[HN Gopher] Veloren - voxel action-adventure role-playing in Rust
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       Veloren - voxel action-adventure role-playing in Rust
        
       Author : tete
       Score  : 195 points
       Date   : 2025-03-29 18:05 UTC (4 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (veloren.net)
 (TXT) w3m dump (veloren.net)
        
       | pndy wrote:
       | 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 wrote:
         | The german word is "Verloren" (Also in Dutch)
         | 
         | But the similarity is striking still
        
           | rzzzt wrote:
           | "Veloren (/ vIlorn /, 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
        
           | suavesito wrote:
           | Not a coincidence, it was derived from the word!
        
             | hovering_nox wrote:
             | I hate it so much. Every time I read it, all I can think is
             | "that's a typo."
        
       | skitter wrote:
       | 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).
        
       | matricaria wrote:
       | 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.
        
         | philipwhiuk wrote:
         | I mean they're all just Minecraft clones.
        
           | maeln wrote:
           | Not at all. Aside from the aesthetic choice, both cube world
           | and veloren have nothing in common with minecraft when it
           | comes to gameplay.
        
           | SkiFire13 wrote:
           | The term you might be looking for is voxel games.
        
           | vmg12 wrote:
           | And minecraft is an infiniminer clone which is a 3d clone of
           | Motherload which is a clone of ...
        
           | zanderwohl wrote:
           | And minecraft started as an Infiniminer clone intended to
           | have Dwarf Fortress elements. Inspiration all the way down.
        
         | suavesito wrote:
         | 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.
        
       | echelon wrote:
       | 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.
        
         | pandemic_region wrote:
         | What about Jai ?
        
           | lawn wrote:
           | Is there anything you can run with Jai yet?
        
           | Ygg2 wrote:
           | Is it publicly available?
        
             | jsheard wrote:
             | 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.
        
         | wavemode wrote:
         | 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?
        
           | Guthur wrote:
           | 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.
        
           | littlestymaar wrote:
           | Not a major studio, but a BAFTA Nominee game[1] is not
           | nothing either.
           | 
           | [1]: https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/2198150/view/655
           | 9419...
        
         | knowknow wrote:
         | 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.
        
         | heromal wrote:
         | > Rust is shaping up to be a major game programming language.
         | 
         | No it's not
        
           | ecshafer wrote:
           | 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.
        
       | misnome wrote:
       | 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 wrote:
         | 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).
        
           | baal80spam wrote:
           | Thanks for the reply, but the instant I saw it requires some
           | kind of a launcher, I closed the page.
        
             | khimaros wrote:
             | this is a confusing take to me. could you explain your
             | aversion to launchers?
        
       | muterad_murilax wrote:
       | Reminds me of 3D Dot Game Heroes for the PS3.
        
       | 99094 wrote:
       | I remember playing a very very early version of Veloren as a Cube
       | World alternative. Happy to see where it is right now.
        
       | littlestymaar wrote:
       | 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.
        
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       (page generated 2025-03-29 23:00 UTC)