[HN Gopher] Dhtml Lemmings (2004)
       ___________________________________________________________________
        
       Dhtml Lemmings (2004)
        
       Author : tetris11
       Score  : 58 points
       Date   : 2025-12-08 14:50 UTC (6 days ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (www.elizium.nu)
 (TXT) w3m dump (www.elizium.nu)
        
       | tetris11 wrote:
       | A 2014 version can be found here
       | 
       | https://github.com/trufae/fxos-app-lemmings
        
         | Mindless2112 wrote:
         | Also, there are:
         | 
         | * https://github.com/tomsoftware/Lemmings.ts
         | 
         | * https://lldb.camanis.net/level/play/473/1/Just-dig
        
       | rickcarlino wrote:
       | This post got me curious about how the term DHTML died so
       | quickly. Apparently we hit peak DHTML in 2001, according to
       | Google Ngram Viewer.
        
         | spencerflem wrote:
         | I've always remembered it as XHTML lemmings, didn't know dhtml
         | was a term at all!
        
         | afavour wrote:
         | Such an interesting bubble of time. JavaScript, CSS and the
         | ability to modify the DOM... but no AJAX requests. I remember
         | using iframes to load remote content. What a mess.
        
           | drysart wrote:
           | There wasn't _much_ of a window where we had the ability to
           | reliably dynamically update webpages without a way of getting
           | data to do it. IE4 was the first browser that had a modern
           | dynamic DOM with CSS support -- but it was all _very_
           | rudimentary. IE5 came out a little more than a year later
           | came with MSXML 2.0 which had the Microsoft.XMLHTTP ActiveX
           | object that could be used within the browser; so it was
           | really only like 14 months where we had DHTML without the
           | ability to do XML HTTP requests.
           | 
           | And even then, you couldn't really make use of it unless you
           | were in the enviable position of not having to maintain
           | Netscape compatibility, because Netscape basically had no
           | ability to alter a page after it was loaded outside of
           | _extremely_ specific exceptions like being able to replace
           | one image with another image of exactly the same size. And
           | through the weird and broken  'layers' concept they came up
           | with to try to rush out a response to IE's iframes.
           | 
           | I remember discovering Microsoft.XMLHTTP in early 1999;
           | probably within a month of IE5 coming out, and it really was
           | like suddenly gaining a superpower. People (rightfully) gave
           | Internet Explorer a whole lot of crap for getting to IE6 and
           | then stagnating for years; but so _much_ of what we consider
           | to be the modern web today can trace its lineage directly to
           | the ideas Microsoft brought to the browser in IE4 and IE5.
           | They basically reinvented what the browser could be.
        
         | RobotToaster wrote:
         | It still irks me when people call pages with JavaScript on
         | "static", when they're clearly dynamic.
        
           | chuckadams wrote:
           | It's static from the perspective of the server. But agreed,
           | it needs a different term.
        
       | foobarbecue wrote:
       | No music? :-(
        
         | teddyh wrote:
         | PC version: <https://www.paula8364.com/socse/index.php?field=au
         | diolink&so...>
         | 
         | Amiga: <https://www.paula8364.com/socse/index.php?field=audioli
         | nk&so...>
        
           | foobarbecue wrote:
           | Oh hell yeah. Totally my jams.
        
       | gbraad wrote:
       | That is just a rehost, as I know the person who created that, a
       | Dutch guy. The original is not hosted anymore due to Brein, a
       | software IP/piracy agency.
       | 
       | https://crisp.home.xs4all.nl/lemmings/lemmings.html
        
         | jcmeyrignac wrote:
         | I remember him, since he won a PHP contest of DownNOut (I
         | finished second).
         | 
         | Another programmer had the same pseudo, but was working on the
         | Atari ST.
        
       | whynotmaybe wrote:
       | Trip down memory lane, I just remembered the sadness I felt when
       | I finished the level where you have to use blockers to guide the
       | descent but when all the lemmings are saved, you have to self
       | destruct the blockers to win.
        
         | lloeki wrote:
         | And the relief when you reach the same level on a higher
         | difficulty level but you have to save 100%...
         | 
         | ... Which you can using various digging techniques that
         | completely eluded you in the easy difficulty.
        
       | sethaurus wrote:
       | Coming from an era of tiles and sprites, Lemmings was exciting
       | because it had real destructible terrain. The game action happens
       | in its pixel buffer, and every little speck of dirt can make a
       | difference to how the characters behave.
       | 
       | When I saw this adaptation back in 2004, I was amazed because the
       | web didn't even HAVE an API for its pixel buffer; the canvas
       | element didn't arrive until a year later! All the
       | destructible/buildable terrain here is faked out with stacked
       | `img` elements. They had to simulate a simple form of graphics
       | with a more complex one, because that's all the platform made
       | available.
       | 
       | It's very good.
        
       ___________________________________________________________________
       (page generated 2025-12-14 20:01 UTC)