FAQ

Avoyd is a voxel editor and PBR path tracer. It is in active development. You'll find more information, including features and user documentation on the official Avoyd website.

Avoyd started as a game. We started working on Avoyd in 1999, selling the game as shareware. It was, to our knowledge, the first voxel game with an entirely editable environment (destruction and building). After a 10 year pause we restarted development in 2012, rewriting the game engine from scratch and evolving the concept to take advantage of technological advances. The new version of Avoyd is inspired the original Avoyd 1999 and Quite's haunting zeo-x-s demo, Rez (Area 4 in particular), FPSs we've liked to play like Unreal Tournament, Descent, and much more.

The game is unfinished and its development is currently on hold but you can play the prototype we include (hidden) in the voxel editor.

You'll find information about each release in the Avoyd changelog and our News forum. We also publish an email newsletter informing you of each release.

list of all the ways you can follow our work:

• Subscribe to our email newsletter - We email you when we release a new full version, roughly every one to three months.
• Visit the Avoyd News forum - We post when we release Beta and Full builds.
• Read our development blog - Subscribe to the rss feed - more in-depth articles and information about Avoyd's development and the technology we develop for it.
• Read our public posts on Patreon - Avoyd release news and open-source software updates. Sponsor us to access private posts and receive Patreon updates by email.
• Join the Avoyd Discord server - We occasionally publish pre-release test versions of Avoyd on our Discord.
• Join the r/Avoyd subreddit.
• Subscribe to Avoyd on PlanetMinecraft for updates specific to the Minecraft map importer and renderer.
• Follow @dougbinks and @juulcat on Mastodon - we post what we're currently working on: the latest Avoyd development and programming, prototypes, programmer art and open-source software updates.

If you would like more details see the devlog post about the Beta release stream.

Minimum Requirements

Avoyd runs on our in-house voxel game engine written in C++ using OpenGL, and Vulkan for the GPU renderer. This is partly why the download size is small. The engine is developed by Doug Binks and Juliette Foucaut.

To follow our progress with the game technology, see the Game Tech topic on our devlog, our public posts on Patreon and follow @dougbinks and @juulcat on Mastodon.

We open source parts of our engine:

• Runtime Compiled C++ for rapid iteration

• enkiTS, my lightweight multithreading task scheduler - further information can be found under our devlog's enkiTS topic

• enkiMI, our Minecraft Importer library

• IconFontCppHeaders, our script to generate Font Awesome icon fonts header files for the GUI

• imgui_markdown, markdown for Dear ImGui

We use third-party open-sourced software listed below. Many thanks to the authors and maintainers of these libraries.

• OpenGL for Graphics

• GLFW for platform independent OpenGL Window & Input handling

• GLEW OpenGL Extension Wrangler Library

• OpenAL Soft for Audio

• RakNet for Networking (using just the low level network code)

• NanoVG for HUD elements

• Dear ImGui for the GUI

• ImGuizmo for 3D manipulation in the Voxel Editor

• LZ4 for compression

• A modified version of SJSON for settings files

• A modified version of the Ray Slope Intersection source from the article on Fast Ray/AABB Overlap Tests.

• Microprofile for real-time profiling - see enkiTSExamples for a sample usage.

• jo_gif GIF writer

• open game tools for reading MagicaVoxel .vox files

• libcurl

• robin-hood-hashing for hash map

• MurmurHash3 hash functions

• xxHash hash functions

• uint C# xxHash, we derived our C++ uint32_t xxHash implementation from this C# example

• dbgtools platform independent debug functions

• stb single-file libraries for C/C++

• TinyEXR for OpenEXR images support

• TinyglTF for glTF .glb export

There are several ways to support our work on Avoyd and our open source projects.

• Buy Avoyd from our site
• Sponsor enkisoftware on Patreon
• Sponsor Doug on GitHub
• If you use Avoyd in your voxel art or other projects, we would really appreciate a mention (ex. "created with Avoyd", "rendered with Avoyd"); and if you want to send us a link, we'd love to see what you've made and boost your work.
• Spread the word about Avoyd and our projects if you've found them useful
• Give us feedback about Avoyd and our project so we can improve them

Yes, some functionality may require a valid user account, but we plan to ensure Avoyd can work even if services are unavailable.

Yes, you can freely use and publish any images, videos etc based on Avoyd. We would just appreciate a mention, and if you want to send us a link, we'd love to see what you've made!

You're likely seeing a standard warning about programs which have not been downloaded by millions of people. The Avoyd executables are virus checked and signed with our company Enkisoftware Limited's digital certificate. The certificates are delivered by an independent provider: Sectigo.

What you can do to check the file you downloaded is safe to open or execute:

1. Always download files to your Windows PC User Downloads folder.
2. Always Scan downloaded files with Windows Defender before opening them:
   1. Right click on the file to open the context menu.
   2. If you're on Windows 11 select Show more options.
   3. Select Scan with Microsoft Defender.
3. Check the Avoyd certificate:
   1. Right click on the Avoyd installer executable file, for example: Avoyd_0.17.0.768_demo_setup.exe.
   2. Select Properties.
   3. Select Digital Signatures.
   4. Check you see this information:

      Name of signer:	Digest algorithm	Timestamp
      Enkisoftware Limited	sha1	17 July 2023 17:20:11 (*)
      Enkisoftware Limited	sha256	17 July 2023 17:20:15 (*)

      (* Example date. This is the date the executable is signed. It is the same as the executable created date.)
   5. Select one of the lines.
   6. Select Details.
   7. Select View Certificate.
   8. Check you see this information:

      Issued to:	Enkisoftware Limited
      Issued by:	Sectigo Public Code Signing CA R36
      Valid from	22/03/2023  to  22/03/2026 (**)

      (** Dates change when the certificate is renewed.)
   9. Optional: select Issuer Statement for more information from the Sectigo website