The chosen style of our project was decided to follow a voxel style tower defense, for both its level design & assets developed. Though when referring to a voxel based game, there are many different styles which the assets can follow from its common cubic design. However, for this project we aimed to stay with the simple cubic design to keep production composed. To understand the different formats of voxel, I decided to research into its design methods as well as games which have used voxels within a different method.
Voxel formats
Voxels within the present development of games, are used through a numerous amount of methods to generate cubic pixel perfect worlds, & level generation. A common format of voxel games persist of cubic world generation designs, alongside its variation of pixel perfect assets generated within a 3D construct.
Cubic generation
Voxels are commonly contributed with the design of cubic assets & environments, due to its default generation being a consistent scale of x, y, & z, cubes. The first voxel based game to be developed was Commanche: Maximum Overkill released in 1992.
Currently, its cubic voxel generation is used widely within 3D games as a method to transfer 2D pixel designs into an open environment. An iconic example leading cubic world generation would be Minecraft. However other voxel based instances, such as teardown, trove, & Crossey Road have also used voxels with a different design approach to it individual characters, objects & environments.
For example, Minecraft follows a consistent cube scale grid, to construct a simplistic design. Whereas, Trove uses a similar scale grid, mixed with a different scale of voxels detailed into objects, characters, & enemies.
Poly world generation
When developing a 3D poly environment, voxels are used in a different format to construct procedural terrain, or environmental editors for the player to destroy or create. Voxels in a 3D poly world are used to design & build the environments which the player will traverse through procedural environments, or premade structures.
An example of a Voxel poly world game would be the procedural environment’s & planets of no mans sky. Voxels in this format is used to generate random outputs of planets, flora, & inhabiting fauna.
Tower defense voxel design
The tower defence we are developing has planned to follow a cubic voxel design upon the assets & level design environments. When developing the tower units & assets conceptualized, two methods are available to construct the assets within blender, using the re-mesh tool to reconstruct the poly meshes into cubic blocks. Magicavoxel will also be used to develop environmental assets & structures.
For my assets, I will use blender to construct the tower units & enemies, while using Magicavoxel to develop environmental flora & structures. To picture an example of a voxel style western, matching the research requirements, I gathered some inspiration from Trove’s frontier environment, & teardowns western themed structures created through mods.
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