React on Rails HN RSC Demo

vunderba 2d 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

frou_dh 1d 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.

Dwedit 1d ago

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

gregsadetsky 1d 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!!

nokun7 1d ago

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

gavmor 1d 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.

x-complexity 1d 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.

argsnd 1d 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.

frou_dh 1d 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.

allenu 1d ago

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

OuterVale 1d ago

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

throwfaraway135 22h ago

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

BatFastard 1d ago

Amazing, most addictive things I have seen in ages.

tantalor 1d ago

Slows down real quick

pfdietz 19h ago

It's not really Katamari without the abusive father.

keiferwiseman 21h ago

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

bookstore-romeo 21h ago

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

http://kathack.com/

mikedd 23h ago

This makes me so happy.

couchand 21h ago

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

yesthisiswes 21h ago

This is awesome!

nokun7 1d ago

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

andylynch 1d 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 …

christkv 1d ago

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

Weball: Play Katamari on Websites (funwithcomputervision.com)