Voxel Quest
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What does the future hold?

5/10/2016

88 Comments

 
Picture
No point in dancing around the issue, I am out of money and trying to figure out what the next step is. Whatever happens, I am continuing to work on VQ, as that does not cost me anything but time. But I might need to allocate much of that time to a paying job, unless I can figure something else out.

The one thing that I have decided, for certain, is that I am returning everyone's money: Kickstarter backers, investors, patrons, and preorders (and anything else). Everyone will keep their rewards regardless. I made this decision before I even launched my Kickstarter campaign, although I've only talked about it with a few people.  I am taking this step regardless of success or failure.

If I have to work another job, I will probably begin this return process as soon as possible (and it will take time to accumulate everything).  Otherwise I will begin returning money when profitable.  I am still planning to release something in the short term, as well as the source code.

I can understand if anybody is disappointed or angry, but I assure you no one has a heavier heart than I do. I invested over $100k of my own money, debt, and equity into this, in addition to about $500k of work (accounting for overtime and opportunity cost).  I spent about a decade working in this area without any sort of return (other than it being "fun"), and over the past 3 years I put in well over 10,000 hours. I dragged my family through all of this as well. Nonetheless, if there is anything more I can do, please let me know.

This is not the end, but it is still a depressing position to be in. Still, I can't help but be grateful to have been given an opportunity to work full time on something like this.

As I have mentioned in the past, writing a game engine is a feasible (if unwise) thing to do, if you pick your battles carefully. I simply had too many battles, and too many directions I tried to tackle at once. My todo list never once shrank faster than it grew.  Only at the tail end of this did I decide (for better or worse) to burn my entire set of goals and focus on one "simple" goal (although I must stress that nothing is simple).

If I sound like I have a bleak outlook, I don't. I still believe in this and I have something that I am proud of. This is the first time in my life I have worked on something of this magnitude, spanning 50k to 100k lines of code, and not wanted to scrap the entire thing.  I've tackled a lot of new ground so I suppose the road is destined to be bumpy, but I continue to learn from my mistakes.

If anyone has any ideas of what I should do next, I am all ears.  At the very least, I feel obligated to be transparent about my current situation.  There is no outcome that I fear, I mostly just want to do what is best for everyone, even if that simply means getting a job and paying everyone back. I will probably investigate past offers I have gotten for funding, but I don't know if that will necessarily bear fruit.

One last thing I would like to make clear is that nobody owes me sympathy, and I am not even asking for it.  My situation is a result of my own choices, and the only thing that I can make better is the future. All things considered, I think this journey has been great so far, and I am curious to see what the future holds.

...

On a happier note, let's discuss what I've been working on recently.

I've talked about (on Twitch) why I ended up doing yet another technical revision.  If it seems crazy that I am doing another revision on the rendering, it might be, but also consider that teams with more members, more experience, and more money are going through the same thing that I am (see this video, if you have not already).

My former method, with the ray marching, was becoming a dead end (on my GPU, a GTX 980, it was dipping to 30 FPS in some cases, at 480x270 no less).  It was not scaling, and it was getting to be too large (I had to break it down into two shaders because I exceeded the instruction limit).  I had the choice to kill it or try and resurrect its performance somehow.  The first thing I tried (and I tried many things) was to get performance acceptable.  I couldn't (at least not without creating other serious issues), so I started a new method, which is pretty close to the second iteration of the engine (when it first transitioned from isometric to perspective mode).  However, I still use the SDF / ray marching stuff where it makes sense, with animated things and quickly previewing objects, neither of which has a huge performance impact on its own.  Overall not a lot of ground lost, especially since I am still using a good deal of code from the SDF stuff (not to mention that the rendering is a relatively small aspect of the code base).

I have transitioned voxel generation to the CPU, using a flood-fill approach that ignores nonvisible voxels and "air" voxels.  It is much more flexible and less restrictive than using the GPU for generation.  There is no instruction limit, there is not as big a penalty to branching, and there are many more sparse operations that can be done (for one, flood-filling is a sparse algorithm much better suited to the CPU).  I also moved to a unified object and destruction model, where all objects and modifications are handled by one algorithm and modifications are voxel-independent, making it easy to do an "infinite" fast undo/redo queue.  There is also caching of generated objects, so you only need to generate things once and they get dumped to a scratch disk (ideally these results will be compressed in the future).

