CSSQuake | Hacker News Reader

CSSQuake

cssquake.com

548 pointsmsalsas115 comments

This is an awesome achievement, but I can't help but notice that Quake ran smoother on my Pentium-133 PC in the 90s than it runs on my Mac M1 Pro...

This engine is not optimised for performance. It's using CSS, after all.

Yeah this is a case of “not the right tool for the job”.

It is awesome though.

Of course, but you'd think after 30 years the compute power should be enough to overcome any lack of optimization. It's a testament to the engineering that went into the original Quake engine.

Decades of optimizing a toaster to make better toast will not make the toaster any better at making meatloaf

I am on the ground. This is great.

Still, why css is as slow as it is given what tech like imgui can do is a little wild.

CSS is a general rendering solution, not something built for rendering 3D games.

And no one has spent any time optimizing 3D transforms to make a game workable because no one would be able to justify the use of their time like that. It wouldn’t even give you brownie points ‘cause most people would just ask “why?”

Id assume "a fun challenge" could be enough of a reason

Is this the right analogy? The product is the same, the appliance is different.

It should be "Decades of inventions from toasters to IOT AI Smart Air Fryers will not make better toast than the original"

But I'd argue the IOT AI Smart Air Fryer should make really good toast. Which is what GP is saying.

It'd be like if the IOT AI Smart Air Fryer had a constraint of only being allowed to use friction to create heat.

CSSQuake uses an intentionally-absurd rendering pipeline. It's not surprising that the result is sub-optimal.

(Though I agree that the meatloaf analogy is not very good.)

I stand by my analogy.

Both a toaster and an oven might benefit from improved electronics but in the end—whether its a toaster from the 60s or a toaster from 3008—you are still using a toaster to make a meatloaf.

CSS is not remotely comparable to a game engine. It's not even a programming language.

We haven't had a toaster that makes better toast since 1997 (Sunbeam radiant control).

Is this you? https://www.timstoasters.com/

Toaster you say?

https://philip.greenspun.com/humor/eecs-difference-explained

Wait, did Quack run on Pentium-133? I had a Pentium MMX 233mhz and I always assumed it didn't ran well so I never bother to get it.

Quake ran on a P75 with 8MB RAM in DOS mode. Not the best but it worked at 320x200.

It must have, because that's what I had in 1996 and I played it.

If you had a 3dfx card it would run silky smooth on a Pentium-120 (what I had at the time)! Quake 2 ran pretty well too if I recall.

Yep 3dfx was a game changer. Was night and day on my 486 DX4 100 with and without

Yeah I didn't have a 3dfx so I assumed the software renderer required a more powerful CPU

Quake ran well on my 100Mhz Pentium.

Bare minimum for it being playable was a 486DX4 100MHz or similar, but with the floating point Quake really wanted a Pentium

I played it on a Pentium with 60mhz - it was allright

Ran fine on my Pentium 90 with 16MB RAM

I played quake in 486dx100.

I ran it on a Pentium 60. If you stuck to 320x200 it ran fine.

I think you’re missing the point

Either you had a Voodoo on your P133 or whatever the M1 is doing is having a bad time...

On my 7945HX this is plenty fast.

For what it's worth it works like smooth butter under Chrome on an M2, on Safari it's clunky and seems to clip alot

Zero issues on Firefox + Linux. Gnome Web is stuttery and weird, though. Must be a WebKit/Safari thing.

Possibly, I did it on Safari. Trying it now on Chrome and it's fine.

Quake compiled in C will run insanely fast at 8K full resolution on an M1.

You wouldn’t happen to have a pointer on where to get this version would you?

Err, strange, what browser? I'm using Firefox on a ThinkPad from 2018 running Linux, and cssquake was running at a smooth 60fps just now (and at 1080p resolution vs the 320x240 or 320x200 someone would likely be running on a P133)

Runs perfectly fine at over 60fps on my Intel Core 358H at roughly 2560x1600.

Perhaps there's something wrong with your web browser. Try Firefox - it works beautifully there.

Maybe try Firefox.

Most of the time, things seem to be optimized for Chrome, but with this, I actually had the impression that Firefox ran a bit smoother, but I tested it on Linux.

This is the first thing I've seen on the intertubes for a /long/ time which genuinely makes me smile, thank you op.

Checked out https://cssdoom.wtf/ and loved it too, both are far lighter than current affairs. \o/

Awesome! Harder to exit than vim.

how did you exit? because nothing seems to be working.

Back button worked for me

I pressed escape, then just closed the tab

I pressed Esc key, click quit. And then closed the browser tab.

In case you want to view the menu, press Tab. Click outside menu items to resume game.

Impressive. I guess this isn't only the renderer made to use CSS but also a full recreation of the engine and logic right? My guess is because a bunch of things do not behave like the original game, e.g. some buttons need to be shot instead of touched to activate, some secret doors open by touching them instead of being shot, etc.

No it’s just the renderer. The game itself is Typescript.

Hi there! Thanks for the report, buttons should work properly now.

Regarding the game logic, the build step has a small JS extractor over QuakeC/progs.dat to generate JSON source facts: states, models, attacks, sounds, etc. The browser runtime is TypeScript and consumes those for Quake-ish gameplay.

It seems like this CSS Quake needs JS to run…

CSS does the rendering, the game logic is TypeScript.

Maybe possible with https://lyra.horse/x86css/ ?

