Idea - Running TDM in your webbrowser

[freyk]

I discovered for myself some great html5 features of our webbrowsers, like
viewing 3d generated environments with google maps and running old dosgames.
(see other topics in offtopic forum)

For the ones who doesnt know it, Its also possible to run Doom 3 in your browser:
project page: http://www.continuation-labs.com/projects/d3wasm/
Sourcecode: https://github.com/gabrielcuvillier/d3wasm
Demo: https://wasm.continuation-labs.com/d3demo/
(pro-tip: run the demo in google chrome/chromium)

For a easy demonstration of our beloved game on cross platforms, how about running TDM in the webbrowser?
(and stream the data files from a tdm mirror server)
 

Edited November 5, 2019 by freyk

[Bienie]

Wow, that is pretty amazing. I got it to run pretty well on my work laptop in chrome. That web application certainly has a lot of potential! As far as porting TDM into webbrowser format, it may be worth looking in to but we have few people with that level of code-fu and time to work on it. Maybe once we get a good VR client it could be worth looking in to this though! If nothing else it could be a fun way to spread TDM to the masses if all you have to do is to embed the game in a post on a forum / social media ^^

[HMart]

TDM is open source and anyone can do with it what they want, I'm also no one to demand others to stop but I most ask, why would you want that? Just to spread the word on the game? 

Running a game in a browser, is very slow compared to running it natively on the PC and that is also slower than it can theoretically be that is why Vulkan and dx12 were invented. If the first contact people have with TDM is with the slowest version of the game, why do you guys think they would go then try the faster version? IMO they would just say the game is trash and forget it, first impressions are very important.

TDM is already more demanding than Doom 3 ever was, they are two different games, not to mention that the engine version used in TDM has many changes and requires newer and updated GPU's, IMO Doom 3 is not and should not be a benchmark for what TDM should be capable off. 

Also Would the TDM team be fine with the game being known by many people has a browser game? We all know the stigma that those games have. 

Now again, if you want to try doing it, go for it, I bet it would be a fun exercise but I ask, what good would it make to the future improvements of the game/engine to have two different versions outhere?  Who would maintain them? TDM team of volunteer coders is already small and even tho I don't speak for them, I bet they don't have much free time to work on something like this. 

Ultimately I certainly don't believe this would help people with slow computers (or slow internet), there's a reason you only see a few games running on browsers and none of them have the complexity or more complexity than Crysis for example, a 12 years old game. (google stadia will change this tho...)  

Edited October 28, 2019 by HMart

[duzenko]

So it needs all the game files to be installed locally first? Kinda defeats the purpose?

[freyk]

Have you tried the demo, hmart? 
ok, its sometimes a bit slow, but the graphics work and there are very fast map loading times . (but why is the handmodel not showing?) 

As i see it, its solution is To get our temporary "your daily TDM-fix" on every modern browser on several os'ses, without installing tdm client using the updater.

The benefits i can think of, for now after a session:
users can run the same build  a browser on windows, mac os, linux distro's, android, ios, etc
if the site-admin updates the tdm files in the backside of the server, you get the latest files without using the tdm updater.
Its sitting temporary in your browser cache, after the first session the game start very quick, you can store you missions on it and save your progress, but if you clean your cache all is deleted.
map Loading times are very fast. 
You can show and demonstrate TDM to everybody who have a modern system and browser.

Edited October 29, 2019 by freyk

[cabalistic]

This would basically require to develop a "new" renderer in WebGL, and possibly some other significant platform porting. I'm not stopping anyone from doing it, but this is going to be a significant amount of work. If I'm writing a new renderer, I'd rather learn Vulkan in the process than another variant of GL

[freyk]

yes, there will be things to port, but you also have the sourcecode from that project that include "example" code how to write/port it. 

[freyk]

found  and played some browserbased Nintendo/sega/amiga/neogeo/arcade emulators and quake 1 in my browser. so, those are "browser games" now, hmart?

some young friends of mine, never played those games, played the browser "demos" and enjoying playing them now on local emulators/devices. 

tip: put in full screen mode, and you got almost the original feeling of playing. 

