Development and Deployment of Cross-Platform 3D Web-based Games

Digital distribution is becoming an increasingly important technique within the games industry. The leading consoles each possess their own bespoke platform to digitally deploy game applications to their users via the Internet, whilst the Windows and Mac OS X gaming market is catered for by systems such as Valve’s Steam platform. However, these digital content services are often machine-specific, proprietary systems, utilising custom web frameworks and a rigid publication system. In this paper we present an overview of the Homura games framework and +et Homura deployment middleware. Homura provides an integrated solution for Java based 3D games development. We also discuss a novel architecture and prototype system, which aims to unify the deployment of hardware accelerated Java-based 3D games applications with online capabilities. +et Homura provides a multi-tiered deployment platform that is secure, robust, and easily portable to a wide range of web servers; whilst the networking middleware component of +et Homura allows developers to build content and feature rich online games in conjunction with the Homura Engine and IDE. Due to nature of the technologies used within the +et Homura framework, it is possible to enable the creation of a game which, from development through to hosting, deployment and networking, can be created with little or no financial outlay for the developer by utilising open source technologies.