VoxelIsland - Tilebased Minecraft-Like RTS game.

i love the lighting

 

Looks great!

So... update?

 

Update - New Buildings
Powercores.

Finally an Update! Im adding 3 new meshes to the game. Some explosive buildings which should be placed carefully near your mainbase. C:
Im feeling like making a gif/video of an exploding base when the meshes are working in the game.



Click for bigger picture!

Cheers!

 

There you are !
This game comes together quite nicely, good to see you keep working on this.

I have to agree with sooshi, the lighting is pretty characteristic and smooth !

 

Thank you very much! You guys are awesome. C:

BTW: What do you guys think about isometric fonts im throwing at that sceenshot lately? Im adding this to the interface as a 3d GUI-Element. To show building stats like cost, energy consumption and stuff like that. If you hover with the mouse over the building it will show all the stats. Currently the game is interface-vise more waste then dwarf fortress. :3 Which is one of my favorite games ever. But damn, i dont want that VoxelIsland is only playable with wiki and shortcuts. Lot of Shortcuts and stuff noone tells you in-game. Like increasing Explosion radius, for example. I need to fix that next! lol.

 

Small Update

I added the 3 new buildings. Its working fine. And i fixed some minor bugs wit instantiation of buildings, and destroying animations.

Performance und GUI- Improvements are next on the list.

Cheers

 

Looking amazing o_o

Great work with the interface!

 

@piluve: Thank you very much, dude! What exactly do you like the most about the interface? Let me now.


First Thoughts - Keyfeature, Ramps


Today i want to talk about one of the main features for the ground combat of VoxelIsland, the ramps. The problem is to add ramps to the world generation without a significant performance lost and how to create the Ramp layers within the engine. I think i found a way to keep this at a low cost for the game performance, but i need to try it first. The idear is to add 1 layer of Blocks to x and z without write over the recent block layer. The next step is to divide the chain of ramp blocks in different kinds of ramps. Like in the image below. I will show you the results of this i a couple of days.

References
possible implementation in Voxelisland




different kinds of possible ramps.





(References: No ingame shot, nor made by me)

source: http://i.imgur.com/wpI2U.jpg
source: http://www.xnaresources.com/default.asp?page=Tutorial:TileEngineSeries:9

 

Well, Im not sure if the game will get better from ramps (I think everybody likes a RTS which is pure 'cube world', but well if you are going to make ramps, Im going to write the 'pure cube world RTS' for sure and make tons of money with it, as this idea is AWE-SOME), but well, you can give it a try I guess...

RollerCoaster Tycoon 1 is a great example where 'ramps' improve gameplay and really crick up the game, but Minecraft is THE example where you absolutely don't want ramps.

 

I don't see how he can continue gameplay without ramps as he has ground units. Unless that is, you want them all to fly or jump which, in my opinion, would be awkward. My only concern is that there wont be enough flat space to fight on, with or without ramps, and would constantly need to fight up hills.

 

You think that jumping is awkward? I have played cube world, where thousands of mobs live, and it isn't looking awkward at all. But if you want to reduce jumping, he can flatten the world a bit more, which also will solve the lack of flat space problem you were talking of.

 

Nice to see some discussion in this thread.

First off, i want to clear up some details.

I dont want to make the game to much minecraft-like. Beside the World-gen and exploration aspect. The game is more an RTS than minecraft.
Like LightSource stated, jumping and flying mesh would be akward. The reason for this is the size of the buildings mesh and the environment. Games like cube-world, Minecraft and Terraria work nice with jumping because blocks are 1mx1m in size.
In VoxelIsland you will have much bigger ramps and environments. The size of an cube is more like 100mx100m.

The good news about the levelation of the environment is that it is a simple codeline in the engine. So if i want i can create maps that are totally flat.



On the other hand. I really like the idea that the player starts on a vast wild island and needs to terraform the clifs and stuff first. To get enough free space for its buildings.

I think i will add some worldgen features for the skirmish mode. To let the gamers decide if they like flat ore mountainous environment, or some other biomes. Like some sliders for custom world-gen.

 

I just found your thread for the first time. This game looks amazing! I love your UI design and the simple look and feel. I'm really excited for the finished product! Maybe you can try for a steam green-light eventually?

 

2 Very good idea's! I dont really understand the 100x100 part (or are the buildings 300 times as big as a unit? that sucks), but I will see later (I guess)

 

@Callski:
Thank you very much! Since greenlight needs gameplay footage, this is the first thing i need. Adding more gameplay. I really want to have more stuff working before i make the gameplay video, though.

@Herjan:
Its Just roughly 100x100m. Ground Units will be large Mech-Robots. So every robot is at least 1 Block in size. A building is currently a 3x3, 5x5 or 7x7 Size. But i will add much larger buildings and units too.

Which means.
Buildings.
3x3 = 300mx300m.
5x5 = 500mx500m.
etc.

Units.
at least ...1x1 = 100mx100m.

 

When will ther be a release on this? It look's amazing and I hope to try a beta version if possible

 

Theres probably too much detail in the buildings, unless if you can zoom in to their level.

 

I love it and damn it is pretty good good job btw

 

Thanks a lot! Im still working on this project. Im currently finishing university so i will have plenty of time soon. So sorry for the late response.

There is a lot of new stuff in the new build of Voxelisland. For example different biomes.

Cheers. =)

 

It looks cool! keep it up! and good luck with the university !

 

Any chance this get's released soon?

 

Tbh I wanna know the same thing! Looks super fun! Mix of Age of Empires, Minecraft, and it even looks great! what more in a strategy game could you ask for?

 

I know right, I own both of those games & I love them both.