You talk about tiling a texture inside the shader with an atlas texture right? My attempts on doing so caused some artifacts as on the edge there is no texture sampling anymore. I was using the modulo operator for that. But that was years ago, are there better solutions nowadays?

3 hours ago, Magogan said:

64 bytes

I meant 64 bits, oops.

2 hours ago, VoxycDev said:

Just divide the texture coordinates by a factor so instead of from 0 to 1 they're 0.1 to .2 (if your cubemap size is 10), etc. Here is an implementation.

The problem is that the logs for example have a border of bark around the wood. If I just cut that in half, there would be no bark at some edges. That just doesn't look right at all.

On 5/28/2019 at 4:30 AM, Magogan said:

The problem is that the logs for example have a border of bark around the wood. If I just cut that in half, there would be no bark at some edges. That just doesn't look right at all.

This will not change the more fundamental concern that the entire game has a similar visual style and similar gameplay style to Minecraft.

"Much like Minecraft except the border on the wood bark is different" still is a comparison against Minecraft.

To be fundamentally different it needs to not be like other games.  If it started out with "It isn't like any other game I've played, there isn't much to compare it against" then you're in novel territory.

It is extremely rare for games to be completely unique. Most start as clones, remakes, extensions, or "spiritual successors" to other games, then they have elements changed about them.

That is not a bad thing.  Humans organize, classify, and differentiate items based on what they know.  Something radically different will create a genre.  The genre typically gets renamed based on the most well known product line, or a defining feature. That's not a problem at all, unless your goal is to break away from existing genres.

Well, my goal is to create something new, but not necessarily visually new. One part of my motivation was the fact that they promised quests in CubeWorld and never added them - I thought that would be a great feature for a voxel game and so I added them to my game.

The class system with the skills based on the weapon that the character currently holds is something I've not seen in any other game. You can simply switch to a different "class" by changing the weapon, though you are limited to two weapons to switch between at a time and if you switch to a third one, you have to (re-)learn it by earning experience.

Villages with roads in-between do exist in a few voxel games, but very rarely. CubeWorld is the only one I know of.

And then there is space, that definitely doesn't exist in Minecraft. There is one voxel game in space that I forgot the name of (edit: it's StarMade), I think it's still in Early Access on Steam. Apart from that I am entering novel territory here.

And there are a lot of planned features such as dungeons with bosses like in World of Warcraft, space combat, ... I don't know what to do with this in terms of marketing, I can't show pictures of things that do not yet exist...

Hey Magogan,

I agree with the sentiments of most of the other commenters here; Cube Universe does look a lot like Minecraft. Pictures are worth a thousand words. There are little to no screenshots that differentiate your game from, one of the most popular games ever made. Everything you do to promote your game visually should aim to make your game stand apart from Minecraft. You can describe the differences in text all you want, but unfortunately words don't carry much weight.

I haven't played your game, but I did check into it. Hopefully I haven't misunderstood what the game can do with my next suggestion...

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One thing is for sure, for a game about different planets and space travel, it's looks a lot like Earth... like way too much like not being on an alien world. I would take a step back and scale down your worlds to smaller "rocks" that have more unique stuff going on. Like, a world that looks barren on the surface, but it's cavernous with large crystals... and that's it. It has a few unique resources and creatures (to that planet type). Maybe a civilization every 3 planets worth of discovery. Each planet type is capable of having a civilization, but you might not find the crystalline people until the fifth cavernous crystal world.  Each world would have one or two gimmicks to encourage the player to find new worlds. Each world is also small enough that it forces you to move on after a couple of hours. You might stay longer to help out a civilization if you found one. The rewards for helping a civilization might be that they share some knowledge on how to use the unique resources found on their planet type. That would incorporate your quest system. You could also catalogue resources and creatures to unlock more technology and "crafting recipes". I think it would be really cool if every second world or so featured a boss monster either roaming the surface, flying in the skies, swimming in the ocean depths or deep within the caves. You don't have to limit your "biomes" to planets either; derelict spacecraft, abandoned ring world experiments, asteroid fields, husks of large space leviathans... and hopefully you don't have to do much more to your engine to support all this. You might need an overarching story, like, ancient alien tech on planets that links to a master race or something. Collect enough of it and the player gets to do something very cool, like make their own planets and pick and choose the biomes, creatures, civilizations... you become a god with the alien technology.

