Ugh. I can't imagine even trying Crossfire on the 800XL's keyboard. The flat panel keyboards on those were almost more for show than actual use. Not good for gaming at all. Even the overly complex joystick controls would have been an improvement over that keyboard.
I had the PCjr version, which had a much more satisfying keyboard. (Though not the chiclet keyboard everyone complains about. The "wireless" infrared one. Yeah, I suppose it wasn't that much better.:-/) I honestly can't stand the modal joystick controls for Crossfire. Not only do you have to hold the button to switch the joystick to fire mode, but the craft automatically stops at every intersection. I tried to get used to that, but I found that it just limited maneuverability rather than helping. And maneuverability was one thing you REALLY needed in that game.;-)
The original was a minigame in Project Gotham. Soo... I don't think that really counts.
Sorry.:-)
FWIW, the game is meant to evoke a sense of classic vector games like Gravitar, Asteroids, Tempest, and Star Wars. In that it succeeds brilliantly. But the game is very much a modern game with modern gameplay. Which is actually a good thing, because it shows what happens when game designers apply all their modern knowledge toward pick-up-and-play games. (Often of the "arcade" variety.)
I don't know if there are any fans of the classic game Crossfire here, but I'd love to know if this reimagining of the game does it justice*. I've tried a few clones (notably SDL Crossfire, GridBlaster, and Gridfire), but none of them were very satisfying. In fact, most of them made changes that I felt were distateful to anyone who enjoyed the original. (Or maybe I was the only one who played with keyboard controls? Hmm...)
Anyway, try it out and let me know what you think. And if you have a Wii, give it a go there. It's tons of fun with two controllers.:)
* Warning: This is still a beta. If you want to save high score, you need to be logged into the website. Sound is not yet there. Internet Explorer is not supported due to its lack of Canvas support. And did I mention that it's 100% Javascript?:-)
The "Real Genius" and "sharks" jokes you're about to post are less than 1% as funny and clever as you think they are.
You must be new here. We get very few "Real Genius" jokes around these parts, and many go unrecognized. Quite sad, I'm afraid......or in deference to you Kent, it's like lasing a stick of dynamite.:-P
Heh. Sorry, I just figured out that trick the other day and just had to share. Being a programmer, I'm terminally lazy about everything. And nothing is more annoying than either having to log out of my current account -OR- open a completely different web browser. (I used to do the latter.) I got the bright idea yesterday of using Chrome's incognito mode as a method of circumventing this issue. One incognito window, and *BAM* I'm clear from my browser's normal sessions and cookies. As a bonus, the browser does not save the admin session or login, making it a nice boost to security.
The only problem I've found with this scheme is that Chrome does do form pre-filling in incognito mode. Which (call me crazy) seems like a rather severe breach for a "privacy" mode. Go figure.
While Chrome may "complicate" their relationship, ideally there should be as many browsers on the market as possible. Microsoft's monopoly over the web produced a sort of tunnel-vision toward website development. Having a variety of browsers available has been changing that. The more browsers available, the more pressure will be placed upon companies to support standards compliance.
So while Mozilla and Google may compete, doing so is in both their interests. In addition, competition is in the consumer's interest because it keeps pushing the browser market forward and gaining us great features like HTML5 compliance, process isolation, privacy modes*, malware protection, etc.
* I've found this to be an excellent way to use an admin login on a site where I also have regular user credentials.
Here's where an expansion pack could pick this trend up and run with it: Add the ability to build little breadboards with transistors. Now there's no physics overhead, and just imagine the stuff you could wire up!
That would remove all the charm of these hacks. What's really cool about such mechanical machines is that they demonstrate computer science in a visual manner. Even we professionals who know that computers != electronics are wowed to death when we see a mechanical computer large enough to watch its operation and see its inner workings. (Even if it is virtual.) Imagine what it's like for those not familiar with computer science? Such a massive computational machine is beyond their belief, even if it performs a simple task. It hearkens back to 60's scifi where computers are monstrously large creations that have incredible brain power. It's pretty cool stuff!
Replace all the mechanics and physics with a few virtual circuit boards and you remove all the charm. The levels stop being machines of wonder and go straight back to their black boxes. To the average user, a circuit board in the game is nothing but a fancy script.
Hi Scott! I've been trying to contact you about a Galaxian clone you wrote some years ago. I've managed to port it to modern web browsers and I'd like to chat with you a bit about it. Unfortunately, all your contact info appears to be horribly out of date. If you get a chance, can you shoot me an email at akaimbatman@gmail.com ASAP?
