Decompilations have opened up all kinds of possibilities and technical wonders when it comes to porting games to other devices that they weren't officially designed for, and one of the most impressive and notorious examples of this are the ports to the SEGA Dreamcast of both Grand Theft Auto III and Grand Theft Auto: Vice City, which took some major reworks and technical prowess to achieve them, and much more so to get them running at playable framerates.

But there are times when porting a game goes beyond video game consoles, and sometimes it gets ported to the most interesting of places, with the latest being browser port of Vice City, meaning the game runs entirely through the internet browser, all thanks to the reVC decompilation.

Gaming website DOS Zone has achieved such an endeavour, with their efforts being worked on making the entirety of Vice City playable through an internet browser. DOS Zone is a website ran by gaming enthusiasts in which they "adapt historical gaming heritage" by porting titles to browser and making them accessible to everyone.

While the guys over at DOS Zone have indeed ported over the entirety of Vice City, playing the game through the browser does come with some caveats, as DOS Zone does try to work alongside copyright law:

The game is given as a limited demo. You can travel and enjoy the gameplay as much as you want but upon going to the 1st story checkpoint (Hotel Ocean View), you're required to upload an original game file to continue. For example gtavc.exe The fact of uploading the original files of the game is checked by checksums.

By this, you are proving that you have bought the game. This version of the game is provided solely for educational and research purposes and demonstrates the technical capabilities of running complex game engines in modern web. The port is created using open source code available on the internet (Github repos, projects re3 / reVC), in accordance with the licenses.

As mentioned above, players can play a demo of the game running through the browser, and those that do wish to continue playing through DOS Zone the full game, can do so by providing the original files for Vice City, in this case, "gtavc.exe", and the website will perform a checksum run-through to verify that the provided file is correct, and then let the player continue playing with the full game unlocked.

DOS Zone also provides multiple videogames aside from Vice City, so for those interested in checking out what other videogames are there to play through, be sure to visit DOS Zone's website.

"Grand Theft Auto: Vice City" on DOS Zone
DOS Zone Website

Update: it got taken down by DMCA, Taken down. you can see it on the website itself.

 

[mathew77]

Wow!.. Could we play it on a Switch 2's webkit?..

 

[SDA]

I don't think Rockstar will approve.

 

[Reploid]

y tho

 

[Dark_Ansem]

Earlier than gta 6

 

[tech3475]

y tho

Why not? They give a reason why they did this.

This version of the game is provided solely for educational and research purposes and demonstrates the technical capabilities of running complex game engines in modern web.

In practical terms playing with a web browser can be useful for systems with more limited capabilities e.g. ChromeOS.

 

[isoboy]

I'm playing GTA4 4k with fusionfix on and off these days. There's a mod that speeds up traffic to make cars fly like bullets. It's hilarious but impossible to play so I edited only the taxi's and ambulances to behave like that since they're fairly common but also random and now I'm enjoying the game but once in a while a taxi will just mow down everything in its path, sending everything and everyone flying. The beauty of the rage engine....

 

[Lostbhoy]

Why not? They give a reason why they did this.



In practical terms playing with a web browser can be useful for systems with more limited capabilities e.g. ChromeOS.

Boss... Why aren't you working?
Employee... I'm researching the streets of vice city for educational purposes... Hold on to i kill this hooker

Gotta love that disclaimer

 

[lightwo]

I'm sure I'd love this if I was younger and attended school/college again!

Nothing beats running original games on bare metal, but not everyone keeps shared computers wide open to running anything after all.

I have no use of WASM games myself, but it's always neat seeing cursed ports like this!


Edit: Hmm, nice port! I played for a few minutes and completed a few missions without any issues. However, it doesn't seem like you can export saves, so it looks like saves are bound to their paid subscription tied to DOS Zone accounts that use some Xsolla authentication system. For that reason, I'm not interested at all... and it's a big shame it doesn't appear to be open source, despite being based on open source reVC.

Edit 2: It isn't even their infra they use for cloud saves, yet they charge for it?!

Spoiler: It's just Yandex Cloud

// Snippet from:
// https://cdn.dos.zone/vcsky/release/vc-sky-en-v5/jsdos-cloud-sdk.js

"use strict";
var CloudSDK;
(function (CloudSDK) {
    const v8Endpoint = "https://d5dn8hh4ivlobv6682ep.apigw.yandexcloud.net";
    const storageEndpoint = "https://storage.yandexcloud.net/doszone-uploads/personal-v2/cloud";
    const presignPut = v8Endpoint + "/presign-put";
    async function resolveToken(token) {
        if (token && token.length === 5) {
            const response = await fetch("https://cloud.js-dos.com/token/get?id=" + token);
            const data = await response.json();
            if (data.token === token) {
                return data;
            }
        }
        return null;
    }
    CloudSDK.resolveToken = resolveToken;
    async function pushToStorage(token, fileName, payload) {
        const profile = await resolveToken(token);
        if (!profile || !profile.premium) {
            return false;
        }
// ...

