
Another Update - shawndumas
http://www.voxelquest.com/news/another-update
======
danso
It's rare to see a Kickstarter project essential "fail" in delivering the
original product but to have so many backers feeling satisfied [1]...it's a
testament to the creator's consistently thorough and engaging updates that
backers were happy to just be on the journey, even if they didn't get the game
they promised. Also, it appears that the estimated delivery was Jan.
2017...there's probably a positive psychological component to being honest
early rather than dragging people through a long period of denial and delay
before going radio silent.

[1] [https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/gavan/voxel-
quest/posts...](https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/gavan/voxel-
quest/posts/1571677)

~~~
gavanwoolery
When I fail, I fail spectacularly. :)

I knew coming in that it was overly ambitious (heck, my website stated that
from the very first days), but I think that shooting for the stars was a good
way to just explore the current limitations of tech and try to do things that
no one else was doing - reason be damned.

The best thing that happened was not something entirely tangible. I have
witnessed the most beautiful side of humanity in my struggles (however trivial
my struggles are in the global scope of the world).

~~~
wlesieutre
Stop trying to give my money back, I don't want it! VQ has been a fascinating
project to watch, and I was always more interested in the tech than in any
particular game that gets made with it.

I'm happy to hear it'll be open sourced, and hopefully people will continue to
push it forward! I've been meaning to pick up some C++ and graphics
programming...

~~~
gavanwoolery
Man, people must really hate money. Somebody just increased their pledge to
me, likely out of spite.

~~~
wlesieutre
It's not that I hate money, it's that I pledged on Kickstarter so you'd make a
cool thing. You made a cool thing, I got to read about its development and
watch all the update videos, and now you're releasing it to the community
under MIT (or similar) license. As far as I'm concerned we're square.

I know the Kickstarter project was planned as an RPG and maybe you could have
throw together a game using the engine as it stood a year ago just to call the
project done, but I don't think that would have been a better outcome.

~~~
koffiezet
Feel exactly the same. Backed the kickstarter because I was once (a long time
ago) also interested in writing a voxel engine but never had the time, and
since then - everything voxel related peaked my interest.

The updates were always nice, and I've always thought of it ending up as an
SDK/playground for voxel technology, and never as eventually a real game. If
it would become opensource, in my view - that would make it a successful
kickstarter, and not a failed-one.

------
phantom_oracle
When you see people say things like:

"I backed you, not the product, keep the money!"

OR

"Open Sourcing it is worth more than I ever backed for this project, refund
not needed"

AND (the best of them all - the way the internet does compliments):

"I will spend however much time is required to hunt you down in person and
forcefully give you the money back if you dare refund me."

You're reminded of how little the things we own or build matter compared to
the bonds we develop.

Maybe 10 years from now, through a community-led project, your game (with you
as 1 of the leaders of the project) becomes a reality.

The game then takes off and is played by the same community who built it. You
end up making about 90 good friends who you game/hack/build the game with and
become a small internet celebrity to niche-gamers.

Although this story is not on the "high-tech, Docker-swarm-graphDB-
containerManager-C++killer-version0.0.1234.44444" level, seeing a story like
this reminds us of our humanity, even as people who rot away behind screens
all day :)

~~~
gavanwoolery
Thanks, I think that the future is wide open and anything can happen down the
road. I hope that my work now eventually puts me in a better position to
enable such things. :)

------
shazow
As a Kickstarter backer, MIT licensed code very much exceeds my expectations.
Thank you!

I'd love to get a playable game out of this someday, but it doesn't have to
come from you. :)

Best of luck, OpenAI is lucky to have you.

~~~
gavanwoolery
Thanks!

------
grownseed
Worth a shot, I know there are some people around here who don't know what to
do with their money, who might be considering financing the next
chat/social/... app, but I implore you to consider supporting Gavan full-time
(should he actually want it of course). I absolutely would if I could,
unfortunately public cancer research is not exactly a lucrative business...

Voxel Quest is a great project that deserves all the attention it can get. It
might not be the next unicorn, hell, it might not even produce any ROI, but as
I see it, it has the potential to have a great impact. See it as a goodwill
project if you will, a chance to make a nice dent in the gaming landscape and
more.

It's not often that I feel this way, but some things just deserve to exist and
be worked on for their own sake. Voxel Quest is one of these things, and Gavan
is the one who can make it happen.

