virtualcube.app - browser based virtual speedcubing with leaderboard, replays & customisable keybindings/graphics

Jude

Veteran
Joined
Mar 27, 2008
Messages
302
Location
Sheffield, England
WCA ID
2008WRIG02
Hey everyone, it's been a while!

I took a pretty long hiatus from cubing, like... 15 years or even longer? But recently got back into it and to my dismay, saw hi-games.net doesn't work anymore! I had a look around and as far as I can tell, there's no longer a site for competitive virtual-cubing.. So I thought - I'll just make my own :) After a couple of months of pretty intense dev work, a very rough around the edges v0 of virtualcube.app is here!

main screen.png


The main features right now are:

- Customisable graphics and keybindings
- Solve/session history
- PB stats
- Shareable replays (here's my current PB)
- Leaderboard for 3x3x3 single, rolling AO5 and rolling AO12.

But I have a lot of ideas and intend to keep working on this actively for a while. Things like solve reconstructions, various drills, different cube sizes, PLL time attack, an algorithm center... For anyone interested in this kind of thing though, I'd love to hear what you would like to see. Basically at this point I'm open to any & all suggestions and whatever it is people want, I'd be happy to try and implement.

Here are some more screenshots (leaderboard looking pretty empty, someone come join me!):

leaderboard.png


SB A012.png


settings.png


If anyone does give it a go, please let me know if you run into any bugs! I'm sure there probably are still some minor issues as no-one has tested this yet except for me. Oh, and if anyone is still around from ye olden days, pop in and say hi :)


P.S. It kinda sorta works on phones but it's a pretty crappy experience. Definitely only intended for computer use right now, though I intend to make it work nicely on mobile at some point as well :)

Cheers,

Jude
 
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Hey everyone, it's been a while!

I took a pretty long hiatus from cubing, like... 15 years or even longer? But recently got back into it and to my dismay, saw hi-games.net doesn't work anymore! I had a look around and as far as I can tell, there's no longer a site for competitive virtual-cubing.. So I thought - I'll just make my own :) After a couple of months of pretty intense dev work, a very rough around the edges v0 of virtualcube.app is here!

View attachment 43204

The main features right now are:

- Customisable graphics and keybindings
- Solve/session history
- PB stats
- Shareable replays (here's my current PB)
- Leaderboard for 3x3x3 single, rolling AO5 and rolling AO12.

But I have a lot of ideas and intend to keep working on this actively for a while. Things like solve reconstructions, various drills, different cube sizes, PLL time attack, an algorithm center... For anyone interested in this kind of thing though, I'd love to hear what you would like to see. Basically at this point I'm open to any & all suggestions and whatever it is people want, I'd be happy to try and implement.

Here are some more screenshots (leaderboard looking pretty empty, someone come join me!):

View attachment 43205

View attachment 43206

View attachment 43207

If anyone does give it a go, please let me know if you run into any bugs! I'm sure there probably are still some minor issues as no-one has tested this yet except for me. Oh, and if anyone is still around from ye olden days, pop in and say hi :)


P.S. It kinda sorta works on phones but it's a pretty crappy experience. Definitely only intended for computer use right now, though I intend to make it work nicely on mobile at some point as well :)

Cheers,

Jude
this looks sweet, good job!
 
Hey Jude (totally not a reference to the song lol), great idea for a website! I have one problem, though. Every time I go to open the website it switches to a fully black screen after about 2-3 seconds. Is this a problem with the device I am using (Chromebook) or something else? Please let me know!
 
Oh, how frustrating! Did this happen from the very first time you visited the site? Or were you able to do something at first (e.g. a solve or creating an account) and now it's crashing?

And do you know how to open the dev console? E.g. it's ctrl + shift + J on Windows for most browsers. If you could do that and then reload the page. wait for it to crash and see if any errors appear there. If so, send me a screenshot and I'll look into it for you.

Other than that, you could also try opening in a different browser, or if your browser has an incognito mode you could try that to see if the issue is related to your browser cache?
 
Oh, how frustrating! Did this happen from the very first time you visited the site? Or were you able to do something at first (e.g. a solve or creating an account) and now it's crashing?

And do you know how to open the dev console? E.g. it's ctrl + shift + J on Windows for most browsers. If you could do that and then reload the page. wait for it to crash and see if any errors appear there. If so, send me a screenshot and I'll look into it for you.

Other than that, you could also try opening in a different browser, or if your browser has an incognito mode you could try that to see if the issue is related to your browser cache?
I got it to work - I was in school so I think it was the school's network blocking the site but not giving me the "Blocked Site" page. In other news...
6.72 Virtual Cube single - 0.01 off Site Record NOOOOOOO WHYYYYYYYYYYY

I did stupid AUF out of site record lmao
 
Oh great, glad it worked for you in the end! But oooof that U' U2 at the end is painful haha. GJ though, nice to see the race for the #1 spot be so tight :D
 
this is honestly super neat! solving a cube with a keyboard is kinda difficult for me to do fast, but im sure if i keep messing with it then i could figure it out. also a bug i found is that when remapping keys, pressing ctrl or alt you cant add a second key with it.
 
