The authors of Madness Road about working with voxels

Experience working on a voxel project with App2Top.ru Evgeny Lavrinenko, founder and CEO of CellsGames studio, which is preparing the Madness Road project for release, shared this.

Hello. Now I would like to talk specifically about graphics, about voxels. Why did you choose this type of graphics?

Evgeny LavrinenkoHi !

Voxels have been looked at for a very long time because of the relative simplicity in working with them, as well as a pleasant appearance. Voxels look very organic in the game. Plus, our team is strongly imbued with voxel and pixel games.

What were the alternatives?

The main dilemma was the choice between stylized loopoli graphics and voxels. As a result, we settled on voxels. Realistic-looking graphics were not taken into account at all: we wanted something new for us, and something that would be easy to read and perceived by the player.

One of the main chips, as far as I can imagine, is cheapness. And you can give a comparative table of costas for some object. How much, for example, will it cost to make a typewriter (in hours or dollars) when using other types of graphics?

Cheapness, of course, is an important factor, but it’s not just about it. We wanted to try something new and make our own Crossy Road /Shooty Skies/Monument Valley format game.

Crossy Road
We implemented games of varying degrees of complexity, there was even a collectible card game, but this time we wanted to do something viral, something crazy.

So it was decided to create Madness Road: a race for survival in a post-apocalyptic world with Crossy Road-style graphics and Earn to Die gameplay.

Returning to the question of price, it is difficult to give an unambiguous answer, since the market is large and prices vary for everyone, but it is safe to say that it would take much more time (three times) and money to create machines in the “classic” graphics, and each edit would turn into additional expenses, which for a small studio can to be fatal .

What do you make voxel models in?

MagicaVoxel is a powerful free program with a good built–in tool for rendering models and extensive export capabilities.

There were alternatives: VoxelShop, which has a slightly more advanced toolkit, and Qubicle, about which, by the way, you have already published a publication. But we finally settled on MagicaVoxel because of its free of charge and the aforementioned export capabilities – the program allows you to transfer models to Unity in just two clicks.

MagicaVoxel EditorCould you tell me how the process of creating such a model from A to Z is going?

The creation of any assets for the game begins with the search for references. For example, while working on the fleet, we referred:

• military equipment

• heavy working equipment

• various hot and rat rods, as well as wonderful cars from the new “Mad Max”, the style of which has more or less spread to our entire transport: post-apocalypse after all.

Apart from references, in fact, we didn’t need anything else. Sometimes the artist even realized a new transport “out of his head”. The simplicity of working with voxel graphics allows you to create new models “on the go”.

The artist begins to draw models from the chassis, as, in general, the assembly of any car at the factory.

TaxiFire truck

“School” bus

After creating the initial version of the model, of course, the stage of making edits follows, but it takes a negligible amount of time.

What difficulties and pitfalls do this type of graphics have (what should be remembered when creating a voxel game)?

The main thing, in my opinion, that you need to know when working with voxel graphics is its limited capabilities in terms of detail. It may not be suitable for all genres of games. Attempts to “add detail” can lead to a deterioration in the readability of game objects, which, in turn, will negatively affect the experience of players.

Nevertheless, voxels can be used in many genres. An example is the 8-Bit Armies game. This is a strategy in the spirit of C& C, the artists of which managed to find a balance between detail and readability, thanks to which players can simultaneously control a large number of troops and easily distinguish units from each other.

How much voxel graphics are more/less resource-intensive compared to other types of graphics?

The speed compared to the classic loopoli and even more so highpoli is simply cosmic both in terms of creating/editing models and in terms of their performance in the game itself. When exporting to a format .The obj voxel model technically becomes a regular loopole with very few polygons.

Don’t you think that voxels have become a “lost” topic today? A lot of people are trying to stand out at the expense of her alone. Isn’t it better to look for some other types of graphical implementation?

Voxel graphics really don’t look as fresh as when the same Crossy Road was released. But at the same time, it is still easy to read by players, easy to implement and, with the right approach to optimization, it is absolutely not demanding on hardware. It is worth using it at least for practical reasons, not to mention the positive attitude towards it in the team.

But to stand out only at the expense of voxel graphics is not the best idea. It’s much more important what kind of game you have.

Thanks for the interview!

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