Tuxracer.js play Tux Racer in the browser(github.com)
141 pointsby retro_guy7 days ago20 comments
  • parasti7 days ago
    Linux gamers from the Linux Game Tome days might enjoy learning that we ported Neverball to the browser (mobile, too) some years ago.

    https://play.neverball.org/

  • oddevan7 days ago
    Oh, this brings back memories of interning in the IT lab at the local university.

    Has anyone done Frozen Bubble?

  • boricj7 days ago
    Impressive work.

    Maybe it's my memory from 20 years ago playing tricks on me, but to quote Civvie 11: "It's like playing a version of [Extreme Tux Racer] where everything was moved two inches or so to the left."

    • pierrec7 days ago
      I also played it back in the day and it seems perfectly accurate to me, at least in terms of control and physics. After a few goes I'm quickly approaching my old personal best on Who Says Penguins Can't Fly. One thing I'll note is that the "best score" display seems to be only based on time, not herrings (which I actually prefer, but I know that's not how you're supposed to play it).
  • dvno427 days ago
    This was always a victory to teenage me after fighting with SDL and Nvidia drivers on Gentoo. Getting this to work with good framerate was always so exciting. Nostalgia hit for sure.
  • Aldipower7 days ago
    Funny, I've loaded it in the browser, played it, was happy like kid. Then I just entered 'extremtuxracer' in my terminal and tada, played it locally without browser. Not to blame tuxracer.js, this is great. But sometimes you forget "normal" software.
    • em-bee7 days ago
      the browser version doesn't work for me, the maps are messed up. anyways i did the same. except i had to install it first, because this is a relatively new laptop. i did have it on the previous one and almost every machine of mine before that.

      i even made my own courses. one thing that i'd like to change is the slope. i made one course that would start in the center and then go in concentric circles around the starting point. it worked, kind of, but it was tricky. it would have worked better with a slope of 0 and a greater height differential from the highest to the lowest level. maybe some day...

  • wavemode7 days ago
    Hearing that song again after almost 20 years made my day
  • VoidWhisperer6 days ago
    Given that the original project (at https://sourceforge.net/p/extremetuxracer/code/HEAD if i'm not mistaken) is C++, I wonder if it is possible to port the original in some form using WASM.

    This is not to take away from the work that the OP has done - it is impressive, I'm just kind of thinking out loud here.

    • proc06 days ago
      Looks like it would be possible with Emscripten but I'm not sure what OpenGL version its using so that's probably the biggest dependency there.
      • q3k6 days ago
        I tried doing this a few years ago, mapping OpenGL 1.x primitives into WebGL was indeed a pain. There were some translation layers but they were either incomplete or targetting GLES, not classical OoenGL.

        I then attempted to actually rewrite ETR to use GLES (or modern OpenGL in general), but that also turned out to be quite an effort given how the original engine/game code is structured.

        • proc05 days ago
          Interesting. Sounds like a rewrite would be faster since the game itself doesn't seem that complicated.
  • jml7c57 days ago
    I wonder if the commercial version of this (from Sunspire Studios) is floating around anywhere. I recall it being even more satisfying to play.

    Looks like the author has gone on to have a successful career in game rendering, working on (among other things) Infamous and Ghost of Tsushima.

    • mrdonbrown7 days ago
      I have a CD copy of the game, and many fond memories playing it with the wife in the early 2000's...
  • elaus7 days ago
    That music is stuck in my ears for so many years...
  • akeck6 days ago
    Is there any way to contribute levels to Tuxracer these days? I made a pair of really long ones (~10 min and ~20 min)
  • rezmason7 days ago
    Oh, fantastic! I've tried rebuilding this for macOS half a dozen times, and never quite managed for one reason or another. And now you've brought it to the browser.

    I might try adding reflections and translucency to ice someday.

  • kaycey20226 days ago
    How was this done? Did the author rewrite the source in TS?
  • lelanthran7 days ago
    Their used to be a racing game, around 2005 - 2008, in the Ubuntu repositories called Torque (or similar)?

    Anyone knows what happened to it?

  • geff826 days ago
    Thanks for bringing me retro feelings of my first Linux days back!
  • teruakohatu7 days ago
    This works really well on mobile. Kudos to the author.
  • mkoryak6 days ago
    i enjoyed falling off the left side of the map in "finding vodka". 800 is terminal velocity
  • unixhero6 days ago
    Penguins also like to have fun
  • lamer37 days ago
    Reminds me the Adobe Shockwave games
  • Animats7 days ago
    But you have to install Node.js to run this "in the browser"? Why isn't this just a web page?
    • halter737 days ago
      There's a link at the top of the README to https://0x00eb.itch.io/tux-racer where you can play it without needing to host it yourself.
    • supersparrow7 days ago
      It could be a webpage but the developer would have to host it on a server somewhere (which would cost something). With the instructions to run it on the GitHub page, you are effectively running a server which is hosting the game.
  • Bondi_Blue7 days ago
    If you want to play locally on macOS, here is a build. If it fails to run, it is likely the error "The requested video mode is not available" and can be run if connected to an external monitor (then you can disable fullscreen and launch without an external monitor).

    https://drodin.com/extremetuxracer/ https://github.com/drodin/extremetuxracer

    • parasti7 days ago
      This guy ports open source games to mobile devices and sells them under their original names. (Selling is okay, misrepresenting them as the official version is not.)