suggestion Feature Suggestion: Optional Voxel-Based Terrain & Block Interaction Improvements

[Russel Ivie]

I am a dedicated player of Vintage Story and an immense admirer of the game's depth, complexity, and immersive world. I'm writing to propose a significant feature idea that could be implemented as an optional mode, along with a related quality-of-life improvement.

The "Smooth World" Idea: Voxel-Based Terrain Generation

The core idea is to introduce an optional world generation setting that utilizes a second, voxel-based layer on top of the existing 1-meter block grid. This would create a much smoother, more realistic, and organic landscape.

How it would work: The world generator would use the same voxel system already in place for the ancient ruins, similar to the voxel chiseled machanic. It would run a calculation on the surface of the world to "smooth" the transitions between 1 meter blocks, particularly on slopes and hillsides. The process would be procedural, much like the existing noise functions for world gen.

Justification: The game already proves this is technically possible with the procedurally generated, voxel-based ancient ruins. This demonstrates the engine is capable of generating and rendering this type of geometry. While an entire world would be a far greater undertaking, it could be a performance-heavy option for players with powerful PCs, or a long-term goal for the future.

Benefits:

Eliminates the need to jump over single-block changes in elevation, creating a more seamless walking experience. As long as the voxel world generation is small enough.

Generates stunning, natural-looking landscapes with gradual slopes.

Enhances immersion and realism, reducing the "blocky" feel of the terrain.

We understand this would be a massive project, impacting performance, world file sizes, and requiring complex integration with existing physics (water flow, AI pathfinding, etc.). We see it not as a simple mod, but as a potential major feature for a future version of the game.

Related Idea: Voxel-Based Dirt, Gravel, and Sand

A smaller, related suggestion for a new block interaction is to apply a similar voxel system to loose blocks like dirt, gravel, and sand.

How it would work: When a dirt, gravel, or sand block is broken, it would drop 4 smaller "chunks" or "balls" instead of a full block. These chunks could be combined in a 2x2 crafting grid to create a full block.

Gameplay Benefits:

Adds a tactile, realistic feel to breaking these specific blocks.

The smaller chunks could be made throwable, similar to snowballs. This would be a fun, non-damaging item for players to toss at each other or just for visual effect (splatting on impact).

Justification: This is consistent with the game’s existing system where chiseled stone blocks drop smaller stone pieces. Applying it to dirt and gravel would feel natural and expand on an existing mechanic.

Thank you for your time and for considering these ideas. We deeply appreciate all the hard work that goes into making Vintage Story the fantastic game that it is.

Best regards,

A dedicated player

PS I added some examples of what i think it might look like below. I crafted these by hand.

[Entaris]

Well, I guess we're about to find out if Tyron et al patrol the forum.

 

Because that's the only guy I can think of that would grasp this, hahaha.

 

Good luck, bud.

[williams_482]

Have you considered that this might make it even harder for new players to find clay?

[Facethief]

Lag city’s that way.

Nevermind what I said here, I just heard “half meter resolution” and scrolled past.

Edited August 21, 2025 by Facethief
Correction of statement

[Russel Ivie]

1 hour ago, Entaris said:

Well, I guess we're about to find out if Tyron et al patrol the forum.

 

Because that's the only guy I can think of that would grasp this, hahaha.

 

Good luck, bud.

Voxel's are the smaller blocks inside the 1-meter blocks that make up the world. is this not there name? I thought it was a common name? its easiest to explain it as a smoother landscape.

[Facethief]

1 hour ago, Russel Ivie said:

Voxel's are the smaller blocks inside the 1-meter blocks that make up the world. is this not there name? I thought it was a common name? its easiest to explain it as a smoother landscape.

Well, yes, but everything placeable in game is already a voxel of some kind.

[LadyWYT]

I mean, it looks pretty, but I'd imagine you'd need some beefy hardware in order to even run with that option...which leads to the problem of players picking that option because it's pretty, and then complaining that the game doesn't run very well. You could add a warning label, but still...

