Command and Conquer – Programming an RTS game in HTML5 and Javascript

http://www.adityaravishankar.com/2011/11/command-and-conquer-programming-an-rts-game-in-html5-and-javascript

by PixelRobot • 15 years ago

271 63 15 years ago

dazbradbury3• 15 years ago

dupe - http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3473024

samwillis• 15 years ago

It doesn't matter if its a dupe of something everyone missed before and people up vote it this time. So much stuff gets submitted now that links are only on the first page of the new list for a few minutes and can easily be missed. This time its hit at the right time and there could be a good discussion about it.

user9756• 15 years ago

I agree with your argument,

but why is he being down voted? All he did was to point out that this article has been published before.

Maybe there are some interesting comments in the "dupe" thread? (in this case no, but you get the point)

I'm still new to HN and I find the up/down vote behaviour rather peculiar from time to time. This is such a time.

dazbradbury3• 15 years ago

My comment was posted when this page had no comments, nor was it on the front page. In fact, I think it had less than 3 or 4 points. I was just informing the original poster, given that I too thought it was an interesting article, that it seems there was little interest here on HN.

Clearly, due to getting enough karma to put it on the front page this time, my comment is indeed now irrelevant. The post was clearly just missed the first time as you say. Whether this is a problem with the karma/new post system or not is a different matter - and probably not one for discussion here.

I didn't think I'd get downvoted though, given when my comment was made, but your points are fair.

swombat2• 15 years ago

C&C is not the "grandaddy" of RTS. Dune 2 is.

phalasz• 15 years ago

Still it is EPIC especially in HTML5.

Quite impressed how far you can go with HTML5 and javascript :)

swombat2• 15 years ago

Oh, no doubt. I'm just being a pedant, like any good geek would be!

eru5• 15 years ago

You can probably make StarCraft in the browser, too. If you remove the nostalgia filter, that's a much better game than Command & Conquer. (I enjoyed both back then.)

twelvechairs• 15 years ago

Or Herzog Zwei or perhaps earlier games (Ancient Art of War anyone?).

(sadly I guess this discussion somehow has to come up every time someone mentions the word RTS.)

artmageddon3• 15 years ago

I have to say I really enjoyed Herzog Zwei on the Genesis - did anyone ever make a new version of it?

Serentiynow3• 15 years ago

Yes. http://carbongames.com/airmech/help.html Interesting blog where they write about their experience in porting it to NaCl.

larrydag• 15 years ago

How about Command HQ and Dan Bunton's games http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Command_HQ. I'm pretty sure Ancient Art of War predates that though. I'm showing my age.

biot• 15 years ago

You beat me to it. :) Some background on Command & Conquer in relation to Dune 2:

http://www.computerandvideogames.com/183584/features/command...

  "The first time we showed that game internally it had wizards
  and castles," recalls a smiling Castle. "We were working with
  Virgin at the time, and they said that they had this great IP,
  Frank Herbert's Dune, and Brett loved the books. So we took
  the game we were working on and recreated it in the Dune
  universe.

  "It solved one of the fundamental problems we had with making
  an RTS, which was that we wanted to have a central resource
  that everybody was fighting over. Dune has spice, which made
  perfect sense - and it was also used when we came to the idea
  of tiberium. It became the anchor of the C&C universe...".

molmalo6• 15 years ago

I thought the same thing, and even went to YouTube, just to feel a little nostalgic for a moment :)

I remember having to move one unit at a time. That alone required some skill!! =)

caycep• 15 years ago

dwarf fortress next!

kiba• 15 years ago

Funny that you mention that, because I am working on my own unique "blend" of dwarf fortress in HTML5 and javascript.

Let just say the game takes place in a dyson sphere in the far future.

nikcub• 15 years ago

i'd suggest using Git properly instead of making a new copy of the main JS file with every version:

https://github.com/adityaravishankar/command-and-conquer/tre...

it would also be nice if you separated out the code into functional modules (as opposed to event functions) so that parts can be reused. I was interested in checking out your selection code since I implemented my own recently.

better modules and functional separation would also make it easier for others to understand and contribute to the code.

Not taking anything away from an awesome demo, just some suggestions.

pavelkaroukin• 15 years ago

All these are minified versions. I believe these were kept in place with different version number attached to be able to quickly switch between, not for version control reasons.

molmalo6• 15 years ago

Check out cnc.js for a non-minified version.

