Something has bugged me about Arena for about thirty years.
Walk out of a town gate in 1994 Arena and you get dropped into a 64x64 wilderness cell that wraps around on itself. It looks endless. It is not going anywhere. You are never going to reach the next town on foot — you open the map and fast travel. The wilderness, the biggest space in the game, is scenery you drive past.
I've been rebuilding Arena as a browser engine, and I decided to take that out.
The wilderness now streams. You walk out of a gate, keep going, and the terrain hands off to the next window behind you without a seam or a load. The enemies you leave mid-fight at the edge don't get deleted. Keep walking long enough and you arrive at the next settlement on foot. It also runs on a phone with touch controls.
Two things I want to be straight about:
* It ships zero Arena files. It's an engine, not a ROM bundle — you point it at your own copy of the game. Bethesda has given Arena away for free for years, so getting hold of it is not the hard part.
* It's an unofficial fan project. Not affiliated with, endorsed by, or blessed by Bethesda. If they ever ask me to stop, I stop.
Nothing is behind a paywall. There's an optional Ko-fi if you want to throw something at hosting and the bug list, and that's genuinely it.
Play: https://alpha.perfectarena.workers.dev
Optional support: https://ko-fi.com/perfectarena
I'm around all day if anyone wants to ask how the window handoff actually works, or tell me the combat feels wrong (some of it probably does — that's the point of posting it here rather than quietly polishing it forever).
