• parasti 2 days ago

    Linux gamers from the Linux Game Tome days might enjoy learning that we ported Neverball to the browser (mobile, too) some years ago.

    https://play.neverball.org/

    • oddevan 2 days ago

      Oh, this brings back memories of interning in the IT lab at the local university.

      Has anyone done Frozen Bubble?

      • taid9iK- a day ago

        Yes! And let's not forget lbreakout2!

        • grgergo 2 days ago

          [dead]

        • boricj 2 days ago

          Impressive work.

          Maybe it's my memory from 20 years ago playing tricks on me, but to quote Civvie 11: "It's like playing a version of [Extreme Tux Racer] where everything was moved two inches or so to the left."

          • pierrec 2 days ago

            I also played it back in the day and it seems perfectly accurate to me, at least in terms of control and physics. After a few goes I'm quickly approaching my old personal best on Who Says Penguins Can't Fly. One thing I'll note is that the "best score" display seems to be only based on time, not herrings (which I actually prefer, but I know that's not how you're supposed to play it).

          • dvno42 2 days ago

            This was always a victory to teenage me after fighting with SDL and Nvidia drivers on Gentoo. Getting this to work with good framerate was always so exciting. Nostalgia hit for sure.

            • VoidWhisperer 2 days ago

              Given that the original project (at https://sourceforge.net/p/extremetuxracer/code/HEAD if i'm not mistaken) is C++, I wonder if it is possible to port the original in some form using WASM.

              This is not to take away from the work that the OP has done - it is impressive, I'm just kind of thinking out loud here.

              • proc0 2 days ago

                Looks like it would be possible with Emscripten but I'm not sure what OpenGL version its using so that's probably the biggest dependency there.

                • q3k 2 days ago

                  I tried doing this a few years ago, mapping OpenGL 1.x primitives into WebGL was indeed a pain. There were some translation layers but they were either incomplete or targetting GLES, not classical OoenGL.

                  I then attempted to actually rewrite ETR to use GLES (or modern OpenGL in general), but that also turned out to be quite an effort given how the original engine/game code is structured.

                  • proc0 a day ago

                    Interesting. Sounds like a rewrite would be faster since the game itself doesn't seem that complicated.

              • wavemode 2 days ago

                Hearing that song again after almost 20 years made my day

              • Aldipower 2 days ago

                Funny, I've loaded it in the browser, played it, was happy like kid. Then I just entered 'extremtuxracer' in my terminal and tada, played it locally without browser. Not to blame tuxracer.js, this is great. But sometimes you forget "normal" software.

                • em-bee 2 days ago

                  the browser version doesn't work for me, the maps are messed up. anyways i did the same. except i had to install it first, because this is a relatively new laptop. i did have it on the previous one and almost every machine of mine before that.

                  i even made my own courses. one thing that i'd like to change is the slope. i made one course that would start in the center and then go in concentric circles around the starting point. it worked, kind of, but it was tricky. it would have worked better with a slope of 0 and a greater height differential from the highest to the lowest level. maybe some day...

                • jml7c5 2 days ago

                  I wonder if the commercial version of this (from Sunspire Studios) is floating around anywhere. I recall it being even more satisfying to play.

                  Looks like the author has gone on to have a successful career in game rendering, working on (among other things) Infamous and Ghost of Tsushima.

                  • mrdonbrown 2 days ago

                    I have a CD copy of the game, and many fond memories playing it with the wife in the early 2000's...

                  • akeck 2 days ago

                    Is there any way to contribute levels to Tuxracer these days? I made a pair of really long ones (~10 min and ~20 min)

                    • elaus 2 days ago

                      That music is stuck in my ears for so many years...

                      • kaycey2022 2 days ago

                        How was this done? Did the author rewrite the source in TS?

                        • rezmason 2 days ago

                          Oh, fantastic! I've tried rebuilding this for macOS half a dozen times, and never quite managed for one reason or another. And now you've brought it to the browser.

                          I might try adding reflections and translucency to ice someday.

                        • lelanthran 2 days ago

                          Their used to be a racing game, around 2005 - 2008, in the Ubuntu repositories called Torque (or similar)?

                          Anyone knows what happened to it?

                        • geff82 2 days ago

                          Thanks for bringing me retro feelings of my first Linux days back!

                          • unixhero a day ago

                            Penguins also like to have fun

                            • teruakohatu 2 days ago

                              This works really well on mobile. Kudos to the author.

                              • mkoryak 2 days ago

                                i enjoyed falling off the left side of the map in "finding vodka". 800 is terminal velocity

                                • lamer3 2 days ago

                                  Reminds me the Adobe Shockwave games

                                  • Animats 2 days ago

                                    But you have to install Node.js to run this "in the browser"? Why isn't this just a web page?

                                    • halter73 2 days ago

                                      There's a link at the top of the README to https://0x00eb.itch.io/tux-racer where you can play it without needing to host it yourself.

                                      • supersparrow 2 days ago

                                        It could be a webpage but the developer would have to host it on a server somewhere (which would cost something). With the instructions to run it on the GitHub page, you are effectively running a server which is hosting the game.

                                      • Bondi_Blue 2 days ago

                                        If you want to play locally on macOS, here is a build. If it fails to run, it is likely the error "The requested video mode is not available" and can be run if connected to an external monitor (then you can disable fullscreen and launch without an external monitor).

                                        https://drodin.com/extremetuxracer/ https://github.com/drodin/extremetuxracer

                                        • parasti 2 days ago

                                          This guy ports open source games to mobile devices and sells them under their original names. (Selling is okay, misrepresenting them as the official version is not.)