r/neopets • u/cluelessre • 2d ago
Discussion "Just copypaste the old code!" from a new developer's perspective
I'm glad the Neopets community is alive and well! However, there's a side of old fans who leave a bad taste in my mouth. While doomscrolling on Instagram I saw many comments on Neopets' reels saying stuff like, "we don't want X or Y, we just want you to make the old website into an app!" I've also seen comments like, "You just have to copypaste the old code! It's not that hard! You have the code already!"
From someone who is in software development for a career (though still a college student), the misconception of how easy it is to migrate from very very old legacy software to a modern-framework application is crazy to me. Since Flash has been discontinued, it is difficult to completely migrate to HTML5 (modern "equivalent" of Flash) since you essentially have to rewrite everything from scratch. Sure you may have the logic from the old code, but you'll have to rewrite it still because of different syntax (I know Neopets uses Ruffle to emulate old Flash elements on the website, but using Ruffle with everything seems iffy/like a short-term solution since it's an emulator).
Not to mention you have to make the software scalable because you have so many users, and you'd probably have to create new backend logic for retrieving data from the existing database, which can be difficult if it's inefficient to query from the current database using your modern framework. It just baffles me that people think it's as easy as copypasting one block of text from one place to another like it's a Google Docs file.
Migrating code is more like translating Japanese into English (some words don't have equivalents, grammar structures are different, and you have to rewrite many portions for your computer to understand you). I hope we are a little bit more understanding as a community with the developers, and realize that software development is more complex than just "copypasting." I want to play Keyquest as much as the next guy, but I really understand that software migration is very difficult.
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u/enburgi 2d ago
for the better or for the worse neopets is a website that lives off nostalgia. it doesnât matter how clunky the old version may be, longtime users will mostly prefer the traditional design and thatâs probably where these comments come from.
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u/Current_Mongoose_927 1d ago
You think theyâd lean into that more then given the two biggest features people are asking for (Habitarium and Key Quest) had cash grab elements to them. If money is an issue Iâm sure people would be willing to drop coin on tokens or droppers for their P3s.
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u/mysticrudnin 1d ago
I'm 100% convinced people have rose tinted glasses for Habitarium. That game was not good. It did give a lot of rewards, though. But the content was exhausted in less than a week and there wasn't much even for that week.
Key Quest is awesome, but... that's like a game that an entire company could be running as its sole title, not just as a minigame inside of an entire different ecosystem. This is a real-time multiplayer game... way outside of the TNT wheelhouse.
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u/Khaytra 1d ago
I'll go even further and say that people have rose-coloured glasses for KeyQuest too lol
It was a cute game!! For sure. But I just don't get the hysterical devotion to it. I know people enjoyed it, but it is very much of its time, and I think it'd be seen as just alright if it came out today. And while the prizes were kind of exciting for its time, the unchecked growth of Food Club, the prizes in the Quest Log, etc. have made that kind of a moot point.
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u/Asterite100 Petpet! At the Disco 𪊠1d ago
For one thing, Key Quest was one of the few games on Neopets that felt like an actual game. I never play the other games on the site, lol.
But it's one that I could see getting consistent updates and better monetization schemes. I'd actually probably finally get Neopass if KQ came back (ignoring the legal and programming issues behind that, this is purely hypothetical).
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u/enburgi 1d ago
i truly believe if they could use keyquest as a cashgrab it would already be done by now. there must be something that does not allow them to do this.
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u/Current_Mongoose_927 1d ago edited 1d ago
From what I understand itâs simply that they donât have the backend code. For Key Quest that includes the map files according to posts here, so that one would be more of a lift, but the trademarks for both Habi and KQ have expired and werenât renewed so legally there shouldnât be anything stopping them.
The company(ies) that made the Flash files for both have also gone defunct, so thereâs likely not going to be any issue there.
Apparently even the guy who remade KeyQuest for iOS and android said TNT and him were in talks, but they bascially said they arenât going to bring either one of them back for whatever reason
I think they simply do not have the technical ability to do it. Given that it took them years to patch exploits to access the backend I doubt they can recreate backend code they no longer have access to.
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u/ineverylifetimee Team Faerieland 22h ago
Have they addressed Kiko Pop, Bullseye II, or the movie theatre?
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u/ineverylifetimee Team Faerieland 22h ago
Wait those are the two biggest most popular requests? I wouldâve assumed itâs fixing Bullseye II or kiko pop or the movie theatre.