(author of x86css)

Not possible, but it would be possible to reimplement Quake's logic and controls in CSS to have it run without JS. I was considering doing that for my next CSS crime project, though now that CSSQuake has hit the hn frontpage there is little point in doing so.

Really cool experiment. A lot of jank. It would sometimes rubber band me back, movement was grid aligned in a way that made accessing the secret room challenging, and the whole tab unexpectedly crashed with no error. 5 star would play again

Show HN: from the dev (who's also in here, maybe a title update) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48571117

As someone who passionately and ardiently hates prolifiration of this set of _hacks on top of hacks_ called CSS (and CSS/JS/HTML aka Web-stack), I must say this is good and valid use case for CSS. :)

Source code: https://github.com/LayoutitStudio/cssQuake

Is this a rip from https://github.com/NielsLeenheer/cssDOOM

The source appears to be <https://github.com/LayoutitStudio/cssQuake>

Separate projects. Niels Leenheer who made CSS Doom has seen Agustin Capeletto's CSS Quake.

https://bsky.app/profile/html5test.com/post/3mok5febchs2g

And I think both have seen these much older handcrafted css3d engines

- https://pantel.is/projects/css3d/

- https://keithclark.co.uk/labs/css-fps/ (the original)

but quake and doom took it to the next level :)

Very cool. I wonder what the limitations are? I see the dog I shot is floating in the air. Is that maybe a CSS thing or is it fixable?

.dog { display: float; }

You win! I laughed way too hard at this. Boss man is now giving me the side eye.

Damn, always gotta deal with these accursed z-index issues with CSS ;)

Just in time for the 30th anniversary. This looks great, well done!

I wish I could use CSS this well too

Don't worry, OP still can't center a div.

I think I've finally found something in common between OP and me

I was centering divs just fine, but now they took away Fable and I'm lost.

Nice, but the view keeps clipping out to far ahead of the map (but the character seems to still be in its original position as I can die from monsters). It snaps back in place when I shoot.

edit: both on chromium and firefox, desktop linux.

This is a great showcase of both the PolyCSS library and CSS itself!

Using the Inspector on it is awesome. You can select each map piece.

Doesn't work at all for me. I keep jumping around and clipping through objects, can't even leave the first room without being stuck in the doorway to the elevator.

have to shoot the elevator buttons in this, in the original you could move into them.

After leaving the first area to the bridge... was the sky really so close to the ground in the original game, or the old monitors made it look differently?

Also nice achievement...!

No light theme though?

Amazing and impressive use of CSS. But at the same time, makes me appreciate what feat Carmack achieved 30 years ago on early Pentiums.

My dark reader was on, and half of the map was black, but I played the first level from my memory. Amazing stuff, thank you.

Wow this is really awesome. Really really smooth. It's insane how after 25 years or so my muscle memory is still intact.

Though this is impressive, I think this is something that should not be possible with a declarative styling language

Its just using CSS for the rendering, not the game logic.

Seems like you get stuck on corners and it really doesn't like running up/down slopes, neat though.

This is what I show my friends when they say CSS isn't a real programming language.

Wow, this is impressive. 60FPS, MacBook Air M1. I was instantly hooked and so much nostalgia.

Every time I click in the window, the menu disappears. I tried both Firefox and Chrome.

Thanks for that report! It is hopefully fixed now.

I still play quake (world) to this day. I just can't quit it.

Hell yeah, I still see it as the optimal arena FPS. The sequels add too much IMO. Quake 1 (QuakeWorld) was such a raw competitive arena shooter that is just pure action, no weird extra mechanics. Pick up items, get some health, shoot people. Q2/Q3 are totally fine too, but I feel like QW really just nailed everything.

Yes. Quake 3, "rebranded" as Quake Live, is the second best for me. I can play both for hours.

Pretty fun to go into f12 and delete the enemy's face.

I noticed my cursor was continuously sliding upward first in Neal.fun's latest canvas multiplayer game and I experienced it here as well. Anyone else see this behavior?

And maybe a skill issue but I was unable to jump out of the slime...

If this is CSS only, then why does in need JS to run?

Crazy, such memories. Thanks!

Has science gone too far?

If this is what CSS has become, it means at some point its development went the wrong way.

The game logic here is running in JS. Only the rendering is handled by HTML and CSS. Is it really wrong that you can do this? All it requires is 3D transformation of elements.

It still needs JS. It just avoids using canvas and does DOM manipulation + CSS instead.

But can it play Crysis?

this is crazy i didn't know css could do this

Really impressive

how long does it take to develop this game?

This is dope.

Your scientists were so preoccupied with whether or not they could, they didn’t stop to think if they should

Then Tresspasser CSS next

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trespasser_(video_game

lowkey amazing!

is there no sound?

Is there a way to produce sound using CSS?

Only screams.

Best. Comment. Ever

    @media speech {
        body {
            cue-before: url(/path/to/sound.ogg);
        }
    }

https://www.w3.org/TR/CSS2/aural.html

You should be able to enable sounds with the M shortcut or through the Options menu.

lol that's crazy. Good job.

Bro how tf.

This is insane.

Wow, this will be a great project for the forever-upcoming VRML /s

Well, Quake and VRML were contemporaneous, but VRML was a plugin in the browser — it was never as fast as Quake, and not intended as a game engine, though there were many worlds and models built in VRML that were at least as detailed as the Quake maps.

Wow

Reply on news.ycombinator.com