- Name: Milan "Cpt. Crispy Crunchy" Ender
- Social: https://github.com/CptCrispyCrunchy
- From: Germany
- Skills / Tools: Programming: Java (favored), C++, C, lua, Haskell, and a bit C#. Machine learning with neural networks (SOM, FFN, Clustering on Github). Numerical programming experience (university course).
Advanced math knowledge (3rd year physics b.sc. student). - Found via: GSoC 2016
- Interests: I love implementing and devising algorithms. Also I'm fascinated with procedural worlds and voxel engines and already read several articles concerning this topic. Therefore I'm particularly intrested in your issues with agent-based simulation of land usage (for its similarity with my own idea stated below) and
noise-based generation of distinguishable terrain features. I would love to play around with the math formulas for terrain creation! - Extra: I coded a lot with the mod computercraft for minecraft and created an api for advanced control of those turtles. However, as I grew more ambitious I quickly stumbled on limitations in minecraft and am now delighted to see an open source approach. I have a concept for an intelligently acting anthive lying around somewhere which is waiting to be implemented. Your project seems like the perfect match for this!
Contributor Hello!
- Thread starter Cpt. Crispy Crunchy
- Start date
Hi @Cpt. Crispy Crunchy and welcome 
Good to have you here showing interest in these topics. Especially the agent-based simulation hasn't seen that much attention of potential GSoC students yet. I'm looking forward to your ideas, questions, and contributions!
To get you started, fork the project on Github and get yourself setup to run from source. You might find the Dev Setup Guide useful. Once you've done that, familiarize yourself with our code base, attempt working on some of the contributor friendly issues, or just toy with the code and let us know about it
For the agent-based simulation topic (#944) there is a lot of reading the related forum thread. For both topics you mentioned, the tutorial on world generation should give you a good idea how our facet world generation works, how to deal with chunks and chunk borders, and so on. The Cities module is a good example of how a world gets populated with "features" and how they are implemented.
If you were refering to the visual representation of the terrain, you might want to ask one of our 3d wizards
Good to have you here showing interest in these topics. Especially the agent-based simulation hasn't seen that much attention of potential GSoC students yet. I'm looking forward to your ideas, questions, and contributions!
To get you started, fork the project on Github and get yourself setup to run from source. You might find the Dev Setup Guide useful. Once you've done that, familiarize yourself with our code base, attempt working on some of the contributor friendly issues, or just toy with the code and let us know about it
For the agent-based simulation topic (#944) there is a lot of reading the related forum thread. For both topics you mentioned, the tutorial on world generation should give you a good idea how our facet world generation works, how to deal with chunks and chunk borders, and so on. The Cities module is a good example of how a world gets populated with "features" and how they are implemented.
I'm not 100% sure what you mean with this. Blocks can have an "arbitrary" shape (should fit in the 1x1x1 cube), and we can have bigger objects that can be placed like blocks. Furthermore, there are multi-block structures, like doors (actually 2 blocks, placed as a whole) or a furnace (placed block by block, becomes a furnace on completion).
If you were refering to the visual representation of the terrain, you might want to ask one of our 3d wizards
Great! Thanks for the quick help in getting started .
Sorry for that rough formulation of my question, but yes I was refering to the terrain representation. So maybe you know the engine of space engineers or no man's sky, creating that smooth voxel terrain feeling.
Anyways, I'm gonna get started now. You'll hear from me soon
.Sorry for that rough formulation of my question, but yes I was refering to the terrain representation
. So maybe you know the engine of space engineers or no man's sky, creating that smooth voxel terrain feeling. Anyways, I'm gonna get started now. You'll hear from me soon
Hi @Cpt. Crispy Crunchy and welcome!
Looking forward to see that ant hive!
As for smoother voxels it has been raised in the past as theoretically possible as an alternative way to represent block/chunk data (projecting a smoother mesh to then render instead of blocks). But that was from a 3D wizard who knew what he was doing, just didn't have the time or interest to do it.
You can get a fair distance towards smoother terrain by simply using shaped blocks. We've got an assortment of slopes and so on (even some round stuff, gasp!), can make more, and can place them during world gen. Again just nobody has tried to do it yet
Looking forward to see that ant hive!
As for smoother voxels it has been raised in the past as theoretically possible as an alternative way to represent block/chunk data (projecting a smoother mesh to then render instead of blocks). But that was from a 3D wizard who knew what he was doing, just didn't have the time or interest to do it.
You can get a fair distance towards smoother terrain by simply using shaped blocks. We've got an assortment of slopes and so on (even some round stuff, gasp!), can make more, and can place them during world gen. Again just nobody has tried to do it yet
Hey, thanks!
Well that sounds promising! I'm setup with the world generator now and tried some stuff out (got some canyon-like worlds) and got used to the code a bit. Will have a look at that round blocks later.
Theoretically, the marching cubes algorithm used to create that smooth mesh terrain shouldn't be that complicated to write so maybe I'll try it out once I've gotten more used to the engine code.
Well that sounds promising! I'm setup with the world generator now and tried some stuff out (got some canyon-like worlds) and got used to the code a bit. Will have a look at that round blocks later
. Theoretically, the marching cubes algorithm used to create that smooth mesh terrain shouldn't be that complicated to write so maybe I'll try it out once I've gotten more used to the engine code
.