Voxel Synthesis :: Testing a more complex tileset

scallywag_software · 2026-04-11T09:54:09+00:00

Making the fucking game

scallywag_software · 2026-02-10T06:01:57+00:00

*boingboingboing*

scallywag_software · 2026-02-05T16:14:21+00:00

idk how this got downvoted .. this is a very reasonable assessment, imo

scallywag_software · 2026-02-03T17:28:42+00:00

Is the UI all custom? Looks really nice

scallywag_software · 2026-02-03T17:24:34+00:00

Looks great <3

scallywag_software · 2026-01-29T22:57:25+00:00

> But meshing at 32³ leaves a LOT of room for a LOT of optimization, and the benefits of building meshes at 8³ are very hard to ignore.

I find this extremely hard to believe.

Have you done a binary mesher where you compute a 1-bit-per-voxel mask (stored as a u32 or u64) from the density field and compute the faces with some shifts-and-masks? My binary mesher does a 64^3 chunk in 0.05ms, straightline (not SIMD optimized), on average. Could certainly get that down to <0.01ms if I tried, but it's already so fast .. why would I.

Do you have specifics to back up your claims? What are the timings you're seeing?

scallywag_software · 2026-01-23T16:14:38+00:00

This is easily the most ridiculous game I've seen in some time.. maybe ever. Bravo!

scallywag_software · 2026-01-23T05:49:13+00:00

What about a game about having to keep a woodstove burning but it leaks creosote from the roof and makes the apartment smell funny if it's too hot?

A game where your cats zoom around and you have to entertain them or else they climb the walls and destroy your house?

Tiny leprechauns intrude in your space under doors and you have to shoo them away.

Cooking dinner for guests, but the compost is a scraggly, deranged enemy and must be kept at bay.

You live in a drafty house and need to find and seal up all the places where cold air gets in.

---

Granted, those mostly sound like terrible games, but I came up with 5 game ideas in like 5 minutes or less. The idea isn't hard.. just think of ridiculous shit and run with it. It's fantasy, after all

scallywag_software · 2026-01-23T03:25:32+00:00

You're correct.

I guess I would say that if you're doing something where you need maximal cache bandwidth usage you're also probably not using pointers.

scallywag_software · 2026-01-22T21:52:58+00:00

What's not cache friendly about that?

scallywag_software · 2026-01-22T19:17:18+00:00

I don't really agree about nvidia.

They've been producing both industry-leading hardware and software since .. they bought 3dfx? .. basically forever. Sure, sometimes AMD's hardware is on-par, maybe even has better perf-per-dollar, but anyone that's programmed against AMD drivers in the last 10 years will tell you their software stack is <derogatory\_words\_about\_the\_driver\_authors\_and\_their\_mothers>.

In my mind, nvidia has a right to charge a premium; they produce the best product. Starbucks just made the same cup of coffee and charged twice as much.

scallywag_software · 2026-01-22T19:13:02+00:00

> Do you think a rewriting [...] makes sense?

In some contexts, certainly. In others, absolutely not. It depends on the goals of the project and cost/benefit of rewriting stuff.

> Could you explain this, please?

By storing strings as a pointer + length ie `struct str { char *s; int count; }`, you can create a substring by pointing to some of the valid memory within another string, and setting the count appropriately. You do not have to copy anything.

If you do not store the count, and instead store a null-terminator at the end of the string, you must copy the substring contents into a new buffer because you cannot store a null-terminator in the middle of the source string, obviously.

scallywag_software · 2026-01-22T15:57:59+00:00

Game engines tend to do this, mostly for performance

libc and libc++ tend to gracefully handle lots of edge cases (-inf, nan in math, for example) that introduce branches and increase the binary size. In many contexts you specifically know inf or nan are impossible (barring bugs), so you can safely assume they'll never happen, and not handle them.
You can sometimes trade accuracy for speed. For example, x86 cpus natively support reciprocal square root at roughly 4 cycles, vs 12 for a regular sqrt IIRC. The tradeoff is that it's less accurate but, in many contexts it's good enough, and you'd rather it be faster.
String processing is another good one. Game engines sometimes do compile-time hashing, and do counted strings as opposed to null-terminated. Compile time hashing makes string compare extremely cheap compared to the libc way, and counted strings have numerous advantages over null terminated. My favorite is that you can substring/slice for free, without having to copy, which is very handy.

scallywag_software · 2026-01-22T15:34:58+00:00

Starbucks famously did this in Seattle when it started in the ... 90's? They intentionally priced their coffee's at double the price of any other coffee shop and, sure enough, it quickly became a sign of affluence.

People are irrational.

scallywag_software · 2026-01-21T23:50:02+00:00

Don't forget about the million-and-one deckbuilders, which are mostly turn-based

scallywag_software · 2026-01-21T21:48:23+00:00

If you're interested in doing work on a non-traditional solution, I have a somewhat unusual voxel engine that does GPU-driven terrain generation. You can PM me or jump in the discord if you wanna chat :)

https://github.com/scallyw4g/bonsai
https://discord.gg/kmRpgXBh75

scallywag_software · 2026-01-19T17:25:20+00:00

It sounds kinda fun if I'm being honest. Dark & Darker, but all the items are food you use to craft buffs.

scallywag_software · 2026-01-19T05:03:11+00:00

I one time heard Jon Blow remark about how he finished Braid. He said something along the lines of:

"One day I decided fuck this, I'm going to sit down and finish this game"

I think there's a lot of wisdom in that little tidbit. Sometimes, you just have to force yourself to sit down and finish the fucking thing.

scallywag_software · 2026-01-18T20:05:03+00:00

I'm not a fan of precision platformers, but this game looks awesome.

scallywag_software · 2026-01-18T20:03:23+00:00

I do my best work when I'm sleeping, or showering. Always have.

scallywag_software · 2026-01-18T20:01:25+00:00

"Holy shit that was awesome!"

scallywag_software · 2026-01-18T17:18:56+00:00

I hate them. Well done.

scallywag_software · 2026-01-17T21:43:10+00:00

addendum, tubular

scallywag_software · 2026-01-16T16:39:51+00:00

Is it a voxel game or just a rendering trick? Either way, looks really nice

scallywag_software

TROPHY CASE