All posts tagged ‘Games’

File Under: Browsers, HTML5, JavaScript
Nov
29
2010

Building a GameBoy Emulator in HTML5 and JavaScript

By

Like Flash before it, HTML5 is where programmers are turning to experiment, and nothing seems to make developers experiment quite like the desire to recreate the classic video games.

We’ve already seen Pac-Man, Astroids and Conway’s Game of Life come to the browser in standards-friendly forms, and now Nintendo’s classic GameBoy platform is getting similar treatment.

The Mozilla Labs gaming blog has a guest post by developer and gamer Imran Nazar, who is hard at work building a GameBoy emulator using JavaScript. As Nazar points out, “HTML5 now offers the Canvas element for easily controlling a two-dimensional graphical display.” Couple that with the improved JavaScript speeds in modern browsers and you have the perfect platform for an emulator.

Nintendo’s GameBoy was the first portable gaming system most of us ever encountered, so the nostalgia factor is high. But the real point of this experiment is to help your understand the processes behind the scenes — how emulators work and how JavaScript can be used to build them.

The emulator isn’t quite finished yet, but Nazar has a great series of posts on his blog covering the various aspects of what he’s done. Not only is it a fascinating look at how emulators work, it also gives some great insight into what JavaScript is capable of doing. You can see the latest version of the emulator on Nazar’s latest post.

If you’re not interested in how it works and just want to get your nostalgia fix by playing some GameBoy games, check out this earlier emulator from programmer Pedro Ladaria.

See Also:

Tags: , , ,
File Under: Browsers, JavaScript
Sep
29
2010

‘Kick Ass’ Bookmarklet Turns the Web Into Asteroids

By

Thanks to his presence as a background image, W.T. Monkey is immune to ass kicking.

Sometimes you just want to kick the web’s ass. Destroy it with tiny dots blasted from your Asteroids-style space ship floating above all the paragraphs and images and semantically meaningless wrapper divs.

Or maybe that’s just me. But if you find yourself feeling the same way, well, you too can kick the web’s ass.

Kick Ass is a JavaScript bookmarklet created by Erik Andersson that turns the entire web into a game of Asteroids. Just head over to the site, drag the bookmarklet into your tool bar and start destroying stuff.

Kick Ass will add a triangular spaceship to any page. Use the arrow keys to steer and the space bar to shoot. And remember, like the site says, “it’s cooler if you make your own sound effects.”

See Also:

Tags: , , ,
File Under: HTML5
Jul
26
2010

Play Pac-Man in HTML5

By

Programmer Dale Harvey has created a playable version of Pac-Man using only web standards.

To rebuild the same gameplay found in the arcade classic using browser-native code, he’s relying on local storage, HTML5 audio, Canvas and @font-face. Harvey is sharing all the code on Github as well, so you can run it locally.

Reminiscent of Google’s recent Pac-Man port, Harvey’s attempt is yet another example of web standards being used instead of Flash to create animated, interactive experiences in the browser.

The Flash plug-in is still the most popular platform choice for browser-based games, and it has some advantages over HTML5. Most notably, a Flash game would work in any browser that allows the plug-in, but to play Harvey’s game, you’ll need to use a browser that supports the elements he’s using — Firefox, Opera and Chrome work just fine, but IE8 is a no-go.

On his blog post about the project, he notes some of the other stumbling blocks he encountered when porting the game. For instance, there’s no easy way to loop HTML5 audio, there isn’t a convenient tool for drawing Canvas shapes, and using Canvas/HTML5 for a game even this simple still puts more strain on your CPU than using Flash.

[via Hacker News]

See Also:

Tags: , , , ,
File Under: Browsers, Events, HTML5
Mar
8
2010

Meet the Winners of Webmonkey’s Google I/O Giveaway

By

We’re giving away a pair of passes to Google I/O today.

A little over a week ago, we kicked off our contest, encouraging you to send us any HTML5 web apps or Google Chrome browser extensions you’ve built. Alternatively, we asked you to tell us how you’d describe a web app to your grandmother. We got a heap of submissions, but we worked our way through the field and picked two winners.

