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Frequently Asked Questions

• Q. What are the Browser requirements ?

• Q. Why do 3D TOMB II not work with Firefox or Safari ?

• Q. How big is 3D TOMB II ?

• Q. How did you manage to fit everything in less than 4k ?

• Q. Why not using all the 4096 bytes ?

• Q. How many levels is there ?

• Q. What should I do when I used all my ammos ?

• Q. How long have you worked on 3D TOMB II ?

• Q. Why don't you use modern techniques such as Canvas ?

• Q. How can I contact you ?

Answers

• Q. What are the Browser requirements ?

  A. the game fully works in IE 5.5+ and Opera 9+.

• Q. Why do 3D TOMB II not work with Firefox or Safari ?

  A. To make it short, the rendering technique used in 3D TOMB II put Firefox's rendering engine on the knees. Firefox is 7 to 18 times slower than Opera and IE. Also Firefox and Safari suffer from a problem in their management of z-index.

• Q. How big is 3D TOMB II ?

  A. There is 1280 bytes of images, 622 bytes of HTML and 2101 bytes of JavaScript, which gives a total of 4003 bytes. That's 93 bytes less than the symbolic 4k ( 4096 bytes ) limit and 437 bytes less than the first 3D TOMB.

• Q. How did you manage to fit everything in less than 4k ?

  A. First, the images are grouped by function and uses little but appropriate amount of colours. The code uses basic Object Oriented Progamming, short variable names and is written to be packer-friendly. Finally the JavaScript is compressed to collapse repeated patterns of code into 1 byte. The compression wipes 1174 bytes out of 3275 bytes of JavaScript.

• Q. Why not using all the 4096 bytes ?

  A. Well, it's hard to reach an exact size limit. Of course I can add features and tweak the graphics ad nauseum. But I already spent an insane amount of time on 3D TOMB II and should move on to another project.

• Q. How many levels is there ?

  A. Many. In fact, there is no limit. However, the deeper you go in the tomb the faster the creatures move and attack. You will have a hard time to make it past the 20th level.

• Q. What should I do when I used all my ammos ?

  A. Run!

• Q. How long have you worked on 3D TOMB II ?

  A. It's really hard to answer. I began to work on a new engine in July 2002 right after the last edition of the5K. I worked in my spare times, experimenting many approaches to find the fastest and smallest techniques. Since the first 3D TOMB I have coded not less than 4 different engines and 3 JavaScript packers. By summer 2003 the game was ready and weighed about 4.7k. Minor adjustments were done every now and then until I decided to work more seriously on 3D TOMB II in june 2007 in order to finally release it. About 50hours were necessary to change some graphics, gain more than 700 bytes and go below the symbolic size of 4k.

• Q. Why don't you use modern techniques such as Canvas ?

  A. Simply because Canvas did not exist back in 2002 when I wrote most of 3D TOMB II. This also reflects in the pixelated aspect of the game. It was designed to work at 10-15fps on the average computer available at the time.

• Q. How can I contact you ?

  A. Drop by my personal site www.p01.org.

Copyright 2002-08 Mathieu 'p01' Henri