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Porting Zelda Classic to the web

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Re: Porting Zelda Classic to the web

#71

Post by the_lonely_road »

xwdv wrote: post #70
marginalia_nu wrote: post #4

I remember about 20 years ago there was a (IIRC) Java Applet-based multiplayer clone of Zelda: A Link to the Past that was sort of a forerunner the to MMORPGs we see today. It changed names to Graal Online because of the lawyers. Thinking back to it, it was really ahead of its time, not only because it was massively multiplayer, but it had a great level editor and was doing user-created content in the late '90s. --ed…

I remember Graal, but where I really sank time in was Era, a modern day mod of Graal. It was so cool, like if Zelda and GTA had a baby. You could get an assortment of weapons, join gangs, get in violent shootouts, I even remember getting blown at a beach house by someone playing a hooker. I think they eventually introduced cars or something. For a middle school kid it was super cool, even though the city was kind of…

Unfortunately most of the families in my circle that are not in tech don’t own computers anymore. They literally just turned the PC off one day and then a few years later unplugged it and put it in a closet to collect dust, with zero chance of ever purchasing another thousand dollar replacement. Their toddlers are amazing at driving tablets/phones though. Who is going to crack the SmartPhone native WoW 2.0?

Re: Porting Zelda Classic to the web

#72

Post by Esther432q »

marginalia_nu wrote: post #4

I remember about 20 years ago there was a (IIRC) Java Applet-based multiplayer clone of Zelda: A Link to the Past that was sort of a forerunner the to MMORPGs we see today. It changed names to Graal Online because of the lawyers. Thinking back to it, it was really ahead of its time, not only because it was massively multiplayer, but it had a great level editor and was doing user-created content in the late '90s. --ed…

No post body was provided.

Re: Porting Zelda Classic to the web

#73

Post by hoten »

gwbas1c wrote: post #43

Awesome! One very minor suggestion: Can you tell me what keys to use (in the UI)? I figured out the arrow keys, but I just don't know what keys map to A & B.

I'm pretty limited in what I can change in the game's actual UI (those "A" and "B" prompts in the game are literally graphics, not text I can just change), so I shoehorned all that info in the About menu up top.

Re: Porting Zelda Classic to the web

#74

Post by marginalia_nu »

and0 wrote: post #69
chriswright1664 wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m Chris Wright, mentioned in the 2nd link. I had the original idea, as the article says I commissioned Stefan to write it for me as I had next to no coding skills back then (apart from HTML and PHP). I ran a fairly successful SNES emulation site (I knew the teams behind Snes9x and Zsnes well) and was looking for a gimmick to boost traffic. Stefan took things off in his own direction with the Graal makeover (we neve…

Seconding graal being hugely formative for me, and I still think of it often. It was my first real social experience online, and inspired in part the hobby projects that led me into software as a career. Thanks so much :)

I think it's pretty sad how a lot of these projects, that not only had a lot of effort put into them, but also had an impact on a lot of people's lives, they just sort of unceremoniously fade away into obscurity.

Graal Online doesn't even have a Wikipedia article. Like there ought to be a tomb stone.

Re: Porting Zelda Classic to the web

#75

Post by danachow »

marginalia_nu wrote: post #45
kbenson wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> WoW came along and really defined what a MMO is. I wouldn't call WoW the first that defined it, or even the first wildly successful one that did. I never played any of them, but EverQuest was huge back in the day. If we are willing to lower the bar of success, there's predecessors to EverQuest as well. Then again, maybe there's something very different than WoW and EverQuest that I'm not aware of? They seemed prett…

I don't think WoW did anything particularly new, what it did was completely suck the air out of the room with its runaway success (which also ended up turning a lot of its competition into ghost towns). Before WoW, there were a lot of different multiplayer games. After WoW, there was almost only WoW and WoW-clones (often down to mimicking the art style).

You are getting the replies because though unintentional your prior wording implies that MMORPG was some niche experimental, concept type genre until 2004 which just doesn’t jive with history. EverQuest was out for years already and was immensely successful as was UO. That WoW became dominant is a different point. And as you have already stated - WoW didn’t do too much new in terms of genre defining.

Re: Porting Zelda Classic to the web

#76

Post by hoten »

zamadatix wrote: post #15

TIL about Zelda Classic which has apparently been around a long time https://www.zeldaclassic.com/development-history/ Very cool port, I like that it tries to integrate it into the browser features instead of calling it a day after compiling. The lack of D-pad support is a bit jarring considering gamepads are supported but it was still very playable.

You should be able to reconfigure the controls to use the dpad instead of the joystick. The menu is behind the settings dropdown (click to see): https://imgur.com/a/hQEEVTt

Might make sense to have dpad be the default.

Re: Porting Zelda Classic to the web

#78

Post by ilaksh »

hoten wrote: post #62
ilaksh wrote: post #52

Is there any work to unbundle web assembly applications from the browser? And further, break apart the monolithic web platform API bundle into something like device drivers? Because let's say you just wanted a 2d game engine using SDL without shaders and using the mouse. Why do we need to drag the entire browser with 1000 APIs and features into it? Just add something like a framebuffer and mouse input to web assembly…

Well, you need some sort of underlying platform to run primitives on. Wasm just isn't enough, and isn't meant to be. But yes, Wasm is not just for the browser, you can run it in Node. Or a custom runtime: https://wasmer.io/

I am very aware of all of that.

The idea that web assembly is not meant to be the platform to run primitives on stems from the political and technical approach initially used to get web assembly inserted into browsers. The basic concept is that it was much easier for people to accept if it was "only the compute part" and also practically speaking only made sense to leverage the extensive UI and other functionality of the browser. Which made it very easy to say it's just for compute.

It's amazing that people are still stuck on that. That just goes to the power of PR and poor adaptability of the average brain. Even Brendan Eich was in a web assembly issue wondering when they were going to add some kind of minimal UI functionality.

Look at for example the web assembly shell and WASI to see how input / out has reluctantly been added to make it so these systems can have some utility on the server.

The only real reason that there hasn't been something like a serious extension to WASI for UI things is because people accept the status quo. We will forever ship a large monolithic overlay operating system controlled by a single megacorp and everyone will use that.

Except for one "competitor" which actually is also mostly controlled by the same megacorp.

Re: Porting Zelda Classic to the web

#79

Post by codebje »

marginalia_nu wrote: post #45
kbenson wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> WoW came along and really defined what a MMO is. I wouldn't call WoW the first that defined it, or even the first wildly successful one that did. I never played any of them, but EverQuest was huge back in the day. If we are willing to lower the bar of success, there's predecessors to EverQuest as well. Then again, maybe there's something very different than WoW and EverQuest that I'm not aware of? They seemed prett…

I don't think WoW did anything particularly new, what it did was completely suck the air out of the room with its runaway success (which also ended up turning a lot of its competition into ghost towns). Before WoW, there were a lot of different multiplayer games. After WoW, there was almost only WoW and WoW-clones (often down to mimicking the art style).

WoW was accessible in a way that previous MMOs were not: instead of repetitive grinding from the very start players are hand-held through levelling with the quest system and a story line. The levelling dungeons have comparatively generous static loot tables, with the rare drops from those dungeons just a nice little bonus. It's not until endgame that WoW reverts to genre.

WoW IMO killed Star Wars: Galaxies, which was exploring a more "open world" style of game; subsequent expansions progressively dialled back the classless system and player generated content.

More traditional repetitive grind MMOs remain popular in some parts of the world, but it's either EverQuest style or WoW style MMOs now.

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