Working on an autonomous NPC system in a voxel-based game (Kingforge)
u/ElykraGames — 14 hours ago
r/VoxelGames
I built a Vulkan ray-marched voxel sandbox in Rust because I got tired of switching between Minecraft and external tools just to make custom blocks
My daughter and I have spent countless hours in Minecraft creative mode. Over time we kept reaching for external apps to design custom blocks, models, and textures. It worked, but the context switching killed the flow. At some point I thought -- why isn't all of this just... in the game? An ultimate creative mode where you never have to leave to make something new.
So I built Voxel World.
It's a GPU-accelerated voxel sandbox written in Rust that renders entirely through Vulkan compute shaders. No vertex/fragment pipeline -- everything is ray marched through a 3D texture. I went this route because I wanted to see how far you could push pure compute-based voxel rendering and honestly because it was a fun engineering challenge.
What started as a rendering experiment turned into a pretty full-featured creative sandbox:
World building tools -- 20+ tools for cube, sphere, torus, arch, bridge, bezier curves, helix, stairs, terrain brushes, clone stamp, and more. All the stuff we wished Minecraft had built in.
In-game model editor -- Sub-voxel models at 8^3, 16^3, or 32^3 resolution with 32-color palettes and per-voxel emission. 175 built-in models (torches, fences, doors, glass panes, etc.) and a full editor for making your own with pencil, fill, mirror, undo/redo. This was the big one for us -- being able to design a model and place it without alt-tabbing.
Procedural texture generator -- Design custom block textures in-game with real-time pattern preview. No more exporting to an image editor and hoping the tiling works.
The world itself is procedurally generated with 17 biomes, 4 cave types, 9 tree species, water/lava simulation, and falling block physics. 47 block types with 608 painted variants (any of 19 textures in any of 32 color tints). Day/night cycle, shadow rays, ambient occlusion, animated clouds, stars, water, point lights with animation modes. Quality presets scale from potato to ultra depending on your hardware.
Multiplayer is still very work in progress but getting better. Encrypted UDP, up to 4 players, full world sync. The networking stack has been the hardest part to get right -- epoch-aware chunk dedup, LZ4 compression, handling the host running both server and client. It works but I wouldn't call it battle-tested yet.
Runs on Linux, macOS, and Windows. MIT licensed, fully open source.
Repo: https://github.com/paulrobello/voxel-world
Build from source: git clone https://github.com/paulrobello/voxel-world.git && cd voxel-world && make run
If you have any questions about the rendering pipeline, the sub-voxel model system, or the chunk streaming architecture I'm happy to dig into the details. This has been a wild project to work on and I've learned a ton building it.
u/probello — 3 days ago
Bad Goons [Free steam key]
Hi everyone!
We’re a small team of friends who have been developing a small shooter game called Bad Goons, for nearly a year now. We’ve reached the point where we need more players to jump in and help us validate the gameplay experience! So we would like to invite everyone to come join our playtest sessions:
- How: Request your free steam key on our discord server.
- When: Thursdays & Saturdays at 5 PM GMT/UTC.
The game is still in an early state, so your feedback will directly help shape its development. Come join us and help make Bad Goons something special!
u/tajlor23 — 7 days ago
Our Steam Page just went live. If a Reality Repair Technician Simulator with a Voxel Art Style sounds appealing, consider wish-listing
u/ConsiderationOk5914 — 8 days ago
Stylized Voxel Game I'm Making
Hi everyone,
I've been working on a stylized voxel game for the past four years and wanted share it and see what people think.
The game is still in it's early stage but I plan to post more about it as I finish parts of it.
If it's something that you like please whishlist it on steam.
Steam: https://store.steampowered.com/app/4581200/In_Their_Footsteps/
Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@SwapChainError
u/SwapChainError — 7 days ago
▲ 6 r/VoxelGames
Wildyverse micro-voxel engine: pre-alpha release
Hello everyone,
I released a pre-alpha version of Wildyverse recently. Wildyverse is a micro-voxel engine that I've been developing since a little bit more than 1 year now. It can simulate physically any structure of any size and it already features some elements to build.
The goal is to make a survival game where craft happens when different voxel materials are connecting and where everything can be physically simulated to create boat, planes or any type of vehicles !
Link to download the pre-alpha: https://www.wildyverse.com/
u/Vinwcent — 10 days ago
▲ 18 r/VoxelGames
Voxborn. Can there be too much interaction with environment in a game? some even useless reactions, but making the world more believable? And even chain reactions.
u/radolomeo — 13 days ago
Finally convinced my team to add an explosion to the game
Now it just needs some sound effects
u/ConsiderationOk5914 — 14 days ago
▲ 9 r/VoxelGames
I made a building game that is a mix of LEGO and r/place. Here is what happened on Day 1.
I’ve been frustrated for a while because most building games on Roblox feel like Minecraft clones or low-effort cash-grabs. My goal was to create something that feels like old-school LEGO mixed with the chaos of r/place.
I ended up making Build A Stud together with my friends. It is a creative sandbox where you place individual studs and color them. You can work with friends, strangers, or just build by yourself.
How the game is structured:
Spawn Island: This is the social hub. It resets every 10 minutes so you can meet new people and mess around quickly before moving on.
The Public Canvases: This is the core of the game. We have 20 different color-coded servers that act as massive 7-day persistent maps. Everything you build stays there for a full week, so you can actually collaborate with strangers on huge projects over time.
Private Islands: For when you want to build in peace. You have full control over who can visit or build, and there are no reset times.
The Launch: We hit a peak of 29 players today. Most people were playing on tablets and phones, which was a huge eye-opener for us in terms of making building and coloring feel good on a touch screen.
The Builds: We have already seen a bit of everything. There was some griefing, but we also saw someone spend their time building a fancy dragon in one of the public lobbies. Someone else is currently working on a really nice house. We even have a few regulars who have been coming back throughout the day to check on their builds and add more detail.
What now? I am not posting links here (you can find us if you are curious), I just wanted to showcase the project and see what people think of the concept.
For those who like building games, what features make a persistent world actually stick for you? Is it about having more progression, or just better tools to work together?
u/Upset-Pin-7958 — 17 days ago