Abraham Williams and Mike Cantelon will be heading to Google’s premiere developer event, which takes place May 19 and 20 at Moscone Center in San Francisco, free of charge.

Here are the winning apps, chosen by the Webmonkey staff, along with a couple of honorable mentions:

Winner: Intersect by Abraham Williams

Williams came up with this cool extension for Chrome that shows additional information about a user’s followers on Twitter — in particular, it shows where you and another user’s social graphs overlap. Install the extension and visit somebody’s Twitter profile page. You’ll see additional grids loading below their stack of followers. You see which of your friends are also following that user, which friends you have in common and which followers you have in common. It’s an excellent social discovery tool for Twitter power users, and the best extension for Twitter’s stock web interface we’ve seen yet. Congrats, Abraham!

Winner: Blood Funnel by Mike Cantelon

Cantelon created this funky little game called Blood Funnel using JavaScript and HTML. It’s basically Space Invaders, except with flying, demonic Goldman Sachs bankers standing in for the buglike aliens. The paranoia is amped up by an awesome, thumping techno soundtrack — served up as an ogg file, of course. Check out Cantelon’s JavaScript source, it’s elegant. Caveat: Blood Funnel is nimble in Chrome, but it’s slower in Firefox. Congrats, Mike!

Continue Reading “Meet the Winners of Webmonkey’s Google I/O Giveaway” »

Tags: , , , ,
File Under: Mobile, Multimedia
Nov
6
2008

What Language Do You Game In?

By

The developer of an online game-building platform is switching from Java to Flash. The reason? Users don’t want Java.

“Up front, I’ll say that the reason we are moving to Flash is because of Java’s adoption rates. It is not, in fact, because of the language itself but because of Java’s deployment model. We suspect that we lose somewhere between thirty and fifty percent of users due simply to the fact that we are in Java.”

Java -- DENIEDIt probably comes as no surprise to anyone who has ever tried to load applets on the web. They are slow and prone to crashing. To be fair, the same could be said of other technologies, including Flash. Java tends to get more than its equal share of criticism, for what I’d call legitimate reasons.

Still, Java has been embraced for most mobile game development, excluding the iPhone. Google’s Android open development platform uses Java. Sun estimates that its Micro Edition of Java is deployed on billions of devices.

So, is Flash the answer? Flash has been popular for creating web-based games. Adobe’s Flex framework has made programming Flash easier, giving developers a more standard environment than a timeline. But Dale Beerman, the developer making the leap to Flash, admits Java’s development environment is still “years ahead” of Flash.

Flash is also mostly unproven as a mobile language. Apple has not allowed it on the iPhone, apparently over worries of battery life. Adobe announced that it has an iPhone version ready to go, should Apple change its mind. So, Flash is getting some mobile love.

The iPhone, of course, has its own development framework, based on Objective C. There are major benefits to developing for a device as well-loved as the iPhone. Unlike Java and Flash, games written for the iPhone cannot be used elsewhere.

As we said recently, mobile casual games are going to be big. There will always be multiple platforms, but the fight for number one is still in the early rounds. Do you think it’s fair to rag on Java? Is Flash a viable alternative? Or, will all the world eventually have an iPhone?

[Graphic by Dale Beerman]

See also:

Tags: , , ,
File Under: Mobile
Nov
4
2008

Casual Games Trace iPhone Popularity

By

The more iPhones that are purchased (and there have been about 5 million 3G models sold), the fewer owners are early adopters. That means apps will become more mainstream. The trend in desktop gaming appears to be holding true for iPhone: casual games rule.

Though action games, which take advantage of the iPhone accelerometer, are quite popular, so are simple, graphics-light games that can be played in short bursts, but are also incredibly addictive. Bejeweled remains popular for paid apps, and four of the top free apps are games, including my new favorite, Trace.

Trace game on iPhoneThe game at first appears a lot like Line Rider, a classic Flash game where you draw a course then watch your player move along it. Trace takes it a step further, as you avoid obstacles in order to finish each level.

