Here is a series of videos I captured over the weekend.
The first one shows a bit of the architecture, also how a couple of useful underground passages can save you time while travelling:
The second is a trip I did to get close to a tower I saw. It seemed simple at the beginning, but the terrain had some severe accidents so I had to figure out my way. I found some caves that helped me get there, also saw I needed to do a quick bridge over a chasm. It runs at double the speed so you would not get bored by all the wandering. Also note that at the end of the video I carve some holes into the tower walls.
The next video also runs at double the speed. It shares the same beginning as the first video posted here, but goes a lot farther.
And the last video shows how the caves can sometimes go really deep underground. You often see cave openings into the surface, but also they could be right under your feet and you would not know. I cheated in this video by showing the wireframe, otherwise it would have taken an awful lot of time to find these caves.
Thanks for more videos!
ReplyDeleteImpressive as always Miguel!
ReplyDeleteWhy there are grass underground? I demand mushrooms!
ReplyDeleteIdea, not sure how doable, though: Add a random rotation to the tile textures, then fade them in with the others, it would help break the grid effect seen in the video.
ReplyDeleteI like the effect the massive towers, spread throughout the land have =3.
ReplyDeleteMe too!
DeleteCan be cool to add big walls between towers.
Truly Amazing!
ReplyDeletePerhaps add a bit of gravity to the camera, so you fall more graduately when removing the ground under your feet?
(In the future, hitting the ground too fast could also cause some damage, as would sliding down a mountain.)
If I'm allowed to nit-pick, one other thing that still bothers me a bit, is that you don't seem to apply gravity to the scenery itself - if you would remove a tree, the canopy would stay floating right up in the air, instead of tumbling to the ground (perhaps even tilting and/or rotating during it's fall).
Now I can imagine it will be quite difficult to detect weither a piece of the landscape/mesh is completely unsupported (and which piece it is), but it kills the experience for me (just like those floating rocks we saw in the older video's).
But, keep up the good work - nothing but praise for the steady progress and beautifull scenery's you push out, cheers!
The big problem is, that applying physics in a game like this, is REALLY costly on the CPU... Often too much so.
DeleteWhat I think could happen, at least for the trees, is when a break is made through the whole thing, the entire tree disappears and generic pick-up-able wood drops in its place. If it's rock or earth, I think either it stays in the air (works for Minecraft) or also the above part disappears and pick-up-able dirt and rock icons drop, like it crumbles on impact.
DeleteWell, for trees perhaps actual physics might work (As long as you arent going to cut down all the trees in a forest at once =3), I think you could even use the system through which it was created to serve for its destruction, since it was made with an expanding tree algorithm (Not an actual tree, but the abstract version of a tree =3), you might be able to have it so, that if the parent dies, all its children become subject to physics until they settle down, this would allow you to cut off branches, which would fall to the ground, cut down the whole tree etc.
DeleteNot sure if the tree data is still stored and accessible, the minor details are unknown to me, but I think that might work. I also dont know about performance impact that might give.
With all the other things, it would be a significantly more challenging thing to do efficiently I believe.
Nevermind all that.. when did VoxelFarm.com go live?!?! I know you mentioned commercialising this tech before, but I missed that announcement. Good show though, can't wait to see it in a game.
ReplyDeleteSam
Yeah cool Page, but it's missing an impressum, that's a must.
DeleteAnd the labels of the Screenshot Slideshow are still Photo Title One, Photo Title Two...
Thanks for the heads up. I'll get it fixed.
Deleteit's been raised upthread, but i was slightly curious about the textures you use - say for the video where you're digging into the cave system below ground, the rock textures seem slightly 'gridike' - is there a method where textures could also be procedurally generated? for instance, you could assign certain colour palettes to various tiles (dirt, rock, building stone, etc) and they could be arranged on the fly also? practical? impractical? or would it drain computer power for negligible gains? sorry for my less than technical phrasing of this question also
ReplyDeleteI am not worrying about textures now. That is a smaller problem compared to what comes next. I think the textures will be a lot better when this thing is ready, let's wait a little bit.
DeleteI just need to ask; What comes next? :)
DeleteWater is coming next.
DeleteCan't wait to see the results!
DeletePhysical water ? Water like "From Dust" game can be tremendous !
DeleteAt least, not minecraft style.
DeleteI saw this a couple years ago :
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pO5-q0Ho5Yw
It would look awesome with your caves and mountain formations
Excellent as usual. Could you say a bit more about how you do shadows and lighting? Are these applied when chunks are generated, or at render time? And how do you handle shadows extending from one chunk to another?
ReplyDeleteThanks.
Lighting is realtime. I use two shadow maps, one for the sunlight and another one for the skylight. That's pretty much it.
DeleteIn the past days I improved the rendering of caves. It is too bad these videos were taken before.
Every day that goes by without an update on Procedural World is a sad day :(
ReplyDeleteYour work is truly intriguing and kickstarting my imagination!
/Emil
What GPU do you use?
ReplyDeleteIt is a pretty old ATI Radeon 4770. Framerate usually is around 60 FPS or higher, except for some spots in forest scenes, where it can drop to 40 FPS.
DeleteI really like how it is so far, but the only thing that bothers me is the cave generation.
ReplyDeleteFirst, the cave floor should not be dirt with grass on it, it should be solid stone. Thus, i expected more round tunnels with stalactites and stalagmites here and there, with large caverns and small tunnels, not everything the same. The walls of the caves are straight up and it just doesn't look natural. Other thing that bothers me is the lightning in the caves. It is too bright. In a real cave you're damn lost without a torch or flashlight in a cave, as there is nowhere the light to come from. Also i noticed a tiny bits of sunlight on the edge between the walls and the floor. Also it could be nice if cave openings to the surface appeared more often and not only on cliffs. Also as said above, the caves would look more lively with a few mushrooms here and there. If you wish to, you can make them give off a small amount of light so the cave wont be complete dark.
That's about caves and i really thing you should release an Alhpa of the game, i cant wait to try it myself :)
Great job so far, keep up the good work