Reviving a Legend: Rebuilding the Donnie Darko Website from 2001

I decided to rebuild a defunct 23 year old website. 2001’s Donniedarko.com.

Behold: donnie.dgw.ltd

It was utter madness. It was utter joy. I don’t know why.

Think this might be the first time I needed to include a Table of Contents on a post.

Table of Contents

1. But seriously…why?
2. Ruffle.rs and the Revival of the Game
3. Resources and Assistance
4. User Journey and Experience
5. Missing parts and notes

But seriously…why?

I’ve always loved this website. Remember, this was built in 2001(!) when websites generally looked like this. We were just starting to use CSS and Semantic HTML to produce more interesting websites outside of the contraints of table based layouts and hacks. But truthfully, back then, if you wanted to build a unique experience for users, you would use Flash. Flash is obviously now very dead, after many security issues and Steve Jobs declaring it would never be allowed onto the iPhone in 2007.

At the time, this site was just so impressive and entered internet legend. Built by the agency Hi-ReS! and launched in October 2001, it totally eschewed the general approach to building websites. It was sprawling, narrative-driven, immersive and brilliant. There wasn’t really any formal navigation; you progressed through the site through exploration. It just felt so novel. And it really isn’t something we’ve seen since. User experience design, accessibility, formal ‘design’ methodologies, design thinking, development convention, and the sheer weight of user expectation have led (in many ways rightly) to something like this becoming impossible to imagine being built today. The original creator is an award winning Fine Artist & Creative Consultant), and I feel we don’t have enough of these sort of creatives in modern web development anymore, but that’s for another post.

Being a Flash site, it was semi-playable until recently via various archived versions of the site. The orignal agency that built it dissolved and their own archive (archive.hi-res.net) eventually disappeared from the web, the Internet Archive was the only place this site could be conceivable accessed. However with Flash becoming obsolete, it was not possible to access this piece of internet history. I always dreamed of maybe rebuilding (restoring?) it, either by reverse engineering it or attempting to try something in vanilla HTML/JS/CSS, which would have been a huge undertaking and probably nothing compared to the artistry of the original.

Step up Ruffle.rs, a Flash Player emulator built in the Rust programming language. Well, well, well. Maybe game on?

The Internet Archive has Ruffle.js enabled which is awesome, so in theory the game would be totally playable, but not all the pages were archived in the same snapshot and also not all the sections were totally archived….so game off. Or was it?

And thus the epic journey begins…

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Ruffle.rs and the Revival of the Game

Playability Through the Internet Archive

• Internet Archive: The game was playable again thanks to its availability on the Internet Archive having archived it in the first place and now Ruffle.rs.
• Archival Inconsistencies: Unfortunately, the game often got stuck after the initial menu or just after the first section, where the next step didn’t existing within the same snapshot. This varied depending on the site version or the specific archive capture accessed.
• Dispersed Archives: Many game pages were archived, but they were scattered across different parts of the archive, requiring direct access to certain pages to progress through the game. Meaning the game was effectively split across time periods, which was rather apt considering the subject matter and the site architecture.

Digital Archaeology

• Archived List of Pages and Files: A pretty comprehensive list of all the pages and files that were archived can be found here and some from the original site.
• Guide to the Site: An archived guide to the site was invaluable to piece together the various part of the game.
• Creator’s Showcase: Alexandra Jugovic, the site’s creator, showcases the original site and much user journey on her website reel again invaluable in trying to solve this puzzle.
• Building a Sitemap: Utilizing these resources, along with 404 errors indicated in the console and network tab, helped in constructing a sitemap of the original site.
• Reddit Insights: Reddit discussions provided valuable insights and interpretations of the site’s text, contributing significantly to the reconstruction process.

Reconstruction and Archival Layers

• Multi-Layered Archive: The current version is an archive of an archive of an archive, originating from donniedarko.com and later archive.hi-res.net.
• Lost Elements: Unfortunately, some parts, particularly a few SWF files that I think might have been streamed in the original site and as such were not archived and so seemingly lost forever. These include files from Level 2 (street.swf, love.swf, fear.swf) and Level 3 (lamp.swf, phone.swf). These were the bits I had to reconstruct. It took some time.

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Resources and Assistance

Now, given the missing parts I needed to basically reconstruct Flash scenes in HTML, CSS, JS 😅😅😅. I’ve been using GitHub CoPilot for about a year now, and honestly there were some parts of this I could not have achieved without it. So using a combination of Ruffle.rs, 11ty, Alpine.js, 98.css, SVG noise filters, Tailwind (I know), AI, Photoshop, Lossless Cut and trusty ‘ol HTML, CSS, and JavaScript I hunkered down and started work.

Additional weird things were required like recording audio out of my laptop speaker from parts of the original Flash files to reuse in the reconstruction effort. Hand-copying text from screen-grabs into HTML and so on. It was utterly mad, but enjoyable.

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User Journey

This is bonkers and amazing. Kudos to the original developers, to use redirects and the url structure as part of the game is just very cool. They even apparently set up loads of satellite sites to enhance the online experience (I think sadly lost). Just awesome.

I also rebuilt the archived guide to the game as well, to help my own development as well as a guide to anyone that might get stuck in the game.

Here I’ve attempted to write up the user journey, behold.

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Missing parts and notes

Desktop Recommended for Optimal Experience

• Keyboard Input: This application is best experienced on a desktop due to its reliance on keyboard input. Although I have tried to implement a mobile keyboard for this some parts require direct keyboard access, although the flash files can’t seem to detect these.
• Known issues:
• Occasionally, new tabs may not function properly and the game can’t be progressed. If this occurs, it’s recommended to return to the main menu and restart the process. Or make sure only one tab is open. Or copy the current url in to a new window and try again.
• Also you know this is Flash, In 2024. So there’s that.

Content Reconstruction Updates:

• Missing Sections: Some sections have been reconstructed in HTML/CSS/JavaScript to replace missing SWF files. The application now redirects to alternative content when attempting to access these files.
• For instance, when /are/you/sleep/golfing/love.swf is requested, it will now redirect to /are/you/sleep/golfing/missing/intro.html.

Specific Level Updates:

• Level 2 – Missing section:
• Problem: The original SWF files for this section were not retrievable.
• Solution: A reconstructed version has been implemented.
• Navigation: Upon completing this segment, the game should automatically progress to the new content. If it does not click here to continue.
• Level 3 – Missing section:
• Problem: The original SWF files for this section were also unavailable.
• Solution: This segment has been similarly rebuilt.
• Navigation: After finishing this part of the game click here to proceed.