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A walkable ASCII cyberpunk city in one HTML file [video]
ASCII City: Traffic and Detail Update - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DSRooHo_HSI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DSRooHo_HSI
ASCII City Update: Interiors, Elevation and Skyscrapers - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UCKEDWowc0o https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UCKEDWowc0o
- keithcarolus 2mo agoFrom the video description: “I wanted to build a city that feels alive, but is made entirely from ASCII characters. This is a small custom engine built with JavaScript and Canvas — no Unity, Unreal, 3D models, textures, or shaders. The world is a grid-based city with roads, buildings, trees, cars, and pedestrians. Every frame, the engine raycasts from the camera to work out perspective, depth, collisions, and what should be visible, then draws it all using letters, numbers, and symbols. In other words: it’s a tiny 3D city made from blocks, viewed through a screen of ASCII characters. Still a work in progress, but I’m going to keep pushing the atmosphere, detail, and interaction further.”
- seaman100 1mo ago[flagged]
- supermatt 2mo agoThis is really nice! is it accessible somewhere to play with?
- avidruntime 1mo agoThe OP's first link is a demo, their second link is the source.
- felineflock 1mo agoWouldn't it be better to use blocks (219 in ASCII) as the main paint unit and use some other half-block and "hashed" characters (ASCII 220, 223, 176-178) to implement dithering?
- wewtyflakes 1mo agoEverything above 127 would be extended ASCII instead of strict ASCII, if that matters.
- recursive 1mo agoThere are multiple extensions to ASCII. "Extended ASCII" isn't a single thing, but a category of single-byte character encodings which are supersets of ASCII.
- Darkphibre 1mo agoBy leveraging characters, you can actually do a form of dithring! See this great interactive blog post: https://alexharri.com/blog/ascii-rendering https://alexharri.com/blog/ascii-rendering
- paavope 1mo agoThat was a really, really cool read!
- Transformanshen 1mo agoWow, that's interesting. It's a good start, and it would be interesting to see how the project develops.
- naet 1mo agoIt looks really good in the video uploaded, but when I tried it myself it didn't look the same and was hard to tell what was going on. Not sure what the issue is.
- rocmcd 1mo agoSame here. The video looks cool, but what I see is much messier and hard to identify shapes and objects. Tried on latest Brave and Firefox on Arch Linux.
- jayturley 1mo agoThe video showcases his new version. The live version is his old version.
- rpdillon 1mo agoRhys is the developer of the video version, a person named Miguel wrote the version that was linked with source code. The CONTRACT.md in Miguel's version suggests AI usage, as does commit history (I'm not a zealot about this, but I do note it). I think Rhys's version is more handcrafted, but also much less accessible, being pay-to-play and being delivered in obfuscated WASM.
- fv3y 1mo agoThe poster has conflated two different projects with a similar goal I believe. The videos seem to come from a closed source project made by an outlet called Grow Now Games. https://ko-fi.com/grownowgames/ https://ko-fi.com/grownowgames/ https://www.grownowgames.com/ https://www.grownowgames.com/
- dang 1mo agoYikes that would be my mistake - I was merging several submissions and thought it was the same project. Sorry! The other links were: https://cybercity.carino.systems/ https://cybercity.carino.systems/ https://github.com/MiguelCarino/CyberCity https://github.com/MiguelCarino/CyberCity
- aleyan 1mo agoIf you want to get into fixed-width character art, I highly recommend doing it in the browser like OP did rather than trying to old school it in the terminal. I have done a little ascii[0] and unicode[1] graphics, and the browser is such a better tool. You can set fonts and proportions and know exactly how things will render for the user. Mouse input, performance profiling and a bunch of other things are just better in the browser. Both of my projects work in the terminal but were browser first. It is kind of shocking to me how TUIs are enjoying a bit of dev tool renaissance right now when the browser is such a capable platform. [0] https://aleyan.com/projects/ascii-side-of-the-moon/ https://aleyan.com/projects/ascii-side-of-the-moon/ [1] https://ytirnity.com/play/hexwalker https://ytirnity.com/play/hexwalker
- holsta 1mo ago> It is kind of shocking to me how TUIs are enjoying a bit of dev tool renaissance right now For me, it's because I can SSH from my wimpy laptop to systems with hundreds of CPU cores and TBs of RAM - and use the same tools and workflows that I am used to.
- saintfire 1mo agoPopping into a TUI from an existing terminal session to quickly do something without lifting my hand is the only reason I use and prefer a TUI. If I have to open a browser which has, frankly mediocre, kb nav, then I'd rather it just be a GUI. I guess I'm a browser detractor, though, because unless its a webserver used for quick configs then I dread using them.
- butlike 1mo agoIn hexwalker, what does the AU/A0 button do? Also is there anything to "do" or is it more of a wanderlust simulator? I found a cave with a coffin but so far no items underfoot to use.
