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Porting Zelda Classic to the web

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Re: Porting Zelda Classic to the web

#81

Post by kidfiji »

electriclizard wrote: post #66
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…

Hey man. Graal was an intimate part of my life growing up. I had thousands of hours logged on Valikorlia and a few hundred on other playerworlds. It was a good idea. It's where I first started programming; graalscript was my first language. It's sad to see it go. I really wish we could have a game experience that had the community graal did. There's not much with that level of involvement for players anymore; it's al…

Likewise! I played a ton of Graal Online during my adolescence and owe my programming career to its level editor (NPC scripting). I was able to learn how to program without reading much documentation outside of reading its command sidebar and inferring from others' NPC scripts. Thinking about it now, they did an outstanding job making it very straightforward to learn and use.

Re: Porting Zelda Classic to the web

#82

Post by marginalia_nu »

the_lonely_road wrote: post #71
xwdv wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

In the '90s, PCs weren't everywhere either. It was very much still a middle class thing. I honestly think it's a trap going for the biggest market. You don't need another Minecraft-success to win. Graal certainly wasn't.

Re: Porting Zelda Classic to the web

#83

Post by astlouis44 »

MasterScrat wrote: post #59

It reminds me: a decade ago, I had the idea of porting Baldur's Gate 2 to the web: http://lumakey.net/labs/battleground/demo1/ I initially played with EMSCRIPTEN as well, starting from GemRB, an open-source reimplementation of the engine. But that was boring, as I wasn't really getting any sense of how things were working under the hood. So I started reverse-engineering the various file formats (a website called IESD…

Baldur's Gate 2 (demo) in WebAssembly. You're welcome!

https://personal-1094.web.app/gemrb.html

Re: Porting Zelda Classic to the web

#84

Post by galangalalgol »

k__ wrote: post #17
xahrepap wrote: post #9

Zelda Classic holds a special place in my heart. My older brother downloaded it thinking it was just a Zelda 1 clone. I discovered it had a quest editor. And it was a very magical moment for me. I spent hundreds of hours never completing any of my projects. It was the first online community I ever joined and actively participated in. Eventually I yearned for for power and discovered Dark Basic. Now I’m a software dev…

Haha, cool! My developer career also started with gaming. The StarCraft map/script editor was my entry drug.

I already knew a few languages, but I credit quake C for teaching me to code at scale and work in large code bases, as well as tipping me towards a software/firmware career vs biochem.

Re: Porting Zelda Classic to the web

#85

Post by causality0 »

evouga wrote: post #68
causality0 wrote: post #63

Considering how DMCA-happy Nintendo is I'm surprised this is till up.

I was the main developer and webmaster of Zelda Classic for several years in the mid-2000s. Nintendo knew about us because disgruntled users reported us in retaliation for forum drama, but they never came after us. Probably because we were never prominent enough for them you care, but we liked to imagine we were protected by someone high up at Nintendo.

I wonder if you'd just been around since before Nintendo got so extreme and were grandfathered in. If Nintendo will take down the likes of AM2R and the Unreal Engine remake of Bob-omb Battlefield they'd certainly take down a straight copy of Legend of Zelda.

Re: Porting Zelda Classic to the web

#87

Post by edgyquant »

codebje wrote: post #79
marginalia_nu wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I loved Star Wars Galaxies, that was the last MMO I really played.

Re: Porting Zelda Classic to the web

#90

Post by wincy »

kbenson wrote: post #42
marginalia_nu wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

UO is actually roughly the same generation as Graal. There were several of these fairly creative stabs at the problem before WoW came along and really defined what a MMO is. I think in many way Neverwinter Nights' persistent worlds is another noteworthy entry. They weren't massively multiplayer, but I think more like a cross between Baldur's Gate and a MUD.

> 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…

EVE online is a wholly different experience than either of these. It came out back in 2003 and is still going. I enjoyed it a lot, some fun memories of getting bored then creating havoc by ripping off my rich corp mates and committing in game insurance fraud, then losing most of my ill gotten gains at the casino. Truly I felt like a space cowboy.
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