
Command & Conquer in HTML5 with multiplayer - SchizoDuckie
http://www.adityaravishankar.com/projects/games/command-and-conquer/
======
kevingadd
Soliciting donations for something you made using someone else's IP without
permission seems like it is absolutely crossing the line. This is a cool demo
and I like the trend of people porting classic games to the browser, but you
absolutely shouldn't have a 'give me money for this' button sitting there.
It's just asking for trouble.

~~~
Strshps1MoreTim
Good think people like Isaac Newton (standing on the shoulders of giants) did
not know about IP, or the humankind would still live in caves.

~~~
danso
That's a bit of a simplification of the whole IP debate. It's not an either-or
thing.

~~~
Strshps1MoreTim
So you're saying: "It's very complicated, you won't understand my arguments."

It is simple, IP laws lead to slower development of science and industry and
accumulation of huge amounts of money and power in the hands of a few.
Classical example is 19th and early 20th century British Empire - it's IP laws
are what to a big degree allowed US and Germany to catch up and surpass it.

~~~
pbhjpbhj
You can't copyright a physical law, you can't even patent it. So in that
respect Newton's work wouldn't be limited in it's use.

Personally I think he'd release his treatise under CC-BY (which requires
copyright law to work).

FWIW patents are about an exchange of knowledge for a time-limited monopoly on
the use of that knowledge. Patents allow the free propagation of the ideas
behind patentable inventions and provide means to incentivise inventors and to
reward beneficial inventions. They also, by exclusions, all the development,
experiment and investigation of others in to the content of patent disclosures
before the details therein would normally be disclosed.

The alternative to patents ("open [letters]") is industrial secrets. If you
can show me how making all current patent disclosures in to industrial secrets
promotes the propagation of technological ideas I'd be much obliged.

~~~
Strshps1MoreTim
Yeah, that's an excellent selling/lobbying tactic - limit the choice to as few
alternatives as possible, ideally two. E.g. the alternative to smoking is drug
abuse, so smoking is not simple... How do you see an industrial secret being
an alternative for a video game (the original post)??

Current patents are not about exchange of knowledge (I'd ask what have you
been smoking, but it's against the HN guidelines, in your view the patent
trolls must be the bringers of fire) - Apple patents on rectangular form,
Monsanto and Co patents on genes, the mind blowing obvious software patents.

~~~
danso
Yeah I don't think anyone here is going to agree with you that computing and
life has been vastly curtailed in creativity after the dominance of Apple and
its copyright-imposing policies.

~~~
Strshps1MoreTim
Talking about simplification ...

------
jamesmcn
Can't tell which is a bigger time sink - the emerging IP debate here, or the
hours I lost playing the original C&C back in the '90s.

~~~
re_todd
I had to repeat Calculus because of that damn game!

------
skyfaller
This isn't an HTML5 game, but OpenRA is an open source clone of Command &
Conquer: Red Alert which also supports the original Command & Conquer and
Dune2000.

<http://open-ra.org>

If you get tired of playing in a browser, check OpenRA out!

~~~
m_myers
Or, you know, just download the actual game instead of a clone. EA released
the first three in the series (Tiberian Dawn, Red Alert, and Tiberian Sun) for
free several years ago.

[will edit in link when I'm not on a corporate network]

~~~
Klinky
I haven't played OpenRA, but I know that getting the games to launch and
multiplayer can be quite spotty with the originals on modern machines.

~~~
skyfaller
OpenRA launches fine and plays multiplayer fine except for a persistent
synchronization bug that will occasionally crash large multiplayer games. The
developers are currently vigorously hunting that bug.

~~~
enraged_camel
Actually, the very original C&C had that bug, too. I remember trying to play
it with a friend of mine and it would often crash with an "sessions are out of
sync" error after 10-15 minutes of playing.

Is it sad that I still remember that, or what? :P

------
justjimmy
Awww yeah… the SFX, the MUSIC (Mechanical man is my fav) and the projectiles.
Still my favorite RTS hands down.

Thanks for sharing!

EDIT: I actually searched Rdio for C&C music after seeing this post…was not
disappointed!

~~~
meritt
C&C:RA Hell March. Such an awesome awesome song.

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f6PxkeOIMA8>

~~~
Pkeod
I like this video with the song more:
<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=096hnKDw5tc>

------
yummies
I've always wondered when we'd get a browser based RTS that doesn't require
some silly plugin. (maybe one exists?) This is a nice start, but will probably
get shot down as soon as it becomes noticed by the powers that be at EA (or
whoever owns the copyright)

~~~
ryandvm
Agreed. I've been wishing for an Age of Empires clone in HTML5 for years.

~~~
ecubed
Age of Empires II in the browser would tank my GPA

------
richforrester
Great. Just great. So much for productivity today.

