Quake 2 was the first fps game that I dedicated serious time to and it kept me entertained for years. April fools day brought a ton of laughs to those, who keep up with google, when they announced that they got Quake 2 running in a web browser. I ignored the post, but then the confirmations came in and as more and more people were showcasing how the game runs on their machine, I got curious and was determined to run it on mine.
How surprised was I when I saw the page that let me run the game in just 6 easy steps.
Now the reason I post this is not, how cool the game is, (even though you have to admit, quake 2 was an epic sequel, a true fps done right), my point here is that they have the game running using WebGL and HTML5 Canvas. Google made history once again, this is evolution. The web site experience soon will no longer have to be confined to a 2D plank with fake 3D effects. The incredible freedom that this technology gives us means that we will no longer have to resort to external applications like flash or silverlight, if we want to “give a web site a bit of a bling”. JavaScript and HTML5 canvas is the future.
The Chrome OS will be hitting the mainstream pretty soon and seeing the quality of games that may be soon available through the browser for the masses, all I can say is bravo GooGle, what a great step towards cloud computing and towards deploying, utilizing and spreading the new browser standards.
Here’s a quick recording of Quake 2 running in the latest webkit build on a Mac Pro, using WebGL, the Canvas API, HTML 5 <audio> elements, the local storage API, and WebSockets.
My mouse sensitivity needs a bit of tweaking and the fps suffered from the screen recording program, but everything considered, this is amazing.