(this thread was created almost 50/50 for my personal questions and general discussion on the topic of voxels, as I bet there are many looking for it)
Hi! I have been playing around in UE4 for a good couple of months now, got to know with the editor, and the general way the engine works, and how to work with it.
Now when it comes to actually wanting to develop something that would not be just a single functionality-demo (like the crystal shooting simulator I did. Yes, a crystal shooting simulator.), but rather a game that actually could classify as enjoyable.
There is one style of computer graphics I have completely fallen in love with -voxels. More exactly, voxels of a very specific size, basically so that if you imagine a minecraft 1m^3 cube (that should be an example everyone knows), and making it consist of 1728 little cubes (that’s 12x12x12).
I also love UE4. The rendering engine is fantastic, the community even better and the workflow generally fits for me quite well.
This week I have spent trying to figure out if the two can be combined, but the information is rather hard to get to, so I finally decided to post a question about it, as most likely someone here knows.
I have had some discussions with Afuzzylama (big thanks to him) about me gaining access to his little contraption he has got going on, but that is about it.
I have seen some nice demos on Cryengine, but I personally dislike the engine for some reason. It's workflow just is quite clunky for an indie.
The unity in the other hand has tons of voxel packages on their asset store, but they vary in quality(some are literally just placing tons of objects, which will kill any computer on this planet if scaled up to any reasonable dimensions), and, let’s face it, Unity 4 is graphically weaker than UDK was, and there are no guarantees on the systems being transportable to U5.
One option of course is to learn proper C++ coding (I do get the general structure of it, and have been able to implement basic gameplay mechanics within it, but my work with it is rather… well, slow. Line by line I have to visit the doc. .) That being said, I would be ready for it, but I would really appreciate someone pointing to the direction I should go about learning it, and overall the back end of the voxels (there isn’t a terrible amount of info on that based on a quick google search)
Things I am assuming you will try to point me to, and replies to them (kind of in a "Frequently offered solutions (FOS) way):
"<a link to the brick game> " -Yes, I have seen it, but the problem is that download links to the engine branch are dead, (as seems to be the project as well) which makes it impossible for me to compile the bloody thing.
“<a link to fuzzy’s pixels for glory>” -Yep, that is a thing I am currently investigating. I’ll bring you updates on my negotiations further down the line
“< a link to a dodgy voxel engine>” -yes, there are surely those out there, but what I am looking for is the polished, broad feel of UE4, and if I change my mind on that, I’ll surely find a couple dozen dodgy alternatives.
“Go read a book on C++, and you’ll be fine!” -phh… How many people have actually succeeded with this advice? To me it seems like just a nicer way of saying “You will never be able to pull it off without an expensive degree on computer sciences”, which I hope is a false claim.
Allright, that’s that, can’t wait to see your answers and advice!