Is My Dream Game Possible to Make?

This is the 3rd devlog in the series in which I'm documenting my progress making a full game in Unity.
This episode is a few months on from the previous, and it's focused on some of the recent hurdles that have been making me question whether my game idea is actually possible. Anyway, I hope you enjoy!
= Music =
- Last Words - Jon Bjork
- Immersion - Gavin Luke
- Praise You (Radio Edit) - Fatboy Slim
- Eyes of Time - Reynard Seidel
- Weapon of Choice - Fabien Tell
Get Praise You (Radio Edit) by Fatboy Slim and over 1M + mainstream tracks here go.lickd.co/Music
License ID: 5oPXvRl1aJk
== Free Assets Used (sourced from Unity Asset Store ==
- City People Lite: assetstore.unity.com/packages...
- Modular Medieval Lanterns: assetstore.unity.com/packages...
- Low Poly Tavern Interior: assetstore.unity.com/packages...
- Little Low Poly World - LITE SRP/URP: assetstore.unity.com/packages...

[@NotGeri]

Awesome video! One small thing is that the music was a little bit too loud compared to the volume of your voice at parts. Good luck with your project!!

[@wheezyworks]

Thank you, I appreciate it! And I appreciate the feedback also. Rest assured I will ensure the balancing is better in my next video.

[@stickguy9109]

Yeah I was gonna say that. I almost woke up everyone when the music part started

[@RafaelFleury_00]

the video was great but i had to turn down the volume every time he put music lol

[@Konitama]

@@wheezyworks Also might want to switch up the music to a free license because you could get slammed for a copyright violation playing popular music like that

[@wheezyworks]

@@Konitama I paid for the license so it's all good

[@stray1239]

minecraft but building is not pain alternate solution to walls: cast a ray from the camera to the player, and make any voxel that is within a certain distance to the ray transparent. (although, your solution worked a lot better than I imagined) you should (at some point when you've done everything else) add a feature where you can import voxel files as builds)

[@wheezyworks]

Yeah, this works in a similar way, only instead of hiding certain voxels, it hides the surrounding chunks so you can see the entire interior. The import idea is nice! Could be really fun to import prefabs etc

[@nicosilva9022]

I feel that the core idea of the game would be a perfect layout for a modding platform, you could have from race games to warships, RTS or a sims like game. Its a cool proyect I hope you keep going and I wish you all the best!

[@wheezyworks]

Yeah, you have no idea how many times per day I get distracted with these sorts of ideas whilst staring at the screen 😂 I’m a big RTS fan too, would be super fun. I’m planning to try and make the building system a thing on its own, so maybe in the future I’ll branch into some other things/open it up for modding etc.

[@mulethedonkey2579]

​@@wheezyworks Remember you dont need to make every feature, Minecraft is simple, you just need to make the tools to do so. So you can do one implementation, say of creation/sharing tools, and then that will create the sims/warship/RTS games.

[@wheezyworks]

@@mulethedonkey2579 Wise words. This is a mantra I live by - sometimes you have to put the blinders on and focus on the simple path to completion that provides a fun product for the end user, then worry about extras later.

[@emghoulguy7174]

This game looks awesome! Good luck!

[@wheezyworks]

Thank you!

[@thatboywags]

Hey Wheezy! Loving what you're doing with the game so far and can't wait to see where you take it from here! This was the first video of yours I caught, and then of course I had to go check the rest of them out. Your growth and progress is insane! Definitely keep posting these! They're entertaining to watch or just throw on for motivating background noise, it's nice to see your work. I'll be checking in often!

[@wheezyworks]

Comments like this make my day! Really glad you like it. I appreciate the kind words - should have more out soon :)

[@Spoopypie]

Dude absolutely following the development of this game! Love the enthusiasm and the concept of the game. Cant wait to see more progress

[@wheezyworks]

I really appreciate this! Thank you.

[@KotCR]

Game looks rather nice visually. You know, while I like the approach you went with with the walls and ceilings in the end, and I think you made the right choice, it didn't have to be that complicated if you didn't want it to be. Just wanted to put that out there for any potential novice gamedevs that might run into the same problem and also consider dropping their project because they lack the skill to come up with a system like you did. No need to give up! There is simpler alternatives. Alot of the isometric games from the late 90s simply had the player manually control camera height by level to hide and show stuff as and when required (and those games didn't have the advantage of the ability to rotate the camera seems as they were sprite based rather than voxel based, which would make this approach even more practical). It was definitely a bit clunky, but it did work. You could take a look at any of the classic X-Com titles as an example of this, off the top of my head, but other games took this approach too.

[@Dominik-K]

Thanks for the devlog, looks super interesting!

[@wheezyworks]

Thank you, I’m glad you like it!

[@panpukinart]

Really lovely editing dude, the production quality is fantastic. Great job and interesting game, looking forward to your future uploads!! :D

[@wheezyworks]

Thank you! That means a lot. Looking forward to publishing the next in the (hopefully) near future!

[@tentmantv2203]

Really great progress, it's really impressive. A possible solution to looking through the voxels might be how the game Going Medieval does it where they have each voxel on a layer, and you can change which layers are visible or opaque and it works quite well.

[@wheezyworks]

Yeah it’s interesting you say that - I haven’t played that game, but I did consider layering - it could work nice. The only issue is it will add extra stress to the build experience, having to remember to draw voxels on the correct layer etc, so decided not to, but it could work

[@tentmantv2203]

@@wheezyworks Yeah I wrote that comment before seeing your solution later in the video. Great work so far!

[@vandoodev]

Starting to look really cool :D

[@wheezyworks]

Thank you!

[@randominternetguy3537]

i just got recommended this video. from viewing experience standpoint, i can tell youre about to pop off. the thumbnail is very neat, and the title is intriguing. i guess about 100k views minimum within the next week or so. good luck on the youtube adventure. this is higher quality than most 1 mil sub channels.

[@wheezyworks]

Man, I appreciate the kind words. I’ll curb my hopes for now, but It’s great to hear things like this when you’ve been working alone on something for so long without much idea of how enjoyable it will be for others. So thank you for this comment, means a lot.

