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[Layl]

I've been working on my own game engine for a few weeks now and it's starting to get into a decent shape. I'm looking for some feedback on the progress so far and opinions on what parts I should focus work.

Current Features:
- Flexible voxel rendering (included voxel types are flat color and textured)
- Entity tree based scenes
- Material based mesh rendering
- Simple physics focused on responsiveness

GitHub: https://github.com/LaylConway/Subterran
Getting Started: https://github.com/LaylConway/Subterran/wiki/Getting-Started
NuGet: https://www.nuget.org/packages?q=Subterran

Screenshot from the "Voxel World" Example

This post was last updated January 22, 2015, 06:02:15 PM with:
- New features
- New screenshot

[Layl]

Here's another screenshot to show some of the improvements I've been making. Did a big optimization pass on the voxels to mesh conversion algorithm to make the following possible.

[Phasesaber]

Looks really cool! I'd love to see some games made in this. 

[Layl]

Just pushed a new update to NuGet! Really excited about this one. Subterran now has support for basic physics. The components for physics functionality are in Subterran.Toolbox.SimplePhysics. The VoxelWorld example has been updated to now have a physics based player character.

[WhenBellsToll]

The engine itself looks nice, but you haven't give too much info on it, so I want to ask a few questions.
1. Does each type of voxel have set properties?
2. Can the engine Idenitfy boundaries of certain type of environments?
3. Are there even predefined environment?
4. If so, what kind?
5. What kind of game are you trying to make here?

[Layl]

The engine itself looks nice, but you haven't give too much info on it, so I want to ask a few questions.
1. Does each type of voxel have set properties?
2. Can the engine Idenitfy boundaries of certain type of environments?
3. Are there even predefined environment?
4. If so, what kind?
5. What kind of game are you trying to make here?

1. The engine puts no limits on what types of voxels you can use and how they're turned into meshes. You can put in an entirely different voxel type into the voxel map component if you want to. The voxel type given in the Toolbox (which is a project with a set of tools for speeding up development) is a simple colored block.

2. If I understand this right, currently the engine has no support for 'biomes' or things similar to that, it does not have generation features built in either, though the VoxelWorld example project has a simple terrain generator class as example.

3, 4. There are no predefined biomes.

5. Shown in the screenshots are just example projects, I do not currently have a game project of my own based on this engine.

[WhenBellsToll]

Okay then the best advice I can give you is to try and make some coherent idea out of it, looks like a project with a lot of potential. Thanks for sharing it.

[Layl]

Here's another screenshot, I made the VoxelWorld's example terrain generation more interesting. There's a lot of other stuff that has been improved and added in the background but that's not visible in this screenshot.

[Layl]

A bit of technical information about using Subterran! Subterran's Entity-Component implementation makes heavy use of interfaces to define what a component can do. For example, the following component updates the position of an entity:

Code:

class MoveComponent: EntityComponent, IUpdatable
{
	public void Update(TimeSpan elapsed)
	{
		Entity.Transform.Position += new Vector3(0.01f, 0, 0);
	}
}

At runtime, Subterran looks for any entities marked with IUpdatable, and calls Update on those in the game loop.

[Layl]

Another new screenshot! Subterran 1.0.128 is up on NuGet with some great new features. Most notably, support for materials and textures. The textures used are from the Isabella 2 creative commons texture pack for Minecraft.