~~~
gavanwoolery
Thank you, I appreciate it, but I have been given a fair shot, and I failed
(or however you want to label it).

I still came out better in the end, with a more developed skillset and better
reputation.

There are thousands of people out there just like me, waiting to prove
themselves. These are the people that deserve funding. :)

I met my first investor on reddit, a total stranger who took a chance on me.
Hopefully I can reach a financial position at some point to give another
person a chance as I was given.

~~~
johndevor
I want to throw my money in your face. Have you considered doing a crowd
sourced funding round?

~~~
gavanwoolery
I did get an offer to do crowd equity (some company that is actually run by
one of the former Activision founders). I don't know that doing more crowd
funding is necessarily the best avenue - I could just be digging my pit
deeper. I'd prefer to build up some savings myself and maybe start my next
company the right way, although that will be a long ways out.

~~~
johndevor
I don't mean to make assumptions, but are you being overly hard on yourself?
Have there been negative replies about the Kickstarter / Patreon?

The comments I've read seem to indicate that people (myself included) want you
to keep pushing on.

~~~
gavanwoolery
There was a mixture of things. I never felt too burnt out but towards the end
when stress and financial issues mounted up it made the process entirely
unenjoyable (and to be clear, its never perfect, but this was the worst). When
you have a solid window of time to accomplish something, things go ok, but
when you run out of time you start flailing in an attempt to prioritize
various things.

The bigger issue, which has been largely invisible to people, is that building
a game on your own while you have a family impacts them in a really negative
way (namely, you can't dedicate the time or money you would like to for them).
If you have money you can compensate (with babysitters and such), or the same
goes for time, but if you have neither than it is pretty hard on everybody.

Basically, it got to a point where I would rather the game be more of a hobby
than a commercial venture; I was never good at the commercial part anyway. :)

~~~
the_rosentotter
Upvoted to the moon. I have been going through this for a few years now
(building a game engine, no less, with a wife and young children). I can't
give my kids the time I would like and I can't give my project the time I
would like. It feels like being torn apart sometimes.

I don't know if this is healthy or not (would I be happier not pursuing my
passion? Would I be guilt-tripping about too little time with the kids anyway,
with a regular nine-to-five?) but I can't quit, it would fuck me up too much
(sunk cost, shattered dreams, etc.). I might have to hit rock bottom first (or
make it big, right?).

In that sense I envy and credit you for moving on - best of luck.

~~~
gavanwoolery
As long as you feel you have a shot, keep going. Better to have tried and
failed than live with regret. But knowing when to quit is also a virtue. :)

------
Volundr
If I'd known the end result of this would be an open source game engine, I'd
have given you more money. Take it! Keep it!

~~~
gavanwoolery
:)

------
qopp
I'm happy that Gavan is Open Sourcing his work and that people are generally
happy with the outcome.

That being said I would not be surprised if Gavan announced a brand new voxel
project and kickstarter a few years from now, starting from scratch like last
time.

Previous discussion:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7491456](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7491456)

~~~
gavanwoolery
Yep, to be honest I don't think I have it in me to do another 3D game. I have
a lot of other 2D game ideas I'd like to tackle at some point though. :)

Genesis failed out the gate because (as mentioned in that thread) I got very
little in terms of donations ($700 would not carry me more than a month in
California).

VQ was my honest shot at it, and I learned many painful lessons from it.
Seriously, drag me out in the back alley and shoot me if I think I need a
third go at this. :)

~~~
BatFastard
Just give it a little time... you forget the pain, and just remember the good
times. Otherwise no one would have a second child! Much less a third.

~~~
gavanwoolery
That's true. In fact, I always say the first child is the "warning shot"

------
zubspace
Is there something you would do differently, if you could go back in time?

Like many developers around here I got into programming through game
development. Back in the days I started working on my own game engine and put
a lot of effort into it without going anywhere. About 8 years I spent working
on it on and off and learned a ton of C++. I believe, it was time well spent,
but sometimes I get the nagging doubt that I should have spent my time more
wisely.