The controls are way simple: you can move left and right, as well as jump. As for drawing your path, you can create or erase lines with the tip of a finger. With those few commands, much can be done. I’ve spent more time than I would like to admit playing Trace. And unfortunately for me, the app keeps track of the time.

I expect games like these to continue to grow in popularity on the iPhone, as the general public recognizes it’s a device worth the price. The iPhone is capable of graphics less childish than Trace’s crayon look, but mobile devices–and the ever popular casual games–don’t require a pretty face.

See also:

Tags: ,
File Under: Mobile
Aug
12
2008

Get $10K For Your iPhone Game

By

ng:moco:)A new iPhone game development company wants to give you $10,000 to write an app. Ng:moco plans to use $100,000 of their funding from Kleiner-Perkins to itself fund 10 game developers:

We’re looking for 10 apps that will be distributed for free, to showcase the iPhone – successful applicants will receive a $10,000 award!

The best part for developers is that, according to CEO Neil Young (not the singer with the “Heart of Gold”), ng:moco is not looking to own the intellectual property. The company just wants to see some good games made. What do they say about rising tides?

The Kleiner-Perkins investment is part of the iFund, $100 million set aside for iPhone development. The ng:moco announced their lab’s micro-funding at early August’s iPhoneDevCamp, where Young gave an inspirational talk (embedded below) comparing early personal computing to the iPhone.

Young previously worked at Electronic Arts, where he oversaw the hugely successful Sims 2 and upcoming Spore games. The EA approach of developing some games in-house while being the publisher for others will likely be duplicated at ng:moco.


Neil Young > iPhone is greater than… from Dominic Sagolla on Vimeo.

See also:

Tags: , , ,
File Under: Multimedia, operating systems, Software & Tools
Jan
2
2008

New Hack Could Enable Linux on the Wii

By

Wii fans hang on to your hats, as the video above explains, hackers have found a way around the Wii’s encryption keys which opens the widely popular console up to home brewed games, open source ports and potentially even a full version of Linux running on your Wii.

The video comes from the 24th Chaos Communication Congress and demonstrates a Wii console running arbitrary code. As Tysoe_J explains in the WiiLi forums, “Nintendo wouldn’t be able to patch this with a firmware update,” since doing so would also break the backwards compatibility with with Game Cube games.

So what do you think, those of you who’ve managed to actually get your hands one, would you want to see Linux running on your Wii?

[via Hackszine]

Tags:
File Under: Business, Multimedia
Sep
4
2007

Easter Egg: The Google Earth Flight Simulator

By

Gearthflight2

It would seem that the latest version of Google Earth, which, as we mentioned, includes the new Google Sky features, also includes a huge Easter Egg — a flight simulator.

To activate the simulator you’ll need the latest version of Google Earth. Open the app (be sure to check out Google Sky if you haven’t), click somewhere in the main map window and press Crtl+Alt+A (Mac users Apple+Option+A) and you should see the dialogue window pictured below.

To use the Flight simulator just choose an aircraft and select an airport from the drop down list. A new window will open and you’ll have a through-the-windshield view from your chosen aircraft.

Continue Reading “Easter Egg: The Google Earth Flight Simulator” »

Tags:
File Under: Multimedia
Jan
29
2007

Solitaire Through the Ages

By

OK, I’ll admit it.

When I first booted up a Vista machine to test it out, I was supposed to be playing with the print driver and the wireless networking features. And of course, within five minutes I was tearing through my third game of Solitaire. I just couldn’t help myself! Why is this game so super-addictive? I think it’s because it’s all the fun of playing cards without the hassle of actually shuffling and dealing. Either way, Klondike Solitaire is dear to our hearts (and presumably yours… and not to mention Hearts!) so we’ve assembled this gallery of Solitaire’s many faces through the ages. Enjoy.

W30games
Windows 3.0, click for larger

Continue Reading “Solitaire Through the Ages” »

Tags:
« OLDER POSTS