This is my first time blogging, so please be gentle with me - after all, I have no idea what I’m doing.

I recently started thinking again about a project idea that I’ve had for quite a while, and before I make too much progress I though I would start writing small posts to document my experiments and discoveries as I go.

What’s It All About, Then?

I’ve been interested in voxel terrain ever since Minecraft was the new kid on the block. Since then I’ve played around with implementing simple forms of this myself and read about various algorithms to produce smooth (“true”) voxel terrain.

Now when I tell you I’m also rather interested in space, you may see where this is headed.

My goal is to create a real-time, planetary-scale voxel terrain engine.

When I say “planetary-scale”, I’m talking somewhere in the realms of Kerbal Space Program’s 1/10th scale up to real solar system scale.

I want to be able to go from standing on a planet surface, to orbiting around it’s moon, to digging for gold (I’ll settle with Helium-3) on the far side of the moon - all seamlessly.

This is obviously something that has been done before, to varying degrees, as games such as Space Engineers show. I’ve also come across a couple of videos online, where people have built something similar, such as this one.

However, this really just proves that it can be done, and serves as inspiration as I attempt to create my own take - and maybe, just maybe, take it up a notch. And learn a tonne in the process, of course.

Conclusion

Join me as I embark on a highly ambitious project to create a “game” that allows you to explore a full size star system and it’s planets, and freely build and terraform on their surfaces.

I have further ideas that I would like to explore too, such as fluid simulation systems, but they can wait for another time.

That’s all I’m going to say for now - the next post will begin the journey proper, so please do keep an eye out for it if this all sounds interesting to you!