"Doom Live" - Quick, browser-based Boom.

Good morning everyone! Last night I was tinkering around with some cloud computing ideas and came up with a simple idea to play Doom a bit better in a browser compared to something like Archive.org. What I came up with is doom.live. It's actually a pretty simple hack-job, but I hope people find it useful.

Under the hood is the final release of Boom running in JS-DOS. I can only provide the shareware episode obviously, but by including FreeDoom and FreeDoom 2, Scythe is playable as a sort of test for now. If there's any interest I'll definitely host more community-favorite WADs. Because of the use of Boom, you have access to more options in the ESC menu such as key remapping as well.

Basically, the idea is that you can pop on any computer, type in doom.live, and start playing right away. Performance is a clear issue (I've had luck in Chrome), different browsers and setups seem to have vastly different experiences, but hopefully campus and work computers may be of Doom-related use again. ;)

Avery

Nice idea. I admit I went looking inside the directory tree after quitting out to see if there were any easter eggs and kind of being disappointed that there wasn't though. :)

Can't open it on my Chrome. :(
Also, I thought this was a Quake Live-based mod until I read the thread.

16 hours ago, Dark Pulse said:

Nice idea. I admit I went looking inside the directory tree after quitting out to see if there were any easter eggs and kind of being disappointed that there wasn't though. :)

Thanks! I might slip something in there tonight now that I'm thinking of it, was going to change the layout of the main page anywho.

13 hours ago, InDOOMnesia said:

Can't open it on my Chrome. :(
Also, I thought this was a Quake Live-based mod until I read the thread.

That's odd, perhaps a permissions issue? JS-DOS will download a zip to your cache (containing the WAD and BOOM.exe) that is required for it to run. Also great catch haha! I purchased the domain because it reminded me of the good ol' days of Quake Live.

Just checked it out - pretty neat all in all!

One good feature, if possible, would be the ability to use local files, e.g. IWADs & PWADs. Perhaps utilising user accounts to store WADs for personal use only.

Slight issues:

- The audio channels are flipped, so directional sound comes out of the incorrect side (left audio out of right headphone/speaker, for example) which makes playing super disorienting.

- Also there seems to be some knockback effect when shooting? I might not remember older ports correctly but this doesn't seem like normal behaviour? Happy to be corrected on that!

Retried loading the page (this time I typed the site's name manually), and it works!

2 hours ago, Dragonfly said:

Slight issues:

- The audio channels are flipped, so directional sound comes out of the incorrect side (left audio out of right headphone/speaker, for example) which makes playing super disorienting.

Yeah, forgot to mention I definitely noticed this too. Sound location seemed to be way different - also seemed like stuff that was far away sounded like it was up closer.

I'd advise against providing the shareware episode, as there already was a case when Zenimax took down Doom on the Web for precisely that. Hell, they might get antsy for you even using the Doom name.

Nice one! I had a similar idea a while ago but failed miserably in setting this up.
Would you mind kindly sharing some info on your setup/server/system?

BTW: I guess Vic Vos is right. Zeni is evil!

On 6/4/2020 at 2:22 AM, Vic Vos said:

I'd advise against providing the shareware episode, as there already was a case when Zenimax took down Doom on the Web for precisely that. Hell, they might get antsy for you even using the Doom name.

So for a long lasting fun it would be necessary to have the option to upload iwads from the client.
But on the other hand: To carry around your iwads all the time would contradict the primary purpose of your project
(Play doom on any computer without further preparation)...

If I could go back time, I would direct my efforts at a pure JavaScript implementation of Doom, rather than Java, as I did with Mocha Doom. For some reason, cross-compiled or multi-layer-emulated solutions a-la EmScripten or DOSBOX running on other browser emulation platforms never satisfied me. Not only performance-wise, but also because features like files, saving or even networking could never be implemented in a meaningful way under such constraints. Also, you can't really "see" under the hood when all there is is layer after layer of obfuscated bytecode of a VM running in a VM running in a VM....

FWIW, the Quake Live plugin was a custom one-off job, developed specifically for the leading browsers at the time using their own custom plugin-in APIs, and didn't rely on either Java or JavaScript.

11 minutes ago, Maes said:

(...) you can't really "see" under the hood when all there is is layer after layer of obfuscated bytecode of a VM running in a VM running in a VM....

 

so sad and so true :-)