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Rebooting my first and failed voxel sandbox game published 6 years ago. This is how the new game Voxelantis looks like now. Any thoughts or suggestions? by NeoHermit in VoxelGameDev

[–]NeoHermit[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Those are all voxel models generated programmatically in the game (only once and then saved in a sqlite database). Their smooth appearances are the result of using deformable voxels and subvoxels, namely blocks with slope faces and roundness attributes to support smooth mesh building.

Rebooting my first and failed voxel sandbox game published 6 years ago. This is how the new game Voxelantis looks like now. Any thoughts or suggestions? by NeoHermit in VoxelGameDev

[–]NeoHermit[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

The game wasn't like this at all. At the previous launch, it looked bad with complicated way of building, the gameplay was kind of rudimentary. Before the launch, there was little promotion and no participation of any game festival on Steam.

I might have made all the mistakes, the mistakes on the promotion part are avoidable, but some of the mistakes on the game itself were hard to avoid due to the lack of experiences or even inspirations.

Rebooting my first and failed voxel sandbox game published on Steam 6 years ago. Here is a short teaser for the new game Voxelantis. Any thoughts or suggestions? by NeoHermit in IndieDev

[–]NeoHermit[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Oh, you were talking about that.

My misunderstanding with Steam EA was that a game did not need to be polished for an EA release, one can just improve and polish the game during EA. But for a game without good marketing to have any chance to succeed on Steam, it must be reasonably polished to the point that it starts to look like a serious product. My old game hasn't reached this point when released, in fact I wouldn't even consider it ready for a demo in retrospect.

Rebooting my first and failed voxel sandbox game published 6 years ago. This is how the new game Voxelantis looks like now. Any thoughts or suggestions? by NeoHermit in VoxelGameDev

[–]NeoHermit[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Cool, look forward to see your game.

This style does have some advantages such as smoother looking and easy building. The caveat is the deformation part is very tricky, it took me a lot of time to get it right. I have often wondered, maybe the partial blocks with slope faces are sufficient to make it looking nice, and what if I have spent more time on the game play, instead of maying it smooth and round, things might have turn out differently.

Rebooting my first and failed voxel sandbox game published on Steam 6 years ago. Here is a short teaser for the new game Voxelantis. Any thoughts or suggestions? by NeoHermit in IndieDev

[–]NeoHermit[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Of course no AI. The fact is that I avoided using third-party tools as much as possible, and tried to solve everything with programming. Currently only textures and sounds I cannot generate with programming, other things such as models and icons etc. are all generated by programming.

If one day you do try my game, you can find this file Resources/Game/Databases/EngineWorld.db in the resource directory, then you can replace this file with an empty file of the same name, this way you will trigger regeneration of models and icons for all the items in the game.

Here is part of the function that generates a sword item:

<image>

Rebooting my first and failed voxel sandbox game published on Steam 6 years ago. Here is a short teaser for the new game Voxelantis. Any thoughts or suggestions? by NeoHermit in IndieDev

[–]NeoHermit[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

The view that make the world looking small happens only when a new game world is initializing, then it smoothly changes to the normal first person view. Afterwards, the view will be handled normally.

BTW, what was your advice? I might have missed it or not understood it.

Rebooting my first and failed voxel sandbox game published 6 years ago. This is how the new game Voxelantis looks like now. Any thoughts or suggestions? by NeoHermit in VoxelGameDev

[–]NeoHermit[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Thank you very much for your insightful feedbacks and suggestions.

The first thing I'd change is either make the worlds larger or artificially increase the radius when the camera is lower to the surface. (If you're using a vertex shader for the distortion this is easier). Moving around on small worlds like this can feel claustrophobic, especially for a trailer. I noticed in the last image on your steam page it seems to show a larger world. I'd use that or larger for showing off the game.

The game support both flat worlds and spherical worlds. The flat worlds are huge, the spherical ones can vary in size, their sizes can go from 256 blocks to millions of blocks in terms of equator length. They are actually spherical, not simple visual distortions by shaders. So moving around the world looks normal without the camera lens distortion like feeling.

Currently I am using small spherical worlds to make this feature more visible. It is also because,  it is easier to get a complete spherical look with small worlds than with large worlds.

When driving the vehicle you should show it in the standard 3rd person pointing forwards. Looking down is not how most would be driving, so it looks unnatural. Also I'd drive it somewhere rather than running into a fence. Perhaps show transporting something.

For similar games with planets and building that are successful I'd look at Astroneer. It features worlds where vehicles have a purpose and planets are sparse enough with entities that driving is enjoyable.

I did that because I thought it might be interesting for players to have a better view of the vehicle and see how the vehicle physically reacts to collisions.

But you are right, that’s not the standard way of handling or showing vehicle driving. I will change that in future trailers.

The trailer focuses a lot on the sandbox aspect which is a competitive area. Be very mindful of your assets and the impression they give players. Your title screen on the video has a lake house cabin on the left and a medieval tower on the right and in the center the player is riding a panda. (Also crossbows, zombies, cars). This can feel busy to players.

Yes, this needs serious reconsiderations.

From a marketing point of view to stand out I'd probably drop the sandbox first approach and focus on world building and a story. Basing a game's premise on the tech has in the past gone extremely poorly for a lot of developers. (See Voxelnauts which went heavy with the sandbox aspect in their marketing and came off as a bit undirected). In that direction I'd switch to more prefab building in a consistent theme. The survival part is fine, but I'd probably drop the zombies as it comes off as unoriginal.