I think this would also make building harder too, in that now you have to chisel everything in order to get it to look good, or at least make it look like part of the landscape. With the current setup, you can chisel if you want to make things look extra nice, but you can also just use basic blocks and the pre-made decorative blocks(like roofing) to get results that still look very nice without a lot of effort, that still match the surrounding landscape.

3 hours ago, williams_482 said:

Have you considered that this might make it even harder for new players to find clay?

That, plus it would probably also make it tougher to determine how many resources a block needs to drop now, since it's not a full block anymore. I'd also be concerned about creature pathfinding, as it can already struggle sometimes with just the basic blocks. I'm not sure how much harder terrain like this would be for creatures to navigate, but it seems like there would be some issues.

 

3 hours ago, Entaris said:

Well, I guess we're about to find out if Tyron et al patrol the forum.

My general conclusion, based on my own observations here on the forums, is that the developers absolutely check in with relative frequency, but do not post or otherwise interact very often at all outside of News and other official communication. 

[Entaris]

2 hours ago, LadyWYT said:

That, plus it would probably also make it tougher to determine how many resources a block needs to drop now, since it's not a full block anymore. I'd also be concerned about creature pathfinding, as it can already struggle sometimes with just the basic blocks. I'm not sure how much harder terrain like this would be for creatures to navigate, but it seems like there would be some issues.

That's a good point, as well, since chiseled blocks typically drop THEMSELVES exclusively (much to my chagrin on finding A WHOLE BRONZE BELL...which was subsequently unmeltable)

[LadyWYT]

16 minutes ago, Entaris said:

That's a good point, as well, since chiseled blocks typically drop THEMSELVES exclusively (much to my chagrin on finding A WHOLE BRONZE BELL...which was subsequently unmeltable)

In all fairness, the resource drops of some blocks(like clay, peat, and stone) is somewhat random, but since chiseled block types aren't usually full blocks, then you'd have to calculate how much of the block is actually there, and then assign that its own resource drop bracket. On top of that, the block might be composed of multiple materials, so then you'd also have to calculate how much of each material should drop. Maybe the calculations for that only run when you break a block, and therefore don't take a lot of extra processing power, but still...that's a whole lot more code to account for in order to implement that kind of function, and a lot more chances for things to go wrong, especially in relation to other parts of the game.

[Thorfinn]

How would this be different than just quadrupling the size of a seraph and the other entities? At least that solves the drops problem.

[Katherine K]

1 hour ago, LadyWYT said:

In all fairness, the resource drops of some blocks(like clay, peat, and stone) is somewhat random, but since chiseled block types aren't usually full blocks, then you'd have to calculate how much of the block is actually there, and then assign that its own resource drop bracket.

Yeah, most of the drop amounts would be easy to adjust to 1/2 and 1/4 blocks. And I don't think it'd be a bad thing for these not to be exact. If the full block of clay normally drops 5 clay, 1/2 block dropping 2 wouldn't be throwing the balance off or anything.

I don't think this makes sense for any but the surface blocks, so you shouldn't have a problem with multiple materials being mixed together. But this does introduce potential problems with soil. Nothing unsolvable, but changes are likely to go beyond simply world gen and will result in some gameplay adjustments.

There are interesting edge cases with grass and tree placements too. It'd be a project, for sure.

6 hours ago, Russel Ivie said:

Voxel's are the smaller blocks inside the 1-meter blocks that make up the world. is this not there name? I thought it was a common name? its easiest to explain it as a smoother landscape.

Entire terrain's voxel. But there's a sub-grid for the blocks, yes.

7 hours ago, Facethief said:

Lag city’s that way.

Game's pretty good at handling sub-blocks, and there seem to be some optimization for slabs. Going down to 1/2 or even 1/4 blocks shouldn't be a problem performance-wise. I won't go so far as saying that it would have no impact on performance, because I'm not that confident, but I would be shocked if it's significant.

[Bomboclaat]

 If Terrain Generation worked like this no one would mistake this game for Minecraft again that's for damn sure. Not having to jump on to every block above me would be a relief as well.

