About a week ago I begun to dig through a few WebGL frameworks. I tried GLGE, CopperLicht, and SceneJS. I went through a few tutorials in each, and then I decided to do something with SceneJS.

I wrote a PHP class that was a recursive backtracer maze generator (will post regarding this later), so what I did was create a second class that transforms the map data from the recursive backtracer and translate it into a 3D Scene.

So far it’s fairly simple, I have a premade set of prims for each wall, ceiling, and floor. Then I just run through the map cell by cell, cloaning the prims and then just adding the row number and column number to the X and Z positions.

The camera view is first person, but you can still walk through walls I haven’t learned how to keep that from happening yet.
I marked the end of the maze with a gold goblet.

Visit the application (Requires a WebGL browser)

From the website http://www.vitsoe.com
“As good design cannot be measured in a finite way he set about expressing the ten most important principles for what he considered was good design.”

1. Good design is innovative.
2. Good design makes a product useful.
3. Good design is aesthetic.
4. Good design makes a product understandable.
5. Good design is unobtrusive.
6. Good design is honest.
7. Good design is long-lasting.
8. Good design is thorough down to the last detail.
9. Good design is environmentally friendly.
10. Good design is as little design as possible.

To the average user, registering with a website is annoying. If you’re just trying a new game out, or posting a comment on a blog then it feels like a waste of time that could be spent on typing the comment or playing the game.
To the webmaster, registration may seem necessary to use many features of your site or game. For instance if you run a chess game, you may want users to register for multiplayer features.

As a developer you need to think about how much information you really need.  Most web registrations require at least 3 points of information; they are email, a unique username, and a password. However in many cases, you don’t need all three of these let alone even one.

• Email: Besides password resets, and website newsletters, and message replies there’s no reason to require an email. Uniquely identify the user by an incrementing number in the database instead. If the users are expected to pass their account name to other’s in order to play together, be creative and make a unique address system.

• Username: Usernames are great as they can link a user’s online person to their posts or game. However its not necessary and just extra fluff if their just commenting or trying out the game. Let there be Anonymous Cowards.  If you run an online game, then give nameless users an automatically generated name. If you want users to have a way of uniquely identifying themselves try making up an address for them, you can theme it to the game (such as: 123 fake st. for a sims game, Quadrant 78.249.34b for a space game).

• Passwords: Truth is that there are many people who only use one computer, and it’s not public. You can always set a cookie, and make a password optional for those who do use multiple computers or don’t want a cookie.

By using these suggestions, your users can spend less time figuring out usernames and passwords and will hopefully find your website more enjoyable and return later.