... this is really ugly.

cef-tex introduction

Cef-tex is a C++-based proof-of-concept grade module for Godot game engine that facilitates instantiating web browser processes, receive audio from them, and renders it to a texture for usage in any Godot-based applications.

Cef-tex originated from a backhanded challenge someone issued regarding a previous implementation that used PythonCEF, and without significant modification to the underlying, abandoned project, wouldn't be able to grab the audio stream. After numerous attempts to make PythonCEF's build system operable it was resolved to simply use CEF directly in this way. Things were much simpler this way, and if audio from the browser isn't needed, I recommend doing it this way.

Here's an annoying illustration captured in Godot: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Pw1xs2w3gc

dependencies

It uses the following

• Chromium Embedded Framework (https://bitbucket.org/chromiumembedded/cef/src/master/)
• Bastian Olij's Godot OpenXR Plugin (https://github.com/GodotVR/godot_openxr)

You'll likely need to grab: src/CEFTex/x64/Release/libcef.dll in order for this to work. Check the CEF repo listed above to figure that one out.

how it works

The basic architecture is that the C++ code provides a way to operate a cef_sandbox in the background, and client code extracts audio/video updates (by implementing CefApp, CefAudioHandler, CefRenderHandler, etc...) and sends some input to make the browser interactable.

sdl-stripped-cpp-example.txt illustrates bootstrapping

code status

This was built with Godot 3.4.3.

This is a limited part of what's really needed, I haven't included the full scene demonstrated above, but here is a basic usage scenario:

• A control contains a CefTexInputWrapper (and script)
• The CefTexInputWrapper contains CefTex, a TextureRect and a gdns which references the gdnlib which in turn references the compiled C++ module
• There's also a Control containing the back button, and a signal connection to the InputWrapper
• Finally the Node, AudioManager, contains a script which receives an unseen AudioStreamPlayer32, and every tick checks CefTex library for available sample buffer, and pushes it into the scene.

Keyboard / text input is complicated by OS integration, the project doesn't support this but if you want to use HTML5 as your toolchain for your menu and maybe signal back to Godot encoding commands into the URLs traversed, this would be a good tool to do that with.

building

Some pre-built binaries included, and others are not. The VC++ project should illustrate the requirements, and Godot has docs on how to use C++. They won't work because of the following TODO in Implementation.cpp

// TODO: Figure out how to fucking mke this a relative path

It should be compatible with Linux, but you're on your own with building, and reconfiguring the references to the link libraries.

It has been a full year since I made any effort on this project, and I remember little about what needed to be done, but a few things spring to mind:

• When compiling the library there was a particular need to use static/dynamic single/multi-threaded library compilation,
  • Those are in the VC solution files somewhere, it's XML so human readable, but not a choice build-system.
• When delivering the CEF library and the DLLs for the texture to Godot, those options are a part of main.tscn

changing

Primary implementation logic unqiue to this project lies in the following source files: src/cef-tex/Implementation.cpp src/cef-tex/cef_handler.cpp cef_generator.gd

licensing

The relevant sections are released under MIT license, and subject to restrictions by licenses of some included components that may or may not be redistributed.

Any sections not subject to the MIT license are subject to their respective licenses.

// Copyright (c) 2008-2020 Marshall A. Greenblatt. Portions Copyright (c)
// 2006-2009 Google Inc. All rights reserved.
//
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// modification, are permitted provided that the following conditions are
// met:
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