Show HN: HTML5 version of StarCraft

by gloomyson • 11 years ago

320 95 11 years ago

Funny thing, I tried to play SC on a LAN last week. No go on my MacBook though. Wine gives graphics glitches and VMWare Fusion was too slow on my ageing MBP.

I downloaded version 1.0 of this and it seems to work quite well! The version live at http://www.nvhae.com/starcraft/ is 0.1. Guess we shouldn't hope for multiplayer, which is what I'm really after.

gloomyson14• 11 years ago

Actually I have the plan to make it support multiplayer using dojo.js, but before that I need to add other features like mining and routing into this game, hope won't make you wait long time^_^

gloomyson14• 11 years ago

Sorry, will support multiplayer by node.js, meanwhile plan to support saving by local storage; I'm studying framework dojo.js now and add its useful functions into my own framework gFrame.js

danielsamuels• 11 years ago

You can use the rawgit to view the current version (1.0) - https://rawgit.com/gloomyson/StarCraft/master/index.html

gloomyson14• 11 years ago

Wow, I didn't know this, but i guess you will hardly enter the game because by now my audio files are separated as a result will trigger large amounts of http requests; I will later join them together to reduce audio file amounts, will play each sound like sprite

LoSboccacc• 11 years ago

pls link cdn rawgit, the normal rawgit is already handing 503 because the project quota ended

SXX6• 11 years ago

Looks funny, but I recommend you to remove all proprietary Blizzard graphics from GitHub and possible just recreate repository without it. If you want to host assets there better to keep them in different repository.

Otherwise you'll clearly get DMCA because Blizzard has long history of banning any project even remotely copying their products no matter if it's done for fun or whatever.

PS: It's also affect repository name, etc.

gloomyson14• 11 years ago

Much thanks for you recommend, I make this game just because I love this old StarCraft game so much and want to realize it in web browser, no plan for make money, and it's much weaker than the original Blizzard game

Tomte4• 11 years ago

Great. Blizzard won't care. But if you like living a risky life, go on.

(And yes, I'm blown away by what you have achieved there)

SXX6• 11 years ago

Fact that you don't make money off it would work for almost any game developer, but not Blizzard. In past they take down several open source projects just because of their name or clean room reverse engineering. And you're basically pirating their game assets.

moonshinefe2• 11 years ago

Great work, but as someone who lived through FSGS and BNETD and various WoW projects that were unsanctioned, be sure to protect yourself against Blizzard's lawyers as others say. They'll be knocking if your project takes off.

stockkid• 11 years ago

I love the old StarCraft. Thanks for making this!

bobajeff• 11 years ago

Yeah, it kind of sucks but there is some ambiguity in the law when to comes to making fan art/games.

But basically as I understand it you can't publicly distribute a game with the same exact title, characters, story and look. You are given some leeway to parody but should tread carefully there too.

So for example: StellarCraft featuring Zerps, Terrags and Protians and use similar but reasonably distinct looks for everyone from the other game would be safer.

RamenJunkie_• 11 years ago

Meanwhile, DOTA2 is a thing...

gort• 11 years ago

I suppose going to war with Valve would have been pretty bad PR. Still, Valve was forced to change a bunch of Dota characters' names and visuals so as to not infringe on Blizzard's IP.

Examples: Windrunner changed to "Windranger"; Pudge made to look less like a Warcraft "abomination"-style creature; Skeleton King renamed and remodeled to "Wraith King".

itafroma• 11 years ago

Meanwhile, DOTA2 is a thing...

After an IP battle that was settled out of court.[1] Valve also does not use any of Blizzard's assets in Dota 2.

[1] http://www.engadget.com/2012/05/11/blizzard-and-valve-settle...

kitsunesoba2• 11 years ago

That’s really too bad. I was thinking about doing a little not-for-profit fan game project that uses entirely my own code and handmade assets, but is set in the Warcraft universe (and thus, taking on a Warcraft like art style). Would they come after me for that? To me that falls into the same realm as Machinima or fan fiction, both of which Blizz seems to have no problem with.

toyg2• 11 years ago

Dude, why creating something in an universe somebody else controls, for free? Wouldn't it be more creative to come up with your own world and characters? It would be more challenging, sure, but much more rewarding in every way (improving your narrative skills, benefiting 100% from publicity of your work, not risking to be nuked with a DMCA from orbit, etc etc).

