Stable build 17 and procedural discussion time

[Cervator]

Couple new builds of interest, going to do some dev discussions on IRC tomorrow (Saturday) US afternoon / German evening, and naming a few new leads

Stable build 17 is out with a bunch of changes:

• BIG NOTE (after previous stable build): Commands in the console now need to start with a / and those with multiple parameters need to be space-separated, no commas needed. Examples:
  • /help
  • /help "listBlocks"
  • /giveBlock "Clay" "Slope"
• Overhauled console - looks different, preps chat functionality, its help system is growing up, etc. Some info in the wiki but beware of stable vs develop differences
• Initial Procedural Architecture Grammar system by Skaldarnar - see its forum thread for more details, in short it starts us toward a grammar system to "write" buildings and more in plaintext
• Lots of GUI framework stuff mostly by miniME89 that's hard to see as it is mostly behind the scenes
• Shiny new inventory by Adeon does stick out, it is even animated!
• Basic creature model animation system, get your animated pony today!
• Bits of build system / version / logistics fun
• Added a block picker screen (F5 for now)

Develop build 297 then got the latest from Immortius added from his mod-arc work

• BIG NOTE: Library jar files changed. Run gradlew idea once or use a fresh workspace with develop. You might also need to poke the new bundled mods with a stick to get everything to work running from source, we'll look into making this easier
• Left/right mouse buttons got switched around again. One of these days we'll settle on something
• Fancy: Moving toward annotations to define input mapping defaults and such
• "Internal" mods are now handled as sub-projects / modules. At the moment in IntelliJ they may need to be explicitly compiled once
• More stuff is supported for actual mods, like the Entity System stuff

Naming some new leads

• A'nW taking over as art lead from glasz who'd rather focus on art than the rather thankless organizing work - which we're still thankful for
• miniME89 getting tagged as GUI lead - more a formality at this point after recent framework effort and collaboration with Adeon and x3ro
• Nym Traveel as procedural world lead - focused around the framework and world map stage, helping us get set up to where we can add new and additional detail generators both to core and as mods

We'll aim to spend a good chunk of time tomorrow talking on IRC (or via Mumble) about world generation, mainly at the world map stage (generating fancy heightmaps and what not) but also likely for chunk storage, other generation features like geology, world shape, etc. I am also getting a hold of a couple co-workers to talk Android at some point during the day. Talk time is estimated in the mid-late US afternoon which is mid-late euro evening, about 13-15 hours from now

More updates to the project readme and wiki coming soon (need to reflect the changes to the console, for instance)

 

[Nym Traveel]

This all sounds promising.
I'll make a brief list of topics to discuss for today evening so we stay a bit organized

 

[Cervator]

This all sounds promising.
I'll make a brief list of topics to discuss for today evening so we stay a bit organized

Thanks - you're lead now anyway, so feel free to run that part

 

[Cervator]

Some quick summary notes - we did some talk via voice chat to test out Mumble that went sort of so-so. I'm still pretty mixed in my opinion of voice vs text, but don't doubt it can be appropriate in some cases. It shouldn't be a problem having our own Mumble server available, as long as we can get interested people working clients.

• Chuck Offsets - shortcut suggestion brought up by Nym to allow us to "cheat" with terrain height differences greater than 256 blocks. Rather than enlarge chunks, simply shift some of them up or down to create a more varied surface without first needing full implementation of vertical chunks. Probably too much work / drawbacks vs. simply implementing proper vertical chunk (as in, chunks in multiple layers in all three directions)
• Height map instead could be generated with an average height per pixel / chunk put to more work - Nym item to get us nice sample height maps
  • Use for the world map to calculate stuff like temperature
  • Could be used secondarily for high level fluid dynamics (which directions should rivers flow)
  • Use to determine where to do sunlight calculations. Height determines first surface, cut off sunlight a certain distance below that, under which sunlight is never considered.
  • Use to allow calculations with greater than height 256 by using average height + height offset vs. average (if needed)
• Biomes could be less "global" than usual in this game genre. Rather than height being defined by biome ("mountain" biome if temp and humidity are within certain parameters creates tall terrain) leave biomes only worrying about true vegetation and climate stuff, maybe painted over terrain by a banded climate simulator or something.
• We need to define the order in which generation happens and what sort of hooks there'll be for specific generators (terrain, climate, rivers, cities, trees, etc) as well as start abstracting out the phases of generation (like biome). Nym will try do to a design of some sort (GDoc? I made an earlier draft)
• Other worlds would likely be disconnected and not contiguous with chunks/blocks even if you could in theory fly into space and go to another planet. Portal style with the potential for a "no-mans-land" in between worlds while stuff loads in the background. Also helps encapsulate separate entity system objects for different worlds.
• Gravity holds some interesting potential and novelty, might go well with a cube planet or unusual source of gravity. Neat GravityCraft addon for MC. Brokenshakles might be able to look at that some more.

All in all - more fuel to get chunks in all directions rather than being limited to a single layer of 256 block tall chunks, and maybe a solid idea on how to handle the main lighting challenge to that

Nym will juggle the world gen of a height map as well as the line-up of different generation phases