In around June this year, LEGO and Google Australia (who do the maps) released Build, a WebGL LEGO simulator.
Touting itself as the world’s largest LEGO set, it allows you to build, using Lego bricks, anything you want on a Google map.The map’s been divided up into small squares, and plots are a 32×32 grid.
Currently, only New Zealand and Australia have been opened up, but I imagine that more global space will be should there be enough interest.
All you need is the Chrome browser, and a Google account. And the willingness to build.
There’s still tonnes and tonnes of space available in both New Zealand and Australia, and because space is allocated on a first come first served basis, New Zealanders could occupy Australia!
There’s also, obviously, lots of space in our surrounding EEZ, although some zooming-in suggests people have been having a bit of fun building boats and islands and whatnot. Still, oodles and oodles of space.
In order to choose a plot, one has a couple of choices.
Firstly, you can just hit the ‘Build’ button you’ll see on the homepage, and it’ll just assign you a plot. Currently, the default appears to be somewhere on Australia’s Eastern coast, or in the surrounding waters.
If, however, you’d rather choose your spot, you can either zoom in until you find the right place and hit ‘build here’, or you can actually type in the address on which you’d like to build, and start from there.
There are a few house rules, mostly around the fact that creations should be one’s own and one shouldn’t be an arse, or preachy, or gross, or anything like that. Summed up, basically, as ‘don’t be a d**k’. Totally sensible, I think.
There are 10 colours to build with already, but should you be one for mods, a hack exists which allows you to build with dayglo pink bricks (awesome). You also get 12 shapes with which to play, which makes for 132 blocks (including pink) with which to go wild.
Creations include a giant banana, medieval castle, dinosaur, Pacman ghost and much, much more - there are already thousands of these built or under construction.
Why the Minecraft Masses have glommed onto this, I don’t know, but they should. They _totally_ should. As well as everyone else, of course :)
Let the land grabs begin!
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UPDATE: Sadly, the pieces provided do not allow me to build a bear :(
Further update: Below, a video showing the construction of a T-Rex (the vid previously posted here didn’t want to work)
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hoKHD_lhbjM[/youtube]
Furthest update: My first build