I spent eleven years working on this Line Rider track | Hacker News Reader

I spent eleven years working on this Line Rider track

delu.medium.com

1,080 pointstodsacerdoti149 comments

Hi everyone, I made this! I already told my whole story in this article (if you'd rather watch a video essay about it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CikpAHiPlmQ) so not much more to add other than I'm still (slowly) working on Line Rider! If you have any questions here I am

hi conun long time listener first time caller here

question that I never got around to asking you when you were working on this: did the community meme about OII never being finished ever get to you? The line rider world is full of a lot of projects that never got completed (SamThePoor’s Cosmic Ultimatum, etc.). What kept you going on this, when so many other projects seemed to fizzle out, as the community kind of shrank and receded, before it really came back into the zeitgeist? I really respect the deliberation and thoroughness you take with each step when you start a project.

> did the community meme about OII never being finished ever get to you?

I've always found it really funny and played along with it!

> What kept you going on this

It was mostly my conviction about the creative potential of Line Rider but it helped a lot that the community remained alive and people understood the significance of this track

Chinese Democracy, Duke Nukem Forever... And now Omniverse II. I think as soon as Star Citizen is released, we can call this one a wrap and move on to the next universe.

Except Omniverse II isn’t a massive disappointment

Don't forget Half Life 3.

Hi. I too went to art school. And spent 10+ years working on a grand software art project.

I relate very deeply.

Well, what was it?

(Wall of text is fine if preferred; I relate too)

A kisrhombille-ish shape-grammar based l-systemly 2d geometry building system. For pretty pictures or whatever.

https://github.com/johnalexandergreene/Geom_Kisrhombille

https://github.com/johnalexandergreene/Forsythia/tree/master...

Oooh, a wall of pictures, even better!

In all seriousness, Wow, this is really cool. Reading through the readmes was admittedly less interesting :) than firing up the editor, getting confused for about 2 minutes, then going "oh" once I got the relationship between metagons and jigs, and that the kernel was basically a placement system based on a rule engine combined with a solver. Coool.

This is admittedly very over my head :) (I may or may not have tried deleting most of the metagons to see if I could start with with simpler layouts, but then I just got handed lots of single-metagon renders instead.)

This makes me think of a bunch of a different categories of Android apps:

- "paint by number" thingies that let you passively "color" pictures by matching up numbered colors with a pixellated numbered grid based on a supplied image

- pattern generators that let you create your own wallpapers, quite a few based on tesselated designs ("geometric pattern" and "tangram generator" are good keyphrases; "wallpaper pattern" also seems to weed out lock-screen pattern generators)

- active wallpapers that display graphical effects of different kinds

- "geometric drawing" apps that generally use some kind of rule system as the basis of control

There are likely other general categories I'm not thinking of.

This system doesn't directly fit exactly into any of the boxes defined above, but the apparent widespread popularity(?) for the above kinds of apps may suggest the existence of a target demographic that might like being available to play with this kind of thing on a phone or tablet. The only consideration is the learning curve.

I cannot deny that I'm describing several months/subprojects-worth of work to port the renderer to run within Android, replace the AWT/Swing UI with something that would be intuitive on touchscreens of various sizes, figure out what crowd(s) to make the app appeal to (eg, solely technical focus, or general passive/"arty" demographic)... but if you ever wanted to showcase the project further, given that the architecture is already written in Java, an Android port almost seems like a shoo-in answer. (I'd actually forgotten it was written in Java when I went "ooh, I want to play with this on my phone.")

Hmm; I made a wall of text to say "port this to Android". I'm more trying to say, "if you have the motivation, porting to Android may have positive results". :)

Thanks for sharing. It's very cool to see the results of sticking to/studying/exploring the depths of the implications of a specific rule system for as long as you have.

I'm glad you like it.

When the whole thing came together and was working I lost the fire for it. Really have no urge to work on it now. Believe me, I've tried too much. Cold wet ashes.

But it's been well smeared around the world and I'm pretty sure what I've found won't be lost. So that's good.

I'm on a totally different project now. Meditation basically.

So, greetings fellow artschool alumnus. What's your big computer project?

It's very interesting.

