
Show HN: Bosconian (1981), in 3-D - nolannicholson
http://nolannicholson.com/bosco-3d/
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benrbray
Great! I would love to see more classic games in the browser. The controls
really throw me off though--do enough people really prefer inverted vertical
controls for it to be the default in so many games? UP to go down, DOWN to go
up?

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flanbiscuit
It made sense to me. I guess it's how you interpret the controls of an actual
aircraft and how they map to keyboard controls. In aircraft controls it's
"pull back" to increase altitude (up) and "push forward" to decrease altitude
(down).

I imagine it this way, each direction key maps to a part of the topside of the
aircraft

\- up: front/nose of aircraft, pressing up pushes pressure on the nose which
would make it tilt downward, hence going down or losing altitude

\- down: back of aircraft, pressing down pushes pressure on the backside of
the aircraft which would make it tilt upward, hence going up or gaining
altitude

same for left and right

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bartread
Yeah, it's funny. For anything involving controlling an aircraft or spacecraft
I prefer aircraft style controls (i.e., pull back for UP, and push forward for
DOWN).

For FPS I prefer the opposite: forward is look up, back is look down, with
very few exceptions. I'm not really sure why this would be but it throws me
completely if I try to play most FPS (and even some six-axis games) with
aircraft style controls.

Felt very natural with Bosconian 3D though.

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pvg
Your own descriptions suggest the underlying reason for this - e.g. 'pull up'
\- the controller maps to the orientation of the thing you are controlling vs
'forward is look up' \- the controller maps to where you want to look.

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ignoranceprior
This is such a great 3D version, very faithful to the original game. Awesome
work.

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scoopdewoop
I am really digging the code. Clean, modern, vanilla js! The amount of polish
in this game is very appreciated!

I see that the assets were made in blender. I hadn't thought to use pixel-art
textures with low-poly in that way. It looks fantastic, especially with the
low-res rendering.

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nolannicholson
Thanks - I really appreciate it!

I got a lot of inspiration for the model style (and a helpful making-of
timelapse) from @librorumque on Twitter:
[https://twitter.com/librorumque/status/1205080756508352512](https://twitter.com/librorumque/status/1205080756508352512)

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wavesplash
On Brave, pressing SPACE just destroys the ship?

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Recursing
Same on firefox

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yborg
Kind of boggles the mind that we've had video games for over 40 years.

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kiawe_fire
Nice work! I really like the art style. It captures the minimalism of the
original, while not resorting to voxels or a "hipster flat low poly" look.

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nsajko
Sadly, I just get a black screen with a white rectangle in the lower-left
corner. Chromium 81.

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nsajko
It may be something to do with audio, see Chromium's console:
[https://drive.google.com/open?id=1gpEX5mTiDO7hkJEkOzqhbSBnbW...](https://drive.google.com/open?id=1gpEX5mTiDO7hkJEkOzqhbSBnbWQaVnrM)

Does the entire web page depend on audio working?

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lowwave
Nice work! Is this first made in blender and then exported JS HTML5?

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nolannicholson
Thanks! The models were made in Blender, but the engine was made from scratch
in vanilla JS using WebGL. The code is public:
[https://github.com/NolanNicholson/bosco-3d](https://github.com/NolanNicholson/bosco-3d)

