Voxel Space (2017)

When this was first posted I made a game with a port of this approach to AGS Engine. Nowadays AGS is much faster since we have improved a lot of things, but this wasn’t the case at the time, so I had to make a few little tricks to make the rendering work well with the engine at the time.

https://github.com/ericoporto/i_rented_a_boat

Re: Voxel Space (2017)

#7

Post by Jare » Sat, May 30, 2026, 3:32 PM UTC

[Edit] ah ok they clarify later as a performance enhancement. I think it was pretty integral to the algorithm, but ok.

Wait why do they say painter's algorithm. Comanche and other such voxel terrain engines went front to back and never had overdraw.

Re: Voxel Space (2017)

#8

Post by swiftcoder » Sat, May 30, 2026, 3:37 PM UTC

Jare wrote: post #7

[Edit] ah ok they clarify later as a performance enhancement. I think it was pretty integral to the algorithm, but ok. Wait why do they say painter's algorithm. Comanche and other such voxel terrain engines went front to back and never had overdraw.

Reverse painters algorithm is still painters algorithm. You trade off the cost of a full screen clear before the frame, in return for eliminating overdraw

Re: Voxel Space (2017)

#9

Post by nine_k » Sat, May 30, 2026, 3:38 PM UTC

Technically this is not related to voxels ("volumetric pixels", so to say), which split the 3D space equally along all three axes. This is just a height map, a set of prisms, not entirely unlike a Doom map. Every prism has a regular fixed-size square base.

For 1992, this was mind-boggling though.

Re: Voxel Space (2017)

#10

Post by esafak » Sat, May 30, 2026, 3:40 PM UTC

I remember how groundbreaking Comanche was. Now I learned that it was a result of the programmer's experience in the medical industry (CT/MRI scanning): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voxel_Space