Yeah, sorry about that. The sandbox is a stress test and geometry doesn't get thrown away if you've ever loaded it. Can I ask what kind of hardware/browser you're running? Is it immediately unusable or only after loading a bunch of stuff?
It should be more usable now. We don't do much in the way of culling yet, and the amount of data in the sandbox just then was far too much to render at once.
And brings back fond memories for me. Back in the 90s as a high school student I made a Will's Voxel Editor for the Tiberian Sun games. Was wonderful. Found a screenshot: http://www.ppmsite.com/newspic/vxlseIII12_big.jpg
This got to be the closest I ever come to feeling cyberspace and I have tried my share of things.
The whole thing works flawlessly, lightning fast and it's thrilling to see others building at the same time while I can walk around in a first person view.
It's a really cool project and performs reasonably well but I have issues with some of the interface choices:
1. The navigation controls are non-intuitive and don't follow most 3D movement conventions. I wanted right-click panning and some shortcut for orbiting (not having to change modes).
2. Positioning is erratic. When building something it would randomly refuse to let me draw on top of some cubes even when I precisely positioned my cursor on the top cube surface. Positioning guides would be nice: Highlight adjacent surfaces, draw alignment axis, etc.
3. Conversely, erasing a bunch of blocks would fail because the erase cursor would "hop" on top of (some not all) blocks I wanted to erase.
4. The "thicken" operation sounds handy but never worked for me even once I figured out (I think) that you have to select blocks first. I expected I could select blocks and then pull them up or out to duplicate them.
5. Having a multiuser environment default to fill/drawing mode is a horrible idea since _everyone_ spews blocks all over the landscape destroying stuff before getting the hang of it. Suggestion: Give everyone a protected 30x30x30 home sandbox where no one else can draw. Everywhere else would be free range.
Overall, you have the tech down but the UI needs playtesting. Watch novices and Minecraft-ers try doing something more than scribble with it. You'll know your interface is working when you start seeing more than blobs and piles littering your world.
Works on firefox, but had a hilarious bug: I allowed the "hide pointer" mode, but after I hit ctrl-W to close the tab my pointer was locked in the middle of the screen on all the other tabs.
Since you're using FPS controls for navigation, I found I was missing space/ctrl for up/down. Also, for another sandbox map-editor (but desktop-based not web-based) see Sauerbraten.org
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[ 5.8 ms ] story [ 60.6 ms ] threadLatest stable Chrome, MacBook Pro (end 2012), 16 GB of ram, OS X 10.9. Immediately unusable.
I just realised that my company laptops is A LOT better than my desktop at home :/
And brings back fond memories for me. Back in the 90s as a high school student I made a Will's Voxel Editor for the Tiberian Sun games. Was wonderful. Found a screenshot: http://www.ppmsite.com/newspic/vxlseIII12_big.jpg
The whole thing works flawlessly, lightning fast and it's thrilling to see others building at the same time while I can walk around in a first person view.
Beautiful, just beautiful.
1. The navigation controls are non-intuitive and don't follow most 3D movement conventions. I wanted right-click panning and some shortcut for orbiting (not having to change modes).
2. Positioning is erratic. When building something it would randomly refuse to let me draw on top of some cubes even when I precisely positioned my cursor on the top cube surface. Positioning guides would be nice: Highlight adjacent surfaces, draw alignment axis, etc.
3. Conversely, erasing a bunch of blocks would fail because the erase cursor would "hop" on top of (some not all) blocks I wanted to erase.
4. The "thicken" operation sounds handy but never worked for me even once I figured out (I think) that you have to select blocks first. I expected I could select blocks and then pull them up or out to duplicate them.
5. Having a multiuser environment default to fill/drawing mode is a horrible idea since _everyone_ spews blocks all over the landscape destroying stuff before getting the hang of it. Suggestion: Give everyone a protected 30x30x30 home sandbox where no one else can draw. Everywhere else would be free range.
Overall, you have the tech down but the UI needs playtesting. Watch novices and Minecraft-ers try doing something more than scribble with it. You'll know your interface is working when you start seeing more than blobs and piles littering your world.
Since you're using FPS controls for navigation, I found I was missing space/ctrl for up/down. Also, for another sandbox map-editor (but desktop-based not web-based) see Sauerbraten.org