Behold: FVoxels!

Phoenix · Post by **Phoenix** » Tue Sep 28, 2004 5:09 pm

Greetings!

I'd just like to share with you something I've been working on for the last couple of weeks. I call them FVoxels, for Fake Voxels. They can be plain coloured or textured, blocking or nonblocking, they can be moved around (as far as zdoom allows) and made into "models" if you will, which if done right look pretty sexy.
Of course the downside is they take a lot of boring work to make by hand, and if you use craploads of them all round then the framerate gets gibbed

(at least on my computer).

I have here a very short demo wad. If anyone wants to take a look, I would be happy.

http://www.neophunk.com/misc/FVoxelDemo.zip

take care.

GeeDougg · Post by **GeeDougg** » Tue Sep 28, 2004 5:10 pm

Yuo mean we can fake 3D floors with these "FVoxels"?

Post by **MasterOFDeath** » Tue Sep 28, 2004 5:12 pm

I don't even know what the hell a voxel is!

Phoenix · Post by **Phoenix** » Tue Sep 28, 2004 5:12 pm

Yuo mean we can fake 3D floors with these "FVoxels"?

you COULD, but it wouldn't really be worth it. it'd be too slow..

wildweasel · Post by **wildweasel** » Tue Sep 28, 2004 5:16 pm

Holy crap, this is one of the coolest sprite tricks I've seen in a while. I'd actually like to see Ken Silverman's KVX format supported in ZDoom in the distant future, so we can have full-3D decorations (impractical to use them for enemies). That would be so freakin' cool.

GeeDougg · Post by **GeeDougg** » Tue Sep 28, 2004 5:20 pm

Phoenix wrote:You COULD, but it wouldn't really be worth it. It'd be too slow....

Well maybe it wouldn't. First tell me what your system specs are.... Maybe mine are way better or something!

MOD: You've never eard of Voxel-space? Ever played Delta Force? Delta Force used Voxels. A Voxel is basically a Volumetric Pixel. Go to THIS LINK to find out all about Voxels.

HotWax · Post by **HotWax** » Tue Sep 28, 2004 5:38 pm

Pros:
1) True 3D objects in ZDoom! Yay!
2) The coolness factor is fun for 10 minutes.

Cons:

1) It must be a PAIN to do that by hand.
2) The effects have to be really subtle and simplistic to not destroy the FPS.
3) After the first 10 minutes, the weak effects you can do with this will probably get quite old

The rotating BFG still kicked ass though.

MasterOFDeath wrote:I don't even know what the hell a voxel is!

A voxel is a 3D object created by manipulating tiny sprites or particles in 3D space. Imagine an object rendered by defining the position of 100's of pixels placed in 3D space and you'll have a voxel. (VOlumetric piXELs).

Or, better yet, don't imagine...

Naitguolf · Post by **Naitguolf** » Tue Sep 28, 2004 5:42 pm

Hey, hot stuff....

Very nice.

But my +2800 suffer a little with voxel BFG

Phoenix · Post by **Phoenix** » Tue Sep 28, 2004 5:54 pm

Naitguolf wrote:Hey, hot stuff....

Very nice.

But my +2800 suffer a little with voxel BFG

it must be something in the scripting then.. when i was making and testing it, fiddling with the delay()s helped the framerate. the BFG rotation was smooth as silk for me when there were no other fvs in the level, and before i had made it translucent and stuff..

@HotWax: it was a TOTAL pain to do it by hand, and even more of a pain to figure out how to set up the texture pics so that they didn't jump around when you looked from different angles, but i have a high tolerance for tedium when i know something's gonna look cool.

BTW, my system specs: celeron 500, 128 megs ram, win 98.

the framerate suffers on mine, but nowhere near as bad as, say, grove.wad, so i assumed it would run fine on everyone else's proper system.

Post by **Graf Zahl** » Tue Sep 28, 2004 6:03 pm

Looks like Lego...

Mr. Tee · Post by **Mr. Tee** » Tue Sep 28, 2004 6:03 pm

HotWax wrote:
A voxel is a 3D object created by manipulating tiny sprites or particles in 3D space. Imagine an object rendered by defining the position of 100's of pixels placed in 3D space and you'll have a voxel. (VOlumetric piXELs).

Or, better yet, don't imagine...

I know it might be a "10 minute fun factor thing" but that is still pretty frickin' cool...

@Pheonix: How in the world did you do that? I downloaded the file just to see what it was (don't have ZDoom at school) and I was that it was just a WAD? I was expecting a modified and compiled ZDoom EXE?

Very cool, it could add really nice decorational touches to levels, and perhaps just neat little additions to sprite monsters (i.e. have a magical sprite monster with a few of those textured voxels twirling around... kind of like the last Hexen boss guy that has those 3 mana cubes around his head)

EDIT: Lego ROXZ0RZ!!!!! And hence so do these Voxels. Man, ZDoom is just TEH source port, and there ain't another source port even close to it!

Phoenix · Post by **Phoenix** » Tue Sep 28, 2004 6:09 pm

Mr. Tee wrote:
HotWax wrote:
A voxel is a 3D object created by manipulating tiny sprites or particles in 3D space. Imagine an object rendered by defining the position of 100's of pixels placed in 3D space and you'll have a voxel. (VOlumetric piXELs).

Or, better yet, don't imagine...

I know it might be a "10 minute fun factor thing" but that is still pretty frickin' cool...

@Pheonix: How in the world did you do that? I downloaded the file just to see what it was (don't have ZDoom at school) and I was that it was just a WAD? I was expecting a modified and compiled ZDoom EXE?

Very cool, it could add really nice decorational touches to levels, and perhaps just neat little additions to sprite monsters (i.e. have a magical sprite monster with a few of those textured voxels twirling around... kind of like the last Hexen boss guy that has those 3 mana cubes around his head)

Yep, that's another thing that's a bit more practical they could be used for, is particles. it'd be better if ThrustThing had tids, heh. i think with a bit of thought they could be used tastefully.

And as for how I did it, heh heh heh. well basically, I take a bunch of 2x2 sprites, load them in the wad and make DECORATEs for them, and then place them close together in the shape i want. i do that for all the "layers" i need, and set their z heights accordingly.. then i drag them on top of each other and voila. for textures, i take a 32x32 one, chop it up in a very specific way (to prevent texture jumping) so it gets to be 64x32 and run it through an image slicer, run a batch renamer to get them to WA11A0 or whatever, load those in..and then change them all by hand and by copy and paste. phew.

also, for the BFG, the bobbing is a gentle ThrustThingZ loop, and the rotating believe it or not is actualy through TeleportGroup. the thing is teleporting around in a circle.

Eragon · Post by **Eragon** » Tue Sep 28, 2004 9:03 pm

I recently tried making a fake floor with them, and while it looks semi ok, it lags me and my freind down to about 5(me)-7(him) FPS. So, we're still a little off until we get voxel floors

Phoenix · Post by **Phoenix** » Tue Sep 28, 2004 9:23 pm

to get a significant speedup, make them "NoBlockMap" in DECORATE (they won't be blocking) and if you need blocking then just use a single blocker thing or two, or a bridge thing or whatnot.

Eragon · Post by **Eragon** » Tue Sep 28, 2004 9:39 pm

Hmm, I'll give that a try tommorow and post my results

Behold: FVoxels!

Behold: FVoxels!

Login • Register