In the end, if you really must have a Jenina Proudmoore, just call her something else and give her a similar-but-not-quite-same background.

tallerholler• 11 years ago

this is awesome! please continue and get multiplayer but also don't get busted by blizzard...

gloomyson14• 11 years ago

Thank you, please don't tell blizzard my game, hope it can live longer in github

artmageddon• 11 years ago

They'll find it pretty quickly. You'll want to move fast to protect yourself.

iopq2• 11 years ago

As someone who still plays the game sometimes, this will take way too much effort to reproduce satisfactorily. Cursors need to change on mouseover, or when a command is selected. There need to be hotkeys, ctrl groups, etc.

Not sure if you're going to finish this, because it is going to be quite hard to polish.

gloomyson14• 11 years ago

Yes, I'm still developing this game, and will be glad if you can watch my game until completely finished

iopq2• 11 years ago

Sure, post it again when it's more polished and I'll comment more.

MasterScrat2• 11 years ago

Looks very interesting :D

I'm currently doing the same with Baldur's Gate engine. I am using Mootools, I want to study your code more to see if Dojo would be better (Mootools introduces overhead with constructors)

Basic demo here: http://lumakey.net/labs/battleground/demo1/

For multiplayer I'm making tests with Firebase...

Also I'm looking into WebGL for some animations (explosions etc) probably it could help performance in your case as well.

gloomyson14• 11 years ago

Very glad to hear that; for dojo, functions in dojo/_base/lang and require.js attract me; and can you share your github URL then i can also watch your project? PS: Are you afraid if game company accuse you pirating their assets? Their words make me nervous

MasterScrat2• 11 years ago

I have not yet published the code publicly but I plan on doing it soon.

With Mootools I like the classical inheritance style. Something else that looks interesting is TypeScript, when you reach ~10k lines of codes pure javascript gets really tricky to debug/refactor.

Yes I am worried about company reaction, I wouldnt publish game assets on a public repo. What I am considering is publishing my game engine along with the scripts I use to process the game resources into suitable web formats.

galenko• 11 years ago

This is awesome, but as others have said, the Blizzard legal team will come knocking on your door very soon. If I were you and if you're serious about continuing working on this, I would take this down immediately, get in touch with their legal team and see if you can work something out with them to get their blessing on this.

They're not evil, it's their job to protect copyrighted assets, without them Blizzard would be out of pocket and SC2 might not have been created, from my experience, there are some really friendly people there, but you have to get on their good side and I'd say you've already gone about this the wrong way (by githubbing their copyrighted stuff).

gloomyson14• 11 years ago

I made this game because i love Blizzard and their game, i'll be very sad if they accuse me, now i'm not feeling good...

moonshinefe2• 11 years ago

This is great work and you should feel good about it.

I've never seen Blizzard pursue a massive lawsuit on an individual without giving them a chance / warning first to take things down.

SXX6• 11 years ago

Pretty sure contacting Blizzard legal team would be dumbest thing ever because you'll never get an answer or just get youself in trouble. Best solution is to remove current repository (or make it private) and then create new repo without copyrighted stuff.

tracker1• 11 years ago

That, or remove said assets and scrub the history.. as another thread mentions there are sites with open game assets that can be used... or simple sketch patterns and generated voice assets can be used in the interim until better assets can be released.

neurohax• 11 years ago

I guess it won't be hard to partner with an indie game artist, replace the sprites and title and turn it into an original game.

vegancap• 11 years ago

Amazing work! Red Alert next??

gloomyson14• 11 years ago

To replace sprite images and sounds in my game will easily change it to another RTS like Red Alert, but i'm nervous about the copyright now, I just want to produce my own game for fun so if I make RedAlert, will not upload to github again

kzrdude2• 11 years ago

You don't need to be nervous. Blizzard asking you to take down your copy of their assets is inevitable. No need to sweat it more than that, it's a fact of life.

