This is not your usual Retronator post, but I’m a huge computer science nerd, so when I saw how well NVIDIA and Cornell’s GANcraft neural network transformed a Minecraft voxel world into a realistic representation, I just had to make some GIFs and share it with you.

I’ll let Károly from the excellent Two Minute Papers channel share the enthusiasm further:

And if you want to see the original researchers’ video, take a look here:

There are more and more art styles that live on the spectrum between pixels, voxels, and low-poly 3D. One interesting approach has always been sprite stacking, a technique for rendering voxel art by drawing individual pixel art cross-sections and offsetting them to create depth.

SpriteStack by Przemysław ‘Rezoner’ Sikorski is a specialized tool that lets you do just that. We got a teaser recently of all the upcoming features for the 2021 version and it’s really pushing the software beyond its humble (but very well received) beginnings back in 2019.

The development has hit a bit of a snag in 2020 (a hard year for many), but luckily Rezoner didn’t let the project die completely and is finally back, ready to bring the new features to release.

The 2021 version needs a couple more months of uninterrupted work to get done, so you can help Rezoner get them by supporting him on Patreon or by buying the previous version on Itch ($30) or Steam (currently on sale for $24).

I was a big fan of Antoine ‘Sir Carma’ Lendrevie’s voxel art ever since I wrote my big article on pixels and voxels in 2016. Not long after, Antoine moved to Vancouver—the home of Brace Yourself Games—and started working as lead artist (and now art director, among other artists) on the simulation/strategy game Industries of Titan.

What followed were 4 years of patiently looking at cubes being carefully arranged into delicious dioramas on his Twitter, merging slowly into vast sci-fi cityscapes you can marvel at in the screenshots above (make sure to see them up big to take in all the voxel detail).

Finally the good news, you can now start colonizing the largest moon of Saturn yourself, as Industries of Titan landed in early access yesterday on Steam and Epic!

If you, like me, in the past tried to find games that don’t have violence/fighting as one of their main game mechanics, it was hard to know what to put into the search field to get your idea across … until 2019 when Matthew Taylor started curating “uplifting, thoughtful, compassionate, cozy video games” on Twitter under the name Wholesome Games.

It turned out he was far from the only one who wished to find more positive gaming titles. The Wholesome Games community quickly grew, leading up to a showcase in 2020 called Wholesome Direct—an online alternative and answer to many physical events like E3 getting canceled that year. Wholesome Direct was welcomed by over 140,000 viewers and was essentially a half an hour of videos of wholesome games weaved together with two hosts and the games’ developers introducing their trailers.

Following a couple of smaller showcases—Wholesome Snacks—in August and December last year, Wholesome Direct is back for its second run coming up this Saturday.

More than 70 games will be shown and—just like last year—we can expect a bunch of them to be presented in lovely pixels, voxels, or low poly pixel art. The whole lineup is hush hush since it includes some first-time reveals, but from those announced, the ones with low-resolution raster art include Moonglow Bay and Yokai Inn.

My Twitter feed also tells me Cheekynauts’ Moonshell Island will be showcased!

I’m so excited for this and all the other games in all the wonderful art styles and cozy colors!

You can tune in too this Saturday, June 12 at 10 AM Pacific, 7 PM Central European Time, on YouTube or Twitch, as well as follow Wholesome Games everywhere on the web.

Since Lospec launched in 2017 with its limited-color palettes list, the site quickly grew into the best resource for digitally restrictive art as it elegantly calls art forms such as pixel art, voxel art, ASCII/ANSI, low-poly 3D, chiptune and anything else digital that purposefully uses restrictions, often inspired by technologies of the past.

After adding an extensive database of pixel art tutorials and many other features such as an online pixel art editor, a merch shop, and user accounts, the site’s creator Sam ‘@skeddles​​’ Keddy would like to go into full-time development on the next big feature, the Lospec Gallery.

The idea is to have all the pixel-art-specific features of galleries such as Pixel Joint (sharp pixels with integer magnification scales), but open to everybody without purist requirements, as well as extended to other digitally restrictive artworks that also lack a dedicated place on the web.

Check the video on top for details or hop directly over to the Kickstarter campaign where you can show support for this very much welcome effort for our community. The project’s base funding has already been reached, but plenty of stretch goals remain for things to get even better (2021 release date, 3D and audio display types, personal portfolios, collaboration features, an API …).

Here’s a small voxel diversion from me, a nature simulation thingy called Project Gaia. 

Codeveloped with Anneke Lisa (design, voxel art), we started the project at Global Game Jam as a calm simulation of nature reclaiming the wasteland that humanity left behind (the theme of the jam was “repair”). After struggling with Unity during the jam (and failing to get anything done), I rewrote everything in WebGL/Three.js, and put some polish on top so that you can try it yourself in the browser. I even wrote music for it!

All the world simulation runs in shaders on the GPU so this is basically a stress test for the graphics card (especially World 5, which is at 120×120×80 voxels). You can press t or h to display temperature or humidity simulation that is running in the background. If you’re so inclined you can even peek at the source code. Enjoy!

Lospec

Lospec is quickly becoming the ultimate website for pixel art resources.

I’ve mentioned the site in my YouTube News episode for November, when it launched with an awesome database of color palettes. 

It includes close to 150 entries, beautifully presented, and searchable by number of colors and tags (if you want, for example, see just system palettes of old computers).