[@MightyDantheman]

For your camera issue, I would recommend checking all voxels within a given range. If those voxels aren't behind the player and are above the player's height, then make them transparent. This would remove the issue where other buildings would also go transparent, even if you aren't inside them. You could adjust the height, but I think it's better to do from directly above the floor the player is standing on, as your current system makes it impossible to see behind the non-transparent walls that are still in front of the player and the camera, making it impossible to see any objects that might be behind them. But overall, love to see your progress. 👍

[@wheezyworks]

Yeah, this could work. The issue is considering player movement and not having to redraw voxels too frequently, but if done right, I think this could be really performant. And stylistically it could work nice also. For the solid wall issue, I've recently added (fixed) camera rotations to get around this. Also, thank you for the feedback! Appreciated.

[@TylerDontSleep]

Nice stuff man I respect the grind

[@wheezyworks]

Thanks!

[@cem8015]

This video is really good man, nice job. Also, I LOVE the game idea and style. Good luck on developing your game!! I subbed too, so I'll be following your journey from now on❤

[@wheezyworks]

Thank you! I'm glad you like it. Thank you for taking the time to show the support, it's these comments that make it all worth it :)

[@earthoforyn]

Really nice video! I can’t wait for the next one!

[@wheezyworks]

Thanks! I appreciate the support

[@sleve_mcdichael]

Cool project! For the video, it'd be nice to see a little bit of coding here and there, I always like to see the framework/engine people are using. (Just noticed you did write Unity in the description, I still think you should mention/show it in your vids). Good luck on the grind!

[@wheezyworks]

I actually considered adding a 5 minute segment at the end specifically covering all of the tech elements, programming patterns etc. I think I’ll do it in the next one!

[@KuroSamaMG]

good damn job, keep working hard mate!

[@wheezyworks]

Thank you! Will do my best.

[@NiceMemexd]

Hey there! just wanted to say that as someone currently getting into the dev world, this video was fascinating to me and i wish you the best of luck with your project! :)

[@wheezyworks]

This is awesome to hear! I’m glad you liked the video. Wishing you the best of luck with your future projects also!

[@therceman]

Good luck with your game! You’re doing some really hard work there 👍💪

[@wheezyworks]

Thank you! Much appreciated.

[@ehdollet9641]

Wasn't sure about this until I saw the whole town area you built but it looks amazing. Definitely something imma need to keep an eye on! Heaps good work, keep it up!! Editing seems heaps good to me, like the style and camera angle when you are talking to us. Audio is on point, as someone who wants to start game making, that time-lapse around 7:25 with the window and light telling how long passed is discouraging in the good way. Doesn't make me want to stop, makes me want to start and not think i's gonna be quick and easy...think I just loved that shot haha.

[@wheezyworks]

Thank you! And yeah, at it’s current stage it’s hard to picture how it will all tie together, which is why I created the “test town” area to demo some things. Also, I’m really glad you like the editing. It was something I tried super hard to improve from my previous videos. I’m especially glad you liked the timelapse. I really wanted to try and show the passing of time so people could understand what went into building it, without me having to just say “oh so this took 2 weeks” etc. I recorded a few morning timelapses to capture the reality of getting up before work to work on my game. The idea was to try and emphasise the sunrise, which I got quite fortunate with on these days. Also, I’m glad if it inspired you to do it in anyway. Even if it looks like a long and hard process, I enjoy every second of it. It feels great when it’s your own project. Those hours feel like seconds.

[@HazielBlack]

simple solution to having roof class items that you can hide is... make them a separate buildable class, and in the game tutorial explain that, roof class tiles hide when you are beneath them and have special properties... and to adjust your clipping view you can add a mask that deploys from the 4th or 5th block from the ground and extends to whatever distance your camera center hits. so you ray cast your camera view, if it hits the building the clipping mask extends there. also to make it less poppy you can use a shader that does an ease fade to transparent or even dither. now if you lets say close up into your character it fades completely to 0 transparency that way you can apreciate way better your character, and for inside building, you can use a small circle clipping mask based on camera view that only affects walls. that way you can always keep track of your character... would make it a button also like enable or disable transparency that way if you want to take a screenshot of your scene you can disable it and give it a good look without having your character place a hole in the view.

[@wheezyworks]

Thank you for taking the time to give the feedback, I appreciate it. The idea of having classes or layers is something I’ve thought about. I may add it, but I wanted to keep the building system as simple as possible. Regarding using a shader, I think that would look great and be performant, but I would still need a way to physically hide the voxels/remove them from raycasting. Given they are all on a single mesh though, I haven’t yet thought of a way to do this that’s more efficient that what I’m doing currently.

[@HazielBlack]

hmm... whats your engine? @@wheezyworks

[@brunomello7499]

dude this is AWESOME

[@wheezyworks]

Thank you! I’m glad you think so!

[@deformercr6680]

looks like many people are getting recommended this from the calculator Minecraft video. Glad I found it, was really fun to watch. Looking forward to how your game progresses :)

[@wheezyworks]

Yeah, in my analytics I can see a fair % of people coming from that video, and I’m glad! I personally really enjoyed the calculator video also. Glad you enjoyed this video also! Means a lot. Thanks.

[@bachwaregames]

Great video and good editing! And don't worry, I've hit those walls (pun intended) as well, many times but you always come through on the other side with a solution you're happy with :-) Looking forward to the next one!

[@wheezyworks]

Thanks man! I’ve really been trying to improve overall quality and editing, so I appreciate that. And yeah, game dev is basically a continuous problem solving excessive with the occasional bit of art and music thrown in 😅. But it’s all good fun. Glad to have you along as always! Oh, and nice reference with the pun😆

[@chadosmen]

good job pall I like what you are doing I love devlogs bc I am making a game an I love enjoying to see others making their dream games

[@wheezyworks]

Thank you! Good luck with your game also.

[@chadosmen]

yours too pall@@wheezyworks

[@chadosmen]

us tiny devs don't have the time or the stuff to make games but we love our art

[@danke1150]

You should be using a shader instead of removing/hiding the voxels at runtime when a player walks behind them. This will work in all edge cases automatically. Start looking into shaders and render pipelines. Edit- I see other people have already suggested this and you don't think it's a solution because of building. You need to decouple your visuals from your game logic. Use shaders (highly performant) to make sure the player is visible and rethink how you're calculating the building positions so that it works regardless. Perhaps you could allow a raycast to go through all the blocks, and highlight (select) the block the cursor is closest to the center of. I think you're going to have to allow camera rotation because otherwise you cannot build behind a wall without first removing it.