I wonder with all of the extra detail and generation how hard this would be to implement in game? Would this affect things like trees as well to make them more round or tree like?
I know you mentioned the ruins already have some of that uneven terrain but considering the caves underground, things can get pretty insane, not just for worldgen but for players to straight up navigate.
I'd like to see a modder try to tackle this concept, maybe it would become vanilla down the line but for now I would love to do a playthrough in a world like this.

(I hope my 4060 would be able to handle it)

[Thorfinn]

On 8/22/2025 at 7:32 PM, Bomboclaat said:

Not having to jump on to every block above me would be a relief as well.

Install one of the StepUp mods.

[Russel Ivie]

3 hours ago, Thorfinn said:

Install one of the StepUp mods.

its not about the jumping. Its about the immersion of the player. The players wouldnt need to think about jumping unless the terrain was steep. players could walk around and the world its self would look cleaner and smoother more realistic.

[Thorfinn]

9 minutes ago, Russel Ivie said:

Its about the immersion of the player. The players wouldnt need to think about jumping unless the terrain was steep. players could walk around and the world its self would look cleaner and smoother more realistic.

True, assuming a smoother world is what you are shooting for. Granted, the team has made the terrain more traversable (read, you can now go pretty much anywhere you like, rather than having to base your travel on what the terrain is) but my understanding of the lore is that this world has undergone a major cataclysm, thus, for example, why you find ruins at the bottom of deep lakes.

I do think yours is an interesting idea, but I am nowhere near as confident as @Katherine K that it can be optimized sufficiently. Even if you make 1/2 m blocklets, you are sending potentially 12 faces to the GPU to render, plus the occlusion culling, as opposed to the maximum of 3 at present. Since the area of a circle is the square of the radius, this 4x would correspond to doubling the view distance. Which is probably why heavily chiseled areas are such beasts.

I mean, your suggestion of 1/4m resolution would logically be the same level of computer demand as breaking the current chunk into 8 "voxels" and rendering that. If the aggregate can be optimized that much, why not do that now?

[Russel Ivie]

On 8/21/2025 at 5:26 PM, LadyWYT said:

I mean, it looks pretty, but I'd imagine you'd need some beefy hardware in order to even run with that option...which leads to the problem of players picking that option because it's pretty, and then complaining that the game doesn't run very well. You could add a warning label, but still...

I think this would also make building harder too, in that now you have to chisel everything in order to get it to look good, or at least make it look like part of the landscape. With the current setup, you can chisel if you want to make things look extra nice, but you can also just use basic blocks and the pre-made decorative blocks(like roofing) to get results that still look very nice without a lot of effort, that still match the surrounding landscape.

That, plus it would probably also make it tougher to determine how many resources a block needs to drop now, since it's not a full block anymore. I'd also be concerned about creature pathfinding, as it can already struggle sometimes with just the basic blocks. I'm not sure how much harder terrain like this would be for creatures to navigate, but it seems like there would be some issues.

 

My general conclusion, based on my own observations here on the forums, is that the developers absolutely check in with relative frequency, but do not post or otherwise interact very often at all outside of News and other official communication. 

Responding to Your Concerns

I appreciate your feedback on the idea of a world made of smaller blocks. Your points about hardware, building difficulty, resource drops, and creature pathfinding are all valid, but I think the game's current mechanics already show that these issues are solvable.

 

Hardware Demands

I don't think a world made of smaller blocks would require significantly more "beefy" hardware. Vintage Story already has a version of this with its ruins. These structures, found all over the map, are composed of half-meter blocks. The game is already capable of rendering these types of assets without major performance issues, so it seems the groundwork is already in place to expand on this concept. It would likely be more about reorganizing existing code than it would be about creating something completely new from scratch.

 

Building Difficulty

I believe building in a world of smaller blocks could be harder, but not by much. You can already try building on the existing ruins and see how it works. If the world was made of half-meter blocks, you'd only see half-slab blocks everywhere. You'd simply need to find a flat enough area and remove the dirt blocks to start building. The need to chisel would only come into play if you wanted your structure to blend in with the surrounding terrain, which would be an optional step.

