Veloren – Voxel action-adventure role-playing

340 points by tete 3 months ago | 91 comments
  • skitter 3 months ago
    If you're interested in how the mountains and rivers are generated, it's mostly based on the paper "Large Scale Terrain Generation from Tectonic Uplift and Fluvial Erosion": Each chunk rises (at a noise-based, constant rate) while erosion is applied based on the chunk's slope and the size of its catchment area.

    The result is a river network as well as the central height of each chunk; based on this roads, caves and structures are laid out. The actual voxels are only determined when a player loads the area and are (usually) not persisted.

    Also, for some technologies not related to worldgen: Rendering is done via wgpu, models are built in MagicaVoxel, and both client and server use an ECS (specs).

    • misnome 3 months ago
      Minor note that installation via the launcher (Why a launcher!?!) seems a bit broken. Both the direct mac download, and installing from Cargo, installs Airshipper v0.15.0. This says that it's outdated and to install a new version. Clicking the button to do this takes you to the Github releases page, where the latest version is 0.14. There's a december release for v0.16 but it's a tag only and has no artifacts. Quit in frustration.

      Edit: Despite having an issues page, the GitHub page of the launcher is apparently only a mirror of the GitLab repository. GitLab has artifacts for the latest version. I am mystified why they send people to the GitHub page on their officially linked and `cargo install` downloads.

      • suavesito 3 months ago
        The launcher was there to make it easier to pull the latest build without needing to check if a new version was available. A couple of years back the updates were irregular (sometimes a few days, other more than a week). We regularized the new builds once a week, but, still, the launcher now serves as a way to explore different unofficial or experimental servers that are being available (via registering in the GitLab project).
    • littlestymaar 3 months ago
      I want to like Veloren, I've been following the project for a long time as I like their design goal and the art direction they have, but even after all this time it's the perfect illustration of what you get when you try making a game with just artists and developers and with no game designers: lots of things are very cool but as a video game it just keep missing the mark.
      • tormeh 3 months ago
        Agreed. I've contributed to the game, so I feel like I have some sort of insight here. Veloren is a bunch of cool features in a bag, but my impression is that there is little focus on the gameplay loop and the holistic player experience. For rather obvious reasons any change that's not achievable by a single person in their free time is also just very hard to get done. Besides, Veloren is popular enough that drastic changes are unlikely to be uncontroversial. I don't blame anyone for this. I guess it's just the nature of open source game development.

        Still, I recommend anyone with a bit of time on their hands try it out. There's a couple of hours of decent fun in it. There's a lot to see and explore. The somewhat incoherent design is a bit of a strength at times, since it means the game is not very predictable. Just don't be disappointed when it's not a polished time sink like WoW.

      • echelon 3 months ago
        Rust gaming is picking up.

        Veloren's mainline client is built on its own engine.

        Tiny Glade uses Bevy ECS, but has it's own graphics stack.

        Both Bevy and Fyrox are starting to get pretty capable. They're not Godot yet, but they're getting there. Bevy and Fyrox have very different design goals, so there's something for everyone.

        Bevy leans hard into ECS and has a ton of utility crates and third party libraries, such as level builders. Fyrox is not so heavily tied to ECS and tries to build everything in as a complete package. Bevy is the more mature engine, but both are viable.

        Both can be easily deployed to the web as WASM bundles, so they're ideal for multi platform targeting.

        Rust is shaping up to be a major game programming language. And it's already an incredible web backend / RPC / API service programming language, so you can write your game server in Rust too.

        • wavemode 3 months ago
          As the old joke goes - Rust has 50 game engines but only 5 games.

          The tools are there, sure, but are major studios using them?

          • tormeh 3 months ago
            The only currently maintained generally available engines used by major studios are Unreal and Unity. Maybe you could count CryEngine, but afaik only one major developer besides Crytek themselves use it. Some indies use Godot, but that's hardly "major studios".

            Also, no, the Rust tools are not there. Unreal and Unity both have entire ecosystems around them that are at least as important as the engines themselves. Plus asset stores, support staff, console support, and all manner of other stuff you want when your headcount enters the triple digits. You can download an open source fork of CryEngine (O3DE - complicated story) right now. It's free, and no one uses it, because it lacks the non-code extras.

            • prox 3 months ago
              Godot is picking up Steam (ha!) with more and more releases.
            • littlestymaar 3 months ago
              Not a major studio, but a BAFTA Nominee game[1] is not nothing either.

              [1]: https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/2198150/view/6559419...