[@wheezyworks]

Firstly thanks, I appreciate the detailed feedback! If there's an efficient way to do this on the GPU whilst keeping the building system good for the player, I'm for it, but right now, here's where I'm at: Let's assume I have a shader that does what I need (hiding all voxels at a certain height). If I want to build inside or behind a wall, the logic is difficult without having removed the walls/ceiling physically. The issue I see is that If walls/ceilings still exist physically, then how do we accurately predict where the player wants to place a block? There is no labelling of what is a wall, ceiling or floor. If we rely on the block that closest to the centre of the cursor, if there is is a wall in the way, it would flicker between the wall and the interior depending on the mouse movement and I can see it becoming frustrating to the player. The difficulty I see is really in the building/block detection if the walls/ceilings exist still in the world. I've not yet found a workable solution for this. The one thing to consider is that with doing all of this on the CPU, it's no different to when the player places a block/edits a voxel or moves to another chunk (and we load next lot of chunks in view). We will not get away from this CPU processing - here we only do it once, when a player enters/leaves a building, or when they change chunk. So I'm wondering if it actually needs optimising or if it's even possible. But that said, I am open to ideas!

[@bluemond100]

@@wheezyworks considering how you can't rely on how players might use the building system (recognizing walls and ceilings) and the performance impact of recognizing voxels (which I guess could be fixed with some caching) I too think a shader would be the best solution. Because of the building issue and assuming you would want the player to see the whole interior of a building and not just a radius around them, it might be beneficial for you to use both systems

[@SonicCraft]

Idea for seeing the player behind a wall (If you still need one): 1. send a raycast from the player to the camera 2. if obstructed, project an invisible shape towards the camera (cube, voxelized cylinder, etc). 3. If any voxel is touching the invisible shape, make it transparent. 4. Profit. (this could allow for a janky sort of fog of war when behind walls) Edit: just noticed another similar comment. Oh well...

[@wheezyworks]

Yeah I like the idea of the "fog of war" style. I might try an implementation of this and compare side-by-side. It's a different direction, but it could be nice. I actually wanted to implement this at night time, to give the effect of limited view. Then open everything up in the day to make things easy to manage. Thank you for the suggestion!

[@SonicCraft]

@@wheezyworks OOH having it at night would be epic!

[@lucaszanardo38]

Since the player is centered we could use the screen position and the depth in the shader code to discard or multiply the alpha value in a certain distance from the camera, but I don't know if it'll be heavy on the gpu side (we can also use a texture mask on the render part to just multiply the pixel alpha).

[@realrunnow]

its a shame the algorythm doesnt like you more- youre underrated

[@wheezyworks]

Thank you! It’s fun to be small and growing though, gives me time to correct and improve

[@May0nna1se_]

Just saw this recommended on my feed and wow man we have similar game projects! My project is basically mix of Minecraft Dungeons and Terraria and I have a dilemma on what to do with the building system and oh my god I have never thought of that way, this video is the perfect solution! About your walls problem... I figure it out by basically use the scroll wheel to manually adjust how you see the height level of the blocks. (As you scroll down, the blocks on the top Y-Level disappears downwards until it reaches the players feet) And then I quickly realize that manually adjusting the height view back and forth is annoying and your solution feels better lol. Edit: I just watched your latest video and I think the scroll wheel solution is useful for navigating tall mountains!!

[@wheezyworks]

Interesting! It’s cool to hear you’re working through similar challenges. Its a difficult design problem for sure. The scroll idea could be nice, especially on the terrain yes. I may explore this - I was trying to figure a way of seamlessly being able to toggle/adjust this as you move around.

[@olgierd245]

I love this view, reminds me of Rollercoaster Tycoon 2 (also Project Zomboid, SIMS!!!), which is a feel that has been rarely there for the past few years. Great job, keep us posted, there are certainly hopes with your game being great, especially if you laverage that uniqueness. Take care mate

[@olgierd245]

The game looks fun, the creativity sparks up in these conditions, but it's good that you want to have it all tested before. At some point, maybe your community could help, but I understand that you need to have your vision casted onto it first.

[@wheezyworks]

Thank you, I'm glad you like it. I appreciate the kind words. Rollercoaster Tycoon is visually a big inspiration for this actually, so it's nice that you say that! Project Zomboid too. Great looking game. I love that retro isometric game aesthetic. Regarding testing, yeah this is a big focus of mine. And I would definitely like to open this up to the community in the near future! Hopefully I will start a discord soon, would be great to involve people and get feedback.

[@osamareema3008]

I felt in love with the game.

[@wheezyworks]

Super glad to hear this!

So surprised to see my city Brașov briefly at 1:16. Nice!

[@wheezyworks]

Ah yes, it's in my B roll archive - it's a beautiful looking place!

[@SharpDressedBear]

Those shots around 1:10 made me really curious to see what some iconic buildings would look like remade in this game! I think Brasov Town Hall (the last one) would be fairly easy to do but it'll be cool to see what people come up with when the game is released!

[@wheezyworks]

Yeah good point, Brasov looks super nice, would be incredible to see places like this be recreated. One of the things I’m most looking forward to is seeing how people use it, and what they create!

