Subjunctive Games

Do You Ever Play MindWare Offline AND Without Internet Access?

Added 2025-10-03 13:01:38 +0000 UTC

I'm working on optimizing the 3D dream minigame. I've recreated it from scratch in Three.js, and it works great - you can turn around smoothly using mouse/keyboard/touch, hypno videos play nicely in all popular browsers, and the overall performance is much better. What's more, the minigame is fully backward compatible, so it's a plug-and-play replacement.

BUT! There's a major technical limitation: Browser security restrictions (CORS policy) block local file loading into WebGL contexts. Basically, if you download MindWare and open mindware.html (or index.html or whatever I call it) directly from your computer (file:// protocol), the browser refuses to load the animated content into the 3D space. This is a security feature that prevents malicious websites from accessing your local files - but it also breaks legitimate offline use.

There are three solutions:

You run a simple local web server (like python -m http.server)
⭐️ The game (index.html opened locally) obtains the videos from the internet (hosted on my server)
You play the web-hosted version

SO! If we go with the simplest solution (number 2), then the only people who would theoretically be affected by the CORS policy limitations would be those who play locally and without internet access. Such players could be served a fallback version with procedurally-generated animated effects (spirals, waves, tunnels, etc.) instead of the current hypno videos.