Why is Minecraft So Blocky? | Game/Show | PBS Digital Studios
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- Опубликовано: 2 окт 2024
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Minecraft is one of the most popular games of all time. And yet, the graphics are a bit… blocky. It seem like a strange choice for such a popular game to make when graphics have become so amazing in recent years. However, it turns out that there is an interesting reason as to why Minecraft has such a distinct style, and it all comes down to the voxel. In the world of 3-D modeling, the voxel was decisively defeated by the polygon. But thanks to one committed programmer, the voxel lived on, and eventually made it’s way into the biggest game in recent history!
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I know that Minecraft looks really blocky and retro, but I don't think it looks ugly. In my opinion, that's just the style they went for, and it worked.
PauLtus B Exactly. I really like how some games that aren't even trying to be photorealistic, like Zelda U, for example, look. In fact, I may like the look of those games more than the photorealistic ones.
StrangerGameMaster
I'm sure I like the look of those games better. It's basically the difference of having an artstyle and not having an artstyle. It will also age way better.
PauLtus B True that. I totally agree with you there.
I always thought that the blocky graphics were a benefit to the gameplay in Minecraft. They allow to build pretty much anything that you want to build, acting like video game lego bricks in a way. However, games that have level editors like the forge mode in Halo limit you to specific objects that you can place. You can still create cool maps, but you will still not be able to have the same amount of creative freedom that you can have in Minecraft. The blocks allow you to be more free with your creativity, sacrificing highly detailed graphics for a more simplistic look to achieve this creative freedom.
lol this is basically what I was going to say but you beat me to it.
Here's a fun quote from Wikipedia:
"Creative limitation is the concept of how purposely limiting oneself can actually drive creativity."
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Creative_limitation
+epicalex95official Yeah, except that you have to have a broad mind and I hate that I have so much freedom and I can't make anything.
+epicalex95official I couldn't have said it better! -jj
How did you not make a Squarespace pun in this?
I mean, the theme of the video is a squared space!
Shane, I get how you're probably thinking yet it's technically arguing semantics. A 2D square exists on a plane whereas space is 3D and so a cube can easily be defined as a 3D square.
I am convinced that one day, with enough computing power, voxel will rule the world!
Regarding 1:20, Ace of Spades is not a Minecraft clone. It's a really original indie shooter game that got completely ruined when it was bought by Jagex (the crappy jagex version being the one shown). If you consider this to be just a crappy MC clone I honestly don't blame you and would recommend that you check out the original because it is actually a very fun game with solid mechanics (and free).
Here is an updated version of it (same game but with better graphics) gamejolt.com/games/openspades/46984
And here is the super classic version: buildandshoot.com/downloads.php
this was one of the better episodes, I learned alot!
I do like voxel games because they're much more destructible -- it just works better! And why is everything else blocky in Minecraft, like characters? Simple: Aesthetics.
My vote for graphics has always gone to the early Oddworld games, more specifically Abe's Oddysee. I wouldn't so much say that it does anything innovative, but so much effort was put into making the game look beautiful, and it paid off. To this day I've never had a game feel more realistic to me from it's atmosphere alone, and the graphics play a large part in that.
Surprised you didn't mention Fez. The unique 3d/pixel art hybrid visual style wouldn't be possible without a modified version of voxels.
+FoundObjectFilms We had it in there at first but wasn't sure about using it since Polytron claims the graphics aren't technically voxels. Seem like it to me though. -jj
Voxels could very much be like steam engines. Gasoline combustion became more favorable, but after some years steam power came back around stronger and more efficient with nuclear power.
+VincentFresa Good analogy. Also Telsa and Edison, right? -jj
Why can't the blocks in Minecraft just be individual polygonal model textured to look retro, because each block isn't its own voxel, so if I understand anything despite being a high school freshman, it could work just as well
+I really hate making up names for this kind of stuff
You're right! That's exactly what Minecraft does, actually. The video is incorrect about it using voxels for rendering.
This was quite educational for me. Thanks for the video!
