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the future of Browser Based MMO: the next generation
MMOExposed
Member RarePosts: 7,400
Well mmorpg.com did an article about a new browser based mmo with 3D action combat and 3 faction open world PvP.
Well one browser based mmo I know is largely popular was Runescape, that pulled off the 3d gaming in the browser. So how has technology in this area of browser mmo come along?
Usually in the browser I am playing a mmorts over the 3D browser mmo. But maybe that's because I don't know any new 3Dbrowser browser based mmo.
http://www.mmorpg.com/mobile/games.cfm?game=894&ismb=1
Well one browser based mmo I know is largely popular was Runescape, that pulled off the 3d gaming in the browser. So how has technology in this area of browser mmo come along?
Usually in the browser I am playing a mmorts over the 3D browser mmo. But maybe that's because I don't know any new 3Dbrowser browser based mmo.
http://www.mmorpg.com/mobile/games.cfm?game=894&ismb=1
Philosophy of MMO Game Design
Comments
Vindictus is browser based? I think not. I have to install it from steam, and i am pretty sure it has its own client.
I believe this is correct, though Vindictus does use browser windows in forms a la EVE Online.
A Mystical Land is full 3D and plays in a browser, but it's for Windows platform only.
The Space Time Studios games, one I know of specifically is Pocket Legends will run inside of Chrome. Artwork is lightweight but the world is 3D using OpenGL. I think it runs on Windows and Mac.
Other than those, I haven't heard much about browser MMORPGs.
http://www.mmorpg.com/mobile/games.cfm?game=894&ismb=1
Browser based is looking up. They made Quake 3 Arena into Quakelive a free browser based remake of the original game. Genius if you ask me. Same game just no cd and free, what more could you ask for. So far the browser side of things do look limited as far as graphics are concerned.
Was on Facebook today and I noticed Wings of Destiny ad. Did a youtube search and the game looked half way play worthy. Kinda like Runescape except newer. I will check it out later, I am hoping that it is not Java based. I can't play Runescape because I disabled all Javascript on my PC.
Not really asking for current gen MMO graphics out of a browser based MMO. That's kind of a silly request honestly. But having actual 3D gameplay with interesting gameplay mechanics is a whole different ball game. Graphics>gameplay. Runescape and MMORTS games prove this. Just most MMO in the browser havnt done anything to go beyond what been already done for years.
Philosophy of MMO Game Design
Having modern APIs available isn't just about getting better quality graphics. Giving developers more tools with which to make their game sometimes means much better performance, or simply much easier to make the game do what you want. Making a given game easier to develop is a big deal no matter what type of game you want.
For example, suppose that you want to have a texture wrap around an object. This could be a texture for a tree stump, or a character's arm or leg, or anything like that. If you do it in the obvious, naive way, you'll get a bunch of graphical artifacting along a seam. There are several things you can do about it:
1) Just put up with a bunch of graphical artifacting and hope your players will, too.
2) Split the texture into two separate textures, which means a substantial performance hit, having to feed in texture coordinates as part of your vertex data rather than computing them from position, having to index which texture to use where, and more of a pain to make the models.
3) Split the vertices along the seam into two separate vertices with exactly the same position but different texture coordinates, which means a meaningful performance hit, having to include texture coordinates as part of your vertex data, and more of a pain to make the models.
4) Put a single line of code in your geometry shader for cylinder-like objects that use wraparound textures.
If those are your choices, #4 is the clear winner by a mile. The catch? It's only available if you have geometry shaders, which means DirectX 10 or OpenGL 3.2 or later. It's not even a terribly complicated line of source code, as it will look something like this:
gTexCoord.y += round(teTexCoord[0].y - teTexCoord[i].y);
(In case you want to understand what that is doing, it's written in GLSL. gTexCoord is my texture coordinates as output from a geometry shader, and teTexCoord is my texture coordinates as output from a tessellation evaluation shader.)