Do a Bananabread to RE? Web Eclipse? Red Web Resurrection?

[cdxbow]

Bananabread (BB), the port of Sauer with emscripten over to JS/WebGL is an impressive technical feat, if you haven't had a look, fire up Firefox and go to https://developer.mozilla.org/demos/detail/bananabread to play. The unreal engine has been ported, too. The list of ports is extensive, a mountain of work, see https://github.com/kripken/emscripten/wiki . Someone hasn't been taking their lithium.

BB is probably it's not quite there yet, as there are still a few performance & technical issues to sort out, it certainly looks like it's got potential. With IE11 supposedly supporting WebGL, the last bastion of resistance to WebGL falls. Now there is, or will be a single environment for 3D web games, cross platform, cross browser and capable of using 3D accelerated graphics. An incredible platform, potentially the platform.

I mentioned to Quin after the Tesserect fuss that using emscripten to make/maintain a low end RE could be a possibility. So thinking out aloud for my own purposes:

Advantages
- General advantages of webGL app

no plugins or installs
always the same version
easier distribution of upgrades/patches/maps
?harder to hack
Players no longer have to run & maintain servers
Easy player access and potentially larger player base
Run on more platforms (some tablets)

- Integration with web stuff

manage player state such as status (health/$$$/upgrades etc), player accounts online
single player - cutscenes, storyline & other narrative devices can be done with web stuff.
maintain game state & progress over time
world state - the games could now easily be set in an online persisting world.

Heck, some of that stuff the cube devs have been asked to do a lot of times, but have declined.

Disadvantages

Performance - this will improve with time, BB is currently not playable for me.
Technical - needs a while to fix and settle in. How good will IE support be? When will Chrome work better?
Need internet connection - doh!
Loss of Freedom - players no longer run servers*, ?lose ability to mod etc
Unknowns - all the unknowns include all the issues related to hosting/servers/performance/security stuff. What sort of server demands are there? At the very least you are going to need some beefy servers with a fat pipe. Also scripting, how does it work? Interfacing with other web elements. Then there are the unknown, unknowns, the Rumsfeld unknowns.....

So I thought I would ask the community for opinions/ideas/technical stuff/issues. Some of you may have played around with it extensively, have insider knowledge or some technical understanding and be able to help me understand the known unknowns.

* Addendum - you could probably run games locally on a server, so that 'freedom' would still be possible.

[Lyberta]

Only client should be ported. Not servers.

Also, I'm against any kind of persistence in games.

[Evropi]

I don't see why servers should be a problem. You just use your client to connect. Obviously the line between client and server is rather thin in Red Eclipse and other Cube 2 games. Anyone can set up a dedicated server and you can connect to it via the web client. I am aware that BananaBread for Cube 2 does not currently work like this, but it shouldn't be a big issue. The server browser should easily be portable to the web client once the legwork's done.

Also, I'm against any kind of persistence in games.

A bit broad but I tend to agree. I was really glad when TrueCombat:CQB did away with the gun unlocking and XP system from TC:E. It makes the game much harder to balance as the strong only get stronger and new players are completely screwed. It does not make for fun gameplay.

As for simple stat tracking though (e.g. Xonotic's XonStat), it would be decent and it would introduce the competitive element everyone has craved for for so long.

[Lyberta]

As for simple stat tracking though (e.g. Xonotic's XonStat), it would be decent and it would introduce the competitive element everyone has craved for for so long.

But stats should not be cumulative. For example K/D ratio or accuracy are OK but number of kills is not. Of course, K/D ratio and accuracy require storing cumulative stats but they should be hidden from players.

However, any kind of leaderboard will greatly boost interest in cheating and since source code is open and network protocol relies too much on trust, this will surely spawn many cheaters, so I'd rather just play the game and have fun instead of bothering about my stats.

[Sniper-Goth]

I'd rather just play the game and have fun instead of bothering about my stats.

This! +1

[Evropi]

But stats should not be cumulative. For example K/D ratio or accuracy are OK but number of kills is not. Of course, K/D ratio and accuracy require storing cumulative stats but they should be hidden from players.

Why would you hide them? This would lead more people to stay and try their hand at being the best. It would lead to greater competition and very likely greater involvement. It would make clans want to do tournaments so they don't just have a forum post about who won the tournament, but have their clan name proudly displayed on a leaderboard, one click away from the game's home page.

I don't understand your 'cumulative' point. I think total number of kills is indeed a meaningless statistic (like win/loss on a chess site, even the worst players have roughly 50/50 W/L ratios), but since there are no technical limitations to counting this... why not?

However, any kind of leaderboard will greatly boost interest in cheating and since source code is open and network protocol relies too much on trust, this will surely spawn many cheaters [. . .]

I disagree. I'm a moderator on a chess site. I'd say what really makes cheating a draw is the ease with which you can cheat. Once an exploit is out, it's over. Cheating on a chess website is hilariously easy as you can use offline engines. They can get around JavaScript means of identifying cheaters too (I can't clarify what I mean by that for fear of someone getting around our means of protection from cheaters). Cheating in shooter games though is fairly easy to stop as it almost always relies on modifying rate of fire. For more serious cheats, like fragging everyone on the map... not only are they rare.

[. . .]I'd rather just play the game and have fun instead of bothering about my stats.

As for this, you should be able to disable stat tracking just like you can in Xonotic.

RE has been heading in the direction of having stats tracked and leaderboards for some time now. The first step towards this was the implementation of accounts in the last release.

[Dratz-_C]

Rather than to simply say that it does not yet work for me I suppose I'll also throw a name into the bucket. It is "Banana bRed Eclipse" with "bRed Eclipse" for short. The small letter b could co-signify "Banana Bread," browser and that it is not of primary importance. Obviously, "Red Eclipse" would still be intact and would show up in most searches for "Red Eclipse."
Cheers