[@mattwester9093]

Hey man just a thought, what about adding a raycast that shoots from the camera to the player, and when it hits something, find the angle of that surface (ie a wall or ceiling). Next, run a horizontal/vertical check to determine all voxels that are immediately adjacent/connected, and then disable them (or make them transparent), and tag them as "hidden". Now repeat the same process, but tell the raycast to ignore any "hidden" tagged voxels, shooting through them until it collides with something else or reaches the player, allowing it to work on layered buildings, or if there are multiple structures obstructing the view. Anyways that's just a quick idea I had while watching your video, but it is looking awesome! Keep up the good work:)

[@mattwester9093]

A pretty cool stylized effect could be achieved by setting a radius of a circle around the center voxel hit by the raycast, and only change those voxels within the radius to be disabled/transparent. This should also solve your performance issue by not disabling/reenabling too many voxels at once like if for example you have a massive roof. This way not the whole roof is disabled, but just the immediate circle radius of voxels around the player in reference to the camera. Only downsides I see to this would be limiting view while indoors, as well as having to constantly change which voxels are enabled/disabled as the player moves around in the building (while voxels leave the circle radius and enter)

[@wheezyworks]

Firstly, thank you for the feedback. It's always appreciated when someone takes the time to provide such a thorough suggestion. I like the idea of checking for voxels that are connected, could be a form of flood fill to only hide voxels in a certain area. But the question is, is it better to hide the entire ceiling for example, or just a cross section and then apply the stylistic effect you refer to. That said, if I just hid, say, 20 surrounding voxels, it would be very fast, as I could just access their indexes directly, now I'm thinking about it, that could be quite nice actually. E.g. hide everything in a 20x20 cube around the ray cast hit. That could work well. I may experiment with that to compare performance and visuals. It could look super nice with the stylistic effect, but would change the feel of the game a lot. Not sure yet which I prefer. Difficulty could be when there are multiple layers blocking camera, but that should be fairly easy to work around. I will think about this. Thank you!

[@mattwester9093]

@@wheezyworks let me know how it goes!

[@Ankh.of.Gaming]

Spitballing here. There are games which generate a "halo" of sort around the player which makes geometry locally transparent around him (essentially a dynamic cutout of the wall). Where "locally" means in screen space, not world space (there could be geometry close to the camera but far from the player that's actually obscuring him - you want it gone too). So a shader aware of the player's screen position and Z level could make any render closer to the camera and within a certain radius transparent.

[@wheezyworks]

Yeah this could work nicely. It’s something I might prototype and compare. The difficulty is if it was implemented with a shader, I would have the challenge of allowing the player to still decorate interiors and build behind walls etc. not sure of a way around this yet. Thank you for the suggestion 😊

[@SpikeStudio]

Seems to be going quite well! Hopefully the demo goes well when you get to that point :)

[@wheezyworks]

Thank you! Good to see you still following along. Yeah, I’m probably going to start sending it to a closed circle soon to get some initial feedback and iron out any game breaking bugs before I get to far into the “fun” stuff.

[@shizzywizzy6169]

For the issue you encountered at 6:03, I recommend you consider the Don't Starve approach with the limited player controlled camera. Its a little more involved but it should take care of most of the obstructed player issues, while preserving your top down isometric vision. By the way i really enjoyed your video, its very professionally done, and I'm glad it appeared in my recommended. Keep up the good work 👍

[@wheezyworks]

Thanks for the suggestion, I’m not familiar with that system, but I’ll check it out. Thanks for the feedback on the video also! Glad you enjoyed it! 😃

[@SuperQGS_]

Great video and really cool looking game. I've been running into a similar problem with a project I'm working on with volumetric ascii text, but they work pretty much the same as voxels, just with characters instead of cubes. It has been difficult to develop an algorithm that knows when to hide characters for visibility and when to show them, while also being able to adapt to all structures a player might build without being insanely slow. I'd be interesting to see or hear about how your algorithm works and how well it performs

[@wheezyworks]

Ooh, that sounds interesting. I was going to do a section at the end of this where I covered how I implemented all of this (wish I had done that now). I’ll try and cover it in a future video when I focus on performance and optimising etc. I’m also considering starting a discord to discuss things like this. Also, thanks for the feedback!

[@Stonehawk]

from the outset of what you've described, from the map editing functions in-game to the day-night cycle to the gathering, bruh this is dwarf fortress adventure mode with a nice isometric visualization suite, a more intuitive UI, and a more fluid representation of character and entity mobility XD edit for emphasis: yes, level editing IN ADVENTURE MODE: it's the Build menu! From the build menu, you PLAN what is to be constructed in that location, and it represents it as blinking 'ghost' structures, and then you designate the materials that you will use to flesh that structure out. Once you're done planning, you can then decide when you want to commit the changes and you (and your 'party') will spend the time constructing it 'off screen' so you don't have to place all the voxels yourself.

[@wheezyworks]

Interesting! I haven’t played Dwarf Fortress but I’ve watched videos on it when the UI was very early in development. I will take it as a big compliment being in the same sentence as that game 😃

[@FlorianRohrweck]

Great Video!

[@wheezyworks]

Thank you!

[@noxabellus]

This is looking cool! When you described the solution for occlusion I didn't really think it'd work as well as it seems to by the end of the vid! Great work P.S. not a big deal, i know you haven't been doing the youtube thing long but just wanted to note that the audio balance in this video is rather unfortunate. The music is at least twice as loud as your voice, I had to keep turning my speakers up and down throughout because with it at a comfortable level for the music I couldn't hear you enough to understand what you were saying

[@wheezyworks]

Thank you for the constructive feedback! Much appreciated. And yeah, the audio balancing toward the later part is where I find it needs improving. It’s because of how I recorded certain parts of the audio (different programs) and I didn’t fade the music as much as I should have in parts. I will certainly be improving that balance in the next video!

[@OctagonalSquare]

First, this looks really awesome! I actually just watched a video of someone making Minecraft on a graphic calculator, and they used the same kind of isometric perspective. I love the look it gives! For the seeing through walls, is this a custom engine or a game dev engine like Unity or Unreal? Both of those have some cool masking systems that should be able to work. You basically can create a mask that only masks between the player and the camera, and have it affect anything in the layer of the blocks.

[@wheezyworks]

Thank you! Yeah, combining an isometric view with voxels creates quite a nice aesthetic I think, it’s loosely inspired by old tycoon games. I also saw the calculator video and thought the same thing about the look of the game. The game is written in Unity. Masking is a really interesting idea actually. That’s not something I thought about trying. The only challenge I can foresee is getting it to be even across multiple chunks etc, but it’s a good idea worth exploring, thanks for the suggestion!

[@OctagonalSquare]

@@wheezyworks yeah definitely a tycoon look too! Love those games, and the original was also made entirely by one person! No problem! Hope it can workout for you. Unless it’s changed, you can basically just do a solid shape. But there are assets in the store that allow you to use transparent images to create a faded edge or something.

[@Zorg_LCR]

great video, I had a problem with the music volume being too high compared to your voice, exept that it was a pleasure to watch your vid

[@wheezyworks]

thank you! Appreciate the feedback. I will improve the audio in my next video.

