It looks pretty nice actually, have you thought of using it for low depth of field effects?

I might, but I do already have a blur-based DOF

Yep median filter is turned on here (partially what Photoshop's smart blur relies on).  It can be turned off as well, as you can see in other shots in the @voxelquest account, like this one: https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CUTXr8OUwAAm4-s.png:large

You tweaked the lighting too, didn't you?

Yep, here is a recent image:

Long time since my last update, I now have a fully procedural / physics-based animation system in:

Partial GIF:


Full Vid:
http://twitter.com/gavanw/status/676953274738700288

See the last string of tweets from http://twitter.com/voxelquest to see how this developed over time.

looking fantastic. can we get a high-res version of the first/last image?

Here are two I had on hand from the last twitch stream:

Getting an Arcane Worlds vibe (that Magic Carpet remake that's developing sooooo slowly)

Been a long time since I've seen that....

euclidion was right



what was the breakthrough?

The breakthrough was to separate the visuals from what can be interacted with at a given time.  I dont need to calculate collision on things 16 km away (I can if I need to, but I won't).  This lets me really effectively compress the visuals algorithmically and I can dump it to voxel data as need for collision, pathfinding, etc.  Its still quite a bit different from what euclideon has going on, which I suspect is just octrees.

Just a few new shots of the vastly improved view distance (formerly 64-128 meters, now 16-64 KILOmeters)

Is it possible to do a similar optimisation to polygons, where distant voxels are "merged" into bigger ones? Like some kind of spatial octree deal?

Problem is that you get some overdraw or spaces between the voxels as you make the far ones bigger, it produces gaps where there might not have been gaps before so all 6 faces need to be accounted for accordingly.

maybe this could help

http://procworld.blogspot.ca/2015/08/voxel-occlusion.html

I am using ray tracing, not polygons, so overdraw is not a problem for me! But still an interesting read.

Is it possible to do a similar optimisation to polygons, where distant voxels are "merged" into bigger ones? Like some kind of spatial octree deal?

Yes, sort of.   I wrote a polygon-based voxel mipmapping solution once, which was used for this thing, but is not active in this video:





Problem is that you get some overdraw or spaces between the voxels as you make the far ones bigger, it produces gaps where there might not have been gaps before so all 6 faces need to be accounted for accordingly.

That house on the cliff looks like a great home for a sorcerer.

Or a hermit

I've upped the view distance considerably, and improved performance to handle it.

(Link to image, to large to see here well): http://i.imgur.com/VcKRJQ8.png

I just wanted to come by and say you are a complete wizard.

Keep it up   

Thanks! 

Looking good as always, I just hope the project does actually ship in some finite amount of time.

Actually, we have a slightly more "firm" target now, although as usual no hard dates.  We are aiming to get out the door in 3 months - won't be a fun game necessarily, but at least something for users to get their hands on.  Within 6 months we hope to have a basic prototype.  From there, it will just be continual improvement of the game for as long as possible and working towards the long term goals as time allows.  BTW I love the look of Super Battlelands

can you raytrace (assuming you are doing that) inside deformed cube? I mean skewed, rotated, etc ...

Also I bet you have already read the paper of media molecule "dream"'s rendering

Yep, I have read the media molecule paper - I actually encountered some similar problems as them.  It is ray-based, and I can do any sort of tranformation to the rays, allowing relatively cheap space deformation.  I can rotate objects, twist them, skew them, or even create portals easily.

Some buildings in action, all visuals use solid modeling as usual.  You can see the building being put together at: http://www.twitter.com/voxelquest

GAVBERRY CRUNCH BE DOIN ALL THE GAMES

IF YOU SAY SO MIGGY O'S

BOOM

Animated version:

https://twitter.com/gavanw/status/627118562629386240

That water is really pretty! I gotta say though, I really dislike the volumetric grass. I think the old 2d grass looked better. It looks like weird slime stalagmites.

I agree actually! This is just an early pass at the grass and it will get better over time (time willing!) already in the newest shots it looks a little bit better just because it is much smaller and more dense.

New fluid in motion:
https://twitter.com/gavanw/status/621251129590984704
https://twitter.com/gavanw/status/621256160805568512