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[stevesan]

Yo dude I just installed (there was a huge stall at the end of the install process..?), and tried to run it, but it crashed immediately. I'm on Win7 64-bit. Lemme know if you want me to send any crash logs, etc.

[jensb]

Ok, I have played the demo and let me say that, having worked with voxels myself, I can see the extent of your effort: this is a great looking rendering of a voxel field!

Thank you!

That said, I add my voice to the chorus: this definitely needs some texture work and some good fixes on the collisions and camera management.

The textures are a result of balancing performance vs quality. Maybe there will be a HD texture pack later on.

I will fix the camera and collision handling.

Also, the geometry popping at the start of a game is quite annoying: on my core duo laptop with hybrid SLI, after generating all the geometry the game still runs smooth, so I think you can optimize this to show less popping.

Is it just visually annoying or is it causing stall as well?

Thanks for the feedback!
Jens

[jensb]

Yo dude I just installed (there was a huge stall at the end of the install process..?), and tried to run it, but it crashed immediately. I'm on Win7 64-bit. Lemme know if you want me to send any crash logs, etc.

Did you get to the login dialog?

best regards
Jens

[stevesan]

Yes I did.

[jensb]

Yes I did.

Ok. Can you verify that you have

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/netframework/aa569263.aspx

and

http://www.microsoft.com/download/en/details.aspx?id=20914

installed?

They are installed if needed when you run the Blockscape Setup but something in your configuration may have blocked them.

best regards
Jens

[Xecutor]

Looks nice. Works fast on my PC. (Core2Duo E6850 3Ghz, GeForce GTS 250, Win7 32bit, 1080p monitor).
A few comments.
1) When deleting blocks I can see sky/water for a few moments. Sometimes parts of remote mountains/caves. Looks odd.

Yes, I have not really figured out how to fix this yet without making the world rebuild too slow. The world data is stored in a kind of flexible octree data structure and this happens when you delete something near the edge of a node. 

Mb deleted block can remain in it's place for a little while?
i.e. Delete it from world and draw as separate object a few moments.
Mb with some special effect.

[jensb]

Looks nice. Works fast on my PC. (Core2Duo E6850 3Ghz, GeForce GTS 250, Win7 32bit, 1080p monitor).
A few comments.
1) When deleting blocks I can see sky/water for a few moments. Sometimes parts of remote mountains/caves. Looks odd.

Yes, I have not really figured out how to fix this yet without making the world rebuild too slow. The world data is stored in a kind of flexible octree data structure and this happens when you delete something near the edge of a node. 

Mb deleted block can remain in it's place for a little while?
i.e. Delete it from world and draw as separate object a few moments.
Mb with some special effect.

Yeah, I think the second option is the way to go: Draw some temporary surfaces to hide the glitch until the world rebuild is ready. I will do some test.

Thank you for the feedback!
Jens

[thelightguy]

Very nice. I found this game through a discussion thread on Something Awful (here) and I like it so far.

Something that was brought up in that thread is that all these voxel games tend to follow a very natural motif.  What about something more digital or artificial, at least as an option.  Sort of a Tron:Legacy style theme to the game, with a world of digital skyscrapers, glassy, cubic surfaces, et cetera.  I think it would fit well with this particular engine especially.

But anyway, just wanted to chime in with great work, and I can't wait to see what you do with it.

[rek]

Something that was brought up in that thread is that all these voxel games tend to follow a very natural motif.  What about something more digital or artificial, at least as an option.  Sort of a Tron:Legacy style theme to the game, with a world of digital skyscrapers, glassy, cubic surfaces, et cetera.  I think it would fit well with this particular engine especially.

Love this idea. There aren't nearly enough sci-fi games that aren't primarily about action/fighting/exploding.

[jensb]

Very nice. I found this game through a discussion thread on Something Awful (here) and I like it so far.

Something that was brought up in that thread is that all these voxel games tend to follow a very natural motif.  What about something more digital or artificial, at least as an option.  Sort of a Tron:Legacy style theme to the game, with a world of digital skyscrapers, glassy, cubic surfaces, et cetera.  I think it would fit well with this particular engine especially.

But anyway, just wanted to chime in with great work, and I can't wait to see what you do with it.

Thank you! I'm glad you like it.

I really want to stay away from a specific theme or time period. I love Dungeon and Dragons but I'm also a hardcore fan of science fiction. In my game I want the player to decide as much as possible. Let's see how this turns out.

best regards
Jens

[jensb]

Hi,

A new version is out!

Some release info from www.blockscape.com:

- Cave system is now infinite in every direction! I will talk more about this in my devlog later on.
- A completely new water model (not just a plane like in the last version). It is a combination of static water bodies and full simulation of dynamic flowing water. Here are two videos to give you an idea of how it works:






- New materials: Sandstone, Limestone, Gold, Iron, Silver.
- Player hull changed a bit.
- Login dialog shows build number.
- Optimizations.

Tell me what you think!

best regards
Jens

[sk2k]

Hello,

i just registered here because there is no contact information on your website (www.blockscape.com).


1. For the love of god, please let me inverse the y-axis of my mouse(up/down). It's difficult for me to enjoy Blockscape now.

