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Ace of spades, Minecraft like FPS

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Re: Ace of spades, Minecraft like FPS

#31

Post by microtonal »

Qz wrote: post #23
microtonal wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I fondly remember NovaLogic's Comanche series. While it isn't of the 'world building' genre, its voxel engine was very impressive for its time: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comanche_series Also interesting (historically) is 'Rescue on Fractalus'. Not just for its cheesy name, but also due to its reliance on fractals to draw 3D mountain sceneries: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rescue_on_Fractalus ! Edit: videos of both…

Rescue on Fractalus had one of the most genuinely terrifying game moments of my 'career'. I won't spoil it here, but you can probably guess what it was from the wikipedia page.

Indeed! Spoiler alert:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M8opv5u9nf0

First time (as a kid) was shocking...

Re: Ace of spades, Minecraft like FPS

#32

Post by euccastro »

etcet wrote: post #30
euccastro wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why has this been downvoted? The game is free software, yet the (temporary) homepage has no link to the sources. This is a most relevant question in a "Hacker News" site.

I haven't heard any mention of this game being free or open source. The software it uses (Voxlap & GenLand) both have permissive non-commercial licenses w/ attribution but are not viral like the GPL.

I stand corrected. I thought I'd read somewhere that it was free software. Maybe I misread "freeware" in TFA.

Re: Ace of spades, Minecraft like FPS

#33

Post by Qz »

microtonal wrote: post #31
Qz wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Rescue on Fractalus had one of the most genuinely terrifying game moments of my 'career'. I won't spoil it here, but you can probably guess what it was from the wikipedia page.

Indeed! Spoiler alert: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M8opv5u9nf0 First time (as a kid) was shocking...

Actually the one I was talking about is when the pilot actually gets aboard the ship first!

Re: Ace of spades, Minecraft like FPS

#34

Post by andywood »

swombat wrote: post #21
Deestan wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not correct to attribute the voxel game genre to Minecraft. It's just the first game of the genre to reach a considerable level of success. Minecraft is just one of many games that were directly inspired by the underground hit Infiniminer.

Is Minecraft Voxel? I thought it was real (if blocky) 3D?

Calling Minecraft "voxel" is sure to introduce confusion. The representation of the map is simply a regular 3D grid of block IDs. When we use the exact same type of regular grid to represent 2D maps, we do not call the grid cells "pixels", so I don't think it's very informative to call these "voxels".

Minecraft is also not a voxel renderer. Voxel renderers typically work by casting rays against the grid. Minecraft draws the blocks with rasterized triangles, using a hardware-accelerated 3D API (LWJGL), just like almost every other 3D game.

In other words, there is practically no interesting overlap between what NovaLogic was doing, and what Minecraft does.

Re: Ace of spades, Minecraft like FPS

#35

Post by andywood »

zer0her0 wrote: post #27
microtonal wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I fondly remember NovaLogic's Comanche series. While it isn't of the 'world building' genre, its voxel engine was very impressive for its time: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comanche_series Also interesting (historically) is 'Rescue on Fractalus'. Not just for its cheesy name, but also due to its reliance on fractals to draw 3D mountain sceneries: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rescue_on_Fractalus ! Edit: videos of both…

I love NovaLogic's games and their voxel engine, don't they own several patents on voxel engine based games? I think I remember that coming up in a discussion a few years back on why we haven't seen more voxel games prior to this recent slew(besides hardware liking polygons more).

This recent slew aren't technically voxel games. At least not in the sense of NovaLogic's tech - see: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2447057.

(To add to the confusion, this particular game, Ace of Spades, actually is voxel-rendered.)

It is however thought that John Carmack's next engine after the Rage engine may include honest-to-goodness voxel rendering: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Id_Tech_6

Historically, Carmack has had quite a lot of influence on both the hardware and API vendors, so it will be interesting to see if he can spearhead more mainstream movement towards sparse voxel octree rendering: http://youtu.be/THaam5mwIR8

Re: Ace of spades, Minecraft like FPS

#36

Post by blhack »

Deestan wrote: post #6
ugh wrote: post #2

Nice to see that Minecraft has seemingly created a new genre of first person world building games.

It's not correct to attribute the voxel game genre to Minecraft. It's just the first game of the genre to reach a considerable level of success. Minecraft is just one of many games that were directly inspired by the underground hit Infiniminer.

Infiniminer may have been Notch's inspiration, but Minecraft is what created the genre. People making minecraft-like games right now aren't copying Infiniminer, they're copying minecraft.

The iPhone wasn't the first smart-phone, it wasn't even the first touch-screen smart phone, but most people (correctly) give it credit for popularizing the style, and creating a new "genre" for smartphones.

Re: Ace of spades, Minecraft like FPS

#37

Post by saulrh »

JoachimSchipper wrote: post #8
JanezStupar wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Then you should go and check TA Spring. It has all the good stuff from TA + modern graphics engine + terrain changing mechanics. I remember this epic duel I played vs 2 other guys (yes my teammate quit) in a castle type map. Since I turtled too heavily for them to break through, eventually they just drowned me by blasting me with arty long enough for map's floor to erode beyond water level.

That sounds cool, but if I play a game I'm usually going for single-player. Does Spring have a useful AI yet?

There are a few, some quite novel, and they're getting better. For example, one of the new ones exploits the computer's ability to individually micro dozens of scouts to repeatedly pwn your mexes at the beginning of the game.

Re: Ace of spades, Minecraft like FPS

#38

Post by PostOnce »

blhack wrote: post #36
Deestan wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not correct to attribute the voxel game genre to Minecraft. It's just the first game of the genre to reach a considerable level of success. Minecraft is just one of many games that were directly inspired by the underground hit Infiniminer.

Infiniminer may have been Notch's inspiration, but Minecraft is what created the genre. People making minecraft-like games right now aren't copying Infiniminer, they're copying minecraft. The iPhone wasn't the first smart-phone, it wasn't even the first touch-screen smart phone, but most people (correctly) give it credit for popularizing the style, and creating a new "genre" for smartphones.

You are using the word created wrong. Infiniminer created the genre; Minecraft popularized the genre.

Re: Ace of spades, Minecraft like FPS

#40

Post by olsonjeffery »

dylanrw wrote: post #39

It's a shame it has no Mac client. :/

I actually play AoS on Snow Leopard using a Wineskin wrapper + ie7 (gross, I know.. but all AoS games are launched from the browser and FF didn't work right for me..)

If you're familiar with wineskin, the process was something like:

1. create new wrapper 2. in advanced settings, launch winetricks and install ie7 (ie8 is always weird/crippled for me) 3. set homepage to http://ace-spades.com 4. in OSX, download the AoS installer MSI 5. Install the MSI from your Wineskin wrapper 6. Set the ie7 bin to be the "start program" for your wrapper 7. Launch the wrapper 8. Click game 9. Profit!

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