[@perssontm1628]

"I have to praise you like I shouuuuuuuuuu------"

[@PGSkep]

I suggest you try to hide your voxels in the shader, calculate the distance from the fragment (or vertex) to a line going from the player's feet to the camera, and apply the alpha based on proximity, things under the player keep their alpha intact so the floor remains visible. You can also use the voxel center as the (vertex) position, to keep the voxel look intact.

[@PGSkep]

Cont. If you have discord, I can help you with the math.

[@wheezyworks]

Thank you for the detailed explanation! I like the idea of using the GPU, I actually considered using shaders for this but my concern was that I’ll still need to do work on the CPU anyway to remove voxels physically to allow building/ray casting into the interior of buildings. I’m sure there’s a like a way around that though. I need to brush up on my shader knowledge though. And at some point I will start a discord. Appreciate the offer for help! It’s always welcomed.

[@PGSkep]

​@@wheezyworks I'll join your discord when you make it.

[@thatprogramer]

Nice Job!

[@wheezyworks]

Thanks!

[@Mawyman2316]

God damn that Earth of oryn game looks amazing

[@wheezyworks]

It does!

[@tapejara1507]

Keep working on it ill buy and try it.

[@wheezyworks]

Awesome! Appreciate the support.

[@moonsteroid]

what’s the desk you got there? looks great, would appreciate some links :D

[@wheezyworks]

I will work on getting some links shortly (hopefully for next video). I only recently got it, so am testing it before I start recommending it to people. Glad you like it though!

[@herdek550]

My tip for video editing regarding the volume. Try to adjust the volumes using speakers (instead of headphones). This method helped me few times when editing, because what might sound balanced in headphones might not be balanced for speakers. But it also might be just a preference thing. Otherwise great video.

[@wheezyworks]

Thanks for the suggestion, always appreciate the feedback. It’s interesting because I edit with speakers and was wondering if it was headphones that had the problem. I think the balancing can definitely be better, but I wanted to try and add energy to the video but it’s a very fine line before you’re adding too much. I’ll be mindful of it in future videos and improve!

[@herdek550]

@@wheezyworks By the way, the music is great. I also love that the music doesn't stop when you are talking. But instead it is just really quiet, but still notcable in the background. So keep up the good work!

[@Skeffles]

Great progress, I really like the wall removal. I have a similar issue that I need to work on in my game. How are you going to distinguish this game above other survival games? When you described the gameplay I was reminded of a lot of other games, minecraft, terraria and valheim to name a few.

[@wheezyworks]

Thank you! Good to see you back also! And good question. There’s a number of areas but essentially the control and oversite of a top down view, combined with the sandbox features. Essentially I want to make it feel like a sandbox that you can adventure in, but also edit at a top down level. Like mixing “god mode” for creating/destroying big structures but with the goal of survival in mind. There’s more to it that I hope to get to in future videos. I’m also trying to keep the end goal quite ambiguous so I can test and refine certain elements as it develops and I get feedback. Also the isometric aesthetic is a big part of it.

[@kakes_]

Just want to add my 2 cents and say I love this idea, and I do think the isometric perspective sets it apart from games like MineCraft and Terraria. Excited to see where this project goes!

[@GlebLaskin]

I saw Voxel Tycoon game on your shopping list! It is the best tycoon game I've ever played!

[@wheezyworks]

I’ve looked at that but haven’t played it, perhaps I’ll have to try it. It looks great.

[@leonalchemist]

plz make sure to check the audio volume for next time, it's really bad 😅 A random idea I have is only render a certain height only when hidden, can always use sphere cast to potentially help with the hole in the wall/ceiling problem? So you could render everything within a box where the player is -1 to render the floor and you render like a few block high only(like 4-5 if there are small buildings), could always go fancier and render a few blocks higher and add more and more transparency further up, not sure if the idea makes sense or would work but good luck.

[@KiaAzad]

You can add a plane above the player and hide anything that's between the plane and camera. Or a cone from camera to the player to hide everything that's inside the cone?

[@wheezyworks]

Yeah, the plane idea could be a good way to get the height, but the difficulty becomes how to efficiently hide everything above that point. The cone idea I thought about trying - with a shader - but I wanted to fully open up the buildings. I'm still not 100% set on my solution though, so we'll see. Thank you for the suggestion!

[@KiaAzad]

​@@wheezyworks You should look into how games like minecraft hide the blocks that are not in the view. I assume something like that should be done in GPU rather than using CPU for it. Perhaps, inside and behind are two different problems. Another way I've seen games handle going behind objects is giving the player, and NPC characters an outline that is visible through walls. If you solve "behind" that way, you can delegate under to the player to mark where their house "inside" is, and where's their ceiling by drawing boxes around them.

[@diontryban5645]

Hi, I'm making my own voxel "engine" right now with the goal of making a top-down sort of game. Are you generating a mesh for your voxels or are you doing raytracing? I'm currently using meshes, but am wondering if I should try to learn raytracing for my own engine Also, I think it would be awesome if you made a discord server for development and development talk. Would love to discuss games with you

[@wheezyworks]

Hey! Good question, right now I’m sticking with the mesh approach. I considered going down the raytracing path but started questioning why - my games performance is currently fine as it is, and I don’t want to push it too much further in terms of smaller voxel sizes etc, so decided to stick with the current approach as to not risk not delivering the game or taking an additional year to implement a system the player wouldn’t benefit from/care about. That said, I do intend to explore it further before I rule it out, and certainly I will be exploring it for future projects. Also regarding discord, I’m actually looking into this currently! Hoping to get one started very soon - will post about it once ready. Would be great to have more discussions on topics like this!

[@mahaphoublue7644]

I alway believe it’s possible, it just took way long and suffer to make it. Now I have one but I believe it could be 20 years later to bring possible with my low experience but could change later soon depending on skills and time. Keep up with your work sir! I believe that you can make it to the one that you planned but long

[@wheezyworks]

Thank you! And good luck with yours.

[@gmd.off_putting6667]

I hope you the best

[@wheezyworks]

Thank you!