              • Rohansi 3 months ago
                Tiny Glade is not nothing but I wouldn't really call it a game. There is no objective and next to no simulation - it just lets you build dioramas.
              • Guthur 3 months ago
                Because it has marginal to no benefit over existing c++ stacks, and more important would be economically detrimental because the majority of game developers doing engine coding are c++ developers.
              • bobajeff 3 months ago
                I don't know if that's true or not but from the perspective of someone who's only looking at open source game engines Bevy looks pretty attractive.

                It's looks very capable (Tiny Glade looks amazing), the code base is new and modular. The missing stuff that keeps me away right now is a built-in editor/IDE and scripting and/or node system.

                So right now Godot is looking more attractive to me.

                I'm also keeping an eye on O3DE but that one I think needs better hardware than I have.

                • tormeh 3 months ago
                  Note that Tiny Glade implemented their own Vulkan renderer, although they do use the rest of the Bevy code base, I think. At least the ECS.

                  Bevy's WGPU renderer is a lot less fancy than Tiny Glade's Vulkan renderer.

                • knowknow 3 months ago
                  I feel like there’s this assumption from Rust enthusiasts that Rust will supersede all other languages and tools. While it’s cool that these things are being done, it’s not enough to show that it will become a major game programming language. Especially due to how mature and sophisticated other tools are in comparison to the Rust tools.
                  • pandemic_region 3 months ago
                    What about Jai ?
                    • Ygg2 3 months ago
                      Is it publicly available?
                      • jsheard 3 months ago
                        Nope, there's an inner circle of beta testers but it's still effectively vaporware as far as the general public is concerned, even after a decade of development.
                      • lawn 3 months ago
                        Is there anything you can run with Jai yet?
                      • heromal 3 months ago
                        > Rust is shaping up to be a major game programming language.

                        No it's not

                        • ecshafer 3 months ago
                          You were downvoted but I think youre right. So many games are made in C++, C#, Lua, GML, Haxe, even Swift, Java and Javascript if you include mobile and web games. In terms of raw number of games, Rust isn’t in the top 10 yearly.
                          • pjmlp 3 months ago
                            Also to note, games industry is very conservative, it took a few decades for those languages to be adopted, and in many cases a push from platform owner was also required.
                            • heromal 3 months ago
                              My comment didn't add much in the way of discussion, so it probably should have been downvoted. But like you said, Rust isn't making a dent so far, and it'll take much more than memory safety to convince the industry to switch to e.g. Bevy rather than the big 2.
                        • dang 3 months ago
                          Related. Others?

                          Veloren, an open source game, release 0.16 - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39876804 - March 2024 (17 comments)

                          Five Years of Veloren - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36259635 - June 2023 (1 comment)

                          Veloren is a multiplayer voxel RPG written in Rust - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33496414 - Nov 2022 (4 comments)

                          Veloren is a multiplayer voxel RPG written in Rust - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30667022 - March 2022 (177 comments)

                          Veloren – Open-source MMORPG written in Rust - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26037461 - Feb 2021 (143 comments)

                          Veloren: An open-world, open-source multiplayer voxel RPG written in Rust - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20347286 - July 2019 (1 comment)

                          • ianbutler 3 months ago
                            Okay I played Veloren for a bit a few years ago and I'm really impressed with the improvement, will need to give it another go.

                            One serious question I have, is there a reason with voxels we still need to have block based stuff? Like back when voxel tech first started taking off I kind of thought we'd get to the place where like you have so many voxels and we get so good at calcing the physics interactions it would just look like a normal game.

                            What are the bottlenecks there? Or is this intentionally stylistic still these days?

                            From looking at some of the bosses I can tell that's getting closer but we're still further than I'd think

                            • JKCalhoun 3 months ago
                              It appears to be stylistic?

                              When I see a voxel rotating in space ... that's not really a "voxel" in my mind, it's a cube.

                              I suppose we over-apply the word though these days.

                              • ianbutler 3 months ago
                                Fair, I guess something like the finals is what Im thinking of? Im not sure though I think they may pre bake their destructible terrain
                                • dannersy 3 months ago
                                  The Finals destruction is not prebaked. The reason it works and is consistent is because everything is done server side and communicated to all clients. The game is very CPU heavy for this reason.
                              • belthesar 3 months ago
                                I'm kinda there with you. The first game I ever played that used Voxels extensively was Command and Conquer: Tiberian Sun. All the 2nd gen Westwood games of that era used voxels for their units and projectiles, and nothing about the art style was intended to be heavily cubist like Minecraft popularized. Ultimately I think we built around technology that modeled physics differently, both in hardware and software.
                                • prox 3 months ago
                                  Check Space Engineers 2 and Enshrouded. They push voxels in that direction. Similarly, SE2’s watersim on planets will be incredible as well.
                                  • tbillington 3 months ago
                                    There are a lot of voxel games that aren't visually cubey. Marching cubes algorithm is just example. Here's a voxel game (fully deformable/mineable world) that isn't block based https://store.steampowered.com/app/1203620/Enshrouded/.
                                    • ianbutler 3 months ago
                                      Oh man how could I forget about Enshrouded, that's a really good example, thank you for bringing that up.

