I’m happy to announce that we can now offer an online version of “Tiles”!
We call it WebTiles for now and it serves version 0.8 of Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup. Right in time for the unofficial tournament!
Edlothiol announced his great idea with working code on the mailing-list a few weeks back, and even though it’s still beta-quality in the aspects of features (mini-map missing, inventory-tab, etc), it’s fully playable and there have even been the first 4 wins by players testing it!
There is a slight draw-back: It needs a fairly modern browser which supports a technology called WebSockets:
- Chrome 6 or higher
- Safari 5 or higher
- Opera 11 or higher (enable WebSockets in opera:config#Enable WebSockets)
- Firefox 4 or higher (disable network.websocket.override-security-block in about:config)
WebTiles are actively being developed! If you’d like to participate, head over to edlothiol’s git-repository and have a look. If you’d like to play, head over to the WebTiles now and either use your login from CDO or create a new login.
Additionally, Wensley practiced his awesome AJAX skills and practically over night created an Online Player Status website. It gives a detailed list about who is playing online – in both, the Console/DGL version and the WebTiles version, on CAO and CDO.
Both, WebTiles and the Online Player Status page, are now linked from the front-page of our website for your convenience.
I’d also like to pay thankful credit to the Tornado Web Server, the open-source python library used to create and manage the websocket for WebTiles, and especially Ben Darnell, who helped edlothiol and me very quickly when we ran into trouble.
Note: CAO games are still missing from the status page, but should show up sometime during the weekend.
1. Comment by Hackum
13/May/2011 at 21:58
Last year this was an April’s Fools joke:
http://crawl.develz.org/wordpress/tiles-server
2. Comment by Napkin
13/May/2011 at 22:00
I promise: This year it’s not a joke! :-)
3. Comment by Marsh
13/May/2011 at 22:03
I love DCSS, tiles and my browser. This is the best news in gaming since… well, since the release of 0.8
4. Comment by Richard
14/May/2011 at 00:28
Wonderful news! Thanks so much to the developers of this! (Finally I can play dungeon crawl on my chromebook!)
5. Comment by enne
14/May/2011 at 03:50
I am amazed at WebTiles. Amazing work Edlothiol, and everyone else who’s contributed.
6. Comment by Intrinsic
14/May/2011 at 08:29
This is exciting news indeed, great work to all who were involved.
7. Comment by VitriolicCrux
14/May/2011 at 11:57
Gave it a try, but I think I’ll stick with offline crawling for now.
8. Comment by donblas
15/May/2011 at 01:47
That is awesome. Great job guys.
9. Comment by Wolfechu
15/May/2011 at 02:56
Just curious, as I’m on a rickety work computer right now and unable to check… Is Webtiles only for CDO right now, or can we play CAO games through it too?
10. Comment by Chrysalis
15/May/2011 at 22:35
Excellent! I always wanted to play online, but never wanted to give up my tiles!
11. Comment by Tyto Alba
20/May/2011 at 17:54
Very nice work, once more. Congratulations for this excellent port. The Tile version still remains my main choice, but it is real good news that the webtiles exists and are playable for a wide range of devices… :)
12. Comment by Phil Leggetter
31/May/2011 at 01:05
I’m surprised about the WebSocket and therefore new browser requirement since Tornado is supposed to use long polling which doesn’t use WebSockets, it uses long held HTTP requests. Is there a WebSockets module that you are using?
How you written your own JavaScript code to connect to Tornado using the native WebSocket object?
13. Comment by Matt_S
31/May/2011 at 04:01
Due to my lack of reading, I kept trying my CAO login. Oops!
This is great news. I hope the minimap gets implemented soon; I feel a bit lost without it.
14. Comment by mt
20/Jun/2011 at 18:26
And why screen resolution is different for every player? Does it depend on their browser settings? Not very comfortable to watch some games.