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Show HN: Lego Island Playable in the Browser
- ycombinatrix 1y agoIncredible! Was this based off MattKC's decompilation?
- Klaster_1 1y agoYes, MattKC mentioned this is his last LI video.
- ranger_danger 1y agoHow is this legal? Specifically, distributing copyrighted assets and using their name/logo without permission.
- ktkaufman 1y agoTL;DR: it's in a gray area, but nobody with power actually cares (at least for now), so it's effectively fine. As I understand it, Lego is aware of the project (there's been a significant increase in interest in Lego Island in the past few years, with attempts to obtain the original source code) and simply does not care. It's an ancient IP and can't realistically compete with anything new, at least not in a way that would significantly affect Lego's revenue. This is not unlike the way several other companies have acted when their respective older games have been given the same treatment; if a fan project is not actively causing problems (reputational, financial, etc.), most companies will just leave it alone. For companies that actually seem to care about public opinion (as opposed to, say, Nintendo), I think it's fair to assume that the bad optics of taking legal action against a random fan project, however legally justified it might be, far outweigh any possible benefits.
- rincebrain 1y agoSpecifically, I would assume the calculus is about "how much damage does this do by existing" versus "how much risk is there that we attempt to shut it down and sue and set a precedent by losing", and because for most projects the first value is tiny and the second value is potentially enormous, companies leave them alone. When either value changes drastically in scale (e.g. a project does something making it very cut and dry which side of legal precedent it falls on, or to massively increase the damage to The Brand(tm)), that's when you get worried.
- h4ck_th3_pl4n3t 1y agoNote that companies usually ignore fan projects like this and don't mention them at all. If they would mention and tolerate them, it weakens their intellectual property in a future lawsuit. Once fan projects get too much traction, companies have to cease and desist them because that's the way intellectual properties work in the law. It usually has nothing to do with whether it was a cool project or not, it's just that there's way too much money at stake when not defending your IP.
- eskathos 1y agoIs there any way for a company, Lego in this case, to adopt a fan mod or remake, to make it legitimate IP/copyright wise?
- Krutonium 1y agoAbsolutely. They just have to license it, and that license can be for a nominal (think $1) cost. That said, Lego doesn't own the game, so if it came down to it, they could strip all the references to "Lego" from it and probably be fine.
- Krutonium 1y agoAmusingly I actually have Video of Atari's Lead of Marketing playing OpenRCT2 on Stream, giving away RCT2 Keys to promote RCT World. To this day, Atari has left us alone though, so yeah it's pretty much not worth it to them to try anything.
- reddalo 1y agoIf I recall correctly, somebody found out that the original creator of the game, Chris Sawyer, despises the OpenRCT2 project -- but he can't do anything about it, because the rights belong to Atari.
- WA 1y agoNintendo and Lego are on the same level when it comes to sue people for trademark violations. There are several cease-and-desist orders against YouTubers for calling no-name bricks legos.
- voidUpdate 1y agoProbably because they are "lego bricks", not "legos", in the same way that you don't call a bag of rice "rices"
- Y_Y 1y ago> you don't call a bag of rice "rices" Well I didn't until now
- supplied_demand 1y agoIf we are being pedantic, they are called “LEGO”.
- stuaxo 1y agoI don't know why, but the US invention "legos" is incredibly grating. Its like a whole country called spaghetti "basgetti" as kids and just went with it.
- perching_aix 1y agoNot really a US invention, pretty sure countless other languages will transform the word the same way. I know mine does, being an agglutinative one.
- al_borland 1y agoThis is how I feel when I hear or see people use the word “maths”, but I simply accept the cultural differences in language. Though I don’t think throwing an “s” on a word to make it plural, even if technically incorrect, is on the same level as “basgetti”. Adding an “s” to words to make them plural, is generally a good rule, there are just some exceptions, and not that many people are deep enough into Lego to know it’s one of those exceptions.
- debugnik 1y ago> the bad optics of taking legal action against a random fan project Just last month LEGO shut down Masks of Power, the Bionicle fan game. They were really close to a release and LEGO had allegedly met the team and given them permission in the past. I'm increasingly convinced that fan projects should be developed quietly and announced right on release, so they at least exist somewhere on the internet if they get shut down immediately after.
- ranger_danger 1y agoYeah I don't understand why fan projects aren't already developed anonymously to prevent issues from happening.
- ndiddy 1y agoIt looks like the team had made a Steam page for their fan game and were accepting donations for working on it, so I can see why Lego felt compelled to take it down. https://web.archive.org/web/20241125104301/https://masksofpower.com/ https://web.archive.org/web/20241125104301/https://masksofpo...
- debugnik 1y agoI don't see where you've read that they accepted donations. Every article and Reddit post I find says they didn't? It was indeed releasing on Steam for free, but I don't know if they had contacted LEGO before doing so. Also, this wasn't the only Bionicle game that LEGO had endorsed, Quest for Mata Nui too, which makes this even more of a heel-turn. They won't have to shut down that one, though: the team went silent and then the main dev passed away.
- ndiddy 1y ago> I don't see where you've read that they accepted donations. You may have missed the "Buy us a coffee" link at the top of the archived Masks of Power page that I linked.
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- paulddraper 1y agoIt's definitely not a "gray" area though it may well be true that no one cares, so it's effectively fine.
