CSSQuake (cssquake.com)
352 points by msalsas 8 hours ago | 75 comments

• jedberg 4 hours ago

This is an awesome achievement, but I can't help but notice that Quake ran smoother on my Pentium-133 PC in the 90s than it runs on my Mac M1 Pro...

• poisonfountain 3 hours ago

This engine is not optimised for performance. It's using CSS, after all.

• jedberg 2 hours ago

Of course, but you'd think after 30 years the compute power should be enough to overcome any lack of optimization. It's a testament to the engineering that went into the original Quake engine.

• culi 2 hours ago

Decades of optimizing a toaster to make better toast will not make the toaster any better at making meatloaf

• libria 4 minutes ago

Is this the right analogy? The product is the same, the appliance is different.

It should be "Decades of inventions from toasters to IOT AI Smart Air Fryers will not make better toast than the original"

But I'd argue the IOT AI Smart Air Fryer should make really good toast. Which is what GP is saying.

• rustystump an hour ago

I am on the ground. This is great.

Still, why css is as slow as it is given what tech like imgui can do is a little wild.

• harrall an hour ago

CSS is a general rendering solution, not something built for rendering 3D games.

And no one has spent any time optimizing 3D transforms to make a game workable because no one would be able to justify the use of their time like that. It wouldn’t even give you brownie points ‘cause most people would just ask “why?”

• Akronymus 21 minutes ago

Id assume "a fun challenge" could be enough of a reason

• Insanity 3 hours ago

Yeah this is a case of “not the right tool for the job”.

It is awesome though.

• jamal-kumar an hour ago

For what it's worth it works like smooth butter under Chrome on an M2, on Safari it's clunky and seems to clip alot

• to11mtm 2 hours ago

Either you had a Voodoo on your P133 or whatever the M1 is doing is having a bad time...

On my 7945HX this is plenty fast.

• DanielHB 3 hours ago

Wait, did Quack run on Pentium-133? I had a Pentium MMX 233mhz and I always assumed it didn't ran well so I never bother to get it.

• iamphilrae 2 hours ago

If you had a 3dfx card it would run silky smooth on a Pentium-120 (what I had at the time)! Quake 2 ran pretty well too if I recall.

• bluedino an hour ago

Bare minimum for it being playable was a 486DX4 100MHz or similar, but with the floating point Quake really wanted a Pentium

• Garlef an hour ago

I played it on a Pentium with 60mhz - it was allright

• UltraSane 2 hours ago

Quake ran well on my 100Mhz Pentium.

• jedberg 2 hours ago

It must have, because that's what I had in 1996 and I played it.

• lightedman 2 hours ago

Quake ran on a P75 with 8MB RAM in DOS mode. Not the best but it worked at 320x200.

• jonplackett 2 hours ago

I think you’re missing the point

• elinear 7 minutes ago

I noticed my cursor was continuously sliding upward first in Neal.fun's latest canvas multiplayer game and I experienced it here as well. Anyone else see this behavior?

And maybe a skill issue but I was unable to jump out of the slime...

• glerk 15 minutes ago

Wow this is really awesome. Really really smooth. It's insane how after 25 years or so my muscle memory is still intact.

• AzzieElbab 6 hours ago

Awesome! Harder to exit than vim.

• pgt an hour ago

In case you want to view the menu, press Tab. Click outside menu items to resume game.

• deskamess 5 hours ago

how did you exit? because nothing seems to be working.

• calgoo 5 hours ago

Back button worked for me

• ChrisClark 4 hours ago

I pressed escape, then just closed the tab

• axus 4 hours ago

I pressed Esc key, click quit. And then closed the browser tab.

• badsectoracula 4 hours ago

Impressive. I guess this isn't only the renderer made to use CSS but also a full recreation of the engine and logic right? My guess is because a bunch of things do not behave like the original game, e.g. some buttons need to be shot instead of touched to activate, some secret doors open by touching them instead of being shot, etc.

• jojogeo 5 hours ago

This is the first thing I've seen on the intertubes for a /long/ time which genuinely makes me smile, thank you op.

Checked out https://cssdoom.wtf/ and loved it too, both are far lighter than current affairs. \o/

• xyproto 11 minutes ago

Has science gone too far?

• remix2000 6 hours ago

It seems like this CSS Quake needs JS to run…

• zamadatix 3 hours ago

CSS does the rendering, the game logic is TypeScript.

• jacobgold 3 hours ago

No light theme though?