Times change. Family, 2 kids, a house. I had to optimize my way of spending
time. In the late hours I got left I started dabbling into other engines and
frameworks for 3D games: Three.js, Dart, Haxe (Flambe, HaxeFlixel, HaxePunk)
and now finally settled on Unity.

If I could go back in time I would tell my former self: "Stop wasting time
doing everything from the ground up. Start making games!" I believe many
aspiring game developers fall into the trap of doing everything by themselves.
They start building frameworks and stuff just for the sake of it and forget,
that making games requires a more widespread skill set (Game Design, Concept
Art, Modelling, Texturing, Marketing, etc..)

Your engine is a work of art. I love the approach you've taken. But from the
start I always thought, that you should start working on a game as soon as
possible. What's your opinion on this?

~~~
gavanwoolery
Excellent question. :)

First, it is quite contrary, but I believe that you don't necessarily need to
make a "game" \- in the way most people think that you should. You are better
off if you can, but it is not a requirement. The best example I can cite is
Minecraft, whose own creator claims it is not a game (he also is adverse to
labels in general though). I demoed VQ to someone at GDC and they had fun just
walking around and enjoying the scenery (yes, it was the proverbial "walking
simulator").

There is value in whatever you decide to do, even if it is not monetary value.
The most important thing, I think, is that you are having fun, because if you
are not then the game business is generally not worth the associated
suffering.

In my case, I enjoyed work most of the time, and in addition got to take a
stab at pushing technological boundaries. The latter was not particularly
valuable in terms of gameplay, but it was valuable in terms of creating
interest and opportunities.

That said, the most telling thing that I found was that I often wanted to find
something simpler (not a strong desire, but definitely in the back of my
head). If I had to redo it all I'd make a 2D platformer - as overdone as that
is, it is something that is far easier to work on and there are not nearly as
many technical battles.

What you decide to use is up to you, but going completely from scratch is not
a good idea IMO (unless you want to learn it all). I am a big fan of
minimalist frameworks like Monogame and bgfx - they handle a lot of that
annoying framework setup for you, but do not include the usual scene-graph
workflow that you find in Unreal and Unity. That said, Unreal and Unity are
excellent options if you do prefer a scene editor and an engine that is ready
to ship out of the box.

~~~
zubspace
Thank you for your wise words!

You are absolutely right. Beauty can be found even in 'simple' things. Hope to
see more creative work from you in the future if you get to it.

Wish you all the best!

~~~
gavanwoolery
Thanks!

------
kvark
Jumping on OpenAI must be exciting! No matter how hard you try pushing the
voxel rendering tech forward, the same effort invested in the AI has a much
bigger potential. I hope you do well and enjoy it ;)

~~~
gavanwoolery
Thanks, I look forward to contributing to the best of my ability. Their
organization is not as hyped as it should be, and maybe that is a good thing.

~~~
ionwake
Great work on the engine, I also have been going through some of the harder
times you mentioned whilst working on my own game engine - so I can totally
empathize.

Can I ask how you ended up at OpenAI? as in did you apply directly? If it is
personal for any reason no worries.

Thanks again for sharing your story and engine with us! Oh and btw if you need
help with the game networking ( I built a sockets based networking engine
which seems to work ok) let me know.

~~~
gavanwoolery
Sorry to hear - hope everything works out for you!

 _" Can I ask how you ended up at OpenAI?"_

Certainly. I had heard of OpenAI from their first announcements, being a
regular reader here on HN. I later saw on Twitter (when I was on the job hunt)
that they were hiring and it seemed like an interesting place to work. I
applied directly, without any references (other than being visible here on
HN).

~~~
ionwake
Thank you for your reply. I have yet to be confident enough to apply directly
to companies I like, even though I am in my prime. I keep wanting to make sure
my portfolio is "perfect" heh. God speed dude.

------
aavotins
I just discovered this, took my time to get acquainted with the whole
situation and I must say that I'm amazed!

You did a really great job, don't be too hard on yourself. As a developer I
always value tools over a product, and you went that extra mile to give the
community a tool, instead of giving them a game. I think you deserve every
penny, great job!

~~~
gavanwoolery
Thanks!

