A Year in Review – 09.21.22

A Year in Review – 09.21.22

Wow, a year already! We started out with just an idea, 5 initial team members, 2 community members that funded our initial start-up costs and a year later we have grown and come far as a community, a team and a project.

First and foremost, we want to thank all of our @EarlyBackers for everything they have contributed to help us, financially and otherwise. Last winter with your help we raised $12,000+ from the community and we have pinched that to the max get the most out of that money as possible. To that end we have been able to produce Art, 3D Models, programming, without you we could not have made it this far or made this much progress in this first year without you and your support!

With that let us focus first on the accomplishments of our first year!

Infrastructure

We have put a lot of time into working on our internal roles and duties in order to streamline our workflow, and decision-making process. This has enabled us to make decisions faster, while remaining flexible to ideas and allowed us to pivot to find solutions to problems and challenges as they arise.

Planning

Planning has become a central part of our daily routine. We spend time almost every day discussing what we need to do next, and how those things should function, look, and how they will impact the game overall. We also discuss the feedback on those subjects that we have received from the community. Asking ourselves how we would implement it, where would we implement it, and should we implement it.

Art

We started out with a base idea of the Toth’Tozan that ended up looking like Groot. Over the year we have evolved our idea around them and produced a large body of Concept Art that has defined the general look, feel, and style of Endless Voxels. In this year we have produced the Unclothed and Clothed concept art for the Toth’Tozan, Qelavian, and Tson’Qar. We have also experimented with textures and materials and more in engine to help make decisions on the look and feel of the game.

3D Modeling

@Superzman has done a phenomenal job at modeling the Toth’Tozan, Qelavian, Plants, Monsters and endlessly toiling over perfecting the Tson’Qar. We have developed original plants, tools, weapon and a new monster or two too. Much more to come as we move forward.

World Generation

A year ago, we had a very basic world generation system in place. No trees, plants, rocks, or grass, and very little texture and material control. Over the past year we have been writing all custom world generation code from the ground up and Boy has it paid off! @Ciprian has worked tirelessly to bring world generation into its current state and will continue to do so!

Terrain
Our Terrain Generation has been the primary focus of development this year for @Ciprian and for just a year we have come a long way. The Terrain generation can use between 4 and 7 bits of noise to create different landscape shapes. What does this mean? It means that planets could look like Minecraft with just cubes, it could have cubes and slopes, or all the way up to being 90% smooth. The work we have put into the Terrain Generation will allow us to create many unique worlds and environments that will amaze and inspire us all. Basic water generation is done and integrated into the Terrain generator. We can define what should be flooded and what shouldn’t. Ponds, lakes and oceans work as expected.

Trees
Our Tree Generator is an amazing accomplishment, not only does it allow us to create unique trees in look and feel, but it also allows us to create unique foliage shapes. The work done with Tree Generation will allow us to create many unique species as the game grows and progresses. By using random noise, we are able to ensure that each tree is still unique even within a specific species of tree.

Plants, Grass, and Rocks
We have Plants, Grass, Rocks and other random elements that can be spawned into the world, with full control over scattering, density, the random probability to spawn, and randomly change size.

Textures and Materials
Our generators all have the ability to define and manipulate which Textures and Materials to use during generation.

Game Play Functionality

We have put our plan together to create a base Player Character setup. By establishing base stats, inventory, equipment, hand crafting, digging, placing blocks and Terraforming. Just to name a few. We are nearing the completion of the base frameworks around these in-game features. @kabloozio, @justfluff, and @sirg have been working tirelessly on completing these sections to enable them to move onto other areas of the game.

UI Driven Functionality
We have laid out the base screen widgets or windows, with the above functionality and working towards a base UI design being designed by @Redlotus.

AI Enemy Control
We have put into place a base system for Enemy AI and will continue to evolve it as needed, as development continues forward.

3D Pathfinding
Some of our team members and community members have expressed concerns about 3D Pathfinding and how it has affected other procedural voxel games they have played before. We have identified what we believe to be a viable solution, with that said it will take many hours and finances to facilitate the full implementation of this solution. It is planned to be part of future development, but currently not something that is feasible at this time.

Merch

@Nonie will be in charge of our merchandising from now on and will be bringing new Endless Voxels goodies in the near future.

Community Management

@Ardele is our official Community Management Director, have an idea you want the team to hear then putting it in the forums and discussing it there in detail with Ardele is your best bet.

This year has yielded amazing progress in the game’s development, and we look forward to this coming year and continuing our work on Endless Voxels.

Please follow us on social media and help spread the word the more people that know about Endless Voxels the bigger the community can be.

Thank you.
SirG

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