CSSQuake | alt.hn

6/20/2026 at 2:45:42 PM

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...

by jedberg

6/20/2026 at 2:59:08 PM

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

by poisonfountain

6/20/2026 at 3:11:35 PM

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

It is awesome though.

by Insanity

6/20/2026 at 4:01:11 PM

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.

by jedberg

6/20/2026 at 4:32:18 PM

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

by culi

6/21/2026 at 1:37:37 AM

We haven't had a toaster that makes better toast since 1997 (Sunbeam radiant control).

by billfor

6/21/2026 at 6:23:53 PM

Is this you? https://www.timstoasters.com/

by culi

6/21/2026 at 1:37:40 AM

Toaster you say?

https://philip.greenspun.com/humor/eecs-difference-explained

by qmr

6/20/2026 at 6:23:31 PM

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.

by libria

6/20/2026 at 8:29:04 PM

It'd be like if the IOT AI Smart Air Fryer had a constraint of only being allowed to use friction to create heat.

CSSQuake uses an intentionally-absurd rendering pipeline. It's not surprising that the result is sub-optimal.

(Though I agree that the meatloaf analogy is not very good.)

by matt_kantor

6/21/2026 at 12:36:48 AM

I stand by my analogy.

Both a toaster and an oven might benefit from improved electronics but in the end—whether its a toaster from the 60s or a toaster from 3008—you are still using a toaster to make a meatloaf.

CSS is not remotely comparable to a game engine. It's not even a programming language.

by culi

6/20/2026 at 5:10:51 PM

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.

by rustystump

6/20/2026 at 5:30:17 PM

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?”

by harrall

6/20/2026 at 6:06:52 PM

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

by Akronymus

6/21/2026 at 12:57:45 AM

Err, strange, what browser? I'm using Firefox on a ThinkPad from 2018 running Linux, and cssquake was running at a smooth 60fps just now (and at 1080p resolution vs the 320x240 or 320x200 someone would likely be running on a P133)

by amatecha

6/20/2026 at 5:09:25 PM

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

by jamal-kumar

6/20/2026 at 7:55:08 PM

Zero issues on Firefox + Linux. Gnome Web is stuttery and weird, though. Must be a WebKit/Safari thing.

by jeroenhd

6/20/2026 at 8:02:43 PM

Possibly, I did it on Safari. Trying it now on Chrome and it's fine.

by jedberg

6/21/2026 at 6:33:44 PM

Maybe try Firefox.

Most of the time, things seem to be optimized for Chrome, but with this, I actually had the impression that Firefox ran a bit smoother, but I tested it on Linux.

by arendtio

6/20/2026 at 10:01:38 PM

Quake compiled in C will run insanely fast at 8K full resolution on an M1.

by api

6/20/2026 at 11:24:42 PM

You wouldn’t happen to have a pointer on where to get this version would you?

by jedberg

6/21/2026 at 7:59:43 AM

Runs perfectly fine at over 60fps on my Intel Core 358H at roughly 2560x1600.

Perhaps there's something wrong with your web browser. Try Firefox - it works beautifully there.

by itvision

6/20/2026 at 3:53:20 PM

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.

by DanielHB

6/20/2026 at 4:03:35 PM

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.

by iamphilrae

6/21/2026 at 12:16:28 AM

Yep 3dfx was a game changer. Was night and day on my 486 DX4 100 with and without

by jklp

6/21/2026 at 9:31:51 AM

Yeah I didn't have a 3dfx so I assumed the software renderer required a more powerful CPU

by DanielHB

6/20/2026 at 3:59:35 PM

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

by lightedman

6/20/2026 at 5:05:53 PM

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

by bluedino

6/20/2026 at 5:27:19 PM

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

by Garlef

6/20/2026 at 8:10:40 PM

I played quake in 486dx100.

by MrFurious

6/21/2026 at 12:48:19 AM

I ran it on a Pentium 60. If you stuck to 320x200 it ran fine.

by bitwize

6/20/2026 at 4:01:34 PM

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

by jedberg

6/20/2026 at 7:02:34 PM

Ran fine on my Pentium 90 with 16MB RAM

by lizknope

6/20/2026 at 4:14:08 PM

Quake ran well on my 100Mhz Pentium.

