Just yesterday, April 28th, JoEngine author, Johannes Fetz, announced a significant update to the Sega Saturn Software Development Kit that now includes support for Voxels.
Johannes also stated that this Voxel support was the first of several updates rolling out in the weeks to come…
Johannes also confirms this demo is running on real hardware…
…and that this software rendering method ‘bakes’ everything down into a single background image.
While not used extensively in many Saturn games, voxels did garner interest and attention from the industry as a creative and ‘low cost’ solution to rendering a 3D playfield in software. There were a few commercial Saturn titles that implemented voxels for their terrain, such as Black Fire, Magic Carpet & AMOK. In the early days of 3D software rendering, it was possible to achieve great performance with voxels, so long as they were used artistically. Their greatest drawback at the time, however, was the fact that their overall detail was typically limited by low system resolution, and Saturn was no exception.
A massive Saturn fan since Christmas ’96, Dave is enthusiastic about growing the community and spreading Saturn love and knowledge to fans old and new. Co-founding the SEGA SATURN, SHIRO! podcast back in 2017 and creating the SHIRO! SHOW in 2020, he seeks to create interesting and engaging Saturn-related content for the community. Dave’s interests circle around game preservation, and he is a huge fan of game magazines and developer interviews.
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