Over a year later … time for some sitrep.
the engine turned out to had some serious faults at a pretty low level with some aspectes of the engine … so first I basically rebuilt the deferred engine from scratch and learned a lot about internal stuff in the process (DeHexTD actually started out as a Test Project for that engine)
Once that engine was done I started refactoring the whole voxel-related stuff into the new engine framework.
Bad things first: It’s no longer “infinte”. I still can make worlds as big as the memory allows, but it will no longer expand infinite dynamically. In the end it was a useless feature anyway with more drawbacks than benefits. This allowed for a whole new range of optimizations and still runs fluid with worlds as big as 7x7km² (fully dynamic!)
I dropped the former Asset-Editor - the new one now supports custom meshes and actual game properties (like materials are defined as wood, and will be rendered depending on with which type of wood that asset was actually created ingame) - very cool. Even allows chaining meshes and stuff
Former Trees were dropped - the new trees are actually living procedurally on the GPU - they grow in realtime (not stepped) now and every tree on the map is actually totally unique (while still looking like a tree).
The cellular automata (doing water and light simulation) was completely removed from CPU and is now processed on the GPU - this is a HUGE benefit to performance and the cellular automata can now run permantly without the need to settle in a static state. Geometry now uses that information directly on the GPU for rendering purposes, so there is no longer need to bake anything into actual geometry.
PathFinding in the meanwhile was improved and is now featureing interconnected areas thruout the world - this massively sped up prior checks to order handling - of course, pathfinding and (structured) order handling all happening multithreaded.
And now the best of all: It’s not longer just an engine. It’s going to get an actual game. The plan is to be something inbetween gnomoria/banished/rimworld but in an actuall full 3D in a fully dynamic environment. The total amount of features is undecided yet. I plan to do a more in detailed look on the current state in some video soon.
Let me know if you have any questions, I may be happy to answer - what started out as a simple hobby project turned into something pretty complex so far 
PS: follow me on twitter for some teasing GIFs in the meanwhile