About David Williams

David is a post-doctorate researcher at the University of Groningen, The Netherlands, where he is investigating GPU computing. Prior to this he worked in the games industry and wrote graphics/engine code for a number of PC/PS3/XBox titles. As well as making games he occasionally enjoys playing them, and also sometimes gets outside to do some photography.

First Day at Develop Conference

Posted on July 11, 2012 by David Williams

Well, we’re finally here! Matt and I both arrived in Brighton (UK) last night where the conference kicked off with welcome drinks and a screening of Indie Game: The Movie (great film for those who haven’t seen it). There was lots of socializing and it was a good opportunity to meet fellow developers.

We were up pretty early this morning because we had to set up the stand before the conference started. It all went pretty smoothly and I’m really pleased with the Voxeliens poster we had printed. We also had the idea to make a large origami voxelien but this turned out to be too much work. You can see the stand in the picture below:

David manning our stand at Develop

There has been a fairly constant stream of people coming to try the game and most seem to like it. The simple nature of the game seems to work well in a situation where people spend just a few minutes at the booth. Even David Braben (creator of Elite) stopped by to have a look!

Having to man the stand meant we didn’t get to many of the talks though. The only one I went to was a Q&A session with the Steam Team, who were talking about their plans for Greenlight amoung other things. We’re hoping they’ll find time to drop by the Indie Dev Showcase tomorrow.

Anyway, we’re both really tired after the long day and our throats hurt from talking so much! But do come and say hi if you’re around tomorrow 🙂

What next for PolyVox?

Posted on June 22, 2012 by David Williams

We’ve been hard at work on Voxeliens for about a year now, and since starting this blog it’s almost all we’ve been talking about. Our PolyVox library has basically been on the back-burner, but with development on Voxeliens very nearly complete, we are starting to get time to work on it again.

Readers not familiar with PolyVox should have a read of this page, but in a nutshell it is the voxel engine which underpins Voxeliens. It’s firmly aimed at programmers rather than gamers, and has had some success in being used for a number of different projects (link). In the future we’d like to use this blog to talk about our technology as well as our games, and I’m going to kick that off with a quick discussion of what’s coming next for PolyVox.

One idea we have been working on is to separate the properties of a voxel from the algorithm. Voxels are no longer required to have a ‘getDensity()’ and/or ‘getMaterial()’ functions, and can instead provide whatever properties they wish (or none at all, as primitive types can now be used as voxels). Algorithms can then make use of function objects which explain how a particular voxel type should be interpreted. This is similar in concept to how the std::sort function takes a comparison object to define how types are sorted.
The same concept can be applied at a higher level. For example, the Cubic SurfaceExtractor used to use getMaterial() to determine when to generate quads for the output mesh. In the new version the user instead provides an ‘IsQuadNeeded()’ function object which is called for pairs of voxels. Instead of just using material, the user’s implementation of this function could also consider the transparency of the voxels when generating the mesh.
Meanwhile, Matt has started reviving the SWIG bindings, and there is some chance we will be making use of these ourselves in the future (which will provide some incentive for us to keep them in working order). He’s also started setting up nightly tests for them so hopefully we can notice more quickly if something breaks.
Lastly, we want to try and add some polish to the next release. This means introducing real version numbers rather than just snapshots, creating a branch in Git for the release, removing/fixing some broken stuff, and getting some documentation written.

These changes might not seem too revolutionary, but this is because we’ve mostly been focused on Voxeliens. Hopefully we can lay the groundwork for future developments and get PolyVox into a position where we can accept contributions from members of our community. After all this work on game development we’re quite looking forward to getting back to the technology 🙂

Voxeliens in C’t Magazine

Posted on June 9, 2012 by David Williams

We’ve received a fair amount of publicity for Voxeliens, but this is a whole new step! We recently found out that the game has appeared in the German computer magazine C’t, which is the second most popular computer magazine in Germany. According to Wikipedia it has a circulation of 315,000. Printed magazines may seems a little old fashioned in the days of the internet, but it really means a lot to get some mainstream recognition 🙂

Even though I can’t read the article I decided it would be nice to have a copy of this, so I ordered one through their website. A German-speaking friend has given me a rough translation and it seems quite positive. For anyone who’s interested you can see the article below.

The title translates as ‘Cosmic Shooting Gallery’ which sounds cool!

In other news, I put the (hopefully) final touches to the OpenGL version of the shader code tonight, which is a big step forward for the Linux version of the game. I know Matt’s hard at work on that so I’ll let him update you in due course.

Voxeliens is now on GamersGate

Posted on May 30, 2012 by David Williams

In January of this year we received an email from Daniel Hjelmtorp (Executive VP of GamersGate) explaining that they had seen the initial screenshots of Voxeliens and were keen to sell it through their website. It was really motivating for us to know that a well established player in the industry thought our game had some potential, and so we’re pleased to announce that GamersGate has today become the first distribution service to be carrying Voxeliens! You can find it at this link, or by clicking on the GamersGate logo below.

