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 Post subject: Masterspace
PostPosted: Wed Apr 18, 2012 1:59 pm 

Joined: Wed Apr 18, 2012 12:04 pm
Posts: 3
Hi,

I just want to make you aware of the newly released game Masterspace, which is using the PolyVox library. It features fully destructible smooth terrain and spaceships that allow you to travel between different planets. For more information visit the game homepage at http://www.master-space.com.

Trailer: http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=3I2eRTwdxMQ

Features:
  • Fully destructible planets and spaceships
  • Mine resources, construct buildings and produce goods
  • Explore a universe full of different planets
  • Design and customize your own spaceships
  • Seamless landing on planets
  • Multiplayer support
  • Continous development guided by community feedback
  • Designed for easy modding

Best regards,
Kristofer Jansson
Master Technologies


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 Post subject: Re: Masterspace
PostPosted: Wed Apr 18, 2012 9:15 pm 
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Joined: Sun May 04, 2008 6:35 pm
Posts: 1827
Wow, very cool! This has to be one of the most complete projects we've seen using PolyVox. I downloaded the game and had a play around. There were a few issues running the it (I'll email you) but this does look very promising. I didn't get very far though (blew up some terrain and collected some resources... but I didn't get much built).

I'd be interested how PoyVox is working out for you, and any problems/limitations you are having with it? Also, can I grab some screenshots for the Projects using PolyVox page?


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 Post subject: Re: Masterspace
PostPosted: Thu Apr 19, 2012 10:18 am 
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Joined: Wed Jan 26, 2011 3:20 pm
Posts: 203
Location: Germany
oh wow, this is awesome.
I'll test it as soon as I can find a windows machine xD

Are you by any chance a clonk player?
The round resources and Sven2 posting in your forum kinda tipped it off xD


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 Post subject: Re: Masterspace
PostPosted: Thu Apr 19, 2012 2:14 pm 

Joined: Wed Apr 18, 2012 12:04 pm
Posts: 3
David Williams wrote:
Wow, very cool! This has to be one of the most complete projects we've seen using PolyVox. I downloaded the game and had a play around. There were a few issues running the it (I'll email you) but this does look very promising. I didn't get very far though (blew up some terrain and collected some resources... but I didn't get much built).

Thank you for the feedback. There have been some unexpected problems with the game and I am working on solving them as soon as possible. This is my first release of a game to the public and I guess there are always some problems to fix immediately following the release, especially for an independent developer with very limited resources for testing the game on different setups.

David Williams wrote:
I'd be interested how PoyVox is working out for you, and any problems/limitations you are having with it?

PolyVox has been working without any major problems since the last recommended release (11th December, 2011). Before that I had problems with crashes with the surface extraction etc., but I would say that the library has matured and is now stable enough to be used in a full production.

I have experienced three major limitations when implementing the voxel terrain: Speed of surface extraction, graphics batch count, and polygon count.

Most of these problems have been solved by working with relatively small volumes (The standard planet is 160x160x160 voxels). Each planet is divided in regions of 10x10x10 voxels, with each of these regions combined into larger regions of 40x40x40 voxels in a low priority thread. This is necessary to reduce the batch count, now limited to a maximum of 4x4x4=64 batches.

In order to achieve real-time speed of the surface extraction, multi-threading is almost unavoidable. In the game, there are three thread types: the main game thread and threads for small and large regions respectively. Each surface extraction event is added to a thread pool and executed on one of the available cores. This means that the speed scales very well for multi-core processing. At least a dual-core processor is recommended to run the game, although it will still run on a single-core processor.

Ideally I would like to reduce the polygon count of the planets as well, but the performance hit and artifacts introduced by surface decimation excludes that option. The game will, however, even with the relatively high polygon count run fast enough on most relatively modern graphic cards.

The game is very well suited for voxel rendering as I get a natural "paging" by the large separation between different planets, which means that only one planet needs to be rendered at once. This means that an unlimited view distance, without any fog, may be used in the game.

Another interesting use of voxels is for the spaceships, which allows them to be fully customizable and destructible. This should open up for som interesting space battles in future updates.

David Williams wrote:
Also, can I grab some screenshots for the Projects using PolyVox page?

I will send a pack of screenshots to your mail that you may use. Of course, also feel free to take any screenshots you want from inside the game.

I think cross-promotion is a very good idea. Would you like me to add the PolyVox logo to the splash screen of Masterspace and a link to http://www.volumesoffun.com on the Masterspace web site?

ker wrote:
oh wow, this is awesome.
I'll test it as soon as I can find a windows machine xD

Are you by any chance a clonk player?
The round resources and Sven2 posting in your forum kinda tipped it off xD

Nice to see that some influences from Clonk may be spotted in the game. :D

I have been playing quite a bit of Clonk and it is one of the main influences for Masterspace, as I always wanted to play a Clonk-like game in full 3D. Sven2 has been really helpful in troubleshooting the game thus far and I guess he registered the game after some promotion on the OpenClonk website.


