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[GalenEvil]

Oh wow, didn't realize that Unity's texture compression was that awesome heh. The AABB that I have looks like it is just a geometric check, but it should work pretty well. It is, currently, exactly taken from the ZFXEngine which was written some time ago when games had to be more efficient with their clock usage so it should work well enough for this. I will look into these "plucker coordinates" and see if I can make any sort of addition to the engine.

Yeah, having a C++ library attached to something that is supposed to be multi-platform is sorta like shooting yourself in the foot I guess. Yeah, a procedural texture creator will probably be a lot of work. Opened my mouth before I did any research into the subject. Going to start that research now!

I'll send all of the relevant files for it when I get back to the internets later on tonight, if I don't fall asleep before then >.< In that case I will be sending it tomorrow when I get online. It may or may not be what you have already but I'll let you decide that heh.

EDIT!!!

Okay, did a small amount of cursory research into procedural texturing and I came up with one that might work for the purpose. It is actually a part of Unity already, and can be found here -> http://unity3d.com/support/documentation/Manual/Procedural%20Materials.html
Procedural Materials are essentially the same as regular materials (as far as Unity is concerned) with the only major exception being that the applied texture is procedurally generated. I haven't gotten into how efficient Unity is at getting this done but it could be something to look at. It looks like the largest drawback is that the procedural generation will only work on MAC and WIN operating systems, and for others will only pre-render the texture onto the material. Still useful, but not as much, if Linux-based systems will also be a target platform.
Also, at the bottom of the linked page, there is an application that will help analyze any performance impact(s) that using Unity's procedural materials may have.

[dreadmullet]

All hail malloc, god of memory allocation.

About the texturing/UVs: if the final game will have those ugly 45 degree slopes, then triplanar texturing simply won't work. Triplanar texturing requires relatively smooth face angles to work well. But if there are going to be UVs like you suggested... I can't think of the best way to do it, other than a Minecrafty sort of thing, with the UVs stretched to each face, kind of like the textured screenshot you showed. But that would look terrible.

Or... we could go with the entirely procedural idea. Like, all the textures are generated when you create/load the map. Kind of reminds me of .kkrieger. The entire game takes up 96kB because all of the textures and models are generated when the game starts. We could implement a similar system for the textures. A bunch of 3D Perlin noise and such applied to each set of voxels-

Wait, ignore all that. I just realized that any solution that doesn't use simple UVs wouldn't work, because the terrain needs to be dynamic. A miner would dig out a voxel, destroying the voxels and revealing new voxels; destroying UVs and adding new UVs. This is making my head hurt...



@Kofthefens: New to IRC? I was too. Try googling "irc help". Short version: download mIRC, join the server Newnet, then join the channel CodeJam.

[GalenEvil]

So, just thought of something else that may or may not work >.>



Okay, in the above there are 3 parts to the image.
*  First part is the really crappy voxel-like thing because I was trying to freehand draw one. Didn't work out too well.
*  Second part of the image is what I sort-of imagine the terrain to look like. Trying to draw things up really quickly so this crappy image will have to work for what I need it to.
*  Third part of the image is essentially my idea of how to fix a texturing issue Instead of trying to do a triplanar texturing to the 45 deg slopes (not shown in picture because my paintbrush skills are lacking) we could maybe make a smooth transition "mesh" and then selectively apply the blended texture onto the visible and affected voxels.

This would probably right now just be a stop-gap measure to last until something else can be figured out. Please tear this idea to shreds! Would rather it get torn apart now than after I get my hands onto Unity and start trying to make it for myself hehe

[malloc]

The texture mapping looks fine as it is. The seams are not really noticeable. Also, I did not say I used triplaner mapper, but rather I kinda did. Unlike real triplaner mapping I am not doing a linear combination of the different planes UVs. But rather just projecting to the most fitting one.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

[GalenEvil]

Okay, I withdraw my idea That looks awesome! I do have an additional question, not graphic related but instead is AI related:

I guess this one is going to be directed at Kofthefens since the GoogleDoc says he's working on Pathing next. How are you going about doing the pathfinding? Also, how is it coming along? Need any help? I feel like a puppy trying to chase down something to play with right now

More research though; once I get some feedback on the Procedural Materials via Unity I will work on getting other things posted up here

[Kofthefens]

I'm thinking for pathing I'll use a*. I just got home, and am about to start. Currently, I think that it will just path in 2 dimensions to the nearest way to go up/down on the z axis, to increase the speed. I'm not really sure though as I haven't done much with pathing before. If you want to help, tell me.

