First public build

Welcome to my game design diary!

Here I want to share about the project I started in summer 2024.

What is is about?

The hex-terrain was born from the idea of creating a permacultural terraforming simulator. I am infinitely thankful for my former teacher and bachelor advisor Csongor Baranyai, who introduced me to permaculture and invoke a strong interest to the metaphor of game design as gardening. I am also extremely happy to have met my partner, who is a permaculturalist with 10+ years of hands-on experience and co-developer of the project. We think that more people shoud know about permaculture and the best way to spread the word is through play!

Why voxel?

I immedeately decided on voxel-based system, because I want each particle of the world to hold its own properties and spread influence to the neighbors. The literal fundament of the simulation is ground - and this is what had to be done first. So I started with terrain generation.

Why hexagons?

This was an idea of my partner: hexagon is much more of a natural shape than cube. Also, hexagons are used in many games, board and digital, for a good reason - 6 directions avaliable instead of 4 on the grid.  Also, hexagons are bestagons!

What's next?

Some things I already tried out a bit and want to implement in the next iteration:

• interactable cells: removing, adding tools
•  primitive water simulation: flows, gravity
•  erosion simulation: water influence
•  color divercity: more cell types identifiable by color