• edwinjm 6 hours ago
• OuterVale 6 hours ago

Separate projects. Niels Leenheer who made CSS Doom has seen Agustin Capeletto's CSS Quake.

https://bsky.app/profile/html5test.com/post/3mok5febchs2g

• pantelisk an hour ago

And I think both have seen these much older handcrafted css3d engines

- https://pantel.is/projects/css3d/

- https://keithclark.co.uk/labs/css-fps/ (the original)

but quake and doom took it to the next level :)

• degamad 6 hours ago
• aggregator-ios 3 hours ago

Wow, this is impressive. 60FPS, MacBook Air M1. I was instantly hooked and so much nostalgia.

• crimsonnoodle58 4 hours ago

Amazing and impressive use of CSS. But at the same time, makes me appreciate what feat Carmack achieved 30 years ago on early Pentiums.

• divan 6 hours ago

As someone who passionately and ardiently hates prolifiration of this set of _hacks on top of hacks_ called CSS (and CSS/JS/HTML aka Web-stack), I must say this is good and valid use case for CSS. :)

• gpderetta 6 hours ago

Nice, but the view keeps clipping out to far ahead of the map (but the character seems to still be in its original position as I can die from monsters). It snaps back in place when I shoot.

edit: both on chromium and firefox, desktop linux.

• boredemployee 3 hours ago

I still play quake (world) to this day. I just can't quit it.

• sgt 5 hours ago

Very cool. I wonder what the limitations are? I see the dog I shot is floating in the air. Is that maybe a CSS thing or is it fixable?

• freakynit 5 hours ago

.dog { display: float; }

• skvmb 4 hours ago

You win! I laughed way too hard at this. Boss man is now giving me the side eye.

• rvba an hour ago

After leaving the first area to the bridge... was the sky really so close to the ground in the original game, or the old monitors made it look differently?

Also nice achievement...!

• stoobs 6 hours ago

Seems like you get stuck on corners and it really doesn't like running up/down slopes, neat though.

• ChrisArchitect 5 hours ago

Show HN: from the dev (who's also in here, maybe a title update) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48571117

• criley2 6 hours ago

Really cool experiment. A lot of jank. It would sometimes rubber band me back, movement was grid aligned in a way that made accessing the secret room challenging, and the whole tab unexpectedly crashed with no error. 5 star would play again

• jdw64 4 hours ago

I wish I could use CSS this well too

• MattCruikshank 4 hours ago

Don't worry, OP still can't center a div.

• qingcharles 3 hours ago

I was centering divs just fine, but now they took away Fable and I'm lost.

• jdw64 3 hours ago

I think I've finally found something in common between OP and me

• Vaslo 3 hours ago

But can it play Crysis?

• iandanforth 4 hours ago

Crazy, such memories. Thanks!

• Snoopfrogg 4 hours ago

This is dope.

• ronbenton 3 hours ago

Your scientists were so preoccupied with whether or not they could, they didn’t stop to think if they should

• aruametello an hour ago
• kiyeonjeon 6 hours ago

how long does it take to develop this game?

• alexb_ 5 hours ago

Doesn't work at all for me. I keep jumping around and clipping through objects, can't even leave the first room without being stuck in the doorway to the elevator.

• ekaryotic 4 hours ago

have to shoot the elevator buttons in this, in the original you could move into them.

• zuzululu 3 hours ago

this is crazy i didn't know css could do this

• xenophonf 6 hours ago

Every time I click in the window, the menu disappears. I tried both Firefox and Chrome.

• cynicalsecurity 4 hours ago

If this is what CSS has become, it means at some point its development went the wrong way.

• senfiaj 4 hours ago

It still needs JS. It just avoids using canvas and does DOM manipulation + CSS instead.

• Rohansi 4 hours ago

The game logic here is running in JS. Only the rendering is handled by HTML and CSS. Is it really wrong that you can do this? All it requires is 3D transformation of elements.

• buffer_overlord 7 hours ago

is there no sound?

• amarant 7 hours ago

Is there a way to produce sound using CSS?

• pwdisswordfishq 6 hours ago

    @media speech {
        body {
            cue-before: url(/path/to/sound.ogg);
        }
    }
https://www.w3.org/TR/CSS2/aural.html
• Waterluvian 6 hours ago

Only screams.

• circadian 6 hours ago

Best. Comment. Ever

• rofko 6 hours ago

You should be able to enable sounds with the M shortcut or through the Options menu.

• AndorinaAI 3 hours ago

lol that's crazy. Good job.

• ikari_pl 5 hours ago

Wow, this will be a great project for the forever-upcoming VRML /s

• thenthenthen 6 hours ago

Wow