I have a new rendering trick that I worked on independently, but I also heard that the team at Media Molecule is doing something similar on Dreams (actually it is pretty funny because our problems and solutions have crossed paths many times, even though we are both working more or less "in the dark").  For lack of a better term, I call it "deferred rasterization."

Polygons are fast, but they consume a lot of vertex memory (one cubic voxel might consume up to 8 vertices and 36 indices depending on the layout).  That is up to 272 bytes of data for a single voxel. The naive alternative is to use points (like GL_POINTS) - a single point for a voxel would only consume 16 bytes if a 4-component vector were used, or 32 bytes in my case (two 4-component vectors).

But the problem with naive points is that they have massive amounts of overdraw (assuming they are large enough to fill gaps between them). Especially when looking at objects whose sides run parallel to the view vector.  Also, naive points do not look very good - they are essentially tiny billboards.

My (reinvented) solution is to draw points as small as possible (1 pixel large), and grow them in screenspace, using ray casting to determine the cubic boundaries of each point.  This is done in a horizontal pass and a vertical pass, as you would do with most kernel type shaders like a blur shader, to reduce the number of texture lookups.  In my tests, it is approximately as fast as polygon rasterization of voxels (or faster), but uses a fraction of the memory.

The results speak for themselves.  I can now run at 1080p at 120 FPS or greater (again, note that my last method only performed "ok" at 1/4 1080p, 470x270 - at 1080p it dropped below 20 FPS).  And I still have plenty of room left for optimization.  It also looks cleaner, visually (the SDF stuff often looked too noisy and had many artifacts, not to mention that jutting edges (such as grass) were too costly).  I should be able to do VR if I can ever spare the time to implement it. Running at low resolution, I can get 600 to 1000 FPS, so this should scale decently (I know milliseconds are more meaningful, but more people understand FPS as a number).

There are many additional tasks and a lot of cleanup that I am doing as I prepare for the first release.  I have had to rework a lot of the physics code because it was simply too unpredictable and not really well suited for voxel collision (Bullet is a great library, but be very careful what you choose to use it for). I couldn't bring myself to write a custom voxel collision handler for Bullet, so prior I was "faking it" and the voxels were not producing "real" collisions or contact pairs - they were simply causing objects to hover above them as if they were exerting a magnetic force.  This led to many issues and collision and friction produced a user control feedback that felt wonky.  There is something be said for simple, predictable, slightly unrealistic physics though.

I will put together a proper update video as well soon, but for now here are some shots and videos:

I've been told I'm good at hiding bodies... pic.twitter.com/ZZBHOvzOKt

— Gavan Woolery (@gavanw) May 5, 2016

Simple object test - most stuff translates over from the old method with just a few minor code tweaks. pic.twitter.com/4ltJp1vZoS

— Gavan Woolery (@gavanw) April 27, 2016

Fixed lighting a bit among other tasks (grass looks less blobby with more precise shadows). #screenshotsaturday pic.twitter.com/hj9niySbey

— Gavan Woolery (@gavanw) April 16, 2016

I like caves pic.twitter.com/DGG6SCu4um

— Gavan Woolery (@gavanw) April 15, 2016

Visualizing LOD by reducing point fill #gamedev pic.twitter.com/nU6JSW7GXP

— Gavan Woolery (@gavanw) April 12, 2016

LOD is fixed at 1/4 here. Even though only 1km view range, the scale is much more apparent now #screenshotsaturday pic.twitter.com/29etQfKYYM

— Gavan Woolery (@gavanw) April 10, 2016

VQ now using real voxels again (~29 million in this scene)! See image for notes. #gamedev https://t.co/cbml0E1tTE pic.twitter.com/jpO0pmBj2T

— Gavan Woolery (@gavanw) April 5, 2016


I'm going to use this space to reply to the comments, as (unfortunately) my web host is not that great and the comments section is rather annoying to type multiple entries in (and I would be typing the same response over and over).  First of all, thank you all for the outpouring of compassion, I was not expecting a response like this.  If you don't want your money back, I won't force it on you but the option remains there, and I won't hold it against you.

I don't have any firm plans for the future yet.  A lot of people are asking me to put a Patreon up so they can give me more money. I'm kind of hesitant to do that, I feel a bit bad taking money while possibly having to spend much of my time working another job.  I will think about it, but I don't have a yes or no reply yet.

Anyhow, just wanted to say thank you everyone, and I swear I'm not getting teary-eyed. ;)

88 Comments
Simon Elliott
5/10/2016 05:48:03 am

Start a patreon and i'll put any money refunded right back into that.

