hey ken! just thought i'de say hi! im the guy who said you were "a great insperation to me as a coder" in the email i sent you a few months back. anyways, i found something interesting that i thought i would point out: there is a commmercial game that uses voxels. Tiger woods 2004 for GBA used voxels for the terrain. also, after a quick google search, i found a few groups who were working on projects with voxels, so your not alone :) didnt know if you or some of the other forum users knew these things or not, so i thought i would point them out.
Awesoken at
Hello, Mr. K. : )
Tiger woods 2004 for GBA used voxels for the terrain.
Actually, from the screenshots, it looks like a standard height-mapped terrain being rendered with polygons. There's nothing special about it. Don't be fooled by advertising buzzwords.
Anonymous at
Actually, from the screenshots, it looks like a standard height-mapped terrain being rendered with polygons. There's nothing special about it. Don't be fooled by advertising buzzwords.
Really? in the articles ive read, they all said it was done using voxels. here is a link to one of them: http://gameboy.ign.com/articles/458/458443p1.html its about half way down the first page they talk about the voxel engine. so are you saying they would just make that up just to add a fancy buzzword?
Awesoken at
Ok, I saw the video and noticed some blockiness in the ground texture, so it could be a voxel engine. I still don't find it interesting because it doesn't support 6 degrees of freedom, it doesn't support room-over-room, and most of all, the article said it takes 3 seconds to render the screen.
if you used a find search and look for voxel it says this game uses them :D
Only heightmaps... so no room-over-room support here too. Those voxel eninges were used for many years now and really aren't anything special.
Guest at
Worms3D I've read on a box with this game, that it uses voxel-based engine.
I wonder how does it render voxels...
Necrovore at
Well... Been A While Since I've Posted Anything... But I've Noticed The Old Dos Game Comanche 2 Seemed To Use A Voxel Engine, Although The Inital Data Is Probably A Height/Color Map
masterlee at
Guest said
Worms3D I've read on a box with this game, that it uses voxel-based engine.
I wonder how does it render voxels...
Nope you can't build tunnel, it only using hight-fields.
Agent ME at
You guys need to expand your definition of "voxel". Voxel just means "volumetric pixel". And as far as I know, a heightmap can easily fit that definition.
masterlee at
Or not Voxel means volumetric pixel that means instead of using two dimensions using three dimensions. Heightfield are only 2D textures where the value of each pixel gives the z-height.
Cryoburner at
I would have to say that heightmap-based voxel engines are still voxel engines, albeit relatively simple ones. The height values themselves count as a limited third dimension, even if they don't allow for tunnels and overlapping rooms. They still have a volume, although they must always settle to their base. The term 'voxel' generally covers all types of these engines, including those with a limited degree of freedom.
w00t at
Yeah, Worms 3D's deformable terrain was pretty damn good. Plus the graphics are pretty good as well. Height map voxel engines are still voxel engines IMHO. As an after thought, is a polygonal + voxel engine a possibility? The best of both worlds, surely?
Cryoburner at
Polygonal rendering of voxel terrain is possible, although generally each separate voxel isn't drawn on its own. Instead, a polygonal mesh is constructed from the voxel data, so that it can be rendered using 3D accelleration hardware.
I think that the best example of this method can be found in the HVox Demos. Note that you'll probably need a pretty recent graphics card to check these out, since they make use of advanced shader effects.
CheapAlert at
80% of Novalogic's games
:D
Guest at
>masterlee wrote:
> >Guest wrote:
> >Worms3D
> >I've read on a box with this game, that it uses voxel-based engine.
> >I wonder how does it render voxels...
>Nope you can't build tunnel, it only using hight-fields.
Afaik (and i even tried :), you CAN build pretty nice tunnels and underground
passages in Worms3d.
I don't remember exactly, but it seems, that there's even's a Jackhammer
among other weapons - like in the original 2d Worms games.
Worms3d engine is not a height-map voxel engine.
Actually, as i've read on Team17 page and forums and "somewhere" on the net,
that Worms3d use 3d voxel "lattices" grid to represent the world
and it extrapolates this voxel grid with polygons using marchingcubes-like method
with polygon surface mesh and then rasterizes and texture-maps polygons
(you can even see how engine (re)draws them after blast or explosion).
imo, it works fine for "Worms"-type "step-by-step" game (even for the
network multiplayer game), but it seems to me that it'll be "too slow"
for true "Ramblings in Realtime" (+ on the net)
Besides, small pieces of level are "floating" in the air after a blast and doesnt fall
- in Ken's voxlap demo they do.
