Katamari Hack For Chrome (and Compatible Browsers)

skaet writes "Using CSS3 transforms and HTML5 canvas, the Katamari Hack for Google Chrome (and other compatible browsers) allows you to turn any website into a game of Katamari Damacy! The script was created by Alex Leone, David Nufer, and David Truong, and won the 2011 Yahoo HackU contest at University of Washington."

Comments

Outstanding!

[WrongSizeGlass]

That is very cool. I'll have that song stuck in my head for the rest of the night.

Re:Outstanding!

[Noitatsidem]

Hey, I'm running astroids, and TWO katamari games at once. Now that makes me happy.

Re:Outstanding!

[Phoghat]

It's fun, but other than right click to grab objects, what do you do then? Is it just a vacuum cleaner of websites?

Safari

[mr100percent]

Works on the latest version of Safari.

Much more fun than my previous favorite browser game, Kick Ass (imagine playing Asteroids but shooting all the objects on a page).

Re:Safari

[shogun]

You can play both at once but it gets boring quickly when you kill the katamari with the asteroids spaceship gun and just have the music playing against a game of asteroids...

Re:Safari

[shogun]

Ok I spoke to quickly, it just kills the visibility of the katamari, you can still play and everything thats stuck to it is still visible (until shot as well)..

Re:Safari

[Anonymous Coward]

Or you can spawn multiple Katamaris!!!

Re:Safari

[AvitarX]

You have just upped the quality of my work days to come significantly.

Re:Safari

[Gadget_Guy]

So according to the posters here, it works in Safari (including on iPhone), IE9, Firefox 4 and Opera. In what way is this something for "Chrome and compatible browsers"?

Let's not go down the old road when people said "Works best in Internet Explorer" only because they did not test anything else.

Re:Safari

[cbhacking]

Amusingly, it does actually work quite well on IE(9). I agree though - standards-compliant websites should be described as such, not as "Chrome compatible." It's good that the script wasn't written in any way that woul require people to be using a specific browser or even specific rendering engine, so why describe it in such a manner?

Re:Safari

[ProbablyJoe]

Oddly, works for me in Firefox 4, but doesn't work for me in Chrome 10.

Re:Safari

[ProbablyJoe]

Disregard that, I'm an idiot. Does in fact run much better for me in Chrome, it lags a lot as it gets bigger in Firefox. I'm very amused by it grabbing entire div elements.

Re:Safari

[JackieBrown]

Anymore like that? That was cool.

Re:Safari

[Dracolytch]

IE9 and FF4 aren't really full-release yet, so I can see why someone might include those in their compatibility list. Likelihood of new compat. issues before release is slim, but I probably wouldn't pre-release browsers as a matter of habit.

Re:Safari

[Gadget_Guy]

IE9 and FF4 aren't really full-release yet, so I can see why someone might include those in their compatibility list.

Internet Explorer 9 has now been released, although it was after the summary was submitted. But Safari was released a long time ago, and it was Safari that gave us WebKit which powers Chrome. It seems bizarre to label it a "Chrome compatible" browser when it should be the other way around.

Anyway, the linked site says "works best in chrome or firefox 4", so not only do they mention Firefox but they also do not use the term "Chrome compatible".

However, I did find an article on this subject from the day before this was submitted here that said:

Google Chrome may have come out of Pwn2Own unscathed, but you can rip through any website it (or another HTML5-compliant browser) displays -- just pull out your handy Katamari Damacy ball and wreak havok on the page. Na NAaaa, na na na na na na na, na na na na na naaaa...

Hmmm... It seems that something got lost in translation.

IE9

[lightbox32]

This is awesome! Works great on Internet Explorer 9 too.

Opera 11 = Success!

[Rinnon]

Running in Opera 11 and it works great! Pretty awesome job.

Interesting

[Lanteran]

Hm, it even works on firefox 3.6- albeit slowly. It's incredibly fast in 4b12 and chrome though. Fun game, also.

Asteroids

[pgn674]

I've had an Asteroids one on my bookmarks bar for a while now: Hello, want to kill some time?

WARNING: This Is Dangerous

[definate]

A warning needs to be attached to this game. Katamari is a dangerous game to play.

First you'll start, possibly with some friends, possibly high, rolling things up, and you'll be having a good time.

Then you'll be consumed with rolling things up, accurately guessing what size objects you can roll up, and developing strategies on how to gain size more effectively.

Eventually you'll get what we like to call "Katamari Eyes". This is when in real life, you start to see regular objects in groups, which could be good for rolling up, or areas you'll want to stay away from as there isn't enough growth potential. It's a well known effect.

This destroys relationships, but given you're reading this, I don't think that's a problem you'll have.

You've been warned!

Re:WARNING: This Is Dangerous

[Greyfox]

Not to mention the risk of the song coming on the radio and then you slam your car into a mailbox...