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Michael Savage-Benoist
5/10/2016 06:19:21 am

Same.

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Gavan Woolery
5/10/2016 07:23:01 am

:) I initially avoided any further crowd funding, but I may consider it as one option. I just don't know that it will be enough to not get a job, so I don't want to be in that risky "halfway" zone. :/

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Jason Johnson
5/10/2016 09:47:39 am

Might be overcomplicated, but you could always start up the Patreon and wait a month or two without spending the money (if you can get by that long) to see how much you can expect to earn from it. Then if it's not enough, you can add the Patreon funds to your plan for repaying Kickstarter funds or something.

I couldn't support a Patreon until after I stop being a poor grad student, but I don't want the Kickstarter money back. It was an investment, and any time it bought you to work was worth it.

Good luck. You're a pretty cool developer.

John
5/10/2016 05:50:33 am

No need to refund my $$$. What I have learned from your blog posts more than makes up for what I spent.

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Dana
5/10/2016 06:43:26 am

Same...no need to refund the SolaceMist donations.

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David
5/10/2016 05:54:57 am

Gavan, would you consider sending a survey to backers asking if they even want their money back?

I, for one, would feel better if you kept my money. It's a small price to pay to see you progress on such an amazing project. I do not really care if you never ship a game. Just reading about your progress is a reward in itself, and you releasing the source code is a cherry on top.

Please keep my pledge, and good luck.

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Arne
5/10/2016 06:34:28 am

Exactly this. It was an investment and you really deserve it. Send that survey or at least keep the money of your loyal fans. And ... keep on documenting your journey if you can :-)

Thanks and best of luck!

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dajomu
5/10/2016 07:09:16 am

Yeah, I feel the same way, don't care about the money

Drake
5/10/2016 09:10:11 am

Same. You should definitely invest enough time to figure out who will want their money back. Many will, but many of us are happy to work with someone this honest and straightforward.

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Kalman
5/10/2016 10:12:56 am

My sentiments exactly. A survey would be good.

Any time I back a Kickstarter, or anything along that line, I see it as a donation to help that person/business pursue what they are trying to do. And hell, sounds like you're still pursuing it. So I would also prefer you keep my meager pledge.

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Malix
5/10/2016 05:54:59 am

Aww, thats a bummer :/

If the engine is well documented & performs nicely, you could license it out & develop it further with that money?

Maybe dish out some "playable" versions to youtube personalities to get the word out, too?

But as for the KS pledge (mine was $20, IIRC), I can manage without you returning it. Sunken cost and what not. :)

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Mozalbete
5/10/2016 05:55:58 am

I don't really want a refund. The development seems to go on well enough and it's fun and interesting to follow. Even if you have to employ a good amount of time on a job I doubt there will be any problem as you, more or less, have fun working on it and keep showing screenshots and little videos with the fun things you create during development

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David
5/10/2016 05:58:16 am

I don't want my money back. Do another kickstarter and I'll contribute again! What you're doing is amazing, never before seen, and completely necessary. I would hate to see this stop.

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Victor Tombs
5/10/2016 06:01:37 am

I don't want my money back, Gavan. I pledged on KS primarily to give you the opportunity to work on your dream project full time for as long as possible.

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tamat link
5/10/2016 06:01:54 am

I think the same, just let people move their kickstarter money to a patreon or something, most of us were here for the fun of watching you do crazy stuff with the GPU, I never thought it would transform in a final game (and even if it did I wouldnt have time to play it probably).

So let people a choice in case anybody wants to keep funding your craziness. Most of us have already get more than what we expected.

Cheers :)

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Bill Eastman
5/10/2016 06:02:08 am

Gavin,

I recognize how much work you've put into this project. When I backed it on Kickstarter I did so because I shared your dream and wanted to contribute to it, not because I expected to get something at the end of the day. My money was well-spent if it allowed an independent game designer like yourself to explore new possibilities and grow in the process. Please return my investment by continuing to dream and pursue those dreams with everything you have, not by giving me my money back.

Thank you,

Bill Eastman

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kerray link
5/10/2016 06:02:26 am

Thanks for letting everyone know, thank you for your work, and if you release it as opensource, that's all I'd ask - no need to return money. It's fun to follow.

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Sam
5/10/2016 06:02:42 am

Definitely not taking any dollars back mate. That's the risk of backing kick starters IMO and I backed you knowing full well that it was a majorly ambitious project 🌞

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Jakub Narębski
5/10/2016 06:02:51 am

As a Kickstarter backer I do not expect and don't need refund (especially that it was a small amount). Please take it as a form of patronage.

