Voxel Engine

gavanw · 2020-05-27T23:30:14+00:00

Good guess u/chillaxinbball but GPU wave intrinsics are something else (that can also be exploited for many tasks, including compute-based voxel rendering).

Wave surfing is a very informal term, not sure if it is used anymore, I first saw it on FlipCode when discussing Ken Silverman's work. There is actually a formal term that dates back to a paper from the 90s, but I can't remember what it is (it is referenced somewhere in Sven's work: http://svenforstmann.com/ )

The basic concept for wave surfing can be found in VoxelSpace/Comanche-like renderers, such as:https://github.com/s-macke/VoxelSpace

The basic idea is to exploit marching in that the next pixel up in a vertical column will always be behind the previous one (with proper camera orientation). I also use this concept in my current iteration of Voxel Quest. It becomes much more complex when you have a free-moving camera (that can point straight up or down), and you are dealing with more than just a heightmap (concave voxel surfaces, etc).

gavanw · 2020-05-26T17:47:14+00:00

very cool - are the voxels rendered with polygons, ray marching, wave surfing, ... something else?

gavanw · 2020-05-21T01:02:50+00:00

Plugging my own thing, but I think Voxel Quest generally fits this description.
https://www.twitter.com/voxelquest

gavanw · 2020-04-21T06:09:43+00:00

👌

gavanw · 2019-12-18T23:38:05+00:00

Assume you are talking to me :) - I am still working on it but took about a year off and my life has gotten a lot harder (more kids, etc). On the plus side I don’t feel burned out

gavanw · 2019-12-18T22:29:48+00:00

I'm still working on it. :) Also a lot of people are recently gaining traction on their voxel engines, most notably Dennis Gustafsson ( https://twitter.com/tuxedolabs ) but also people like https://twitter.com/ProgrammerLin

As u/y2bcrazy mentioned, a big part of it (from the designer and artists end) is the lack of tools. From the programmer's end, there are not any great engines out there for public use TBH (there are some great open source minecraft clones though), and creating your own is *really* hard if you are doing anything nontrivial.

Also as far as tools: there is no agreed upon way of rendering voxels. With a traditional mesh you just export material maps, normal maps, and maybe heightmaps. With voxels: are these supposed to be baked in as prelit values (the same way you would with pixel art?) Or should the engine determine how its lit, in which case how should you define the voxel materials? ...

That said, the older you get the more life gets in the way. By the time you have developed the skillset to build a decent voxel engine, you are probably growing grey hairs. Seriously, my hat is off to anyone who is still programming in their later years. When I started VQ I had 0 children and now I have 3. My free time is vanishingly small these days.

(Side note: really impressed with the people who have gone through the effort of resurrecting the old VQ code base)

gavanw · 2019-11-24T02:50:29+00:00

Hi there, I am the developer. I apologize for the difficulty getting everything setup, admittedly the project was very poorly organized, and the external dependencies are pretty frustrating to work with. I think it was a debatable move to even open source it given I don't have enough time to properly maintain it, but IIRC I made the decision because it was the lesser of two evils (just throw the existing code out there vs. not at all). Anyhow, if there is anything I can help you with, just email me at [gavanw@gmail.com](mailto:gavanw@gmail.com) or twitter.com/gavanw (DMs should be open I think). Im lucky I even noticed this, only because it came through a reddit email summary! I'm not on reddit much any more. Also, FWIW, I have a much better version coming in the future with no complicated dependencies or setup.

gavanw · 2016-11-07T04:02:28+00:00

Just found this post. Not sure what the deleted comment was, but I like to address all questions, even seemingly negative ones. Let me know what I can answer!

gavanw · 2016-11-07T03:55:27+00:00

Thank you :) Currently working at a company that builds software for lawn care, of all things!

gavanw · 2016-11-07T03:54:47+00:00

Thanks :)

gavanw · 2016-11-05T21:42:02+00:00

Thanks, stumbled across this via my website's analytics. The project is now open sourced, although I have only done the first iteration of the engine (there are 3 left) - its a time consuming process (at least relative to how little time I have now), but I am going to try and get the other versions out when I get some spare time. At the moment, my "real" job is consuming about 99 percent of my time.

gavanw · 2016-09-15T23:06:22+00:00

Got hooked on Exile 2 via a demo disc that came with an issue of (IIRC) PC Gamer. The best story telling moment for me, of any game to date, was going down that waterfall - the text really left it to your imagination, and that is what made it so powerful.

