I have no idea where these blobby shapes are coming from...

[A new version is available]

A new version is available

It includes pencil tool brush size adjustment, pencil tool straight line mode, and a fill and extrude tool.

This looks really cool. Were there any major edge cases when creating the creating the modeling algorithm? I noticed in the video when you create the door in the beginning it seems to create an infinitely thin plane at the bottom, but when you extrude the "garage" area near the end of the video it doesn't.

Are there any restrictions for commercial use?

No not right now, and if there is in the future it wouldn't be retroactive.

I recently got a full time job and haven't worked on this very much but I did add color pallets. I have decided to make it free for now and I have updated the first post with a download link (for windows only right now).

[/obligatory_retro_voxel_thing]

can I download it?

I sent you a download link to a beta build in PM. Dont use the marquee select tool Its not done.

change the name you dum

Dum no one ever suggested a better name. I am open to suggestions though.

[Download]

Boxxy is a voxel modeling program designed for creating low res "pixel art" style voxel assets.







Current Features:

• Adaptive sparse voxel data that expands/contracts as you work.
• Object nesting and hierarchies.
• Current tools include: Transform (Move, Rotate, Scale), Pencil, Box Fill, Volume Select (Copy, Paste, Fill, Erase).
• Color picker with customizable HSB shift offsets.
• Duplicate and Duplicate as Instance.
• Boolean based merging with maintained object transformations. (Union, Intersection, Subtraction).
• Export highly optimized OBJ and texture.
• Global and local file color pallets.

Heres an example of what kind of mesh/texture it exports. All the objects in the scene use the same texture so it can work nice with instancing/batching.



Some additional planned features:

• Paint Bucket tool (works as an extrude tool as well).
• Plugin system for extendability. (C#/Unity API).
• FBX export with optional vertex color instead of texture.
• More export options.
• Customizable hotkeys.
• Render image/gif.
• Animation.

The program is completely free and can be downloaded here:
Download


Mac and linux versions should be available in the future, I just need to make sure all the input stuff and file browser thing work.

This game is really addictive. Are there multiple levels in it yet? I havent got past about week 3.

I think some kind of "zen" mode would be really cool. Where you dont lose from overcrowding and dont have to hook up new stations that spawn (and they go away after a while of inactivity). So the focus for that mode would just be to try to make the most efficient and large network as possible. Score could be based on number of people served per minute or something.

I noticed it sometimes hangs forever (infinite loop probably) while dragging a line, possibly only after disconnecting it from a station.

Yeah I bet it has something to do with the == overload. I bet if you change "default(GameObject)" to "null" it will work correctly. Why are you using default(GameObject) instead of null anyway?

Should that have any effect on anything here, though? I mean, that's the first thing coming to my mind, too, but I don't understand why that would have an impact, or how it could, regardless of anything they're doing in their == operator.

The piece of code I posted doesn't exist anymore, as things are done differently now, but I still wonder what caused that behaviour.

I use default() for consistency so things look the same everywhere, and I remember thinking it's good so if the type changes later, the code still works. It stuck with me and I now just use it without thinking. I can't deny I might have used it in places where 0 for numeric types could mess things up, but as I try to avoid that sort of thing anyways (returning null to indicate errors and such doesn't sit well with me), I don't think that happens very often, if at all. Changing the type so radically would likely require changes anyways and I would spot those places. Do people not usually do that? Should default() be only used for unknown types like in templates?

In c# all classes are referece types and all structs are value types. default(AnyClass) will always return null, and default(AnyStruct) will return an instance of the struct after executing its constructor.

The only time I have found it useful to use default() is in functions with generic arguments when its unknown if the generic type is a valuetype or a reference type. Otherwise its best to just use null if the type is a class (reference type).

What? Code was working weirdly so I started printing text traces to get a better picture of what's going on.

