[HN Gopher] CSS Minecraft
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       CSS Minecraft
        
       Author : mudkipdev
       Score  : 203 points
       Date   : 2025-05-26 18:28 UTC (4 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (benjaminaster.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (benjaminaster.com)
        
       | globie wrote:
       | Without a doubt the most impressive thing I've seen with CSS.
       | 
       | This immediately brought "A Single Div"[0] to mind, which stood
       | as the coolest CSS demo I'd seen for... 11 years!
       | 
       | This one takes the cake. I'll be pouring over it. Thanks!
       | 
       | [0]: https://a.singlediv.com/
        
       | 90s_dev wrote:
       | > For the best performance, please close other tabs and running
       | programs.
       | 
       | This has always been the case with CSS, hasn't it? When you use
       | it for rendering something relatively complex, you're kinda
       | doomed.
       | 
       | I get the dream, we want everything to be declarative, and leave
       | room for future optimizations, so that we can write once and run
       | everywhere forever.
       | 
       | But in practice, it's not really an improvement over traditional
       | GUIs that let you draw directly. Hence CSS is literally adding
       | draw[1].
       | 
       | This is a huge reason 90s.dev doesn't use HTML/CSS but starts
       | from scratch and lets you draw right into WebGL2 yourself, or
       | with high-level APIs _if_ you want.
       | 
       | [1] https://developer.mozilla.org/en-
       | US/docs/Web/API/CSS_Paintin...
        
       | skulk wrote:
       | If anyone's wondering how it manages the state, a quick peek into
       | the source code shows that it uses radiobuttons and the HTML
       | contains all the blocks you could ever possibly place.
        
         | globie wrote:
         | I... you're right. I was wondering why the world was only
         | 9x9x9, there's 46k lines showing each block can have air,
         | stone, grass, dirt, log, wood, leaves, or glass.
         | 
         | I kind of like it.
        
         | 90s_dev wrote:
         | That is the most hacky solution I may have ever seen in a CSS
         | demo. I love it.
        
         | johnh-hn wrote:
         | If anyone is equally curious how the camera state works, it
         | looks like the camera is controlled by running animations when
         | a button is in its :active state and pausing them otherwise.
        
       | felineflock wrote:
       | Please tell me if I understood it correctly:
       | 
       | It implements voxels via <input type="radio" />.
       | 
       | Each of the faces of each voxel is configured via <label>s, one
       | for each face having a different CSS class.
       | 
       | There is a voxel for each type of block (dirt, grass, stone, etc)
       | and only one is activated at a time.
       | 
       | The <input>s are arranged in a 9x9 grid 10 blocks tall times the
       | number of different types of blocks (about 6500 total).
       | 
       | All that is enclosed with <div>s with CSS classes that respond to
       | the camera navigation (look up/down, move up/down, forward/back,
       | clockwise/counter)
       | 
       | That is brilliant!
        
       | taosx wrote:
       | Blew my mind. I have hundreds of tabs open, no issue on linux
       | chrome.
        
         | echoangle wrote:
         | I think at some point the number of tabs doesn't matter because
         | the tab is unloaded and the state is maybe stored on disk. As
         | long as you don't open them, having them open shouldn't slow
         | the browser down.
        
       | ryanisnan wrote:
       | Well done!
        
       | quantadev wrote:
       | Pretty slick! I never had played minecraft before. I never knew
       | how blocks were place down until I ran this page. But it needs to
       | be able to use the mouse to rotate, and mouse-wheel to scale!
        
       | sefke wrote:
       | Damn, this is impressive.
        
       | h1fra wrote:
       | Very impressive
        
       | justinde wrote:
       | Web-based minecraft, when?
        
         | JLCarveth wrote:
         | You used to be able to play Minecraft classic directly on
         | minecraft.net
        
         | thrance wrote:
         | Fun fact: one of the first versions of Minecraft (the "classic"
         | one) was playable in a web browser. I actually did play it as a
         | young teen and later thought I must have dreamt it, when I
         | couldn't find it anywhere.
        
           | protocolture wrote:
           | It got extended, embraced and extinguished.
        
         | auxiliarymoose wrote:
         | The phone is ringing--Java Applets called B-)
        
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       (page generated 2025-05-26 23:00 UTC)