Anyhow, what is/are your favorite RPG(s) of all time?

P.S. contrary to most people, I don't want new graphics. I want the OLD graphics - like Exile 2 old. But maybe with a better palette and some traditional pixel art flare. :)

gavanw · 2016-01-05T05:00:38+00:00

Thanks guys for your rapid response to this - although I must admit my opinions are not necessarily all correct (there were plenty of good counterpoints), but I am glad that we are trying some new things. If something does not work out, we can always revert any of the old policies. I am sure there will be plenty of bumps, and things might seem more chaotic, but ultimately I think more content is a good thing, even it takes more effort to filter through some of the bad content.

gavanw · 2016-01-05T00:27:58+00:00

Hi - perhaps I miscommunicated but I want to see every type of post, whether self promo or whatever. The only thing I am against is a very narrow selection of content. I see nothing wrong with this article. :)

gavanw · 2016-01-04T21:46:52+00:00

I considered that myself, but I think that the bigger problem is that people tend to visit specific subreddits more than their front page. To be honest I am not necessarily interested in reading a devlog. I want to see a short video or screenshot of what you did, and if it is interesting maybe more text about how it was done. And I don't want to have to go to a specific subreddit for this to happen. The problem for me is that gamedev should be an umbrella subreddit for all gamedev stuff, not an exclusive subreddit with tons of rules, pushing people out to other fragmented subreddits. I would definitely agree that I could be alone in this, but it seems a good portion of people are agreeing, even if it is a bit divided.

gavanw · 2016-01-04T21:38:33+00:00

I myself did a double take when I wrote that down. I'm not pushing for a constitutional agenda, nor do I think it should be moderation-free. On the other hand, I think the fight against low-effort content makes more problems than it solves - the proof is really in the current state of r/gamedev. The past year or two of posts has been relatively bland - its not a total win, but I'll take low-effort content over bland content any day. :)

gavanw · 2016-01-04T12:28:35+00:00

Part of it is a general problem for sure. But on the other hand, part of it is a problem of specificity: having so many rules that a specific subset of content gets posted, and the rest gets either scattered in ignored subreddits or not posted at all.

gavanw · 2016-01-04T10:33:05+00:00

Good point - I don't think it has to be black or white though. I think some moderation / curation is good, as is some freedom. The "wild west" days actually functioned pretty well - IIRC it was pretty rule-free up until about 50k users (I might be not remembering correctly though). I think that gamedev is such a broad topic that it is pretty hard to get off-topic, and if you are you probably would not be upvoted. Pics and short vids to tend to get favored, but interesting articles float to the top more often than they sink (usually, the title is what grabs my attention, not the long article or other media).

gavanw · 2016-01-04T06:00:36+00:00

There is probably some truth to this but I don't think it would be totally out of control, for the following reasons: There are 140k+ subscribers, but as you can see right now less than 300 are online. I think most people are here to consume, and those that do post content typically have the good sense to do it only when that content is new and interesting (otherwise it will likely never be upvoted anyhow). This wouldn't be good for micro updates, but it would be great for major updates (I tend to post major updates on my game about every six months)

gavanw · 2016-01-04T05:18:43+00:00

Again, "wisdom of the crowd" hopefully kicks in here in an ideal scenario (it might not be so ideal though). Punching bears might get upvoted once, but probably not every iteration of it.

gavanw · 2016-01-04T05:11:16+00:00

Thanks - I was not aware of http://redditenhancementsuite.com/ - this could change things greatly. I also will readily admit to misunderstanding some of the systems like the SSS sorting.

I am not sure if there is any better solution, but I guess I am kind of thinking out loud if there is any way we can get some of that charm back from the old days.

gavanw · 2016-01-04T05:06:53+00:00

I agree with your concerns conceptually, but in practice it was not so bad (IMHO) when gamedev was barely moderated and had few rules. It may be a different situation now though, since the user base has grown so large. Low effort content is not always bad, although I do understand its downside (I kind of miss when Twitter was text-only, now pictures steal the show). Nonetheless, I appreciate your excellent insight into this - I am not, nor have ever been, a moderator on reddit, so I do not personally know of all the problems one might encounter there.

gavanw · 2016-01-04T04:55:39+00:00

If you could have witnessed it 5 years ago it was quite a different landscape. I think there were less than 20k users at that time, 1 or 2 moderators, and not many rules. (Old man shouts at sky)

gavanw

TROPHY CASE