By Alec Meer on August 1st, 2011 at 4:06 pm.
Oh, ‘voxel destruction’ are two words that so truly belong together, like cheese and chips, apple and pie, seagull and evil. Indie alterna-flight sim (also with tanks) A New Zero has updated its voxel-based engine to include structural physics – meaning that when you bring the rain onto a building, it’s going to crumble spectacularly into a shower of distressed voxels. As you may see below.
Voxels are the best. I do wish I wasn’t so cack-handed that I couldn’t play A New Zero anywhere near capably, however.
Oh, and developers Cryptic Sea are also working on a pedestrian mode for A New Zero, which means you can walk into one of those buildings and watch it gloriously collapse around/onto you.
No release date for this new hotness yet, but you can try out the current version of A New Zero for free right here.
01/08/2011 at 16:09 Dominic White says:
Just a reminder that A New Zero is the game with this trailer:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CjQUhIWNfqw
War is great when it’s surreal, abstract and dreamlike.
01/08/2011 at 22:01 Hoaxfish says:
I think a lot of game settings could benefit from that in general
01/08/2011 at 16:16 doubledope says:
Voxels are great :)
As I am not the one to judge the simplistic style the game has, at least give it some enviroment fog. It greatly will enhance the feel of depth and occludes that nasty horizon… I saw a voxel demo a few days back with a moving hand in a highly detailed corridor. Someone might drop a link below? :)
01/08/2011 at 16:48 ireplytoretardo says:
you mean like light mist floatin around and sand clouds rollin about?
ANZ deffo doesn’t need a fog screen tho. its great to see explosions of light and smoke trials in the distance as you approach in your fighter from afar!
01/08/2011 at 20:12 Snuffy the Evil says:
Was this it?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QNQtwzVGmsM
02/08/2011 at 06:39 syntax says:
I saw that same demo, I think it is of Frostbite 2 and most definitely is not voxels.
01/08/2011 at 16:25 Salt says:
Do I get to be the first person to say that’s not “proper voxels”? Do I do I do I do I?
Instead, it’s a series of buildings constructed from a multitude of same-sized cubes. That the cubes rotate and fall freely when the building is hit clearly demonstrates that they’re not a representation of voxel data.
Could be the landscape / buildings are voxel data until a collision occurs, at which point select voxels are cleared and replaced by physically simulated cubes.
A New Zero, and this destruction technology are both wonderful things.
01/08/2011 at 19:13 The Sombrero Kid says:
Voxel is probably the most inappropriately used word of the decade & it’s only 2011! I’m going to start calling pixels 2d voxels just so i can use the word voxel in even more instances.
01/08/2011 at 19:17 Defiant Badger says:
While your right, those arn’t really voxels, voxels are just going to be used to describe this kind of thing like cell shading is used for borderlands-like graphics, because there isn’t really a better, equally concise description for it yet.
01/08/2011 at 19:27 neolith says:
This.
01/08/2011 at 19:42 Lucretiel says:
Do I get to be the first person to say that’s not “proper voxels”? Do I do I do I do I?
Instead, it’s a series of buildings constructed from a multitude of same-sized cubes. That the cubes rotate and fall freely when the building is hit clearly demonstrates that they’re not a representation of voxel data.
Could be the landscape / buildings are voxel data until a collision occurs, at which point select voxels are cleared and replaced by physically simulated cubes.
A New Zero, and this destruction technology are both wonderful things.
Actually, it is voxel data. Read the Cryptic Sea article this video comes from (http://crypticsea.blogspot.com/2011/07/and-all-you-create-and-all-you-destroy.html)- The buildings are small instantiated voxel zones. When you fire a cannon, it uses a simulation very similar to their bridge-building sim to calclulate the per-voxel destruction. Each destroyed voxel is replaced with a physically simulated derbis cube, to add to the effect. If you look carefully, though, that debris is temporary- it doesn’t last longer than the smoke.
01/08/2011 at 22:06 Hoaxfish says:
I hearby coin the word “boxels”. As in, everything is boxes. This is a close relative of cratexels, where in, everything is a destructible crate containing loot, usually ammo or something.
01/08/2011 at 23:37 simonh says:
So would Minecraft be Boxel-based or Cratexel based, since every block drops something? I suppose it depends on whether you consider dirt and rocks “loot”.
01/08/2011 at 16:26 Gnoupi says:
Oh, now I know where to redirect all the griefers who are regularly joining the RPS Terraria server for the sheer fun of destroying everything other people built and leaving the place like an apocalyptic wasteland.
Other topic and bitterness aside, nice video, always impressive to see this kind of destruction detail.
The world needs more building destruction games.
01/08/2011 at 16:26 Hexanol says:
The Volition guys (Red Faction, Freespace etc) did a presentation about their destruction tech at GDC last year, looks like these guys are doing a similar thing. Notice the delay in dynamic collapse; it’s really expensive to calculate when buildings should collapse with a connectivity graph model (which I assume they’re using) so you spread the cost over a bunch of frames, which means there’s a noticable delay. Volition made the delay sorta-OK in Guerilla, while this implementation looks like it needs a bit more smoke and mirrors to make it less obvious.