------
jsd1982
I would say that when you get asked about the project in interviews or casual
conversation, don't sum it up as a failure of any sorts. Speak about it as a
success in research because that's what it really is. Basically, don't
downplay your accomplishments due to one metric of success/failure such as
Kickstarter or Patreon cancelation.

~~~
gavanwoolery
Thanks - I do believe it made good strides elsewhere, in spite of whatever one
might deem it commercially. :)

------
lemiffe
The amount of positivity in this thread makes me believe in humanity again :)
(coming from someone battling with depression)

~~~
jd20
Couldn't agree more! Although sad Gavan will be passing on the torch, seeing
this make the top of HN and the overwhelming support from people is such a
positive surprise.

------
willismichael
I would love love love to see a number of indie game studios pick up the open
source engine and do crazy things with it that even Gavan didn't imagine. I'm
so excited for the potential in this.

------
thedaemon
Sorry to see you go. But I'm proud that you are going out the proper way by
releasing source code. Having amazing projects like this die and never see the
light of day is very sad and happens too often for my liking.

~~~
gavanwoolery
Yes, and to be honest this could have happened. Fortunately my investors were
cool about everything and let me open source it.

------
kriro
It wasn't your intend but to me this project and it's conclusion that is
happening right now kind of proves my base assumption that crowdfunding of
creative endeavors is a very good idea if the circumstances are right. My
hypothesis has always been that there will be people willing to pay other
people to do stuff that is interesting and that one of the major motivators is
to make sure those people can work on said stuff. In essence I feel it's more
important to communicate that the money is meant to keep the creative process
running and not for specifics products. I will pay X$ so that artist Y can
keep doing what they do but probably won't pay Z$ to buy a product from that
artist if that makes sense.

I feel like the reaction you are getting indicates that hypothesis isn't
horrible. Thanks for that :)

~~~
gavanwoolery
I agree and you're welcome :)

------
nickpeterson
I haven't followed this project, and know very little about rendering, but I
saw in your updates you ended up moving the voxel generation off the GPU and
onto the CPU. How feasible would rendering on the CPU be for your engine? Is
it highly specialized towards using GPU features, or could it be reasonably
distributed across multiple traditional CPU cores?

~~~
gavanwoolery
I debated moving rendering to the CPU at one point. The CPU allows you to use
much more creative tricks, but of course lacks the ability to crunch tons of
numbers in parallel to the extent that a GPU can. It is possible, but the
question is - is it worthwhile? :)

~~~
wingerlang
Do you have some example?

~~~
gavanwoolery
One good example is ray casting. In a GPU there is no temporal locality, each
pixel is ideally independently determined. On a GPU you can cast a single ray
and flood fill out from there. This is slightly similar to what Ken Silverman
did in Voxlap with wave surfing, although IIRC that algorithm only fills along
vertical scanlines.

------
iaw
I look forward to every update on Voxel Quest. I find the entire project
breathtaking and beautiful. Even if I never personally play it, I am grateful
that it exists.

~~~
gavanwoolery
Thank you :)

------
Paul_S
You couldn't have handled this situation any more gracefully. I hope your
engine finds a game... or a game finds your engine.

------
BatFastard
Good work on VQ! I can totally relate to what you went thru, since I went thru
exactly the same thing myself 6 months ago. Glad to see you are open sourcing
it, might have legs still, though nothing can compare to the passion of a
founder.

~~~
gavanwoolery
Yeah, not to mention its quite a complex code base. But hopefully I can help
some people at least getting it to compile. :)

------
gabrielcsapo
amazing work on Voxel Quest, I have been following this since the start and it
made me want to carry that same engineering excellence in my open source
projects!

~~~
gavanwoolery
Thanks!

------
MustardTiger
It is really nice to see someone in the game industry with honesty and
integrity. But at the same time, it makes me sad that it stands out as being
so incredibly rare.

~~~
gavanwoolery
Thank you, I am honored!

------
stcredzero
Your game website looks great! What's it implemented on?

~~~
gavanwoolery
Thanks, it was built from scratch in C++/OpenGL. The only major library used
was Bullet for physics.

Edit: oh, the website or the game? The website was made with Weebly.

~~~
syngrog66
it's good you clarified that but I'm afraid the damage may already be done:

somewhere right now there is a young ambitious web UI designer thinking, "I
know! I'll start a new fad where every web UI requires a JS physics engine!"
and somewhere else right now, some uBlock Origin developer is thinking, "Uh
oh, I better start designing a way to block those too."

;-)

~~~
shawndrost
[https://github.com/kripken/ammo.js/](https://github.com/kripken/ammo.js/)

------
gldev
This is incredible, looking forward for the release of the engine, what is it
that you'd be doing with openAI?

