Voxel Dungeon, plans

Posted by Scott_AW on May 20, 2010, 10:44 p.m.

Details about the project have been hovering more in the technical, so here's a bit about the planned features, limits and tools.

Lets start with the tools since I mentioned those last and most are avaible.

TOOLS

Evaldraw, made by Ken Silverman, the program that currently is used to run and edit it. Currently it has no support for storing strings yet, so a lot of data is hard coded. But not impossible to figure out for making modifications. I'll be keeping functions that hold the lists of models at the bottom of the code to make it easier to find.

Strip2voxel, the program I made in GLBasic converts a strip of images into a raw VOX file. There are currently some limits, as GLBasic seems to have some issues handling very large images. So I may need to remake this in something that only uses software rendering in hopes of better accuracy. Another alternative is to just use bmp files and read straight from them instead of loading them. Right now the limits I've found are with 64x64 images with a limit of 14-16 'layers' before the program starts to chew up the image.

Slab6, also by Ken Silverman, allows more fine tuning of the vox, and then you save as a KV6 file. Color, pivot point, scaling and such can be modified.

poly2vox, might be by Ken, but I'm not sure. This one is very useful for converting models, with textures included. It supports 3ds and OBJ formats and you can set the sizing 1-255 for the largest point.

map editor, also made in GLBasic by myself and still a work in progress, but it'll handle creation of various sized maps, light, object, event and entity placement.

Templates, because nothing is easier than working from templates and examples, I plan to provide mask templates with template man that you can easily create your own 3d person w/ animations. Right now just simple walking is done, but I still have some modifications to do.

Now for limits, because there are always limits…

LIMITS

Single story, there are no rooms over room, and may not plan to be any. There will be the ability to create double story walls, but I'll save that for the features bit.

Size & Index, Entities, objects, events and lights are currently limited to 32 of each. I may double this, but don't want it too high. Maps are limited to 8-64 in a square dimension only. I may also increase the max size on this now that I've optimized parts of the ray casting Ken provided. 254x254 is the max map size.

Visual bugs, been experienced on some platforms but not all. Strip2voxel has some issues on certain computers using onboard memory for video ram. Other glitches have occured but only one systems tested.

No strings, none. Editing to the source file required to add text.

some more!, but can't think of them now…

So on to the positive,planned features.

FEATURES

(1) Special stair objects - since theres no true rooms over rooms, when placing down/up stairs, adjacent walls will be cloned to make it seem like you have two stories worth of stairs going up.

(2) In addition to this stairs will have a special light source that either fades them to black(background color) or white(like outside). Going up stairs will be an automated movement and fading transition between levels. This will also be applied to exit halls and exit doors.

(3) Two piece doors that swing like doors. Consisting of a frame and door itself.

(4) Dynamic lights, this is already working.

(5) Dynamic enviroment lighting, much like I've done in past projects with a time based color change for outdoor enviroments. Would affect the 'white' fade out screen.

(6) Good, bad & neutral NPCs.

(7) Text speak built into Evaldraw, could be promising because it can be modified at any point.

(8) Basic RPG features, stats, items and possibly item creation and resource collection.

(9) Conforming tile objects, objects that change depending on their neighbor. Like a group of grass getting taller or having curved edges to reduce the squarish look. Also including roofs, paths(maybe) and a few other objects that may benefit from this. Another thing I'm taking from my past attempts.

And more…but feel free to add suggestions.

And yes, I will be making a game with this…eventually. This will pretty much become what The Crawl was attempting to be.

Comments

Ferret 14 years, 6 months ago

Are you going to be able to make a background image? Like a sky or something, or is this game going to be underground the whole time.

Scott_AW 14 years, 6 months ago

I believe its supported, so most likely yes. Exteriors will be involved.

Quietus 14 years, 6 months ago

damn i should think more to draw out my limits/boundaries rather than what i want to fill those boundaries with.

Cesque 14 years, 6 months ago

Quote:
And yes, I will be making a game with this…eventually. This will pretty much become what The Crawl was attempting to be.

:)

sirxemic 14 years, 6 months ago

Quote:
I will be making a game with this…eventually.
I often say that about my projects as well, but 99% of them don't get finished.

Scott_AW 14 years, 6 months ago

Thus is life, but if I get far enough with it, it can at least be usable to anyone interested.

And the makes can be a max of 254x254.

Cesque 14 years, 6 months ago

Quote:
I often say that about my projects as well, but 99% of them don't get finished.

Yes, but games based on anonymous tree node forums and scrolling image boards wouldn't be that interesting anyway. :)

Scott_AW 14 years, 6 months ago

I can see a game built around the node forum. Attack of the Forum

Bosses will be in the form of trolls starting flame wars.

The Avatrol 14 years, 6 months ago

Yeah but the Voxel Dungeon is way cooler from a game design standpoint. ;)

Scott_AW 14 years, 6 months ago

So I tested it out, 254x254 maps work great, heres a vid.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DzC9blDWATY

To put in perspective, that tiles that 64x64, so a map is up to 16256x16256x64 voxels