I like the separate canvas for mouse activities. Makes a lot of sense. It's
probably not that much of a novelty, but I'm a designer/lousy programmer, so
I'm impressed easily.

~~~
adityars
:)

------
MrJagil
Astonishing. Was just playing Dungeon Keeper- that might as well be next.

If only it would be taken seriously. I.e. actual accounts that would get
punished for leaving etc.

------
bicknergseng
Funny... I was confused when I saw an already visited link when I opened up HN
for the first time today. I found this last week after that Dune II post.

------
sgt
I find it a bit difficult to scroll up/down/left/right, because I constantly
overshoot and then it stops scrolling. I then have to move the mouse back and
try to find the exact point where it starts scrolling. A bit frustrating after
20 minutes of gameplay. Is there a way in HTML5 to "capture" the mouse within
a certain area?

~~~
adityars
You can use the keyboard arrow keys to scroll...

~~~
sgt
Wow - I didn't even think of trying that, because for some reason I figured
that the original game could only scroll using the mouse. So much for
presumptions...

~~~
adityars
Someone specifically requested the feature on the issue tracker, and since it
was a one line tweak, I added it in :)

------
Tyrant505
Can someone make an Ultima Online Clone already? This is incredible validity,
great job!

------
bobsy
Very cool but isn't the AI bugged?

Run unit into attack range. Pull unit back and attack with other units. Enemy
AI will attempt to chase unit which you are pulling back. Should mean with a
bit of micro you won't lose any units.

------
aymeric
Anyone interested in learning how to code such games can have a look at my
open source Terrarium.js <http://terrariumjs.wiselabs.net>

(it has a multiplayer component)

------
thrownaway2424
Well it has a few bugs it seems (it took me like five minutes to deploy my
factory, and then I got disconnected) but wow, what a great service to
humanity.

------
TommyDANGerous
I want to use HTML5 more often but I refrain because of comparability issues
with IE for the users who still use it...

------
dubcanada
I can't run anyone over :(

And my dude walked across water.

But it was awesome!

------
mindjiver
Good thing this was posted in the evening CET, otherwise I wouldn't have
gotten anything done today at work. :)

------
hayksaakian
IMO the games industry has a dearth of open source activity, and I'm thankful
to you for moving it forward.

~~~
adityars
Thanks... Hopefully between this game and my new book, I inspire tons of new
developers in 2013 ... :D

------
makmanalp
Does anyone else get stuck after level1 because the UI freezes? Firefox
aurora.

~~~
adityars
Chrome works better... Several people have reported this bug in Firefox for
Windows

------
bmmayer1
30 minutes of entertaining and nostalgic gameplay = one enthusiastic upvote.

------
enraged_camel
Great job, but no cutscenes?

~~~
adityars
Still figuring out a way to host videos... Hosting videos on shared hosting is
asking for them to be melted ....

------
10dpd
Just wait for the flood of In-App Purchases to ruin the gameplay.

~~~
adityars
lol.. Not going to happen... I even removed any ads on the page...

------
Goranek
Game of my youth. It works nicely !!! Great job!

~~~
adityars
Thank you :D

------
dested
Was this done with emscripten or ported by hand?

~~~
iso-8859-1
Ravi Shankar (a multi-talent it seems :P) ported it by hand, I think. Check
out the source: [http://www.adityaravishankar.com/projects/games/command-
and-...](http://www.adityaravishankar.com/projects/games/command-and-
conquer/release/cnc-0.6.4.js)

Doesn't contain anything I connect with Emscripten (stack and heap
references). Actually, not even the object fields names have been obfuscated!
It is quite readable. But I'd feel bad minifying a port of a game I don't own,
too. Maybe that's why.

------
omnisci
and productivity in offices plummets. :)

------
goggles99
Will HTML5/JS games ever approach the performance that we have had for years
with Flash/Silverlight? I try all these HTML5 demos and have thus far never
failed to be sorely disappointed at the complexity that is required to code
them and the poor performance they yield.

Shouldn't a new technology only be embraced for a certain use (like creating
games) when it is "better" in some way than what we already have? Sorry, I
really just don't get it. When will people realize that games will never be
viable in HTML5. Embedded audio, videos, vector graphics and minor animations
for a web site/app - great. But games??? Please stop. You are not using the
best (or even suitable) tool for the job.

~~~
joelthelion
Maybe browser support isn't good enough yet? I don't think there is anything
fundamental that makes HTML5 slower than Flash or Silverlight other than the
fact that it's new and standard, which makes it harder to get right (but will
make it far more useful in the long run).

~~~
goggles99
Then Hype HTML5 when it is ready for prime time. I am sick of all the
excitement surrounding it. It is not revolutionary, nothing about it is
particularly new (can it do something that Flash/Silverlight cannot???) or
exiting. Everything that it does can already be done and in a better way.

All this and we can't really use it for years to come because it is not mature
and not enough users have modern browsers.

Enough already. Let me know when the party starts, cause I am sure am sick of
hearing hype over HTML5 when there are already better alternatives. When Flash
was new and games like this were created (this was like 8-9 years ago LOL) It
really was a big deal because nothing like it existed at the time.

HTML5 to me is like the GO programming language. YAY, another language that
can do what hundreds of other languages can already do. It may be new and
"neat", It may even be the best tool for doing certain niche things, but
hardly worth seeing in the news every day.

