Playable HTML5 demo of Space Quest authors' Kickstarter project (Chrome app) | Hacker News Reader

Playable HTML5 demo of Space Quest authors' Kickstarter project (Chrome app)

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24 pointspavlov15 comments

Hey, Rahul here, one of the guys from Q42 who built the prototype.

We approached the "Two Guys from Andromeda" just over a week ago with the idea of helping show them that HTML5 is a viable adventure gaming platform. They were so surprised that they brought us on with them to help prototype an early game demo during the Kickstarter period.

We had a lot of fun prototyping this, and it's just the beginning. Each time the Kickstarter pledges reach another $100k, we'll release another iteration based around fan feedback. This could mean better art, sound and narration, expanded gameplay, death sequences, etc - we're really looking to just interact with the fan community on this.

As far as we're concerned, getting to do this (working with our childhood heroes while using our favorite development platform) is a net win for hackers and geeks, so I thought it would be a relevant post here. Have fun!

If it's HTML5, why does it require Chrome? Is there any way I can have Firefox have a go at it?

Since it's a prototype we're focusing on fast iterations using webkit specific CSS properties and such without worrying about cross browser support. I think it works okay in Firefox, but we haven't tested it and don't guarantee it for this phase.

It requires Chrome because putting it up in the Chrome Web Store allows users to download and install it, which removes concerns about latency (since the assets total 7MB, we don't want the game art loading in fragments). It also allows us to point to a single place where people can get the game. And Google is in charge of hosting and bandwidth, something else we don't want to be worrying about right now.

If your concerns lie with Chrome being a Google product, I believe you can install it in Chromium as well, though I haven't tried it myself.

This is hardly a demo. It's barely even playable. There's no sound, no color and if it's supposed to highlight HTML5 (since that is in the title of the post), why does it require Chrome?

Spoiler alert: the end of the 15 seconds of the demo (if you can manage to get your walking sprite thing to it without getting stuck) is just asking for more money and redirects you to a website.

I'm a massive fan of the Space Quest series, and Sierra adventures in general, but this is just insulting and, in no way, makes me want to donate money to your cause.

"Hey it's Mark Crowe and Scott Murphy, the legendary (and charismatic, funny, brilliant and ever good looking) game designer duo!"

"You vaguely remember a post on Gamasutra about them getting filthy rich over some Kickstarter campaign."

...

"So why are you still standing here? Go make yourself useful!"

Really, why are you still standing here? Go back to the Kickstarter campaign and help get us to $200,000!

Aaaand... redirect to http://guysfromandromeda.com/finishing-audio-scott-mark-prot... - which has terrible display issues in Chrome. Were you guys intentionally attempting to make it look like you were just trying to squeeze money out of people? That's all this felt like.

This demo doesn't "interact with the community" or invite any sort of interaction with the community. It doesn't mention it in any way, shape or form in the "demo" or the website you're redirected to; saying so after the fact doesn't help at all.

I was very excited about this. Color me very disappointed.

Martin from Q42 here, also one of the guys behind the html5 prototype thing.

This first prototype is the least viable "playable game" to illustrate Mark and Scott really think highly of getting fans involved from the earliest sketch to the final adventure game.

Doing that and iterating quickly on (the overwhelming) responses needed a flexible engine and easy deployment to the PC, Mac and Linux platforms with an experience that is 99% similar on all of those. HTML5 and the Chrome Web Store are ideal for that.

So it's not about HTML5 itself actually, it's about being able to act upon fan feedback and incorporating that in an improved next prototype in a matter of days.

It feels like pioneering and the entire team (Two Guys and Q42) is very excited about what's coming up. A next prototype with real artwork, a real avatar and in the end music and all that - that's the bar we've set and it will be one that will resonate better with the most sceptic voices heared so far as the "prototype" will be as close to - or equal to - a real short adventure game. Only this time done with fans in a really short time.

I played the demo and the dialog at the end really rubbed the wrong way. It felt like you were making a big joke about raising $100,000 and that the demo was just a ploy to get another $100,000.

You should consider the effect you're having on all the people who've trusted you and given you the first $100,000. The dialog at the end makes a mockery of their belief in you.

I understand what you're saying and we probably could have worded it differently, but ultimately we do need another $100k. In fact, we need $500k or the game won't happen. So we're trying to focus the community on working towards those goals with us. After all, they want to play the real game, not just the prototype.

I prefer being honest about what the demo is: it's a great way to interact with the community and a great way to help spur further pledges. Hopefully playing the demo will convince people to up their pledge.

Great demo, it immediately felt like being back in the Space Quest world.

But did anybody try visiting q42.com? I'm not sure if this proxy server here is blocking some critical content or not but I find it impossible to navigate the 3D stuff. Once I click on a block of text I'm stuck and have to navigate back with browser buttons to see other options again. Some options seem cut-off from visibility. I wanted to see if they offer some sort of HTML5 game engine but I've had to give up because I can't figure out how to navigate this site. Edit: Finally figured out that hectic scrolling with the mouse wheel allows me to navigate.

Haha, sorry about that. q42.com is very experimental, perhaps too much so. It works really well in Chrome/Safari, okay in Firefox, and not at all in the lower-end stuff.

You can use the keyboard to go back and forth between steps.

We don't offer a HTML5 game engine yet, but we'll build one if we need to. Right now we're using a light-weight version of what we made for sarien.net.

It's a cool idea and performed perfectly first try in Chrome once I figured how out to navigate it... for all I know it could be my mouse scroll sensitivity is the issue. Sarien.net is awesome BTW :)

I must've missed the build up for all of this because all I got was a very, very buggy interface and two floating guys insulting me and I didn't get it.

That said, I did enjoy SpaceQuest as a kid -- looking at Wikipedia, I wasn't more than 10 when the last game came out. It seems like Kickstarter has become a mechanism for making me feel old.

When you're over 30, you'll find that the world has become a mechanism for the sole purpose of making you feel old :)

I agree that the Spaceventure demo isn't all that impressive in itself. But if you screw your rose-and-blue-colored space glasses on tight, it's not difficult to imagine what it might feel like to play a new Space Quest game in the browser.

(Edit: the comments by the Q42 guys reveal that this prototype was just an idea a week ago. From that point of view, it's very impressive what they managed to build in such a short time!)

What did you feel was very, very buggy about the interface? Please let us know so we can work on improvements.

Walking around in general felt painful - For example: I got stuck getting in to the first cave because I was standing on the wrong spot, so I had to walk around a bit to move forward, though the environment really didn't give me any clues that was the case.

This doesn't appear to use Canvas...

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