HTML5-based games development and optimization company Ludei has announced 3D support for its game development platform. The resultant technology proposition here is the potential for developers to deliver WebGL 3D games to "virtually" any mobile device.
"We've already made HTML5 cross-platform 2D game development a reality," said Ludei CEO Eneko Knorr. "Now we are unlocking the door for the thousands of web game developers who want to publish great 3D games on mobile and reach consumers through the most popular app stores. Our 3D rendering allows today's most popular mobile devices to run a 3D HTML5 game with the same great user experience and performance that native gamers are used to."
NOTE: Ludei will support 3D game development via the open WebGL standard. WebGL is the browser equivalent of OpenGL, the industry standard for deploying 3D animated games.
The kronos.org specification for WebGL is as follows, "WebGL is an immediate mode 3D rendering API designed for the Web. It is derived from OpenGL ES 2.0, and provides similar rendering functionality, but in an HTML context. WebGL is designed as a rendering context for the HTML Canvas
element. The HTML Canvas
provides a destination for programmatic rendering in web pages, and allows for performing that rendering using different rendering APIs. The only such interface described as part of the Canvas
specification is the 2D canvas rendering context, CanvasRenderingContext2D
. This document describes another such interface, WebGLRenderingContext
, which presents the WebGL API."
The addition of 3D rendering on the Ludei platform means (for the first time) that WebGL runs on every iOS and Android device, so developers don't have to worry about which devices currently have built-in 3D support to handle their complex HTML5 mobile animated games. Ludei says that today, 3D game developers, including those that historically publish console and PC games, can use its technology to deliver their 3D titles cross-platform to Google Play, Apple App Store, and elsewhere.
Supported destinations currently include the Apple App Store, Google Play, and the Amazon NOOK, Chrome, and FirefoxOS markets, as well as Pokki and Intel AppUp.