[@7scissors336]

0:30 yeah that is so relatable

[@hallen.09]

I reckon you could have a system that when it detects you walking under something, it sends out a huge raycast to find the walls of the building, only if they are connected to the roof. Then you can make everything above that invisible or transparent, and work from there. May be a performance issue though. Also, maybe use a shader to give your player an outline when passing behind things.

[@Zorg_LCR]

having an outline for the character wouldn't allow you to actually look and decorate the interior of your building. but yeah the raycast is the solution we all think of. My take on it would be to make a box like 10 * 10 around the character where you see through.

[@wheezyworks]

Yeah, the raycast is what I ended up doing (though didn't explain it in the video). At the moment, I have to hide voxels physically so you can decorate interiors etc. Using a shader would present some challenges in that it would only be invisible, not physically removed. Perhaps there's a way around this, but haven't thought of it yet. I have considered doing a 10*10 around the hit point or similar solution also. It could work nice as I'm using a multidimensional array/grid structure, so access would be instant if I always access the same +10 indexes etc. I think I'm going to try this and compare them side by side. I quite like the stylistic aspect of hiding all surrounding buildings also. If you imagine being in a large structure that spans multiple chunks, it could be quite nice.

[@Zorg_LCR]

@@wheezyworks yeah having the whole building unveil at once is quite nice, but having a fixed radius would be perfect for a little horror vibe during the night. ( well this can still be achieved by making a fog of war during the night )

[@wheezyworks]

@@Zorg_LCR yeah this is what I plan on adding for the night time. There will be a small view circle surrounded by fog. Different light sources will help with this, but there will always be a decreased view circle to increase the risk of going outside at night

[@Zorg_LCR]

@@wheezyworks do u have a discord btw ?

[@Kieza-]

I’ve only been doing game Dev for a couple months now, I believe it would be possible to efficiently reveal the player between obstructions without decimating the entire roof. I think if you can draw a line trace between the Camera and the Player, then you can know exactly when the player has an object in front of them. Then with the same line trace path, you could have the transparency applied within a Radius outside of the central point where the line trace hits.

[@wheezyworks]

Yeah good suggestion. The raycast part is something I ended up doing (but didn't explain it in the video), but the hiding voxel around the raycast point is something I hadn't considered much until recently. It would be very performant actually, but would be a different stylistic direction. I think I'll implement it and compare the two and see what people prefer. Thank you for the suggestion! Edit: one thought on performance, it would mean redrawing a lot of voxels as the player moves around, so would have to go with using a shader in this approach actually

[@Vaareth]

i'm at 7 min and you're talking about seeing the character behind walls. in your level editor, white walls are transparent and you can see your character behind. and i thought of something. i will take recent exemple in starfield because easy to use to illustrate since it's brand new. when you use the scanner, or fly in your ship, you have reticule. so, why don't you put an invisible reticule on the camera side, with your character as the center, a single transparent ray from the character to the reticule, and everything in between get transparency ? you make building blocks have a transparency variable, that activate when in between the player and the reticule, and the lighter transparency the furthest or closest from the character. let me explain more. you have a 10cm diameter reticule on the screen, a ray that goes from it to your player, you can also make a transparent bubble that would have the same size as the reticule from the camera point of view (and everything it touch gets transparency). when your player enter a building the ray touch/go through blocks.... neverminds if the bubble around your player isn't big enough if you get to far away from walls it won't touch them, therefore not activating the transparency. but, if you make a cylinder from your camera point of view to your player, everything in between gets transparency, AND (the point i wanted to make earlier) gets lighter the more walls there is, lets say you have 3 the closest from your character gets transparency 1, the middle get 2 times lighter, and the third one get 3 times lighter. but i don't know if it would be easy to do or not, i'm not a game dev (yet x'D)

[@wheezyworks]

That's an interesting idea. Actually because of the data structure used (multidimensional array/grid), doing something like this could be really performant. The raycast part you mention is a good suggestion. I actually ended up doing this (but I didn't explain it well in the video). I've had a few people suggesting variants of hiding just blocks around the raycast, but it's a different stylistic choice. It could be a performant alternative, I will consider this. Thank you for taking the time to write the feedback!

[@amekgomo4578]

I guess this is late and I don't know if you tried this but since you're already ray casting and having planes why not check if any plane of placed blocks is obstructing the player and hide those blocks somehow?

[@AetherXIV]

Will all the buildings just be for the player character? It seems like the build system would favor a Colony Manager type setup.

[@wheezyworks]

Good question. I agree with the colony management idea. It’s something I really would like to explore. One of my stretch goals is being able to designate certain buildings for a set purpose, then implement colonies around that - but in addition to the survival elements. It’s a stretch goal/future addition though for when I’ve got the core game working. We’ll see though

[@AetherXIV]

@@wheezyworks well good luck man! I tried for a little bit to make a voxel colony manager and just the world gen and updating of blocks made me pause it. I'll stick to couch coop games till I get better at programming. I resonated with what you said in the first part about the inspiration, turning voxel art into playable spaces is a sweet idea.

[@thyst7014]

according to all known laws of youtube, there is no way that this video won't pop off

[@wheezyworks]

The algorithm is a mystical beast, but we’ll see!

[@Wardergrip]

Cool video, please make sure your intermezzo music is about same volume as your voice. I was constantly increasing volume when you started speaking and decreasing when the music starts.

[@wheezyworks]

Thanks for the feedback, I will certainly improve that in my next video.

[@gamerboydk484]

Yay

[@mikejurkowski]

Could you cast a ray from the player to the camera and make any voxels that intersect with that line +- x pixels transparent? That may avoid any future states that could be problematic, and would hopefully fix the tall building issue.

[@wheezyworks]

So I take a similar approach now with ray casting from player to camera but I calculate the voxels to hide on the CPU. I believe you’re suggesting hiding the pixels with a shader? My concern is if I do that, the raycasting will still detect objects if they are not physically removed from the scene. Not sure yet how to handle that

[@mikejurkowski]

@@wheezyworks I am not sure, tbh I know nothing about game development I was just guessing a solution with limited understanding of how it all works. I am sure you found the right solution, you clearly know your stuff.

[@wheezyworks]

@@mikejurkowski well logically it makes sense and is very close to what I’m doing - so it was a good suggestion considering!

