Browsercraft: Java Minecraft in the browser • Hacker News Board

Re: Browsercraft: Java Minecraft in the browser

#21

Post by autoexec » Mon, Mar 31, 2025, 4:03 PM UTC

__jonas wrote: post #6

Huh, is Minecraft Java edition free now? I haven't played in a long time but I thought when you download the regular client you only get to play after signing in with an account that purchased the game, how is this thing just starting the game directly?

A long time ago I looked for a way to download Minecraft to install on systems without any internet connection and it just wouldn't work. I even tired alternate launchers, but eventually gave up. Maybe the situation has changed and it's possible now though.

Re: Browsercraft: Java Minecraft in the browser

#22

Post by nicce » Mon, Mar 31, 2025, 4:08 PM UTC

jillyboel wrote: post #19

immibis wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's safe for the player, unsafe for the one hosting it, who risks prison time.

Downloading a publicly available jar ( https://piston-data.mojang.com/v1/objects/4a2fac7504182a97dc... ), that gets linked on the minecraft wiki ( https://minecraft.wiki/w/Java_Edition_1.2.5 ) and running it unmodified is "risking prison time"?

Depends on if the free trial is misused here somehow. I don’t know if it is.

Re: Browsercraft: Java Minecraft in the browser

#23

Post by SJC_Hacker » Mon, Mar 31, 2025, 4:11 PM UTC

esafak wrote: post #11

whalesalad wrote: post #2

We have come full circle #applets Twenty years ago running java in the browser would have just been called "using the internet"

Java Applets gave Java a bad name. Java was that thing that made web sites grind to a halt.

If it had come out of Google or Microsoft maybe even Apple, the JRE would have been integrated into the browser much more efficiently and it would have been no slower than Javascript

But I don't remember Applets being particularly slow even back then, if you had a decent internet connection and they were written by a decent SDE

Re: Browsercraft: Java Minecraft in the browser

#24

Post by jillyboel » Mon, Mar 31, 2025, 4:17 PM UTC

nicce wrote: post #22

jillyboel wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Downloading a publicly available jar ( https://piston-data.mojang.com/v1/objects/4a2fac7504182a97dc... ), that gets linked on the minecraft wiki ( https://minecraft.wiki/w/Java_Edition_1.2.5 ) and running it unmodified is "risking prison time"?

Depends on if the free trial is misused here somehow. I don’t know if it is.

There is no circumvention of any access controls.

Re: Browsercraft: Java Minecraft in the browser

#25

Post by gavinray » Mon, Mar 31, 2025, 4:18 PM UTC

5 years ago, I watched a YouTube recording of a meetup talk given by one of the CheerpX engineers:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7JUs4c99-mo

In it, they showed a functional demo of porting an OSS multiplayer C++ game entirely to the browser with WASM.

Afterwards, I read some of their engineering content and was blown away.

It's been fascinating to watch the CheerpX/CheerpJ progress from afar over the years.

Re: Browsercraft: Java Minecraft in the browser

#26

Post by TOGoS » Mon, Mar 31, 2025, 4:18 PM UTC

SJC_Hacker wrote: post #23

esafak wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Java Applets gave Java a bad name. Java was that thing that made web sites grind to a halt.

If it had come out of Google or Microsoft maybe even Apple, the JRE would have been integrated into the browser much more efficiently and it would have been no slower than Javascript But I don't remember Applets being particularly slow even back then, if you had a decent internet connection and they were written by a decent SDE

I wrote a lot of applets back in the day for little graphics experiments and such, somewhat inspired by Ken Perlin's homepage[1]. I found that it's quite possible to make applets that load fast and run fast if you care about those things while building it and do some profiling. If you pull in hundreds of megabytes of libraries and trigger a GC every second then of course it will be slow.

[1] https://mrl.cs.nyu.edu/~perlin/

Re: Browsercraft: Java Minecraft in the browser

#27

Post by spicybright » Mon, Mar 31, 2025, 4:18 PM UTC

SunkBellySamuel wrote: post #3

This is the main way I used to play Minecraft in the Beta days, thanks!

There's a very funny story behind MinecraftForFree.com which is what most people used back then.

Notch (the creator of minecraft) was angry someone was posting his game online for free. He emailed the owner, Dylan, of the site threatening legal action.

Instead of going down a legal route, Dylan challenged him play a game of quake3 to settle the dispute.

If notch won, Dylan would take the site down. If Dylan won, notch would would leave him alone and let him keep hosting the site.

Notch agreed, won the match, and Dylan followed the promise and took it down forever!

Re: Browsercraft: Java Minecraft in the browser

#28

Post by [deleted] » Mon, Mar 31, 2025, 4:19 PM UTC

Ajedi32 wrote: post #4

whalesalad wrote: post #2

We have come full circle #applets Twenty years ago running java in the browser would have just been called "using the internet"

Yep, the original Minecraft ran in the browser in a Java applet so this is particularly fun example. Though obviously there are significant security benefits to the JVM running within the browser's WASM sandbox instead of directly on the host.

[deleted]

Re: Browsercraft: Java Minecraft in the browser

#29

Post by philipwhiuk » Mon, Mar 31, 2025, 4:21 PM UTC

Ajedi32 wrote: post #4

whalesalad wrote: post #2

We have come full circle #applets Twenty years ago running java in the browser would have just been called "using the internet"

Yep, the original Minecraft ran in the browser in a Java applet so this is particularly fun example. Though obviously there are significant security benefits to the JVM running within the browser's WASM sandbox instead of directly on the host.

Until they want features and punch holes in the sandbox.

Audio/video codecs are a great example.

Re: Browsercraft: Java Minecraft in the browser

#30

Post by waveringana » Mon, Mar 31, 2025, 4:39 PM UTC

When I was in fourth grade, I'd take the half a mile walk to the library almost daily which always made my parents happy because they assumed I was going to read, but instead I was hopping onto their computers, going to http://minecraft.net, and playing minecraft on IE :)

Thanks for the nostalgia