The reason US Companies didn't choose to manufacture this technology domestically is because Wall Street only cares about projects that turn a profit in 4 months.
While that probably does have some effect, there are three words that come to mind when I think of battery development:
Environmental Impact Statement
That right there will kill any power generation or storage technology before it's even a glimmer in an scientist/engineer's eye.
95% of people doesn't need Windows. When people acknowledge that then this year will be the year of the Macintosh.
Fixed that for you. Linux will take over on the desktop when it becomes competitive and user friendly on the desktop. Ubuntu has been doing a good job in moving that direction, but the system still needs to be (ironically) more open to users installing software and performing tasks outside of the sandbox offered by the package manager.
Hahahahah! That's funny, dude. You had me going there for a moment. Great-- oh. You're serious? Seriously?
I think the real question is have you tried any other browsers? Above all else, IE's lack of standards support stands out like a sore thumb. Every time I develop a site for the damn thing, I can't help but notice that simple features like DOM2 and CSS2 still aren't supported even though they are over a DECADE old. That means that sites have to be gimped for IE's substandard support. And it shows. Modern websites perform poorly in Internet Explorer, with interfaces that are regularly slower or degraded. (I remember one application that had a column sort. Near instantaneous in Firefox, about 20 seconds in IE. I had to algorithmically optimize the living hell out of it just because IE was sucking so badly. ) And don't even get me started at how grating IE7 is on the eyes. I mean, the interface looks like an amateur artist took a dump all over the screen. Ungainly tabs, toolbars in odd places, over the top graphics, etc. The best I can say for it is that it works. Sometimes.
Don't even get me started on Microsoft's outright unwillingness to support upcoming standards like HTML 5. Funny, it never seemed to be a problem 10 years ago when their browser was the only one that implemented the standards.:-/
IE7 is the worst major browser on the market today, bar none. FireFox, Opera, Safari, SeaMonkey, Chrome, etc. are all FAR better options. Anyone who thinks that IE is "a good browser" is woefully out of touch with what is available on the market today. I cannot wait to jettison the piece of crap. Especially after I noticed that Microsoft is *explicitly* ignoring the same requests for standards support that they did in IE7. When the RFE for support of DOM2 Events is closed as "works according to specs", you know there's a problem.
When I bring up the Wii menu the game display is correct in the background, but as soon as you close the menu it warps back to fucked up mode, so it does seem to be a rendering issue with the Wii itself.
That was the exact same problem I had.
I previously tried all resolutions, and have tried both S-Video and Component connections to see if they make a difference. The only way I got it to work was switching to a different screen altogether which is of little use as that TV isn't in this room where I want to play!
I'm going to take a wild guess and say that the TV that works is a CRT and the one that doesn't work is not. Am I right?
Are the settings you mention part of a new update at all or were they always there? as I say it's been a while since I last looked. If they were always there then I'm sure I'll have tried them- I went through every combination of relevant settings possible at the time.
The settings were always there, but it can be confusing to get them right. For some reason progressive scan vs. widescreen are different settings. I'd actually suggest trying the minimum of SD/4:3, and then try HD/16:9 if that doesn't work. Couldn't hurt to try, anyway.:-)
Also, Composite and SVideo cables require that you use SD, but the system can still emit a 16:9 signal. So you might want to make sure that you're using SD/4:3 if you're not using component cables.
I had an issue with the Wii whereby some of the downloadable games (like super mario world) don't display correctly on my screen.
Make sure your Wii is configured for Widescreen/Progressive or Standard/Interlaced. Occasionally the system can end up being set to Widescreen/Interlaced which reeks all kinds of havoc with Virtual Console games.
(This particularly happens with Gamecube games that offered Progressive scan support. If you forget to press the magic combination when you start the game, it will happily reconfigure your Wii to Interlaced mode. Boo!)
VMWare and Parallels have drag+drop support from host to VM (unsure about the others). If others don't have that, they at least have a shared folder support.
There are a variety of circumstances under which this doesn't work. Particularly when dealing with a custom build of an OS or a true hobby OS. Such OSes often have support for common file systems, so this sort of solution is perfect.
In addition, using a lesser known VM environment can also lead to difficulties in transferring data back and forth. e.g. QEmu, Bochs, etc. Apart from having low price tags, these projects rock because you can add debugging info into the VM and recompile. Makes it a lot easier to understand what you're doing wrong. (Especially when we're talking about kicking a kernel you wrote into protected mode. Always fraught with troubles, that is.)
