Browser Based Space Game

[hallsofvallhalla]

By the end of this week I should be finding out if a project I am involved with gets funding. This would be the real deal thing and I would be building the entire web end plus some other stuff. I am not sure if it will go through but it is more apt to happen than anything else I have been involved in and if it does then this post will be null and void.

However it very well may not go through but all of the buzz and excitement has really got me thinking on how I need to settle to one main project. I am anxious to get on the road to development again towards a MMO. I have thought on it and I know what I want to build. It is has been itching me for some time.

I am looking to build a browser based 3d Space/Planetary MMO. Much like freelancer but with more ability to explore more planets. Think Mass effect through the browser with major text based browser functionality. It will be very tech driven, innovative, and current gen. It will also be available through Facebook.

Now like nearly all indie projects no pay is involved unless we start making money. This is a extremely serious project that I will be using Planetary Wars as a base and adding more history to it. We will be using Unity with a MMO server backend along with Javascript/PHP and connecting the two with HTTP requests.

I am looking for modelers, designers, writers, coders, and anyone else wanting to get involved. I am going to keep the team relatively small and will build a base of command to share our work and ideas and project management.

You can contact me via PM.

[Chris]

That's what I'm building! Remember http://ranzei.com/ I showed you like half a year back! This is an older version still, I've been working on it local. But dude if we both could fund it we could share ideas and make it together.

I refuse to use Unity though!
WebGL/JavaScript V8 = The way

[hallsofvallhalla]

hmmm i would love to learn webGL. Let me look into it. Any good links on JS8?

[Chris]

http://code.google.com/apis/v8/intro.html
http://lizstinson.blogspot.com/2009/06/ ... chine.html

Basically JavaScript will be faster than ever before.

[hallsofvallhalla]

as an example here is a test of what i came up with this morning. Still need to make the ship movement more fluid

http://forsakensanctum.com/PlanetaryWars/index.php

[hallsofvallhalla]

updated ship movement

[Chris]

Oh God! First I have to download and install Unity player! What a fuss!

[hallsofvallhalla]

haha, small plugin, like 1 meg and there are literally thousands of games that use it, especially on facebook so you might use it again.

[Jackolantern]

There are no good books for WebGL right now because it is to volatile for any too be written. It is still under heavy development. However, one thing we do know is that it will always be some form of a subset of OpenGL ES, whether that subset includes it all or only part of it. There are books written on OpenGL ES, and some existing OpenGL books have chapters specifically designed for it.

A word of warning: WebGL is very low level. Probably lower level than you have ever worked with unless you have worked in OpenGL. You could literally get lost for years in making a competent and fairly modern game engine with it, and that would be before writing even 1 line of code for the game itself. I myself won't be touching WebGL until some much higher-level engines are released and support really picks up. This is not the 3D context of HTML5 Canvas, and you can expect significantly more work with WebGL than even the most advanced Canvas projects.

[hallsofvallhalla]

Will a plugin not be required? I know Googles O3d or whatever is a plugin.