VoxelWar Discussion thread

Miscellaneous projects by the Build and Shoot community.
1001 posts Page 63 of 67 First unread post
bloodfox
Post Demon
Post Demon
Posts: 2206
Joined: Mon Oct 21, 2013 4:32 pm


you little prick. He's not banned... then he wouldn't be on now...
longbyte1
Deuced Up
Posts: 336
Joined: Sun Jul 21, 2013 7:27 pm


bloodfox wrote:
you little prick. He's not banned... then he wouldn't be on now...
Really? How'd he change his title then?? And why hasn't he posted some begrudging remark against me yet?
Monstarules
Organizer
Organizer
Posts: 494
Joined: Sun Dec 16, 2012 4:44 pm


I don't want to be seen as a necroposter, but is this project still underway? I really liked it.
bloodfox
Post Demon
Post Demon
Posts: 2206
Joined: Mon Oct 21, 2013 4:32 pm


eh idk but LeCom doesn't care right now
LeCom


Uh AoS is dying and BnS is RIP, so why even bother. Plus, accordingly to the response from BnS, vxw is some piece of shit and etc.
And finally, the voxel fps genre is currently dying as well.
longbyte1
Deuced Up
Posts: 336
Joined: Sun Jul 21, 2013 7:27 pm


Icarus North wrote:
LeCom wrote:
Uh AoS is dying and BnS is RIP, so why even bother. Plus, accordingly to the response from BnS, vxw is some piece of shit and etc.
And finally, the voxel fps genre is currently dying as well.
And you'd think it'd be thriving because of the little minecrafters.

OH BUT GUIS BNL ISNT DYED YIT!!!!!!!!111!!!!!1!!!

And LeCom, seriously. What you should be doing with your life instead of trying to make a program that's barely compatible with someone else's poorly coded server stuff is going off from scratch and making something entirely your own.

From personal experience, I can't use someone else's shit when I make a program. If I do, I never learn anything, and it never gets finished anyways.
Voxel FPS isn't dying. It's just not as alive as it was back then.

Also 1000th post yay.
LeCom


I actually dare to say that the voxel fps genre IS dead, but in another sense. What I actually mean is, we're no niche pioneers anymore; there's much competition, and quite some crapware ("call of blocks" [wtf even], BnL, w/e). And from my point of view, the idea of a voxel fps isn't original enough to sustain a lot of players/games dragged into it.

Btw, the main reason why I still browse BnS is that its bookmark is still hanging around in my stuff.
Moreover, I have been doing many experiments with voxel rendering lately. I've written a raycaster which renders 1280*800 pixels with 30 FPS and a visibility range of 1024, where Voxlap achieves the same speed with a visibility of 128 voxels and 1024*768 . However, it can only render heightmaps and up/down rotation doesn't work (that's also the reason why it's so fast). If the concept of SVO raytracing (PND3D uses this algorithm as part of its concept) is as good as it sounds (and my implementation finally starts working someday), I might have a Voxlap alternative, maybe its software version will be even superior to OpenGL. Even if not, it can be calculated on the GPU, beating the framerate of OpenSpades one way or another.

EDIT: Oh yeah, I actually could rewrite everything and make a new client + server and make it all 10/10, but who would play it? Blue_Wink1
bloodfox
Post Demon
Post Demon
Posts: 2206
Joined: Mon Oct 21, 2013 4:32 pm


LeCom wrote:
EDIT: Oh yeah, I actually could rewrite everything and make a new client + server and make it all 10/10, but who would play it? Blue_Wink1
k, here's a "challenge" if we're complaining about voxel fps and how we have too much competition then what do you suggest we do? Maybe making Build and shoot actually belong to a game that isn't a voxel game but an fps at heart or will that be like adding in a sesame street character to a star wars movie? (Then again there was a sesame street episode with C3PO and R2D2 in it...)
Or just move away from FPS? Do you think we might be able to get more characters making an FPS without a voxel theme or would that not matter when it comes to advertising games? The main concern when people would look at an ad for BnS is the fact that they would say "Oh, I can just download a gun mod for MC" or "Oh, there's already TONS of games that are like that. Example: AOS 1.0" << These facts aren't exactly mind blowing shit but we need to consider that if we want this forum to survive (which I think is a shitty idea already...) we should move to a different genre. Hell, I'm not a coder and I'm just a lonely asshole who just likes to sit on his fat ass talking about this shit. So what the FUCK DO I KNOW
LeCom


Mane, relax. Some guys here on the forums sure have some weed left.
The main problem is that the idea of AoS wasn't that original from the start on. Basically just a mix of 2 genres. You are right, why not just "a gun mod for MC". So yes, I would definitely suggest a shift in the genre, but not as far as you wrote. Seeing AoS right now, I think some tactical elements would already be a real ground-breaking revolution. Things like larger game scales (more players + larger maps), some actually interesting weapons, you know. Plus, elements that can quickly turn the tide, like a sudden airstrike, so everybody has to rethink the attacking plan. I think AoS can't be saved (and BnS? Just forget it.) though. It's too conservative and inert. And, it's based around one specific game and won't ever transition, except somebody might take over OpenSpades, but that's unlikely.
bloodfox
Post Demon
Post Demon
Posts: 2206
Joined: Mon Oct 21, 2013 4:32 pm