BTW. did you try the distance function technique for VoxelQuest? http://iquilezles.org/www/

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Guillaume
5/10/2016 06:08:43 am

I knew that I might not get what I pledged for. This is the nature of Kickstarter. Keep my money :)

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Hanspeter Jochmann
5/10/2016 06:09:47 am

Same for me. IT was a kickstarter. If Bad in mind that the mony can be burnd. No problem with it, it was and is an intresting journey to follow.
Even as I'm a developer and Geck myself.
Keep it going and US on the Mail loop of your progress.

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Just_Ice
5/10/2016 06:12:48 am

Thank you for refunding, you're a class act.

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Pate Blomqvist
5/10/2016 06:16:35 am

Please keep the KS money. In this case the process was/is so much more than the end result!

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Jake Staines
5/10/2016 06:25:20 am

If you give me my money back I will consider it a personal insult. :P

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zimbatm link
5/10/2016 06:31:24 am

Please don't refund me. Kickstarter is all about giving opportunities for people to work on something and that it exactly what you did. And while we didn't get a game out of it, the responsibility is shared and should stay that way. This is how Kickstarter is supposed to work.

Building a new game engine is crazy challenging and you did an incredible good job at it. The worse that could happen now is for all this work to get lost because you are busy working to refund everyone.

If anything, there should be more developers working on this. Find a studio that wants to build a game with your engine, their specific needs will help with direction (and also bring some money to the table).

You can also open up the code so that other developers can contribute. This will give you more polish on the engine. You can make it dual-licensed (eg: GPL+commercial) so that studios still have to pay when releasing commercial games with it. Once you have enough income ramp-up the team. Contributors are a good source in that regard because you already worked with them.

/2c

Best of luck,
z

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Gary B
5/10/2016 06:36:38 am

It's pretty clear to all that have followed you that you put your heart and soul into this herculean effort. Speaking for myself, and likely for many of your other backers, I was just happy to be a part of the journey. All any of us could really ask for is that you gave it your all, and I don't think even you could downplay how hard you worked at this. No refunds please - at least not to me.

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David Wetuski
5/10/2016 06:38:56 am

Please do not return my money. The reason I chose to invest in this project is not for the game itself, but for the fact that you're building this cool engine and making the source code available for others to build on. Even if the engine is not finished, just by releasing what you have done so far, you will have earned that investment.

Please consider creating a Patreon or similar monthly donation system. I want you to be able to keep working on this full-time, for as long as your heart is in it.

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Andre Popovitch
5/10/2016 06:52:05 am

Please, keep my money! There's really no obligation or expectation to, I've participated in worse kickstarters, I've fully got my money's worth from this one!

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Talvieno
5/10/2016 06:53:48 am

Gavan, you know no matter what happens, I'm in it for the long haul. I may not have been able to back it myself, but I plan on sticking around and seeing this out to the end. I know you have the passion and drive to make this game a reality, and it's not going to lessen from you having to get a job. Do whatever you think is right, and I'll stand by you.

Keep your chin up, man. :) It's not over yet.

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Trevor Christensen
5/10/2016 06:59:08 am

Make some sort or Scorched Earth / Gorillas / Worms / Molez game from your engine. It would rule. Keep the money please.

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Jakob Külzer
5/10/2016 07:07:13 am

Love your work and following the progress. Keep the money, and keep working! You're doing something I wish I could do. :)

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anthill
5/10/2016 07:18:49 am

No refund for me. The source would be nice if you can't find a market for it. If you do release it, I'd love to see some tutorials on the code and the engine and more detail on how you got those amazing improvements. I'd patron for that.

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Jan Sælid
5/10/2016 07:21:54 am

Same here. Keep the money. Hope you continue or find other ways to expand on this exciting voxel engine. And I do hope we see more of the emergent AI stuff....

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Grownseed
5/10/2016 07:22:12 am

Hi Gavan,

I'll echo the sentiment around here, following the development of VoxelQuest itself so far has been worth the money I gave through KS and more, so:

1) Please don't refund me
2) How can I give you more money?

Whatever happens, all the best going forward, I for one can't wait

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ChrisPebble
5/10/2016 09:38:43 am

This. Keep my money and find a way to let me give more.

Whatever happens in the future (even if you need to walk away at some point) it has been amazing to watch.

