I'm converting the non-full voxel path tracer from CPU to GPU (the full voxel case already works), and have reached the point where I have pixels on the screen.
Lots of debugging to do to get from the first image to the second!
In order to debug the vertex generation for non-full voxel path tracing I switched over to simple ray casts as the shaders compile faster, allowing me to iterate more.
Some time with Renderdoc debugging of the Vulkan compute shader has solved a few issues, and if you squint it almost looks alright.
Apparently @nothings (I think this is Sean Barrett's official Mastodon handle) did a twitch stream about his new voxel raycast engine, and someone uploaded it to Youtube (I can't find it on STB's Youtube or Twitch account). Makes a very interesting watch if you're interested in #voxels.
I'm not one for "New Year's resolutions", but I am one for overly ambitious projects.
For 2023, Project365 is "One New Game Per Day".
Given that I have 634 unplayed games in my Steam account and {mumble} unredeemed bundle Steam keys, there's a reason my unplayed collection is tagged "Pile of Shame".
I'll pin this to my profile, and give a brief summary here each day (or x, if I miss x days due to work or stuff).
I'll play 15-30 minutes of (at least) one new game I've never played before (or played less than 15 minutes of). I'll give every game at least 15 minutes, even if I hate every minute of it.
I'm also open to suggestions; if you reply to this thread with a game, I'll schedule it, or tell you what I thought of it.
One of the things that's come up is that I have a bunch of games that I've played once, and not touched again.
August 30, 2023 - Day 242 - NewPlay Review
Total NewPlays: 262
Game: Dead Bits
Platform: Steam
Release Date: Jun 8, 2014
Library Date: Jun 11, 2018
Unplayed: 1906d (5y2m19d)
Playtime: 16m
Dead Bits is a voxel-based FPS platformer, that is somehow less than the sum of its parts.
The game starts out with something that almost resembles a storyline, and then you find yourself in a series of brightly-coloured maps or dark tunnels with a torch, facing a a barrage of identical enemies whose health is represented by a number set in typeface from one of those "Free Font Downloads!" websites.
The platforms are hard to judge, and every death sees an unskippable cutscene as monsters gorge on your dead voxel body in black and white.
Your weapons are whatever each level sees fit to give you, and collected weapons don't carry forward between levels. There is no loot.
The melee weapon is an undefined chrome-wrapped long thing.
Guns are gun-ish shaped things.
The only goal is to kill enough monster shapes to get to the next level.
The absolute kicker was when quitting the game, it hung. As it had set itself to the front-most window, and prevented anything from being in front (like Steam, or the task manager!), I spent several minutes on top of that 15 minutes just trying to quit.
Dead Bits is nothing more than trading card fodder, a big:
Minetest 5.8.0 (forum.minetest.net)
Minetest no longer ships with a default game...