This, of course, is just an idea for you to consider. From what I've read about your game, the scope seems too grand for multiple planets and solar systems. It almost reads like you can find a lot of villages and be helping many people and find many boss monsters just on one planet... which begs the question, what will the other planets offer me that I haven't already experienced on the first planet? And if it takes more than 10 or 20 hours to "complete" a planet, will a player really want to do that 20 more times... or even 3?

I strongly suggest you make a small, simple planet with two biomes at the most, a few creature types, maybe 8 resources to collect, a village, and a boss monster. Get that working well and polish it up. Make the trees purple and the sand pink or something. Avoid making planets that look like earth. Don't make a world with lush green fields, dense evergreen forests, sandy dunes, blue oceans and snowy mountain tops. It's not that you can't have earth-like features, but having so many together that match our planet is not interesting enough to separate your game from Minecraft. And unique alien flora and fauna would bring these world to life, literally.

The things you love about your game are technical things, like your blocks are half the size of Minecraft's so things look a little less blocky. So use that to your advantage visually. Your trees look a bit more interesting... so in a game about planets and space, why not have a biome of twisting root systems that you wander under and over, where you work your way up the massive tree trunks to the canopy up top. Minecraft is too blocky to pull that off, I feel, but your world resolution would do that nicely.

- - - - -

Anyway, I feel that your game needs an overhaul of scope and setting, not necessarily any of the mechanics you've implemented thus far. However, if what I have proposed is not something that interests you, I would at least post a simple graphics challenge on this site. Post Cube Universe's texture maps and make a graphics overhaul challenge with the prerequisite being "less like Minecraft, the better". Who knows what some of the artists here might come up with? You never know, maybe a skilled artist is willing to take an afternoon and have a crack at the challenge. Also, some people just want to get their feet wet with game development and this would be an interesting opportunity with no strings attached and no commitment. Leave it up for a couple of weeks or so.

I have a lot more ideas for the space planet/biome concept too, if that captured your interest, and I'd be willing to discuss those more with you.

Hi Guy Fleegman,

thank you for the extensive feedback. I plan to add most of the stuff you mentioned, including underground things like crystal caverns etc.

The problem is that all of this requires a lot of work and I have to release the game/the next update at some point so I get money to speed up the development.

The earth-like planet looks like earth, but that's not much of a problem as long as there are other planets that look different. The luminous planet does look very different (it has snow, too, but that's more or less normal if you consider that it is just frozen water and every planet that supports life has water). There are red deserts and dark mushroom forests. I have pictures of the mushroom forest prominently placed on the website.

You have a lot of other interesting ideas but I can not add even one of them to the game in time.

I need a lot more content anyway, the problem currently is that every village in a biome has the same quests. I could generate less villages - but there is a limit on how far they can be apart, otherwise I wouldn't have any roads between them at all. I would rather add different points of interest like a graveyard with some ghosts or an enemy base so not every point of interest is a village. I can't do that right now because I need more models with animations and textures for that (and some code to generate quests that send you to different points of interest). Well, an enemy base would work with the existing models, I think I'll add those bases soon-ish.

I'm not sure that you understand the crux of what I'm saying, but I wish you luck, Magogan.

I think I do. The problem is just that I cannot work more than I do currently and there is still a list with important things I need to do before I could add anything of what you have proposed.

I cannot make the planets smaller, then you could outrun the sun because of how the day/night cycle works.

I will add more planets after release when I can afford a full-time graphics designer. I have a lot of ideas, too, like a lava planet with underground biomes or a gas giant with a city in the sky, I just need a lot more time to add those features.

Hi Prinz Eugn,

thank you for the feedback regarding the screenshots. They are mostly placeholders currently because I still wait for the textures for the characters that some freelancer is creating for me. I obviously can't make screenshots where the characters are just plain white. Nevertheless, your feedback helps a lot.

What do you mean, the game I describe here is not what you are reading about on the website? I agree in terms of images, but what is wrong with the texts?

I really like the earth-like planet, it looks beautiful overall, maybe some textures can be replaced like the podzol in the forest, but apart from that it really looks great. Yes, it looks like earth and therefore kind of like Minecraft, but I will add more planet types and show those more prominently.

I have added some new screenshots of villages and stuff on the store page recently.