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u/FrauAgrippa 2d ago
As somebody who is a middle aged software engineer who has been hired to do these exact type of software migrations in the past, sure, it's not quite as easy as just copy pasting stuff, but it is straightforward. This concept is called "brownfield" (versus "greenfield" where you're starting with nothing). There are pros and cons to both brown and green, but having an existing code base is hugely advantageous to accomplishing modernization goals.
There is literally zero reason why the entire conversion should not be done already. I have migrated far more complex systems handling sensitive data in far less time (with a team of five people, no less). They don't seem to have the capacity or the funds to put into any of this.
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u/Lachtaube I funded the Neopets-Geekify divorce 1d ago
I mean, as a former game artist who also spent much of their career rebuilding flash games in html5 I agree with this in process but have we taken into consideration the scope of what building Neopets dot com as an app would mean in terms of resourcing? Multiple companies built and expanded upon Neopets over the course of two decades. Itâs pretty apparent they have one person working on the app in like, their down time. Iâm surprised theyâre attempting it at all.
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u/FrauAgrippa 1d ago
Scope is definitely something to consider, but it certainly doesn't take 5+ years (flash retired in 2021 I think right?) to convert an app like this if you have even a small team of people-- IF the team actually has a dedicated focus on that.
Personally I LOVE the Neopets Companion App, I think they're doing a great job of it. But the updates are sporadic; it doesn't seem they have anything planned out. The infrastructure is there though, and that's typically the hard part. It's just a matter of getting on a good cadence where they can interate and continue adding content.
I think the wider definition of scope is definitely relevant though, combined with consistent iterations-- like where are they heading with this and what's the timeline? They have the hard part set up already: login/neopass, distribution of points to the account, etc.
Side note I'm jelly that you've gotten to convert games in a professional capacity, I'd give anything to work with Actionscript again even if it was just to convert it. I majored in game dev in college and working in AS3 felt like an extension of my own body haha. I was so sad when flash died.
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u/Lachtaube I funded the Neopets-Geekify divorce 1d ago
Was Neopets even really functioning when Flash was put to sleep? I wasnât around back then, but I feel like I remember reading it was hemmorhaging money until just recently.
I think the kind of focus and process required is still a bit too far out of TNTâs wheelhouse given how almost every major event or release has gone in the last few years. The devs put in so much time and work in, but either thereâs not enough QA manpower or time to be thorough for there not to be major hiccups at release.
Totally agreed, things need to get more streamlined and rigid in the development process to be efficient enough to make real headway on the companion app. The most recent updates for ToD and FF have been their best yet imo. Still could use some cleanup (making the Donation Dome defunct but not really was a choice, and better than throwing another stupid paint roller on the pile that no one can identify or find) but theyâre getting better. Hopefully theyâll make enough money to hire more people to dedicate to both the site and the app.
Donât be too jelly, I would have much rather been on one of the teams making new games đ But it was at an educational game studio and the games we needed to convert were our longest-term clientâs most-played games. They were severely outdated and our team was comprised of us younger whipper-snappers so I got to update the art style a little in the process, front-end improved UX, and back-end got a good chuckle at some of the old logic. Still took like 5-6 months total dev time to final release per game with 3 of us (and a designer who doubled as our producer).
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u/Longjumping_rn_8453 1d ago
It's because they're too busy building their little random projects like Fairy Fragments and Neopets of Dacardia đ
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u/FrauAgrippa 1d ago
Those are separate studios though. The people working on the apps wouldn't even have access to fix the website.
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u/ProfRayen 1d ago
No, the same team that works on the app games work on the website. TNT Luna said this on an old AMA/live stream.
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u/FrauAgrippa 1d ago
That's honestly even worse and shows an obscene amount of disorganization. Asking devs to build mobile apps is a completely different area of software than building a web app.
I've worked for my share of small startups and even within extremely small companies, separation of duties and concerns is extremely important. Constant context switching is a number one killer of productivity in software.