Tutorials

Today an even more gargantuan resource was unveiled: a list of over 500 tutorials, categorized by tags, authors, and mediums—a feat that took multiple months to compile.

Keep reading

Steam release headlines

We’ve seen an insane amount of big releases in just the last few weeks (Iconoclasts, Celeste, Dandara, Aegis Defenders), but there are so many more … I’ve written about some already, so here are just a few one-liners about recent releases on Steam.

Gladiators play dodgeball with spears; none survive

(Retronator post, Steam page, $15)

Sheep gains sentience, designs video game sequel

(Pre-quel post, Steam page, $4)

Zack Wood unveils monsters have feelings too; might be tripping

(Steam page, $5)

Dwarves leave Early Access, embark to settle in ruined regions

(Retronator post, Steam page, $12)

Voxel chicken crosses the road, reaches other side unharmed; local farmers relieved, increase egg production

(Retronator post, Steam page (EA), $20)

Minecraft’s global convention Minecon Earth takes place today. Unlike previous years where people met in the real world, you’ll be able to participate in the 90-minute keynote/event right in the livestream video above (starting Noon EST).

Some of you might recall the first Minecon in 2011 where about 5,000 people celebrated the release of 1.0 in Las Vegas (together with ‘Nether Party’ featuring deadmau5). The game has grown a bit since then and last year 12,000 tickets for the show in Anaheim sold out in seconds. This time around there will be no such problem, everyone can just tune in online.

What to expect? One thing we know is that players will vote which of the four possible new mobs Mojang will bring to life, while the other three designs get discarded forever.

Other than that people are gathering together in real life for screenings, cosplaying and all the normal stuff you’d do at a convention, just decentralized. 

As I write this, it’s just 9 hours away, so we’ll soon see what the team has in store for us this year.

You can finally try out Fugl, the absolutely gorgeous voxel art meditative bird flying game. It’s an Early Access release, so know that your $10 (minus 10% right now) go towards further development of the game.

What I want to draw your attention to is, look at the video below, and notice that as the bird rotates, it re-voxalizes to fit the game’s fixed voxel grid. Usually a voxel artist would manually decide how to voxel an object, kind of like building a LEGO model. If you then pretend to fly the model around the room, it doesn’t change its shape. Not so with Fugl! Here the voxels are strictly aligned to the initial 3D grid so when the bird rotates, it needs to re-voxel to fit the fixed grid. It’s quite rare to see this and a pretty neat detail.

Anyway, enough nerdtalk. Go and try flying around yourself on Steam!

I wish Zach Soares wasn’t so mysterious on his collaboration with Lu Nascimento, (both of who formed @littleventurepals a while ago), because I really want to write about their great art. 

While we wait, here is some of Zach’s client work which finely embody why I grew big fondness for the emerging art style of voxel art. It’s not as prevalent as pixel art yet, but well on its way there and offers a nice, unique alternative that joins pixels and low-poly in our ensemble of retro game aesthetics.

If I had the money for all the Kickstarter projects I write about (and weren’t a digital nomad who needs to pack all physical things into one suitcase every month) … then I’d have a lot of fun with Pixio. It’s the closest we’ve come to voxel art in the real world.

In theory I love decorating my workspace so I would love to create little things for my theoretical desk that I don’t have.

Sometimes I think about settling down so I’d have a living room to place a TV with a ZX Spectrum Next hooked into it, and a shelf with all the Bitmap Books books. Until then, I will put all these things into my virtual Retronator HQ in Pixel Art Academy.

In my imaginary world, here’s how I’m assembling a Steve:

If your existence is less theoretical than mine, grab yourself a set on Kickstarter, to be estimatedly delievered end of Summer. Last chance, campaign is running out in a day.

I should have played more virtual reality games at the Game Developers Conference, given that VRDC was happening as part of GDC, but so far not many pixel art games have figured out how to do that in 3D (I’m holding my breath for The Last Night to be the first). Anyway, the three-dimensional equivalent to pixel art is of course voxel art, and you can easily do that in VR.

Fugl was one such demo I randomly ran into in one of the expo halls. Put this video on fullscreen, stick your nose to the picture and you still won’t have a clue at how cool soaring around a voxel art world feels like.

The game will enter Early Access on Steam sometimes later this year. In the mean time, you can follow the author Johan Gjestland on Twitter.

Canada is a nice place for game development, because the government is very nice to game developers. Cococucumber from Toronto are being supported by the Canada Media Fund and the Ontario Media Development Corporation in creating their voxel hack-and-slash action-adventure. Riverbond, as the game is called, will offer about 150 hand-crafted levels for you to explore and fight your way through, alone or with up to 3 other friends.

I had the pleasure to play Riverbond at GDC, albeit shortly and in little chaotic jump-in fashion, but the game really does stand out visually. All the art has a loving style and even when voxels fly off of enemies it all stays very cute and approachable, kinda like LEGO Movie.

It’s worth watching in motion, so I’ll just say the game’s coming to PC and consoles later this year, and I’ll leave you with the trailer.

What do you get if you mix Animal Crossing, Harvest Moon and Minecraft? It’s Staxel! 

It was started in 2014 by Bart van der Werf, one of the Starbound programmers, as a friendly alternative to Minecraft. Instead of being motivated by survival from everything that tries to kill you after dawn, it focuses on farming, cooking and making friends.

Staxel is early in development, but already playable and has a sizable community. You can join yourself by visiting their website.