Hi Touch Arcade community! What is Littlecube Valley? Littlecube Valley is an upcoming voxel sandbox roleplaying game, set in a medieval fantasy world made of many colourful little cubes. Our primary inspirations are Cube World and Voxatron, with secondary influences from Dwarf Fortress, Ardacraft and classic-RPG games. The content of the game will be developed in modules using major incremental updates and it is aimed at Apple Arcade. Link to the development blog. Updates (07th July 2020) I have finally completed reworking on the template character and grass trampling. A new blog post on Procedural Voxel Grass Generation has been posted. The latest development video now shows the character running around the procedural grass field. Some screenshots to show. I have submitted the details of this project to Apple Arcade, but I think the likelihood of approval could be pretty low. Cheers!
Development Update #3 Hi guys/gals, My apologies for long period as I was working on quite of a lot of art assets and also the geometric solutions in order to achieve the present visual aesthetics. I have also uploaded a new video and posted the various screenshots for your viewing pleasure! Many thanks to those of you who had read my blog or followed the facebook page!
Development Update #4 Hi guys/gals, I have completed another major overhaul of the game system. I have also uploaded the new screenshots which are a lot more vibrant. To summarise, I have completed upgrading the entire rendering solution to iOS Metal. We also now have a level of detail solution for performance purposes. And the voxels now show better clarity, with updated texturing and colours. The audio subsystem has been implemented as well. The images below show low levels of interior detail for the cottage. Next, the video below shows the upgraded visual aesthetics, the improved performance and the audio implementation. The development video now has audio enabled, with one music track from WOW Sound. Subscribe to the TouchArcade YouTube channel Thanks!
I had been working on a procedural world generation solution, just finished the river network. I still have to work on cascaded levels of detail before converting all these data and getting them to get in my custom voxel engine. I will update the blog another day, until I can match Wollay's world map generation system and output.
@Robert denis, thanks for the compliment! Development update #5 is now ready! All the details will be mentioned on the blog. Procedurally Cascaded World Maps To summarise, it now has a much more improved river generation system and it also now comes with biomes. I can now combine this solution with the existing isometric voxel system that I currently have. The list of images are now on Imgur. For your convenience, this is what a level 1 cascaded biome map would look like. And its corresponding river network. The next step is to integrate both the procedural map system and the isometric voxel system together, to get a near-infinite game world and a hierarchical world map similar to that seen in the unreleased version of Cube World.
Updates (3rd April 2019) My apologies for the late update. Previously, I showed that A* Search and Voronoi can be used to generate rivers on a procedurally generated world map and cascade for a near-infinite world. There were a number of glaring issues that needed to be resolved. Today, I am excited to summarise that the solution can now achieve the following : 1) River branching, braided river networks, varying river widths. 2) Height field generation using a numerical integration solution, which eliminates the use of coherent noise. 3) Hybrid method for terrain generation using pre-fabricated voxel data and procedural modelling. All technical details, images and video are now on the blog. Major update on World map, Rivers, Elevation and Character Animations I have compiled a video showing the progress in character animations and procedural terrain generation. The images below show the various regions of our procedurally generated terrain. Our next step is to work on civilisation locations and road networks on the world maps. We also need to adding flora and fauna as world content, and attempt to convert the current coloured world maps into medieval fantasy maps as seen before in World of Warcraft and Warhammer Online. The recent announcement of Apple Arcade has breathed new excitement into my project. I intend to submit my project to Apple one day and let them evaluate if I could join such an elite club. Because this is the only way to address the incoming disruption posed by Hytale (46 million views now). Cheers!
My apologies for the late update and it has been about a year since then. Apart from reworking on the voxel game engine, I have also been working on procedural grass generation. This is the result after numerous iterations. There are still a few more things to take care of, including new character designs before I update with a video on grass trampling and the blog post.
Looks interesting. Voxel reminds me of old times. So, when is the intended release date? Also will environment be destructible as well as characters? I miss the good times when dismemberment was a thing. And no, I am not a psychopath. I think.
Hi Jstorm, To be honest, I am not too sure about the release date. But the goal for early access is to at least allow the player to explore a small village and its surroundings. And that is after the world map generation gets an upgrade. As for voxel destruction, I intend to have it for certain objects that would make sense to allow for destruction, such as cutting down trees. But rampaging a village and its houses would be reserved for monsters, while the player is the one to defend it, unless the player is the one on the offensive against an enemy camp. If an enemy monster or character gets defeated, it should have the voxel destruction animation similar to that seen in Voxatron. Although, I am not too sure on the issue of friendly hits, but I will revisit this issue once I get voxel destruction working. Thank you for your reply!
Well, it seems you got quite a way to go until release. I wish you luck then. I believe your game really appeals especially to old farts like myself who saw the transition between 2D and 3D.
