Hello everyone!

It's been a few years now that I have this project in mind. I've been working on prototypes for around 6 years and now I am ready to work on a final project: VoxelVerse.

It is made in Godot 4.0 (at least the beta, for now).

Here, I'll explain the experience I had with this project and where I am going, the state of it as time goes on.

Some context:

6 years ago, working with Unity, I decided to try creating a Minecraft like game. I quickly learned that it would require way more work than expected and I started to see why people usually say "You should not do this, it's too difficult". And they were right, but I was stubborn and kept trying.

Now, the project I am working on will be a community based game. It takes inspiration a lot more from Forge than Minecraft itself, for all of the technical stuff. I would like this game to be more like an engine or a sandbox where players can create their content as much as they wish and let out their imagination! I would like to allow everyone to create and share their addons, maps, and stories.

The goals with this is to let players go through a new experience every time they play a user-made world. From Minecraft-like worlds with a big emphasis on survival, to entirely story-driven worlds, each with their own content. But still Voxel based. Everything can be created for each of your world: Blocks, Items, Characters... It's up to you!

A look to the past:

As I said up there, I started this project a long time ago. It went through many stages but most of them were experiments and only for me to learn how to make it possible. Some projects were only focused on optimization and how much I could push the engine to it's limits (which is why I decided to stick to Godot, it gives me a lot of control)

My first projects: Unity

These were the first, my introduction to the idea of Voxel worlds. They allowed me to learn the most and find my way.

The search for optimization: XNA/MonoGame

I always wanted to be able to create huge worlds, to create nice landscapes and most of all: Make it WORK. The biggest challenge has always been to make it performant and not a mess filled with lag and stutters every time the world generates. And this was the hard part. Learning about asynchronous calls, chunks, and especially the choice for the right engine! I needed control over every single aspect of the project but still needed an engine to work with.

Which is where I am now.

Today: Godot

Here is the current state of the project. It is way more complex than it looks (but that's what I will explain later on). I decided to stick with Godot for the perfect mix between control and features. The engine is lightweight and allows me to optimize as much as I can, where I was completely unable to do it with Unity.

I have implemented so many solutions to allow customization, freedom, and I made it ready for mods and addons! And from this point onwards, I'll post details about the interesting parts of the project and the state of it.

Let me know your thoughts about it, I'd love to hear some feedback :)