Also THANK YOU for bringing back the end-segment
What is the footage at 6:50?, I'm assuming it's a modern voxel concept, cause it looks really cool
It might be Euclideon. They release a video every year or so (or more) and then disappear. A looot of skeptisism around it.
Really nice work, Jamin. I think that once computers are powerful enough (and they will be), voxels, like atoms in reality, will be the preferred building block of graphics.
Cool history lesson! Are there any games that utilize bot voxels and polygons? I would imagine each has it's pros and cons...
+hypersapien that game at the 5:06 mark, AMOK, has both. -jj
thanks!
+hypersapien Well, I believe minecraft actually does, It seems like a hybrid engine. As I'd expect voxels to act like points in your world that are something or nothing. The base world code uses voxels (or a 3d matrix if you want to look at it like that), but I think the graphical stuff is actually made of polygons.
So all objects you see are made of polygons and textures, even though they are square and cheap. But the land underneath you uses a voxel engine. So it actually uses the voxel ideas and concept for optimisation, but the graphics engine is still based on polygons and textures.
+PBS Game/Show +Roel de Meulder +hypersapien minecraft doesnt use voxels to display but instead uses them in its' data structure, voxels have the advantage of containing volume, but the disadvantage of being a LOT more data. a 25 unit voxel cube volume with... say 256 types of voxels (25*25*8 bits) can give you the same amount of info as 1300 polygons (1300 * x y z values each with 32 bits) so voxels require a LOT more memory. in addition to that moving voxels around, deforming them, manipulating them, requires shifting a ton of data around as well.
This is why in general in minecraft you cant manipulate large chunks of terrain at once, (the game slow down a lot for a large explosion for example) whereas with polygon games characters are relatively easy to deform (smooth skeleton animation, physics, various effects.
this is even before you had things like 3d cards which use custom hardware to create move draw and manipulate polygons.
as for games that use polygons and voxels, most of the voxel games shown here didnt even use proper voxels, they used a raycasting method (raycast voxels : normal voxels :: doom engine : quake engine) basically voxel terrain drew long vertical lines, instead of little cubes to save on drawing time. (the most advanced game using this method AND polygon characters that I can think of right now is the french made Outcast.
a few games did use proper actual voxels, the blade runner adventure used them for characters. and actually the new Everquest Landmark uses a very advanced voxel datastructure that then gets turned into polygons and smoothed much like a more advanced minecraft. oooh also Blood by 3d realms had some voxel weapons and powerups! (figures since it was also programmed by Ken Silverman)
sorry about the data dump, I LOVE game engines and their history, and have been a pc gamer for years, loved the mention of Voxlap and Ken Silverman.
most people arent aware that tomb raider also used odd versions of voxels... (tomb raider used cubes with deformable corners)
and my last bit of trivia... Descent's engine was entirely made of cubes and portals... long before portal :)
+Sharky That's pretty cool =) You also get the award for longest reply, haha.
Minecraft does not use voxels. Minecraft uses a 3d grid of block type ID's that are contained in a polygon cube wrapped in pixel maps. There is absolutely no voxel rendering in Minecraft at all. Sorry. Not hating on the game. And I love the show, but this is just false.
+AOZMONSTER
You're right, but I would definitely say that Minecraft's graphics and gameplay (well, it's predecessor's graphics and gameplay) were inspired by voxels.
+OriginalPiMan haha okay
It sounds like voxels and polygons should be used *_together_* to create something truly amazing in terms of both gameplay *_AND_* athestics.
You missed the point (it showed on screen but you didn't mention it) he made about graphics cards optimizing for polygonal rendering, not voxel rendering. Maybe the biggest reason voxels flopped was because of hardware support favoring polygons over voxels. Voxels were (and still are) unoptimized for rendering. Voxels are ultimately forced to render as polygons. Two for each rendered side. [ / ] So much care has to be had on the part of the programmer to not hopelessly bottleneck on rendering voxel scenes at a playable framerate.
and silly me always though minecraft was blocky because its gameplay demanded it. How stupid that I didn't realise it's actually fate's supernatural plan to serve voxels justice.
