Part 3 - Some Dirt and Grass

1/10/2012

Just a quick update, since I got a lot of questions about texturing - any voxel can have its own custom material properties. Here is a very simple example I whipped up, and included a kind of crude grass and dirt texture (dirt is really just a solid color, dithered by voxel towards where the grass grows). In my opinion, this is very crude and was kind of hastily put together - I promise the future versions will look a lot better :). I am also pleased with initial reactions - my visitors have skyrocketed to over a thousand in one day (not a lot, but that is up from 1-10 visitors per day ;) ). I included one shot with a smooth simplex noise (and crappy looking) terrain and another with a sharper (I think better looking) voronoi-based terrain.

6 Comments

Chris link

1/11/2012 10:36:19 am

Awesome! I can't wait for a video.

I'm coming at this from a "mindcraft" kind of thinking, but how are you storing the data for the blocks? The first thing that comes to mind is a 3d array, and then you stream chunks as the viewpoint moves around? Or something else entirely?

Did I mention I can't wait for a video? Heh.

And yeah, your visitors skyrocketed no doubt because of the pic of the day on Gamedev. That's how I got here at least.

Take care.

Gavan Woolery link

1/11/2012 11:27:21 am

Yes, at the lowest level it uses 3D arrays, but that is used primarily for constructing the visuals (displaylists/polygons) - after each chunk gets constructed, a lot of data gets thrown away, although it will cache the majority of the data on disk and a bit less of it in memory, so long as it is within a certain range of the player. Currently, with these view distances, 2-4 gigabytes of memory is being consumed at any given instance -- however, there is still a ton of room for optimization (both in terms of speed and memory footprint). Additionally, while this game will be playable on lower-end systems, I also want it to be a major catalyst (if possible) for pushing the amount of memory and cores on a computer.

It REALLY benefits from more cores (chunks get processed almost twice as fast on a quad-core as opposed to a similar dual-core system. It also really benefits from a lot of memory - I want to push 32-64 gigabytes as a "reasonable amount" for high-end settings. Really, systems should be taking advantage of memory prices, but most aren't. At under $300 for 32 gigabytes, it should be pretty standard in a gaming-oriented system. (http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductList.aspx?Submit=ENE&N=100007611+600083963&QksAutoSuggestion=&ShowDeactivatedMark=False&Configurator=&IsNodeId=1&Subcategory=147&description=&hisInDesc=&Ntk=&CFG=&SpeTabStoreType=&AdvancedSearch=1&srchInDesc=)

And yeah my site stats list GameDev.net as the main contributor. :) Going to try and post a video right now, I guess I will just post what I have - I can always make fancier videos later.

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4/4/2013 03:54:47 am

Thank you for any other great post. The place else may just anyone get that kind of information in such a perfect approach of writing? I've a presentation next week, and I am on the search for such info.

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4/28/2013 07:50:48 pm

Good 3D effect! The pics are describing itself, then i may guess how the video would be. Sure it may have taken a long time to create.

Gavan Woolery

4/28/2013 08:23:14 pm

Thanks!

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8/21/2013 07:02:31 pm

The animated pictures of the dirt and grass posted on the page are too good. I would like to know how you designed these pictures. I am a computer science student and am eagerly waitng for your reply. Thank you.

Part 3 - Some Dirt and Grass

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