Is Voxelands dead?

Danfun64
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Is Voxelands dead?

by Danfun64 » Post

As of this writing, there hasn't been a new Win32 release in about a year, there hasn't been any new activity in the Voxelands Gitlab in three months, and the Voxelands website is down. Is the Voxelands project dead?

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voxelproof
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Re: Is Voxelands dead?

by voxelproof » Post

Danfun64 wrote:As of this writing, there hasn't been a new Win32 release in about a year, there hasn't been any new activity in the Voxelands Gitlab in three months, and the Voxelands website is down. Is the Voxelands project dead?
Yes, obviously it's dead. I've been waiting for the win build too checking the forum from time to time. Probably some serious technical issues caused the project to be abandoned which is understandable given there was apparently only single active developer left.
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u34

Re: Is Voxelands dead?

by u34 » Post

The wiki, webpage, github seems to be offline?
What did darkrose as admin and developer do?
Lets renew all and restart the project, this should be done, because the game is great and should not be dead?!!

cu cHyper

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Re: Is Voxelands dead?

by Linuxdirk » Post

Danfun64 wrote:As of this writing, there hasn't been a new Win32 release in about a year, there hasn't been any new activity in the Voxelands Gitlab in three months, and the Voxelands website is down. Is the Voxelands project dead?
It was pretty much dead from the beginning on because it always used an outdated Minetest version to build on and that was never changed. It had some nice ideas but the effort should have been put in a game for Minetest, and not in a fork that combines the Minetest engine and a Minetest game into one thing.
cHyper wrote:Lets renew all and restart the project, ...
... as a Minetest game. Yes. That would be awesome. Current Minetest engine features with Voxelands gameplay and I'm all in!

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Re: Is Voxelands dead?

by voxelproof » Post

Linuxdirk wrote:
cHyper wrote:Lets renew all and restart the project, ...
... as a Minetest game. Yes. That would be awesome. Current Minetest engine features with Voxelands gameplay and I'm all in!
Good idea.
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Re: Is Voxelands dead?

by u34 » Post

https://www.chyper.at/voxelands/

is a page @ my blog with infos, etc and the latest win-build-32bit-downloadlink and a couple of pictures belongs to the game. i hope that somebody must recreate the homepage and continue that good game. a win-developer was not found in the former months. but i do not know why the webpage and all the wiki is currently offline. i like the game very much.

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Re: Is Voxelands dead?

by u34 » Post

https://www.patreon.com/posts/update-on-19874681

the domain just expired by not paying the money.
here are the statements posted by patreon:

The website is currently down as the domain has expired and I don't currently have the money to renew it.
The Patreon money only covers the server costs, so everything is still up, there's just no domain to access it; the gameservers can still be found at 106.187.103.195.
If all goes well, I should be able to renew the domain next week, and everything will be back as it was.

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Re: Is Voxelands dead?

by voxelproof » Post

cHyper wrote:https://www.patreon.com/posts/update-on-19874681

the domain just expired by not paying the money.
here are the statements posted by patreon:

The website is currently down as the domain has expired and I don't currently have the money to renew it.
The Patreon money only covers the server costs, so everything is still up, there's just no domain to access it; the gameservers can still be found at 106.187.103.195.
If all goes well, I should be able to renew the domain next week, and everything will be back as it was.
Great news, I'm still holding my tp for Voxelands waiting for the updated version of this extremely nice, retro-styled and somehow strangely captivating game :)
To miss the joy is to miss all. Robert Louis Stevenson

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Re: Is Voxelands dead?

by u34 » Post

voxelproof wrote:
cHyper wrote:https://www.patreon.com/posts/update-on-19874681

the domain just expired by not paying the money.
here are the statements posted by patreon:

The website is currently down as the domain has expired and I don't currently have the money to renew it.
The Patreon money only covers the server costs, so everything is still up, there's just no domain to access it; the gameservers can still be found at 106.187.103.195.
If all goes well, I should be able to renew the domain next week, and everything will be back as it was.
Great news, I'm still holding my tp for Voxelands waiting for the updated version of this extremely nice, retro-styled and somehow strangely captivating game :)
please share your tp for the community. i hope that there will be a windows build for the latest update of the game.