Actually, I've read that Ken offered Team17 his voxel engine for
Worms3d game but in that case the game couldn't be run on polygonal console.
(imho, it's not fair...)
I wonder how they reconstruct the parts of level after a blast - it doesnt seem
that they do the "full level-scale reextrapolating and reconstruction" after
each explosion or blast :).
Another thing that I am curious about is do they use any advanced
surface reconstruction techniques - like generating topologically correct
(iso)surfaces from arbirtray points set?
Guest at
w00t said
Yeah, Worms 3D's deformable terrain was pretty damn good. Plus the graphics are pretty good as well. Height map voxel engines are still voxel engines IMHO.
Imo Worms3d engine is not a height map voxel engine (see the previous post).
It uses 3d voxel "lattices" and extrapolates them with polygonal mesh using marchingcubes-like algorithm.
w00t said
As an after thought, is a polygonal + voxel engine a possibility?
Team17 call their technology used in Worms3d "Polygon"+"Voxel"="Poxel" :)
I still do not understand why Ken's engine didn't fit...
Cryoburner at
That sounds similar to the process used in the HVox Demos mentioned in my previous post. A polygonal mesh derived from the voxel data can be rendered quickly on modern 3D hardware, complete with texture mapping and other accellerated effects.
I haven't tried Worms 3D out yet myself, as it just doesn't look as polished as its most recent 2D predecessor, Worms World Party. For one, the visuals are relatively mediocre,with blurry textures and little new in terms of environments and weapons. Despite their claims, I don't believe that a fully 3D perspective adds to gameplay, and it would seem to me as though it would only detract from the strategic aspects of the game.
I notice that they they have a demo available on their site, so I'll try it out just to see how accurate my presumptions are. This also reminds me that I haven't copied Worms World Party onto this new computer yet. As a side note, I really recommend that game, although it's 2D and unrelated to voxels in any way. : )
Guest at
Ken, why your engine didn't fit for Worms3D :?:
Awesoken at
Ken, why your engine didn't fit for Worms3D
2 reasons:
* They insisted that their game run well on consoles. My engine was not designed for that.
* I approached Team17 a few weeks too late. They had just finished designing their own engine ... and it was working well for them.
Something to keep in mind: I never actually sent Team17 a demo of Voxlap. This means the first time they could have seen it would have been the release of the Voxlap Cave Demo in September of 2003.
Cryoburner at
By the way, I never did mention my thoughts on the Worms 3D demo. Their polygonal voxel terrain engine for it is actually rather mediocre. The individual voxels are very blocky, and not much is done in terms of smoothing the resulting polygonal mesh. The result is that an average explosion knocks out only a handful of cubes, creating rectangular holes in the ground. The textures lack detail and are quite blurry, so they don't help much. I'm sure something a bit more impressive could have been done with it.
Plus, I maintain my position that Worms is better as a 2D game. In 3D, much of the strategy is weakened, partly because players rarely become trapped, and underground travel is cumbersome and almost nonexistant. The focus moves more toward aiming and firing than actual planning. And then there are the camera controls, which are extremely bad. While there is a first person view, you mysteriously can only use it for aiming, and not for actually moving around. Trying to travel through a tunnel causes the camera to jump all over the place, and at many times your view is entirly obstructed.
Much as I expected, the game isn't nearly as fun, or even as good looking as its recent 2D predecessor Worms World Party.
Anonymous at
I've noticed that Shiny used real-time tesselation and some voxel-like technology in a game titled Messiah:http://www.gamasutra.com/features/19990924/messiah_01.htm
Anonymous at
Does anybody here knows how did "they" implemented destructable environment (walls and terrain) in Red Faction?
And the other thing:
The calculation for transforming the voxels in polygons is done very simple, so no marching cubes was necessary for this.
Does anybody here (Ken?) can explain how this could be done (very simple and without marching cubes :))?
I haven't played Red Faction, although I don't think it uses voxels. The angular polygonal holes in objects look more like what you would find in the 3d view of a realtime editor which allows blocks to be carved into. Either way, its more of a feature found in limited areas rather than how most of the level geometry is organized. Similarly, real-time tesselation, like that found in Messiah, is nothing like voxel technology. It's just a way to automatically adjust the polygon count of 3d models depending on the current perfomance and amount of detail on screen.
Outcast does make nice use of voxel environments though. I haven't tried it on this system yet, but probably should, as it will likely be able to handle a fairly decent screen resolution at reasonable framerates now.