Voxel.js: Minecraft-like Browser-Based Games, But Open Source

Paul Fernhout writes with a snippet from Joystiq: "Voxel.js is a new open-source project designed to allow anyone to create 3D games that run directly in a browser. Created by Max Ogden and James Halliday, Voxel.js is based on JavaScript and WebGL, and makes it relatively easy to build Minecraft-like games that play in browsers like Chrome." Paul adds a link to this interview with Max Ogden about the creation of Voxel.js in 22 days. The main site is at Voxel.js.

Blog post with more background info

[maxogden]

Hi, I'm the Max mentioned above. Here is a post I did yesterday with more background details on the project: http://maxogden.com/bringing-minecraft-style-games-to-the-open-web.html [maxogden.com]

Looks they they are using standards to me

[Paul Fernhout]

First, they say "Chrome version 23 or above or Firefox version 17 or above are recommended." So, you can try either.

I had problems using Voxel.js in Firefox 18 on the Mac, so I downloaded Chromium (the open-source fork of Chrome) from FreeSMUG , and Voxel.js ran fine it it. It was actually snappier than Minecraft on my machine, but that may just be because of a smaller world?

I feel I'd probably rather download Chromium once and then surf to web pages than download a Java application like Minecraft and deal with all sorts of issues when trying to use Minecraft add-ons (given Minecraft has not prioritized supporting community add-ons). It has been a pain to manage lots of incompatible Minecraft add-ons (my wife even wrote a tool to help our kid deal with that). Also, when you download Minecraft addons, they presumably with full permissions and so could do anything to your system like read or delete files. I presume that web pages in Chromium are much more limited in what they can do (even though I have heard about theoretical WebGL exploits).
http://news.slashdot.org/story/11/06/17/121236/microsoft-brands-webgl-a-harmful-technology [slashdot.org]

Here is a pre-built download link for Chromium if Mac users need it:
http://www.freesmug.org/chromium [freesmug.org]
Or people can build it from source:
http://www.chromium.org/ [chromium.org]

It would probably be fair to say WebGL is not that well supported everywhere. I had problems with it in Firefox as above. Still, it seems to me like this group is trying hard to use open standards with JavaScript and WebGL, so I'm not sure your criticism is fair in that sense. WebGL is supported by multiple browsers, but probably just not very well yet:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WebGL [wikipedia.org]

Still, give it time, and I expect WebGL (or something similar) will run most anywhere.

Anyway, this generation may be "nuts" in their own way, true. :-) The question is, is the "nuts" of a bunch of people across the planet getting together virtually to write free and open source software (for shareable virtual worlds of abundant virtual resources) more "nuts" than a bunch of people getting together to give us, say, the "Cold War" and the artificial scarcity of software patents and endless copyrights etc.?