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Re: Is Voxelands dead?

by voxelproof » Post

cHyper wrote: please share your tp for the community. i hope that there will be a windows build for the latest update of the game.
Since TP Sunny is an evolutionary descendant of my Voxelands experiments I'm going to release it along with the tp being developed exclusively for Minetest Game and some MT mods. And, I'd forget -- there're confirmed rumours about the finally upcoming release of the world-famous Super Duper Graphics Pack, so let's see how it looks like to make the best of it ;)
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Re: Is Voxelands dead?

by u34 » Post

Well, that's the end of that.

Image

Jul 25 at 7:09pm
I've decided to just let Voxelands die, it was fun while it lasted, but it's just become a chore lately.

I'm still working on other games, one of which 'The Void' will be available on itch.io soonish.

So thanks for all your help, if you'd like to keep supporting me you can do so here or at my personal patreon page: https://www.patreon.com/TicklishHoneyBee

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Re: Is Voxelands dead?

by voxelproof » Post

cHyper wrote:Well, that's the end of that.
I've decided to just let Voxelands die, it was fun while it lasted, but it's just become a chore lately.

I'm still working on other games, one of which 'The Void' will be available on itch.io soonish.

So thanks for all your help, if you'd like to keep supporting me you can do so here or at my personal patreon page: https://www.patreon.com/TicklishHoneyBee
So sad. This cute little game certainly didn't deserve such cruel fate. Let it rest in Voxelvalhalla.
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Re: Is Voxelands dead?

by Hamlet » Post

Linuxdirk wrote:
cHyper wrote:Lets renew all and restart the project, ...
... as a Minetest game. Yes. That would be awesome. Current Minetest engine features with Voxelands gameplay and I'm all in!
Should you ever start this project, I'll be happy to contribute for what I can.

It must be said that Voxelands was and still is better than Minetest regarding networking:
Voxelands did not downloaded anything but the sever's map and the players' positions, while Minetest downloads every single sever's mod (even if vanilla, even if exactly the same build!), and even if you re-join the same server and no mods were updated. I mean, it could at least save that stuff exactly as it allows to save the downloaded server map.

Who cares? Anyone having a metered internet connection like me.

I miss Voxelands.
Not its segfaults.
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Re: Is Voxelands dead?

by cHyper-0815OL » Post

let it not die
Last edited by cHyper-0815OL on Sun Mar 22, 2020 16:41, edited 1 time in total.

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Re: Is Voxelands dead?

by rubenwardy » Post

Hamlet wrote: It must be said that Voxelands was and still is better than Minetest regarding networking:
Voxelands did not downloaded anything but the sever's map and the players' positions, while Minetest downloads every single sever's mod (even if vanilla, even if exactly the same build!), and even if you re-join the same server and no mods were updated. I mean, it could at least save that stuff exactly as it allows to save the downloaded server map
.
This is isn't really true for a few reasons. First, the client never downloads any mods from the server. It downloads media such as textures, models, and sounds. These are all cached on the hard drive. It also receives definitions of things, but definitions will only be a few KB in size
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Re: Is Voxelands dead?

by Hamlet » Post

rubenwardy wrote:This is isn't really true for a few reasons. First, the client never downloads any mods from the server. It downloads media such as textures, models, and sounds. These are all cached on the hard drive. It also receives definitions of things, but definitions will only be a few KB in size
I'll correct myself rephrasing; as far as I know:

If I connect to a Minetest server which only has the vanilla Minetest Game v5.1.0, my client will download textures, models and sounds from that server even if I actually have installed Minetest Game v5.1.0 on my client. Is it correct?
Would not make more sense using the textures, models and sounds already on my disk, instead?

I'll assume that this is not possible due to the fact that MT is an Engine and not a Game - I guess that there is some technical limitation that prevents using the already on the disk media files, in the above described situations -, and due the fact that of course there will always be a server using a mod (i.e. textures, models, sounds) which is not already available on my disk.

That's fine. But it could allow to choose to store and reuse the newly downloaded media, as it does for the map.
EDIT: it does it. See: next replies

Correct me if I am wrong, but the last time I checked (that is one or two years ago) if I connected 5 times -in a day- to the same server, Minetest downloaded 5 times the whole media: it did not reused it after having downloaded it the first time.

It caches the media on the disk, it uses it while you are connected to that server, but when you disconnect where did the media files go? I guess that they aren't saved, am I correct?