The new "Audio" object in HTML 5 is an up and coming standard that should make such problems go away. But until that time, consider using a solution like SoundManager2:
Do you ever run a virtualization program (VMWare, VirtualPC, QEmu, VirtualBox, etc.) on your Mac? Ever had a situation where you wish you could move files from the host to the client? Tired of creating ISOs just to move files back and forth?
Like this? Breakout is a fairly simple game that requires only minimal animation. That makes it relatively easy to program. That doesn't mean it can't be done better. The breakout example I linked to it pretty choppy once you slow it down to a reasonable speed.
I wrote a DHTML version of Pong a while back that is far superior. Here's a link. The underlying architecture was very primitive when I wrote it, not having features like the Canvas tag available. And yet it is one of the better Pong variations on the net. (If you don't mind my saying so.) The reason for its superiority is simple: 95% of people who write a game don't understand what makes games interesting.
In the case of Pong, nearly all variations are too slow and the AI consists of stupidly following the ball. Well, that's not very fun. The ball should bounce fairly quickly and the AI should respond like a human. How do you make AI respond like a human, though? Simple: It should not act robotic and it should make mistakes.
The AI for Pong stops moving the paddle when the ball is traveling in the opposite direction. This helps remove the "robot" feel of the opponent. Next, the computer is limited to the same rate of movement as the player. This gives the player a chance to sneak one by the computer. (Since the ball is faster than the paddle.) Finally, the AI has a bit of jitter in its algorithm. Rather than moving with the ball, it computes where the ball is expected to be. A random amount of jitter is then added to the computation so that the computer has the possibility of "misjudging" where the ball will actually arrive. By adjusting the jitter, the game can be made to play on easy, normal, or hard. (Use the options menu to set the difficulty. Though for some reason, the menu doesn't work on Chrome. So just be aware of that issue.)
Another game that is rarely done right is Tetris. Take the Jetris game in the "GameJS" link. It's a nice tech demo, but it's a sub-par game. And not because the game is of the "classic" Tetris variety. (My own Tetris game was of the same variety.) It at least gets the coloring right in that each piece is a specific color. (Though adhering to the Tetris standards for coloring would have been an improvement.) That's a good first step. The bigger issue is that the piece selection does not have a very good distribution of pieces. I regularly get three or four of the same piece in a row. That should never happen in a good Tetris game. Programmers need to take steps to ensure that the player will never get more than two of the same piece in a row. The Tetris "Bag" algorithm is a good solution to this that makes the game more fun. Another good trick is to ensure that pieces always arrive in the default rotation.
Anyway, the point of my rant is that the technology is rarely the problem. A good game programmer can make a fun game out of nearly any technology. An inexperienced game programmer with no understanding of what is "fun" can make any technology look like the problem.
By the time IE 10 comes out, it will look like what Netscape 2.0 looks like to today's market. Even today, users hanging on to IE are reminiscent of the die hard users of Netscape 4. Netscape 4 was awful in comparison to IE5, but since it was the only viable alternative to IE, it hung around for quite a while. Life got a lot better when the Internet purged NS4, and it will get a lot better when it purges Internet Explorer.
The only difference between the Netscape 4 debacle and Internet Explorer is that Netscape didn't have the resources to develop a better browser. They ended up needing to spin off browser development, thus resulting in Firefox in the long term. Microsoft has no such constraints. They have nearly everything they need to make IE a better browser, but they don't want to give up their stranglehold on the web.
Well too damn bad. It's only a matter of time before IE loses its majority market share. The more the IE percentages drop, the faster the uptake of alternative browsers.
I used to have a very pretty Space Invaders game written in 100% DHTML, but I never released it where anyone could see it. If you're curious, shoot me an email sometime and I'll point you to it. While it had sound effects and music, the underlying code was not nearly as good as I could have done. (It was written before I had a really good feel for how bad of an idea innerHTML was.)
Neither of us is as good as the Space Invaders clone in TFA, though. That is a marvelous piece of game design right there. Very professional in every way.
(Mine is based on the NES version rather than the more modern Tetris versions, so use UP to rotate, DOWN to make it drop faster, LEFT/RIGHT to reposition the piece. If you use IE, click outside the block-drop area to make sure that it has proper focus as I have not finished the adapter.)