After many hours of playing... you forget that it's made of blocks.
Deep, right?
that was a very strong opinion about a decent movie there sir. Pixels might not have been the best movie ever, but it was definitely entertaining and fun. Just because people give Sandler a bad rap, doesn't mean it is not worth a watch =D
proud to say that I was there for Alpha
Final Fantasy hands down. I only played it for its graphics. Story, what story. It's so purdy.
Minecraft uses texture mapped polygons for rendering so I'm not sure it's really the best example here.
"Whys Minecraft blocky?"
Thats like asking why we breathe.
Incoming 11 year olds raging and ranting about minecraft being the best game ever....
+Michael kaster the followers of this channel are nice cultured boys and girls, no problem here
+Michael kaster why would they be angry? its not like jamin contradicted it.
Fernando Moraga I know but they find their way everywhere...
Hey, you forgot about Resogun for the PS4 when you were talking about voxel based games.
+deebznutz100 Resogun came long after MineCraft. Completely irrelevant.
so the movie should have been called voxels!!!! lol I love this vid,
"You see! The trees and clouds are BOXXY!"
One lesson to take away from this is CS programs really should spend more time looking at the past. More and more they have been about teaching the latest and greatest 'get these kids into industry as fast as possible' tech while skipping over what has already been done. This has locked the industry into a constant state of rediscovering the same things over and over (and going through the same mistakes over and over, because learning what people figured out 10 years ago is uncool).
Show vector graphics some love!
How dare you call minecraft ugly!
very interesting! I learned a whole lot
I love "another world" by eric Chahi ! in polygon graphism in 1991
as long as my GPU runs it i am ready :)
Why mc is so blocky? Because Notch's a crap coder and it would run like shit if it had actual graphics, that's why. Don't believe me? Check out "performance" of Wurm Online, game (with actual, but still shitty, graphics) that Notch was also working on.
I don't think Minecraft is ugly, but then again, I'm a retro gamer and have always loved not only the style of NES/SNES-era games, but also pixel art, isometric art, and the ability to make things with pixel precision and on grids. It satisfies some part of my brain to be able to snap things right into place, and know they're right where they need to be, and one speed bump to getting into engines like Unreal (which I'm currently learning) has been that I can put something in a place that LOOKS to be right, and later find out that it's off by a pixel or three and I just want to strangle it. So there are detriments to the polygon style of graphics as well.
Besides which, you didn't mention the ability to change Minecraft's textures. Some of the texture/resource packs are just awesome to look at, and allow cubes to look more round than they have any right to look :D
One of your better episodes, indeed. Thumbs up.
And don't kill me, internet, or say I'm a bot. Pixels was not a great movie as a whole, but it had some terrific art. Like the neon-bright battle against the Centipedes. Also, the concept was lots of fun. Pretty lousy movie overall, but not an entire pile of rubbish either.
I'm early but I won't make a joke.
+Laszlok Nice joke.
You are the joke
Jigglypoof that's deep, man
I think the problem with voxels is that we render them as polygons. So it takes more processing power for results that are less smooth. Minecraft even shows this by rendering its building blocks (not actually voxels) as polygonal cubes. If we could have a true voxmap engine with 3-d sprites, I think we could accomplish some stunning results with little to no extra processing.
I was playing minecraft as I watched this. The ugly appearance of minecraft is not whole due to the voxels themselves but the self imposed limitations of 16 bit resource pack and shaders that favor performance over ascetic. Mojangs development team has stated in the past in a minecon Q&A that the reason for this was to allow for greater compatibility with older computers. It could also be due to the relative difficulty of having a stable java based version of minecraft which also has higher quality shaders and textures.
