I was thinking last night about ideas for games. I think Ken's engine's Unique Selling Point is definately the destructable voxels - ergo a game involving destruction is probably the best way to showcase it.
I'm not sure how to describe this game without it sounding frankly quite rubbish. I'll have a go though.
HomeWrecker
Hazard at
Your Idea is hard to do with Voxels. Smashing a Room to it's Parts may be funny with physically animated, destructible, polygonal objects like in HalfLife2, but Voxels are best used for Landscape deformation, not for "smashing objects".
Something like Worms3D or Clonk3D would be perfect for a voxelengine.
cragtek at
Hazard said
Your Idea is hard to do with Voxels. Smashing a Room to it's Parts may be funny with physically animated, destructible, polygonal objects like in HalfLife2, but Voxels are best used for Landscape deformation, not for "smashing objects".
Something like Worms3D or Clonk3D would be perfect for a voxelengine.
I was under the impression that voxels of any kind were freely-destructible. In essence a landscape and a plantpot are made of the same elementary building blocks, aren't they?
Hazard at
Yes, but look at the way the Voxel Landscapes get damaged. If you would make the HomeWrecker game and hit a chair with a baseball bat, the chair wouldn't break. Instead a hole would appear where you hit the char. Just like in Ken's Game.c . It looks kind of unrealistic. You would have to add a whole physics engine to raise realism. In Polygon engines all this is already possible. A combination of voxels for landscapes and buildings and polygons for characters and objects would be perfect.
Frobozz at
If you would make the HomeWrecker game and hit a chair with a baseball bat, the chair wouldn't break. Instead a hole would appear where you hit the char.
This largely depends on how the code is written. You could easily make a weapon that breaks objects rather than creates holes.
Read voxlib.txt. It mentions a good number of voxel-related functions. There are functions that do small stuff like modifying individual voxels up to functions that make various primitives such as spheres, cylinders, etc. A breaking chair could easily be done with the functions that Ken provides.
You could even remove the chair from the level and load up a KVX model of a broken chair with a piece laying nearby. :wink:
cragtek at
Hazard said
Yes, but look at the way the Voxel Landscapes get damaged. If you would make the HomeWrecker game and hit a chair with a baseball bat, the chair wouldn't break. Instead a hole would appear where you hit the char. Just like in Ken's Game.c . It looks kind of unrealistic. You would have to add a whole physics engine to raise realism. In Polygon engines all this is already possible. A combination of voxels for landscapes and buildings and polygons for characters and objects would be perfect.
Right, yes. I see. Well the landscape deforming concept could be used in that case in some sort of other-worldly terraforming game I guess. It seems perfect for craters. I'm not sure how one would work this into a gameplay format though.
Hazard at
@Frobozz: I will admit that i was wrong if you show me a demo where you are able to break a chair with a baseball bat in a realistic way. ;)
I really don't want to take that game idea down, maybe it could be fun, but i just want to prevent people from believing too much in voxels. They are a great step in the right direction, but they still aren't the "holy grail" of a realistic gaming environment. Some people just seem to get a bit too enthusiastic about them. :)
AcetoliNe at
It seems perfect for craters. I'm not sure how one would work this into a gameplay format though.
Hmm.. craters would be fun... has anyone ever thought of Scorch3D? It would be AWESOME in a voxel game...
Frobozz at
Hazard said
@Frobozz: I will admit that i was wrong if you show me a demo where you are able to break a chair with a baseball bat in a realistic way. ;)
Oh you want realism (pretends he didn't see that part). :D
Actually a game idea popped into my head a day or so ago. Somebody could remake Ken's Labyrinth using voxels. :wink:
Edit: I did some quick mental calculation and have determined that you can fit one episode per voxel map. It makes the walls 16 by 16 by 16. It actually allows you to fit 15 levels per map (allows for ceilings and floors otherwise its 16).
Anonymous at
If my calculations are correct, Quake + voxels = fun.
Anonymous at
Just try making a demo that works the way you want. I'd like to see how it would look like.