Hello,
as promised here I will show off my game now. (Although I don’t made it to match the “tomorrow” at least in my time zone ;))
It’s still very early especially the visuals so don’t expect too much 
I’m planning to create a RPG that uses a blocky terrain on the one hand but on the other hand I intend to create something visually more appealing. One step to do so is to shrink the block size to half a meter in all directions. The other will be with textures and vegetation (although I’m concerned that this might be negative for lower end graphic cards^^).
There will be no digging but more questing. I hope to be able to “half procedurally” generate quests, towns and relationships between neighboring towns etc. I want to support modding and accounted for this already in the past work.
As of now I implemented a lot of stuff “behind the scenes” and lately started the terrain generation (I was busy due to exams). At the moment it just has low level features and biomes. Bigger structures (that strongly depend of the biome) are the next thing to create.
After that I will implemented the character and make it able to walk around, then I will implement either fighting, vegetation or the generation of towns.
One low res screenshot:
You can watch more screenshots at
Also you can find some more information and my twitter account with a click at “Home”.
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Great start there!
The green though… it’s a little bit too green.
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Thanks 
Of course the colors are just placeholders Although as written above I’m not 100% sure whether to use textures or just plain vertex colors… Probably textures for more realism (and to reduce the “just another minecraft” reactions ;))
You’ll get compared to something else no matter what you do. Vertex colors with smaller blocks and you’ll get compared to cube world (a pretty neat looking game, by the way)… with textures, you’ll get called “minecraft with a texture pack”.
Just don your thick skin.
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looking slick, nice work
Thanks 
([Cube World] a pretty neat looking game, by the way)
Yes indeed. I was already planning my game when I saw CubeWorld and got shocked how many things he does in a way I would/will do them^^ But there is enough difference I think to not end up as "a clone". (Btw: I'm jealous every time when he posts about nice new features that he implements while I'm either busy with studying or have to do basic stuff first^^)
you’ll get compared to something else no matter what you do.
That's true... It's the way our brain works I think^^
@enum said:
That's true... It's the way our brain works I think^^
I was just happy when the comments on Mythruna's youtube videos started to compare me to games other than Minecraft. :P
As I can see people more and more are started to be interested in developing voxel-based worlds after you-know-what-game and this is really really nice because this brings a whole new experience to the virtual worlds, because it gives you an ability to change this worlds, which makes you feel more a part of it.
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because it gives you an ability to change this worlds, which makes you feel more a part of it.
You will be able to influence the game world in my game but just indirect or maybe just by placing "building material" or items to build a house or something like that.
I loved the idea of a game where an explosion leaves a whole in the ground but I guess this things will only affect everything above the ground mesh like plants or the color of the mesh. (Ok, maybe it's possible to carve a ground by just pushing the blocks some layers deeper... That's a good idea :D Thank you for activating my brain in this direction ;))
As travelling will be something that can be awarding in terms of satisfaction due to exploring a new world and due to ingame awards I need to reduce the space requiered for storing and sending the world. This is especially important because my blocks are just half a meter in every direction.
I was just happy when the comments on Mythruna’s youtube videos started to compare me to games other than Minecraft. :P
Yeah, I followed your progress and noticed these things everytime I told a friend about you ;)
looks promising
Are you planning to include ambient occlusion? Because that is really complex - at least it was for me - rewrote the lighting engine about 3 times before it really worked 
@KayTrance said:
As I can see people more and more are started to be interested in developing voxel-based worlds after you-know-what-game :) and this is really really nice because this brings a whole new experience to the virtual worlds, because it gives you an ability to change this worlds, which makes you feel more a part of it.
This is, at least for me, exactly the reason why I started a sanboxing game - you can shape the whole world - everything is possible (nearly) - and that's also the reason, I think, why so many new sandboxing games are being developed. Notch did a really good job with Minecraft but there is so much more that can be done in such an environment than what has been done in Minecraft.
Are you planning to include ambient occlusion? Because that is really complex – at least it was for me – rewrote the lighting engine about 3 times before it really worked ;)
I currently focus more on gameplay stuff than on visuals. I want the game to work so that I can see visual improvements inside the "real" game when doing that. (Another reason is: With the exception of sth. that could be like jMEs unshaded I did not write any shader until now. I am eager to learn that (and I already have literature in my bookshelf) but gameplay first.)
This way I did not even think about which lighting techniques to use.