Thanks to the GamersGate team for their support!

First glimpse of Voxeliens running under OpenGL

Posted on May 20, 2012 by David Williams

This weekend I’ve started the process of getting Voxeliens to run under OpenGL as well as Direct3D. A large part of this transition is handled automatically as we use Ogre as our rendering system and it already has support for both APIs. However, we do need to convert all our HLSL shaders into GLSL versions.

So far this transition is going fairly smoothly, and the screenshot below is taken from the new OpenGL version. As you can see, the voxel colours are coming through but the lighting and shadows are missing. Shadows are probably going to be the trickiest part but hopefully it will come together over the next week of so.

Although I’m still working on Windows, the motivation behind the OpenGL version is to allow the port to Linux. Stay tuned for further updates!

What next for Voxeliens?

Posted on May 10, 2012 by David Williams

Hello again! Well it’s been a busy couple of weeks but, with the Windows version of Voxeliens finally out of the door, I thought it would be useful to update everyone on our plans for the next couple of months. Getting the game released was a huge milestone but it’s not the end of the project yet 😉

I’ve spent some time over the last week tweaking the payment system. I’ll talk more about this in a future blog post, but basically we wanted a smoother experience. For example, the price displayed now include VAT so there are no more surprises when you reach the checkout stage. We’ve also removed the address and phone number requirements for PayPal orders.

I’m also pleased to announce that we expect to have Voxeliens on GamersGate within the next few weeks. GamersGate contacted us after they saw the initial set of screenshots which we released in December, and I’m currently preparing the material needed to build our product page on their website. Hopefully there will be more news about this in the near future.

After that the priority is the Linux version. Matt will have an important role here as he knows Linux better than I do, but I’m hoping the port won’t be too difficult. We need to port the shaders to GLSL and remove some Windows-specific input code, but we had cross-platform support in mind from the start. We’ll probably also want some Linux testers so stay tuned if you’re interested.

So that’s the immediate plan. There will also be some longer term investment in Voxeliens in terms of getting it onto other distribution sites, running promotional activities, etc, but I expect that in a couple of months we will be able to get back to PolyVox and have a think about our next project.

Voxeliens is out now!

Posted on April 27, 2012 by David Williams

We’re excited to announce that, after more than a year of development, the Windows version of Voxeliens is finally released. You can now download the demo or purchase the full game from our online shop.

Thanks to everyone who has helped us bring the game to completion! It may seem like just a two-man project, but when you consider the testers, the developers of the open source software we used, and the people who contributed art and sound assets it becomes clear that we couldn’t have done it without you. We hope everyone enjoys the game, and please do let us know what you think!

David and Matt

Voxeliens release date!

Posted on April 22, 2012 by David Williams

Ok, here we go… after a sucessful beta testing program we can finally announce that Voxeliens will be released on Friday 27th April! Just writing these words feels pretty scary, as this game has been such a big part of our lives and the end is finally upon us.

The version released on Friday will be Windows only, but we will soon be working on the Linux version and hopefully MacOS soon after that. A simultaneous release would have been nice but it was just too much work.

On Friday we will also make the demo available, so you will be able to test the game before purchasing. Be sure to come back then!

More Voxelien renders

Posted on April 15, 2012 by David Williams

First of all, thanks to everyone who has helped with testing! It seems that overall the game is in a pretty good state, and we hope to produce a release candidate in the next few days. We’ll send that out to all testers and, assuming there are no major problems, this will be the version which gets uploaded to our online store.

We’ve also done some more high quality renders of the Voxelien enemies. I have to admit, I really like making these 🙂

Voxeliens is ready for testing!

Posted on April 1, 2012 by David Williams

Update: Thanks for all the interest! We now have enough beta testers and have been gettings some useful feedback on the game. So far there are no major problems so we hope to get the final game out soon.

We’re pleased to announce that a release of Voxeliens is now getting close. Before release, we would like to get a number of people to test the game. The main aims of the testing are to ensure compatibiliy with as many systems as possible, and also to set an appropriate level of difficulty. Naturally we would also like your opinion on the game, but be aware that we won’t be making any significant gameplay changes as we hope to release soon.

Each play of the game will only take about 10-15 minutes, but we’ll ask you to give it a few plays so we can see how you progress with practice. A log file will be recording how far you get and how long each level takes. The testing period will probably run for a couple of weeks and there may be more than one beta version released. The last version you receive will be the release candidate, so you’ll basically get the final game for free. 🙂

If you are interested then please send an email to david<at>volumesoffun<dot>com with the subject ‘Voxeliens testing’. If we don’t get back to you straight away then please be patient, as we’ll start with just a few people and then expand from there. Please note that this first version is for Windows only. Linux and MacOS ports will follow once the final Windows version is released.

Hope to hear from you!

Volumes Of Fun

Voxel-based games and technology

Author Archives: David Williams