VoxelIsland - Tilebased Minecraft-Like RTS game.

Hello guys. I want to present you my new solo game project, called Voxelisland. A Minecraft-like RTS game with a Procedural Worldgeneration developed in Unity3D. I want to make this game a multiplayer game. (Internet and maybe splitscreen with gamepads).




I will update this thread regulary with gifs. The gifs are low-res, have less colors and have a low framerate, so please don't take them as state of the art. I will add a Video in the future.


What is VoxelIsland?

VoxelIsland is a RTS-game in a Voxel-terrain-engine. A catastrophic event in the past causes the waterlevel to raise. So the different factions battle for the last remaining Islands. The natural-border of the Islands seperates the fractions from each other. In order to attack another Island you need to scan the other Island first to see enemy forces. Think about Battleships! You select the target and watch your missiles deform the environment.
There is a Multiplayermode planed too.

~~Allready Implemented Features~~


Change your Environment
Change the whole Island. Build or Destroy your environment.


The Interface
Design your Base, manage your Ressources in a classical way and in a completly destroyable Environment.
If you love Total Annihilation, Minecraft and Metal Marines you could like this game as well.


Upgrading
Upgrade your buildings. But keep in mind that the big expansive Buildings are the first target on the list of your opponents.



You can follow me on twitter for future updates for VoxelIsland or Don't Trust Henry. Or just watch this thread!

Blog: http://donttrusthenry.de/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/DontTrustHenry

Some pretty nice Voxelengine Ressources, if you are planning to create your own Voxelengine, check them out.

A List of Voxelengines for Unity. Some features from here are used in VoxelIsland too.
http://unitycoder.com/blog/2012/10/18/voxel-resources-engines-for-unity/

Big thanks to MrWishmaster35
Which can be found on youtube. Without his gameengine the game wouldn't be possible.
http://www.youtube.com/user/MrWishmaster35

 

It looks neat but for me the name has to change. It is way too obvious - it's an island made of voxels - which is a developer terminology from YOUR point of view and nothing to do with the end-user's understanding of it.... "world of blocks" etc.

 

Thank you!
But i guess, having an obvious name which discripes the content of a game within its name is pretty awesome. There are few other game projects using the voxel terminolgy in its names. Voxatron for example. Unitil this game is more than just an university project right now i will keep that name. But thanks for pointing this out. I will think about it!

Cheers

 

I can generate lot of chunks until the framerate drops. But the idea behind that project is that there is no endless world like in Minecraft. By starting the game willl generate Islands and you build your missile defense, nuke and industry and defend yourself against other players or NPCs.

 

Your blog really annoyed me, the mouth over the posts was far too big.

 

Okay. Which device do you use? Smarthphone or PC, which browser?

 

I'm on a 13" macbook pro, google chrome.

EDIT

I noticed when you press the ENTER site button it opens a new window, fix that please.

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/19968260/Blarg.png

 

I will fix that that a new window is opening.
...but i don't get whats wrong in that screenshot. Its exactly the same like in my browser.

 

Blog is bugfixed now.

 

He's annoyed that 1/3rd of the vertical space in your blog posts are taken up by the character's face+teeth. It annoys me too, I expected it to go away once I started scrolling.

 

Okay you got a point there. But the staying head is a big part of that blog. So i will not change it in the near future. I could make the Henry header a bit smaller for low resolution displays.

 

Ddding the buildings and working on a nice visual for letting you know if you can build or not. Im pretty happy this is working so far. More Buildings will be added soon. Im currently working nearly 8h daily on this project.

Cheers!

 

Closeup of some of the buildings.

 

Today i added some new buildings.



Cheers!

 

I wonder. Would it be possible to add some form of low level smoothing to a voxel based terrain like this using non-standard voxels?

Right now the buildings and the terrain don't mesh well.

 

Added some placeholders for buildings.

@Psyckosama: I want some hard contrast to the voxelbased environment and the grey ambient occluded buildings. Ramps are one way to smooth a voxelengine a bit more, also it is pretty much needed if i want to add vehicleds and mechs. So lets see what comes in the future.

 

Digging on the water level adds water now.

 

I added some fancy particle clouds to the game.

 

I added some directionallights and some alpha fading to the particles.

 

Phew... i love raycasts.

 

Awesome! I really dig the style - I like your more subdue color palette.
Bookmarked!

BTW, I am curious, what program did you use to capture those animated gifs?

 

@I am da bawss: Thank you very much!

For capturing the gifs i use a free tool called LICEcap.
You can find it here: http://www.cockos.com/licecap/

 

Very clever with those gifs : )
Game looks great as well!

 

I fixed a really annoying raycasting bug today...


... and had a lot of fun with particle effects. =)

@virror: thank you very much!

 

I remade the Mainmenu. Yet, its pretty dark and less colorful compared to the game. But in future, i want to add a nice impression of a randomly generated cubeworld to the bald menu.

 

Different emitters for all blocks.

 

To start off with, I really like the look of this game so far! However, I can only see this being a Mobile game, What platform are you planning to release it on?

 

The real fun is starting now! =)






@_Spanda_

Thank you very much. Im not sure if mobile platforms will handle the game. But lets see how much performance i get from the fixed code. VoxelIsland will be mainly developed for PC.

 

This looks pretty cool, really diggin the style to the game so far. As for the gameplay will it be sort of like Civilization?