LeCom wrote:
Mane, relax. Some guys here on the forums sure have some weed left.
The main problem is that the idea of AoS wasn't that original from the start on. Basically just a mix of 2 genres. You are right, why not just "a gun mod for MC". So yes, I would definitely suggest a shift in the genre, but not as far as you wrote. Seeing AoS right now, I think some tactical elements would already be a real ground-breaking revolution. Things like larger game scales (more players + larger maps), some actually interesting weapons, you know. Plus, elements that can quickly turn the tide, like a sudden airstrike, so everybody has to rethink the attacking plan. I think AoS can't be saved (and BnS? Just forget it.) though. It's too conservative and inert. And, it's based around one specific game and won't ever transition, except somebody might take over OpenSpades, but that's unlikely.
you're not suggesting a voxel fps though right? somehow I feel that people would be more attracted to game that's a bit like CoD... unfortunately... give it somewhat a look of CoD but then boom once they start playing they would realize "Oh shiiiiit this game is different but fuck the maps are awesome and there's a lot of players."
longbyte1
Deuced Up
Posts: 336
Joined: Sun Jul 21, 2013 7:27 pm


People liked AoS because it boiled the ideas of voxel FPS down to the core: buld then snip.

Themes in some shooters (like WW2 or WW3) can often obstruct gameplay, to the point that players can't be creative with the game because all of the game's content pertains to that specific style. (TF2 actually tries to get around this despite its '60s style.)

How AoS was "marketed" was pretty simple: here's the download, here's the server list, now go play. The trailer's just gameplay, what'd you expect.
How AoS+ was marketed, though, was more of meta-creativity: the game explicitly instructed you to "be creative." For some reason this idea of telling people to be creative seems to be an increasingly popular marketing scheme. And many people just don't like being told to do things.

So if you want to compete, it's because you can bring the voxel genre all the way down, back to the fundamentals.
And if you can manage to do that plz add buttons and elevators ok thanks
LeCom


longbyte1 wrote:
People liked AoS because it boiled the ideas of voxel FPS down to the core: buld then snip.

Themes in some shooters (like WW2 or WW3) can often obstruct gameplay, to the point that players can't be creative with the game because all of the game's content pertains to that specific style. (TF2 actually tries to get around this despite its '60s style.)

How AoS was "marketed" was pretty simple: here's the download, here's the server list, now go play. The trailer's just gameplay, what'd you expect.
How AoS+ was marketed, though, was more of meta-creativity: the game explicitly instructed you to "be creative." For some reason this idea of telling people to be creative seems to be an increasingly popular marketing scheme. And many people just don't like being told to do things.

So if you want to compete, it's because you can bring the voxel genre all the way down, back to the fundamentals.
And if you can manage to do that plz add buttons and elevators ok thanks
@Basic gameplay: You have a point, indeed. However, there's already a very simple voxel FPS, and it's dying atm. Moreover, I tried to imply that the changes should be very small, exactly for the purpose of strategic creativity. I could say that "back to the roots" is the opposite of getting out of this overpopulated niche, but then there's no game that resembles the old AoS version, so no idea.
@Themes: The best thing is just to leave it to the servers, just like the game modes and maps.
@Marketing: I can't say how negative being told to do what you want is, I'm not a psychology expert. Though what I can say is that AoS 1.0 wants you to be creative when there's not much to be creative about lol. It's like AoS 0.75 zombies: if the enemy can fly anywhere or nuke your whole castle, there's no point in building anything. Yeah, that again concerns your argument of game simplicity.

@bloodfox: No, the voxel + fps combination is a beautiful thing I wouldn't want to discard. And about the CoD part: One can just open a server with CoD theme (it's obvious that an AoS successor just HAS to add custom models on servers, at least) and then do the gameplay video on that. That wouldn't even be fraud, since there actually would be such a server in that case :P
longbyte1
Deuced Up
Posts: 336
Joined: Sun Jul 21, 2013 7:27 pm


Putting themes on servers rather than the game as a whole is exactly my point! But in order to do this, the game needs to have a solid framework that gives power to the community, not to the developer.

AoS's mistake was that we depended on Aksoy to give us monthly updates, hopefully balancing whatever we wanted to balance or fixing X issue. And if he didn't then we just complained more until he responded. But AoS's main problem is the limited net protocol. For the server to make and break blocks we have to pretend that somebody invisible is doing it, block by block. We can't use RLE/zlib to communicate big changes on the map without forcing a reload. We cannot make things move smoothly or click on blocks to interact with the map. We also don't really have a say in the specific parameters of the client, such as custom weapon models, ammo, speed, and loadout.

So then why doesn't Iceball fit our needs? Here's where it falls short:
  • Hardly any public face; more effort seems to be placed on the open-source end of the project than actually campaigning to get people to play the game. 1000+ commits but no player base?
  • Ugly. Now this seems like a subjective point but it's awfully true. It still looks unfinished.
  • Server still doesn't give clients resources.
  • GPL.
Can we ever get people to play Iceball and overcome these problems?
Or should we start all over again?
bloodfox
Post Demon
Post Demon
Posts: 2206
Joined: Mon Oct 21, 2013 4:32 pm


Iceball is lub. iceball is life <3.
but tbh, as much as I love that shit, staying with it won't work. approach a new idea without that fucking dumbass idea of making it a voxel FPS
LeCom


Oh good then I'm not the only one seeing faults in the development of IB (not saying that it's crap though). GM and his team just have wrong priorities. They seem to emphasize on miscellaneous or unimportant things, while IB itself has nothing to offer as a game. It's more like a game engine, but very complex and hard to mod.
1001 posts Page 63 of 67 First unread post
Return to “Noteworthy Picks”

Who is online

Users browsing this forum: No registered users and 12 guests