- perching_aix 1y agoIt isn't. It will stay up only until they get sent a strongly worded email/letter by LEGO. Experience it while you can.
- ToucanLoucan 1y agoI doubt there will be a letter... there's been an enthusiast-driven project to remake Lego Rock Raiders (Manic Miners if you're interested) for years now, and not only is Lego aware, they've actually provided some of the original assets for the game (the intro movie and some misc. graphics) to help the project along. As long as no one is monetizing it they don't seem to much care. Which like... is the balanced view IMO? Like nobody is making money off this or the Manic Miners project, it's not detracting from any games Lego is actually releasing right now, and absent those factors, it's essentially free advertising and building community goodwill. I wish more companies would take this "it's not hurting us, just let it be" route for fan projects instead of guarding their IP like a dragon.
- msgodel 1y agoHoly cow that's incredible. I remember playing this when I was ~6 on Windows 95 and being able to walk around and everything was so cool. Now it runs in the browser. The decomp approach seems surprisingly effective. I know someone else did this with starcraft to get it to run on ARM and said it was the wrong way to do it although I think he did it all in assembly instead of trying to get something sane out of it.
- Titan2189 1y agoHere the Video telling the story behind the port https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JUNdWnI5BTk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JUNdWnI5BTk
- btown 1y agohttps://youtu.be/gthm-0Av93Q https://youtu.be/gthm-0Av93Q is also a fascinating dive into the decompilation process here!
- iqandjoke 1y agoIt hangs after I try to inspect elements...
- foxtacles 1y agoIt has trouble with regaining focus at times. Try switching back and forth between the game and another tab/window and it will recover eventually (the hanging is just the game being paused when it goes out of focus)
- lpa22 1y agothis is one of those games that lives in my head. the quirky narrator and the personalities of all the characters felt really unique at the time. seeing stuff like this, and backyard baseball, again in browser or modern apps just doesn't hit the same though
- Sarkie 1y agoGod I love MattKC and his randomness
- tempaway43563 1y agoI remember watching my young nephew play Lego Island and the introductory video where the camera flies around the island is amazing. But then he was totally baffled by the 'main menu' when some excited lego guy babbles instructions at you in flowery hard-to-follow language, and you had to do abtract things like write in a book or drag icons onto the map before you got to do anything fun like racing cars. I think he could have clicked around that screen for hours and never realised he had to drag the people onto the map. Great game but they wouldn't make it like that now. Its like a grown ups idea of an interface that a young child would like, rather than something actually tested.
- brettermeier 1y agoI also struggled and quit after 10 seconds or something not getting onto the island ^^
- msgodel 1y agoYou have to click the red arrows a couple times then go through the rotating door. I don't remember struggling with it much as a kid tbh. I've thought about what I used to do with computers before and realized I used to have way more patience with them than I do now. I remember suffering a lot of the stupidity in qbasic and Turbo Pascal when I was 11. I don't think I would tolerate that today. Lego island seems similar.
- prophesi 1y agoTo be fair, after you enter your name in the book, the Infomaniac tells you that you have to drag a portrait on to the map to begin the game.
- tempaway43563 1y agoYes but that only works if the child is listening. Children dont listen to wiggly mad dudes waving around on the screen. They just randomly click around and giggle at things.
- skibz 1y agoThis is impressive on so many levels. What an absolute nostaliga trip! Thank you for this.
- fastball 1y agoWho wants to do LEGO racers next?
- mrbluecoat 1y agoYes yes yes!
- ycombinatrix 1y agoput me in coach
- SwiftyBug 1y agoI'd love to be able to play Lego Island 2.
- johnea 1y agoWhat about Mata Nui?
- ycombinatrix 1y agoIsn't that a Flash game? You can already run that in a browser today.
- johnea 1y agoI actually received the source flash for this game from Lego when they discontinued it online. I was able to run the flash, but there also seems to be some scripts or other functionality that allows the internationalization of the text bubbles. I could never get this working. The text bubbles were just empty. Do you know how to overcome this? Or is your comment indicating that this game is online somewhere? Thanks for info!
- sidewndr46 1y agoHow is Direct3D retained mode implemented in the browser?
- foxtacles 1y agod3drm has been implemented from scratch: https://github.com/isledecomp/isle-portable/tree/master/miniwin/src https://github.com/isledecomp/isle-portable/tree/master/mini... The entire project can be compiled targeting Emscripten. There's nothing particular to the browser implementation
- sidewndr46 1y agoThe last update video I watched from MattKC indicated they were still deciding how to approach this. Based on the commit dates in that tree, it looks like they must have completed it.
- gbraad 1y agoI believe one of the DevolutionX (diablo) developers did this
- Jotalea 1y agoI haven't been in the time this game was popular, but I cannot deny that making it playable in a web browser is crazy. And to all the people that did play and enjoy it back then, I think they'll have a happy surprise.
- favorited 1y agoOh man, this is great timing – I played the hell out of this game in middle school, and I've recently been investigating either getting it running on modern hardware. I got it installed & launching inside an XP VM, but that is (unsurprisingly) not ideal. I've been thinking about building a retro gaming PC for these kinds of games, and now I can kick that can a little further down the road.
- lamer3 1y agogood.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- kristoff200512 1y agoIt's interesting. Can I add it to my website to showcase it?