BananaBread – a browser-based 3D shoot ’em up

Le Monde Informatique reports that the Mozilla Foundation has published a shoot ’em up game – BananaBread – to demonstrate the capabilities of its Javascript libraries. If it works in Mozilla’s Firefox browser, all Javascript-compatible browsers are affected by these developments. No plug-in needs to be downloaded since everything is implemented in the browser. The only thing that has to be downloaded is the Javascript code (which explains why the game loads slowly).

In terms of technology it is an improvement of the asm.js module produced by Mozilla using Epic. The Emscripten compiler has enabled conversion of a game built with the Unreal Engine 3 game engine written in C++ into a Javascript/WebGL assembly.

Mozilla has also announced full support for the WebRTC (Web Real Time Communication) standard in Firefox 22. This standard enables real-time peer-to-peer audio and video communications. WebRTC is used for chat between players in BananaBread.

All the code in this project is open (and practically all the art assets), so others can learn from this effort and use this code to create their own browser games.

There’s a demo available if you fancy your chances or are just curious.