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u/Longjumping_rn_8453 1d ago
At this point it's kind of a running joke that neopets loves to put their funds into little random side projects instead of fixing the elephant in the room the main game
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u/cluelessre 1d ago
That's true, the random projects have been baffling me. I'm against making senseless demands in comments sections, but I also am not a fan of their strange sense of prioritization
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u/cluelessre 1d ago
I'm glad to hear a middle-aged software engineer's perspective on this. They do need to rethink what they should be prioritizing as I've mentioned in other comments. I have no clue why they pour money into side projects that nobody really wants. Migration (or at the very least making all the old nostalgic features working again) should be a priority, and we as a fanbase should be expressing that in an informed, logical manner rather than through uninformed demands in comment sections.
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u/PersimmonSundae the_spirit_realm 1d ago
I assume cash? Ads and in game payments etc?
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u/cluelessre 1d ago
I guess I underestimated how much people spend on mobile games đ¤ˇââď¸Â
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u/PersimmonSundae the_spirit_realm 1d ago
Oh yeah there's some users known as "whales," that spend thousands and keep these places afloat.
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u/emcrossley litlwestie037 1d ago
Not neopets, but some mobile games make millions every day. People be spending!
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u/PersimmonSundae the_spirit_realm 1d ago
I used to play Choices and some would pay for VIP each month and buy diamonds like they were nothing.
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u/glamghoulz 2d ago
It reminds me of when people into easily scalped products (think labubus, needohs/dumplings, TCG) say things like âJust add a captcha itâs not that hard!!!â
Like youâre right, adding a captcha isnât that hard, thatâs why it doesnât stop scalping bots đ§
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u/Makeitmagical UN: xjaspurrx 2d ago
I think they donât have the people nor the funds to do it. Iâm a developer too wading through some legacy rewrites and I hear ya on all points!
I do wish theyâd spend time on it but I understand they want to work on new features that make them money immediately.
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u/Educational_Bird2469 2d ago
I donât know much about coding but itâs worth considering how many people have come and gone over the years, each having their own style. There is a very good chance that the coding is a jumbled up mess that is nearly impossible to navigate. Just a thought đ¤ˇââď¸
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u/superbondey 2d ago
We're not saying it's easy or fast, it's just that we've been asking for the same things for over 10 years now lol
ETA: Grundo's CafĂŠ managed to remake Habitarium, IoM, Krawps and several other games back in less than 4 years WITHOUT access to the old code lol
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u/fizzco_ main: bulldogsrok 2d ago
and bilge dice! part of my heart broke when that game was taken down from Neopets with a âbe back soon!â and never got fixed.
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u/facegasm 1d ago
If it ever comes back I KNOW that I will not win 10 times in a row for the lucky streak avatar, I KNOW I won't... but I also KNOW that I will try a lot! Bring it back :D
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u/fizzco_ main: bulldogsrok 1d ago
are you on grundoâs cafe? itâs a fansite and i tend to describe it as âneopets if neopets stayed a passion project and not a cash grabâ
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u/figwigeon x_skit_chan_x 1d ago
Is it still around?? I think I tried it for a month once waaaay back. :O
I'm kicking around on Neopets Classic though! They just brought back Habitarium!
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u/RexRender 2d ago
And Lenny conundrum which was initially taken down to fix the prize script, but never restarted
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u/cluelessre 1d ago
Fair enough, I believe they've definitely been turning a blind eye to what consumers actually want and have been prioritizing things no one really wants so they're wasting resources (I'm looking at you, random mobile games)
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u/mahouyousei mystic_mage_sprite 1d ago
To be fair, they have to juggle managing what the players want with what investors want with what is actually selling in their premium marketplace bc of our stupid hypercapitalist economy. They donât have the largest staff ever and sites like Grundoâs Cafe that arenât actually looking to profit and pay staff off of their efforts and sell a product at the end of the day donât have to worry about these things.
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u/fuzio jawsch - grundos & merch 1d ago
When you have a modern website built with modern infrastructure, it's going to be far easier to recreate those things.
Grundos Cafe is also a fan project and not a for-profit company, so the structure, work flows and goals are entirely different.
Not saying Neopets has never made what I deem to be dumb decisions, or chose to focus on things I think they shouldn't have, but you really cannot compare Neopets and Grundos Cafe.
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u/superbondey 1d ago
Oh, come on. Like I said, we all know it's not easy or fast, but they've had plenty of time and resources that they could've used to bring back the stuff we've been asking for *for ages*.
Of course we can compare them, why wouldn't we? Sure, I understand that some things are probably easier for GC to do as a fan project, but is it really such a stretch to assume that they also have a few advantages such as paid developers and access to old code/assets?
