Command and Conquer – Programming an RTS game in HTML5 and Javascript (opens in new tab)

I can see EA getting up in arms over a game like this since they are still selling Command & Conquer Games (Tiberian Dawn was part of Command & Conquer: The First Decade which came out a few years ago), but what about for other games that aren't being sold? The author here is giving proper attribution and isn't making any money off of it, as far as I understand. What about remaking games from companies that don't exist anymore?

/not an expert on copyright and honestly curious

I'm in a similar boat.. I'm trying to recreate Squad Leader by Avalon Hill in a browser. I think Hasbro might own the trademark, but I don't think copyright applies to game rules:

http://www.battle-board.com/minisl/

If they send a cease and desist I guess I'll just take it offline. I don't think there are any damages in my case, but I'd still hate to be sued!

Did EA really release the source code of command and conquer? I could not find it!

which game did you try to recreate?

All of this has happened before, and all of it will happen again.

Back in the early days of the personal microcomputer they were regarded as toys relative to the minicomputers and mainframes of that era. And in many ways they were. But bit by bit people copied functionality from older systems to PCs. Often times the new stuff was a bit simplified and in some cases downright hacky. Even CP/M let alone DOS was a pale imitation of UNIX, for example. But the microcomputer community caught up rapidly, and then soon overshot the state of the art by developing GUI based operating systems, word processing, desktop publishing, desktop graphic design, etc.

The same sort of thing has been happening with mobile platforms as well. At one time mobile computers were very immature compared to their PC counterparts, but they've started to leap-frog PCs in usability and certain other capabilities.

Since its inception the web has always been regarded as a potential competitor platform to traditional PCs. Today we are seeing hints of that coming true, with a lot of web based software replacing traditional shrink-wrapped client software. And we're also seeing the edges of the PC's strengths being nibbled away too, with various applications that would have been very difficult to make run on the web being ported to html5 and such-like. But this is probably just a hint of the progress which will come in the future, when eventually the browser-as-a-platform is fully realized technologically and running an immersive first-person 3D game fully within a browser is the norm rather than a proof-of-concept.

It is also awesome that he did it as one person in a month. I'm sure it took a lot more time to develop the original and a lot more people.

Well, it's a lot sooner than you think. Flash 11 already has the unreal tournament engine ported.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UQiUP2Hd60Y

To me, the impressive part is that the whole thing is (as far as I could tell) just 177KB of jQuery/Javascript code -- plus sounds and images.

Yes. The same for programming languages features such as Javascript.

You beat me to it. :) Some background on Command & Conquer in relation to Dune 2:

http://www.computerandvideogames.com/183584/features/command...

  "The first time we showed that game internally it had wizards
  and castles," recalls a smiling Castle. "We were working with
  Virgin at the time, and they said that they had this great IP,
  Frank Herbert's Dune, and Brett loved the books. So we took
  the game we were working on and recreated it in the Dune
  universe.

  "It solved one of the fundamental problems we had with making
  an RTS, which was that we wanted to have a central resource
  that everybody was fighting over. Dune has spice, which made
  perfect sense - and it was also used when we came to the idea
  of tiberium. It became the anchor of the C&C universe...".

Or Herzog Zwei or perhaps earlier games (Ancient Art of War anyone?).

(sadly I guess this discussion somehow has to come up every time someone mentions the word RTS.)

Still it is EPIC especially in HTML5.

Quite impressed how far you can go with HTML5 and javascript :)

I thought the same thing, and even went to YouTube, just to feel a little nostalgic for a moment :)

I remember having to move one unit at a time. That alone required some skill!! =)

You should have probably marked the citation somewhat more.

All these are minified versions. I believe these were kept in place with different version number attached to be able to quickly switch between, not for version control reasons.

I've had this happen to me on Chrome. It was definitely a browser bug, because restarting the browser resolved it. I first noticed it when I was working on a web page with complicated CSS rules for 'cursor'. If I had to guess, it has to do with loading custom .cur or .gif files as the cursor, since it didn't seem to happen unless I tried to do that. However, it was very sporadic and I could never get a reproducible minimal test case.

It doesn't matter if its a dupe of something everyone missed before and people up vote it this time. So much stuff gets submitted now that links are only on the first page of the new list for a few minutes and can easily be missed. This time its hit at the right time and there could be a good discussion about it.

Funny that you mention that, because I am working on my own unique "blend" of dwarf fortress in HTML5 and javascript.

Let just say the game takes place in a dyson sphere in the far future.

Like the flash/java games we've had for the last ~12 years?

I'll be impressed when we get a full 3D FPS/RTS with full shader effects.