Developer Diary: In-Browser Networked FPS

Chris Dickinson, like Opera's Bruce Lawson, received his undergraduate degree in humanities -- but has loved programming since high school, and especially loves game development.

The best games aren't just tech-tacular, either: rather, they use technology to do things other kinds of art have been doing for thousands of years -- although perhaps in differently interactive ways. For plenty of gamers, the plots are at least as memorable as the graphics -- and the plots don't age as poorly as graphical engines do.

So Chris, with his liberal arts degree and considerable game-development experience (years ago he wrote an OpenGL engine in C++) is a great developer to write about WebGL game development.

His latest project is underway: a networked first-person shooter (FPS), in the browser, using WebGL.

He's documenting the development process in a series of blog posts, and has currently completed through 'Rendering with WebGL'. Quite a bit more is sketched out, though: he'll be using Socket.io and Node.js for networking (though he will explain why not Websockets, however cool they are), Web Workers (crucial for a game this complex). 

Should be worth following, if you're interested in watching a WebGL game (an FPS, no less) come to life.