I can understand being done with something as complex to reason about yet fundamentally self-consistent (ie, lacking novel/unexpected details to discover). Heh, "cold wet ashes" is more interesting than "old chewing gum", I might borrow that :)

Perhaps someone could file "port to Android" on GitHub and tag it "good first issue for newcomers"... xD

At the end of the day, you stuck in there and finished it, and cold wet ashes are arguably better than fire drenched in burnout. (Ooh. That fell out nice. What's the meta equivalent of a rhyme?)

Meditation is interesting. I'm trying to figure out my brain as well. It's so weird; not only is every brain's user manual uniquely different, every single one is also written in a different long-lost language. And so the reverse-engineering process has to come up both with the content and the language. It's so annoying. :)

As for my "big computer project"... I somehow got the idea that "I shall solve the UI problem!" (......woops). Over the past few years this has slowly (and initially painfully) morphed and rounded out into a general interest in psychology, human focus, the understated/unintuitive amounts of friction produced by network effects, and how hard it truly is to solve for holistic, cohesive design that allows us to reason about complex ideas in ways that are intuitively instinctive.

The OCD about UI design started around 2003. I think I was 12, heh. It took from around 2006 to 2011 to go from "I shall make a new terminal!" to "eeh... the only winning move is not to play" when I kind of properly integrated the significance of obsession ("I must figure this out now") vs true interest ("I want to figure this out properly"). Developmental delay is fascinating. I guess my big project (if I could sign off anything at this point) was, uhh, growing up.

I still remain interested in the field of UX design, and continue to reduce ideas to their basic building blocks that I can objectively use for parts on a regular basis. So far I have a few fairly boring ideas that I might be able to commercialize at some point (into a field that already exists, but could do with better integration); if that fails, I'll just go back to the drawing board and start again. One of the more relevant things I've learned thus far is that trying really hard to make something work "because it has potential", without being able to reason through that "potential" end-to-end, is something to avoid like the plague.

(As for school, that didn't quite work out, mostly due to process failures surrounding institutional incompetence.)

Also. I just gotta tell you what a metagon is. Because it's cool and simple.

A metagon is the essence of a polygon. It's the definition of a polygon minus information pertaining to location, orientation, scale and chirality (handedness).

Huh. I may or may not be slightly more curious about geometry than I was before :)

Thanks. I think. (uhoh)

Please post again directly as Show HN. I would love to see more community response and add ons to your work, and find the next serendipitous connection.

Whoa. As someone who used to "play around" with Line Rider back in the day, I had no idea that was actually possible. That end sequence was amazing! The music score on the ascent was a perfect match. I felt like I was watching the final scene of a James Bond movie or something.

I was just about to ask you what the last item was in the track (that meme) but realized I didn't actually read your blog post and just watched the video. WHOA. Major, major props for such a great post to accompany the video with. I'm sharing this with everyone my age that knows what Line Rider is :)

Hi Conundrumer! I was part of the Line Rider community in the early days making manual tracks under the name Holcomb227. Your dedication is really impressive. It seemed like the community had many perfectionists and/or artists and I wonder what they're doing now.

Holcomb!!! It's great to meet you again! And yes the community still has perfectionists and artists!

Also do you have any of your old Line Rider videos or .sol saves (specifically "The Amazing Nose Manual", "Manuals", "Watch it Now")? If you do, it would be great to get them archived by Rabid Squirrel: https://www.dropbox.com/request/4tqU7np9RJrfu17LvBae

(LR Archive context: http://bevibeldesign.com/line-rider-archival-project)

If you want to get in contact, my Twitter is @d_e_lu and my Discord is conundrumer#1409

Unfortunately the computer I used to create most of my tracks and videos has had its hard drive wiped multiple times throughout the years. I did create a few tracks on my friend's laptop (now broken) so I'll check if that data can be recovered.

It's so cool to see these kinds of interactions happen. The size of the internet (and the world) is smaller than you might think! It puts a smile on my face :)

Alternatively: HN is a lot larger than you might think it is.

I just recovered the data from my friend's laptop. Unfortunately I couldn't find any .sol files for Line Rider. :(

Omg that was absolutely nuts. I was relatively impressed all the way through and then the polygonal visuals flew by and that just blew me away.

Amazing amazing work!

> I was relatively impressed all the way through and then the polygonal visuals flew by and that just blew me away.

