60 FPS Retro Gaming on Mobile – Master System Emulator in JavaScript (2013) | Hacker News Reader

60 FPS Retro Gaming on Mobile – Master System Emulator in JavaScript (2013)

gmarty.github.io

105 pointstosh37 comments

I hate it when they take over my browsers back button. Pressing back until you hit HN again is a pain when you watched the whole thing.

Credits on the actual content though. Nice achievement.

I always open hn links in a new tab, so then I can just close it and go back to the hn post.

On a pc/laptop I do the same, on a phone it is too inconvenient. Too many clicks. Or at least, that are my 2 cents.

IDK about android, but on ios I just force touch (or long touch on pre-6s devices) and select 'open in background'. Not that many clicks, imo.

But you'd have to switch to that tab, close the tab again, which is all at the top and not too easy to reach for my thumb.

I have to say Safari is better with having tabs at the bottom but that is not available cross-platform so I can use it on my windows based machines.

For a related example of a recompiler, see http://cvs.schmorp.de/vt102/vt102 - this JITs the vt102 ROM into Perl which is then eval'd.

Yup; hack. Illustrative.

The same presentation is available as a Sega Master System ROM, that can be launched in the described web emulator:

https://gmarty.github.io/jsSMS/

(just choose the Reject.js 2013 ROM)

Not sure if it's still the case, but DataView used to be vastly slower than having multiple typed views (Uint(8/16/32)Array) of the same buffer. Could explain some of the perf difference.

video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ey2TGjLTYuw

Love it! The SMS is my favorite system, but I am much better with JavaScript than C. I'll definitely be checking this out on github.

It would be great for accessibility if the pixellation was the result of a font, rather than actually using images to represent the text.

It'd need to use actual markup to display the text, so the images aren't really the problem. They could generate invisible DOM elements with the proper ARIA roles attached in order to support screen readers and then the way they render the text wouldn't matter.

The slides seem to just be bitmaps so they could also just attach alt text to them...

It would be great for the persistence of knowledge if they'd engrave the knowledge into titanium slabs that are buried in a protected cave as well.

Correct me if I am wrong though, I believe, usually, that presentations are meant to be shown on a stage of some sort. I don't see how accessibility comes into play here.

What I often see is that presentations at conferences/meetups, etc are not shared at all. Rather than giving props to gmarty you complain about accessibility.

He made an effort to create a great looking presentations and, instead of a compliment, he gets criticised for not adhering to a 'better' technological and user experience standard to achieve it. The irony being that if he'd have opted to not share at all, there wouldn't have been a user experience problem to begin with.

If you read the thread, there's multiple comments about the back button. Do you want that to be not expressed as well?

> The irony being that if he'd have opted to not share at all, there wouldn't have been a user experience problem to begin with.

This isn't what GP asserted, this is a hyperbole.

GP is just making a suggestion to improve the software. You can take the suggestion for granted, comment on it, ignore it, you can up- and downvote it even. Just like you can do on GitHub or one of its competitors. You could even take it into account during a major overhaul.

If you can't even give honest feedback [1] on creative works we end up in a world of self-censorship. Compare it to how you're not allowed to give a negative reference in Germany. The difference then becomes in how positive people are raving about the employee. Pretty soon, you get a fake society where you supposedly fake it until you make it. I'd rather have brutal sincerity. Its more realistic and easier to process therefore more efficient.

Please, if my code sucks, tell me so, and tell me where you think I could improve. Heck, send me a patch or clone my git repo. I thrive on criticism as long as its constructive instead of destructive. The comment of GP is constructive.

[1] In this case a suggestion for improvement.

Your way of thinking is not healthy for personal development or long-term happiness.

People should not do things to receive compliments.

If they receive a compliment, they may feel better for a second. How much further does that take them?

Criticism should be welcomed, not fought.

If the person used text instead of images, this knowledge would be easier to spread around to people who have eye problems, for example, and perhaps even for search engine optimisation. They'd be known in a bigger circle. At the cost of a bit more effort, perhaps.

It's up to the person who gives the presentation to decide whether this effort is worth it. But they would NOT be hurt by criticism. If they are, that's a big problem.

However, if they never see the criticism, they would have fewer opportunities to improve.

Giving a compliment is giving a fish. Giving criticism is helping someone fish better.

https://gmarty.github.io/jsSMS/

If you pick "React.js 2013 slides" from the dropdown, it becomes clear why it looks like this.

You mean Reject.js 2013 Slides. Where the dropdown is the list of ROMs. To spoil it: there's a ROM which allows one to "play" through this slidedeck. It's got some neat visual transitions & stuff too (Fire to move forward)

Master System games are very inaccessible.

Please don't destroy the back button... i had to click it 60 times to get back here...

> Please don't destroy the back button... i had to click it 60 times to get back here...

After the third or fourth click, did it cross your mind to type in "news.ycombinator.com" instead? Or did you just want to see how deep the rabbit hole goes? :)

For people don’t know: Press and hold back button on iOS safari helps in such circumstances.

Except it has a limit on the number of backs it shows. In this case I had gotten to the end, And hacker news was too far back.

Long pressing on android chrome does nothing. Maybe just my samsung...

Yep, hijacking the back button is rarely useful if ever. I would never think to click back to go one slide back.

I disagree, I think it makes sense. It makes it possible to link to a specific slide.

You can use replaceState[0] to update the URL without adding a new history entry.

[0]: https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/History_API...

True, forgot about that. Yeah that would’ve been preferable.

This is someone's presentation deck. Can't he do what he needs to to have a smooth presentation?

Long-press/click on the back button for a list of URL in your recent history.

This, for me, only gives me about 10 results.

Why did they use anti-aliasing? Doesn't look very retro.

Retro games weren’t pixelated per se http://kayin.moe/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/1391807722376.pn...

yeah but modern indies dev believe the exact contrary and replicate a style that has never existed.

Yes and no. Many of us used S-Video then RGB/VGA wherever available. Though in the case of the original NES our options were indeed limited.

I played my Sega Genesis occasionally on the Amiga monitor, but far more on composite televisions. Other systems like Atari, NES and SMS, only on a TV. I would estimate the proportion of people who used monitors vs TVs for 8 and 16 bit gaming is very small.

Surely they did look like the one on the left if you looked in the frame buffer. What they most certainly didn't have was TTF/OTF fonts rendered in true colour with anti-aliasing.

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