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As a software engineer, voxel engine development has unique appeals to me over traditional 3D game engines. It's something about the power you have to define th
by bottled_poe 10y ago
As a software engineer, voxel engine development has unique appeals to me over traditional 3D game engines. It's something about the power you have to define the entire game environment so simply but precisely I guess. Shameless plug - I released a game called Voxelvoid last year which uses a voxel engine (Voxatron was a significant inspiration). I've been developing the engine a lot since then, maybe I'll blog about it at some point. It's still a side project for now though.
- smallnamespace 10y agoWouldn't you have more precision by defining triangles by hand? For example, voxels can't represent non-right-angle surfaces without adding jagginess, while a triangle can.
- moftz 10y agoExactly, I don't understand the voxel craze all of a sudden. Plain old triangles work a million times better than any voxel ever will. I guess voxels are more of an aestetic now but I'm not a fan. All the sharp edges just make it harder on my eyes to focus on what I'm looking at.
- bottled_poe 10y agoI guess I'm thinking of precision in terms of the very close relationship between the game's logical model with the visual representation.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- juliendorra 10y agoVoxels can be volumetric, ie. each voxel have physical properties. Also, your models are full of voxels, inside, each with its own properties. Mesh based models are empty.
- smallnamespace 10y agoYes, but then you could accomplish the exact same thing with volumetric polygons, with the added benefit that arbitrary polygons better approximate any 3D shape.
- dahart 10y agoWhat are volumetric polygons? And do they better approximate cubes? ;)
- fenomas 10y agoThat's equivalent to asking why a 2D game or game engine would use a 2D grid when it could get more precision by defining arbitrary 2D polygons. If you're making something like Tetris or chess or Conway's life or whatever you don't want precision, you want a grid. (Naturally, one can model a system as a grid but render it as arbitrary shapes, or vice-versa.)
- dahart 10y agoKeep it up and do blog about it! Voxel engines do have unique advantages over traditional game engines. I like how your game re-voxelizes the player every frame, a different approach than, say, Minecraft. Odd that people suggest making it "better" with polygons, as if you're stuck with voxels, as if you didn't choose it consciously, as if you didn't already understand the alternatives. :) Ignore it and keep making awesome games.
- bottled_poe 10y agoThanks! Yes, this game engine does indeed resample the voxel representation every frame (similar to how antialiasing or scaling a 2d image works). Everything rendered is a voxelised representation of the underlying models.