Voxelstein 3D

[hansk]

1. Is the engine how modifiable? Are homebrew maps and mods possible?
2. Are you releasing it open source?

It will be open source, thus 100% modifiable. Plus all gameplay stuff will be scripted, so all you need is notepad for that. A map editor of some kind will be made, but you will probably need voxed/slab6 for making voxel art itself.

3. Is there a netcode planned, or support for one? Would love to play some Vxlst3d DM DooM-style.

It's one of those super cool things to have, but doesn't seem probable right now. The problem is if you want to join a game in progress, you need to synchronize hundreds of MBs of voxel data. Plus with streaming there's a whole bunch of things that must not go wrong if you want to maintain determinism in voxel operations.

4. Materials, is there a new editor them in the works? What kind of material support is there and can you make your own palettes and modify them?

I haven't gotten started with materials yet, but the ultimate idea is to have configurable destruction for each pair of materials and damagers. For example bullets would cause tiles to crack and wood to splinter, and flames would cause tiles to darken and wood to burn. It would even enable stuff like leaving footprints in dirt.
It really needs a powerful editor though.

5. How is the developement going? Hope it's not too stressful.

This is probably the most technologically complex project I have ever been involved with. If only it was called polygonstein
But really, development is mostly stalling because I'm just too busy with other stuff.

[ConsistentCallsign]

[Shrinker]

This is simply awesome

[ConsistentCallsign]

This is simply awesome

This is like playing an AGS game, except it's 3D!!   and it's an FPS!!


AGS games have no replay value..
FPS FTW!

[Shrinker]

Lol, are you on steroids or something?

I read through all of this thread (!!) and noticed your strong aversion towards polygonal graphics, and now this too
For instance, "AGS games" are certainly worth playing again after some time, after you forgot most of their story

You seem a little overprotective regarding the voxel technology. Many good things have been done with polygons already, voxels just don't do the job quick enough, development-wise. I've been getting my hands dirty with polygons for many years now, and so far they never disappointed me. I like the voxeltech (tm) though, for it is a completely different approach to graphics, and that is why people will chose to play Voxelstein 3D. There will be no deep insight that voxels are superior, they will simply play it because it's cool and not a widespread technology.
Therefore, content matters more than you might think. An all-new technology with children dying will simply not be accepted by the broad mass. And I really hope for you that your views to reality become a little less distant in future. I mean, nothing the Nazis did is acceptable in any way, but they must be made fun of in order to disarm Naziism. And that is where I see your game too. There should be a little more development on the character the player controls throughout the game. Something like spinning newspapers, from time to time, indicating the great success of the player. There could be lots of Achtungs and Verbotens on them

To hansk: You're doing an awesome job so far too. I've followed your YouTube and stuff, and seemingly this game project has a technological background now that is getting more and more solid.

I really wonder though how well a hybrid would perform: using polygons for the coarse architecture, and voxels for all the 3Details, or when the coarse architecture is blown to bits. But since your voxelism is calculated exclusively on the CPU, it might be too inefficient to combine both rendering methods.

Also, since when is CUDA an absolute necessity for GPGPU? Last time I checked, HLSL and GLSL could be misused for that too


Cheers

[ConsistentCallsign]

nothing the Nazis did is acceptable in any way

That's absurd. They accomplished lots of great things. Like.. um.. yeah..

Well, they did manage to make the world population smaller. How they did it, however, is another story

world's population is expected to reach about 9 billion by the year 2040.

= more famine, more poverty and in general: Reduced quality of life per person.

they must be made fun of in order to disarm Naziism.

The purpose of this game is not to tell people that nazis are "bad" and "evil" etc.. but to be a murder simulator. I think that nazism is just a symptom of a bigger problem which is the notion/belief that it's ok to "snuff out" a problem with violence and war. It's more important to tell that war/violence is bad and should never ever be tolerated, and that war is full of blood n guts and babies drowning face-down in their own diarrhea ♥ so that maybe, people will stop and think that "war against terrorism/communism/jews/blacks/arabs/[insert "evil" group of people here] = innocent babies drowning face-down in their own diarrhea ♥ and war crimes against humanity etc


Anyway..
FPS games are not supposed to be "politically correct". No matter how hard you try, the FPS will always be a despicable murder simulator where problems are solved with war/violence.

:'(!!

might be too inefficient to combine both rendering methods

on the CPU

Yes. Rendering polygons is a waste of CPU cycles (and this is exactly why the power-hungry, watt-wasting, expensive GPU monster was born: because the polygons raped (and then murdered) the framerate)

CUDA an absolute necessity for GPGPU?

We can not use (GP)GPUs, because they are not programmable.

And so, my fellow programmers: Ask not what you can do for your hardware - ask what your hardware can do for you.

[Shrinker]

CUDA an absolute necessity for GPGPU?

We can not use (GP)GPUs, because they are not programmable.

They are programmable, that's the whole point of shaders...

[ConsistentCallsign]

They are programmable, that's the whole point of shaders...

This is about principles. Programmers around the world must unite and boycott the hardware industry!

When programmers buy slightly modified GPU boards, they encourage the hardware industry to continue manufacturing and developing obsolete boards/technology.

We need better compilers that can optimize and auto-parallelize our code for us!
More money must be put on developing better compilers and better CPUs, not on obsolete GPU boards.

:3

[Shrinker]

Duh, that's why shader languages and APIs are standardized: They will work for a long time.

[ConsistentCallsign]

Duh, that's why shader languages and APIs are standardized: They will work for a long time.

That's an unacceptable compromise

Programmers must not give into the hardware industry's demands. Programmers must never negotiate with the hardware industry!

[hansk]

Hello Shrinker.

Shaders aren't flexible enough to handle all the rendering, but we could use them for post-processing etc.
But this project is all about doing things in new exciting and possibly retarded ways. So I don't think we'll be using them

[ConsistentCallsign]

It will look brighter when raytraced

I get ultra-fast framerate when the raytracer resolution is set to 120x75, but then the wall stretching becomes more visible *EDIT* problem solved the stretching was caused by a bad aspect ratio..


OMG!! I love playing in 95x95! That's over 9 thousand rays being traced each frame§!!

IT'S OVER 9000!1§!!11
:3

[Shrinker]

But this project is all about doing things in new exciting and possibly retarded ways.

Yeah, that makes sense now
j/k

[Maren]

Hello Shrinker.

Shaders aren't flexible enough to handle all the rendering, but we could use them for post-processing etc.
But this project is all about doing things in new exciting and possibly retarded ways. So I don't think we'll be using them

Yep, keep it unique, keep it raw, keep it voxel

[ConsistentCallsign]

Yep, keep it unique, keep it raw, keep it voxel

Welcome back, Maren!