Friday, May 16th, 2008
Cubescape: Isometric Pixel Fun
Category: Games
, JavaScript, jQuery
Ever wanted to create your own isometric pixel picture, but didn’t know what the word isometric meant? Well, now you can fulfil your wildest dreams with Cubescape!
That is the headline for Cubescape, a site that released a new jQuery based front end that lets you drop the cubes!
Perfect for a Friday, go ahead and get dropping on this very clean interface.
4 rating from 42 votes
Very cool… for about 2 minutes. How does people find the time to do this stuff?
Yes, very cool and well written. Is there anything jQuery can’t do?
Where do they find time? Stop watching TV:
http://www.clusterflock.org/2008/04/where-do-people-find-the-time.html
I really like this. it’s very very cool!
if you use it too fast, it freezes and throws these errors
cubes[row][col][cubes[row][col].length - 1] has no properties
http://www.themaninblue.com/experiment/Cubescape/js/cubescape.js
Line 719
cubes[row][col][index] has no properties
http://www.themaninblue.com/experiment/Cubescape/js/cubescape.js
Line 206
Pretty cool stuff. Reminds me of Qbert.
SWEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEET !!!
Question, and this is really a serious question and I want you to consider it before you start bashing a non-JQuery believer.
Why does this need JQuery? The number of functions used by this that are not directly available in normal JS can be counted on one hand (basically tweening and well, I can’t really think of ANYTHING else). The reach of this program (JQuery, like most JS libraries still employs *gulp* useragent filtering!!! And yes this does cause actual problems as any browser that is not on the list, maybe because it’s a custom browser, maybe because it’s a differently branded beta, will simply not work), the maintenance work (if you don’t update the library, then your program will only ever work with the list of browsers that were included with JQuery at that time. If you link directly to a release server than you’re relying on that server to still be up in ten years and that it will contain an updated, but still compatible version. Does that sound realistic to anybody?), it all increases and I don’t really know what for. Please, somebody explain. To me this looks like a developer switching from C to Java because ‘colored text’ might work better.
Oops, should have done some proofreading: The reach of couse doesn’t increase, but changes for the worse.
@Hans
jQuery isn’t “needed” to implement something like this. The reason it is used is that it makes development easier. I think that you are overanalyzing what is more or less a technological experiment ;-).
“but didn’t know what the word isometric meant?”
Pet peeve: Whoever wrote that apparently doesn’t know what the word isometric means either. Cubescape uses an Axonometric projection, not isometric.
Fantastic application.
Also, isn’t isometric projection a type of axonometric projection and more specifically the type of isometric projection used in cubescape?
No. Isometric projection requires that all angles be 30 degrees. One of the angles in Cubescape’s cubes is 26.5…
though it is true that isometric is a type of axonometric projection. Just not the type used by cubescape.
@Hans Schmucker - to avoid or cast off a framework because it uses useragent filter is a bit extreme. Most of the time when a framework uses useragent filter it’s because there is no other API or functionality sniff available and it falls back to the useragent sniff as a last resort. Chances are that the developers have attempted other methods and have been forced to use a useragent sniff. If you find that there is some other method or check available you are welcome to file a bug report http://dev.jquery.com/newticket/.
Developers use frameworks to ease the time building scaffolding for coding projects and to alleviate a majority of cross browser concerns.
Most developers who use a framework do so for their whole site/web application, and. not just for a single effect/feature.
- JDD
@jdalton
Agreed 100%.
It’s actually quite fun to find ways to use capability detection rather than ua sniffing, but is unfortunately not always possible.
Well done, great UI effects too! Sort of reminiscent of assembler.org, a collection of random nifty Javascript-based UI experiments from 2002 or so.
I had a similar “isometric-style” builder thing on my site which used Tetris-style pieces you could color, rotate and save things with (I also saved the time spent working on it) - It was impressive to see the complexity of things and time (2+ hours in some cases) people would put into making stuff.
Nicely done! Not really useful, but still fun!
Thanks.Good article
Cubespace?? Interesting Article, thanks Armenian Genocide , great information and research.