Indeed. The polygons were quite literally jaw dropping to me.

That is the craziest line rider track I have ever seen. Really good work, kudos!

I loved your RATIONALIZATION piece linked to in the article.

Well done....

~slow clap~

Wow the poverty of my imagination 5 minutes ago. I read the start of your blog and I was like this sounds lame and geeky and I imagine some sort of I don't know like Bob sledding like 2D color game kind of weird thing and just sounded weird. And then I watched your video and I was like oh my God. It puts a smile on my face it's cool and thrilling and ASMR and something I'd never even heard about. thanks for helping provide this chance to open my mind to something new and really cool and thanks for like sharing your passion.

Hats off for this masterpiece, David — and my congratulations for not letting this dream escape but working your way through to see it bloom to fruitition.

I had immediate flashbacks to my old modder days for Jedi Knight and DN3D, I was reminded of the endless fun we had creating worlds out of the puzzle pieces we were handed on our underpowered machines.

Playing with GTA3 config settings, cheating physics engines in Stunts, watching the releases of the demoscene with awe. The time was magical and feels nostalgic in retrospect. I feel like pulling out one of my early works and doing the same.

Most impressive though I think is the development you did as an artist. Starting from the effect based presentation in your early works, it's wholesome to see you take all of the stuff you learned about physics engines, still top it off with more you've learned along the way — but then let it all take a backseat to telling a story instead. One of drama, hope, despair, struggle and eventually, "escape".

Thanks for making my day.

There's a drawer in my closet that's labeled "unfinished business".

I'm inspired to open it right now.

A fellow JK modder? Would you mind sharing what you made?

> cheating physics engines in Stunts

You mean this one?

http://www.ibiblio.org/GameBytes/issue20/misc/stunts.html

Oh, the hours I played creating the craziest tracks in the undocumented editor barely hidden away behind Shift+F1, reliably making the car hit the ground at a certain angle and speed, triggering a bug (probably an unchecked signed wraparound) that would make it accelerate infinitely into orbit.

Oh wow, Stunts! This game rocked. Best Loop de Loop physics ever!

Making the video, did you control the character directly or was it like a tool-assisted speedrun? And how much actually requires your own input, given how (iirc) there's some tracks that just run themselves?

(Not the author, but I've played Line Rider a lot a long time ago.) The character isn't directly controllable. They're affected by gravity, and collision with user-drawn lines. You can also draw "boost" lines that accelerate the character when touching, and "decoration" lines that don't interact with the character.

It's always amazing to see what creative people can do with what is very likely a bug in the game engine. I suspect that the developpers of Line Rider didn't originally intend for people to be able to do the majority of the tricks on this track, but we could argue that it would be a lesser game if it didn't allow these techniques.

It reminds me of bunny hopping and similar "bugs" in old FPS engines that turned out so popular that they sometimes ended up being purposefully implemented in subsequent engines.

> It reminds me of bunny hopping and similar "bugs" in old FPS engines that turned out so popular that they sometimes ended up being purposefully implemented in subsequent engines.

Skiing in Starsiege: TRIBES immediately sprang to mind--and the wailing and gnashing of teeth that followed when they tried to reduce/limit it in Tribes 2 (only to add it back in with the "classic" mod).

Is this track also available as a download somewhere to try it in linerider.com itself, rather than as a video?

Never heard of the game before, but now I want to try it with this track

Here it is: https://www.linerider.com/?layers&track=https://www.dropbox....

It's a big track so might take a while to load. The ending animation doesn't work properly at the moment

It loaded for me in under 5 seconds or something and runs great; impressive performance.

Edit: I'm new to linerider but is it super common to have the tracks set to music? Could be cool to have some basic ability to have a music track in app.

Thanks so much for that! The ending worked except for the credits

Brilliant work! This game should be compulsory for all mechanical engineering students. It’s a good way to differentiate between function and ornamentation.

Was not expecting my jaw to drop this morning. Well done man, well done.

I’m curious how you were able to remake the game with the same physics. How was that process?

I started with loading the save files using an existing JS library. And then, with the help from past modders who decompiled the original Flash version, I was able to port the physics into JS. I had a lot of reference save files to verify if I did it properly.

