ePanorama.net » Games to play

2D Driving Simulator on Google Maps

Tomi Engdahl — Tue, 24 Feb 2015 17:47:33 +0000

http://framesynthesis.com/drivingsimulator/maps/ This as a quite cool game idea… Posted from WordPress for Android →

The elevator programming game

Tomi Engdahl — Mon, 23 Feb 2015 08:44:18 +0000

Elevator Saga The elevator programming game is an addictive programming challenge. It is a nice JavaScript simulation of transporting people using one or more elevators. You write the code and the elevators move accordingly on your browser. The initial program supplied is flawed, and you have to write your own program with better algorithm. You are challenged to improve the algorithm to transport the requisite number of people in the given time and when you succeed you can move on to the next challenge. You can discover the full API.

You can play the game on-line. The game is open source (code available in GitHub).

Play old MS-DOS video games!

Tomi Engdahl — Wed, 07 Jan 2015 12:48:53 +0000

You can now play nearly 2,400 MS-DOS video games in your browser. Archive.org has added a new library of DOS games: Nearly 2,400 MS-DOS games are now available to play — for free — in almost any browser on the Internet Archive. The games are playable on the browser through EM-DOSBOX, a port of the DOS emulator.

Welcome to Software Library: MS-DOS Games for MS-DOS machines that represent entertainment and games. The collection includes action, strategy, adventure and other unique genres of game and entertainment software. Meaning: A lot of people of a certain generation (hi!) are once again able to play the games they played over and over and over again as kids. The games are provided without instructions, so some experimentation (or search for old manuals) might be necessary.

The Internet Archive is arguably best-known for its Wayback Machine, the neat and useful repository of home pages past.

Happy Birthday Tetris

Tomi Engdahl — Fri, 06 Jun 2014 15:47:50 +0000

Soviet blockbuster computer game Tetris is 30 years old. Tetris (Russian: Те́трис, pronounced [ˈtɛtrʲɪs]) is a Soviet tile-matching puzzle video game originally designed and programmed by Alexey Pajitnov. It was released on June 6, 1984. It was the first entertainment software to be exported from the USSR to the US. The versions of Tetris were sold for a range of 1980s home computer platforms, and has later had very many re-incarnations in different forms, including ones mentioned in this blog: MIT huge Tetris hack and JavaScript Tetris in 140 bytes. There are nowadays many version of Tetris on-line to play on web browser.

Happy Birthday Tetris: It’s flipping 30 article and Tetris Wikipedia page give you a good look on the history of this classic computer game.

Rubics cube in your browser

Tomi Engdahl — Fri, 23 May 2014 11:12:48 +0000

Rubic’s Cube had it’s 40th Anniversary this week. Although the Rubik’s Cube reached its height of mainstream popularity in the 1980s (from where I remember it most), it is still widely known and used. Since then it’s sold over 350 million units, making it the best-selling toy ever. Rubik’s Cube is a hard task to solve, thus some modern time hackers have built even smart phone powered LEGO devices that can solve it.

In honor of the 40th anniversary of the Rubik’s Cube, Google adorned its Doodle space with an interactive version of the insanity-inducing puzzle: Google put an impressive simple browser-based Rubic’s Cube Doodle game up on its homepage. Built thanks to advances in CSS and a few smart design tricks, it’s one of the most challenging doodles the company has done so far.

The widespread support for CSS 3-D Transforms on most browsers meant the team could build the cube in a way that was playable for most users: CSS 3-D Transforms lets us display the cube in a 3-D space. It is quite amazing that can be done with those transformations. I have earlier written on using CSS3 for video effects.

Chrome, complete with Javascript engine, allows the Cube to be twisted on any device. HTML5 & CSS3 allows the style to appear 3D and help make the Cube motions fluid. Three.js 3D-library allows the cube to be rendered in real time. Here is the Rubik’s Cube from Google:

JSSpeccy: A ZX Spectrum emulator in Javascript

epanorama — Fri, 03 Jan 2014 07:13:33 +0000

I just wrote that Classic 70s and 80s games now online. I have also found out that you can play also play games from over 30 years old Sinclair ZX Spectrum home computer on-line.

