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DarkBASIC Professional Discussion / Voxel technology

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Kenjar
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Posted: 1st Nov 2005 01:10
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Hi all, does anyone remember Comanche 3 or any of the pre-Comanche 3 era games from nova logic? Do you remember how the landscapes where made up using Voxel technology, and soild state models such as trees, tanks etc? Basically I am wondering if DarkBASIC Pro supports voxals. They can be used to create much smoother landscapes with less processing power then lower quaility soild state models.

If DBP doesn't support them then does anyone have a DLL for it?


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Dimension
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Posted: 1st Nov 2005 01:36 Edited at: 1st Nov 2005 01:37
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What exactly are you trying to do.

and ya I think I do remember if i'm thinking of the right game.
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Peter H
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Posted: 1st Nov 2005 03:07
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I think you would have to make them yourself.... (maybe a dll...)

"We make the worst games in the universe."

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Kenjar
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Posted: 1st Nov 2005 17:33 Edited at: 1st Nov 2005 17:34
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shame, the technology has a real chance of producing landscapes more accurately. These screen shots where from Comanche 3, the game was released on March 26, 1997, taking into account the complete lack of 3D hardware support, and it's a DOS game I think the graphics are still rather impressve if a bit blockly, certainly duplicating terrain in such detail for a model would push it into many tens of thousands of polygons, and they managed this with resolutions of 800x600 on a Pentium One 75Mhz to 133Mhz. It's all software processing so imagin the level of detail you could get with a modern 2Ghz+ PC?

The game was based on Novalogics own VOXEL SPACE 2 technology which was a mixture of Voxel and 3D models. Tanks, Trees, helicopters where all 3D models, but the landscape was Voxel based.

Check out these screen shots:





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Matt Rock
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Posted: 1st Nov 2005 19:59
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Why not use Geoscape? It's much more simple and accurate (in my experience anyway) than using a matrix, especially for larger maps. We made an entire planet using Geoscape and it's responsive on slower machines. Nova had some of the biggest maps ever and I always wondered how they did that... like in Delta Force 2, if you run north forever and ever the map just keeps repeating. Some of those multiplayer games would go on forever because players would take the fight outside the main area. It was a less realistic response to Battlefield's "You're leaving the Combat Area" feature, but a nifty one neveretheless.

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Emperor Baal
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Posted: 1st Nov 2005 20:31
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Quote: "like in Delta Force 2, if you run north forever and ever the map just keeps repeating"


That's because they made the map repeat itself, just like you say.
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Kenjar
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Posted: 1st Nov 2005 22:12
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Geoscape is just a terrain generator. It's using a heightmap to make a mesh, and to be honest, while it's quite smooth it's taking far more processing power to achive then Voxel's would. With a PII 500 voxel technology could easily match what Geoscape produces, and at a much, much lower processing cost. But for some reason Voxels where never widely accepted, even novalogic when comanche 4 came along used meshes, and to be honest I think the game suffered because of it.


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Matt Rock
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Posted: 1st Nov 2005 22:51
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So what's the process used for deploying voxels in a 3D environment? I mean, how did they do it before?

"Hell is an Irish Pub where it's St. Patrick's Day all of the time." ~ Christopher, *The Soprano's*
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Benjamin
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Posted: 2nd Nov 2005 00:19
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voxel

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Agent Dink
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Posted: 2nd Nov 2005 00:23
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Commanche!! I used to love that game. I always wondered how they did the terrain. I guess that answers my question.

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CJB
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Posted: 2nd Nov 2005 05:47
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Some ideas:

Large image for the terrain texture.

Another large image for the 'voxel height map' (greyscale).

Use a simple 'ray-casting' technique to get a 3d version of the terrain texture (in similar style to Mario-Kart, or the bonus section on the original Jazz Jackrabbit).

Offset the y-position of each terrain pixel's height with the correspnding data from the height map.

That would probably work. Nice and fast too (using look-up tables for the ray-casting).

Just nag me if you want some example code to do it, and I might write some.

Oh, and 'Where=>Were'



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Matt Rock
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Posted: 2nd Nov 2005 07:55
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Where is greater than or equal to were?

if where => were then sp = 1

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Hubdule
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Posted: 2nd Nov 2005 09:21 Edited at: 2nd Nov 2005 09:27
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If you're interested in Voxels then I think this is the right project for you:

http://advsys.net/ken/voxlap.htm

Cool idea and engine Check out the source and the demo projects.

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Kenjar
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Posted: 2nd Nov 2005 10:48
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I have to admit I downloaded it and thought... hey this looks rubbish... then I started shooting.

Ye Gods, imagine trying to duplicate that level of distruction in a mesh. Bit's of land where exploding all around me. I'm helping to write an Open MMORPG game, but at the moment it is in it's Offline stages. I can just imagin having a landscape made up of voxels, and having my magically enhanced warrior punching though walls, or a wizard collapsing caves on himself with a misaimed spell. The game ran so smoothly as well, and the level loaded so quickly. Clearly there's enough processing power left to make the voxels far finer, it was barely taxing my CPU at all.

There was an initial build time for the levels, but what interested me was the way the build time only occured once, and afterwards the level loaded instantly. With meshed the calculations need to be done every single time.

I think if the resolution of the pixels where doubled or trippled it would rival meshes quite easily simply because it's natrually pre-desposed to toward curves and angles.