 

Resource Drops

The system for dropped resources is already established in the game. When you break a full stone block, it drops three to four stones. In contrast, breaking a chiseled ruin block might only drop one or two. This same logic could apply to other block types. Instead of a full dirt block dropping, it could drop smaller "dirt balls" that you could combine to craft a full block, similar to how cobbled stones are made.

 

Creature Pathfinding

You're right that creature pathfinding can be an issue, but it seems to be because they struggle with the large, one-meter blocks. If the world were made of half-meter or smaller blocks, creatures would no longer need to jump. Both players and mobs can already automatically move up any block that is less than one meter tall (like stairs). A world with smaller blocks would likely make pathfinding much smoother and less frustrating for mobs, which could even fix some of the current pathfinding issues.
 

Foreseen Issues

You are right to be concerned. The hardest part of implementing this change would be blending the new, smaller-block terrain with existing structures like ruins, traveling traders, caves, and trees. While I don't see this as a major problem with half-meter blocks, it would get more challenging the smaller the block size gets. Ultimately, it would be a matter of smoothly transitioning the new terrain with the less-detailed, pre-existing structures in the world.

[Russel Ivie]

6 minutes ago, Thorfinn said:

True, assuming a smoother world is what you are shooting for. Granted, the team has made the terrain more traversable (read, you can now go pretty much anywhere you like, rather than having to base your travel on what the terrain is) but my understanding of the lore is that this world has undergone a major cataclysm, thus, for example, why you find ruins at the bottom of deep lakes.

I do think yours is an interesting idea, but I am nowhere near as confident as @Katherine K that it can be optimized sufficiently. Even if you make 1/2 m blocklets, you are sending potentially 12 faces to the GPU to render, plus the occlusion culling, as opposed to the maximum of 3 at present. Since the area of a circle is the square of the radius, this 4x would correspond to doubling the view distance. Which is probably why heavily chiseled areas are such beasts.

I mean, your suggestion of 1/4m resolution would logically be the same level of computer demand as breaking the current chunk into 8 "voxels" and rendering that. If the aggregate can be optimized that much, why not do that now?

Hardware Demands

I don't think a world made of smaller blocks would require significantly more "beefy" hardware. Vintage Story already has a version of this with its ruins. These structures, found all over the map, are composed of half-meter blocks. The game is already capable of rendering these types of assets without major performance issues, so it seems the groundwork is already in place to expand on this concept. It would likely be more about reorganizing existing code than it would be about creating something completely new from scratch.

I do see how it might cause issues, but that why I suggesting it being an option for players to turn on or off. a slider for 1-meter block generation or smaller for people with more powerful PC's.

[Thorfinn]

5 minutes ago, Russel Ivie said:

The game is already capable of rendering these types of assets without major performance issues,

It is capable of rendering a few ruins at once, yes. Usually, there's only a few dozen blocks of 1/2m. You are talking potentially all of them in the view distance.

[EDIT]

Check out BetterRuins, where there are several hundred of them. Turn the spawn frequency way up and see what happens if you start getting a higher fraction of them. It's a little more involved to do with vanilla ruins, but is still well within the ability of anyone with basic knowledge of English.

Edited August 24, 2025 by Thorfinn

[LadyWYT]

Just now, Russel Ivie said:

Hardware Demands

I don't think a world made of smaller blocks would require significantly more "beefy" hardware. Vintage Story already has a version of this with its ruins. These structures, found all over the map, are composed of half-meter blocks. The game is already capable of rendering these types of assets without major performance issues, so it seems the groundwork is already in place to expand on this concept. It would likely be more about reorganizing existing code than it would be about creating something completely new from scratch.

Better Ruins is a mod that adds many more ruins that are much larger and more detailed to the game. Most of these ruins have a lot of elaborate chiselwork compared to vanilla ruins. I've said as much elsewhere on the forums, but Better Ruins, while a great mod, is notorious for being demanding on hardware, and is often the cause of reduced performance. I don't have a potato pc, but I don't have top-of-the-line either, and the times I've played with the mod, there was a definite performance hit. Pretty graphics are nice, yes, but a good framerate is critical to actually playing the game. Incidentally, I suspect this is also the reason that vanilla ruins are fairly simple--the game needs to run well on a wide range of hardware.