This can be seen by adding shader mods such as Sonic Ether's Unbelievable Shaders which make even the basic minecraft textures look fantastic at the price of being significantly harder to run on all but the best pc's.
www.minecraftforum.net/forums/mapping-and-modding/minecraft-mods/1280299-sonic-ethers-unbelievable-shaders-v10-1
There are a number of examples of tech demos and other voxel based games now that do better in that realm. I think a recent good one that I read about that is really a wonderful example of how a voxel based game could have higher end ascetics and have smooth performance was developed by John Alcatraz in the unreal 4 engine.
www.cinemablend.com/games/Watch-What-Minecraft-Looks-Like-Unreal-Engine-4-123187.html
This is facinating, thank you for sharing. :) Regarding graphics I would say Stardew Valley and Undertale are modern low resolution games that still look pretty good because they are stylistic. Their limited graphics allow for one person to create a lot more than they would if they tried to up their graphical prowess. To me a game that I can get lost is in is the ideal, although I do enjoy a Warframe style graphical overload from time to time.
In the end it may not be beautiful (well I think it is), but if it wasn't that great the the game wouldn't have become so good. Nor would have it inspired SOOOO many other clones and other types of games to look old school.
I have been playing Witcher 3 for about a month now. This is one of the mostly intensely graphical game I have ever encountered. The wind is about to change strength and the plants react. Swimming through water has never looked so flawless. When game graphics become so strong, full immersion exists.
At this point, there are three schools of graphics emerging:
1) Hyper Realism (Witcher 3, GTA5, etc...)
2) Hand Drawn (Blizzard games, ie Diablo 3, World of Warcraft, and Torchlight)
3) Retro Games (Minecraft, Hotline Miami)
From 2009 to 2013 I attended the Art Institute, in the Game Art & Design program. This is when Retro Games really took off. Part of the popularity was a simple drag n' drop program Game Maker, which used pixel art as a basis for the visual aspect of games designed by the current breed of student game designers. Since then, many indie games have been released, such as the Shadowrun reboot and Minecraft.
I'm not going to go too much into the history of boxels or other forms of raster graphics, seeing how you've done that well in spades. I'm not going to go into the history of vectors either, seeing how that's a story that's still being written with many modern animations. That and the fact that vector graphics are following the same path as polygon graphics. Just the same, I won't talk about vexels and other hybrid concepts, although talks of such concepts may be interesting in terms of future tech talk. Given that such concepts get used outside of passive media.
However, I do want to point out that the history of polygons, as you presented, is a little off. For starters, there were games in the 80's that did function well with polygons. Most known example being the arcade game, I Robot. Sadly, problems that lead up to what I call NACC 83 had occurred. NACC 83 being my acronym for the North American Console Crash of 83. Anyways, that infamous crash had prevented polygons from expanding further in gaming. Despite that, some still used polygons for animations, most notably for music videos such as Dire Strait's "Money for Nothing". If anything, the animation industry, along with help from the music industry wanting more tech in music videos, actually helped continue the progress of polygons. Although Starfox did make Polygons more popular in gaming again, Reboot along with similar TV and movie animations helped to show just what polygons can do overall. Do remember that gaming was still seen as blasé until the mid 90's, when many more became aware of how culturally significant gaming was. Though, that may have been due to the fact that E3 had a more celebrity presence in 1995. Not just in the sense of celebrities being present, but also the fact that big names, like Sony, were making an impact that year. A larger impact than anyone has realized at that time.
As for Minecraft's success, I believe there are two reasons for this. The first one I won't go into because epicalex95 has said it far better than I could. So, yes, the functionality and potential of boxels does play a large role in it. The second reason Minecraft became successful is because many were starting to see digital gaming as blasé again. For many people, Minecraft was a new experience. Something they haven't seen before. It wasn't just in how the boxels looked that made Minecraft different, but also how the boxels functioned, which you've outlined very well in this video. Due to boxels being different from what many are familiar with, Minecraft managed to draw a lot of attention.
I think the devs who are working on EverQuest Next said that their MMORPG was going to use voxles, right?
That's pretty amazing because I never would have guessed!
I wonder if some day maybe computers will become powerful enough to use them in a less blocky way, but in the meantime, I still like minecraft :)
Surprised you didn't (briefly) mention polygon's 2D cousin, vector graphics. Early vector-graphic games such as Asteroids used a vector monitor to render. Vector graphics are probably most widely recognized for their use in Adobe/Macromedia Flash graphics on the web.