 

@TheGhost: Thank you! Im very happy, that people like the style so far.
Personally, i really love Civilisation. But i would compare the gameplay more to, total annihilation, metal marines and Battleships. Think of players battle on wholes Islands, protecting their properties and attacking other players with nukes and groundunits. For groundunits i need more progress in ramps and KI, though but i really want to implement ground combat in the future.

 

The project is going well so far. Im currently working on the sound/musicmanager and voices so not much to show. Im curious, anybody knows a free plugin or VST for Voice modulation, to create robot like voices from samples? Would be cool if anybody knows a tool for that.

 

I fixed o lot of bugs and addes some new features. You can now dig and build in a sperical shape, which is really funny. With the + and - Keys you can change the size.

I also found some free Voice modulation vst's. So i can finally work on the sound manager again. Hopefully i can show you the results today or tomorrow.

 

Okay i made some example Voicetunes for the VI. Im really happy whit the result. The first version is a bit to noisy i think. I prefere the second one because its a bit clearer. What do you guys think?

Robotik Sound 1: http://www.file-upload.net/download-7745239/BuildBatteries.wav.html
Robotik Sound 2: http://www.file-upload.net/download-7745375/BuildStorages2.wav.html

 

Everyone wants to build a skyfortress!

 

Great looking game, unique version of that style. Good luck and keep it up!

 

Today was a great day. I managed to get all the needed warefare scripts working. I also added some new soundfiles. And there is a new building which is now in the game. The battery. If you played total annihilation you can get an idea, what you need this building for. If not, let me explain it to you.

I dont want to let players rush each other to early with surprise nuke strikes. So i added a ressource cap which slows the game a bit down. But this cap can be raised by building storages(Industry) or batteries(Energy).In order to build you first nukes you need to build a decent industry including storages and batteries. I hope you like the idea so far!

Im also working on a 3D Model for the Industry storage, at the moment. You guys will see the results tomorrow.



cheers!

 

I coded a shader which colores the vertices depending on y. I will use this for the tactical map.





The tactical map will be a feature for players to attack each other. Since players are not connected directly via map, you need to choose your target wisely. But everything on enemy territory is coated in a fog of war. In order to reveal the map you need to attack or scout there. You can only land Groundunits if the area is revealed!

 

The storages are rather big buildings to keep massive amounts of ressources, military and science equipment.

 

I can see some very destructive explosions in the future .
Looking good so far.

 

Wow, this looks very promising ! Those clearly arranged menus and HUDs are also very nice to look at !

How deep into the ground will you be able to dig ? And is there something to be found (any resources ?) or does it hold any strategical advantages at all, if you do so ?

I also LOVE your blog design, lol. It has some sort of a psychadelic touch to it... =D

 

thank you very much! Im happy you like my blog and the clear Menu design of the game. Im actually a big fan of minimalistic designs and pixelart of course! Also this is still a one-man student project and i was thinking a lot about how to create a game in a decent art-style which is not lacking in gameplay. So gameplay is the focus on that project.

The game currently has 100 visible block layers. 0-50 is water level which is not digable.(You can dig or bomb the ground under 50 but it always fills up with water again, think of an aquifer.) 50-99 can be freely used for building and digging. I was really thinking about adding some alloys, ores and rare metals to the game. Maybe Uranium for Nukes. Or other rare elements for mechs and lasers. But currently the only generated blocks are: Sand, Stone, dirt, grass/dirt ... also there are wood and leaves from threes and water blocks which can not be removed. Actually, adding tactital ressources would bring in a lot of possible problems to the game. Especially in world generation because i want to keep a fair ressource spreading for every player. First, i need to think about all that possibilities before i would add them, but they are clearly a possible future goal.

So, lets see. =D

 

Sure! So better safe your base.

 

The tactical view will be used for attacking other players. Since you only see other bases from a satellite-like view. You need to have some sense for height which is created with the shader i coded.

 

I have to say... I'm liking this more and more! Keep the updates coming, and keep up the good work for sure.

 

Very nice, I am thinking about starting a game similar to this soon, and I have to say right now your my inspiration. Keep it up!

 

@LightSource: Thank you very much! I hope i can keep updating daily.

@TVE: Wow, im quite happy and honored to hear that. Comments like that make my day! Thank you very much!! And im quite interested into your prospective gameproject. =)

 

Sorry, but no big updates for today. I have to do the univesity presentation for that project on Monday. Whish me luck.
I fixed some bugs,though. The storage is also fitting pretty well to the game(Besides the shadows which need to be fixed). And i added some particles to the battery as well.




Cheers!

 

Usually I don't post on threads in such a short time peroid, but I have to say I actually really like the particles your using. I think they fit with the game style well. Good luck on the demonstration.

 

Hello. Its now possible to switch between tactical and normal view even the heightshader is still actives. Was harder then i thought to make it that way. But finally its done! And i added a lot of new soundeffects and some logical performance stuff between how buildings interact with the environment. In older Versions the ressources a building creates/consumes was hardcoded in the builder script. Now everything is related to the Instantiated GameObject which is way more logical. Oh and i upgraded the explosion effects.



And sry for the small file.



@LightSource: Thank you very much! I think the particles are a nice way to get a better contrast to the environment. In the future it could be possible that every player in a multiplayer match has his own particle color!