by UltraSane

6/20/2026 at 4:53:10 PM

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.

by to11mtm

6/20/2026 at 4:04:44 PM

I think you’re missing the point

by jonplackett

6/20/2026 at 1:53:03 PM

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/

by jojogeo

6/20/2026 at 12:16:14 PM

Awesome! Harder to exit than vim.

by AzzieElbab

6/20/2026 at 5:15:39 PM

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

by pgt

6/20/2026 at 1:40:27 PM

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

by deskamess

6/20/2026 at 2:18:01 PM

I pressed escape, then just closed the tab

by ChrisClark

6/20/2026 at 1:50:07 PM

Back button worked for me

by calgoo

6/20/2026 at 2:18:24 PM

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

by axus

6/20/2026 at 2:40:03 PM

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.

by badsectoracula

6/20/2026 at 8:41:41 PM

Hi there! Thanks for the report, buttons should work properly now.

Regarding the game logic, the build step has a small JS extractor over QuakeC/progs.dat to generate JSON source facts: states, models, attacks, sounds, etc. The browser runtime is TypeScript and consumes those for Quake-ish gameplay.

by rofko

6/20/2026 at 6:55:08 PM

No it’s just the renderer. The game itself is Typescript.

by slopinthebag

6/20/2026 at 12:26:25 PM

It seems like this CSS Quake needs JS to run…

by remix2000

6/20/2026 at 3:41:12 PM

CSS does the rendering, the game logic is TypeScript.

by zamadatix

6/20/2026 at 7:07:48 PM

Maybe possible with https://lyra.horse/x86css/ ?

by rikschennink

6/21/2026 at 9:51:29 AM

(author of x86css)

Not possible, but it would be possible to reimplement Quake's logic and controls in CSS to have it run without JS. I was considering doing that for my next CSS crime project, though now that CSSQuake has hit the hn frontpage there is little point in doing so.

by rebane2001

6/20/2026 at 12:21:27 PM

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

by criley2

6/20/2026 at 1:28:03 PM

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

by ChrisArchitect

6/21/2026 at 7:58:56 AM

Source code: https://github.com/LayoutitStudio/cssQuake

by itvision

6/20/2026 at 12:47:04 PM

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. :)

by divan

6/20/2026 at 12:20:24 PM

Is this a rip from https://github.com/NielsLeenheer/cssDOOM

by edwinjm

6/20/2026 at 12:40:38 PM

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

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

by OuterVale

6/20/2026 at 5:00:57 PM

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 :)

by pantelisk

6/20/2026 at 12:33:27 PM

The source appears to be <https://github.com/LayoutitStudio/cssQuake>

by degamad

6/20/2026 at 1:02:55 PM

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?

by sgt

6/20/2026 at 1:25:34 PM

.dog { display: float; }

by freakynit

6/20/2026 at 2:26:24 PM

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

by skvmb

6/21/2026 at 1:00:30 AM

Damn, always gotta deal with these accursed z-index issues with CSS ;)

by amatecha

6/21/2026 at 3:09:57 PM

This is a great showcase of both the PolyCSS library and CSS itself!

by msephton

6/20/2026 at 2:33:45 PM

I wish I could use CSS this well too

by jdw64

6/20/2026 at 2:46:12 PM

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

by MattCruikshank

6/20/2026 at 3:04:10 PM

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

by qingcharles

6/20/2026 at 2:57:47 PM

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

by jdw64

6/21/2026 at 4:13:50 AM

Using the Inspector on it is awesome. You can select each map piece.

by koolala

6/20/2026 at 12:17:24 PM

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.

by gpderetta

6/22/2026 at 6:20:59 AM

This is what I show my friends when they say CSS isn't a real programming language.

by zftnb666

6/20/2026 at 1:40:38 PM

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.

by alexb_

6/20/2026 at 2:30:08 PM

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

by ekaryotic

6/20/2026 at 5:33:52 PM

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...!

by rvba

6/20/2026 at 3:53:39 PM

No light theme though?

by jacobgold

6/21/2026 at 1:57:23 AM

My dark reader was on, and half of the map was black, but I played the first level from my memory. Amazing stuff, thank you.