That's incredible, especially given how finicky I imagine porting physics and math from ActionScript to JavaScript to be.

Is it finished?

Yes it's released: https://www.linerider.com/

I'm just working on maintenance and adding new features

Maybe the best art experience I've had this year; amazing!

Incredible. I remember spending hours on line rider as a young'n. The ending sequence blew my mind.

Nice job.

Heyo! I’m the other half of Line Rider Review, the video essay channel David mentions at the start of the article. I’m not quite the historian Bevibel is, but if you have any questions related to Line Rider or its history over the past decade, I’d be happy to provide additional context.

A lot has changed since I started doing Line Rider art in middle school (here’s an old one: https://youtu.be/h__96TEF85g and here’s more what I do these days: https://youtu.be/o2XMFgk3JQQ). Forcing myself to learn editing software in middle school eventually helped me land video editing gigs before I transitioned to software. Line Rider took me on a fun path to get there :)

David’s always been an innovator, and I love seeing his stuff show up in unexpected places (though HN is probably the least shocking place I’d find this article)

Holy. Crap. That is mind-boggling. I remember back in 2006 I thought I had taken things too far when I wasted many, many hours of my life figuring out the Line Rider file format: https://www.mrspeaker.net/2006/11/15/line-rider-file-format/

But this is about 10 levels beyond that! Only now do I see I didn't take things far enough by half - this is beautiful and... complete. Just amazing!

I remember the day Line Rider actually came out. I remember seeing it on Digg, and this was before Youtube but people were theorizing if a loopty loop would be possible (oh simpler line rider times!). I remember hacking something together into a (flash) video back then. I think I may still have it laying around somewhere.

EDIT: Yep, here it is, "Date Created: 9/23/2006" which is the day Line Rider came out according to wikipedia.

And https://ruffle.rs/demo/ can actually play it! Wow!

EDIT2: Here's self hosted thanks to Ruffle!

https://ehsankia.com/linerider/

Youtube existed back then and for me line rider was a phenomenon that increased my use of it, one of my first liked videos was line rider jumps the shark, from 25sep2006. I remember watching many line rider videos back then.

Seems like you're right. Though Google acquired it around November 2006 which is when it really started to rise.

One of the old masters... TechDawg's Make Believe https://youtu.be/fTnT66LGrdY from March '07.

You are a mad lad. That was impressive work. And now I have experienced your blog. Thank you.

I think the ability for humans to build seemingly straight-forward and simple tools or building blocks that other humans then go on to create insanely complex things like this with is what sets us apart from every other species in existence.

I really appreciate this line of thought. It can be easy to brush stuff like this off as frivolous, but when you look at it from a more primitive perspective, it really is amazing, and it truly seems to me like art

When Octopus realize they don't have to starve themselves to death when they are 3 years old that will be the end of our reign.

You can actually prevent them from starving themselves by destroying a small part in their brain.

Strange! Anywhere I can read more about that? And ideally the study about how they figured that out!

https://science.sciencemag.org/content/198/4320/948 and a more recent one https://jeb.biologists.org/content/221/19/jeb185751

Funny coincidence, I was just reading "Sphere" by Michael Crichton, and the zoologist in the novel was presenting the same argument about the the intelligence of octopuses. Side-note, this book is driving me crazy, the characters seem to be the dumbest persons alive, although they supposed to be the smartest scientists.

From Wikipedia:

> Octopus lifespan is limited by reproduction: males can live for only a few months after mating, and females die shortly after their eggs hatch. ... Octopus reproductive organs mature due to the hormonal influence of the optic gland but result in the inactivation of their digestive glands, typically causing the octopus to die from starvation. Experimental removal of both optic glands after spawning was found to result in the cessation of broodiness, the resumption of feeding, increased growth, and greatly extended lifespans.

TIL

Damn, how greatly?! Why do they leave us hanging? What were the natural causes they died of?

Some of the octopus are still alive today.

For anyone looking for a serious answer, the 1977 experiment seems to have extended life for several months (which is almost double the lifespan in some species), before they died for another reason which was not explained.

What I gather is that the optic gland controls all hormone secretion, and although they were able to prevent the digestive system from being blocked by removing it, the same gland likely is necessary in other areas.

That's an unfortunate evolutionary rut to be stuck in.

