Tuesday, June 18, 2013

StarForge avec Voxel Farm

Here are some very exciting news at least for me. A few months ago CodeHatch, the company behind Starforge, licensed the VoxelFarm engine. They are using it from Unity in this latest video showing their new game terrain:


These guys are crazy-talented. Moreover, they are the nicest, most positive people I have ever encountered and worked with. Maybe it is because they are Canadians, who knows.

My heart is with Starforge, I really hope great things come to this project. If you have not checked this game out, it is on Steam.

25 comments:

  1. looks awesome.
    you guys not responding the licensing inquries,
    perhaps had a more licenses

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  2. Oh excellent! How cool is it to see two favourite projects merging in a way?!

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  3. Awesome! I wonder how they're going to integrate it with their own building system? For now they appear to be entirely separate, but it seems to me like the best option might actually be to scrap most of their old system and instead let your system handle all of the non-moving stuff, as it's more detailed and versatile.

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  4. Going forward, how are both of these projects being developed? Are they going to build off of that specific engine build? Are they going to get updates from your engine as you build it (that seems like a lot more work, especially if the game is already available for download).

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  5. Really sad to see how it'll be in a future your Voxelfarm engine. Sniff. Good luck!

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  6. Well, seems that now there's a way to wander in your procedural world...a 3rd party one but hey this looks awesome.


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    1. It is his engine (VoxelFarm) but as far as I can tell, it is not his procedural world. It looks different, and Miguel says that the video shows "their new game terrain". I look forward to playing in Miguel's own Procedural World, but I am happy to see what other companies are doing with the engine.

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  7. This is really exciting to see some gameplay applied to your amazing terrain system.

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  8. Hello! I'm really happy for you that your tech is starting to bring in clients and such, it's always great when someone who's work you follow enjoy a measure of success! wooooo!

    Are you able to explain more about how the Voxelfarm interacts with the Starforge game/program/tech? For example, I bought Starforge several months ago (due to interest in procedural landscapes) but found it really clunky and awful, with fairly generic terrain - will the Voxelfarm stuff merge with what they are doing, or are they only using specific elements or... ?
    (apologies if this question is vague, and thanks for your time in advance)

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  9. Michael GoodfellowJune 19, 2013 at 12:05 AM

    I downloaded the demo on Steam, but I'm not getting great results. There are polygon edge cracks all over the landscape, and lots of flimmering in the distance. It does seem to keep up on my machine though.

    Despite a "Tree density" slider in the options, it's all barren ground. Is that intended?

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    1. I have no idea if this is intended or just a stage in their development.

      How is your project coming along, BTW? It has been some time since I checked it out.

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    2. Health issues have been getting in the way, so I've just been playing with various platforms and misc. stuff. Most recently used Emscripten to compile the C++ code into Javascript. Surprising amounts of stuff work, but the browsers have their little quirks. It's nice that people can just click and run a demo though.

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  10. I've posted this yesterday, but it doesn't seem to show up in the comments yet, so I'll try it again:

    Excellent as always. But I've been meaning to ask for a long time now; Are you ever going to make a post about the ways you manipulate noises to get those awesome terrains? Because I'm quite interested in noises, but there are very few good articles about it on the internet (especially about the more advanced topics like warping). Knowing (something) about the way you sum, multiply or warp your noises, or whatever you do with them, would be very cool.

    Anyway, keep up the good work!

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    1. There is no secret sauce. All the important bits are in this blog.

      Noises alone are not a good source for terrain features because they are local methods. It does not matter how you combine them, they are doomed to be uninteresting, they do not have real information in them. You need some sort of global process showing erosion, glaciation, etc. over your terrain. How you bring this is not important, you could use Wang/Corner tiles, run erosion and weathering filters in real time.

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    2. I know that, but still, getting realistic terrain is a delicate and difficult process (because it might look awesome with one seed, but completely stupid with another). Especially if you want it to look good as well, but you seem to have nailed this, so I thought maybe telling a few details would be interesting. But then again, I can imagine you don't want to tell the whole world about the specifics of your terrain-creation.

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  11. He talked about it a few years ago, you can read through his entire blog for more information, it's not that hard but here is a good start : http://procworld.blogspot.fr/2011/05/hello-worley.html

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    1. I've actually read his entire blog, including that post, but this is still the absolute basic for procedural noise. I'm pretty sure he uses way more advanced techniques to get these sorts of terrain, as just using the basics would get very boring and bland landscapes. It would be very cool to know something about those more advanced techniques.

      Thanks for your help though.

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  12. finaly! and it is epic miguel!

    already had starforge and steam had it updated so lucky me got to check it out. cant wait to see other games using your worlds

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  15. I'd been looking at StarForge, but it didn't feel polished enough for me to jump in. This put me over the edge and I picked it up, as it was the only concrete way to support this project.

    I'd wanted to experience your terrain, and lo and behold, it is very similar. The cave/stalactite algorithm looks like they left your vanilla caves alone, so it was fun to run around in them and get a feel for what you've created :)

    Haven't played with it enough, the mechanics behind the "game" that is StarForge is still pretty uninteresting at the moment, but I'm hopeful that will improve with time.

    Congratz on having people out there using your sauce.

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  16. I ask me is the voxel farm engine so bad or was it only the guilt of the starforge devs why starforge is so bad and buggy ?

    The flying or hover vehicle are more big armors then real vehicle.

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