PS: I seem to be the only one (maybe with the exception of pspeed) who did not start out with using thousands of box geometries^^ (Maybe I read about that being bad beforehand, don't remember^^)
@enum said:
PS: I seem to be the only one (maybe with the exception of pspeed) who did not start out with using thousands of box geometries^^ (Maybe I read about that being bad beforehand, don't remember^^)
You read the posts and information available which already puts you 9,000 steps ahead of most.
In my case, I'd been doing different 3D programming for a long time and already knew "many objects = bad". I figured batching would be good and I looked at the source code for infiniminer and confirmed it.
@enum said:
I currently focus more on gameplay stuff than on visuals. I want the game to work so that I can see visual improvements inside the "real" game when doing that. (Another reason is: With the exception of sth. that could be like jMEs unshaded I did not write any shader until now. I am eager to learn that (and I already have literature in my bookshelf) but gameplay first.)
This way I did not even think about which lighting techniques to use.
PS: I seem to be the only one (maybe with the exception of pspeed) who did not start out with using thousands of box geometries^^ (Maybe I read about that being bad beforehand, don't remember^^)
Yeah - you're right: gameplay is most important - most games today forget about that ;). I recently got a beta key for Diablo3 and they enhanced a lot of graphic stuff but the gameplay is mostly the same as the old Diablo2 and that despite the huge amount of development time.
But on the other hand I fell in love will the neat shader effects and I think it is also important to have some kind of ambiance and unique style within the game - but that doesn't mean that the game needs to be overloaded with graphic effects - I think there should be some balance of graphical effects and gameplay. So maybe it is really the best way to start with the gameplay - because graphic effects can be added later in most cases ;)
I agree as well - game play is most important as without interesting game play, it’s not really an interesting game, despite fabulous graphics.
Graphics can help to improve immersion though, but if it’s meant to be a game (rather than a show case, demo or the like) game play should definitely be first priority, in my opinion.
I look forward to following this project’s progress - good luck!
Work on what inspires you at that moment. Sometimes adding a cool graphics effect will keep the motivation going and help get through the more mundane stuff. Sometimes adding that mundane feature is enough to get you inspired to do other things.
The worst thing that can happen in an indie/hobby project is brain-lock… where development stalls because you know you should work on feature X when really you’d rather be working on feature Y. Better to do something than to do nothing.
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Truly spoken pspeed and thank you Tumaini
@pspeed said:
You read the posts and information available which already puts you 9,000 steps ahead of most.
In my case, I'd been doing different 3D programming for a long time and already knew "many objects = bad". I figured batching would be good and I looked at the source code for infiniminer and confirmed it.
Yeah im one of the bad boys that stepped on someones nerves to learn that...
In this case PSpeed... (sorry again :) )
@pspeed said:
Work on what inspires you at that moment. Sometimes adding a cool graphics effect will keep the motivation going and help get through the more mundane stuff. Sometimes adding that mundane feature is enough to get you inspired to do other things.
The worst thing that can happen in an indie/hobby project is brain-lock... where development stalls because you know you should work on feature X when really you'd rather be working on feature Y. Better to do something than to do nothing.
Just read this. Words of indie wisdom, truly.
I have been wanting to use a block terrain for my game as well. But seeing that one half of jMonkeyEngine devs are working on block terrains and the other half is working on space games, I am trying hard to come up with something a bit more alternative...
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@nihal said:
Just read this. Words of indie wisdom, truly.
I have been wanting to use a block terrain for my game as well. But seeing that one half of jMonkeyEngine devs are working on block terrains and the other half is working on space games, I am trying hard to come up with something a bit more alternative...
Heheh. If you are referring to core devs then I'm the only one working on a game at all right now... and that's how I started here. Normen has one or two game projects that he pushes along from time to time but nothing as time-consuming as my own.
If you are referring to general devs-at-large then I think it's just that the most vocal projects are the space and block games. I think the block games get a lot of traffic because people initially think that's a very easy way to get started (when in fact it's the hardest) so they have to ask a lot of questions. And the space games always run into various hard to solve problems very early... while also immediately having some cool visuals.
There are a few more classic RPGs going on, though. As well as some other games.
But I take your point. :) Trying to be distinct is difficult... but remember that perfect is the enemy of good. Sometimes it's better to start on something interesting and see where it takes you. Maybe you figure out a new twist some way down the path.
This project and status sounds kinda like mine did about a year ago:
http://www.desura.com/games/3079
Best of luck