Agreed. It's not an innate intelligence that makes us stand out. It's our capacity to share our intelligence and build upon solutions from friends, parents, and many generations of ancestors.

Not quite the same, but this reminds of defrag from various quake games (mostly quake 3 and variations). The idea of strafe jumping being in the original quake (well circle jumping more like which is kind of different) started as a bug based on how acceleration works in quake that was used to basically fly through maps and became a central part of movement in the game. Of course, in addition there was the more well known rocket jumping where you use the force of weapons as a means to accelerate. Later, people made entire maps that require mastering this movement, a little bit like parkour, and it developed into a game mode that had very large and intricate maps that require a lot of skill to complete.

Here's a good example of defrag[0].

[0] https://youtu.be/x0HpJvyLnxA?t=54

That is fascinating. It reminds me of the games I used to play when I was younger. I remember playing COD4 back in the day and "strafing" being an important part of the gameplay. Another thing that every pro player did was reload animation cancelling. It allowed one to rapid fire snipers.

COD4 also had serverside mod support where upon connecting to a dedicated server, the client could choose to download these mods from the server. It was crazy what the community was able to come up with.

These days... well, surprisingly not so much has changed. Even though the official multiplayer servers have long gone dark, the original COD4 on PC still has a community and player base. Its remastered version that came out recently on the other hand is pretty much dead.

That reminded me of OSP Rocket Olympics, a Quake 2 mod based around rocket jumping skills. Was fun playing that on lan parties: https://www.orangesmoothie.org/rocketo/

I think because of this bug Counter-Strike also had the same long-jump/bunny-hopping strafing thing, so HNS was born. CS 1.6 HNS is by far the game I had most fun with.

Starsiege: Tribes is even closer to line rider in spirit. It came out just before Quake 3. It has massive (many km^2) outdoor maps with rolling hills and jetpacks. Early in the alpha the devs and the users figured out that by spamming jump while going down a hill you could "ski" and pick up speed the jet up the next hill to maintain. This bug, skiing, became the central element of the game. And because Tribes allowed client side scripting in a c++ like language you could just use a "jump script" to efficiently ski.

Eventually people were building line-rider style FPS maps for skiing starting around 1999.

Nowadays I play an open source fps called xonotic which is more or less UT and quake 3 mixed together with a heavy emphasis on motion, and a lot of people in the community have recommended I try Tribes as well actually as they have similar focus on movement.

After casually watching the progression from SWF, to Silverlight, to some overdone version on the Wii, it gives me warm fuzzy feelings that linerider.com is still hosting a down-to-earth (albeit modern) version.

I remember backing up the SWF version of line rider. And then they added a STRAIGHT LINE tool. No more abusing the right click menu! How far this game has come!

> After years of development, after some more collaboration with that Line Rider friend, and after connecting with the owners of Line Rider, it wound up becoming the official version on linerider.com. This version resolved many of the issues I had with the original version

I'm so curious to hear more about this. That's like a geek dream come true.

The history of LR is complicated! It was originally created in Flash by Boštjan Čadež who sold it to InXile. InXile made the versions in Silverlight and the overdone versions on Wii, DS, and PC, but they all flopped and they did nothing with LR for years. And that's where I came in: while I was remaking LR in Javascript (intentionally down-to-earth) I brought my friend onto the project and he had a contact at InXile and got us connected with them. We figured out an agreement and eventually (we were novice developers at the time!) got our version (well now it's just me, my friend left the project) onto linerider.com. Then InXile gave LR back to Boštjan so now it's basically completely indie again!

Fun fact: InXile got acquired by Microsoft, and for a brief period of time, Microsoft technically owned LR

So neat, thanks for the history.

Minecraft and Line rider, interesting range of games there Microsoft

If I may critique this, there were some parts that didn't work for me (the ribbon section the most [1]), and some of the words and other parts went by way too quickly to figure out what was going on: it would have been nicer to slow down and appreciate the scenery more in that time. The ending is also rather abrupt; the music really felt to me like it wanted a denouement after the climax instead of just... ending.

That said... holy crap that final sequence was amazing, easily making up for whatever issues I have with other parts of it.

[1] Mostly due to the "moving too fast to get a sense of the scene" problem, I think.