                                      Okay so it does just seem stylistic at this point then.

                                    • vintermann 3 months ago
                                      It's a bit odd, because the main appeal of blocky voxels is that it makes building easier, and these aren't building games.
                                      • ChickeNES 3 months ago
                                        Have you seen the game Teardown?
                                      • 99094 3 months ago
                                        I remember playing a very very early version of Veloren as a Cube World alternative. Happy to see where it is right now.
                                        • matricaria 3 months ago
                                          This is an open source version of another game called Cube World, which was basically a scam when it came out. Had only a few of the promised features and didn’t update for years.
                                          • suavesito 3 months ago
                                            The project started, as you stated, as a clone of Cube World (the name CloneWorld was thrown a few times, did not stick). But it was rapidly decided that the direction we wanted was different. Veloren is a look-similar (and I would argue that not that much) of Cube Wolrd, but it is headed in a completely independent direction.
                                            • tormeh 3 months ago
                                              I think this is a bit outdated. Veloren started out as a Cube World clone, but the goal has changed over time to Veloren being its own thing.
                                              • philipwhiuk 3 months ago
                                                I mean they're all just Minecraft clones.
                                                • zanderwohl 3 months ago
                                                  And minecraft started as an Infiniminer clone intended to have Dwarf Fortress elements. Inspiration all the way down.
                                                  • philipwhiuk 3 months ago
                                                    Merging two different ideas is almost by definition, not cloning.
                                                  • maeln 3 months ago
                                                    Not at all. Aside from the aesthetic choice, both cube world and veloren have nothing in common with minecraft when it comes to gameplay.
                                                    • vintermann 3 months ago
                                                      Default gameplay maybe? But I'm pretty sure there were servers that tried to do whatever Veloren is doing. The diversity of minigames and whole game concepts on Minecraft servers was pretty extreme for a while.
                                                    • vmg12 3 months ago
                                                      And minecraft is an infiniminer clone which is a 3d clone of Motherload which is a clone of ...
                                                      • itishappy 3 months ago
                                                        It's Dig Dug all the way down...
                                                      • rhet0rica 3 months ago
                                                        But Cube World wasn't a crafting or mining game; rather, it was an open-world Zelda-like ARPG, with a lot of progression from randomly-generated gear. The voxel size is smaller, and voxels are untextured, resulting in a 3D-ified pixel sprite look.
                                                        • SkiFire13 3 months ago
                                                          The term you might be looking for is voxel games.
                                                          • philipwhiuk 3 months ago
                                                            Not really - look at the feature list.

                                                            You can make other voxel games. This game is not that, it's explicitly the list of features in Minecraft.

                                                      • daemonologist 3 months ago
                                                        Couple of tips for getting this to launch (I don't have deep experience here, this is just what worked for me):

                                                        - install the Rust package rather than the Flatpak or COPR

                                                        - disable fractional scaling if you're using Wayland

                                                        - launch airshipper from a terminal rather than the Gnome app grid (and if you've already done the latter check for and kill any orphaned processes - they seem to get stuck sucking up a whole thread)

                                                        • pndy 3 months ago
                                                          Isn't that word used as name means "lost" in German?

                                                          I tried it a while ago and it looks really interesting - especially biomes and lightning

                                                          • VonTum 3 months ago
                                                            The german word is "Verloren" (Also in Dutch)

                                                            But the similarity is striking still

                                                            • suavesito 3 months ago
                                                              Not a coincidence, it was derived from the word!
                                                              • hovering_nox 3 months ago
                                                                I hate it so much. Every time I read it, all I can think is "that's a typo."
                                                                • Hikikomori 3 months ago
                                                                  Is the game a quest to find the lost r?
                                                                • rzzzt 3 months ago
                                                                  "Veloren (/ vɪlɔɹn /, ve-LOR-en, from German/Dutch verloren ('lost')) is an open-world, open-source multiplayer voxel RPG written in Rust Language."

                                                                  https://wiki.veloren.net/wiki/Main_Page

                                                              • canadiantim 3 months ago
                                                                Thanks for ruining my productivity. This is awesome!
                                                                • silverliver 3 months ago
                                                                  I remember the last time a tried it on the steam deck, less than a year ago through their launcher, it was completely broken and unplayable. I would love to give it another go if this was fixed.
                                                                  • muterad_murilax 3 months ago
                                                                    Reminds me of 3D Dot Game Heroes for the PS3.
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