[@sethbrundle6506]

Couple of off-the-cuff ideas about the visibility problem: How would something like a spritemask work (is there a 3D equivalent)? Also, dunno how you're actually detecting whether there's something before the player, but what I'd try based on what I've seen here is to shoot a ray (or couple) from the camera to the player and de-render anything hit on the way. Not sure if it's achievable, or implementable here, just got me thinking.

[@wheezyworks]

Thanks for the feedback. Yeah, I ended up going with the raycast approach (but failed to explain it in the video). I'm not sure about the spritemask equivalent, I guess hiding set voxels in a certain radius around the ray hit would work, but i'd probably have to use a shader. Also it's a different style. Maybe I will try this though.

[@wamy_]

Not a gamedev but a dev, but I have an idea about how to optimize the invisible blocks when a player is under or behind blocks. Why not just send a ray cast out from the camera. Check to see if the camera can see the player and if it cant then any blocks in front are made invisible

[@wheezyworks]

Yeah, I actually ended up opting for a similar solution of sending a ray from the player to the camera and doing a similar calculation. The difficulty is in efficiently hiding the blocks, as I have to do it block by block (unless I switch to using shaders. Thank you for the suggestion!

[@wamy_]

@@wheezyworks maybe try chunking and just hiding chunks?

[@MattyDoesGameDev]

It seems like your implementation uses the CPU a lot to hide and show the voxels when they are in the way. Instead, could you write a shader that takes an array of all the voxels that are collected from a ray between the camera and character, then dithers/makes them transparent? Shaders are daunting for me, so I have minimal idea how to implement them. Either way, I loved this devlog! Keep em coming!

[@wheezyworks]

Thank you! My shader knowledge is limited but the reason I kept with the CPU is because I need to remove voxels physically to allow decorating interiors etc. probably a way around it though, but I’d need to brush up on my shader skills 😅

[@ratoshi21]

Meanwhile AAA devs: the character will just be hidden behind an obstacle, deal with it.

[@wheezyworks]

🤣

[@orxngc]

Only one minute into the video but I would like to mention that you maybe interested in Axiom, a mod for minecraft that allows building at this scale and in a similiar way. Your project seems awesome btw!

[@wheezyworks]

Interesting, thanks for the suggestion, I will check it out! Also thanks for the feedback! Much appreciated 😀

[@jfftck]

Did you think of having a blueprint mode instead of designing in the real world? Then you could place what you designed and have something like an RTS game where your town builds with the resources that were collected. The only difference between RTS and is style is that you are the one fighting and not having to recruit warriors. Also, just make a circular area transparent that is where the intersection between the player and the camera.

[@wheezyworks]

Great ideas. This is similar to what I’m working on at the moment. You’ll be able to build then commit/rollback your changes before you spend the blocks and it is actually created in the world. I intend to add a bunch of features, like copy/paste, saving blueprints etc. I like the idea of being able to do this to quickly build large areas. These features will probably come a bit later though. For making just the one area transparent, I have been thinking about doing something like this, but I kind of like the stylistic aspect of hiding all ceilings, I think it would be nice to see the entire inside of buildings. Not sure yet though, will probably try them side by side.

[@zapp770]

Wow this guy really answered to all but 17 comments. Thats impressive 👍

[@wheezyworks]

Aha, one of the best parts of my day!

[@Usualyman]

About the ceiling problem - just create a shader that makes the voxels transparent in some specific area. Like in the cone area, where the top of the cone is the character and the base is the screen. 🤔

[@wheezyworks]

This could look nice, and be performant but the challenge is that the voxels will still be stored as solid and will still be in the world, meaning it won't be possible to decorate interiors etc. Haven't figured out a way around this yet (not to say it's not possible).

[@ABrainrotAwayFromHeaven]

Is everything okay with Unity ?

[@hellomynameisrodney]

with that middle part, when you can't see the character--what if the user could define it as a ceiling or a wall and create logic around that AND/OR make the character and enemies have an outline that's always seen regardless if it's behind the wall or not.

[@wheezyworks]

Yeah I did consider doing this by adding layers, but didn’t want to put extra stress on the player (remembering to draw on the correct layers etc). I wanted it to be as simple as possible to use. The character outlines is a good call. I’ve been thinking a similar thing. Will help with NPCs etc too

[@hellomynameisrodney]

and if you instead not take out the chunk but make the face invisible where the chunk is still loaded, it should come back more smoothly.

[@krum3155]

I think the issue with the visibility of the player might be better solved by raycasting from the camera to the player (or spherecasting to adjust the size of the hole) instead of straight up from the player. Just an idea. Not sure if you have a different vision for this mechanic.

[@wheezyworks]

Yeah that’s what I ultimately ended up switching too, I just need to fix a few things with the angles to stop things magically disappearing even when you’re not obstructed 😅. Thanks for the suggestion!

[@nikoskonstantinou3681]

Will the new Unity changes affect your project?

[@wheezyworks]

I think it’s too early to tell. I always liked the idea of cheaper pricing/free games to start with. For now, I’m not rushing to any conclusions, will see how it all plays out.

[@DominicRyanOsborne]

Almost like the default behavior is transparency except outside of the cone where your view of where the player character location isn't.. where's my missile guidance system instructions manual. Otherwise in the context of a running game you could see more than intended if you can x-ray a whole building by walking behind or under it. Then there's the more existential question of why can you see things the player controlled character can't and what is that ok in 110% of every game ever made.

[@wheezyworks]

Yeah interesting take. I’m not 100% sure yet which route I’ll end up taking. I kind of like that you can see all of the inside of the building. It’s part top down management, part RPG game. I will probably experiment back and forth with this.

[@thebillington]

Game looks and feels a lot like Rollercoaster Tycoon. I still play a lot of OpenRCT, it would be awesome if you leant into that vibe. Also I loved the sly inclusion of you BH Baby Pure. Maybe I’ll see you on W517.

[@wheezyworks]

Ah! I'm glad you say that. It's actually a big inspiration for the whole aesthetic of my game and one of the reasons I chose isometric. That era of games as a whole has aged like fine wine. And you're the first person to call out the pure! Aha. My pking days are long behind me (for now). Is the PVP scene still strong?