I think it would loose something else then. That wonder and awe you can get when you get just a glimpse of something.

Incredibly amazing. You should have presented this to the Assembly (in Finland) Wild Compo. You would have won for sure. Your artwork is incredible, for me the part after "Danger!" was awesome to see :) And the twirling braids at the end were so cool.

I think this reminds me of the Action Supercross game https://dosgames.com/game/action-supercross/ and mapping community around it. Eventually, well in 2000, it rebranded to Elasto Mania and has kept on going ever since! https://elastomania.com/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pLzfchwsriE

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=42N-wl5znQ0

Wow this brought back a ton of memories of playing Line Rider and watching videos of amazing tracks on YouTube. My friends and I spent countless hours playing this in school, though my interest in it far outlasted theirs.

Line Rider was (is) such a great avenue for artistic and tinkering spirit. Someone else here called it a "demoscene" and that's a perfect comparison. It's a very easy game and community to get sucked into.

This track is pretty cool, and that ending is incredible. Nice to read that you were able to come back to a revived community and finish the project. I guess I'll go watch all my favorite tracks now, thanks :)

As an aside, it's great to see many here on HN who also love(d) this game. Not that I'm surprised the two communities would overlap, but there were at least a few years between the last time I built a track and the first time I came to HN. There are such strong common threads of interest across the internet.

If you are like me and had never heard of Line Rider before and so didn't understand why people are freaking out over a simple line animation, head on over here:

https://www.linerider.com/

To appreciate the work that went into Omniverse 2, try to make a track that has the rider doing a single loop-the-loop.

Not only is this an impressive work of art and quite a feat, the write up is thorough and one of the best things I've read all year. Wow.

The post is full of life lessons and details the struggles of being an artist and engineer. Leave the flash game out of this, and it's _still_ a great write up.

Congrats! Well done.

This made my day. The passion, work, but also completeness that you get blasted in your face is amazing! (amazing to the point where I re-watched it a few times, on the big screen as well)

Some other amazing line rider tracks synced with music:

Super Flu - Selee: https://youtu.be/mpuSi6YooAo (this one's my favorite)

This Will Destroy You full album: https://youtu.be/qasxqKScOfY

Brain Power: https://youtu.be/IMHWsJEG5-0

I made the moving backgrounds in Selee!

This really caught me off guard. What an unexpected twist.

I have so much respect for people who take their projects this far and I love this mix of programming, art, and overall geekery!

I'm so happy I learned that there's a "line rider demoscene" today.

This is one of the more incredible expressions of passion I've seen in a long time. Thanks so much for doing it and sharing with all of us!

This should be the intro/opening credits to a Bond movie.

I've been in touch with David on-and-off since college and I gotta say, he's been passionate about this as long as I've known him, he's extremely talented, and he's always working on fantastic, creative projects. I'm really excited to see this post on HN.

I quite like DoodleChaos' work on Line Rider. It's less of a visual masterpiece and more of an audio one.

Line Rider in general just puts a smile on my face.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WmLh6UvLo14

Agreed. That's who introduced me to this (awesome) scene.

Try out https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W8oIeL_OPc8

I collaborated on that project! I implemented the remounting feature and tuned it to be suitable for making this track

That's awesome! Line rider reminds me of a past internet where things were a bit more creative and joyful.

I'm so glad to see that people like you are still spreading that love of the creation.

Nothing better than seeing people spend time doing something they love & honing their craft, for years. You can see the overflowing passion.

It's more about being fast and move on to next big things(or so they think) nowadays. That mindset never able to create this kind of art.

I was confused about why some of the black lines are solid and some, the guy just passes through. So I read a bunch of Line Rider tutorials, but they said the only possible colors for lines are red, blue, and green, and now I'm even more confused.

Line rider is full of bugs. Very fun and useful bugs. Going fast enough or at the right angle or nearby something or ... will let you clip through things, accelerate uphill, spin instead of moving, etc.

LR is basically a sandbox of broken physics.

The most important part is its reproducible so you can keep making micro adjustments so you perfectly exploit those issues.

Wow, that makes Omniverse II and other massive projects even more impressive...

The red, green, and blue lines are those colors when editing, so you know what type they are. When you hit "play" and are viewing the rider ride the lines, all lines are black.

