Voxel Renderer (just planning RN)

So I’ve been searching around on the forums and have seen multiple people who are asking for “multiple layers of tilemaps in raycasting.” I know this is not how raycasting works, but I see the inspiration. I also know that what they are asking for is a real thing, called a voxel engine, and after looking at projects like @Brohann’s 3D dev log and @kwx’s multiple space games, I believe it would be possible to make one in makecode.

However, I have no experience in 3D rendering once-so-ever and would prefer to keep coding in blocks. Im thinking if I put restrictions on my idea, like no textures, minimal shading, ext, I could still make it in basic makecode.

From my understanding, a basic voxel engine works by keeping track of every place a cube is, and then drawing a square for each side of said cubes. Although I fear my understanding is grossly oversimplified.

For now, Im not coding anything and this topic will most likely never turn into anything big, but I want to work through the theory. is it possible, or even probable?

I am asking for the input of the smart side of makecode, thanks in advance!

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I haven’t looked at full voxel or marching cube rendering - my suspicion is that this would be beyond the limits of MakeCode Arcade hardware devices (though I’d be happy to be proven wrong), but seems doable on a sufficiently fast machine using the emulator. The new native polygon-drawing functions should be a big help, I didn’t have those back when working on my renderer.

The closest I got to voxels was a 2.5D height field implementation in Fire Rescue Chopper, but that’s of course far simpler to implement.

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