Homura and Net-Homura: The creation and web-based deployment of cross-platform 3D games

Digital distribution is becoming an increasingly important method within the games industry. The leading consoles each possess their own bespoke platform to digitally deploy games applications to their users via the Internet, whilst the Windows PC gaming market is catered for by systems such as Valve´s Steam platform. However, these digital content services are often machine-specific, proprietary, utilising custom Web frameworks and a rigid publication system. In this paper, we present Homura and NetHomura; two interconnected frameworks which facilitate the development and deployment of cross-platform, hardware-accelerated 3D games applications using standard Web browsers and Web technologies, using a combination of Java and PHP.