SoA Tech: Round Voxel Planets

Hey all! This is a technical video explaining in detail the differences between the brand new round planet mapping scheme and the old one, and it also touches on torus worlds a bit. Thanks to all of you for leaving suggestions on the previous planet videos, and be sure to leave your opinions and suggestions in the comments!

Oh, and please excuse the rendering ugliness, we're in a pretty deep back-end dev phase and aesthetics have been on the back burner for a while. We'll make sure everything looks pretty for the next release!

Download (Outdated. Wait until 0.2.0 for best experience):

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BUG REPORTING AND SUPPORT

Seed Of Andromeda is programmed in C++/Opengl/SDL

Steam Group: Seed Of Andromeda (search on steam)

~THE TEAM~
Lead Developer / Programmer: Ben Arnold
Designer & Web Developer: Matthew Marshall
Web Developer: Jesse Leskinen
Artist & Designer: Georg Hammerschmid
3D Artist & Animator: Andreas Ressl
Community Manager: Patrick Cavanagh
Programmer: Frank McCoy
Programmer: Jeremy Fischer

Contributors:
Isaque Dutra
Nathan Matthews

[IntrinsicGameStudio]

Hey everyone the game is dead. I'm working on something new now that I have almost a decade of experience, but I'm balancing that with a AAA career so will be a few years until I post anything about it. Until then, subscribe and maybe you will see a video from me pop into your feed in a few years. EDIT: Check out newest videos :D

[wesofx]

You've created by far the most technically impressive voxel games I've ever seen. It's truly inspiring.

[hershes]

Shout out to YouTube showing me someone else’s attempt at solving the SPECIFIC problem with many of the same specific details I have been pondering the past few days! Awesome videos on here, bummer I’m years too late. Hope all has been going well for you!

[passengerpigeonjay]

In the worse case scenario at about 7:20, one possible solution would be to add post processing effects that would distract enough from the size change.  If you look at the NMS clip, the sky becomes much brighter and "noisier" and washed out during transition, probably to account not only for a worst case scenario but also to simulate what atmospheric entry would look like.

[sownheard]

It Looks a lot better than before keep up the good work

[HiAdrian]

2:14 Same thing on Earth at the Bermuda triangle. Lots of strange phenomena happening where the seams meet.

[apmario]

bro ive been wondering how this could possibly be done forever and here youve finally done it

[WatcherOfShadows]

This game looks sooo freaking promising. Please please please keep at it!

[paulwhited]

Wow! Everything looks amazing! Can't believe just a few years ago I would watch you programming this in class :') brings tears to my eyes! 

[DJoppiesaus]

Wow that distortion was way more serious than I thought. It causes motion sickness!
Great work!

[kawallabair]

Awesome work, I wouldn't worry about peoples views on distortion, navigators and cartographers had a very similar problem when designing naval mapping haha. The reason for so many different styles of map is in determining what is important to the reader, whether it's proportionality or accuracy of distance.

[poorlymadeproduction]

Once you can generate entire planets from the very beginning and get space to planetary landings figured out, you can do ANYTHING with that engine.
That is something frontier developments did not get right.

[Hugobros]

I've discovered your project like a month ago while looking on how to do properly various things in a voxel game engine ( especially the lightning propagation, huge thanks for making a reddit post on that ! ). And I gotta say that this is, by far, the best and the most promising blocky space-sim game I have ever saw, and if such a game is vowed to success then SoA should be that one. Cheers from a lazy 18 years-old belgian programmer.

[unweeked]

For anyone who wants another take at spherical planets, take a look at the development of PlanetSmith :)
It's ongoing and doesn't use cubes but hexagonal blocks.

[radicaltrooper]

my guy is still responding after 7 years

[lufsss_]

as a beginner in game dev this video made my jaw drop. Impressive stuff dude!

[christynprice]

+Ben Arnold I know this is an old video, but I was going to say, if some camera shaking was added, due to entering atmosphere ;), then you could hide the change in size/position of the landscape features, not sure about exiting the planet, but I feel most people would be looking to space while exiting.

[scruffles]

Man this is actually awesomely impressive, I hope one day this gets picked up again somehow

[devinmedina]

This is amazing... I love how the scale of the planet and how it looks from space. Keep it up!

[CrazyTechReviews]

I really enjoyed this video. I like how you show how you solve all these complex geometric problems. look forward to seeing more content!