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 Post subject: Re: Masterspace
PostPosted: Sat Apr 21, 2012 12:46 pm 
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Joined: Sun May 04, 2008 6:35 pm
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KrilleMaster wrote:
Thank you for the feedback. There have been some unexpected problems with the game and I am working on solving them as soon as possible. This is my first release of a game to the public and I guess there are always some problems to fix immediately following the release, especially for an independent developer with very limited resources for testing the game on different setups.


Sure, we had some similar problems with Voxeliens. I found it really useful to set up a virtual machine with a fresh Windows XP install and then make a snapshot. Then I could easily revert to a fresh install any time I wanted, in order to test the latest build.

KrilleMaster wrote:
Most of these problems have been solved by working with relatively small volumes (The standard planet is 160x160x160 voxels). Each planet is divided in regions of 10x10x10 voxels, with each of these regions combined into larger regions of 40x40x40 voxels in a low priority thread. This is necessary to reduce the batch count, now limited to a maximum of 4x4x4=64 batches.

In order to achieve real-time speed of the surface extraction, multi-threading is almost unavoidable. In the game, there are three thread types: the main game thread and threads for small and large regions respectively. Each surface extraction event is added to a thread pool and executed on one of the available cores. This means that the speed scales very well for multi-core processing. At least a dual-core processor is recommended to run the game, although it will still run on a single-core processor.


Yep, this all sounds pretty sensible.

KrilleMaster wrote:
Ideally I would like to reduce the polygon count of the planets as well, but the performance hit and artifacts introduced by surface decimation excludes that option. The game will, however, even with the relatively high polygon count run fast enough on most relatively modern graphic cards.


The surface decimation is definitely one of PolyVox's weakest points. I do think it's feasible to instead downsample the volume data, but only if the density value are smoothly changing. Otherwise the cracks will be noticable and I suspect this would be the case for you. I also hope to provide an adapter to let PolyVox work with an external library such as OpenMesh so maybe this provides better decimation than what PolyVox has built in. Otherwise the TransVoxel support may be useful in the future.

KrilleMaster wrote:
I think cross-promotion is a very good idea. Would you like me to add the PolyVox logo to the splash screen of Masterspace and a link to http://www.volumesoffun.com on the Masterspace web site?


Sure, if you can find somewhere appropriate which doesn't get in the way of your website. Maybe on the Wiki or something. I got your screenshots for the projects using PolyVox page and will update this after Voxeliens has shipped. Which should be next week so things are pretty busy right now ;-)


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 Post subject: Re: Masterspace
PostPosted: Tue May 08, 2012 3:09 am 

Joined: Wed Feb 29, 2012 12:35 am
Posts: 25
Interesting work, may I ask you a couple questions?
How long did it take you to finish this project as it is?
Also I don't know if you have mentioned this before or not but it seems that you are using Ogre as a renderer if I'm not mistaking ( I didn't download the demo yet), if so can you give me a hint on how you did achieve the shadowing? because they look pretty accurate to me.


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 Post subject: Re: Masterspace
PostPosted: Mon May 14, 2012 6:03 pm 

Joined: Wed Apr 18, 2012 12:04 pm
Posts: 3
xelons wrote:
Interesting work, may I ask you a couple questions?
How long did it take you to finish this project as it is?
Also I don't know if you have mentioned this before or not but it seems that you are using Ogre as a renderer if I'm not mistaking ( I didn't download the demo yet), if so can you give me a hint on how you did achieve the shadowing? because they look pretty accurate to me.


Hi,

Sorry for the late response. It is true that I am using Ogre3D for rendering and I have implemented "depth shadow mapping" to achieve the shadowing. The implementation of depth shadow mapping is is described in more detail here: http://www.ogre3d.org/tikiwiki//Depth+Shadow+Mapping.

The shadows are updated dynamically in real-time and support moving light sources. However, the technique is relatively demanding on the graphics card and needs one extra batch per light. This makes it suitable for terrain shadowing from a single light source, e.g. a star, but would be very slow for a lot of extra light sources.

The project has been on the prototype stage for about 1.5 years, but most of the content and code for the current version has been produced the last 6 months or so.

Best regards
Kristofer Jansson
Master Technologies


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 Post subject: Re: Masterspace
PostPosted: Mon May 28, 2012 2:55 am 

Joined: Thu Dec 08, 2011 12:48 pm
Posts: 6
KrilleMaster wrote:
Hi,

I just want to make you aware of the newly released game Masterspace, which is using the PolyVox library. It features fully destructible smooth terrain and spaceships that allow you to travel between different planets. For more information visit the game homepage at http://www.master-space.com.

Trailer: http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=3I2eRTwdxMQ

Features:
  • Fully destructible planets and spaceships
  • Mine resources, construct buildings and produce goods
  • Explore a universe full of different planets
  • Design and customize your own spaceships
  • Seamless landing on planets
  • Multiplayer support
  • Continous development guided by community feedback
  • Designed for easy modding

Best regards,
Kristofer Jansson
Master Technologies


Dose the full game includes the resource code? If I pay for it.


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