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."
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 20 hours ago [-]
There was a Katarmari bookmarklet way way back around 2008ish.
yes - kathack or something. I won a lot of friends because of it back in the day.
gavmor 17 hours 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 16 hours 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 15 hours 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 13 hours 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 22 hours ago [-]
Google also has their own take on this when you search for Katamari. Click on the little katamari ball.
5 hours ago [-]
OuterVale 23 hours 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 11 hours ago [-]
You can't fully roll up the first page >:(
pfdietz 8 hours ago [-]
It's not really Katamari without the abusive father.
bookstore-romeo 10 hours ago [-]
very well done! reminds me of the katamari bookmarklet i saw on hn a while ago
Awesome! This sort of thing brings me back to the good old days
BatFastard 20 hours ago [-]
Amazing, most addictive things I have seen in ages.
mikedd 12 hours ago [-]
This makes me so happy.
tantalor 23 hours ago [-]
Slows down real quick
couchand 9 hours ago [-]
lwn.net makes for a pretty fun level. See how big a combo you can get!
yesthisiswes 9 hours ago [-]
This is awesome!
nokun7 19 hours ago [-]
So much fun. If it had the original music that'd be super awesome!
andylynch 14 hours 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 13 hours ago [-]
Freaking love it lol. Very cool idea got sucked into rolling up the corporate site.
alex_miller 2 days ago [-]
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hananinas 16 hours ago [-]
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DobarDabar 16 hours ago [-]
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Rendered at 22:44:54 GMT+0000 (Coordinated Universal Time) with Vercel.
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
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.
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!!
http://kathack.com/