(:

~~~
gavanwoolery
Mostly basic software engineering tasks, helping put together some test beds,
maintenance, and stuff like that. The researchers there will be doing the
heavy AI lifting, which I am not very experienced in (at least as far as NNs,
of which I only have a basic working understanding). Still I'd like to take it
as an opportunity to dabble further with AI if I have any spare time, maybe
flushing out VQ's emergent AI / proglog-ish language some more.

~~~
gldev
I'd so be in with the researchers! Such an interesting work best good luck!!

------
ebbv
Good on you for being honest all along and for open sourcing the results and
offering refund.

I wish people (both people seeking funding and backers) would take more
realistic and honest approaches towards crowdfunding.

~~~
onion2k
Odd as it may sound, I don't believe more realism would be a good thing in
crowdfunding. We need more projects like Gavan's game - things that are
_ludicrously_ ambitious that still produce a fantastic outcome even if they
fall before the originator of the project is satisfied.

Crowdfunding as a mechanism to pre-order something you know for certain is
achievable is good, and very useful, but crowdfunding moonshot projects has
it's place too. We should help people do crazy hard things because,
occasionally, the outcome is awesome.

Voxel Quest is one of those times.

~~~
daveguy
There are plenty of ludicrously ambitious projects. It takes someone like
Gavan running and communicating about the project for it to be a success even
if it doesn't make it to the finish line.

The outcome of a lot of over ambitious projects is that there is virtually no
communication after funding and then they come up with some bs story about how
they spent all the money before they could get anything to show for it.

Crowdfunding would be 10x what it is today if all of the "failed" projects had
failed with regular communication, significant progress throughout, and a
handoff of material (code or kit type release).

Unfortunately this is the exception rather than the rule.

~~~
onion2k
The lack of communication from some projects has little to do with how
ambitious they are. Simple projects can be terrible at keeping backers in the
loop. I absolutely agree that it's a problem, and maybe something that
actually represents an opportunity. An app that pushed project founders to
communicate regularly would be useful...

------
stephengillie
Wow! In 2016, to have a successful Kickstarter, you don't even need to deliver
anything; you just have to be charismatic and write interesting updates for
people to want to give you money.

~~~
gavanwoolery
Dreams are the new deliverable I suppose. A lot of people have labeled me as
charismatic, but in person I am very socially awkward. :)

~~~
stephengillie
What else do game makers do than deliver dreams? Just maybe not the dreams you
planned on delivering from the start. :) Grats on your successes, may they
grow with you.

------
dreamling
Can anyone be more even-keeled or humble than Gavan?

You impress me, sir. keep the patreon around for people who just want to
support a seriously good person who makes fun stuff from time to time.

~~~
gavanwoolery
I'll consider it, but money will not go to me - if anything it will be used
for bounties or awards to people who contribute to the source repository.

------
mrfusion
Would voxel quest work in the vive?

~~~
gavanwoolery
Yes. I have a CV1 that I was going to test VR on. Its current post-process
point fill might prove troublesome to some degree though (a few edges would
probably not produce coherent voxels for each eye).

~~~
mrfusion
Awesome! Can't wait to try that someday. Did you approach any VR funds about
funding?

~~~
gavanwoolery
Someone suggested I try it, but in the end I had so little time the only safe
thing was to begin searching for jobs. I have had countless offers fall
through so I am aware of the dangers of trying to work out a deal with another
party.

~~~
syngrog66
syngrog's rule of "offers" and "exploratory conversations": nothing is real
until their money shows up in your bank account ;-)

------
googletazer
Never knew about this project, the water and water physics looks beautiful.
Hope this ends up in good hands.

~~~
gavanwoolery
The project had relatively little exposure outside of Hacker News. Glad to see
people are still discovering it for the first time. :)

------
ironrabbit
May I ask what you'll be working on at OpenAI? (congrats, btw!)

~~~
gavanwoolery
Basic software engineering tasks mostly (not research). :)

