HELLO...hello...hello... ECHO!...echo!...echo...
...such a lonely place.
...place...
...place...
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Second try at uploading because the last one did not show up in the BBS list...and I like seeing it there!
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Voxatron: Implications
Voxatron is an incredibly unique game. It opens the door to wide new vistas of creative exploration, and in a way that will be intuitive and community driven. However, the potential of this game, only in its infancy, extends far beyond itself, or so I think it very well may. It is, really for the first time, introducing truly volumetric gameplay, something that is today only possible with voxel data structures. While games like Minecraft were certainly volumetric, what I am getting at requires a high enough resolution to really give some 'meat' to in-game objects.
In most games one may find stunningly rendered cars, but of course these cars have no real engines. In-game characters or other players have no internal organs. Cities have no sewers, and the materials used to make these worlds aren't really materials at all, and lack characteristic behaviors. Volumetric gameplay is meaty gameplay, providing a satisfaction which I have only seen the games Voxatron and Cell: Emergence attempt to capitalize on so far. When there arise games involving dynamic in-game simulations, CA, etc, I think volumetric gameplay will really take off, and here we are seeing one of the first attempts at what may spark a new genre in voxel-based gameplay.
However, there is something particularly fun about all this for all you lovers of retro. Recall that at the dawn of the retro-age there wasn't, obviously, any stylistic appreciation for the look of pixelation. So then why did the mainstream put up with it? We'd had photorealistic films for many decades by then, so what was it about games that drew us, despite their inability to accurately portray the worlds wherein which their stories took place? The word is interactivity. It offered a radically new experience to us, so that representing an italian plumber as a combination of red and green in an area exceeding a range of no more than 16x16 pixels was acceptable. This experience so outweighed asthetic importance that such simplistic presentations entered immediately into the mainstream and exerted a defining cultural force on a generation.
Likewise, there is room once again for such simplicity. Just as we moved from the passive act of film to the interactive act of gaming, a new experience is coming that will outweigh the importance of many of the most important design features of many mainstream games, including photorealism. That experience is the volumetric experience. It is the experience had in knowing the world you are engaging is not a facade, but a complex, reactive and volumetric simulation. In a way, a legitimate computational reality, where the explorative possibilites are neither predetermined nor determinable. Truly creative exploration of the impact of volumetric interactivity on the gaming experience may lead to a mainstream revisitation of the retro-experience, though such a period will likely be a short one.
As computational power increases, voxels or some equivilent will increase in resolution and all games will become volumetric. Even in the development of a title for the My Little Pony franchise, to ask what the neccesity of volumetric rendering and the ability to have dynamic interaction with a complex simulated world in such a game could serve would be like asking why a game of the same type today neccesitates 3-D textured graphics and proper lighting effects. It will simply be a matter of realism; no longer a novelty. Volumetrism (just coined) will become a standard design feature of any game experience.
But there is at least a brief period coming, I suspect, where the retro style will be ressurected, not merely as the result of a more or less stylistic design decision, but as a neccesary compromise to enable the development of highly interactive, volumetric game worlds in a cost-effective way, and in a way which modern machines can handle well.
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Demonstration of modular approach to vehicle animation using only two clips and allowing arbitrary speeds and distances to be covered. Modularity will, naturally, be essential to large scale, dynamic voxel scenes. From this demonstration you can also see how cars will turn corners, requiring at most two more clips. Different rates can be applied to different vehicle model animations to coordinate ones less common than others (i.e. bikes, taxis, etc.). It will be exciting to see how modularity is used to make quick work of large projects while retaining quality and interest.
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Hi Zep,
When you updated the game did you change or remove any colors from the swatch plate? It seems that white is not an option. I made a level that is mostly white and I put a lot of time into it. Maybe I just over looked it on the plate.
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Is it the case that there is significantly low support for the game, and is this why I always see the same 618 levels in the BBS list, or is that because there was only one chance to have user levels uploaded? If there is a support/activity problem, what can be done to help that?
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A quick test of pushing, carrying, standing on, stacking, hoisting and throwing actors using some crates and the good old snail.
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zep - thanks for adding the export functions to Voxatron!
Here's some screenshots of a level running in my own OpenGL voxel renderer, with 8x AA and a fake ambient occlusion effect:
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A prototype of Swarm Racer 3000 is now available to all Lexaloffle customers! Log in and check your My Games page to get download links for Mac, Linux or Windows. If you need to activate purchases from the Humble Store, see this thread.
I prototyped Swarm Racer 3000 in 2009 for the Tokyo Game Show, and I'm releasing this brushed up version of that so that it doesn't gather dust for too long. I'm hoping to do 1.0 at the end of the year, after Voxatron's engine and arcade mode is finished. It won't be a massive game -- around 40 tracks, a simple designer and some guest composer's music would round it off nicely I think.
This preview version has 8 tracks and the trophy system of the original Swarm Racer (which is offline right now -- I need to update the builds). I haven't put an online score system in yet, as I'm working on a better system that Voxatron will also use. If you want to get competative, feel free to post your times here!
I'm not sure if I'll keep lasers and the fairy character, but left them in to play around with. I also left in some debug keys -- F & N for fast forward and slow motion, and PAGEUP, PAGEDOWN move the camera (try zooming in and watch the renderer fail beautifully)
More screens:
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Reworks That Matter is a collection of remixes of Morusque's excellent Blocks That Matter soundtrack. It's free and you can listen to it right now on Bandcamp!
Due to an administrative error, Swing Swing Submarine also gave me the opportunity to submit a track (Ore). This was a welcome opportunity for me to reply to Morusque's earlier reworking of Chocolate Castle tunes (for the Blocks That Matter Chocolate Update). The piece I chose to remix has similar arpeggios and chord changes, although I dragged the tune quite far from its soft, ethereal origins and into caustic chip territory. Because -- you know. That's something I know how to do.
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I was wondering if there's a way to set an invisible bounding box in a room. For instance, I am making some rooms which are to scale to the character, with low ceilings (you can't see them obviously) so I don't want the player to be able to jump on the outside bounding walls. They are not to the ceiling for a reason...is there a way to make it so that they can jump as normal but cannot jump on the outside wall?
I've attached a picture pointing out what I mean. The outside walls and wall separating the bedroom shouldn't be objects that can be jumped onto since it's implied they connect to a ceiling.
Any help would be appreciated. 
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 | Welcome to 2013, Year of the Snake! Here's a little preview of an old prototype I decided to dust off recently. Swarm Racer 3000 is the sequel to Swarm Racer, with new visual style and some new elements. I ended up going nuts and making 8 new tracks & some audio. It was great fun! I'll be releasing it shortly as a bonus game for Lexaloffle customers. |
Also a couple of development images when the renderer broke in interesting ways:
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hi zep, i was wondering if you had considered porting voxatron or your other games to android as this cool new console (OUYA) is coming out. You probably already heard of it of course, biggest kickstarter response ever! Its based on the shareware model, the first level or levels are free then you can choose whether or not to get the whole game. Im hoping to put some games on it one day via Gamemakers android porting capabilities.
also just curious what anyone thinks of the OUYA as a way to play pc/mac games with a nintendo/playstation type controller. Personally im really excited if it works out.
p.s. it already has (kinda) dual stick so would fit your controls. merry xmas!
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