While not as pretty, there's also an online multiplayer version written in Javascript here:
Slashdot Mirror
Ah hah, a cagne sur of Street Fighter 2010!
Ugh. I can't imagine even trying Crossfire on the 800XL's keyboard. The flat panel keyboards on those were almost more for show than actual use. Not good for gaming at all. Even the overly complex joystick controls would have been an improvement over that keyboard.
I had the PCjr version, which had a much more satisfying keyboard. (Though not the chiclet keyboard everyone complains about. The "wireless" infrared one. Yeah, I suppose it wasn't that much better. :-/) I honestly can't stand the modal joystick controls for Crossfire. Not only do you have to hold the button to switch the joystick to fire mode, but the craft automatically stops at every intersection. I tried to get used to that, but I found that it just limited maneuverability rather than helping. And maneuverability was one thing you REALLY needed in that game. ;-)
The original was a minigame in Project Gotham. Soo... I don't think that really counts.
Sorry. :-)
FWIW, the game is meant to evoke a sense of classic vector games like Gravitar, Asteroids, Tempest, and Star Wars. In that it succeeds brilliantly. But the game is very much a modern game with modern gameplay. Which is actually a good thing, because it shows what happens when game designers apply all their modern knowledge toward pick-up-and-play games. (Often of the "arcade" variety.)
I don't know if there are any fans of the classic game Crossfire here, but I'd love to know if this reimagining of the game does it justice*. I've tried a few clones (notably SDL Crossfire, GridBlaster, and Gridfire), but none of them were very satisfying. In fact, most of them made changes that I felt were distateful to anyone who enjoyed the original. (Or maybe I was the only one who played with keyboard controls? Hmm...)
Anyway, try it out and let me know what you think. And if you have a Wii, give it a go there. It's tons of fun with two controllers. :)
* Warning: This is still a beta. If you want to save high score, you need to be logged into the website. Sound is not yet there. Internet Explorer is not supported due to its lack of Canvas support. And did I mention that it's 100% Javascript? :-)
You must be new here. We get very few "Real Genius" jokes around these parts, and many go unrecognized. Quite sad, I'm afraid... ...or in deference to you Kent, it's like lasing a stick of dynamite. :-P
Press the space bar.
That's the worst argument I've ever heard. I've got two words for you Psystar: Berne Convention
You'd almost think they were organized just to antagonize Apple. Hmm...
Heh. Sorry, I just figured out that trick the other day and just had to share. Being a programmer, I'm terminally lazy about everything. And nothing is more annoying than either having to log out of my current account -OR- open a completely different web browser. (I used to do the latter.) I got the bright idea yesterday of using Chrome's incognito mode as a method of circumventing this issue. One incognito window, and *BAM* I'm clear from my browser's normal sessions and cookies. As a bonus, the browser does not save the admin session or login, making it a nice boost to security.
The only problem I've found with this scheme is that Chrome does do form pre-filling in incognito mode. Which (call me crazy) seems like a rather severe breach for a "privacy" mode. Go figure.
While Chrome may "complicate" their relationship, ideally there should be as many browsers on the market as possible. Microsoft's monopoly over the web produced a sort of tunnel-vision toward website development. Having a variety of browsers available has been changing that. The more browsers available, the more pressure will be placed upon companies to support standards compliance.
So while Mozilla and Google may compete, doing so is in both their interests. In addition, competition is in the consumer's interest because it keeps pushing the browser market forward and gaining us great features like HTML5 compliance, process isolation, privacy modes*, malware protection, etc.
* I've found this to be an excellent way to use an admin login on a site where I also have regular user credentials.
That would remove all the charm of these hacks. What's really cool about such mechanical machines is that they demonstrate computer science in a visual manner. Even we professionals who know that computers != electronics are wowed to death when we see a mechanical computer large enough to watch its operation and see its inner workings. (Even if it is virtual.) Imagine what it's like for those not familiar with computer science? Such a massive computational machine is beyond their belief, even if it performs a simple task. It hearkens back to 60's scifi where computers are monstrously large creations that have incredible brain power. It's pretty cool stuff!
Replace all the mechanics and physics with a few virtual circuit boards and you remove all the charm. The levels stop being machines of wonder and go straight back to their black boxes. To the average user, a circuit board in the game is nothing but a fancy script.