I actually research this stuff for my PhD so I immediately jump to the flaws, but it’s really quite impressive. The abstract art style excuses a lot.
01/08/2011 at 16:37 Dawngreeter says:
For my money, the delay looks appropriately cinematic. Before I read your explanation (and thanks for that, very informative) I assumed the delay was intentional.
02/08/2011 at 10:35 enobayram says:
I’m also doing a PhD on similar things but not exactly on this, so your opinion overrules mine. But I would suggest you to reconsider if it would still take that long time even when there are so few voxels. My opinion is that either it is intentional or they’re being VERY conservative in keeping the computational cost per frame low. (such as using a cellular automata which spreads the destruction to a few neighbours per frame.)
01/08/2011 at 16:31 Dana says:
Why I have not heard about this game before ?
01/08/2011 at 17:08 jonfitt says:
I have no idea:
http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2009/01/15/war-in-432kb-a-new-zero/
01/08/2011 at 16:32 BAReFOOt says:
Now somebody only has to build a WTC and program a airplane into it. :P (Remember that GTA mod?)
(Or a Burj Al-Arab.)
01/08/2011 at 16:56 jp0249107 says:
it’s ironic because that link has nothing to do with what actually happens. Ahh hippies, they know nothing.
01/08/2011 at 16:34 bit_crusherrr says:
Looks good. I love games where you can knock down buildings.
01/08/2011 at 16:38 BirdsUseStars says:
Jeeze it’s like some kind of Minecraft, but for war! Like a…like a…some sorta crazy war-craft!
02/08/2011 at 10:38 enobayram says:
Although I’m a fan of it, I have to admit Minecraft has almost no physics whatsoever. Considering how coarse its voxels (boxels? :) ) are, I’m sure Minecraft could use an engine similar to this game, and it would be AWESOME!!
01/08/2011 at 16:44 hessrid says:
I was listening to a music video when I clicked on Dominic White’s link.
The trailer and the music mixed quite nicely, so I thought I’d share this “accidental dub”:
Might want to see the original music video too, it would make even more sense then…
02/08/2011 at 01:48 Vorrin says:
hah, right, they do mix nicely, gives it a surreal apocalypse now feel, cheers
02/08/2011 at 03:03 Benevolence says:
This is cool, thanks for sharing. The song kinda reminds me of DJ Shadow’s version of “Six Day War” by Bagshot.
02/08/2011 at 12:42 Daoler says:
That’s just awesome.
01/08/2011 at 16:47 Hensler says:
Ah Voxels… brings back good memories of the old NovaLogic games.
01/08/2011 at 16:51 Shadowcat says:
http://crypticsea.blogspot.com/2011/04/new-zero-blowing-stuff-up-is-fun.html
01/08/2011 at 17:05 ananachaphobiac says:
Hooray Tanky Tanky!
01/08/2011 at 17:08 Utgaardsloke says:
This looks very promising!
01/08/2011 at 17:09 jonfitt says:
I played this for a bit two years ago when RPS first linked to it. I’m pleasantly surprised they’re still working on it!
01/08/2011 at 17:37 kyrieee says:
The actual game looks really neat
01/08/2011 at 17:49 YeOldeSnake says:
We want this sort of destruction for ace of spades
01/08/2011 at 18:31 Teddy Leach says:
Tanks for the video. O-HOHO-HOHO!
01/08/2011 at 19:33 Defiant Badger says:
Wow, this is gold; let me write it down.
01/08/2011 at 18:38 Sinnorfin says:
I once had a dream being in a somewhat voxely world where everything was built out of grey blocks like here, it was a city with huge half finished skyscrapers and i was there to destroy it all.. powerful dream it was.
01/08/2011 at 19:17 DarkDobe says:
The one thing that could really use fixing is the complete lack of rubble left behind when those buildings collapse – though that is a while ‘nother bag of problems and limitations waiting to be tackled.
02/08/2011 at 10:42 enobayram says:
One not so realistic, but tactically useful solution would be to re-voxellate ( :S ) some of the debris boxes once they’re done bouncing around.
01/08/2011 at 19:31 Defiant Badger says:
Grr, upon trying to play this game I found that by default the resolution is too big for my screen so part of it is cut off, and moving up the small amount I can doesn’t do any good. But when I try to change this I find I can’t because I can’t find any way to “accept” my changes; presumably because the button for that is at the bottom of the page.
Has anyone else encountered such a problem?
09/08/2011 at 15:21 Gorman says:
Bah, I can’t run this either. Any ideas on how to change the resolution without being able to click the “apply” button?
01/08/2011 at 20:01 SprintJack says:
If you like voxel you should realy keep an eye on this project
http://www.atomontage.com
01/08/2011 at 21:00 skinlo says:
Also check out this: http://procworld.blogspot.com/
02/08/2011 at 10:28 Daz says:
Forget the voxels, it’s the particle smoke effects that really sell the effect overall for me. That looks fantastic! The smoke seems to have real weight and spread across surfaces very realisticly… I dunno what they did, but everyone should be doing it!
02/08/2011 at 15:41 mont3core says:
I love this game so much, it’s the best thing to play at 3am. It really tickles my demoscene spot and captures an amazing amount of ambiance in under a meg.