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Christen Thompson
5/10/2016 07:26:20 am

Please keep my money and please open a patreon account so I can send you more. The project you are working on is worth continuing and I have really enjoyed your blog posts.

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Matt Varan
5/10/2016 07:53:36 am

Hi Gavan, just wanted to say thank you for the work you put into this project. Yours was the first Kickstarter campaign I had ever backed. There was something so pure and personal about your project that I had to back it. Looking at all the other comments here, I hope I'm not overstepping my boundaries to say that they also felt the same. Keep the money I pledged. I think it went to good use. Just please don't give up. Good luck in your future endeavors!

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Rick C
5/10/2016 07:55:32 am

Please keep my kickstarter money. You've earned it with your hard work and the lessons we've learned through your endeavor. I'll gladly pay again. Keep up the good work!

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Andreas Aronsson link
5/10/2016 08:07:48 am

For me personally I don't need any kind of refund, I see the money as a donation no matter if the creator delivers :P I've had other project fail on me and that's just life.

I've enjoyed keeping up with your posts and videos and seeing what crazy stuff you come up with :) It has been way more enjoyable than some other projects I've backed and even gotten the rewards from ;)

So yeah, if you really do want to pay money back, perhaps do the survey some people have suggested. Thanks for be so totally up front with the situation and not shying away from telling us how it is.

I know some projects who just vanished, will not answer to email or do any kind of updates. Those kind of things leaves one wondering, it's not a good feeling.

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TheSlider
5/10/2016 08:22:51 am

Same as everyone here. You deserve the money for all the amazing work you've done so far and shared with us and I would gladly give you more if that allows you to keep doing what you like to do. : )

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Flintsteel7
5/10/2016 08:31:50 am

I'm not a backer of your KS, but have been following the Voxel Quest project for a while, and am very interested in the progress you've made!

I'm sorry things didn't go as you maybe wanted them to, but I'm glad you seem to be taking it as well as you do.

I can imagine you're wary of further crowd funding, but it seems from the comments I've read here that a chunk of your supporters want to continue supporting you. If there were a Patreon or similar way for us to support you, I would be gla dot help as well.

Also, I'm very interested in the engine for my own projects, and would like to purchase it and the source code when it's available.

Keep up the good work Gavan!

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Bryan
5/10/2016 08:38:54 am

I backed the project knowing full well it may never see the light of day, but felt it was worth backing none the less.

I respect where you're coming from and it's appreciated to hear. But I don't want a refund either.

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James
5/10/2016 08:49:08 am

No refund for me thanks, if it comes back I'll just send it back :P

Myself and a small team are working on our own engine part time (have been for nearly 6 years) and its pretty damn tough. You've made more progress than we have and I reckon yours will see the light of day eventually :)

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stalelight
5/10/2016 08:58:46 am

Gavan, I am aligned with what many people have said so far - please send out a survey to see how many people want refunds as many of us would like for you to keep our donations.

To assist you with ways to fund this project - IMHO your next goal should be to create a 'Playable Early Access Game' with a tutorial or demo so that players can get a feel of it. Also try to provide some sort of 'workshop' tools so that player/devs can provide you additional feedback while assisting with game and world creation. If you need any help with a story, please let me know. Thank you.

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PreacherJayne
5/10/2016 09:00:00 am

Keep my money as well. You've taught me a lot about game development through example, and I'm grateful to have been able to participate in the process as a community manager over the last year and a half. You're doing great work, and I'm excited to see what the future brings.

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John
5/10/2016 09:13:07 am

I used this website to preorder the game and I definitely don't want a refund.

It is rare to see someone working so hard to create something so groundbreaking! What you've created has a lot of potential and I hope there's a way we can support you in continuing it! Whether that's using Patreon or something else.

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Japa
5/10/2016 09:30:06 am

I, too, don't want my money back. It wasn't much anyway in the first place.

That said, I think things would have gone a lot smoother if you would have concentrated on making the game from the start, in isometric, rather than trying, failing, and trying again to make it work with perspective.

There's no end to the number of graphical work that could be done, but sooner or later, you need to put it into a game.

I think most people who got excited about the project from the beginning were going by what you were showing then.

All the procedural towns, artsy trees, wooden piers, etc, that caught everybody's eyes before hardly got a second look once you started re-doing the engine multiple times.

I somebody who also uses patreon, I agree with the suggestion. It doesn't have to replace your day job, whatever that ends up being, but it does help out for keeping you going, just as long as you still work on the game in your own time.