Hi Scott! I've been trying to contact you about a Galaxian clone you wrote some years ago. I've managed to port it to modern web browsers and I'd like to chat with you a bit about it. Unfortunately, all your contact info appears to be horribly out of date. If you get a chance, can you shoot me an email at akaimbatman@gmail.com ASAP?
Thanks!
While that probably does have some effect, there are three words that come to mind when I think of battery development:
Environmental
Impact
Statement
That right there will kill any power generation or storage technology before it's even a glimmer in an scientist/engineer's eye.
Fixed that for you. Linux will take over on the desktop when it becomes competitive and user friendly on the desktop. Ubuntu has been doing a good job in moving that direction, but the system still needs to be (ironically) more open to users installing software and performing tasks outside of the sandbox offered by the package manager.
Hahahahah! That's funny, dude. You had me going there for a moment. Great-- oh. You're serious? Seriously?
I think the real question is have you tried any other browsers? Above all else, IE's lack of standards support stands out like a sore thumb. Every time I develop a site for the damn thing, I can't help but notice that simple features like DOM2 and CSS2 still aren't supported even though they are over a DECADE old. That means that sites have to be gimped for IE's substandard support. And it shows. Modern websites perform poorly in Internet Explorer, with interfaces that are regularly slower or degraded. (I remember one application that had a column sort. Near instantaneous in Firefox, about 20 seconds in IE. I had to algorithmically optimize the living hell out of it just because IE was sucking so badly. ) And don't even get me started at how grating IE7 is on the eyes. I mean, the interface looks like an amateur artist took a dump all over the screen. Ungainly tabs, toolbars in odd places, over the top graphics, etc. The best I can say for it is that it works. Sometimes.
Don't even get me started on Microsoft's outright unwillingness to support upcoming standards like HTML 5. Funny, it never seemed to be a problem 10 years ago when their browser was the only one that implemented the standards. :-/
IE7 is the worst major browser on the market today, bar none. FireFox, Opera, Safari, SeaMonkey, Chrome, etc. are all FAR better options. Anyone who thinks that IE is "a good browser" is woefully out of touch with what is available on the market today. I cannot wait to jettison the piece of crap. Especially after I noticed that Microsoft is *explicitly* ignoring the same requests for standards support that they did in IE7. When the RFE for support of DOM2 Events is closed as "works according to specs", you know there's a problem.
*swoop* You rang?
That was the exact same problem I had.
I'm going to take a wild guess and say that the TV that works is a CRT and the one that doesn't work is not. Am I right?
The settings were always there, but it can be confusing to get them right. For some reason progressive scan vs. widescreen are different settings. I'd actually suggest trying the minimum of SD/4:3, and then try HD/16:9 if that doesn't work. Couldn't hurt to try, anyway. :-)
Also, Composite and SVideo cables require that you use SD, but the system can still emit a 16:9 signal. So you might want to make sure that you're using SD/4:3 if you're not using component cables.
Been there, done that. As I mentioned in another post, it's not always a viable solution.
Q: Am I the only one around here who uses VMs to write or build custom kernels?
This being Slashdot and all, I'd generally expect a greater response in the affirmative. Hmm...
Make sure your Wii is configured for Widescreen/Progressive or Standard/Interlaced. Occasionally the system can end up being set to Widescreen/Interlaced which reeks all kinds of havoc with Virtual Console games.
(This particularly happens with Gamecube games that offered Progressive scan support. If you forget to press the magic combination when you start the game, it will happily reconfigure your Wii to Interlaced mode. Boo!)
Let me know if that fixes you up. :-)
There are a variety of circumstances under which this doesn't work. Particularly when dealing with a custom build of an OS or a true hobby OS. Such OSes often have support for common file systems, so this sort of solution is perfect.
In addition, using a lesser known VM environment can also lead to difficulties in transferring data back and forth. e.g. QEmu, Bochs, etc. Apart from having low price tags, these projects rock because you can add debugging info into the VM and recompile. Makes it a lot easier to understand what you're doing wrong. (Especially when we're talking about kicking a kernel you wrote into protected mode. Always fraught with troubles, that is.)
The new "Audio" object in HTML 5 is an up and coming standard that should make such problems go away. But until that time, consider using a solution like SoundManager2:
http://www.schillmania.com/projects/soundmanager2/
Do you ever run a virtualization program (VMWare, VirtualPC, QEmu, VirtualBox, etc.) on your Mac? Ever had a situation where you wish you could move files from the host to the client? Tired of creating ISOs just to move files back and forth?
Well, have we go a solution for you!!!! ;-)
(Call now! Operators are standing by!)
