tag:dreamwidth.org,2017-04-25:3165654Kevin Reid's blogKevin ReidKevin Reid2020-08-09T15:06:50Ztag:dreamwidth.org,2017-04-25:3165654:54200Cubes reboot: All is Cubes2020-08-09T15:06:50Z2020-08-09T15:06:50Zpublic0<p>I've been getting back into playing Minecraft recently, and getting back into that frame of mind caused me to take another look at my <a href="https://github.com/kpreid/cubes/">block-game-engine project titled "Cubes"</a> (<a href="https://kpreid.dreamwidth.org/tag/cubes">previous posts</a>).
<p>I've fixed some API-change bitrot in Cubes so that it's runnable on current browsers; unfortunately the GitHub Pages build is broken so the running version that I'd otherwise link to isn't updated. (I intend to fix that.)
<p>The bigger news is that I've decided to rewrite it. Why?
<ul>
<li><p>There's some <a href="https://github.com/kpreid/cubes/issues/71">inconsistency in the design</a> of how block rotation works, and the way I've thought of to fix it is to start with a completely different strategy: instead of rotation being a feature of a block's behavior, there will be the general notion of blocks derived from other block definitions, so “this block but rotated” is such a derivation.
<li><p>I'd like to start with a client-server architecture from the beginning, to support the options of both multiplayer and ✨ saving to the cloud!✨ — I mean, having a server which stores the world data instead of fitting it all into browser local storage.
<li><p><strong>I've been looking for an excuse to learn <a href="https://www.rust-lang.org/">Rust</a>.</strong> And, if it works as I hope, I'll be able to program with a much better tradeoff between performance and high-level code.
</p></li></p></li></p></li></ul>
<p>The new version is <a href="https://github.com/kpreid/all-is-cubes">already on GitHub</a>. I've given it the name “All is Cubes”, because “Cubes” really was a placeholder from the beginning and it's too generic.
<p>I'm currently working on porting (with improvements) various core data structures and algorithms from the original version — the first one being the voxel raycasting algorithm, which I then used to implement a raytracer that outputs to the terminal. (Conveniently, "ASCII art" is low-resolution and thus doesn't require too many rays.) And after getting that solid, I set up compiling the Rust code into WebAssembly to run in web browsers and render with WebGL.
<p style="text-align: center;">
<img src="https://switchb.org/kpreid/2020/all-is-cubes-first-console.png" alt="[console screenshot]" style="margin: 4px; max-height: 30em; max-width: 50%; border: none; padding: 1px; box-shadow: #22A 0px 1px 4px 0px; vertical-align: middle;">
<img src="https://switchb.org/kpreid/2020/all-is-cubes-first-webgl.png" alt="[WebGL screenshot]" style="margin: 4px; max-height: 30em; max-width: 50%; border: none; padding: 1px; box-shadow: #22A 0px 1px 4px 0px; vertical-align:middle;">
</p>
<p>(In the unlikely event that anyone cares, I haven't quite decided what to do with the post tags; I think that I will switch to tagging them all with <a href="https://kpreid.dreamwidth.org/tag/all+is+cubes">all is cubes</a>, but I might or might not go back and apply that to the old posts on the grounds that having a tag that gets everything is good and I'm not really giving the rewrite a <em>different</em> name so much as taking the opportunity to replace the placeholder at a convenient time.)</p></p></p></p></p></p><br /><br /><img src="https://www.dreamwidth.org/tools/commentcount?user=kpreid&ditemid=54200" width="30" height="12" alt="comment count unavailable" style="vertical-align: middle;"/> comments