[HN Gopher] Pharaoh's Tomb HD - A Remake Made in JavaScript with...
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Pharaoh's Tomb HD - A Remake Made in JavaScript with Kaplay
Author : JSLegendDev
Score : 115 points
Date : 2025-01-18 22:44 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (pt-hd.iocaihost.me)
(TXT) w3m dump (pt-hd.iocaihost.me)
| magic_hamster wrote:
| Okay, this is pretty cool.
| JSLegendDev wrote:
| This was made with the JavaScript Library Kaplay. Check it out
| here : https://kaplayjs.com
|
| Game was made by Misanthrope. His twitter can be found here :
| https://x.com/petergencur
| simonw wrote:
| Great job making this work intuitively on a mobile touch screen.
| colordrops wrote:
| I was thinking that I haven't yet experienced this particular
| control mechanic for a video game. It's not perfect but it
| works on a mobile touch screen.
| modeless wrote:
| I faced a similar problem when porting Cave Story to the web
| with mobile support, and I like the solution I came up with:
| https://thelongestyard.link/cave-story/
|
| Cave Story is not a simple or easy platformer and clearly not
| designed with touch controls in mind, but I've been able to
| finish the game with touch controls alone.
| colordrops wrote:
| Nice they seem to work really well! The idea of relative
| movements makes a lot more sense than fixed button
| locations on touch screens.
| _Misanthrope wrote:
| Yeah, I wanted minimal approach like make it just work
| without adding anything on top. Although, overlay buttons
| would have been much easier to implement, heh. Also, jump or
| shoot (at least) as buttons would be more accessible and I
| might do that as option once I focus on touch later on.
|
| I'm also toying with the idea of zooming it in with a follow
| cam, but I'm getting much ahead of myself now. :)
| _Misanthrope wrote:
| Thank you, it means a lot!
| vunderba wrote:
| Works fine on a PC but I found that the jump is measurably
| delayed (at least on iOS Safari) which makes it about 10x more
| difficult, anyone else experiencing this?
|
| Hoping this is an implementation detail and not something
| inherent to the Kaplay engine.
| pryelluw wrote:
| Yes and a bit more difficult but enjoyable. I hope someday we
| get good touch controls for a video game.
| teruakohatu wrote:
| Games back then were brutal. I am not sure if there is a bug but
| I got stuck on the third level with no way to continue nor anyway
| to die. Just stuck.
| _Misanthrope wrote:
| Yess, the old games did have softlocks like in this one! You
| can press R to reset the level. And L to load the latest
| autosave. I didn't expect game to be shared this early so there
| is a missing info about these controls. :)
| teruakohatu wrote:
| Thank you for the tip. You did a wonderful job.
| _Misanthrope wrote:
| Thank you for your words! :)
| vunderba wrote:
| Nice. I didn't detect any measurable input lag - which is good
| because these old-school games can be tough as nails.
|
| I briefly flipped through the docs - it seems like Kaplay shares
| a lot in common with PhaserJS. I'd be interested in a comparison
| between the two frameworks.
| JSLegendDev wrote:
| I made a video explaining why I prefer to use Kaplay. It's 12
| min long.
|
| It's not a direct comparison with Phaser but I think it could
| give you a clear picture of where Kaplay stands and what it
| offers compared to Phaser.
|
| Link here : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o8a6jXRnYfc
| zfg wrote:
| Why is it better than just doing it in WebAssembly?
|
| With WebAssembly you'll get native builds as well as web
| builds, higher performance, and you're not restricted in the
| language you use.
| hombre_fatal wrote:
| Why would you compare a game framework to wasm?
| zfg wrote:
| Because WebAssembly brings every game framework to the
| web.
| hombre_fatal wrote:
| No, the game framework would have to be designed for
| that, or someone would have to put in a lot of work to
| get something like an emscripten pipeline working.
| zfg wrote:
| They are designed for that.
| JSLegendDev wrote:
| Without going into the Web/WebAssembly debate, KAPLAY is
| just too good as a library to pass up. It's intuitive, easy
| and comes with a lot built-in. It makes making games
| actually fun with it's ECS-like API.
|
| If KAPLAY existed as a WASM runtime or in another language,
| I would use it.
| ternnoburn wrote:
| Use the technology you know and move quickly in. For a game
| like this, personal preference is way more important than
| optimal language/technology choice.