But, I think that polygons have more use. Voxels have their shine. But polygons, I think, are still more useful. I am in school for game art. And I am making my own game. I know that I am still new to game design, but I think that I can say that polygons have more use. For example, I use a program called ZBrush. It's a digital sculpting tool. If you want to sculpt in more detail, you add more polygons. And I believe that a high-poly character is less CPU intensive, than a high voxel character. Either way, depending on the resolution, both will appear to be blocky. Just... A different kind of blocky. But like I said before, voxels have their shine.
You showed Euclideon Footage there.
As far as I know, their Voxel system is very different from Minecraft et al.'s: What they are doing is only surface-"voxels" - really, they are doing polygons, but so fine that they only need a point per polygon instead of 3+ (or 6+ if we are talking cubical voxels). That's what they mean when they are talking about "atoms"
This model does not support digging, at least not in the same way "normal" voxels would, but it supports super fine-grained models.
Now if only the materials where there too. Thus far, at least, it looks like they are only doing flat textures. But they haven't shown anything new in forever once again. They'll probably pop up with some random new demo within the next six months or so.
Asking why a game about Blocks is Blocky is like asking why a movie about Satan is Satanic.
+Samuel Baugh Think further. Why was minecraft developed as a game about blocks? Moreso, you're underestimating how many people (gamers, publishers) would probaby have not seen the potential that Minecraft does in fact have. It may seem obvious, but it kind of isn't.
+Samuel Baugh True enough! -jj
+LyricalDJ I dunno, it was just funny because the block game is being asked why it's blocky. Pretty cool Video, but just look. Even Jamin enjoys the joke!
I like the Lemmings, Worms Armageddon, and Cortex Command, because these games store their levels in a pixel-like format, making it theoretically and almost always also practically possible to make custom levels by importing graphics, which can be screenshots of other games!
The way walking is implemented makes it so that rough terrain is supported which means that slopes are supported from the start.
Additionally, each character has digging and building abilities (Lemmings can build stairs, Worms have ropes, jetpacks, and girders, Cortex Commands have jetpacks) which means that every place in every level can eventually be reached, given enough resources, unless the level contains indestructable materials, of course.
When I saw Minecraft for the first time, I hoped it would do the same for 3D but it has a height limit of 256 blocks and the blocks cannot be individually retextured.
nice one :D
I just want to say to those who are asking "when will voxels not be blocky" that we are already on the verge of such a reality.
Games such as Blockscape, Everquest Next Landmark, and No Man's Sky are already dipping their feet into those waters, so it's just a matter of time before a number of other titles come to follow.
Myself, a single programmer out on my lonesome have been "standing at the edge of those waters, preparing to take my first step" as it were. I'm actually familiar with some of the algorithms that the engine powering Everquest Next Landmark uses, and I've been trying to understand just what it takes to make such a powerful engine.
The solution hasn't been an easy one to find, and I'm still working at it, but I can definitively say that after my first attempt at it, I have come to to several conclusions about just what I need to make my next attempt that much better than the results of my first.
Here is a series of screenshots taken from my first attempt:
The following are voxelized at a voxel size of 1 meter, equivalent to Minecraft -
i.imgur.com/4UBXCkz.jpg
i.imgur.com/4bdG6hy.jpg
i.imgur.com/AvPDFxo.png
i.imgur.com/XATqhZ1.jpg
And past this break, I incorporated the ability to change the voxel resolution of the map freely -
(Also yes, pony)
i.imgur.com/GCNCUEB.jpg (voxelized at quarter meter voxel size, 4x4x4 = 64 times more voxels per meter than Minecraft)
i.imgur.com/c1bKDTW.jpg (voxelized at quarter meter voxel size, note how much more detail you can see in the "tree" model)
i.imgur.com/2t6guK4.png (voxelized at half meter, 2x2x2 = 8 times more voxels per meter than Minecraft)
(note that in this overview image however, you can see the voxel resolution diminish the further from the center it gets, that is
the Level of Detail system at work)
That's the last of the screenshots from my first attempt. And I have to say it had a lot of issues, largely due to flawed or incomplete optimizations, that result in it having a highly unstable frame rate. I've been doing a lot of research in preparation for a total revision of the general workflow for my next attempt.