2. Do not let the installer make a silent install of whatever your game needs. Make it an option in the installer or provide a .zip file with just the game files.

3. Put contact informations on your site and also a bit more about yourself.

4. At the current state of Blockscape i would put 5 Euro into Blockscape, but not 9 Euro.

5. From time to time the game freezes for a second. I do not know what's the cause of this is. The game runs smooth otherwise.

So far it looks good and it has potential.

sk2k

[Xecutor]

Dynamic water is really good beginning, but it is very bugged in current version.
Textures are flickering a lot and water flow on mountain's slope has disconnected pieces of textures.
IMO shallow water flow should be implemented as multitexturing of underneath surface.
Another issue - cursor and surface marker are invisible when pointing from air toward block in water.

It's good to hear that you are making good progress.
I wish you a lot of patience and some luck

[jensb]

Hello,

i just registered here because there is no contact information on your website (www.blockscape.com).

1. For the love of god, please let me inverse the y-axis of my mouse(up/down). It's difficult for me to enjoy Blockscape now.

Very sorry about that. Next update will have that option.

2. Do not let the installer make a silent install of whatever your game needs. Make it an option in the installer or provide a .zip file with just the game files.

Good point. A separate download with just the game files sounds like a good idea.

3. Put contact informations on your site and also a bit more about yourself.

I will do that.

4. At the current state of Blockscape i would put 5 Euro into Blockscape, but not 9 Euro.

Ok, I will think this over.

5. From time to time the game freezes for a second. I do not know what's the cause of this is. The game runs smooth otherwise.

Yes, I have seen this on a couple of machines as well. I have tried to pin it down but got nothing so far. My guess is that it's caused by
1. certain graphics drivers not liking huge changes in vertex data.
2. the dot net garbage collector freeing huge amounts of memory.

So far it looks good and it has potential.

sk2k

Thank you very much for the feedback!

best regards
Jens

[jensb]

Dynamic water is really good beginning, but it is very bugged in current version.
Textures are flickering a lot and water flow on mountain's slope has disconnected pieces of textures.

Yeah the flickering thing is really unfortunate. The rendering pipeline is super streamlined and optimized to be able to push the amount of vertex data. Part of the optimizations include lock free synchronization of the rendering engine and the world generation engine and that didn't really work out with new water model. I have been working for 2 days with a fix for this now and I hope it will be ready in a couple of hours.

IMO shallow water flow should be implemented as multitexturing of underneath surface.

Hmm, why would that be a better option?

Another issue - cursor and surface marker are invisible when pointing from air toward block in water.

That is a big issue. I will make sure that that is fixed in the next release.

It's good to hear that you are making good progress.
I wish you a lot of patience and some luck

Thank you and thank you very much for the feedback!

best regards
Jens

[jensb]

Hi,

New build released. It fixes the flickering issues reported here by Xecutor.
It also enables God mode if you own the game.

I'm sorry that the other requests didn't make it into this release. Correcting the bug took way too much time.

best regards
Jens

[jensb]

Hi!

I'm writing to tell you that the game now has a new sculpting tool for creating more organic structures like trees and natural looking caves. Check out this video for more info:





Please tell me what you think.

The next update will add multiplayer to Blockscape.

best regards
jens

[Cunnah]

Hi, I have to say I'm loving what I see so far, I have a few questions and suggestions.

1. it appears the way you calculate water is that it exponentially slows as each level of water nears being full. If that is the case would it be easier to just have a cut off and say once there is such a water level its just full? I hope I'm not trying to teach granny to suck eggs with that one.

2. Love the new sculpting tool, if you implement some form of survival (which apparently you are) you should definitely use that for digging out material!

3. does the sun move?

4. is the world infinite as it stands right now? I went for an underwater stroll and hit quite a few islands on my travels and something that appeared to be even bigger than the starter island but it crashed before I could explore.

[jensb]

Hi, I have to say I'm loving what I see so far, I have a few questions and suggestions.

Thank you!

1. it appears the way you calculate water is that it exponentially slows as each level of water nears being full. If that is the case would it be easier to just have a cut off and say once there is such a water level its just full? I hope I'm not trying to teach granny to suck eggs with that one.

That would break the "conservation of mass", i.e. you would end up with more water every time the water moves.

2. Love the new sculpting tool, if you implement some form of survival (which apparently you are) you should definitely use that for digging out material!

You can use any of the tools to dig but the sculpting tool creates better looking tunnels of course

3. does the sun move?

No, sorry, not yet.

4. is the world infinite as it stands right now? I went for an underwater stroll and hit quite a few islands on my travels and something that appeared to be even bigger than the starter island but it crashed before I could explore.

The world is infinite in every direction. Even up and down.

I'm a bit surprised to hear about the crash. Did you get some kind of error message? What specs do you have?

best regards
Jens

[Cunnah]

no error message, but I have noticed it does coincide with missing chunks (?) same with going down. BTW there's getting lost in minecraft and then there is getting lost in blockscape!
specs are AMD Athlon X2 3GHz (ish I never trust what windows thinks), 4GB Ram, 64bit windows 7.  ATI Radeon HD 5700

Also, as for the water I see the issue, but then again it seems that is the trade off other games take for a quicker approach to the problem (thinking of terraria in particular).