 

[GothicIII]

Step 1: Take down Demo because of high demand (doh!)
Step 2: Take down full version because of licensing issues
Step 3: Offer monthly premium to access 20y old game.
Step 4: Profit!

 

[LoggerMan]

> Due to the unexpectedly high popularity of the project, resulting in significant traffic costs, and in order to avoid any risk of the project being shut down due to rights holder claims, we have disabled the demo version. You can still run the full version by providing the original game resources.

 

[Chellarina]

I wanted to say how cool and useful for preservation this is, but it being closed source and requiring payment for save use is a big no no.
That means it has nothing to do with educational purposes and they'll be lucky if Rockstar stops at a DMCA takedown (which they truly deserve; people like this give game preservationists a bad name).

I hope I'm wrong, please correct me if I am (haven't checked it out myself).

 

[shakrdev]

View attachment 546898​

Decompilations have opened up all kinds of possibilities and technical wonders when it comes to porting games to other devices that they weren't officially designed for, and one of the most impressive and notorious examples of this are the ports to the SEGA Dreamcast of both Grand Theft Auto III and Grand Theft Auto: Vice City, which took some major reworks and technical prowess to achieve them, and much more so to get them running at playable framerates.

But there are times when porting a game goes beyond video game consoles, and sometimes it gets ported to the most interesting of places, with the latest being browser port of Vice City, meaning the game runs entirely through the internet browser, all thanks to the reVC decompilation.

Gaming website DOS Zone has achieved such an endeavour, with their efforts being worked on making the entirety of Vice City playable through an internet browser. DOS Zone is a website ran by gaming enthusiasts in which they "adapt historical gaming heritage" by porting titles to browser and making them accessible to everyone.

While the guys over at DOS Zone have indeed ported over the entirety of Vice City, playing the game through the browser does come with some caveats, as DOS Zone does try to work alongside copyright law:



As mentioned above, players can play a demo of the game running through the browser, and those that do wish to continue playing through DOS Zone the full game, can do so by providing the original files for Vice City, in this case, "gtavc.exe", and the website will perform a checksum run-through to verify that the provided file is correct, and then let the player continue playing with the full game unlocked.

DOS Zone also provides multiple videogames aside from Vice City, so for those interested in checking out what other videogames are there to play through, be sure to visit DOS Zone's website.

"Grand Theft Auto: Vice City" on DOS Zone
DOS Zone Website

 

[NostalgicMillennial]

If only someone could pick up REVC and RE3 and finish what was started...

 

[Robert Newbie]

If only someone could pick up REVC and RE3 and finish what was started...

The pain still haunts me. As a huge GTA3 fan, I wanted to see the project finish the remaining goals. Most notably, the physics are still broken at high framerates. I wonder if the "reverse remaining unused/debug functions" would have led to any new discoveries.

OpenRW sounded interesting, but the project hasn't been touched in months.

Now that I think about it, wasn't the entirety of GTA3's code released with the Definitive Edition? I'm not sure if that had a huge effect on what we know about the game, especially since the game had already been decompiled.

TL;DR: Mentioning GTA3 is an easy way to get me to nerd out.

 

[BraveDragonWolf]

Ah, Vice City... Where punching your own car is against the law...

 

[Viri]

Lock up your daughters! Shoot your sons! Because Love Fist is coming to town!

Spoiler

 

[LanHikariDS]

The pain still haunts me. As a huge GTA3 fan, I wanted to see the project finish the remaining goals. Most notably, the physics are still broken at high framerates. I wonder if the "reverse remaining unused/debug functions" would have led to any new discoveries.

OpenRW sounded interesting, but the project hasn't been touched in months.

Now that I think about it, wasn't the entirety of GTA3's code released with the Definitive Edition? I'm not sure if that had a huge effect on what we know about the game, especially since the game had already been decompiled.

TL;DR: Mentioning GTA3 is an easy way to get me to nerd out.

GTA3 is just such a fun rabbit hole, too!

 

[Jayinem]

You can also now play GTA 3 on Charmin toilet paper.

 

[Zumoly]

The website was taken down.