Really great episode! Super interesting. Voxels, when made small enough and combined, should be able to represent any object, as is the case with differential volume elements in calculus. We can take these differential volume elements, which have infinitesimally small dimensions in three orthogonal directions (e.g. x, y, and z in Cartesian coordinates, a.k.a. length, width, and height), and add them up (by an integral in calculus) to create the volume of an object on a much larger, more tangible scale. I'm guessing that's what Ken Silverman saw in voxels. The problem with using voxels is then having the computer create every voxel/differential volume element and add them up.
Did Worms 3D use polygons or voxels? Because I think any game where you can freely dig through the environment and bomb through it, like Minecraft, Lemmings and Worms, would be better off with its 3D version using voxels instead of polygons.
I thought it looked blocky because low-poly models meant that the game was using less power on frivolous graphical rendering, and instead using your limited power to render the world itself as a whole. It's the only reason a game as "big" as Minecraft will run on lower end PCs.It doesn't have 20,000 tris per frame, and no fancy 4x grass textures.
Plenty of games and engines have done destruction without being voxel based. Most games don't fully explore building/destruction because 1) before Minecraft nobody even realized there was a demand for such a game 2) most games favor other factors such as realistic physics and if you have physics allowing destruction/building is going to cause a lot of headaches or inconsistencies.
Red Faction 2 had deforming polygons that you could blow holes into with rocket launchers, even digging tunnels through a level. Rust is an example (there are many) of a game that lets you build structures. This concept is not new nor limited to voxel games.
As far as i'm concerned, both polygons and voxels have things that are interesting and beneficial. It's exactly like paintings and pixel art, both can be amazing even if they are so different. Personally, as a fan of more stylized graphics, i think minecraft's style is quite beautiful and of course complimenting the gameplay, since it's alot easier to create worlds and express yourself with blocks. And i cannot imagine a game with a similar concept to minecraft, using more realistic polygon graphics, because there will be a huge amount of data to be processed, not only for the computer, but for the creator as well. It changes the lighthearted fun of building a mansion in blocks to the creation of a 3d house model for a game, which is considerably harder. And let's not forget the success of LEGO (that give you a sensation quite like minecraft) in recent years. As for games i played for the graphics, i would say a couple of less known titles, or at least i don't hear about them often: "El Shaddai: Ascension of the Metatron" for its artistic backgrounds and great stylistic choices that fit the world and story, and "Asura's Wrath" for it's rough looking, cool graphics
Starwars Batlefront is the most beautiful looking game on the PS$4, the forests for instance look real. Everybody complains about the lack of game to accompany the graphics, I like the game as it is but the complainers are right. Either way the game is beautiful. How is it made? I don't know.
Minecraft is a fantastic looking game. There is nothing bad about using squares. Voxels just work well and blocks make sense for building. you want to make a super accessible and simple building game give people some squire blocks. Besides have you seen what happens when you combine voxels and polygons? carpenters mod for minecrafter gives you everything you need to a less blocky minecraft.
I'm still a teensy bit miffed at the claim that Minecraft is "ugly." I might be an odd one, but I really like the look and feel of older graphics. Minecraft is very beautiful in its way. Same for Undertale. Or older games like Morrowind and FF IX. They aren't ugly, they just aren't photo-realistic.
I wonder if it would be possible to have an engine mix voxels with polygons, depending on the object? That way you could use voxels for world building and destructable terrain, while polygons could be used for creatures and things that are less destructable and more organic. Also, would it be possible to give voxels the equivalent of a bump map to make them appear less "blocky" themselves.
Only if the voxels were smaller... I mean I like minecraft, but after a while you get tired of those cubes. If they were 1/4 or even 1/8 of its size, you could absolutely build anything with more detail. Making round things in minecraft is tricky, either you have to make it really big or you are screwed.