[@thebillington]

@@wheezyworks I'm not a PvPer myself but I'd say the wildy scene due to wildy boss rework and overall PvP scene due to BH are stronger than they've been in years.

[@thebillington]

@@wheezyworks also with the recent Unity announcements are you considering a rewrite? Maybe an x86 Assembly implementation following in the steps of Chris Sawyer!

[@wheezyworks]

@@thebillington Aha! As much as I respect Chris for writing a masterpiece using only assembly code, I would like to finish this project 🤣

[@NexusBaum]

when character is behind something, maybe make a circle around them and make just the voxels in the circle be transparent. so you have a better limit of what to make transparent, instead of whole plains.

[@wheezyworks]

Yeah this is a different stylistic direction, but it could be nice. It seems a fair few people like this idea also as I've had a few similar suggestions. I think I'll try a side-by-side comparison, and see which people prefer (and which is most performant!). Thank you for the feedback.

[@Pockeywn]

for the view thing just make a plane between the camera and the player and cut off everything on one side. maybe make the player project towards the camera until it hits something and then it makes the plane at that distance or maybe a step back

[@Pockeywn]

it might be expensive to calculate when the ray is at the edge of a voxel space and to check the nearest voxel every time the player moves but what I did in one project was to have an object that wasn’t rendered attached to the player and pointed at the camera and scale it up until it touches the ceiling and then taking the scale of that object and multiplying it by whatever number to get the size (weird solution I know) also a cone works best for the object

[@wheezyworks]

Hmm, yes that could be a nice solution for calculating from which point to hide things, and it could follow the player as they move up. But I'll still have to detect if the player is inside, then hide everything above the plane. The 2 combined together though could be a nice solution for when the player goes up stairs (which is currently a bit ropey!). Thank you for the feedback!

[@His-Games]

Could you make a drastic camera change, say, to first person? This is obviously a huge 180, but would alleviate all visibility problems and maybe even allow players to appreciate the scales of builds more. Also, have you considered how you can build interiors in build mode? Edit: actually I think your solution is better, so ignore all this

[@wheezyworks]

At one point, I thought that might be the only way, but then I feel my game loses a lot of its uniqueness so decided to stick with top down.

[@GundrakMafia]

Here is a idea for you. while in build mode have a option to set layers so say floor is like y=0 you render only that layer increase layers to show more layers or view all layers or even just single layer you could also alot camera rotation while in build mode

[@wheezyworks]

Yeah this is an interesting idea. Something I've thought about trying. My only concern is adding extra complexity during build time for the player. But if it helps with performance, then I may do it. For now, I think it's okay, but I will keep it open as an option. Perhaps the player would actually prefer the option to layer things. Also, regarding rotation, I added that a while back but it was completely broken. I've fixed that in the past few days actually :) Thanks for the feedback!

[@GundrakMafia]

no worries, good luck dude love watching the progress.@@wheezyworks

[@slBrelaz]

Curious that you did a raycast up and not a raycast towards the camera...

[@wheezyworks]

Yeah, great point. I ended up switching to this when I realise the raycasting up would be limited, not sure why I did that initially. I guess casting to a camera (non physical object) seemed strange at first.

[@oktopuss2006]

idk how possible this is, but maybe asign everything a layer value based on its xy position, so if at any height, if it comes within a radius of the player physicaly, and its between the camera and the player, and if it enters a radius graphically, it just doesnt get rendered. idk tho

[@wheezyworks]

So this would be similar to 3d chunking I think. Basically breaking what is currently a large cross section of voxels into smaller, more manageable layers (if I'm understanding correctly). This is actually on my backlog as a big improvement I intend to make soon. Thanks for the feedback also!

[@idle.observer]

Why you are not grouping the bricks based on their level? Instead of switching off/on every block one by one, use the height level. Like H1 is the parent of all first blocks (1 unit above floor level)

[@wheezyworks]

You raise a really good point that I didn’t actually get into in this video, and probably it would have been good to visit here but it’s something that’s currently on the backlog. I currently only use 2D chunking, but plan to upgrade this to 3D so that it’s more optimal to do things like this. Hoping to get to that as part of the next iteration

[@stickguy9109]

The end result is nice. Though would be nice if the transition to transparency would be a little smoother and not just a sudden pop

[@wheezyworks]

Thank you! And I agree completely, I’ve got a todo item to come back and animate the transitions a bit further down the line.

[@pofiPenguin]

did the video really need to start with that sudden sound tho.... Opened the video up with a cat on my lap and now I'm all scratched up :s

[@mulethedonkey2579]

Yes. If it needs a planet-computer powered by a Dyson sphere, then its possible. Or a fusion reactor

[@wheezyworks]

Yeah agreed, covering those components in the next devlog

[@TheGreatProphecy]

I feel like so much pain would be fixed with the way you place walls and what not, if you just allowed for camera movement in all directions, circular in left to right, and maybe some kind of limit up and down.

[@wheezyworks]

Yeah, I’ve been considering this. I’ve added camera rotations to fixed isometric angles. That works quite nicely for now. I can’t add free movement without compromising the isometric camera, and also it’s kind of nice to have the constraints - makes it easier to use

[@2pedroandrade]

A solution I would come up with for the inside-building problem is changing player's POV to 1st person when inside.

[@wheezyworks]

Yeah I thought about this, and am still considering having the option. But it changes the style a lot and takes away from the aesthetic I think. Not sure yet though, maybe.

[@2pedroandrade]

@@wheezyworks You are right, it would dissociate from the rest of the game atmosphere, however it would defitenily make inside places look more intimate, cozy or detailed. It's like leave your house and the world suddenly goes bigger lol

[@godboat.]

yum

[@oththakom9327]

Has anyone brought up the sims games yet? Specifically the older ones which had their own tricks of seeing through multiple layers of ceilings and floors.

[@wheezyworks]

Interesting, you know I haven’t actually looked into those games too much (apart from playing them many years ago). I will look into it. Thanks for the suggestion!

[@gamerboydk484]

Marby highlight the careters behind the building or when its dark😊

[@wheezyworks]

Yes this could be a nice feature :) I will consider it.

[@victor_silva6142]

Losing is fun!

[@bomxacalaka2033]

reminds me of worldedit

[@mmuekk]

Did you use unity?

[@wheezyworks]

Yeah