I'd love to see voxel technology in a Dragonball Z game, for those of you who know the anime cartoon, the things the games really miss is the lack of distruction on the landscape. Each ki blast makes a creator, each time one of the fighters is hit hard enough he goes right though a mountain. Each punch makes a dent. It would even be possible to limit it by saying once you go too deep into the ground the planet explodes.

We where talking about mining in Open MMORPG. This technology would be great for making your own mining tunnels and hunting for gold. A pick axes, a drawf, need I say more?

Anyway it's such a shame that graphics cards are pre-desposed to accellerating polygons only, though the game engine used in the cave demo did use OpenGL for accelleration. I wonder if Direct X can do the same thing?

http://advsys.net/ken/voxlap/voxlap03.htm


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Hubdule
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Posted: 2nd Nov 2005 11:20
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You should also try the source code page. There is also a complete precompiles demo game level bundeled with the engine source.

http://advsys.net/ken/voxlap/voxlap05.htm

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Kenjar
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Posted: 2nd Nov 2005 12:53
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Yes I already have, and it's going to take me a while to work out what is going on, if I manage to work things out I'll look into producing a Voxel DLL.


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Van B
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Posted: 2nd Nov 2005 14:59
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That would be incredible - sorta like the advanced terrain plugin, that's the sort of thing you could and should be selling.


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Kenjar
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Posted: 2nd Nov 2005 15:24
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I'm teaching myself C++ slowly, though my skills are now where near what's required, give me a few months.


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Kenjar
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Posted: 2nd Nov 2005 19:30
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Quote: "Some ideas:

Large image for the terrain texture.

Another large image for the 'voxel height map' (greyscale).

Use a simple 'ray-casting' technique to get a 3d version of the terrain texture (in similar style to Mario-Kart, or the bonus section on the original Jazz Jackrabbit).

Offset the y-position of each terrain pixel's height with the correspnding data from the height map.

That would probably work. Nice and fast too (using look-up tables for the ray-casting).

Just nag me if you want some example code to do it, and I might write some.

Oh, and 'Where=>Were'"


Sure, while I'm plugging along with the DLL (which will take months, and months because I'm still learning C) I'd love to see a ray-casting attempt. I'm not too fermila with ray-casting yet, it's not somthing I've needed yet, but I'd love to see a voxel example for DBP.


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Peter H
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Posted: 2nd Nov 2005 20:45 Edited at: 2nd Nov 2005 20:46
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wow that was one cool demo on "Ken Silverman"'s site!...

I feel like working on this in C++ now lol... (he gives a QBasic sample voxel engine, which would be easier to understand then the C++ source he also gives out)

but it would be really cool if you made a voxel dll for DBPro... i think everybody would worship you. (and give you money )

"We make the worst games in the universe."

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Kenjar
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Posted: 3rd Nov 2005 16:37 Edited at: 3rd Nov 2005 16:40
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No promises, but it's an idea I'd like to see turn into reality. Voxel tech definately has advantages.

For anyone else who might want to have a go at converting the QBasic code into DBP here it is.




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TKF15H
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Posted: 3rd Nov 2005 16:56
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Same here. It's been so long since I've done any QB coding, so I can't make head or tails out of that rendering algo. I'll have to read the voxel tutorials at gamedev yet again.

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jrowe
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Posted: 3rd Nov 2005 18:18 Edited at: 3rd Nov 2005 18:27
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You might be interested in this code, Kevil made it AGES ago, it's his attempt at imitating voxels in DBPro. It uses memblock mesh manipulation. At the time there was talk of a 3D imitation of worms (it was about the same time as Worms3D came out), but I think Kevil deemed it too slow to use this way. It's one of my favourite code snippets, for DBPro...

http://www.thegamecreators.com/?m=codebase_view&i=b6fb6b20765649f05a1c2a8436fbf7a3

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Peter H
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Posted: 3rd Nov 2005 19:25 Edited at: 3rd Nov 2005 19:28
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@jrowe- yeah, that's cool, but it's using polygons to imitate voxels... instead of actually rendering voxels... i do think that's as close as you can get (using polygons to represent voxels) with DBPro's native commands... but i think it would be alot more powerful/usefull to make a dll of it...

Quote: "I'll have to read the voxel tutorials at gamedev yet again"

didn't know they had one... i guess i'll have to go read it to

found it?

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Kenjar
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Posted: 3rd Nov 2005 21:30
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Ye Gods. My brain hurts now, lol. I'll have to read that article a few times before I know what it's going on about. Yes, like I say it'll be months and months before I produce anything like a Voxel DLL, but I'll give it my best shot. Now, off to read it again.


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CJB
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Posted: 4th Nov 2005 23:43 Edited at: 4th Nov 2005 23:44
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I've got the first stage done (the mariokart style flat terrain thing). Here's a pic:



It's too slow at the mo, but I am re-doing it using memblocks (instead of locking pixels and using point).

Then I will get the height-mapping working.

Then I will make some nice looking terrains (instead of the 3-year old stylee images I'm using at the moment!)...

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Timber Wolf
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Posted: 5th Nov 2005 06:08 Edited at: 5th Nov 2005 06:09
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Good old Nova Logic. BHD veteran myself (The game that is, talk to my dad if you want a real one). Did some modding for it myself. With the DF and JO series, terrains were massive, but all they did was have a height map with differant sections (4 being common) and used a .trn file to determine the tile method of these sections. so pretty muhc you had 4 sections just repeating themselves.

For the record, I beleive JO disapointed me and DFX was a sign of lack in creativity


I known: HTML, How to 3dmodel
learning: Javascript, C++, Basic
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