Voxel Quest
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Update 04 / 08 / 2015

4/8/2015

14 Comments

 
Since the last update:
  • Explosions (temporary effect, needs improvement); Sound effects are also all placeholders by the way
  • More intelligent chunk refreshing that reduces redundant chunk refreshes (useful for destruction among other things).
  • Rendering spheres of arbitrary size in screen space with real depth, normals, clipping, etc
  • Projectiles
  • Camera Shake (on jump, on objects hitting ground, fades with distance from camera); it is exaggerated right now
  • Zooming in and out to first person mode
  • Walking around with collision, realtime smooth movement that can revert to unit space for turn-based combat and so forth.
  • Physics (gravity, dampening, rigid body physics with adjustable bounciness/hardness, friction, etc).  Currently operates on axis-aligned boxes (even when boxes are rotated on the Z axis)
  • All movement-related effects are now timer-based (rather than frame-based), although you can also force a certain time interval to prevent stutter/frame skipping.
  • Jumping
  • Lantern placement fixed (raised up inside of houses, no more lantern clusters for more efficient lighting)
  • Volumetric textures optimized for lower voxel resolutions (larger shingles, bricks, and boards)
  • Better character selection/deselection with dotted line selection effect; now distinguishes between the active entity and the target entity
  • Better sprite rendering with no clipping or depth sorting errors
  • Labeled all 1600+ items and entities (even though they are just placeholder objects)
  • Added context sensitive options to the drop down menu based on which targets (if any) are selected
  • Quick experiment with trees: upped the number of limbs to produce dramatically larger trees (as seen below)
  • Improved, less naive chunk picking (for rendering) - now uses a flood fill to pick chunks, instead of a bounding cube.
  • Many other small improvements I am probably forgetting to list :)

I am still working on many aspects of the AI but only a day or two per week right now - I am trying to not get stuck in any one area as there are many tasks left to cover.  I think this most recent set of changes opens up a lot more modding potential (in particular, for realtime games).  I think it would be pretty easy to make a platformer (like Mario N64), an artillery game (like Scorched Earth or Worms), or many other options (at least, easier than it would have been with strictly unit/turn-based movement).

I came in with the intention of doing videos weekly but as it turns out monthly makes more sense - there are some weeks where not a lot happens visually.  It also saves me time.  Nonetheless I advise you to follow the @voxelquest (or @gavanw) account on Twitter or my Youtube channel for smaller updates in between.
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Also, I posted this a bit late for April Fool's, but it is worth reposting I think.  Since I added in first person view, I obviously need the obligatory hand swinging some weapon.  (In this case it is one of the weapons from Hexen):
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In spite of this being a joke, I really do dig this style (as did Twitter, apparently) and I would like to perhaps have something similar ultimately.
14 Comments
Vincenzo
4/8/2015 05:22:53 pm

Taking control of a character the engine looks now alive ^^
Smooth movement are cool (I wasn't expecting jumping, that is awesome @_@) and the first person is a very good idea for interior scenes.
As for the explosions, I'm going to think that the destructiveness of the scenery could be a problem other than a cool thing.

Nice to see you updating your project :)

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Gavan Woolery
4/8/2015 06:14:39 pm

Thanks! Yeah destruction is more to show what it can do, rather than what will ultimately be implemented. I suspect brick and stone will be more resistant (or even invincible) to explosions in the real game. :)

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Caleb Leak
4/8/2015 07:01:57 pm

This is looking rather amazing. Any thoughts on adding a VR mode to Voxel Quest? I think the style and top-down perspective lends itself well to it.

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Gavan Woolery
4/8/2015 07:15:06 pm

I'm hooking up a CastAR right now actually

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Vincenzo
4/8/2015 09:33:51 pm

Just one more reason to buy your game and a VR headset! :D

Bilouba
4/8/2015 10:06:34 pm

I'm so happy I backed this project. Keep up the good work !

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Gavan Woolery
4/9/2015 02:48:44 am

Thanks for backing, will do :)

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Daniel link
4/9/2015 02:31:22 am

Nice!

How is the 3d world stored (or described) in the engine?

Will physics affect voxels (ie., buildings/caves might fall/break in)?

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Gavan Woolery
4/9/2015 02:51:46 am

The world is generated algorithmically in chunks, collision and rendering data is extracted, and the rest is tossed. Most data is stored in a semi-sparse method (empty chunks are tossed, completely full chunks are not rendered). There may very well be basic, unrealistic physics (i.e. broken objects fall straight down or maybe collapse into rubble.

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Daniel link
4/9/2015 07:28:42 am

Thanks for the reply Gavan

I'm actually not sure if I'm able to explain what I meant with my first question.

I'll try to explain with an example (feel free to ignore this btw, I understand you are busy!)

Let's say I want to represent a solid cube.

In a vector-based engine, I could represent it as a list of vertices (each with it's own x,y and z coordinate), followed by a list of faces (each referencing 3 of the previously defined vertices), normals and so on.

In a parametric-based engine, on the other hand, I could represent a solid cube as a series of equations. Something like the first result here: http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=cube+equation

In the VoxelQuest engine, how is that solid cube described?

(Sorry if my question is still unclear - or inaccurate. My programming skills are very limited)

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Gavan Woolery
4/9/2015 08:43:38 pm

You can produce arbitrary "blobby" shapes at the voxel level (which can approximate things like cubes, albeit with rounded corners). You can also insert any sort of superellipsoid (http://www.voxelquest.com/uploads/9/5/4/0/9540564/6381309_orig.png) with a 27-slice grid to make a wide variety of shapes. See http://www.voxelquest.com/news/how-does-it-work for more info on that.

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Daniel link
4/10/2015 01:45:13 am

Got it!

Sorry for asking a repeated question..
I guess I missed that post when I read through your blog before..

Thanks!

Noc
4/24/2015 10:27:15 am

This looks amazing. I hope you can sort things out in your real life -- remember that it takes priority and that the game can always wait -- but I'm still awaiting this anxiously. I can't wait to see voxel characters in the game, and I'd love to see them walking around at a realistic pace.

Reply
Gavan Woolery
4/24/2015 11:11:19 am

Thanks! I don't have a real life. j/k :) I spend a fair amount of time attending to family/etc although it is still hard work.

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