I just released an alpha version of a new HTML5 game, called BlockFort. Screenshot:
It’s similar to the creative mode of Minecraft, without all the unfun exploring and mining ;). Saves are backed up to the cloud so can be restored if you start playing on the PC and want to make some slight adjustments on your tablet or vice versa. Creations can be shared with others via links allows you to give people links to your creations.
- * *Note: *When you begin to play BlockFort for the first time, I ask for your Google Account information. This is exclusively used to associate your saved creations with your account.
Here’s how to play:
Main menu
- Click outside of the menu window to begin playing!
- Save: Click/tap “Save” and enter a name for your creation
- Load: Click/tap “Load” and select a previous creation
- Share your creation: Click/tap “Share” and hit Ctrl-C to copy the provided URL (note that you must have already saved your creation for this to work)
- Options:
- Click/tap color selector and set desired color
- Click/tap to change whether the game goes fullscreen, to change whether it’s displayed in stereoscopic mode (perfect for VR devices like Google Cardboard or Oculus Rift), and to change which type of controls you want to use
In game controls
In all control types, escape or leaving fullscreen will take you out of the game and back to the menu.
- * Keyboard/mouse
- Move around: Up/Down/Left/Right/WASD
- Look around: Mouse movement
- Fly up: Space
- Fly down: Shift
- Place block: Left click
- Delete block: Right click
Touch
- Move around: Touch the lower left corner of the screen
- Look around: Lower right corner
- Fly up: Upper right corner
- Fly down: Upper left corner
- Place block: Tap anywhere else on the screen
- Remove block: Long press anywhere else on the screen
Device orientation
Move your head (VR device) or device (phone/tablet) to look around. You will slowly fly around the world you have loaded. Nothing can be created or destroyed with these controls until I figure out some scheme that will be relatively universal across VR / mobile devices :(.
If you have any problems playing, let me know by filing a bug, leaving a comment, or e-mailing me! Any feature requests / bug reports / random ideas / general love and adulation you’ve got are fine :).
Personal notes:
- BlockFort is deployed as a Google Go app on AppEngine.
- The frontend is HTML + JavaScript using JQuery for general interactions and three.js for WebGL.
- The game’s design doc is available here with source code also available. Note that I’m a C++ programmer at my day job so please don’t judge me by the quality of this code :).
I was inspired to create this game for two reasons:
- I am really bad at arts & crafts in the real world and thus wanted a virtual space without physics to be able to construct cool stuff so no one would have to see my failed attempts :).
- I was amazed by how simple spaces, like the Block Fort level in Mario Kart 64, could have made an indelible impression on my memory and wanted to build my own beautiful space.
I’ll put up some links to nice demo stuff I built with BlockFort soon but in the mean time you can have my gold brick house.