I'm with @Thorfinn on this one--I don't see how you optimize such a thing enough to operate on a wide range of hardware without running into performance issues. It seems more an option that will require some beefy hardware in order to have a playable framerate, and as I said before...you could solve that just by making it an option at world creation and putting a bold disclaimer on it about hardware requirements. At that point, if players choose that option and run into issues, that's on the player. However, I'm not sure such a thing is in enough demand as to be worth the development time currently.

6 minutes ago, Russel Ivie said:

Building Difficulty

I believe building in a world of smaller blocks could be harder, but not by much. You can already try building on the existing ruins and see how it works. If the world was made of half-meter blocks, you'd only see half-slab blocks everywhere. You'd simply need to find a flat enough area and remove the dirt blocks to start building. The need to chisel would only come into play if you wanted your structure to blend in with the surrounding terrain, which would be an optional step.

I like chiseling, but as much as I like it...honestly, I don't want to spend the lion's share of my time just trying to make my builds fit seamlessly into the world. Yes, blending a build into terrain is optional, but I'm betting that most players prefer their builds to look like they at least fit into the landscape, even if the build itself is simple. If a build looks like it's just been copy-pasted onto the land, it doesn't look very good, and it's not uncommon to see players complain about "ugly" structure generation due to the structure generation not blending with the surroundings.

 

11 minutes ago, Russel Ivie said:

Resource Drops

The system for dropped resources is already established in the game. When you break a full stone block, it drops three to four stones. In contrast, breaking a chiseled ruin block might only drop one or two. This same logic could apply to other block types. Instead of a full dirt block dropping, it could drop smaller "dirt balls" that you could combine to craft a full block, similar to how cobbled stones are made.

Yes, but what do you do about composite block types? Part dirt, part clay, etc. I am assuming that composite block types would be included in this type of generation, in order to make things look even prettier.

I will also note that if you include dirt clods as a sort of "partial dirt" drop...it would really need another use aside from just crafting a dirt block. Otherwise, it's just a nuisance item that will clutter a player's inventory. 

15 minutes ago, Russel Ivie said:

Creature Pathfinding

You're right that creature pathfinding can be an issue, but it seems to be because they struggle with the large, one-meter blocks. If the world were made of half-meter or smaller blocks, creatures would no longer need to jump. Both players and mobs can already automatically move up any block that is less than one meter tall (like stairs). A world with smaller blocks would likely make pathfinding much smoother and less frustrating for mobs, which could even fix some of the current pathfinding issues.

Except I'm pretty sure that you can already cause plenty of pathfinding issues for creatures, just by using chiseled blocks. They don't need to jump in order to have problems navigating the space.

Additionally, if creatures no longer need to "jump" or "climb" as much in order to navigate the world, that brings with it the issue of...what options does the player have to escape hostile wildlife and monsters? Currently, the player can manage to outrun most fast enemies by navigating more difficult terrain, assuming that the player can manage to time more of their movements properly than the enemy can. I'm not saying that creatures shouldn't have smoother pathfinding, but it is a factor to account for, given that most players don't like feeling that the creatures have unfair advantages when it comes to navigation and other things.

22 minutes ago, Russel Ivie said:

Foreseen Issues

You are right to be concerned. The hardest part of implementing this change would be blending the new, smaller-block terrain with existing structures like ruins, traveling traders, caves, and trees. While I don't see this as a major problem with half-meter blocks, it would get more challenging the smaller the block size gets. Ultimately, it would be a matter of smoothly transitioning the new terrain with the less-detailed, pre-existing structures in the world.

I'm pretty sure you don't blend this kind of terrain with the current--you'd pretty much have to pick one or the other. Maybe pre-existing worlds could be remapped, but that's likely a LOT of waiting time, as well as a lot of potential for things to go wrong. Likewise, if you make this the default setting, and lower-end hardware can't run it...it's going to really suck for the players with lower-end hardware to figure out they can't play the game anymore due to this kind of change.