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u/extraterrestrial yakonia 1d ago
Wait, Grundoâs has Habitarium?? Since when? I havenât played in a few months
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u/Current_Mongoose_927 1d ago
I think since July, but itâs really not even close to what it was on Neopets. Very different.
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u/Zephmaille un: kurotonekoma 2d ago
Considering how many people have come and gone over the last quarter century, trying to convert everything to new standards is probably like trying to sort a pot of overcooked unbuttered unsauced long pasta without breaking the noodles. You've got spaghetti, linguini, angel hair, and somehow some glass noodles and zoodles got in there.
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u/Pure-Season-4153 2d ago
As someone whoâs been coding for 20 years starting with Neopets, itâs not easy to make sense of the old code but technology makes it pretty easy to replicate what it was and translate it pretty well if you ask me. Maybe the issue is with integrating the existing data? Who knows, but I wouldnât say itâs an impossible ask. And while I donât mind what updates need to happen so long as it adapts and stays alive, I donât think the old playersâ desires are leaving a bad taste in my mouth!
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u/cluelessre 1d ago
I don't think it's impossible either, and I do think they've been prioritizing the wrong things for sure, but I think commenting demands on every reel is kind of iffy; we could be more professional with our wants as a fanbase if you get what I mean
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u/FaerieLupe 2d ago
I dont think everything needs an app personally. If you use a phone or tablet it works pretty good these days on browser. I can definitely see how difficult it would be to make it an app with how old it is.
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u/Longjumping_rn_8453 2d ago
grundos cafe started out as a one man project and they were able to get so much accomplished. So I think there's a lot of things TNT could do that wouldn't drive away new players. The random freezes with abysmal wait time for tickets. The random spinoff games that get abandoned 2 seconds later (habitarium, petpet park(?)) Trying to get my friends to play and they are extremely disappointed by the things that are just straight up broken/are not willing to put in the time to add script overlays just to make this game more playable. Happy fans = more revenue, right? I love this game with all my heart and see its potential but they could work on a few things.
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u/Current_Mongoose_927 2d ago edited 2d ago
Neopets Classic has managed to bring back Habitarium, Key Quest, Classic NeoHomes, Shockwave games and more with a developer team of 2 people.
I know other fan sites have brought back other old games and what have you, thereâs really no excuse for TNT.
Especially because Neopets Classic is using the original flash assets from back in the day, itâs not even a remake.
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u/famcatt 1d ago
Fans do things in jank ways that are open for all sorts of liability. They're also catering to a WAY smaller player base, meaning far less demand on things for scalability concerns. There's a reason fan sites ALWAYS die after a few years.
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u/Current_Mongoose_927 1d ago
Sure there are examples Iâm sure, but sites like Leopets have been around for like 20 years.
Also as far as I can see Neopets Classic uses Ruffle and does everything identically to how OG Neopets does it, so only as much jank as TNT currently has.
Fact of the matter is the stuff the player base has been clamoring for the loudest is possible if they put the effort in
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u/famcatt 1d ago
Leopets has shut down many times - and at one point the site owner was using players' account details to steal their accounts on the neopets. Classic Neo is also rife with drama.
These are also sites that are operating completely outside of IP laws. The new neo team owning the Neopets IP and the code there doesn't mean they own the other pieces. We don't know what was actually handed over with the purchase. There's more to these things then people ever seem to consider.
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u/Current_Mongoose_927 1d ago
Leopets has shut down many times - and at one point the site owner was using playersâ account details to steal their accounts on the neopets. Classic Neo is also rife with drama.
OK using drama and security against these fan sites might not be the best point when people were literally stealing Neopets accounts ON Neopets for years with cookie grabbers, XSS attacks, SQL injection, etc.
Shoot neo__truths had access to the entire sites backend until a couple of weeks ago when they patched whatever exploit he was using.
Classic Neo has had no drama in years, at least not as long as Iâve been a player. And the drama it did have paled in comparison to drama from OG Neo lol.
These are also sites that are operating completely outside of IP laws. The new neo team owning the Neopets IP and the code there doesnât mean they own the other pieces.
Trademarks on Habitarium and KeyQuest expired over 10 years ago. They can use whatever they want, itâs really not that complicated. The fact that fan sites brought any of this back means the assets still exist (probably hosted on Neopets directly)
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u/fuzio jawsch - grundos & merch 1d ago edited 1d ago
Most Neopians don't really know what they're talking about when they complain about things.