Seeing David’s passion for line rider over the years has been nothing short of inspiring. He’s a mathematical genius who brings that to play across everything from music to line rider to software. Can’t wait to see what they build next!

Is the game going to survive Flash's imminent end of life?

I spent way more time than I want to admit playing my favorite Flash game, Fantastic Contraption. I'm concerned that the possibly millions of hours of creativity that went into the thousands of levels and hundreds of thousands of solutions are going to go down with that ship in a couple months.

I guess the internet archive is working on supporting older games but I wonder how feature complete and bug-free that's likely to be

There are already well established flash archival projects which should keep flash alive forever.

I think the biggest issue was not the death of flash, but that many games used external resources and broke after those servers went down.

Yes, Line Rider will survive because it's no longer made in Flash. I recreated it in Javascript.

This is art. I’m always impressed with people who use what might be considered sub-optimal tools to create with. I remember reading about some guy who paints by changing the colors of cells in Excel. Mind blowing.

Here’s another fun Line Rider video synced to “Something Just Like This / Hungarian Rhapsody No. 2” by the piano guys: https://youtu.be/mZd1GsRHVts

I collaborated on that Piano Guys project! I attached the instruments onto the riders

Awesome perseverance! As someone who has worked on a project for many years, I understand the fits and starts.

When I hear about most businesses failing I think about that saying: "Quitting smoking is the easiest thing I've ever done. I've done it a thousand times!"

Temporarily giving up is like a superposition of success and failure. It hasn't collapsed into true failure until you stop working on something for the last time.

Wow it's amazing to see true art and deep complexity turn up places you would have never expected it; like discovering the depths of Conway's Game of Life, fractal art, origami... Where you spot something, go "huh, that's neat", then proceed to discover that there is a world of enthusiasts, technical jargon, wikis, competitions, etc. all hiding in plain sight.

Wow, very cool!

Off topic, but it made me flash on something I spent many, many hours on probably 20 years ago, that I can't quite recollect. Does anyone remember the flash experience where you created little creatures out of lines and springs and they kind of hobbled around? I believe "soda" was in the name. That thing really got me into computers and the web!

Soda constructor

It looks like the original is not online anymore, but here's an open source version

https://peterfidelman.github.io/constructor/

Soda Constructor! It's another one of those niche physics things I want to remake and expand upon

That was amazing and entertaining as heck. Loved how it was synchronized with the music. Brought back nostalgic memories!

Amazing. I don’t pretend to understand this world at all, but I will say the stairway to heaven equivalent appears to be this seven minute track with surprisingly good theme music.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=wvStvN6dumY

Amazing! This reminds me of a track I made for Action Super Cross / Elastomania, where every quirk in the engine was used. I had to simplify a lot of objects because I hit the max number of polygons all the time. I have to see if I can find that masterpiece somewhere :)

The last 1 minute was pretty amazing

Inutile donc indispensable.

Have to admire the dedication you've put into that. Us casual line-riders spent a few hours at best and moved on onto the next shiny thing and there's there people like you that went above and beyond. A labour of love.

Someone made a 20 minute breakdown of this video and it's history here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CikpAHiPlmQ

You probably know the song, if you watched the Matrix movies.

I guess, I'll watch Matrix this evening. The song he used for the video really is amazing and gives Matrix Vibes. (Chateau - Rob Dougan)

This legit brought a big smile to my face. So much passion on display here.

Loved this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B2Al2UnrtEE Bohemian Rhapsody

Wow, the very final sequence is really something. Awesome.

This brings back memories of playing Free Rider 2 on TrackMill. It’s amazing how these simple games were elevated to art forms by their communities.

Curious if it became a chore or was it more of a relaxing pasttime?

Like with other ambitious creative projects, at times it felt like a grind, but seeing it slowly come together kept me going.

I want to play it.

Oh man. Now I want to go play winterbells again.

Pushing the boundaries of human knowledge!

Amazing job!

Not everything done in Flash was awful.

Thanks for sharing it!

TIL 11 years == 400 hours

Yeah a little misleading with the 7 year gap. Still impressive! Not many creative projects I've spent 400 hours on...

It's beautiful.

Geezus mate.

I'm lost for words.

EMBRACE THE VOID

Looks meh.

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