Quietly off line... Play to a java game without paying phone costs, quietly off line, is of course attractive (in France the phone cost is around 2 $ per hour...). If you know a little the Html code, it also allows to build some catalogues, by transferring the game in your pages (see the example of Ataxxlet).
Recovering a java game, is putting it into a folder (=directory) of his disk and playing it off line.
Only recover on PC is here mentioned. It may be supposed that it is a little similar on others platforms...
It is not easy... Java games are not all recoverable because either the author does not want, either he does not care about it, either it is impossible to install for technical causes that we will see (the "irreducible one's"...).
But the first difficulty is that, on his own PC, there is (neither with Netscape, neither with Internet Explorer) no simple mean to extract a site from the cache (where it will be automatically purged, after some time).
Manualy... By the explorer, you may analyse the content of the cache by looking the folder C:\Windows\Temporary Internet Files. It is here possible to copy the files of one site toward a recovery folder. You have to take care to build the folders structure as it was in the original folders. It may be a long operation... And the explorer often fails when the cache is big...
You also have to verify, in the command tag <applet> of the Html page, the value of parameters "codebase" (directory) and "code" (applet name), so that they didn't contain absolute address (http//...). If so, replace it by relative address (as ../java/reversi.class).
Cache Explorer The shareware "Cache Explorer" (Netscape and Internet Explorer versions) allows to automatically do the above copy operation. However, it does not keep the folders structure and modify links. So, sometimes, the java applet fail (chiefly when it call another applet out of its folder). In these cases, you have to use again the manual method.
Be care, sometimes Cache Explorer changes the files name (even with drag and drop). Particularly, it replaces "." by "_", for example ataxx.board.class by ataxx_board.class. It may need to give again the initial name.
To try Cache Explorer, see our page about this software in our Freewares site.
The Java Virtual Machine If the applet still fails after the above operations, the use of the JVM "Java Virtual Machine" may be good. This software may be downloaded from the Microsoft site (1 Mb).
Direct access to the directory Although these operations, some games still fail. It may be normal, some authors take precautions to forbid such copy. But, for others games, the freeze is due to the use of pictures. They are directly called by the applets, and they don't go into the cache (at least with Internet Explorer 3).
Then you have to tempt to recover it directly. If the page is called http://thing/nice/mypage.html, you use the browser to access the directory http://thing/nice/ (you also may try http://thing/nice/images/). If you don't get a Html page , you may find the missing image file(s). By clicking on it, it goes to the cache, where it is recoverable.
The irreducible one's This operation may be successful if the applet is called in relative address (such as images/piece.gif), not absolute one (such as http://thing/nice/images/piece.gif). Here, what you may do, you will only play on line.
Although... Although, there are still some exceptions, at least one. The Barkocy Reversi is not recoverable, but the source is given. So it is possible to replace inside the 5 absolute address by relative ones, and to compile (or make compile by somebody having the compiler).
So it becomes recoverable.