Here's something interesting, an open source Warcraft II style engine https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stratagus

You'll have to adapt the same strategy as they do, or any other engine remake: Host and share your engine, require the user to themselves supply the original game installation. That way your project is just a mod.

Another example of a great engine remake is "RttR" http://www.siedler25.org/ a remake of the Settlers II engine. They require a separate installation of the original game to play.

Kaivo• 11 years ago

For Red Alert, there might not be much problems to do it since they made it a freeware[1] years ago and there are already plenty of projects around it.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Command_%26_Conquer:_Red_Alert...

nomercy400• 11 years ago

Your code is still yours. The assets might not, but you can reproduce similar gameplay. Release it without the graphics and have people gather assets somewhere else (or find some free ones as suggested), as done with games like OpenTTD.

It is cool and impressive what you've achieved here, don't let that discourage you. Keep building these things.

iso8859-1• 11 years ago

C&C was already done: http://www.adityaravishankar.com/projects/games/command-and-...

jpatokal• 11 years ago

Anybody got this running without downloading the whole lot and hosting it locally? http://htmlpreview.github.io/?https://github.com/gloomyson/S... loads up to the splash screen but no further.

kaoD• 11 years ago

Worked for me whitelisting the site in Disconnect.

thomasahle• 11 years ago

Amazing work! I put this in full screen, and at times, playing the 'Protect Athena' level, I even forgot it wasn't the real thing. Must have taken you a lot of tuning :)

gloomyson14• 11 years ago

I suggest you use cheat code "full recovery" or "power overwhelming" or "the gathering", or finish this level is mission impossible

hitekker• 11 years ago

For those wishing to play without downloading:

Open http://htmlpreview.github.io/?https://github.com/gloomyson/S... in FF (or Chrome without its security stuff on)

niutech• 11 years ago

Thanks for promoting my project ;) I hope it will serve you well.

mentos• 11 years ago

Are there any Html5 game frameworks that this could/should have been built on top of? I feel like there are a bunch of games that could be made with an html5 client...

S4M• 11 years ago

Is it just me, or it's the "gather" function to mine resources is not working? Really nice apart from that.

gloomyson14• 11 years ago

The "gather" function is just not added into game by now, the code is not done, you can use cheat "show me the money" to easily get resources as much as you want.

songgao• 11 years ago

Even the cheat codes still work!

gloomyson14• 11 years ago

Yes, to check cheat code list, you can check cheat.js by itself, they're all listed in switch~case expression

hvidevold• 11 years ago

Good job gloomyson! I've been working on HTML5 version of Starcraft 2, see https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PoPNrz2LUG0 , https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EvhUteDp3o8 , and source is at https://github.com/emnh/rts . Only free assets are included in github repository submodule, same separation strategy as Stratagus.

j_s• 11 years ago

Check out the StarCraft AI competition if you need some ideas:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8884694

Plishar• 11 years ago

I make games all the time for myself, sometimes using copyright protected images. But I can't share the source code or publish the game in Google Play if I do that.

If I want to share or publish, I have to use free stuff or make it myself. If I want to use copyright material and publish it, I need permission and a contract with the owner of the IP, a license or agreement of some sort to use their stuff.

All this applies to everyone, not just the US, if you want to do business. If it's just for fun that's fine but you can't distribute it in anyway, including github.

jlebrech• 11 years ago

I would commit a change that removes the assets and see what pull request you get. or even better i'd make it load assets from a theme then anyone can theme it.

Mizza• 11 years ago

Cool.

Anybody looking for an HTML5 Startcraft-esque multiplayer game might want to check out http://littlewargame.com

xytop• 11 years ago

Play it online here: http://shvelo.github.io/StarCraft/

(fork with gh-pages added)

david_p1• 11 years ago

Well nice game, few days ago I found something very interesting, html5 game that is a combination of starcraft and clash of clans, with much better graphic and real time AI, but the game doesn't seems to be ready yet... http://ageofsalvation.com/ It is the most advanced html5 game I have seen though.

Show HN: HTML5 version of StarCraft

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