- aleyan 1mo agoAU/AO are auto explore underworld and overworld and A0 is to stop auto explore. You can click on them in the top menu. > Also is there anything to "do" or is it more of a wanderlust simulator? It is mostly just a technology demonstrator for having a hexagonal grid map in the terminal. There is nothing to do. I am prototyping some gameplay features around interacting with the environment, but I expect the end result will be very light weight gameplay that more "A Short Hike" than nethack.
- jeffgreco 1mo agoIs the GitHub project the same as the videos? Seems like no.
- SpyCoder77 1mo ago[dupe] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49310003 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49310003
- ChrisArchitect 1mo agoWelcome. Not a dupe if no discussion after a period of time. Sometimes things just don't get traction. Resubmit is ok.
- rvz 1mo ago> Sometimes things just don't get traction. Resubmit is ok. More like it was resubmitted a hundred times already.
- yboris 1mo agoI posted this 15 days ago - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49314380 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49314380 Glad to see HN visitors finally see it on the front page :)
- deleted 1mo ago[deleted]
- deleted 1mo ago[deleted]
- postalcoder 1mo agoThis makes me deeply nostalgic. Starlight Zone from Sonic the Hedgehog is my favorite game level of all time and the aesthetic of this city is basically like stepping into the background of Starlight Zone. https://youtube.com/watch?v=ZHR5OKDL81g https://youtube.com/watch?v=ZHR5OKDL81g
- FpUser 1mo agolove it. It has a mood
- rkagerer 1mo agoIt's beautiful, but when I went to try it out myself it seems it's pay to play? https://ko-fi.com/s/e1e0f91951 https://ko-fi.com/s/e1e0f91951 Note that's "Prototype 1", and I gather the more developed v2 (featured in the update video) isn't available yet.
- ramoz 1mo agoI bought the game so I could study the code. Unfortunately it is wasm & obfuscated. I'm gonna see what my handy dandy big giant brain buddies can do with it.
- pan_lid 1mo agoReminds me of classic DOS text adventures, but with a modern cyberpunk twist. Love the aesthetic and the clever single-file packaging.
- hexley19 1mo agoSeriously impressive browser tech pushing what's possible in one HTML file. The ASCII art and walking mechanic are brilliant.
- Sorrel47 1mo agoReminds me of old MUDs, but elevated with a proper walkable city. Super clever use of pure HTML for this whole experience.
- ryecrust 1mo ago[dead]
- deleted 1mo ago[deleted]
- klas_segeljakt 1mo ago[flagged]
- lenikirilov 1mo agoAnother example when technology can be just used to do cool things, art, and not only be useful (besides beiing a learning experience by the author)
- kodoman 1mo agoI love the way this looks very interesting and impressive. One does wonder if as you keep making it more realistic, does it begin to lose it's ASCII nature a bit and become more like a normal rendered game to look at. I think it looks beautiful as it is at the moment and can not wait to see more of this.
- teddyh 1mo agoThis is an ad. Furthemore, what is being sold, for money, is a simple prototype of a basic 3D renderer.
- nom 1mo agowtf are you talking about
- throwaway613746 1mo ago[dead]
- andsoitis 1mo agoWhere’s said HTML page?
- unsane 1mo agodang above said they messed up merging 2 different submissions into this one. IDK if the video paid one is a html file, but here's the other (less impressive but still impressive) submission, playable, plus source html: https://cybercity.carino.systems/ https://cybercity.carino.systems/ https://github.com/MiguelCarino/CyberCity https://github.com/MiguelCarino/CyberCity WASD to move etc, 1-2-3-4 for CyberCity - Frontier - Moonwalk - Edo
- mattgoupil 1mo agoThis was really impressive. Looking at the comments, I didn't realize there was a whole ASCII art underground. I don't want to sound negative at all, but it would have been nice to seem some recognizable letters to drive home that it's ASCII.
- Hugsbox 1mo agoSays it's in one HTML file... well, where? Why post a video if you could just link to it? I don't see a link to it anywhere, and I'm not watching a youtube video to look at an HTML file.
- goatking 1mo agoThere is a link in the video description. You have to pay for the demo...
- Hugsbox 1mo agoAh yes, let me just whip out my wallet real quick and pay for a demo of an HTML file. I'll _definitely_ be doing that.
- ivanjermakov 1mo agoTo be fair it's a great way to accept donations.
- Ey7NFZ3P0nzAe 1mo agoIt's not a donation if they're actually selling a file.
- Hugsbox 1mo agoMaybe we have a different definition of "donation", but it requires you to pay at least $2.50 to access it. Sounds like a purchase, not a donation. And for a demo of an HTML document.
- osener 1mo agoReminds me of textmode demos https://www.pouet.net/prod.php?which=24206 https://www.pouet.net/prod.php?which=24206