Serentiynow3• 15 years ago

ea is making the same thing. http://www.ea.com/tiberium-alliances

Command and Conquer Tiberium Alliances brings the battle to your browser in this epic strategy MMO. Compete or ally with your friends in a worldwide war for precious resources. Based in the Command and Conquer Tiberium story world, C&C Tiberium Alliances allows players to experience C&C in a brand new way. Using HTML 5 technology, players are able to access their game from any web accessible browser making this one of the first truly portable mmo strategy titles to hit the market. Apply for the Closed Beta today at www.TiberiumAlliances.com and get into the closed beta.

eru5• 15 years ago

You should have probably marked the citation somewhat more.

SeanDav• 15 years ago

Great effort! Still a couple of comments: As already mentioned C&C is not the originator of this genre. Wikipedia has a decent article on this:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Real-time_strategy

Also please don't use a black background. The dark blue links are really hard to see clearly!

scriptproof• 15 years ago

Very interesting. These games in the browser will change the world for gamers.

jiggy2011• 15 years ago

Like the flash/java games we've had for the last ~12 years?

I'll be impressed when we get a full 3D FPS/RTS with full shader effects.

eru5• 15 years ago

I guess it's more about how people are now actually using the technology to full effect, than about nifty graphics.

Destroyer661• 15 years ago

If you check out http://mrdoob.github.com/three.js/ you'll see that WebGL/Canvas is way beyond the flash/java games. Both do have low-level shaders right now and more improvements are coming all the time.

roschdal2• 15 years ago

I would advise you to stop working on this project immediately, and instead focus your efforts on creating a game with original game content. EA owns the trademarks and copyright to the material.

You'll be much better off by starting your own project, instead of cloning a commercial product. Yes, the source code of command and conquer might have been released by EA, but EA still owns the trademaks.

(speaking as someone who as tried recreating a popular turn based strategy game using HTML5..)

artmageddon3• 15 years ago

I can see EA getting up in arms over a game like this since they are still selling Command & Conquer Games (Tiberian Dawn was part of Command & Conquer: The First Decade which came out a few years ago), but what about for other games that aren't being sold? The author here is giving proper attribution and isn't making any money off of it, as far as I understand. What about remaking games from companies that don't exist anymore?

/not an expert on copyright and honestly curious

ceejayoz• 15 years ago

> What about remaking games from companies that don't exist anymore?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abandonware#Enforcement_of_copy...

pwf• 15 years ago

There's ads on the game site, so he must be making some money off of it.

davedx• 15 years ago

Ads and a donate button.

rmc2• 15 years ago

There was an article on HN recently about how many people (esp. young people) have a different idea about copyright from the law, and seem to think that so long as you attribute something, and especially if it's not taking sales away, then it's OK. That is one idea of copyright, the law has a different idea.

In short, the Command and Conquer trademark is still in use, so EA are legally required to sue you.

The copyright on the art work is fully covered or for the next 50 years (or maybe more).

It doesn't matter if the company doesn't exist anymore (their assets, incl. IP) belong to someone. It doesn't matter if a copyrighted content is not being commerical exploited anymore, it's still copyright.

If this sounds outragous to you, talk to your politicans, read Free Culture by Lessig, talk to a Pirate Party.

robertmrangel• 15 years ago

I'm in a similar boat.. I'm trying to recreate Squad Leader by Avalon Hill in a browser. I think Hasbro might own the trademark, but I don't think copyright applies to game rules:

http://www.battle-board.com/minisl/

If they send a cease and desist I guess I'll just take it offline. I don't think there are any damages in my case, but I'd still hate to be sued!

rmc2• 15 years ago

Probably not game rules, but be careful with logos (of the game and of game pieces).

smallblacksun• 15 years ago

The ideas in the rules cannot be copyrighted, but the specific text of the rules can be (see http://www.copyright.gov/fls/fl108.html). Also, game mechanics can be patented.

muro• 15 years ago

which game did you try to recreate?

roschdal2• 15 years ago

https://github.com/freecivnet/freeciv-web

atesti• 15 years ago

Did EA really release the source code of command and conquer? I could not find it!

kghose• 15 years ago

I'm on Mac OS X Lion and Firefox. I lost my cursor after I loaded this page. So now, when Firefox (any firefox window) is active my cursor disappears. It returns when I make some other app active. This sometimes happens on Chrome and Flickr, so I wonder if there is some HTML5 thing that is buggy for FF and Chrome?

