
Show HN: WebGL Minecraft-like scripting environment for teaching programming - cjdell
http://webblocks.uk/
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nachtigall
Very nice. My kids (9 and 11) would love this, if it wasn't in english, they
currently use Scratch or code.org a lot. Any plans to make this available
(translatable) in other languages? German in our case. Language is really a
big entrance barrier in this age.

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vidarh
Use it as an opportunity to teach English. I started out with translated
manuals (Norwegian) as a kid, but quickly "ran out" and had to work my way
through English manuals and picking it up as I working my way towards some
other goal basically snuck a lot of English learning in under my radar - I
didn't really realise how much English I was learning until later.

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Moru
Same here, I went from a 2 in English (almost lowest grade) to 5 in three
years thanks to programming books and games :-)

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Retr0spectrum
Interesting. It would be nice to have tab support in the editor.

One thing I noticed was that it took several seconds to construct large shapes
like spheres - It might just have been JavaScript being JavaScript, but it
would be good if you could improve performance somehow.

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willvarfar
Or animate them with step-through?

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asimuvPR
This is very nice. Mind talking more about what you built it with?

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cjdell
Think I'll put together a blog post about it when I get time. Link in the
bottom right takes you to the source if you feel like tinkering with it. Happy
for others to use/adapt this project of course!

I'm honestly surprised we're not seeing more stuff like this now that the web
is such a powerful platform. I want to inspire people into making more of
these kinds of things :-)

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asimuvPR
A blog post would be very nice. Given the multitude of options outs there its
easy to forget about things like this. Its good that you are generating
awareness for it. I was surprised when it worked on my phone. :)

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joeyspn
Pro-tip: If you jump (space bar) several times, you can fly...

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jastr
That's an amazing feature/bug!

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cjdell
It was originally a bug, but then I upgraded it to a feature. :-)

There is also fly mode, see buttons on the right.

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w-ll
Why no mouse input?

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cjdell
Would like to add this soon, was slightly fiddly so stuck to keyboard for now.
Have got Cardboard support but just as a proof of concept, needs more work :-)

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Hydraulix989
Click and drag to look around (I hate it when WebGL demos monopolize the
mouse) would be neat and pretty simple to implement! :-)

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cjdell
Mouse input now working thanks to Jason McGhee :-)

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mobiuscog
Whilst the shift-mouse is horrid, I understand the rationale.

At least make the cursor stay in the same postion when this is used, otherwise
you have to keep releasing shift, moving the mouse back to the center, and
pressing shift again.

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jasonjmcghee
Unfortunately, you can't move the mouse back to the center. Javascript does
not allow hijacking the mouse. I bet you can imagine why. If there's a better
way to do this, by all means make a PR. I know this is a dreadful solution,
but it's better than nothing.

EDIT: I stand corrected! I found a way! PR in. I'm using requestPointerLock

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Hydraulix989
Yes, Unity WebGL uses it as well, pretty sure.

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geonnave
That's cool, congrats!