This - for me - meant downloading several MBs (50MB? 100? I don't know, I could not tell.) of media files again and again, which sucked 3GB of internet traffic - my monthly availability - in less than a week.
Whereas when using Voxelands I could play on servers even two or three hours per day - each day, usually in the evening - and those 3GB lasted for a whole month.
At the moment this prevents me from using Minetest servers.

This is why I wrote that on this side Voxelands was and still is better than Minetest: I didn't had to download anything; with the due differences, of course.
Last edited by Hamlet on Sun Oct 27, 2019 11:07, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Is Voxelands dead?

by rubenwardy » Post

Hamlet wrote:If I connect to a Minetest server which only has the vanilla Minetest Game v5.1.0, my client will download textures, models and sounds from that server even if I actually have installed Minetest Game v5.1.0 on my client. Is it correct?
Would not make more sense using the textures, models and sounds already on my disk, instead?
This is true because minetest won't look for the installed games for textures first. You can create an issue for this, perhaps
Hamlet wrote:Correct me if I am wrong, but the last time I checked (that is one or two years ago) if I connected 5 times -in a day- to the same server, Minetest downloaded 5 times the whole media: it did not reused it after having downloaded it the first time.

It caches the media on the disk, it uses it while you are connected to that server, but when you disconnect where did the media files go? I guess that they aren't saved, am I correct?
This is not correct, the media files are saved to disk forever where they will be used in future connections. You will only download a particular file once from the server. However, if the file is modified then it needs to be redownloaded
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Re: Is Voxelands dead?

by Hamlet » Post

rubenwardy wrote:
Hamlet wrote:If I connect to a Minetest server which only has the vanilla Minetest Game v5.1.0, my client will download textures, models and sounds from that server even if I actually have installed Minetest Game v5.1.0 on my client. Is it correct?
Would not make more sense using the textures, models and sounds already on my disk, instead?
This is true because minetest won't look for the installed games for textures first. You can create an issue for this, perhaps
I'll think about it: it's not like everyone is on cheap metered connections, but it could be useful for people playing on smartphones or similar devices.
rubenwardy wrote:
Hamlet wrote:[...]It caches the media on the disk, it uses it while you are connected to that server, but when you disconnect where did the media files go? I guess that they aren't saved, am I correct?
This is not correct, the media files are saved to disk forever where they will be used in future connections. You will only download a particular file once from the server.
O_O this is big news! \o/
I will test some vanilla server - i.e. one not using 200 mods - to see how much traffic it consumes.
rubenwardy wrote:However, if the file is modified then it needs to be redownloaded
That makes sense, of course a mismatch would not be acceptable.
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Re: Is Voxelands dead?

by Hamlet » Post

rubenwardy wrote: This is not correct, the media files are saved to disk forever where they will be used in future connections. You will only download a particular file once from the server.
Hamlet wrote: O_O this is big news! \o/
I will test some vanilla server - i.e. one not using 200 mods - to see how much traffic it consumes.
I've been playing on a server (with the option "Save server map on the disk" turned on) and as you said it downloaded the media files just the first time that I connected; the other times it apparently "skipped" that step (the "Downloading media" progress bar took no time to complete).
I've compared my remaining traffic after the first connection, then after the second and the third; now I don't even bother no more because the 2nd and the 3rd checks didn't show any significant changes.
Well, test passed! :)))

Thanks for telling me about how it actually works. :)
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Re: Is Voxelands dead?

by voxelproof » Post

cHyper-0815OL wrote:my blog page for voxelands ;-) let it not die

http://www.petersiederer.eu/games/voxelands/
I also believe it's worth saving. And I hope that any effort to relieve this project will retain its simple, rough, 'sketchy' graphics.

EDIT
Jesus, I meant "to revive" :\
Last edited by voxelproof on Sat Nov 02, 2019 09:58, edited 1 time in total.
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About Voxelands today

by Wuzzy » Post

In this post I will post everything I know about the current state of affairs.

First, Voxelands is not dead, you can still play it. It is “dead” in the sense that it is no longer under development. And sadly, darkrose left Voxelands in a pretty buggy state. But it's still a good game. But it needs a lot of bugfixes.
The latest stable release is 1709.00.

Voxelands can still be downloaded on various Linux distros. Here's an AUR package for Arch Linux:

https://aur.archlinux.org/packages/voxelands/

The source code (including the full Git history) of Voxelands is hosted on GitLab:

https://gitlab.com/voxelands/voxelands

Note the branch names are a bit different in Voxelands: IIRC, “master” is for stable release while “next” is the dev branch.
I don't know who operates this repo. Of course, I also keep my own copy on my machine.

