Thread: Putting the web in OpenGL games

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    Putting the web in OpenGL games

    Hey guys,
    I'm writing 3d game and would like for my users to be able to surf the web from within the game. I'm just wondering if this is possible and if it is, what should be my first step. Thanks in advance.

    -Charles

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    I know you may take this as me being a prick, but here goes: don't attempt to do that.

    There is absolutely no good reason to create a browser in any game --that's why there are so many browsers out there.

    You will be reinventing the wheel. Why would anyone want to use your browser over firefox, or chrome? Because its integrated into the game? What does that mean for the people playing it? That they can now access the internet? Well they already could.


    Sorry if I sound like a prick, but there just isn't any reason to do this.

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    Quote Originally Posted by smasherprog View Post
    I know you may take this as me being a prick, but here goes: don't attempt to do that.

    There is absolutely no good reason to create a browser in any game.
    There's actually several good reasons to embed a browser in a game-- a couple off the top of my head:
    • You could use it to power your GUI via HTML/JS.
    • You could use it to embed mini-games or other additional content inside your game.
    • You could use it for in-game chat (Meebo, IRC, Facebook chat, etc.)
    • You could use it for in-game advertising (not really a big advocate of this, but hey, it's a possibility).
    • You could use it to display tutorials, game-guides, or community boards from within the game
    • You could design special web pages that users could visit in-game that are "aware" of certain in-game information and that could potentially communicate back with the game client. (For example, your users could use this to load mods from third-party sites without ever leaving the game)


    There's a whole range of possibilities beyond the obvious "put a web-browser in your game"-- you just gotta think outside the box a bit.

    @ gamecoder:

    Check out Awesomium, it does what you want, is free for non-commercial use, and has a simple OpenGL sample included in the latest SDK-- lots of big game companies are beginning to use it. (Disclaimer: I work as a programmer on the project)

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