Including alphachannel.
Also add "voxel properties" in object editor.
[X] destructible [ ] indestructible [ ] gravity influenced
Each voxel can be "painted" with a different property.
I'm sure he wants he wants to keep the voxel data at 8 bits (hence the fixed color palette). You could have a custom palette for each room, but it would get a little messy because everything uses that same palette (player, all monsters, etc.), which would be a problem for using those same objects across different rooms with different palettes.
Supporting alpha blending opens a big can of worms, because the voxel engine relies on only having to render the faces of cubes that are visible. Having partially transparent cubes means a lot more faces to be rendered, with depth sorting so they're blended in the correct order, etc. Personally, I think it would ruin a lot of the clean voxel look anyway if you started adding complex layers of partially transparent voxels.
Having individual voxel properties (indestructable, etc., in addition to custom properties the scripts and triggers could use) would add a lot of flexibility to the level designs. I'd love to see that. Again, though, it would require more than 8 bits per voxel. I wonder if it would be worth it to have 16 bits per voxel - like maybe 10 for color (increasing the palette to 1024 colors) and 6 for properties (giving you 6 independent properties). It would double the memory usage and cache thrashing, but it seems like the tradeoff could be worth it (assuming it didn't kill performance too much).
+1
Indestructible voxels are vital to the success of this game and to creating incredible levels.
I agree with the ability to have indestructible objects. I've played a couple levels where by the time I made the exit available, I had a hard time finding it because the doorway got decimated. Being able to make things like that indestructible would let level designers make it so markers for doors and other things can't be destroyed.
Surely the indestructible voxels is very possible since these are what the items are made of??
[Please log in to post a comment]
