Cubeteam: A collaborative 3D voxel editor in the browser

by everettForth • 13 years ago

47 17 13 years ago

Slow and unusable. Cool UI though.

ahkurtz• 13 years ago

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?

LinaLauneBaer• 13 years ago

It is very slow for me as well...

Latest stable Chrome, MacBook Pro (end 2012), 16 GB of ram, OS X 10.9. Immediately unusable.

fudged71• 13 years ago

It worked eventually, a little bit, but my laptop has never revved it's fans this much before. Seems cool though.

noptic• 13 years ago

Running fine on my "work" laptop :) (Win7 64bit i72760qm@ 2.4GHZ 8GB RAM)

I just realised that my company laptops is A LOT better than my desktop at home :/

willvarfar• 13 years ago

Looks a lot of fun!

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

rainmaking• 13 years ago

Super fast and fluid on Ubuntu 12.04 64bit, 8GB RAM, Core i7 QM, GT630 2GB. (yeah beefyish box but it does work great)

franze2• 13 years ago

here is the same .... but different https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6731386 (in 2D and with snowmen and flowers instead of voxel) built on top of meteor.js (on github: https://github.com/franzenzenhofer/snowmen)

dualogy• 13 years ago

So -- actually not "the same" at all then ;)

franze2• 13 years ago

well

    voxels = {x,y,z} 
    flowers = {x,y}

Stormvirus• 13 years ago

Around 30-50 fps with a lot of geometry on the screen, sometimes peaks at 60 with an i7 950, 12gb, 280x and the latest version of chrome.

ThomPete• 13 years ago

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.

Beautiful, just beautiful.

jones1618• 13 years ago

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.

oftenwrong• 13 years ago

I like it, but I am confused by the interface. How does one switch between navigating the left-side menu and using the crosshair to look around?

SteroidsLove• 13 years ago

Building thrones at the top of the world is so fun!

Pxtl• 13 years ago

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

Cubeteam: A collaborative 3D voxel editor in the browser

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