Caffeine in 3D with voxel.js

voxel.js in CaffeineSince Caffeine is powered by SqueakJS, you can create mashups with any other JavaScript frameworks you like. Let’s take a simple look at 3D graphics using voxel.js, an open-source voxel game building toolkit.

hello blocks

Following the “hello world” example at, we generate a simple Minecraft-like blocks world in which we can walk around and dig (you can visit it here). The example gives us a JavaScript file, builtgame.js, that we can also use from Caffeine.

As generated, builtgame.js evaluates its createGame function at load time. This creates an HTML5 canvas, initializes WebGL, and begins the game when the hosting page is loaded. We want to save those steps for SqueakJS to initiate, and we also want to use a canvas of our own, in a Caffeine window.

hooks for Caffeine

We can achieve the first part by changing builtgame.js so that it just puts createGame somewhere SqueakJS can get to it, instead of evaluating it. We can create a property on the browser DOM window for this: = createGame;

Normally we would edit the source projects from which builtgame.js is generated, rather than builtgame.js directly (properly forking the corresponding repositories), but for this example we’ll just go ahead.

Voxel.js uses the three.js framework as its WebGL interface. The three.js WebGL renderer accepts an HTML5 canvas parameter for its initialization function. The second change we’ll make to builtgame.js is to pass a canvas set by SqueakJS in another window property:

View.prototype.createRenderer = function() {
  this.renderer = new THREE.WebGLRenderer({
    canvas: window.gameCanvas !== undefined ? window.gameCanvas : undefined,
    antialias: true});
  this.renderer.setSize(this.width, this.height);
  this.renderer.setClearColorHex(this.skyColor, 1.0);

Finally, we’ll change the game rendering initialization function, to save a reference to the voxel.js renderer’s event emitter, so that we can tell it to pause from SqueakJS:

Game.prototype.initializeRendering = function(opts) {
  var self = this;
  if (!opts.statsDisabled) self.addStats();
  window.addEventListener('resize', self.onWindowResize.bind(self), false); = (
      function(dt) {
        self.emit('prerender', dt);
        self.emit('postrender', dt);
  if (typeof stats !== 'undefined') {
      function() {

on the Smalltalk side

Now, in SqueakJS, we can create a VoxelJS class:

  subclass: #VoxelJS
  instanceVariableNames: ''
  classVariableNames: ''
  poolDictionaries: ''
  category: 'Hex-HTML5-WebGL-VoxelJS'.

VoxelJS class instanceVariableNames: 'game'

We’ll give it a class-side method to load and initialize voxel.js, with a Caffeine window and canvas for it to use:


| canvas |

Webpage current loadScriptFrom: 'js/voxeljs/builtgame.js'.
canvas := Webpage createWorldOfKind: 'voxeljs'.
canvas styleAt: #borderRadius put: '10px'.

(Webpage current)
  windowizeElementNamed: canvas window id
  closingWith: [
    self pause.
    Webpage current top at: #gameCanvas put: nil].

canvas window dragWith: canvas window windowButtonsTray moveButton.
game := (
  (Webpage current top)
    at: #gameCanvas put: canvas;
    game: {#container -> canvas window})

We’ll also add a method for pausing the voxel.js renderer, using the ee property we added to the game rendering initialization in builtgame.js:

  game ee pause.
  (JQuery at: #fps) element remove

In a workspace, we send our initialization message:

VoxelJS initialize

Now we have our first voxel world, running in a Caffeine window that we can easily close, rather than the whole screen. If you clear your browser cache (including IndexedDB) for, you can reload the Caffeine page to see this code in action.

Please let me know if you get this far!


2 Responses to “Caffeine in 3D with voxel.js”

  1. I made it. Thanks for the post.

    Liked by 1 person

  2. […] seen a couple of examples of frontend Caffeine development, using jQuery UI and voxel.js. Let’s look at something on the backend, using Node.js and something I like to call […]


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