Shortly after reaching a benchmark with my light propagation system, I realized two things. The first was that the development of YAVE has been productive and enjoyable enough that I want to turn it into a finished game. The second was that people -- including fellow game devs in Seattle, other HMN members, and potential investors -- have a difficult time conceptualizing a game which uses a voxel engine but is very different than Minecraft. So I've decided to take some time off from engine development in order to prototype some gameplay in Unity.
For the next month or so I'm not going to be very Handmade, but wish me luck anyway. You can follow my twitter for bite-sized updates. For example, two nights ago I managed to jury rig a "level editor" out of an existing level design tool for Unity. Why is "level editor" in quotes? That's for you to find out in a future update.
What would a YAVE game be like, anyway?
Comments
I'm interested to know why you chose to go with Unity for prototyping ?
My though is that since Unity is not a voxel engine, the gameplay of the prototype will probably not use voxels, so why make/use a voxel engine ? Won't it add some complexity (if it's not needed) ?
On the other side, won't making the prototype in yave allow you to figure out what you really need in term of engine functionality, bring up eventual limitations, help making sure everything is working, that the engine can be easily integrated (if it's one of your goals) and have a "real" prototype ?
I'm not saying you shouldn't prototype in Unity, I'm interested in what lead you in that direction.
My though is that since Unity is not a voxel engine, the gameplay of the prototype will probably not use voxels, so why make/use a voxel engine ? Won't it add some complexity (if it's not needed) ?
On the other side, won't making the prototype in yave allow you to figure out what you really need in term of engine functionality, bring up eventual limitations, help making sure everything is working, that the engine can be easily integrated (if it's one of your goals) and have a "real" prototype ?
I'm not saying you shouldn't prototype in Unity, I'm interested in what lead you in that direction.
Unity is not a voxel engine, but it has several packages that allow me to fudge it decently. I am using this package for voxels and some others for gameplay logic. I think you'd have to be insane to try to make a high quality game out of this stuff, but for a ten minute vertical slice, it'll do.
Meanwhile, I have a lot of people asking me things like, "OK what kind of puzzle will you have in your game? What kind of combat?" Even though my game idea is more by-the-book than something Jonathan Blow might make, there's still some stuff than needs proving. I don't want to wait for the model import / scene graph / animation queue / sound systems to be done before answering those questions.
Meanwhile, I have a lot of people asking me things like, "OK what kind of puzzle will you have in your game? What kind of combat?" Even though my game idea is more by-the-book than something Jonathan Blow might make, there's still some stuff than needs proving. I don't want to wait for the model import / scene graph / animation queue / sound systems to be done before answering those questions.