OldCoder also hosts a copy of the Git repo here:

Code: Select all

https://git.minetest.org/minetest/voxelands/commits/branch/master
Both repos look the same to me. I know, you hate OldCoder (please no drama now), but I'm glad about every copy. It's very important to preserve Git history of Voxelands. You can always read the source code anyway.

OldCoder also now controls both http://www.voxelands.net and http://www.voxelands.org. This is a very basic “archival” site of Voxelands and the website is clear that it's not the “official” one. Basically this is just a download and link to OldCoder's repo. It's not a very good website but it gets the job done.

It's really unfortunate that darkrose has lost http://www.voxelands.net due to money reasons. This is just really stupid. But frankly, the original website wasn't that great either. What's just annoying is the loss of the entire forums … The old website also had a wiki but it was very much lacking.

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Re: Is Voxelands dead?

by Hamlet » Post

The official Voxelands website is archived and available here: https://web.archive.org/web/20171019224 ... lands.com/

I have tried OldCoder's server, it gave me issues with the items' recipes despite I used v1704 and the server apparently is 1704-dev.

And, yes, I think that the whole "let's clone Minetest's website and forums, then Voxelands' website" is creepy.
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Voxelands Revival

by Wuzzy » Post

In the previous post, I wrote about where Voxelands is now. In this post, it's something different:
So, in this thread a couple of people had the idea to redo Voxelands in Minetest.

I think this is a great idea. The Voxelands latest “stable” release (1709.00) is not really stable as it hats lots of bugs. The game is good, but the engine is in a really bad state. I see lots of graphical glitches. I also experience crashes. And the inventory controls are … *puke*. Well, it's a fork of Minetest 0.3, after all, so it inherits all the bugs from that era. I still had lots of fun with Voxelands, if it were just more stable … So yeah, porting to Minetest would fix all of that, but the downside is that it would be a lot of work.

A large chunk of Voxelands could indeed be translated to Minetest and it would automatically fix pretty much all the engine bugs that plague Voxelands at the moment. The game is free software as well (in fact, it must be) and the media could be all copied over. Replicating all the nodes and items will undoubtedly take a LOT of work, but it seems a huge chunk of the game would be possible in Lua code only.

Some features that would require an engine change are:
  • Character creator in the main menu. However, I think there's a mod for Minetest which replicates the character creator pretty well. For a game in Minetest, the character creator could also be moved in-game, which makes more sense in Minetest anyway.
  • Leaves are angled and their own drawtype
  • Fences are their own drawtype and can go diagonal as well
  • Roof tiles are angled and they introduce another drawtype and they look really cool! This really should make it into Minetest!
  • Rails are 3D and seem to be also have their own drawtype
  • 3D mobs. I don't know if the model format is compatible
  • Sprinting that is not server-based
  • Voxelands introduces new controls. For example, “using pointed node” and “using wielded item” are 2 separate actions. But cloning this feature isn't really neccessary IMO. The game would still work with the Minetest controls.
  • The main menu looks better (no weird tabs)
Some of the GOOD ideas in Voxelands that could inspire other games:
  • Seasons
  • The wood crafting tiers: Trunk → wood block → plank (craftitem) → stick
  • Gemstones to enchant your tools with new capabilities
  • Character creator
  • 3D roof tiles
  • Except for plants, most of the nodes are true 3D. 3D ladders, 3D rails, 3D doors, 3D iron bars, … No flat planes.
  • You must wear appropriate clothing in cold areas, or else you take cold damage
Just so you don't get any false hopes. I am not planning to port Voxelands for Minetest anytime soon. That just looks like a lot of work and I still have other projects that await completion.

I just wrote this post for documentation purposes.

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Re: Is Voxelands dead?

by rubenwardy » Post

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Re: Voxelands Revival

by Linuxdirk » Post

Wuzzy wrote:Fences are their own drawtype and can go diagonal as well
Roof tiles are angled and they introduce another drawtype and they look really cool!
Rails are 3D and seem to be also have their own drawtype
In my mind I made up a slope drawtype that in theory could cover all of those individual drawtypes. Can’t code that of course :( But iv anything from Vocelands gets rescued over to Minetest then it should be sloped nodes without having to create 3D models in Blender or the like.

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