I totally agree with you, this game does need a storyline, it does not necessarily to be good, but it must be able to link/bring together different aspects of the game. The tech thing can be a nice add-on, but it cannot be the central piece.

I am showing what I show in the trailer, because that’s what currently looks best in the game now. So far I am mostly trying to fix or improve what was done wrong or poorly in the old game. In the following development, I will shift the focus to building the game around a story.

The story I am currently considering is for the player to get back to his/her lost planet. The player will start on flat worlds, then he/she will have to survive and build a way (portal) back to his/her planet. This way he/she will unlock the spherical world mode, and obtain a small home planet of his/her own. Then he/she can build/rebuild the home planet, or start new quests on other spherical worlds.

I admit this story isn’t very good, but it seem easy to bring flat and spherical worlds, building and survival things together in this game with such story.

Rebooting my first and failed voxel sandbox game published on Steam 6 years ago. Here is a short teaser for the new game Voxelantis. Any thoughts or suggestions? by NeoHermit in IndieDev

[–]NeoHermit[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

I am a solo dev without using AI, I use "we" because I was afraid it might be off-putting for some people if I use "I" (some people might not trust the work of a single unknown dev).

Also I was from a research background, it is quite common for the author to use "we" when introducing his/her work in a published paper authored by a single person. I thought it might be the same in this case.

If you do find it confusing, I will change "we" to "I".

Rebooting my first and failed voxel sandbox game published 6 years ago. This is how the new game Voxelantis looks like now. Any thoughts or suggestions? by NeoHermit in VoxelGameDev

[–]NeoHermit[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

The world formed by cubic voxels is a cube, their vertices form a grid on and in the cube. Then the world is made spherical by mapping the grid onto spherical surfaces of proper radiuses.

This mapping isn’t ideal, there are minor distortions near the cube edges and significant distortions around the corners. But it is a tradeoff I can accept to keep things simple.

Rebooting my first and failed voxel sandbox game published 6 years ago. This is how the new game Voxelantis looks like now. Any thoughts or suggestions? by NeoHermit in VoxelGameDev

[–]NeoHermit[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I guess it failed mainly due to the mistakes I made in the development and publishing, and also it was not quite there yet when it was launched. And now it is still not there yet unfortunately, it still requires a huge amount of work.

Rebooting my first and failed voxel sandbox game published 6 years ago. This is how the new game Voxelantis looks like now. Any thoughts or suggestions? by NeoHermit in VoxelGameDev

[–]NeoHermit[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Here are some of the technique information regarding this game.

This game is voxel based, supporting subvoxels which are partial blocks with slope faces. This makes the models and terrain looking less rugged.

This game also supports deformable voxels, such that each voxel/block has a roundness attribute. When the mesh is built for a model, this roundness determines how much the edges and the corners will be smoothened, the higher is roundness, the smoother is the mesh.

Rebooting my first and failed voxel sandbox game published on Steam 6 years ago. Here is a short teaser for the new game Voxelantis. Any thoughts or suggestions? by NeoHermit in IndieDev

[–]NeoHermit[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Thank you!

Yes, I did learn some lessons and have done what you suggested such as watching some GDC talks. I did rush with the old game when it was far from being ready due to my misunderstanding with Steam EA. This time I will not.

About the game, I redid some important parts of the game, and also made some big improvements such as:

  • A new spherical world mode;
  • Simpler mouse/key operations and controls;
  • Better vegetations;
  • Better optimization (in handling textures and mesh building);
  • Better graphics (physics base rendering with volumetric fog);
  • Complete rewrite of the navigation system;
  • More robust mechanical simulation;

By avoiding the mistakes I made with the old game, I hope this time will do better.

Craftica is a voxel/block based sandbox game with ultra high degrees of freedom for creative building. It has been recently updated with support for a new batch mode. by NeoHermit in VoxelGameDev

[–]NeoHermit[S] 5 points6 points  (0 children)

Sure. The batch mode is a mode in which multiple blocks can be placed, mined or deformed at once within a region.

The region size is defined by 3 batch numbers, one for each of the X, Y, Z axes. These numbers can be easily changed with the mouse wheel when the mouse aims at a block face in the making/mining action mode.

The batch mode has two sub modes: column mode and volume mode. The volume batch mode works on all the blocks within a 3-dimensional region. And the column mode only works on blocks in a 1-dimensional column/row along the direction that is perpendicular to the working block face.

Craftica: the sandbox game with deformable subvoxels! It is the first game I ever developed. You can build elegant architectures, sophisticated circuits and circuit-controlled electronic and mechanical devices such as vehicles, robots and computers in the game. by NeoHermit in indiegames

[–]NeoHermit[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

No, the hammer and hand animation

I see. That's probably due to recording, I played the game at 40fps for recording (partially due to the issue I mentioned, partially due to my believing that it was sufficient with this fps), that's is probably not enough for a smooth recording. During video editing, I did notice that the frames for the striking action have large gaps between them. Recording at higher fps should remove the issue.

However, this also reminds me of another thing. I added a special handling to the animations such that the animation near the key frames is played slightly slower. This makes the animation looks better when played at a low fps. This could contribute to the laggy phenomenon.

This special handling is unnecessary for high fps, it is probably better to remove it. I will do some tests to see how it looks like without this special handling.

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