JSSpeccy: A ZX Spectrum emulator in Javascript allows to run 10 classic games in your browser. I tested the JSSpeccy emulator, and it seemed to work well on Chrome browser but failed to work correctly on Firefox (version 26.0).

This is not the only on-line emulator. There is a Java based ZX Spectrum emulator at zxspectrum.net. I don’t recommend that page so much, because it is unsigned Java based applet.

Classic 70s and 80s games now online

epanorama — Mon, 30 Dec 2013 07:17:09 +0000

A Second Christmas Morning: The Console Living Room. In an expansion of the Historical Software Collection, the Internet Archive has opened the Console Living Room, a collection of console video games from the 1970s and 1980s. This means that classic video games from the 1970s and 1980s have been put online by the Internet Archive and can be played within a web browser for nothing.

The collection has launched with games from five early home consoles, including the Atari 2600 and Colecovision. Well-recognised titles such as Pacman, Space Invaders and Frogger are all in the archive – with more consoles and games expected soon.

Nostalgic urges has created this archive because as the consoles fell into disrepair and became ever more scarce, playing these games has become difficult. For many years, communities of gamers have created ROMs images of games that can be played on a normal PC by using an emulator. However, in many cases, gaming in this way can be illegal. But older games such as the ones found on the Internet Archive fall into something of a legal grey area (publishers and developers often turn a blind eye).

The Internet Archive is now experimenting with an in-browser emulator that allows you to try software in the archives (Currently the games do not have sound, but will soon). Based on the MESS emulation software, this JSMESS (Javascript MESS) player should run in most modern browsers and will map to most keys on your keyboard.

Crypt WebGL demo

epanorama — Thu, 21 Feb 2013 20:35:15 +0000

Mozilla announced a new WebGL demo: Crypt Demo. This Crypt Demo is a great example for how far browsers have come and for the cross-platform experiences developers can now create without having to rely on plugins. The demo is written by ACTISKU‘s Anthony Liot. The demo should run in most modern browsers that support WebGL on systems that have new enough graphics card (it does not work on Internet Explorer because it doesn’t currently support WebGL). I tested the demo on Firefox where it worked well. Take a look around this candle-lit Crypt developed Unigine.

Angry Birds in web browser

epanorama — Fri, 20 May 2011 06:52:27 +0000

You can now play Angry Birds on the web! If you did not know earlier, let’s tell you now that Angry Birds is a puzzle video game developed by Finland-based Rovio Mobile. In the game, players use a slingshot to launch birds at pigs stationed on or within various structures, with the intent of destroying all the pigs on the playfield. Angry Birds has been praised for its successful combination of addictive gameplay, comical style, and low price. With 140 million downloads across all platforms, the game has been called “one of the most mainstream games out right now”. It is quite funny and addictive to play.

Angry Birds comes to Chrome. Google and Rovio have announced the deal to bring Angry Birds game to Chrome. Angry Birds is available in Chrome Web Store for free.

Web browser gaming

epanorama — Fri, 14 Jan 2011 11:08:02 +0000

Mozilla wants to see the web browser as a new gaming platform in addition to normal browsing use. Mozilla Labs Game On is all about games built, delivered and played on the open Web and the browser. Out of the 160+ submissions to the first competition, 124 games have been selected to be showcased in the Game On Gallery. You can play games being hosted on Mozilla Labs or author’s own server.

The games usually execute Javascript so run on your local machine, but the servers are still being hammered heavily on bandwidth when lot of people are downloading the games to their browser (like normal web pages). You can vote for the best game (you need to register to be able to vote). Notice that the source code of many games is available, so this could be as well a learning experience besides gaming fun.