Code:

GameObject GetObject()
{
  GameObject result = default(GameObject);

  .
  // Do stuff where result gets assigned to.
  .

  if(result == default(GameObject))
    Print("Result in GetObject() is null.");
  else
    Print("Result in GetObject() is NOT null");

  return result;
}

and then elsewhere

Code:

GameObject thing = GetObject();
if(thing == default(GameObject))
  Print("Thing returned by GetObject() is null.");

It now prints

Code:

Result in GetObject() is NOT null
Thing returned by GetObject() is null.

It's not critical at the moment, but I don't understand what's going on, and that makes me grumpy, and above all scares me.

The type GameObject is Unity's GameObject, and I read in their Unity Answers site that they've overloaded the == operator to detect if a GameObject has been destroyed even if it's not null (eg. for destroyed objects gameObject == null returns true). I suspect that overloading has something to do with this behaviour, but I still don't understand.

Yeah I bet it has something to do with the == overload. I bet if you change "default(GameObject)" to "null" it will work correctly. Why are you using default(GameObject) instead of null anyway?

I was/will need to do something like this too, and I was thinking of a nice solution for it, but havent implemented it yet.

This is for just a 2d grid of squares, but Im sure you can can get the idea to extend it to work on a 3d volume.

-Start with a list of all squares, the "open list", probably in a hashset format or something.
-Select the first square in the in the list and create a rectangle out of it.
-Expand this rectangle north, and check if any squares in the newly expanded area are empty, do not exist in the open list (already removed), or otherwise undesirable for grouping. If any are undesirable dont apply the expansion.
-Do this for south, east, and west.
-Keep doing this until it cant expand anymore.
-Remove all the squares bounded by this rectangle from the open list.
-You have a rectangle you can convert to a quad.
-If open list length > 0 goto step 1.

I have no idea if this is the fastest or best way to do it but it seemed pretty elegant and id imagine the results would be pretty optimized.

I like 12 best. Simple clean shapes. It reminds me of the Wolfenstein logo a bit, that's why I like it I guess. Here, I made a few variants based on 12.




The game looks and reads really nice. I like the wonkyness to the tiles, it really helps make it look more interesting and varied even though the tiles are the same. And yeah, the textures do look nice. Good work!

Those are great. After posting the first batch I also made a variation of 12 and came up with this:


I also made a logo.

Click for 2X

As you may have noticed I was really inspired by completely ripped off this awesome broforce logo.

Concentration Camp Tycoon

Haha well there wont be any of that kind of stuff. Thats one reason I wanted to distance it more from real world factions. I think I also want it to be unclear who the real bad guys are. So it a faction that looks a lot like Nazi fighting a faction that looks a lot like USA but other than the way they look theres no indication of which is the bigger evil.

I decided to change the name back to Axis, which was the original working title. And decided to go more abstract on the setting to distance it from the real world ww2 setting and factions. Im trying to come up with a faction symbol to replace the iron cross for the players faction (which is the german-ish one).

Im leaning towards 8, 6, 10, and maybe 12. What do you guys think?

Thanks guys!

Man, I'm always a sucker for cartoony 3d art styles. Consider me interested, albeit a bit in the dark about the project. Would love to hear more about how it plays! 

Theres not a whole lot of gameplay yet. Most of the work has been on the tech and game systems, such as the tile system, room system, AI framework.

Gameplay wise the goal is something very much like Dungeon Keeper 2, but more rts style combat, where you select and order units around, instead of picking them up and dropping them. Units will still do things on their own, like sleeping, eating, training and combat, but you can select them and tell them to move somewhere to hint at what you want them to do.

I also want to have a pretty big focus on sabotage and traps and stealth. basically there would be a special spy unit that can disguise and sneak into enemy territory and plant traps and bombs, silently take out enemies, and reveal the enemies base.

I have started implemented unit AI logic. This gif shows the "engineer" unit blowing up marked walls. The explosion effect still needs a lot of work.

Axis is a dungeon manager game in the vein of Dungeon Keeper 2 and Evil Genius, with a world war 2 era-ish theme in an alternate reality. It focuses more on RTS combat and sabotage though.





Twitter: @kurtloeffler