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Josh Gunderson link
5/10/2016 09:30:46 am

In lieu of refunds, I vote to toss it on GitHub. That way others can help.

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Mike
5/10/2016 09:46:49 am

I use kickstarter as a source to fund interesting idea's. If I get something out of it then bonus. I won't take a refund because i'm paying for innovation not a game. I backed this KS because the idea had me wanting more games like this.

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TobiasK
5/10/2016 09:47:52 am

Keep the cash, someone in debt needs it more than me.
Don't worry about the progress, sometimes stuff fails and pledging on kickstarter is a gable anyways.

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rrc2soft
5/10/2016 09:48:23 am

No need to give me any money back. You have tried your best, I enjoyed your updates, and that's enough for me. Learn from your mistakes, and keep on trying your best.

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Nils Wloka link
5/10/2016 10:11:00 am

When backing Kickstarter projects, I accept the fact that I might get nothing in return for my money. That's especially true for software projects, which have high amounts of uncertainty in the best of circumstances. So if at all possible, please just keep my money.

Oh, and even if it didn't succeed in the end, I really enjoyed the vision and your updates.

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Jason Smith
5/10/2016 10:15:16 am

Just going to re-iterate the comments - I don't need a refund. I hope you keep developing it, even if it takes longer and you're doing it in your free time.

(Also, if you end up looking for a "real job", check out Amazon Game Studios up in Irvine. I've got some friends over there - they're doing cool stuff and looking for people like you.)

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jhondidfool
5/10/2016 10:20:28 am

I'm with the others. Just make a patreon and I'll re-pledge my money and even more. This is a worthwile project.

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Fosco
5/10/2016 10:38:14 am

I don't want the refund, but I do look forward to checking out the source. Best of luck with your next job and keep up the good work!

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Fosco
5/10/2016 10:59:46 am

I don't want the refund, but I do look forward to checking out the source. Keep up the good work, and best of luck!

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Jussi Rasku
5/10/2016 11:03:42 am

I fully concur with the others. Keep my money and use the time not working to pay the refund to do anything you love. If it is VQ, teh better :)

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Chris Joel link
5/10/2016 11:22:57 am

Gavin, I just to add a voice to the chorus of supporters: I do not want a refund. I was hoping to discover through this post that you had started a Patreon or similar. As an amateur game developer, your work is an inspiration to me. I would love to support it, even if I can only give a little.

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Travis Chapman
5/10/2016 11:37:39 am

I only gave $10, but I don't want it back; it's not like you've scammed anyone of their cash, and I'm happy to have helped you along with the project, this is one of the most amazing things I've ever seen someone devote themselves to and I just want to see it keep improving.

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Shawn
5/10/2016 11:43:40 am

I don't want a refund; if you publish the source, that's good enough for me.

Thanks for all the posts!

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Chris Wilcox
5/10/2016 11:48:34 am

+1 for keeping my money. I'd way rather you keep my $10 and keep pursuing your dream than me buy a sandwich.

Good luck, bruthah.

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Clawdius Talonious
5/10/2016 11:49:59 am

I'm inclined to agree that I didn't donate my money to this project to have it be refunded, I wanted the project to be finished and I see little reason to refund those of us who feel the same way. VR support for the engine offers a potentially even more interesting aspect to the possibilities this engine offers any game that will use it, and the work you're putting in to finish it will only be slowed by trying to seek employment in order to repay the donations offered to you through crowdfunding.

If anything I think you should consider the suggestions made by some to put up a Patreon site, so you can focus on your work. Maybe contact Valve and HTC and apply for some aide either giving you hardware required for VR testing, financial backing, or a combination of those two and advice for how to proceed. https://www.vrfocus.com/2016/04/htc-announce-100m-accelerator-program-for-vr/ The Accelerator program seems designed just for cases like VoxelQuest, where not only does your finished project offer content by itself but it will also potentially provide indie developers another outlet to manufacture content of their own.

I would love to see a room scale game similar to Black and White, where you raise a creature in a (potentially using procedural generation to scale to room size) world where it can affect the surroundings and you can raise it to assist or terrorize the people in the world around it. With your Voxel system, a Magic Carpet-like terrain alteration system could add to the godgame feel, allowing the player to directly interact with the landscape. A lot of people seem interested in that sort of a game on /r/Vive and so far no one really steps into the void left in the genre of God games, especially those designed for VR.

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Benjamin Schmauss
5/10/2016 11:57:54 am

Keep my money. I love what you do and your updates are enjoyable.

