Weball: Play Katamari on Websites

Posted by croes 4 days ago

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Comments

Comment by vunderba 4 days ago

Wow - this is surprisingly well done. I really like that it goes from picking up text elements to eventually being able to grab physical images off the site as the ball grows larger.

Tangential but I was playing "Kirby and the Forgotten Dreamland," a little while ago and in the game there's an ability you can absorb called 'needle.' It initially gives you the appearance of a spiky porcupine rolling around in a ball.

However, the evolved version of this ability lets you attach random objects to you, like a tower, a corkscrew, and a cactus, among other things. Rolling around with all these items attached to you seems to be a nod to the game "Katamari Damacy."

https://youtube.com/watch?v=4aa4xR8zAJk

Comment by psp99 2 days ago

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Comment by frou_dh 2 days ago

That's amazing. I would have no clue how to write that so that it works so well.

Edit: I guess the main enabler is that it gets out of the business of HTML really quickly, by importing a representation of the page into the game engine. The classic bookmarklet version linked below messes with actual page elements using CSS transformations etc.

Comment by Dwedit 2 days ago

There was a Katarmari bookmarklet way way back around 2008ish.

Comment by gregsadetsky 2 days ago

http://kathack.com/ !

it's http only, so the bookmarklet won't work on most sites. I fixed it up:

https://kathack.greg.technology/

thanks for the great reminder/reference!!

Comment by nokun7 2 days ago

yes - kathack or something. I won a lot of friends because of it back in the day.

Comment by gavmor 2 days ago

Horrible framerate after a few hundred words, but super fun until then! I love the special touch of the large images being true obstacles.

Comment by x-complexity 2 days ago

Likely because the ball isn't a single static 3D object. There are likely improvements that can be made on that front by periodically generating the inner layers of the ball as a single asset.

Comment by argsnd 2 days ago

I was surprised by the frame rate staying surprisingly smooth on an iPhone 17 Pro Max even after completing the entire wiki page, even though it got moderately warm. I guess these things really are powerful.

Comment by frou_dh 2 days ago

It was playable even on an 8 year old iPhone XS. I cleared up the whole wikipedia page and the framerate never got bad enough to hamper the gameplay.

Comment by allenu 2 days ago

Google also has their own take on this when you search for Katamari. Click on the little katamari ball.

Comment by OuterVale 2 days ago

This is such fun. I just went along and rolled up a few websites, including my own. Great little bit of web whimsy.

Comment by 1 day ago

Comment by nokun7 2 days ago

So much fun. If it had the original music that'd be super awesome!

Comment by andylynch 2 days ago

Thank you so much for reminding me! I had kind of given up but your comment prompted me to check again and it turns out Bandai Namco recently put all the original soundtracks on streaming. Na na na na na na na na …

Comment by throwfaraway135 2 days ago

You can't fully roll up the first page >:(

Comment by tantalor 2 days ago

Slows down real quick

Comment by BatFastard 2 days ago

Amazing, most addictive things I have seen in ages.

Comment by christkv 2 days ago

Freaking love it lol. Very cool idea got sucked into rolling up the corporate site.

Comment by keiferwiseman 2 days ago

Awesome! This sort of thing brings me back to the good old days

Comment by pfdietz 2 days ago

It's not really Katamari without the abusive father.

Comment by bookstore-romeo 2 days ago

very well done! reminds me of the katamari bookmarklet i saw on hn a while ago

http://kathack.com/

Comment by mikedd 2 days ago

This makes me so happy.

Comment by couchand 2 days ago

lwn.net makes for a pretty fun level. See how big a combo you can get!

Comment by yesthisiswes 2 days ago

This is awesome!

Comment by alex_miller 4 days ago

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Comment by hananinas 2 days ago

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Comment by DobarDabar 2 days ago

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