Many newer games with landscape-mending capabiliteis like Space Engineers use kind of hybrid. The terrain and constructions are voxel based in principle but have a polygon mesh molded on top of it. This means they have the freedom of voxels but retain much more graphical capability with polygon graphics.
best episode so far
Really enjoyed this episode. Please do more like this!
Also, Minecraft is great, but the biggest game of the century? We're only 16 years in. How about the biggest game of the century so far?
6:38 "If voxels where shrunken down to be tiny they could build objects with a level of precision and detail that polygons could only dream of."
Voxels are just a way of storing 3D data. In fact voxels can be interpreted as polygons.
I do think a day will come when voxels will be viable. It's gonna take some time but there will be a time when computers will have the brute force to render things out of tiny voxels. The biggest benefit will be destructibility. The problem with destructible meshes in games these day is that most of the time the break points a precalulated and if it's not a lot has to be done to split a mesh in half and then once you've split it you have to add a texture to the cut side of the mesh. In the case of stone pillars placing down some rock texture is fine but say the thing being chopped in half is a fleshy human. There's a lot of different stuff going on inside the human body. The game Afro Samurai places a generic "meat" texture no matter where or how the bad guy was cut, sufficient but not realistic.
With voxels cutting it things in half is even easier just say everything on this side go here and everything on the other side go here. Not only could it be used to make realistically squish humans that exploding into realistic bits of viscera but walls and floors that break realistically too. Metal beams that bend and twist realistically, car that go crunch and spray a shower of broken glass. It could even be used to realistically simulate things like smoke and fluids. Heck, the Gels in Portal 2 were done in a voxelish way.
It's possible that someday voxels will be used instead of polygons, not for everything, but certainly for things that need break and distort realistically.
I don' fully understand why polygons are more economical than voxels. Sure, I can see why they'd be back in the day when they were all solid colors, but nowadays they have textures that are bitmaps, now instead of having all those voxels, you have all those pixels on the surface of each polygon, so I'd imagine it would work out to be about the same since you can have hollow objects made of voxels.
Metal Slug has always been a pinnacle of pixel art graphics in my book. SNK has some seriously dedicated artists that can crank out ridiculously smooth and detailed animations with a "limited" palette. The game couldn't work any other way, its aesthetics are deeply rooted in the pixel.
Personally I really like Minecraft's graphics it has kind of a pixel art charm to it. It's not like it's trying to look realistic or anything.
Another really cool blocky game that predates Minecraft is Sauerbraten (Cube 2). It's an open source game engine that uses 6-directional octrees to build the map. This differs from a "polygon soup" approach where all of the polygons are arranged ahead of time and then inserted into the scene - the octree *is* the map and all polygons are generated on the fly from its node structure.
sauerbraten.org/docs/dev/readme_developer.txt
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cube+2%3A_Sauerbraten
Minecraft doesn't render voxels. It uses polygons. Voxels are really just stored data. This is all on the Wikipedia page for Voxels.
This has been mentioned already, but there seems to be a lot of confusion, still.
This video makes a lot of mistakes, sadly.
I love the diversity that games offer to players, not only gameplay wise, but also visually. My personal preference actually goes to games that do not have a realistic feel to them. Take the Guild of Dungeoneering for example. Graphically it doesn't have too much to offer, but that's exactly the point. It stays true to the roots it was inspired from. It allows me to take the game for what it is: a fun experience during my spare time.
That's not to say that I feel that voxels are better than polygons, but I do think it allows creators to stick to unrealistic environments better and make games that are more attractive for me to play.
Minor correction - just as pixel is shorthand for "picture element", and texel is shorthand for "texture element", voxel is shorthand for "volume element". (Not volumetric pixel).
I understand that it is to make the parallel between pixels and voxels, but using the term "pixel" instead of "sprite", or at least never mentioning sprites makes the whole thing incorrect. Because when rendering, polygons get rasterized and displayed as pixels. And while the levels in Minecraft are stored as voxels, instead of say bsp or static meshes, they are still rendered using polygons.