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Ohh glad you like it! And yep, it's definitely a bit tricky at first but after a little practice it becomes second nature just like turning with your hands.

Fun fact: after I got back into cubing, I learnt a whole new set of OLLs and PLLs because the ones I used to use were not ideal for modern finger tricks (plus I'd forgotten half of them anyway). When I first started working on this project and doing some tests on the virtual cube, all of a sudden my keyboard-muscle-memory kicked in and I accidentally did an OLL alg that I didn't even think I knew anymore! Just like a random old alg I used to use, despite not having used a virtualcube in over 10 years and not using the alg for IRL cubing either haha. Muscle memory is a crazy thing!

And thank you for the bug report! Can confirm I'm getting that too. I'll make sure that's fixed in the next update :)
 
Last edited:
Hey everyone, it's been a while!

I took a pretty long hiatus from cubing, like... 15 years or even longer? But recently got back into it and to my dismay, saw hi-games.net doesn't work anymore! I had a look around and as far as I can tell, there's no longer a site for competitive virtual-cubing.. So I thought - I'll just make my own :) After a couple of months of pretty intense dev work, a very rough around the edges v0 of virtualcube.app is here!

View attachment 43204

The main features right now are:

- Customisable graphics and keybindings
- Solve/session history
- PB stats
- Shareable replays (here's my current PB)
- Leaderboard for 3x3x3 single, rolling AO5 and rolling AO12.

But I have a lot of ideas and intend to keep working on this actively for a while. Things like solve reconstructions, various drills, different cube sizes, PLL time attack, an algorithm center... For anyone interested in this kind of thing though, I'd love to hear what you would like to see. Basically at this point I'm open to any & all suggestions and whatever it is people want, I'd be happy to try and implement.

Here are some more screenshots (leaderboard looking pretty empty, someone come join me!):

View attachment 43205

View attachment 43206

View attachment 43207

If anyone does give it a go, please let me know if you run into any bugs! I'm sure there probably are still some minor issues as no-one has tested this yet except for me. Oh, and if anyone is still around from ye olden days, pop in and say hi :)


P.S. It kinda sorta works on phones but it's a pretty crappy experience. Definitely only intended for computer use right now, though I intend to make it work nicely on mobile at some point as well :)

Cheers,

Jude
Wow how long did it take?
 
This is really neat!

I'm curious what inspired the colorblind shades. As a colorblind cuber, I have a much easier time telling the colors apart. However, I still would have a harder time solving with the colorblind shades because there is no yellow on top. Is there any particular reason you chose this combination?
 
This is really neat!

I'm curious what inspired the colorblind shades. As a colorblind cuber, I have a much easier time telling the colors apart. However, I still would have a harder time solving with the colorblind shades because there is no yellow on top. Is there any particular reason you chose this combination?
I actually can't remember. I just googled around and I think found a random old reddit post or something? Then I asked a friend of a friend who is colour blind if it worked for them and they said yes, so I just went with it. They aren't a cuber though, so they were only able to say whether they could tell all 6 sides apart and not whether it was actually good for solving.

If you can recommend something that would be be better (e.g. similar but with yellow on top instead of grey) then feel free to let me know and I'll make it the default for the colour blind preset!

Wow how long did it take?

As the other guy pointed out, a couple of months! I was spending several hours on it most days though. I've coded basic things before but nothing this ambitious so I really had to learn a lot. But honestly it was a really fun and rewarding experience precisely because of that!
 
If you can recommend something that would be be better (e.g. similar but with yellow on top instead of grey) then feel free to let me know and I'll make it the default for the colour blind preset!
Sorry for the late reply, I'm not on here much. For the type of colorblindness that I have, (red-green, which is the most common), I've found that The Cubicle's factory half bright shades work very well for me, they don't have any new colors but the shades are all pretty distinguishable.

If there is some standard for colorblind shades that I'm unaware of, definitely go for that. But I've not heard of such a thing.
 
this is honestly super neat! solving a cube with a keyboard is kinda difficult for me to do fast, but im sure if i keep messing with it then i could figure it out. also a bug i found is that when remapping keys, pressing ctrl or alt you cant add a second key with it.

Fixed this so you can now use shift, ctrl or alt plus another key as a keybinding!

Sorry for the late reply, I'm not on here much. For the type of colorblindness that I have, (red-green, which is the most common), I've found that The Cubicle's factory half bright shades work very well for me, they don't have any new colors but the shades are all pretty distinguishable.

If there is some standard for colorblind shades that I'm unaware of, definitely go for that. But I've not heard of such a thing.

Ah great, thanks for letting me know. I'll look into that!
 
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