Edited November 4, 2019 by freyk

[stgatilov]

On 10/29/2019 at 3:37 AM, cabalistic said:

This would basically require to develop a "new" renderer in WebGL, and possibly some other significant platform porting. I'm not stopping anyone from doing it, but this is going to be a significant amount of work. If I'm writing a new renderer, I'd rather learn Vulkan in the process than another variant of GL

I guess there emscripten supports OpenGL-to-WebGL translation. But the OpenGL currently used in TDM is surely wider than a "subset of GLES 3". Moreover, WebGL does not support some of the features used right now.

Clearly, all the window system integration, threading, and probably many more has to be rewritten in order to make it work.

To be honest, I personally dislike the trend of putting everything into the browser. Doing so to hardcore games is the worst idea I ever heard.

[kano]

12 minutes ago, stgatilov said:

To be honest, I personally dislike the trend of putting everything into the browser. Doing so to hardcore games is the worst idea I ever heard.

Here here. Nothing like playing videos in the Firefox web browser, which still does decoding in pure software in 2019, instead of using one of the native video playback applications in the OS, which uses proper hardware acceleration, thereby leading to less heat and longer battery life. And, Google and Mozilla are in a race to see who can build the biggest web browser that renders older computers obsolete.

 

There's a reason many Linux flavors are dropping support for 32-bit computers, it's because in a few years, you won't even be able to use one to browse the Internet due to both web browsers (and websites) surpassing 4GB per process memory constraints!

[stgatilov]

9 minutes ago, kano said:

There's a reason many Linux flavors are dropping support for 32-bit computers, it's because in a few years, you won't even be able to use one to browse the Internet due to both web browsers (and websites) surpassing 4GB per process memory constraints!

I have found that browser is the only RAM-consuming feature on a typical PC (and on my PCs most of the time). I think RAM manufacturers should pay money to Google for ongoing Chromium development

[duzenko]

This got me around to the opposite idea - download only the darkmod.exe and it should download missing assets on map load (i.e. integrate the installer)

(The only 'heavy'/per-request assets being textures and sounds)

Anyone who played Q3 and downloaded maps from server will get the point.

[demagogue]

I think it's kind of a cool idea. Also kind of a gratuitous gimmick. But if somebody did it, it might be fun to try out. Does it allow you to play on any computer through the browser? That's how I'd use it, just to show friends, or message a link where people can just go and play. If it's not like that, then the utility of this drops off somewhat. 

As an aside, if somebody wants to tackle a gratuitous but cool feature, I would love somebody working on a multiplayer version. That's still my #1 pipe dream for this game, for 10 years now I've pined for that. 

[freyk]

yes, demagogue, you can now show this 3 demo to everyone who uses google chrome/firefox on any modern system on windows, mac os, linux distro, etc. (it shows to me, that google chrome runs this more fluenty then firefox on the same system.) 

Edited November 5, 2019 by freyk

[kano]

8 hours ago, demagogue said:

As an aside, if somebody wants to tackle a gratuitous but cool feature, I would love somebody working on a multiplayer version. That's still my #1 pipe dream for this game, for 10 years now I've pined for that. 

Talking out my rear end here, but I think multiplayer would be a more practical feature to implement. I mean, id games and engines are ALL about the multiplayer. Doom 3 had it, limited as it was. But the reason I am just talking out my rear is that I don't know what changes were made while transforming Doom 3 into The Dark Mod that would need to be reworked in order to support multiplay.

It is likely much more complicated to support than I think that it is.

Edited November 5, 2019 by kano

[peter_spy]

Fyi, there are idtech4 multiplayer code forks out there, like librecoop. Having something like Thievery for TDM would be great, but typically that attracts different audience.

[freyk]

and how about co-op? 

(my last offtopic post in this topic) 

please dont post offtopic posts. could someone another topic about multiplayer?

[Destined]

55 minutes ago, freyk said:

and how about co-op? 

(my last offtopic post in this topic) 

please dont post offtopic posts. could someone another topic about multiplayer?

You mean like this?