Quick Look: Voxatron

@FoxMulder said:

Neat little shooter. I just got the Humble thing and think its cool. They do need to change the controls like Jeff said and have WASD control movement and arrowkeys shoot. But still alright with its currnet mouse controls.

First thing I thought after playing for 10 seconds. The way that The Binding of Isaac handles it would be perfect for this.

At first I was like, "hmm interesting shooter" than he got a build gun and climbed on the tower and exploded and it was awesome.

Fucking bought.

Perhaps voxels are harder to work with than polygons. I'd really like to know.

Who makes the sushi and chocolate in the voxelverse?

@l3illyl3ob: Could you say that computers are powerful enough to do something like anti-aliasing in voxels to, you know, lessen the jagged effect of voxels? At its basest, a voxel is just a cubic pixel, right? Couldn't they just assign a color or alpha value to smooth things out? You're right, polygon technology have been the people's champion, so of course people have developed crazy tools to facilitate working with them....if only people put some time into developing voxel tools. VHS vs. Betamax, I guess. Thanks for the awesome info on voxels, by the way.

@Grumbel: I actually don't think the filesize for storing voxels should be much bigger if at all than polygons + textures. Think about it. Voxels are just pixels in three-dimensional space. When it comes to rendering an image, pixels are just dots that are assigned a couple of bytes of data that represent what color and alpha it should show, right? Apply that to voxels and you have yourself a bitmap. Done. I think voxels haven't been given the chance to flourish...all the effort has been put into developing tools for polygons. I would say that a large enough group of people would have to be willing to start the "voxel revolution" in able for voxel technology to catch up....but you know what they say, time is money. I don't think ANY game developer would want to invest in that much money into reinventing the wheel when there's already a wheel to use.

Wow, Jeff, you're actually pretty good at this game. Better than I am, anyway! Excellent to see you guys actually play with the editor a bit in a Quick Look! I'm always disappointed when someone says "ehhh I'm not into making stuff" and either skips it or skims it.

Was also fun to see you guys check out some user levels. If you're a fan of Brad's Law of user-generated levels, you should check out "Grassland", it's pretty great! But it was fun to just see you check out random levels for a minute or so, then do another. That'd be a great feature, watching a few of you go into some game and check out a bunch of user-made levels at semi-random.

This looks awesome.

@RuneseekerMireille said:

Call me crazy, but even though they play nothing alike, I see this game and think: 3D Dot Game Heroes.

If you're crazy then so am I because I thought the same thing.

WHY DO THEY NOT COMMENT ON THE DOPE MUSIC ONCE IT STARTS!?

I cannot get over the controls. Several really neat and charming indie titles lately just dont get it. The Binding of Isaac patch, Controller: Joytokey?, yeah fuck you on that one, not actually funny when you charged for your game and gained profit from it. And Voxatron Alpha, the controls are just, meh, mouse has issues especially shooting in the direction you want, usually you shoot either one left or one right from what you actually are aiming for. There are certain things holding a lot of these "I got a neat retro idea" indie games from being actually compelling games and controls are pretty high on that list.

Hah, cool! the original Prince of Persia was also the first thing that popped into my mind at 12:23.

Otherwise this game makes me think of both Solstice and Serious Sam for some reason.

I cannot get over the controls. Several really neat and charming indie titles lately just dont get it. The Binding of Isaac patch, Controller: Joytokey?, yeah fuck you on that one, not actually funny when you charged for your game and gained profit from it.

Voxel (n.) (vock-sull)

It's like a pixel, but used to render helicopters.

This game looks mad fun

Huh, this actually looks awesome. To the Humble Bundle! *whoosh*

Also I hate to say it but "I probably could have made it if I'd jumped better" would NEVER have come out of the mouth of Brad.

great stuff! great idea and pretty cool execution. I'd like full dual-analog controls myself.

You can use the num keys to shoot, it controls great then, wasd or the arrows to move and 2468 to shoot straight and 7913 to shoot diagonally

I had to buy this, thanks Jeff.

This game looks cool.

"What a horrible night to have a curse." It's from Castlevania II: Simon's Quest. How do you guys not know this?!

Agreed, needs more music & sold for me. Okay it's already a game I'd buy but the lack of 8-bit music is vexing at times on a game that needs it.

@wolf_blitzer85 said:

@MrOldboy said:

I cannot get over the controls. Several really neat and charming indie titles lately just dont get it. The Binding of Isaac patch, Controller: Joytokey?, yeah fuck you on that one, not actually funny when you charged for your game and gained profit from it.

Binding of Isaac is made in flash which can't support controllers. Also it's not like we are entitled to controller support, although it is nice when it's available. Since Voxitron is only on version 0.13, I'm hoping that they will put in proper controller support.

I understand this completely, but it is still an issue holding back a lot of these indie games. Voxatron I can forgive since it is presented as Alpha and really shouldn't be offered in exchange for money yet. Binding of Isaac however I cannot forgive. Fine flash cant support controller input, a game cannot just be forgiven for flaws that are "outside of the dev's controls" when they are completely inside the dev's controls. Dont make the game in flash and have better control options, or make it in flash and have awkward controls. There are benefits to making the game in flash, but at the end of the day a customer is going to play your game in exchange for money. We are not entitled to controller support. But if people dont demand more from indie titles (that are sold for money) what will happen to the indie game space? Will this forever be a trend where we'll have to wait for the XBLA port to get a more polished experience?

The game just got patched with additional controller options, and a crosshair for the mouse! Oh, the wonders of playing games still in development.

@MrOldboy said:

not actually funny when you charged for your game and gained profit from it.

