Minecraft and JavaScript, Tempo, Janpu
webgl
graphics
games
templating
games
There’s not a doubt in my mind that a version of Minecraft in JavaScript is possible. Imagine it… WebGL graphics and a fast Node server!
AlteredQualia has some impressive WebGL demos that use three.js. I seem to remember covering three.js on this blog before, but the author has really been pushing it to new heights lately. The Minecraft demo really caught my imagination.
There’s also Minecraft-JS (demo) which is a 2D version of the game.
As far as the server is concerned there’s Nodecraft by Jeremy Apthorp. Development appears to have stalled, but Jeremy made an interesting stab at building something.
Node-backed WebGL games will be huge — please send us your games and demos!
Tempo
Tempo (GitHub: twigkit / tempo) by Stefan Olafsson and Tyler Tate is a client-side JSON rendering engine that works without a framework like jQuery. By passing Tempo an element ID and some data, it can generate suitable HTML from a fragment like this:
<ol id="tweets">
<li data-template>
<img src="" />
<h3></h3>
<p></p>
</li>
<li data-template-fallback>Sorry, JavaScript required!</li>
</ol>
The authors suggest that this makes Ajax content easier to work with, which makes a lot of sense to me. There’s nothing worse than dealing with plain JavaScript string handling when you really want convenient interpolation. I also like the fact it degrades appropriately, as seen in the example above.
Janpu
Janpu by Michal Budzynski and Krystian Siemiatkowski is a little JavaScript game with a great big UNICEF donation link to help the relief efforts in Japan.
