browser based game with a stand alone 3D part

It's possible, since you're the programmer.

Except, you need to overcome various issues. Since it's a turned-based game, players can play at work, right before going to bed, etc. So before takign a next turn, it might take 5 hours to pass. Going into a 3D environment as a player to attack another player who is sleeping gives you an unfair advantage.

But I'm not sure what you're aiming at. Will it be a full online game world, where players can challenge eachother, or just have a piece of virtual land and can only attack neighbours, etc.

It's possible, but there are quite a bunch of hurdles to overcome. Esp. if you have no experience with 3D game programming. It also needs a way for the server to handle multiple clients combatting eachother, without too much server stress.

Toolmaker

I have made StarX single player spaceword ho! like game long time ago and new one Galacticus a multilayer rts. But the problem is that it is far easier have complex economy/political/social simulation with a web server but its more fun to fight battles in 3d.

I am just asking if it has been done before.

StarX:

Galacticus:


The problem with attacking off line players would be solved by making space ships travel anywhere in the galaxy with reasonable amount of time. So players would have chose to attack only on line players that are same size. Plus there is always AI and standard roll of the die combat when no one wants to play the rts game.

I think I'm doing excactly what you are trying to do. But I take a little bit of a different approach.

My game is a team management game where everything is done in the browser after the user logs in. That means cash management, training your team, doing all the management stuff etc.

Then, I've developed an ActiveX control with my own 3D engine and networking. The way it works is:

(1) After the player is done doing all the browser side stuff such as managing his team and setting up a game strategy, he would goto the "Play Game" page, which houses the ActiveX control.

(2) He clicks a button on the HTML page that tells the ActiveX control to show the "Lobby" where players chat and challenge each other. Once a challenger has been found, then the AX control pulls both players team information from the server and starts to render the game inside the AX control.

I'd show you how this works, but it's still in very ALPHA stage. I've got the basic 3D stuff working, but I'm focusing more on the chat/lobby system for now.

I think this maybe what you are looking for.

Well some thing like that but not ActiveX. I develop on Linux and trying to stay as multi platform as possible. I remember i have written an Active X openGl control before and did not like it much.

How are you handling the web servers? So you have a php site + some C++ server + the ActiveX client? My theory why i want to do this this way is 2 points:
1 browser based game people can play at where ever or on their cellphone – don't matter.
2 browser based games are easier to develop with much more content and rules.

Well if my point #2 is wrong then its not at all that logical to do. Just making a full 3d game would be better.

I think i will make a demo browser based game and then if it progresses well i will add the 3d client.
My other idia is to make the 3d client essentially a simple web browser witch would render But i think that would be more difficult and i don't relay want to reinvent VRML.

eiforall,

My game IS platform independant. I haev activeX controls for IE browsers and Mozilla plugins for firefox browsers. My engine is pretty much modular. The plugins are simply shells for running the engine in a browser.

As for the server, I'm renting out a dedicated server for myself. The server (Win2003) houses the ASP.NET webpages, the database (SQL2005) and my game server application that I coded in MFC to handle all the connections and chatting.

The problem you will face if you are not developing a 3D plugin for the browser will be launching a 3D application from a browser command. I myself am not sure how to do this or how to even pass parameters between the browser and the application.

If you don't want to code a plugin from scratch, and your game is not that complex, I would suggest you take a look at Shockwave3D.

Good luck!

You can lunch game form a browser through active x controls :)

I was thinking that users would just click and lunch it them selves when they want to get into the lowlevel battle details other wise just watch the stats form the browser.

I have seen shockwave3d games i think i should look into it i remember liked flash4 even when it was very limited.

Mr Head Hunter – i don't think i will relocate UK ... you must get lots of spam from the kids here on gamedev trying to get into the gaming business.

requiring users to use different applications for the various aspects of your game seems like a poor user experience.

If you want to make it browser based, you might perhaps look into something like shockwave (multi-platform, can do hardware accelerated 3D, etc). You could just have 2 user interfaces in the same app that way: 1 for rts aspects, 1 for 3D aspects. when it comes time for the choice to be made, the user just clicks one button or the other and the game just switches between 2D and 3D.

If there's no really compelling reason to make this browser based, then you can do everything with a standard openGL standalone app.

-me

This might be a little off topic, but I have seen games with a web interface to manage strategy and such, with real-life elements that provide the action. There are quite a few Role-playing games that work this way - Darkon, for instance - Where a King/Ruler/Warlord/Whatever makes strategic decisions, sets forth attacks, etc and then players meet at a park in real life (and in costume of course :) ) to wage a mock battle with foam weapons. The game master then applies the outcome of the mock battle to the web-based interface - ie: the defenders were defeated and their territory/artifacts seized by the victors.


While its different than what you are doing, you might look at this for some inspiration. Perhaps one option you could consider would be to schedule the real-time battles for mutually agreed times (much like the scheduled Mock battles in Darkon, or similar to organized raids in WoW.)



PS - I don't want anyone to get the impression that I actually play Darkon. I'm not one of those role-playing wierdos ;) Someone just showed me Darkon: the Movie and I thought I'd share the similarities.

The reason I decided to make my game web based is for a couple of reasons:

(1) No need to worry about interface or GUI programming. You can do everything in a browser and do it quicker AND with a database back-end! Add ASP.NET to that, and it's even easier to implement (Yes, I'm in LOVE with ASP.NET, so sue me!)

(2) The game can be played from ANYWHERE. You can manage your game from any computer with an internet connection. The ActiveX or Mozilla plugin is less than 2MB to download and it will only download media (textures, meshes, sound, etc) whenever you need them in real-time. This makes it super east to run my game from just about any PC out there.

If I did this as a stand alone product, then I'd have to code an entire OpenGL GUI system, and I'm NOT interested in that.(And NO, CEGUI is just way too much of a pain for me)

The above reasons make for developing my game a real snap and it's also an entertaining experience for the end user I think. And since my control runs inside a browser window (like quicktime or flash) and not a separate window , I don't think it will detract from the user experience at all.

That's it basically. I'll post a link to my site once I've figured out most of the querks. Like I said, right now it's in REALLY early alpha stage. I got the main skeleton of the website working (registration, news, login, etc) and the activex control only draws a quad that rotates. Still lots of work to do :)