| pavel_lishin wrote:
| I wonder if anyone's remade Dangerous Dave.
|
| I've never beaten it! I'm not even sure if I've watched a video
| of the game being beaten.
| zfg wrote:
| A Dangerous Dave remake:
|
| https://www.maizure.org/projects/lets-make-dangerous-dave/in...
|
| https://github.com/MaiZure/lmdave
|
| Deadly Dave, based on MaiZure's remake:
|
| https://github.com/skoperst/deadly-dave
|
| Another one compiled to WebAssembly:
|
| https://github.com/shlomnissan/dave-wasm
|
| https://shlomnissan.github.io/dave-wasm/
| andrewstuart wrote:
| Tough game. Love the atmosphere.
| craniumslows wrote:
| My inspiration at learning TurboPascal and writing my first
| little games was this game! How cool. Very fun to see it again!
| Thanks.
| _Misanthrope wrote:
| Nice! I was learning Pascal waay back at school. And this is my
| first game that I'm dabbing into game dev with, as well. What a
| small world. :)
| Dwedit wrote:
| It looks like the hitboxes are a lot tighter than the original
| version.
| _Misanthrope wrote:
| Yes they are! They copy the actual object dimensions, more or
| less.
|
| In the original, hitboxes were of tile size (16x16). It made
| the game much harder to play, especially nowadays when even
| knowing this fact, it felt very unfair or deceiving at times.
| There are many quirks that were happening in the background
| because of it and it was fun remaking that.
|
| Although, this change is one of those that are meant to refresh
| it and bring closer to today's standards.
| _Misanthrope wrote:
| _Controls hint!_ |
|
| You can press R to reset the level. And L to load the latest
| autosave. I didn't expect game to be shared this early so there
| is missing info about these controls :). (Also, touch users would
| be out of luck in this one, sorry..)
|
| Btw, there are just 5 levels so far (original has 60).
| Geste wrote:
| Loaded fast, played nicely, very cool !
| mouse_ wrote:
| Mobile controls could potentially be improved by anchoring first
| touch position
|
| I touch and drag right to move to the right, but I find the
| character sometimes starts to move to the left simply because my
| thumb jitters naturally, even though I'm still holding to the
| right of first press.
|
| I also find it hard to anticipate if my taps are going to jump or
| throw a spear.
|
| Awesome job!! I remember when HTML5 was first pushed as the
| replacement for flash based webapps, the input latency was always
| terrible and I mourned the death of Flash. I'm glad that this
| seems to be a mostly solved issue, most of the recent web games
| I've tried have felt as good as native or flash.
| _Misanthrope wrote:
| It is actually implemented as you mention, there is just some
| weird thing going on with that, not necessarily tied with touch
| itself. There is a threshold in place as well to prevent that,
| yet it happens at times. Will have to investigate more at some
| point.
|
| Jump is a single tap or tap and hold for continuous jump until
| direction changed (translated to some point from original).
| Spear is a double tap (which means jump is slightly delayed and
| double has to be quick). Yeah, it is not optimal setup, check
| other comments about this topic. :)
|
| And thank you very much for your words! I feel you with Flash
| vs HTML5 Canvas debacle, heh.
| butz wrote:
| HD should imply at least higher resolution graphics and updated
| audio, but this version seems to be just a direct remake, as far
| as I see. Unless I missed button that toggles graphics mode?
| BrenBarn wrote:
| The graphics and the audio are both updated. The original
| didn't have the smoothing and fading in the graphics; it was
| almost just solid blocky colors. It's still lo-fi but not
| nearly as lo-fi as the original.
| InsideOutSanta wrote:
| They did a really great job updating the graphics in a way
| that (in my personal opinion) makes them look more appealing
| than the original, but still makes them look like a classic
| videogame.
| Narishma wrote:
| Yes, a trap a lot of HD remakes and fan-made HD mods fall
| into is that they upgrade sprite or texture resolution but
| keep animation framerate or geometry the same, which
| creates a janky/disjointed look that I can't stand.
| BrenBarn wrote:
| Awesome. Can we hope for Arctic Adventure next? :-)
| Narishma wrote:
| There's some kind of collision detection issue going on as I
| immediately fell through the pyramid bricks in the first level
| and got stuck inside them.
| algem wrote:
| Pretty cool, i liked the touch controls on my phone. They weren't
| perfect but were intuitive.
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