Re:WARNING: This Is Dangerous

[Drakkenmensch]

Not to mention the risk of the song coming on the radio and then you slam your car into a mailbox...

This is especially problematic if you've also been playing a lot of Burnout Paradise lately. *hits SHOWTIME button and starts singing Katamari theme song*

Re:WARNING: This Is Dangerous

[gravis777]

Nah nah, na na nah na na nah nah, nah Katamari Damacy!

Re:WARNING: This Is Dangerous

[ashidosan]

Oblig: http://xkcd.com/161/

Re:WARNING: This Is Dangerous

[PwnzerDragoon]

Oblig: http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2004/10/1/

Re:WARNING: This Is Dangerous

[AeonEchelon]

Naaaaa na na na nana na na na KATAMARI DAMACY!!!

Re:WARNING: This Is Dangerous

[Greyfox]

He's just documenting what a lot of us have experienced. Mailboxes are just the right size to roll up with a car. A motorcycle would be too big. Dogs and pedestrians are small enough but (fortunately) don't seem to trigger that reflex.

Re:WARNING: This Is Dangerous

[Deefburger]

"Name one time government did any good" Hmm - When it did nothing, and nobody noticed.

Run both

[Anonymous Coward]

You can load and control both Katamari and Asteroids at the same time on a page. In fact, you can even shoot the katamari with your ship!

Neat, not all elements can be grabbed.

[RyuuzakiTetsuya]

I can't seem to get it to pick up the FCKEditor. :( HALP.

Neat-o!

[StuartHankins]

Works on iPad. Good stuff, cleverly done!

This works really well on...

[Janvitos]

practically any porn site :)

Re:Right-click on MBP?

[Scotty L]

Get a real computer?

timecube.com

[Lazareth]

The very first thought I had was "hmm... website with LOTS of text that I despise and want to roll over and demolish with glee..." Didn't take me long to go to timecube.com

I'm in your timecube REFUTING YOUR STUPIDITY!

Re:timecube.com

[deadhammer]

Just took my Katamari for a walk down Gene Ray's ode to insanity (scrollwheel to scroll down works fine, you can roll it straight down the middle). My Katamari was the size of my browser window and I wasn't even a tenth of the way down. Dude packs in a lot of text.

Re:timecube.com

[Pawnn]

For some reason, I just KNEW you were going to say Facebook...

Re:timecube.com

[Alsee]

The site you most despise is Timecube? Seriously?
I consider timecube to be sorta cute harmless nonsense.

I'd me more inclined to pick something like Answersingenesis. Definitely not cute or harmless.

-

Re:Right-click on MBP?

[NemosomeN]

Or just select the option to left click. I helped you with this, so you'll have to get someone else to wipe your ass.

Rolling

[h4x0t]

Up all the post I don't care for as we speak.

Flickr

[friedmud]

It's pretty fun to use in photostreams on Flickr.... all of the pictures swirling around the ball looks awesome.

Also... if you use it on Google Maps you can kind of actually play a game of Katamari! It really will pick up the map tiles (after it gets large enough) seems to grow extremely fast at that point though.... but I haven't played with the parameters too much yet.

I've been running it with the max number of items with Safari 5.0.3 on a 17" MBP without any trouble at all...

Really sweet hack!

Re:Right-click on MBP?

[friedmud]

Just tell it to use "Left Click" instead... and use three finger dragging to move it around! (Three finger dragging can be enabled in System Prefs->Trackpad if you don't already have it enabled).

Re:Right-click on MBP?

[YoshiDan]

Click with 2 fingers on the trackpad.

Re:Warning to GNU/Linux distributions

[DarwinSurvivor]

So ... Windows users need not worry? :P

YouTube

[Anonymous Coward]

Using this on the main page of youtube looks hilarious.

Lots of objects to pick up?

[LoudMusic]

Try Mac Desktops! Their "All" category has over 7800 thumbnail images :)

http://macdesktops.com/?category=0

Happy rolling!

The official word

[93 Escort Wagon]

My daughter, who is not a computer geek but is a lover of Katamari, states categorically: "THAT IS SO AMAZING! THAT IS SO COOL!!"

Every website should have that option

[Krupuk]

I just rolled up this entire site!

Great for getting rid of troll comments!

Re:website to roll

[Krupuk]

Thanks. You just broke my internet!

Old News

[CheerfulMacFanboy]

Many Browsers did that with your RAM for ages.

-1 Troll?

[quantumphaze]

Well I thought it was funny.

Remind me

[CheerfulMacFanboy]

Why was Flash better than HTML5 again?

It's the Wonderful Wonderful End of the World

[rjejr]

If you run this on the Katamari Hack page it looks just like a level in The Wonderful End of the World. Yes, I know that game is a complete rip-off of Katamari, but it has a level where you pick up words just like this level. And a much better theme song IMHO.

Does Wonders for Slashdot 3.0

[bill_mcgonigle]

See subject.