In short, the only way I really see this kind of thing working, outside of mods, is an optional setting at world creation that can't be changed after creating said world, and that comes with a disclaimer about the stronger hardware requirements.

[Thorfinn]

2 hours ago, LadyWYT said:

It seems more an option that will require some beefy hardware in order to have a playable framerate

I think that's a bit optimistic. There are maybe 1,000 blocks visible in some of those. If you have a view distance of 1,000, and a FOV of 60 degrees, that's potentially half a million blocks visible. So take the worst performance hits of BetterRuins, and imagine something 500 times worse than that. In every direction you look. Heck, most machines don't swing max view distance now, at 1m.

Could you optimize that somewhat? Sure. Let's say you could shave off a third. That still seems like it would be absurd.

[EDIT]

It occurs to me there might be an easy way to see. Create a chiseled block that's missing 4 of the 8 vertex blocks, two on the top face, the alternate two on the bottom face. Replace dirt blocks (probably lf and mf would be enough) with this block, and create a new game.

Edited August 24, 2025 by Thorfinn

[LadyWYT]

33 minutes ago, Thorfinn said:

I think that's a bit optimistic. There are maybe 1,000 blocks visible in some of those. If you have a view distance of 1,000, and a FOV of 60 degrees, that's potentially half a million blocks visible. So take the worst performance hits of BetterRuins, and imagine something 500 times worse than that. In every direction you look. Heck, most machines don't swing max view distance now, at 1m.

Could you optimize that somewhat? Sure. Let's say you could shave off a third. That still seems like it would be absurd.

Maybe. By "beefy" I mean the absolute top-of-the-line specs; you could probably get some playable results if you have an absolute beast of a machine. I would assume in that case though, you'll probably also need to turn your view distance down, as well as turn down other graphics settings(like god rays and shadows) in order to get something playable.

Of course, that's just guesswork on my part, based off observations about shaders, extremely high resolution textures, and extremely detailed models. There's also this monstrosity, and its accompanying warning: https://mods.vintagestory.at/sphericalblockmodels

Not that anyone wants spheres instead of blocks, but I think it's also a decent example of how more complex shapes increase hardware demands.

[Katherine K]

5 hours ago, Thorfinn said:

I do think yours is an interesting idea, but I am nowhere near as confident as @Katherine K that it can be optimized sufficiently. Even if you make 1/2 m blocklets, you are sending potentially 12 faces to the GPU to render, plus the occlusion culling, as opposed to the maximum of 3 at present. Since the area of a circle is the square of the radius, this 4x would correspond to doubling the view distance. Which is probably why heavily chiseled areas are such beasts.

Modern (and I mean past 10 years or so "modern") rendering hardware is primarily limited by memory bandwidth, not triangle counts in any realistic setting. If they take up the same surface area on the screen, it rarely matters if you render it with one triangle or 2 to 4. Your bottlenecks will be in rasterizing, texture fetches, lighting, etc, and that doesn't scale with triangle count all else being equal. Besides, a single tree in VS takes up at least a typical chunk's worth of triangles. Not to mention any chiseled structures, including generated ruins. The impact of going to a slightly higher triangle count of terrain is negligible. Machines old enough that it'd make a difference to aren't going to be able to run VS at anything other than a slide show rate to begin with.

[Phantom72]

I used to play TUG, loved being able to build with the smaller blocks.
So YES, for better no-mc looking terrain.. as for finding clay, there should be another way :).

1. 1 block turning into 8... for all of them, nope, I just love my 100fps and being able to backup my whole world to dropbox in a couple of seconds
2. Just skimming the top generated layer with chisels.. that might work
3. Or fake it as in other games - 7d2d,nms, etc
4. __

[KoviBat]

I think this is a good idea. It might be resource-intensive, but I think it's worth it. It also sets a little bit of a precedent to have voxel-based animations for breaking blocks. Having voxels break free from natural blocks like wood, stone, dirt, or sand when you break them. It also means it can get even smoother when it snows, which I would love. Having it as an option would definitely be appreciated.