Live data from Hacker News

Dune II ported to the Web with Emscripten

play-dune.com

51–60 of 67 posts

Re: Dune II ported to the Web with Emscripten

#51

Funny, I've been replaying Dune 2 over the past week and a half. Despite the controls being somewhat clunky (no selecting multiple units, your units won't defend themselves in a lot of cases, etc.) this game has character and charm , not to mention hours and hours of gameplay. I have been hoping that games like this, King's Bounty, Settlers, XCom, and others from that era would show up for mobile platforms. A lot of…

There's a decent Settlers (Settlers 3-ish) port for the iPad.

Re: Dune II ported to the Web with Emscripten

#52

Funny, I've been replaying Dune 2 over the past week and a half. Despite the controls being somewhat clunky (no selecting multiple units, your units won't defend themselves in a lot of cases, etc.) this game has character and charm , not to mention hours and hours of gameplay. I have been hoping that games like this, King's Bounty, Settlers, XCom, and others from that era would show up for mobile platforms. A lot of…

iDos is great for this. Playing Ultima V on my iPad is fantastic.

Re: Dune II ported to the Web with Emscripten

#56

Awesome. I'm not so excited about the tiny 320x200 viewport though. Why not zoom it to fit the browser window? Strangely, they seem to have managed to disable the browser's built-in zooming. So yeah, fun, but squinty.

> Strangely, they seem to have managed to disable the browser's built-in zooming.

I believe it captures all keyboard input. But if you click the URL bar, you should then be able to zoom in and out (since then the page doesn't get key events).

Re: Dune II ported to the Web with Emscripten

#57
post #9
post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No copyright issues; it's based off of OpenDUNE: http://www.opendune.org/

The source-code is probably based off OpenDUNE but I'm pretty sure the art isn't. They'll be taken down for the art for sure ...

Dune 2 was released as freeware if memory serves me right. I know they still can send them C&D letter, but I don't think westwood/ea will bother.

Re: Dune II ported to the Web with Emscripten

#58
post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe a silly question: do copyrights for games (art or whatever) ever expire?

Yes, but not for a long time.

By "long time" you mean "as long as large copyright holders lobby to keep extending the window" which could mean "never" in practice.

Re: Dune II ported to the Web with Emscripten

#59

I'm sure this site will be taken offline for copyright infringement almost immediately, but it really is a decent recreation of the original. It's also historically significant: Dune II is to the real-time strategy genre what Wolfenstein 3D is to the first-person-shooter: not necessary the very first example ever, but the first to achieve notable popularity, and the progenitor of most of the following examples.

Maybe a silly question: do copyrights for games (art or whatever) ever expire?

Same as for anything. In the United States there's a chart for looking up rights and determining if a property has reverted to the public domain: http://copyright.cornell.edu/resources/publicdomain.cfm

1923 is the base-line year for any works with a proper copyright notice. 1977 for any works at all, as the requirement for a notice or registration was eliminated.

Re: Dune II ported to the Web with Emscripten

#60
post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, but not for a long time.

By "long time" you mean "as long as large copyright holders lobby to keep extending the window" which could mean "never" in practice.

Why don't we just settle on "so long as to make expiry irrelevant for video games".
Post reply on HN