There were 2 power-ups you missed in your Mario power up video. Those power-ups were the 1-up mushroom and super star.
Also when you said "That weird version of Mario 2" in your how Mario makes you a better player, did you mean the American or Japanese version?
This was an amazing episode that I almost skipped because I "knew" why Minecraft was blocky. Had no idea it was going to delve into the history of the voxel as well!
i think it's worth noting that not all polygon-based graphics used triangles, the Sega Saturn, for instance, used squares, which is why it was so hard to develop for, and why even now, it's quite hard to emulate well.
No mention of the vector graphics that early games like Asteroids and Tempest used? For the record, they lost out to pixels because they required specialized hardware to draw on the screen, which worked for arcade cabinets but not so well for home consoles.
I don't even know how many title like i wach some Minecraft videos but I still don't know about Minecraft beacuse I can only play fake of it right?
you forgot to mention outcast! great, beautiful game. Everquest Next is supposed to used voxels too!
Are voxels not just polygons cubed? Is the difference between a polygon as fundamentally different as Rector and Vector graphics?
Voxels are slowly finding a way back. Some realtime engines are making more overt use of Voxels, either rendering them on scene or using them to inform procedural polygon models, usually for landscaping.
It also has actual crops and trees and whatnot, but has absolutely no real science or even physics, it's practically not a survival SIMULATOR
Suggestion: the Japanese investigation game genre and its roots in the ideology of incarceration. ("There's always an answer, and the answer will produce a confession.")
One game's graphics that always stood out to me was the beautiful hand-drawn style of Yoshi's Island. That games graphics were drawn in an ageless style, and thus the visuals haven't aged a day.
i dont understand why you think minecraft looks ugly. i think it looks great. i dont think pixelated means ugly. it is what you do with the few pixels you have. and modern games they dont control what every single pixel in their models is but in minecraft they can (and did) design it so each pixel is exactly where they want it.
How the frig are CT scans unexciting?
+Jza Diamo I'm planning to start creating a GPU accelerated CT scan voxelizer at some point in the near future. My hopes are that I'll be able to make changes to CT scan based voxel models in real time like you can change the world of Minecraft in real time.
This is so that I could potentially make video game characters that have all the organs, muscles, bones, and blood that we do. It'll make it more fun to slice em and dice em in gameplay.
That's awesome! I mean, I'm not so into gore, so It's creepy to me, but nonetheless awesome!
If reality were a simulation, as Rich Terrile (the director of the Center for Evolutionary Computation and Automated Design at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory) argued back in 2012, it would be made of voxels.
interesting. personally i would disagree with him. it would be made of neither polygons nor voxels but rather the spherical equivalent of voxels
4:28 Game please?
+ReblazeGaming 3D Dot game heroes.
+ReblazeGaming Darude sandstorm
Joseph Wise thanx
If computing power continues to get cheaper and makes a jump similar to the one that allowed polygons to be used instead of pixels without a massive performance drop then voxels might take off.
Am I the only one that hears a faint phone alarm going off in the background a few times? I had to take my headphones out and check but its definitely coming from the video. Thought I was hearing things for a minute.
IIRC red alert stores its vehicle graphics as voxels, allowing them to be rocked by explosions nearby or robotic attacks from inside.
Minecraft is NOT made of voxels. you can easily see that in grass or wheet. the models are just 2d sprites nothing volumetric about them
Interestingly, Minecraft seems to be big in Japan. To the point where the blocky structure has influenced the design of the mecha in the newest Super Sentai series Jyuohger.
Minecraft is so blocky as an ode to blockheads everywhere. Now children will no longer view "blockhead" as an insult. Notch is taking it back.
Great video! But Minecraft DOES NOT render with voxels. It uses polygons.
Dear Jamin, there's something that has been bothering me. Do you do all the research and write all episodes by yourself, or are you just a host, reading a script someone else has written?
the game that I love the most for its graphics is Curse of Monkey Island. Cartoony style with the best background art ever.