Voxel Space (Comanche Terrain Rendering)

This video explains one of my favorite algorithms ever: The Voxel Space engine. This technique was used to render the terrain in the Comanche: Maximum Overkill game.

We'll start with a high-level overview of the technique, and proceed to write a very short implementation using C and a graphics framework called DOS-Like.

Source code: https://github.com/gustavopezzi/voxel...

DOS-Like framework: https://github.com/mattiasgustavsson/...

Rotation p5js Sketch: https://editor.p5js.org/gustavocp/ske...

Sebastian Macke Voxel Space Page: https://github.com/s-macke/VoxelSpace

Codermind Team Voxel Space Article: https://web.archive.org/web/201311130...

Voxel Space was a voxel raster graphics rendering engine invented by Novalogic developer and vice-president of technology, Kyle Freeman, and it was used in many of their games.

The first game that used this technique was called "Comanche: Maximum Overkill". Comanche was programmed in 32-bit x86 assembly, and it was released for MS-DOS users in 1992.

Novalogic was issued a patent for the technology in early 2000.

US Patent US6020893: https://patents.google.com/patent/US6...

Chapters:
00:00:00 Introduction
00:03:00 Kyle Freeman
00:08:00 High-level Algorithm Overview
00:24:11 Starting our C implementation
00:50:09 FOV, Projection, and Looping Voxels
01:17:45 Rendering from Front to Back
01:34:19 Perspective Projection and Perspective Divide
01:43:34 Handling Keyboard Input
01:47:13 Wrapping Terrain Data Around
01:54:22 Camera Rotation
02:12:08 Horizon (Pitch Up & Down)
02:19:30 A Discussion on Fog Effect, Camera Roll, and Sprites
02:27:14 Final Considerations on Performance
02:40:00 Conclusion & Next Steps

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