hardsetHead
First time out of the vault
Hi guys,
I've been busy for a little while working on a bit of a portfolio project.
https://github.com/ajxs/jsFO
My project was a conversion of the Fallout2 engine to be playable in your browser. After a good deal of work, I've come to the point where, for the time being, I am unable to commit to working on the project on a regular basis. I've made quite a bit of progress thus far, but due to the limitations of the platform I've decided not to continue the project to completion. That may change in the future, but as the project currently stands I don't view the goal of playing Fallout within the browser as being realistic and feasible. From time to time I might fix a few things here and there, and if other people are interested in helping out I'd be more than happy to get involved again or give any help I can.
The project has always been open-source, and I've decided I'd like to publish the code here so that it can provide a good basis from which other mod authors, or interested parties can learn ways in which a port of the Fallout engine can be accomplished.
Should there be interest in the project, I plan to publish documentation of the engine and it's functionality over the next few weeks.
If you want to test it out, all you have to do is download the source, and run the index.html file.
Currently it has several maps converted. It'll load up the Gecko Power Plant by default.
Be aware, that the project is in a 'non-playable' state. Presently, you can run around the map with minimal object interaction. But it demonstrates the capabilities of the engine fairly well.
Feel free to report any problems running it you have here. I'm still willing to fix minor problems here and there.
The main hurdles to a full playable release, as I see them, are:
* Due to the way the browser works, all game assets need to be converted to native browser formats and loaded into the browser's memory prior to launching the game. Even with compression these files can be quite large, which would place a large burden on the user if they were streaming the game online. Even though the capability for this currently exists.
* Lack of documentation of the scripting engine: even if I was able to commit the time to making a vm in Javascript for running the scripting engine, I'd still need to do large amounts of research into the actual implementation of the scripting engine itself. Which would be more than I'm willing to take on.
* Certain rendering processes, such as animated palettes and realtime light-mapping of objects are quite costly in terms of FPS, or outright impossible due to the limitations of real-time asset loading. I've already implemented a fairly hacky framework for light mapping, but it's rough at best.
* Real time loading of assets is nigh on impossible. Javascript is unfortunately incredibly slow in this regard.
Nevertheless, if anyone is interested in further development feel free to get involved!
I'd be more than happy to answer any questions of how things work.
Let me know your thoughts!
Also, you can download the current version zipped from this link:
https://github.com/ajxs/jsFO/archive/0.0.5.zip
I've been busy for a little while working on a bit of a portfolio project.
https://github.com/ajxs/jsFO
My project was a conversion of the Fallout2 engine to be playable in your browser. After a good deal of work, I've come to the point where, for the time being, I am unable to commit to working on the project on a regular basis. I've made quite a bit of progress thus far, but due to the limitations of the platform I've decided not to continue the project to completion. That may change in the future, but as the project currently stands I don't view the goal of playing Fallout within the browser as being realistic and feasible. From time to time I might fix a few things here and there, and if other people are interested in helping out I'd be more than happy to get involved again or give any help I can.
The project has always been open-source, and I've decided I'd like to publish the code here so that it can provide a good basis from which other mod authors, or interested parties can learn ways in which a port of the Fallout engine can be accomplished.
Should there be interest in the project, I plan to publish documentation of the engine and it's functionality over the next few weeks.
If you want to test it out, all you have to do is download the source, and run the index.html file.
Currently it has several maps converted. It'll load up the Gecko Power Plant by default.
Be aware, that the project is in a 'non-playable' state. Presently, you can run around the map with minimal object interaction. But it demonstrates the capabilities of the engine fairly well.
Feel free to report any problems running it you have here. I'm still willing to fix minor problems here and there.
The main hurdles to a full playable release, as I see them, are:
* Due to the way the browser works, all game assets need to be converted to native browser formats and loaded into the browser's memory prior to launching the game. Even with compression these files can be quite large, which would place a large burden on the user if they were streaming the game online. Even though the capability for this currently exists.
* Lack of documentation of the scripting engine: even if I was able to commit the time to making a vm in Javascript for running the scripting engine, I'd still need to do large amounts of research into the actual implementation of the scripting engine itself. Which would be more than I'm willing to take on.
* Certain rendering processes, such as animated palettes and realtime light-mapping of objects are quite costly in terms of FPS, or outright impossible due to the limitations of real-time asset loading. I've already implemented a fairly hacky framework for light mapping, but it's rough at best.
* Real time loading of assets is nigh on impossible. Javascript is unfortunately incredibly slow in this regard.
Nevertheless, if anyone is interested in further development feel free to get involved!
I'd be more than happy to answer any questions of how things work.
Let me know your thoughts!
Also, you can download the current version zipped from this link:
https://github.com/ajxs/jsFO/archive/0.0.5.zip
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