Welcome to Zanycanvas, a new (unofficial) place for Krazycanvas!
Krazycanvas was a game developed by Joe Crop. Players were able to draw and play within a seemingly endless canvas. With the user generated landscape was crystals to collect and doors to wander to. The doors weren’t too useful, or at least I don’t think so. But it’s the art that mattered. The human expression in between the chaos as players were desperately trying to get a footing on and fall miles down. It was fun.
It was developed using Adobe Flex. Because of this, when Adobe Flash Player was to expire at the start of 2020, the game’s future was clear. And soon, it stopped being ran.
This isn’t to be confused with DrawCanvas which was under the same name as Krazycanvas. As far as I know, that’s mostly lost.
While the client has been preserved, the same cannot be said for the server that handled various things. Zanycanvas aims to not only be a server replacement, but a new home for Krazycanvas.
A security consideration is also worth noting. I don’t particularly want bad actors to mess up the canvas. As AI agents are readily available, the potential for abuse becomes more likely. Somehow, the original canvas survived prior to 2020. Only that the client has a bug that allows players to wipe tiles blank.
This is all just an idea for now. I want to carefully plan this out. No ‘vibe coding’ whatsoever! And yes, there is art in building backend services. Programming is inherently a skill, and it can be a craft.
Krazycanvas is already preserved in the Flashpoint Archive, with some parts of the canvas available to explore. However, it remains there to be playable in singleplayer. Zanycanvas will address the online multiplayer part later.
It shouldn’t be too long. Much of it was already figured out.