Like this? Breakout is a fairly simple game that requires only minimal animation. That makes it relatively easy to program. That doesn't mean it can't be done better. The breakout example I linked to it pretty choppy once you slow it down to a reasonable speed.
I wrote a DHTML version of Pong a while back that is far superior. Here's a link. The underlying architecture was very primitive when I wrote it, not having features like the Canvas tag available. And yet it is one of the better Pong variations on the net. (If you don't mind my saying so.) The reason for its superiority is simple: 95% of people who write a game don't understand what makes games interesting.
In the case of Pong, nearly all variations are too slow and the AI consists of stupidly following the ball. Well, that's not very fun. The ball should bounce fairly quickly and the AI should respond like a human. How do you make AI respond like a human, though? Simple: It should not act robotic and it should make mistakes.
The AI for Pong stops moving the paddle when the ball is traveling in the opposite direction. This helps remove the "robot" feel of the opponent. Next, the computer is limited to the same rate of movement as the player. This gives the player a chance to sneak one by the computer. (Since the ball is faster than the paddle.) Finally, the AI has a bit of jitter in its algorithm. Rather than moving with the ball, it computes where the ball is expected to be. A random amount of jitter is then added to the computation so that the computer has the possibility of "misjudging" where the ball will actually arrive. By adjusting the jitter, the game can be made to play on easy, normal, or hard. (Use the options menu to set the difficulty. Though for some reason, the menu doesn't work on Chrome. So just be aware of that issue.)
Another game that is rarely done right is Tetris. Take the Jetris game in the "GameJS" link. It's a nice tech demo, but it's a sub-par game. And not because the game is of the "classic" Tetris variety. (My own Tetris game was of the same variety.) It at least gets the coloring right in that each piece is a specific color. (Though adhering to the Tetris standards for coloring would have been an improvement.) That's a good first step. The bigger issue is that the piece selection does not have a very good distribution of pieces. I regularly get three or four of the same piece in a row. That should never happen in a good Tetris game. Programmers need to take steps to ensure that the player will never get more than two of the same piece in a row. The Tetris "Bag" algorithm is a good solution to this that makes the game more fun. Another good trick is to ensure that pieces always arrive in the default rotation.
Anyway, the point of my rant is that the technology is rarely the problem. A good game programmer can make a fun game out of nearly any technology. An inexperienced game programmer with no understanding of what is "fun" can make any technology look like the problem.
By the time IE 10 comes out, it will look like what Netscape 2.0 looks like to today's market. Even today, users hanging on to IE are reminiscent of the die hard users of Netscape 4. Netscape 4 was awful in comparison to IE5, but since it was the only viable alternative to IE, it hung around for quite a while. Life got a lot better when the Internet purged NS4, and it will get a lot better when it purges Internet Explorer.
The only difference between the Netscape 4 debacle and Internet Explorer is that Netscape didn't have the resources to develop a better browser. They ended up needing to spin off browser development, thus resulting in Firefox in the long term. Microsoft has no such constraints. They have nearly everything they need to make IE a better browser, but they don't want to give up their stranglehold on the web.
Well too damn bad. It's only a matter of time before IE loses its majority market share. The more the IE percentages drop, the faster the uptake of alternative browsers.
You're too kind. :-)
You can see some videos of a PacMan game I was working on as well as the evolution of the Tetris game here: http://www.youtube.com/profile?user=thewiirocks&view=videos
I used to have a very pretty Space Invaders game written in 100% DHTML, but I never released it where anyone could see it. If you're curious, shoot me an email sometime and I'll point you to it. While it had sound effects and music, the underlying code was not nearly as good as I could have done. (It was written before I had a really good feel for how bad of an idea innerHTML was.)
Neither of us is as good as the Space Invaders clone in TFA, though. That is a marvelous piece of game design right there. Very professional in every way.
Needs work. Here's my version, complete with an adapter for Internet Exploder:
http://java.dnsalias.com/tetris/ie
(Mine is based on the NES version rather than the more modern Tetris versions, so use UP to rotate, DOWN to make it drop faster, LEFT/RIGHT to reposition the piece. If you use IE, click outside the block-drop area to make sure that it has proper focus as I have not finished the adapter.)
While not as pretty, there's also an online multiplayer version written in Javascript here:
http://www.wiicade.com/gameDetail.aspx?gameID=1063
That one is not mine, though the programmer did use my network technology. ;-)