Cubescape

13 May 2008

20 comments

A Blue Perspective: Cubescape

Cubescape: Your own digital landscape

Sometimes I get a little obsessed. And that obsession takes me down a long, winding path. Some might even say a laborious and twisted path.

The latest focus of my obsession? Cubes.

I can't explain it really. Perhaps it has something to do with my fascination in the indivisible building blocks of our digital lives – pixels. But any reasoning aside, the net result is that you get to enjoy the fruits of my labour. A labour involving lots of animation, shadows, a completely bastardised version of ray-tracing, and one big sprite image. So without further ado, I present to you Cubescape. A tool for isometric jiggery pokery.

Please don't even try it in Internet Explorer 6. (And why would you? What's a browser without alpha transparent PNGs?)

I always take great pleasure in providing people with the tools to create something new, so, I leave Cubescape in your capable hands and await what astounding feats of imaginative ingenuity you'll deliver to my blogstep.

A hearty but insufficient thanks to Michael Koukoullis from Agency Rainford for bringing me out of the dark ages (of flat files) and setting up the backend which drives this little project. I know how much pain it caused him to leave the haven of Rails for the hell of PHP.

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Comments

  1. 1/20

    Dylan commented on 13 May 2008 @ 06:47

    Wow, that is amazingly slick.

  2. 2/20

    Wolf commented on 13 May 2008 @ 06:53

    Respect. Pushing some limits here!

  3. 3/20

    David VanDusen commented on 13 May 2008 @ 06:58

    I can haz custom cyoob colorz plzzzzzz?!?!?!

  4. 4/20

    Grant Palin commented on 13 May 2008 @ 07:35

    A little browser intensive, but very impressive nonetheless. Way to push the envelope!

  5. 5/20

    Trendygirl commented on 13 May 2008 @ 08:10

    Finally pixels are becoming realy 3D!
    I realy enjoyed playing around with the cubes. When i make something wortfully, i will drop by:)

  6. 6/20

    Dylan F.M. commented on 13 May 2008 @ 09:08

    It's fantastic.
    All I ask is for a way to make a broader placement of cubes. Maybe like tetris, with shapes and the ability to rotate them? just a few things like a cube, plane and line?
    Great stuff!
    I tried to make a coastline. I wonder how many clicks it took? Sore finger. http://www.themaninblue.com/experiment/Cubescape/load.php?id=9

  7. 7/20

    Andrew K. commented on 13 May 2008 @ 09:37

    No wai!

    You wrote some PHP?!

    ;)

  8. 8/20

    john Allsopp commented on 13 May 2008 @ 09:55

    Magic stuff cameron,

    next stop 3D tetris - do that and I hope you have the server resources to stand up to the slaughter of traffic you'll cop, and a business model to let you retire in a week!

    wicked

  9. 9/20

    john Allsopp commented on 13 May 2008 @ 09:58

    Further to that Cam,

    add in support for the Wii (there's a library to give you access to all the wiiremote's coolness)

    http://hullbreachonline.com/wii/sdk.html

    And then of course, hook into the accelerometer on the iPhone/Touch for an iPod version.

    j

  10. 10/20

    The Man in Blue commented on 13 May 2008 @ 10:33

    Oh, of course John, Wii version will be out in a few minutes. :P

  11. 11/20

    Lachlan Hardy commented on 13 May 2008 @ 10:44

    Dude!

    This is utter magic.

  12. 12/20

    Benson commented on 13 May 2008 @ 11:20

    Amazing work dude! +1up for the iPhone version.

  13. 13/20

    Michael Koukoullis commented on 13 May 2008 @ 11:28

    Okay if I knew beforehand that you would have the moon of Endor floating on the front page I would have done things differently.

    You have really outdone yourself with this one dude, nice work!

  14. 14/20

    Lachlan Hardy commented on 13 May 2008 @ 15:03

    Okay, so all I want now is editing (of my own, and the ability to fork and add to others), collaborative building and sexy widgets for sharing them with people....

    You bored with this yet, or you want some more?

  15. 15/20

    Michael Koukoullis commented on 13 May 2008 @ 15:11

    @Lachlan Hardy: Remixing cubescapes would be nice, with credit given to the original cubelayer of course.

  16. 16/20

    dusoft commented on 14 May 2008 @ 00:13

    Heavy as hell, Firefox says: Unresponsive script (stop or continue)....

    Interesting, but if this is going to be slow as hell in Firefox - no thank you.

  17. 17/20

    Gary commented on 14 May 2008 @ 00:34

    Heavy or not, Cubescape rules!

  18. 18/20

    dusoft commented on 14 May 2008 @ 01:00

    I am not saying it does not rule, however accessibility and usability have to be taken in mind! Especially, if this is a product of The Man in Blue, web standardist by his heart.

  19. 19/20

    Peter commented on 23 May 2008 @ 22:17

    @heavy as hell
    no broadband connection and it works fine.no probs with the fox... very impressive!

  20. 20/20

    elg0nz commented on 24 May 2008 @ 04:43

    You should turn this into a facebook app!!

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