So you want to create a videogame using voxels?

Then you'll have to first decide whether you want to start from scratch or use an existing game-engine.

Warning:
Starting from scratch requires knowledge about many different areas of programming. If you don't have any experience with 3D computer-graphics, or simply don't want to invest literal years of your very finite life, it might be best to start with a game engine instead.

Here are some questions you should ask yourself from the get-go...


— What should your voxels look like to the player?

  • Plain coloured cubes?
  • Textured cubes?
  • Smooth terrain?
  • Realistic?

How big will the individual voxels be, in relation to the player?

Too small, you loose the ability to easily build stuff; too big, there won't be enough detail for the mind to fill in.

Note that this directly plays into what your voxels look like!

How big do you want the world, that the player exists in, to be?

Keep in mind that, even if you procedurally generate an entire planet, you will still have to fill it with interesting content; best start small!

— Will players be able to play together?

If you start with just singleplayer and then try to add multiplayer on top... you will be in for a colossal world of pain. Plan ahead for this.

— Do you want your voxels to be destructible by the player?

Some optimizations can only be done during development-time, instead of runtime, due to the soft realtime constraints of videogames; making the switch later is very annoying.


Minecraft Clone?

If you do intend to create a voxel-based videogame, there is something you should be immediately and acutely aware of:

No matter what you do, your game will inevitably be compared to Minecraft... and that's okay!

Copying and remixing other peoples ideas has been happening for quite literally thousands of years across all creative disciplines!

Nothing these days is truly original, so don't worry about it and just create what you like!

As a matter of fact, Minecraft is strongly inspired (read: a 'clone') of an earlier game: Infiniminer.

Having said that, Copyrights and Trademarks are very real things, so don't go using assets from Minecraft (or other games for that matter!) in your own project... unless you want to get sued.

Always check that the things you use have the proper license.

You have been warned!