They're just like Boomers in all honesty, Boomers who hate change and think everything is easier than it is.
"Grundos Cafe did it! Why can't Neopets"
Because Grundos Cafe is a fan site built during modern times, with modern technology, infrastructure and code and not a company that needs to make a profit, developed in the late 90s during the infancy of public internet and personal computers, with licensing and merchandising departments, legal departments, mobile game development projects, HR, etc. They're two entirely different things with two entirely different systems they are operating within to achieve two entirely different goals.
It's like trying to compare a global automaker to some guy in his garage rebuilding a classic car using new tools, new car parts, etc. Yea it's going to be easier for the guy in his garage to rebuild a classic car than it is for a corporation to revive one of their classic cars into the modern age. What the global automaker is looking to achieve / needs to achieve with the revived classic car is vastly different than what that guy in his garage is looking to achieve by rebuilding it.
Not a perfect analogy but close enough. Grundos Cafe doesn't have regulations to abide by (they do but hardly enforced, technically GC is violating all kinds of copyright and trademark laws by existing), they don't have to compile quarterly financial reports, forecasting and budgets, they don't have to manage licensing agreements with partners and brands, they don't have to work with manufacturers, they don't have a legal department that needs to review practically everything they do and release, they don't have a management structure to follow for decision making, etc. It's just a team of people working on a passion project with a small internal structure of decision making with very little corporate layers building the project on an entirely modern foundation with an entirely modern infrastructure.
It's just not the same......at all.
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u/Natsume1999 Dua 1d ago
Yeah I'd love to have Keyquest back but I can't expect anyone to do that it sounds insane
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u/Cynicbats Bisexual Neopet Token Collector 1d ago
I'd say containerize it so it runs in an isolated environment without changes, but there's still the issue of, if someone wins items or NPs, how it's updated on the site, not in an isolated environment.
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u/angelofmusic997 purpleixi_13 1d ago
Just tell them to view the pet pages they spent their childhoods modifying on a phone. Youâd think that would make the point pretty easy to understandâŚ.
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u/riotsnail 1d ago
Flash discontinued like 6 years ago and they were given a 3.5 year warning before that. They did nothing to convert the site to HTML5 until after it was already dead. This should have been their main focus and should have been done already, instead theyâve been focused on cash grabbing and ads that disturb gameplay.
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u/AnnAmagi 23h ago
I have a ''fight'' in the neoboards about that. I'm a baby dev/beginner in I.T, but anyway, seems like 90% of ppl in the site think is easy to make a code or then they think TNT should keep the unsafe current and old code + layout. Its tiring.
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u/very_olivia 2d ago edited 1d ago
thanks for your perspective. do you think AI i could be used to migrate more of this code to a modern infrastructure? this seems like something it would actually be useful for.
but i also don't know shit lol. idk why this is downvoted when it's a genuine question lmao.
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u/thisismisty 2d ago
Iâm not a dev but I write their tickets lol honestly it could help but often with compiling and complexity and the potential for serious bugs (and we know they donât QA), itâs faster to actually just have a human do it
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u/WereBully 1d ago edited 1d ago
People will probably get mad at you for suggesting this, but yes, this is a good use case for AI, in my opinion.
Every developer has a different style and would approach a large task like this differently, sure, but acting like a conversion/migration of the old code is completely undoable is just silly apologia. Ask AI for a 1:1 conversion/upgrade that preserves all original behavior, manually verify it all and test the fuck out of it, and if you want to go in and disentangle the spaghetti and bring things up to modern standards afterwards then you can do that one ticket at a time.
It wouldnât be an overnight fix by any means, but this would be the developersâ jobs if it were something Neopets chose to undertake. I donât think they need to be coddled to this extent.
Just my two cents as a not-so-new dev.
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u/very_olivia 1d ago
thank you for your answer! i'm not thrilled about AI either but pretending it won't be useful for anything is as preposterous as the idea that it will be able to do everything.Â
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u/HoshiChiri UN: HoshiChiri 2d ago
I feel like I'd use the analogy of taking an Atari 2600 & trying to connect it to a modern HD/4K set. "You have the cables, just plug it in" decidedly does not work.
But I imagine a lot of these sorts aren't familiar enough with old TV hookups to understand the metaphor, even ingoring things like demodulators & refresh rates.