When I saw this fps implemented using the canvas element last week I knew gold had been struck. With the canvas you have the ability to create a real-time drawing surface with JavaScript. With the XMLHttpRequest you have the ability to get and send data to a web application which can read and write to a database. If you add these two things together you can make a massive multiplayer online game in a web browser that requires very little loading time, no installation and no plugins. This is the hotness. If games like Kingdom of Loathing pick up on this technology they can do some really revolutionary stuff.

As a proof of concept for this idea I have created a terrible terrible demo. It’s really simple and almost embarassing, but that’s what you get with less than an hour of work. I only tested it in Firefox 1.5, but it should theoretically work in any browser that supports XMLHttpRequest and canvas. There are two links and a canvas. If you click a link, the square with the coordinates it represents will turn black. This isn’t anything new, except that behind the scenes those coordinates are being read from XML data. If you replace that static XML data with a web application and a relational database then you’re playing with power.

Maybe the demo will be better by the time you read this. I’m going to keep working on it as a platform for creating games that utilize grids. Tile-laying games like Tigris and Euphrates and strategy games like Dungeons and Dragons combat are top contenders. All that we have to do now is expand the canvas to have real 3d drawing power with the help of the GPU.

What are the long term implications of this technology? The most obvious thing I see is another nail in the coffin of Microsoft. Looking for the reason? PC Gaming is one of the main reasons pepople still run Windows. If all the software is web-based then Firefox becomes the OS and Linux/OSX/Windows doesn’t matter. If we can make a 3d, or even a 2d MMO that works in Firefox regardless of platform we can make a killing. Even people running old versions of BSD would be able to play the game just fine. There are more PCs than consoles out there. Firefox’s popularity is growing daily. A quality game built on this platform could easily overtake the great World of Warcraft because the barrier to entry is so small. To get into most MMOs you have to install software and have sufficient 3d hardware. Signing up for this MMO would be no harder than registering for a forum on the web.

I’m going to talk about this tonight on GeekNights.

I remember back in the 90′s there were JavaScript games. Java and Flash were big and slow to download over dial-up connections. Yet people wanted to play games in the web browser. People created a bunch of CGI and JavaScript based games using form elements and gifs to create poor renditions of classic turn based games. Mostly card games IIRC. But as technology advanced we got Director, Flash and Java to provide the browser embedded games we desired.

Recently there have been advances in web technology like AJAX, SVG, XmlHTTPRequest that allow web pages to be more dynamic than ever. Without using iframes we can have pages that both update information in a database and update their display based on information from the database without reloading. I think it’s freaking obvious that we should make a game based on that architecture. It will load fast, look cool, not require plug-ins, work in any new browser, allow multi-player and just be fun.

My current vision is to recreate versions of European board games such as Puerto Rico, Tigris and Euphrates, St. Petersburg, Carcassone, etc. using this platform. Much like the version of Settlers of Catan made with Java, this would be a huge hit and a great way to kill shit tons of time.

Now, there is more to it than in-browser games that don’t require a plug-in. ANY modern browser will run the games. That could potentially include browsers on cell phones, Palm devices, Blackberries, etc. Imagine if instead of paying your cellular carrier money to download a shit version of Tetris because they disabled phone functionality you can instead just visit a page and play board games with your friends for your standard data charge. And different style sheets for different media will enable the game to have a proper interface despite your chosen browser, device and network speed. The day when 5 people can play the same game of Puerto Rico on a phone, palm, blackberry, PC and PSP in different parts of the world will be a very good day.