[GalenEvil]

awesomes! I would love to help out I don't have massive amounts of A* experience but I think I understand enough to be of some use. If you want we can chat via the IRC channel; I will probably be online for a few hours more tonight. Turns out that having a fancy dinner is code for "Rabbit roast over rice" and not going out to a restaurant for dinner, heh. I am pretty sure that I am in the right channel on IRC so if you get on we can start workin on this promptly.

[dreadmullet]

If you need help with A*, I have some C# code that works in 2 dimensions. It was for a roguelike engine I was making, and it's partially intwined with extra bits of code, but it provides something that works. If you want to make it yourself, I suggest using this awesome piece of pseudocode.

[Araph]

Also, is there any reason why the textures are 1024x1024?

Well...

Like, minimum 2048x2048, preferably 4096x4096.

My suggestions is add more features to the textures. In the end random noise is not pleasing to look at.

Trying to add features... I made the veins in the wood more pronounced, changed the colors a bit, and added a bump map before rendering it on a plane in Maya.

Spoiler: The Result (click to show/hide)

Is it better at all? I hope?

[malloc]

'Ello guys.

I added materials. Voxels can now have a materials assigned to them. I pretty much totally separated the mesh generating code from the terrain code. So now the terrain object only has the manage and worry about the voxels. Each voxel can now reference a material. The material has the appearance assigned to it via a descriptor. The material also has a few functions assigned to it. Like say a game object "steps" on it, a event can play. Or if it gets "mined" by a object another event can play.

For now all of these do nothing, but they will come in to play later.

Screenshot time:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

[dreadmullet]

A bunch of placeholder assets: http://www.mediafire.com/?xwhlfa41xx1g8c7
A really quick robot, minecart, tracks, ore, and wooden support. All but the robot are really quickly textured as well. It should all just work in Unity.


@Araph: That is much better. And a bumpmap! I forgot about those. Still one thing, though: I can see right now that it doesn't tile along the Y axis very well. There's a sudden gradient on the top and bottom.


@malloc: GLORIOUS

[GalenEvil]

@Malloc: I agree with Dreadmullet on that. Beautiful work

[Kofthefens]

@malloc. Amazing! Makes what I'm doing look insignificant

As to what I'm doing, pathing works. There's probably some optimization that could be done, but it works for now. I have a Point class, with a boolean for if it is occupied, so when malloc and I merge code it should be pretty simple to update it.

@dreadmullet- for some reason the images don't load into Unity. It says 'Blender cannot convert the .blend file to FBX file' I can make something in blender on my computer (like a cube, about the extent of my skills with blender), and import it just fine.

[GalenEvil]

Okay, I added a table of tasks for myself at the bottom of the doc so that I can make sure that I stay focused on some things. What I have right now should be completed or nearly completed in about a week, maybe a week and a half if task number 2 starts giving me a lot of grief. I will be working in Java just to get a framework for it done and can have Kof port it over into C# since AI pathing is his toy

Since this is more advanced AI Pathing stuff could someone give me a better idea of what is expected of the entities as far as how they get from point A to point B? Or maybe just throw some ideas at me that I might be able to get into the AI Pathing routines?

EDIT!!!
Oh yeah, one more thing to ask. This will need to be an 8-coordinate directional AI pathing system, I think. So I should probably update my first bit of notes to include turning the Path system I currently have into the 8-coordinate system from a 4-coordinate system >.>

[DrPoo]

You guys are way beyond my league, wow.
I dont even think i can help, im too stupid as a programmer to do this, i mean all that pathfinding stuff, the best i could do is a freaking menu or something stupid like that.
Now i feel like the stupid ideas guy. Could you guys kick me out?

Wow i am awful. I withdraw my own right to influence on this project.