So the difference between a game and a game with controller support is one should be free and the other is fine to be charged for?

Voxelicious...

This looks great. I'd love a battlefield 3 or Red faction guerrilla mod with this tech.

@MrOldboy said:

@wolf_blitzer85 said:

@MrOldboy said:

I cannot get over the controls. Several really neat and charming indie titles lately just dont get it. The Binding of Isaac patch, Controller: Joytokey?, yeah fuck you on that one, not actually funny when you charged for your game and gained profit from it.

Binding of Isaac is made in flash which can't support controllers. Also it's not like we are entitled to controller support, although it is nice when it's available. Since Voxitron is only on version 0.13, I'm hoping that they will put in proper controller support.

I understand this completely, but it is still an issue holding back a lot of these indie games. Voxatron I can forgive since it is presented as Alpha and really shouldn't be offered in exchange for money yet. Binding of Isaac however I cannot forgive. Fine flash cant support controller input, a game cannot just be forgiven for flaws that are "outside of the dev's controls" when they are completely inside the dev's controls. Dont make the game in flash and have better control options, or make it in flash and have awkward controls. There are benefits to making the game in flash, but at the end of the day a customer is going to play your game in exchange for money. We are not entitled to controller support. But if people dont demand more from indie titles (that are sold for money) what will happen to the indie game space? Will this forever be a trend where we'll have to wait for the XBLA port to get a more polished experience?

I think your totally wrong. Isaac doesn't really strike me as needing good controller support as it seems fine the way it is, where as this game seems muuuuuuch more analog, and there is no excuse for trying to emulate dual joystick shit with a mouse and not having a mouse cursor. You should always have a good idea of where you are aiming without having to go by "feel". If you've ever played a DJS with a mouse to aim and no crosshair, even with a laser sight, it's pretty awful. At lest in my experience. And it's not exactly a hell of a lot of work or thought that needs to go into a cursor on screen.

The creator of Voxatron says he is adding dual-joystick controls later. He claims he didnt do it the first time because it mixed with the jumping didnt feel right to him. I beat the really short "story" mode and it was pretty challenging and neat. I hope the creators make more levels and the user stuff is good. I've actually played more of Issac than the others. I like the rogue-like randomness, but I really do not like the art style. But it is fund enough to look past that.

@patrick said:

@MrOldboy said:

not actually funny when you charged for your game and gained profit from it.

So the difference between a game and a game with controller support is one should be free and the other is fine to be charged for?

No, not at all. The difference was that the devs thought that putting that line in the menus would be a joke, when controller support has been something a lot of players, who bought the game, were asking for. Think about what that line in the menu is asking the player to do.

It lacks class and polish from a developer that has gotten a lot of praise for their efforts. It simply admits a fault with the game and asks the player to fix it themselves. There is a certain level of expectation when it comes to any game and I think gamers' expectation level from indie titles needs to be higher if we want that space to grow and flourish in the future.

It sounds like I am complaining about controller support in indie games, but its more a concern about the unpolished controls that I feel plague a lot of indie games coming out recently. Controller support could help alleviate some of these issues, or it might not. But The Binding of Isaac plays very well once you tweak the dead zone and button mappings in joytokey, but why did I have to do this? I'm not a video game developer.

I'm done buying these indie pc games until they start making them gamepad compatible. What is this the 1990's?

the title card picture or whatever its called looks like a bunch of candies... mmm

@MrOldboy: They added controller support in the latest patch, everything except menus works perfectly with my 360 controller now.

You can still only shoot in eight directions, so I bound shooting to the face buttons and jumping to the right trigger.

@gike987 said:

@MrOldboy: They added controller support in the latest patch, everything except menus works perfectly with my 360 controller now.

You can still only shoot in eight directions, so I bound shooting to the face buttons and jumping to the right trigger.

What game are you talking about, Voxatron? Just loaded up Binding of Isaac from steam with latest update. You still cant even remap the keyboard controls. edit: assuming its not Isaac you're talking about since I think you can only shoot 4 ways.

life is like a voxel chocolate. you never know what you're going to get.

Reminds me of 3D Dot Heros kinda at least in the art style...might have to check out the latest Humble Bundle...especially if it has Blocks that Matter.

For the curious, the duplicate powerup isn't a powerup. It will make clones of every enemy on the level. Play "Evil Clown Land" and you'll see how this can go really bad really fast.

Asking people to pay more than the average is a pretty clever trick.

I love the look of this game but I'm not sure about the actual gameplay. It's not the greatest. The sword is awesome though. Also, the game gets pretty hard later.

For everyone that bought this, the creator just released a patch and you can customize the controls. Just download the installer again from your humblebundle download page and install over the current files. It will keep your save and everything.

Edit: you can also use a gamepad.

@MrOldboy: I was talking about voxatron.

So they made a dual stick shooter version of 3D Dot Game Heroes? I guess I'm alright with that.

*EDIT* LTTP on that one. geez.

@DeF said:

ah voxels .... anyone remember Outcast?

Who could forget one of the greatest games of all time?

@16:53 oh my god it's the <hello my baby hello my honey hello my ragtime gal> dude from Battletoads on NES. Watch this video at 6:08 to see what I'm talking about: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QmBpebvfykE

God the exploding is so satisfying.

Cool to see Notch at the top of the Humble Bundle donation list at $2000

A humble bundle just as my CC expired? CURSES!!!!

If only someone remade Wolf 3d using nothing but Voxels...

http://voxelstein3d.sourceforge.net/

My wish came true!

When are they coming out with Delta Force: Voxatron?

This looks neat....I will surely pick up the humble bundle when I have some money to spend.