by system2

6/20/2026 at 2:37:32 PM

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

by crimsonnoodle58

6/20/2026 at 6:12:21 PM

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

by glerk

6/20/2026 at 6:52:33 PM

Though this is impressive, I think this is something that should not be possible with a declarative styling language

by ulrischa

6/20/2026 at 6:54:47 PM

Its just using CSS for the rendering, not the game logic.

by slopinthebag

6/20/2026 at 12:27:59 PM

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

by stoobs

6/20/2026 at 3:48:54 PM

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

by aggregator-ios

6/20/2026 at 12:08:59 PM

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

by xenophonf

6/20/2026 at 8:39:59 PM

Thanks for that report! It is hopefully fixed now.

by rofko

6/21/2026 at 7:06:52 PM

If this is CSS only, then why does in need JS to run?

by justaj

6/21/2026 at 10:32:40 AM

Pretty fun to go into f12 and delete the enemy's face.

by casey2

6/20/2026 at 3:40:38 PM

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

by boredemployee

6/21/2026 at 1:02:48 AM

Hell yeah, I still see it as the optimal arena FPS. The sequels add too much IMO. Quake 1 (QuakeWorld) was such a raw competitive arena shooter that is just pure action, no weird extra mechanics. Pick up items, get some health, shoot people. Q2/Q3 are totally fine too, but I feel like QW really just nailed everything.

by amatecha

6/21/2026 at 1:09:58 PM

Yes. Quake 3, "rebranded" as Quake Live, is the second best for me. I can play both for hours.

by boredemployee

6/20/2026 at 6:20:47 PM

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...

by elinear

6/20/2026 at 2:24:31 PM

Crazy, such memories. Thanks!

by iandanforth

6/20/2026 at 6:16:24 PM

Has science gone too far?

by xyproto

6/20/2026 at 2:18:38 PM

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

by cynicalsecurity

6/20/2026 at 2:23:08 PM

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

by senfiaj

6/20/2026 at 2:22:51 PM

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.

by Rohansi

6/20/2026 at 2:59:14 PM

But can it play Crysis?

by Vaslo

6/20/2026 at 11:29:23 PM

Really impressive

by joehabeebs

6/20/2026 at 3:39:44 PM

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

by zuzululu

6/20/2026 at 12:54:25 PM

how long does it take to develop this game?

by kiyeonjeon

6/20/2026 at 2:19:12 PM

This is dope.

by Snoopfrogg

6/20/2026 at 3:50:19 PM

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

by ronbenton

6/20/2026 at 5:09:32 PM

Then Tresspasser CSS next

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trespasser_(video_game

by aruametello

6/20/2026 at 7:10:56 PM

lowkey amazing!

by vldszn

6/20/2026 at 11:01:55 AM

is there no sound?

by buffer_overlord

6/20/2026 at 11:56:53 AM

Is there a way to produce sound using CSS?

by amarant

6/20/2026 at 12:17:01 PM

    @media speech {
        body {
            cue-before: url(/path/to/sound.ogg);
        }
    }

https://www.w3.org/TR/CSS2/aural.html

by pwdisswordfishq

6/20/2026 at 12:12:35 PM

Only screams.

by Waterluvian

6/20/2026 at 12:17:24 PM

Best. Comment. Ever

by circadian

6/20/2026 at 11:58:55 AM

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

by rofko

6/20/2026 at 3:38:23 PM

lol that's crazy. Good job.

by AndorinaAI

6/20/2026 at 11:28:22 PM

Bro how tf.

This is insane.

by AbraKdabra

6/21/2026 at 12:15:59 AM

[flagged]

by cws_ai_buddy

6/21/2026 at 12:13:25 PM

[flagged]

by terekhindc

6/20/2026 at 1:10:43 PM

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

by ikari_pl

6/21/2026 at 8:05:15 AM

Well, Quake and VRML were contemporaneous, but VRML was a plugin in the browser — it was never as fast as Quake, and not intended as a game engine, though there were many worlds and models built in VRML that were at least as detailed as the Quake maps.

by perilunar

6/20/2026 at 3:27:32 PM

[flagged]

by formit34

6/20/2026 at 3:38:25 PM

chrome web store?

by GeorgeWoff25

6/20/2026 at 12:00:11 PM

Wow

by thenthenthen