SkiFree in the Browser

[winestock]

Twenty-nine comments and no one has posted the site of the author of the original SkiFree?

http://ski.ihoc.net/

SkiFree was originally written for VAX/VMS on VT100 terminals. Scroll down that page to see a small animated GIF showing where abominable snow monsters come from.

[basicallydan]

Thanks for posting this :) it's interesting - Pirih has put he original game up for download as well as far more media one would expect. Great site. I hope he notices my port, it soils be amazing to get his feedback :)

[kenrikm]

Wow this really brings me back, what was the name of the game with the bow and arrows? that was another favorite of mine "back in the day" Thanks for making this!

[lowglow]

Confirms that I'm still terrible at this game over 20 years later.

[eksith]

Don't worry. Soon there will be a version for Google Glass that will superimpose trees, rocks, other skiers and so on. And then...

[dereferenced]

Some differences from the original:

1.) You can't press right twice to stop, then up repeatedly to climb.

2.) You can't press various arrow keys after jumping to do a trick pose that gives you extra points.

3.) There's only 1 degree of 'turning right', not two. Same w/ left.

[the_cat_kittles]

4) There aren't those rock/?? things that when you hit turn into mushrooms/tombstones/??

[pserwylo]

Also, there was a bug (feature?) in the win 3.1 version where if you sat yourself under a seat, and then held the up arrow to slowly go up at the same time as the lift, and your score would rocket up by the 1000s.

We used it to increase the high score on our primary school computers from a measly 11 to several tens of thousands in a couple of minutes.

Otherwise, pretty darn faithful recreation, great job!

[basicallydan]

Hey! Thanks for the feedback. Right you are for 1 and 2 - maybe I will get around to implementing these :) but as for 3, try using the mouse. Movement is still a bit funny, and could do with some improvement so I might do that next.

Thanks again! Naturally, I encourage you to contribute with code if you are that way inclined :)

[networked]

Nice. I expect SkiFree to finally get a modder community after you complete this version. :-)

Unfortunately, the player's movement seems to come to a halt every 14-15 m or so in Firefox 18.0.2 on Linux x86_64. That is not the case in Chromium 24.0.1312.56 on the same platform.

Edit: there are also visible lines over and under the tall fir trees in Firefox: http://imgur.com/3wnXSqs.

[basicallydan]

Brilliant feedback thank you :) I get the same line issue in Mobile Safari but can't work out why without setting up debugging tools so maybe solving the issue in Firefox will help.

[silverlight]

Played just to confirm that the yeti ate me :-D. Good times!

[Yoni1]

http://xkcd.com/667/

[basicallydan]

Haha! Glad you enjoyed that experience. It was one of the first big things I did :P

[the-come-ons]

This is great. I miss the pooping dog though. :)

[basicallydan]

Hahaha! I will get on it!

[ComputerGuru]

Time to make it an MMO with websockets.

[networked]

Joking aside, it could be useful to implement ghosts [1]. You'd have to have non-random (fixed seed) tracks for this, though.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ghost_%28video_gaming%29

[basicallydan]

It's in the long list of awesome features :D it actually wouldn't be too hard. I suspect the hardest part would be making the après-ski experience realistic ;)

[shousper]

+1 !! Honestly, this could be really cool!

[h4pless]

Just realized you have to run the yeti into trees to keep them from eating you... Feels like a good moment for a facepalm.

[basicallydan]

Haha! This wasn't a feature in the I original but I thought it might add some balance to my version which was lacking some features which are useful for accruing points!

[tlrobinson]

http://xkcd.com/667/

[CoryG89]

Awesome! Just got transported back to my parents living room on Windows 95. And yes, I still suck at this game.

[jbrooksuk]

I love it. This game brings back so many memories for me! As it's written in JavaScript, I intend to take it, add some realtime players via Node.js and get this up and running. So much fun for a side project and with a great starting point!

[mikesmullin3]

hey he doesn't do tricks and he doesn't get fully eaten by the yeti

[basicallydan]

Nope, not yet. He has five lives because I haven't quite worked out the difficulty of the Yeti yet. Tricks will happen, too, eventually :)

[jggonz]

Ooh, I loved this game!

[bdg]

:( The controls aren't the same. I want to make him walk up forever really really slowly.

[NamTaf]

I noticed this too. In the original, the left and right arrows rotated you. In this, they correspond to 'face left' and 'face right' respectively.

The difference is, in the original if you were facing left and hit the right arrow, you'd rotate one position to the right. This would put you as facing down again. In this, if you're facing left and hit right, you immediately face right. To face down you have to press down.

It's still confusing my muscle memory :(

[nextstep]

Amazing! Works super well on Mobile Safari and it has the yeti attack at the end!

[bromagosa]

It's amazing how something as funny and non-scary as this monster could scare the hell out of me when I was a kid... I remember myself playing and almost getting a heart attack every time the monster showed up.

[xlevus]

If you crash when the yeti is chasing you, the yeti disappears.

[3327]

amazing finally! you could do tricks though in the original one maybe an addition to patch on the following release ?

[enneff]

The controls are wrong, too. Left and right should rotate the character, but right now they make him turn hard left and hard right. In the original there were also two degrees of left and right turning, so you could navigate with more precision. You could also turn fully horizontal and then use the up arrow to climb the hill sideways.

Please fix this! :-)

[basicallydan]

Unless someone beats me to it I will do this next time I make any changes. The great thing about feedback like this is that I get to find out what peoples' favourite missing feature or bug are, so thanks :)

[kungfooey]

Now if we could just get a JS version of the Johnny Castaway screensaver, reliving my youth would be quite possible.

[d0m]

I swear this game is better than most of the game I've played this and last year. Graphics aren't everything.

[twodayslate]

Wasn't this posted a couple weeks ago?

[basicallydan]

You may be thinking of my submission to /r/webdev on reddit?