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Alex Dunn
5/10/2016 11:58:26 am

Gavin,
It was wonderful watching you create this engine. Having done the same thing before, (though be it on on much smaller scale, ran into scaling issues ;)) creating an engine and then trying to scale it, and having to re-architect things based on your previous learned experience, is such a long and arduous process. You did this on your own! That's insanity! For what it is, it's an incredible achievement, I'm not sure what any of us really even expected what the game and gameplay would even be at this point, but I don't think any of us really cared, because we know given enough time it would be awesome. I'm sure I'm echoing the sentiment, I don't want a refund and would be happy to donate again if possible.
I know you wanted this to be moddable in the future, I'm sure when things are more flushed out that people could make great procedurally generated worlds, (I'd love to see something like Dwarf Fortress rendered with your engine). Even if the next steps were to open source or release source code to backers, I think you could have a vibrant community around this engine.
Thanks! Looking forward to what's next!
-Alex

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Gerald
5/10/2016 12:39:19 pm

Gavan, keep my money.
I only spend money on Kickstarter that I do not need, and I certainly don't take money from people who are in difficulties.

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Noc
5/10/2016 12:43:20 pm

I have been following this project on youtube well before the KS, and since then I have been following it religiously on twitter and twitch (Jetadex on twitch)

What I can say with certainty is that you've put blood sweat and tears into this project, and I am almost equally certain that this game will be a masterpiece because of it. Beyond that you have been communicative and were smart enough not to give hard deadlines to your backers, and because of that I am absolutely dumbstruck that you are planning to give refunds. telling everyone you will give them refunds is a terrible solution for being too broke to continue work on the game :p. Even though knowing the types of backers you have, I know you'll get to keep a good sum. I really hope you aren't letting your pride make financial decisions for you.

The Patreon is a really good idea, and though I'm a dead broke student I will definitely scrap together $5 a month for you. I know your backers really believe in you and will do the same if not allot more. Even if you still have to get a job, atleast let us help afford basic creature comforts while you take on this beast of a project. We're all in your corner, Gavan, and we'll all step up when the chips are down. And though it's probably redundant, I definitely will not be accepting a refund.

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Jason Alexander link
5/10/2016 12:57:46 pm

Just to echo many other's comments:

I don't need/want a refund. That was for you to do what you're doing now - pursuing your dreams, and, hey, if it results in a product: GREAT! If not, I'm backing someone who's passionate about what they're doing. I'll do that all day long.

Keep my money, and keep working (if possible).

And, if you setup a Patreon, I would be on board, as well

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NZB
5/10/2016 01:13:20 pm

same with me; please keep money - it was interesting journey we all took together with You!

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Zebulon Pi
5/10/2016 01:23:14 pm

I'm good with not getting my money back. Backing doesn't mean getting a game, it's about funding a dream, and sometimes dreams don't necessarily produce a finished product, and that's OK. You learned, we got to experience that learning, so I consider my money well spent, man.

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Kingsley
5/10/2016 01:56:17 pm

Patreon! Yes, Absolutely! I suggested that back in the Kickstarter days!
You're doing this for the long haul, Gavin, and you make great progress. No one is expecting you to make something of this scale on some paltry dole of kickstarter money.

Even if you don't get enough patreon money to live off at the start, you shouldn't feel stressed over it. We know you want to make your dream game, and we're trying to help. As long as you keep trying, we'll keep helping. That's the deal.

Keep my money. Believe in us, who believe in you.

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Raetac
5/10/2016 03:50:02 pm

Whatever I pledged, keep it. I've forgotten about it a long while ago and if it's helped one person to be able to touch even the edge of greatness, it was not wasted

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Eli Grey link
5/10/2016 04:10:26 pm

Once you open-source what you have done so far, please include your entire commit history. In your original Kickstarter campaign you promised to upload the full source to GitHub, so no matter what happens, you need to upload the source code eventually.

I'm sure many of us are curious to look at and experiment with both the old and new engine code. I would prefer if we got more than just the current state of the master branch, as your both your past and current code interest me.

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Joel Robinson
5/10/2016 07:13:35 pm

Please keep the the money. I have no interest on receiving a refund. If you feel you must please provide a way to contribute again. I really like the idea of Patreon. The only thing I would really like is for you to open source the (really well commented 😄) code. I have no regrets in funding you. While I hope you can finish and would really to help you continue, if you feel you can't, I'll support whatever you decide.