Any one else with this issue?

pak• 15 years ago

I've had this happen to me on Chrome. It was definitely a browser bug, because restarting the browser resolved it. I first noticed it when I was working on a web page with complicated CSS rules for 'cursor'. If I had to guess, it has to do with loading custom .cur or .gif files as the cursor, since it didn't seem to happen unless I tried to do that. However, it was very sporadic and I could never get a reproducible minimal test case.

nicetryguy• 15 years ago

I'll just leave this here

http://www.youtube.com/user/theostation#p/c/880ECFFEF4972939

molmalo6• 15 years ago

Isn't it strange that we are celebrating being able to build things made 20 years ago, but in the browser?

I can imagine someone in 2032 posting somewhere: "Hey! I ported Crysis to the XXX " Being XXX = an Augmented Reality 3D Browser or what comes next in 20 years from now.

Just a thought.

wslh• 15 years ago

Yes. The same for programming languages features such as Javascript.

InclinedPlane• 15 years ago

All of this has happened before, and all of it will happen again.

Back in the early days of the personal microcomputer they were regarded as toys relative to the minicomputers and mainframes of that era. And in many ways they were. But bit by bit people copied functionality from older systems to PCs. Often times the new stuff was a bit simplified and in some cases downright hacky. Even CP/M let alone DOS was a pale imitation of UNIX, for example. But the microcomputer community caught up rapidly, and then soon overshot the state of the art by developing GUI based operating systems, word processing, desktop publishing, desktop graphic design, etc.

The same sort of thing has been happening with mobile platforms as well. At one time mobile computers were very immature compared to their PC counterparts, but they've started to leap-frog PCs in usability and certain other capabilities.

Since its inception the web has always been regarded as a potential competitor platform to traditional PCs. Today we are seeing hints of that coming true, with a lot of web based software replacing traditional shrink-wrapped client software. And we're also seeing the edges of the PC's strengths being nibbled away too, with various applications that would have been very difficult to make run on the web being ported to html5 and such-like. But this is probably just a hint of the progress which will come in the future, when eventually the browser-as-a-platform is fully realized technologically and running an immersive first-person 3D game fully within a browser is the norm rather than a proof-of-concept.

paintAcquaint2• 15 years ago

Well, it's a lot sooner than you think. Flash 11 already has the unreal tournament engine ported.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UQiUP2Hd60Y

molmalo6• 15 years ago

Awesome. But Adobe is slowly moving away from Flash.

BTW, Google ported Quake II to the browser (WebGL, WebSockets, etc) back in 2010.

BLOG: http://googlewebtoolkit.blogspot.com/2010/04/look-ma-no-plug... CODE: http://code.google.com/p/quake2-gwt-port/

Why don't we have something like a MMO-SimCity 4, instead of all those *Ville-s out there. Hey, EA, are you listening ? :)

wtvanhest• 15 years ago

It is also awesome that he did it as one person in a month. I'm sure it took a lot more time to develop the original and a lot more people.

hammock• 15 years ago

Keep in mind it's a lot easier to trace a picture with tracing paper than it is to draw it in the first place. (Although this is really cool- one of my favorite games.)

molmalo6• 15 years ago

I did a simple RPG game engine (It handled basic scripting, navigating through different maps, some screen tricks, etc), back in 1999 when I was 15 y.o. (yeah, I had a LOT of spare time back then)... I'll leave a screen here: http://img41.imageshack.us/img41/2714/proyge0.jpg in case someone wants to see what it looked like (I had 'borrowed' some tile art from several games of the time: Final Fantasy 5 and Harvest Moon :P but some were entirely made by me!!).

It was made in C++ and some ASM (I needed to use assembler to improve the performance in some critical areas, like graphics, working with 0x13h mode, I wrote my graphic library from scratch).

I can assure you that it was laborious and pretty difficult (specially talking to the hardware directly). But I REALLY wanted to learn programming, and I didn't went on vacation that summer, so I spent a lot of time coding for fun :)

Do you want to know the funniest part of it? Some years later, I lost the majority of that code. While formatting my PC, I forgot to save that... Now I only preserve some exes, but I've lost the level editor and the tile editor I made =(

Oh gosh, I feel nostalgic now.

Having said all of this, I can really understand the guy who ported this game. The will to learn is a powerful motivator.

bkyan• 15 years ago

To me, the impressive part is that the whole thing is (as far as I could tell) just 177KB of jQuery/Javascript code -- plus sounds and images.

Command and Conquer – Programming an RTS game in HTML5 and Javascript

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