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Build's voxel?

Wed, 09 Aug 2006 15:35:34

Mago KH

Probably this is a dumb question but is Silverman's voxels sprite models possible in the Vavoom engine? I was intrigued by them when I played Blood, but now I see Ken Silverman is actually working on a engine based fully on voxel (called Voxlap), and I was just curious to know if a system like that could be rendered by Vavoom... I only ask this because Build also was 2.5D, so it couldn't be THAT different than Doom? (or am I totally wrong here?) In an interview Carmack talks about a game that had both 3d and voxel in the same setting (called Outcast). That might be an interesting idea... Anyway, just for you people to take a look [img:tnxihzl0]http://advsys.net/ken/voxlap/cave.png[/img:tnxihzl0] [img:tnxihzl0]http://advsys.net/ken/voxlap/tscr019.jpg[/img:tnxihzl0] [img:tnxihzl0]http://advsys.net/ken/voxlap/overgrou.jpg[/img:tnxihzl0] What do you guys think (specially you programming guys) think about this? Could that be a real contender to polygon based engines like Silverman thinks? His page with demos and sources is here: <!-- m --><a class="postlink" href="http://advsys.net/ken/voxlap.htm">http://advsys.net/ken/voxlap.htm</a><!-- m --> Quite a curious aproach if you ask me, funny how opposite is his and Carmack's road after their respective major success (Doom and Duke Nukem) - one went for the mainstream, edge of your seat, technology driven, next generation market (Doom3), the other for an alternative, clearly "indie", labour of love kind of research...
Wed, 09 Aug 2006 16:28:46

Crimson Wizard

Isn't it similar technology that was used in Delta Force for landscape drawing?
Wed, 09 Aug 2006 16:42:26

Janis Legzdinsh

Technically it would be simple to render them, but who wants blocky voxels when you can have nice textured triangle models?
Wed, 09 Aug 2006 17:01:09

Mago KH

Hahaha, you guys need to check out this, it's a comic strip showing an encounter between a pixel and a voxel! Very funny, actually the whole series seems to be quite light-hearted and intelligent. <!-- m --><a class="postlink" href="http://pixelcomic.net/014.shtml">http://pixelcomic.net/014.shtml</a><!-- m --> Janis: after posting here I went to chek out that belgium game called Outcast they were talking about, and the reason they used voxels was that it could render unique looking landscapes, including automatic generation of random terrain. Of course, there are quite a bit of polygon terrain generators out there, but all share a problem - are not compatible with Vavoom as far as I know! <!-- s:D --><img src="{SMILIES_PATH}/icon_biggrin.gif" alt=":D" title="Very Happy" /><!-- s:D --> So if indeed voxels are possible and not hard to implement, I actually think this could be a very interesting instrument to have in mind, specially for KH future project that would, much like Outcast itself, involve great emphasis in freedom of movement, and free landscape scenarios to travel into. Currently with sectors and slopes, natural looking terrain is pretty much impossible due to amount of work put in detailing... Still, my question was more of a curiosity, this is actually very new to me, so I'm not saying anything, but it does give you something to think about, specially because thetechnology seems to have gone a long way since those relatively old photos I posted here... If a natural blend between sectors and voxels were to be possible, with the addition of the supported 3d polygon models, it could generate a new range of possibilities, I guess... I don't know... I'm no mapper though... There's a simple tutorial wikipedia linked that explains how to create a 3d voxel engine to render terrains in C++, if any of you guys are interested in taking a deeper look: <!-- m --><a class="postlink" href="http://www.massal.net/article/voxel/">http://www.massal.net/article/voxel/</a><!-- m --> Crimson: yes, it seems they used them in Delta Force too. And quite a few times before 3D polygons were able to successfuly render large meshes, it seems (simulators, etc).

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