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Kevin Karan
5/10/2016 08:56:19 pm

Please do not refund my money.

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snargleplax
5/10/2016 09:09:09 pm

Keep my money, along with my thanks. Your work on this has been inspirational, as is your attitude in what you've written above. +1 for Patreon as well; I'd love to contribute more through that kind of channel.

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Karl
5/10/2016 09:49:18 pm

Please set up a Patreon!

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Maximinus
5/11/2016 12:46:40 am

Good luck with the next steps of your adventure.

Very curious about your impressions of lib Bullet (that I also use) : what shoud we be careful about? Doesn't btBoxShape work for voxel-type collisions?

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BinarySplit
5/11/2016 01:06:41 am

No need to refund me - your research into voxel rendering has been amazing and I've learned so much from it. I feel like I owe you much more than the $20 I pledged.

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Francesco Bellomi
5/11/2016 03:39:17 am

Gavan,
no need to refund my $$$.
I really enjoyed following your work.
Good luck with your future work.

Francesco

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Jan Święcki
5/11/2016 04:44:48 am

Gavin,

Don't refund. This needs to continue. Create another Kick Starter or Indiegogo. Seriously. This engine is dream engine for me. When I was a kid I dreamed about something I called "3D texture" and fully destructible environment. This is it:)

I will give you more money for this, just plz do create funding opportunity for you from the community!

Take care,
Jan

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Lionel
5/11/2016 06:14:05 am

Going into the kickstarter, it was clear that it was a very hard challenge, and I never thought that I could really play this game soon.

The uniqueness of what you are trying to achieve on your own and following you on this journey is completely worth whatever money I gave you in the first place.

Every update on the rendering engine was always like a mini Christmas.
I loved the technical details and explanation (even if I don't get most of it).

I really hope that you will not give up on this project and maybe Patreon could help you free some time to continue working on it.

I love everything about this project and I wish you good luck. And keep the money man !

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Daniel Lyons link
5/11/2016 06:21:52 pm

Keep my $10! Geez!

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Erhune link
5/11/2016 07:49:08 pm

I'm not a backer of VQ, but I wanted to chime in to give you some well-needed words of encouragement in these kind of times.

Your situation really reasonates with me: I too invested about a similar amount of time and money in my own game, and ran out of funds after ~3 years. I thought a lot about stopping the project or pausing it, and decided to continue working on it part time while freelancing to get my finances back together. In the end, I didn't work on it as much as I wanted, and trying to juggle with 2 "jobs" and other personal issues drained me of my energy and led me into slight depression, which took ~1 year to heal. I'm back full-time on my game now, unsure that it was the "right" decision, but I didn't want to waste the efforts and really wanted to avoid leaving things unfinished.

I'm not giving you any suggestion on how you should proceed, because frankly I don't know what I'm doing myself. But you can definitely be proud of your achievements, and having managed to gather such a wonderful community around you (reading the comments here give me hope for humanity!).

The only advice taken from personal experience I have for you is being careful with potential partners/publishers/other. Dealing with them can consume a lot of time and energy, for a result that might very well be "nothing".

Best of luck for whatever path you choose to take.

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Thomas
5/12/2016 02:43:10 am

Sending money back? A kickstarter campaign is a way to sponsor interesting projects. There is NO guarantee the project will end out as intended, meet its time-frame, nor is there any guarantee the project will ever complete.

Had you taken the money and just run off, I would be pissed, but as I see it, you have faithfully tried to deliver, and I believe your intentions have been honest!

I don't expect to get my money back!... You don't owe me anything (but the right to a copy of your game if it ever completes *in the current form*)!

For reference, I also backed projects like Elite Dangerous, as I thought it would end out running under linux... Did not, and I have never played it.... So you are not the only one not meeting your (own) expectations, nor will you be the last!

Kudos for trying!

P.s. In this case I would even increase my 'investment' if you start an additional campaign... Even if there is no guarantee for a final product!

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Arhiippa
5/12/2016 04:03:53 am

I don't want a refund. Keep working as much as you realistically can and hopefully you'll find a way to finish this project.

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BumblesShrimp
5/16/2016 08:13:08 am

Please let us know if enough people want money back that your patreon can't support it. I'd be willing to chip in to refund people who are less interested in your work than myself.

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Borky Borkbork
5/16/2016 08:30:46 pm

Please don't refund me. By being so open during the development process you've earned the $60 that I kickstarted.

You've created something very valuable, and I hope you are able to find a way to use it to feed your family.

Bork

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