WorldGen/Debugging

[Sin3point14]

Terasology has great support for generating wide terrain features on the scale of biomes but the biomes themselves lack certain localised small features which add to that biome's uniqueness, My project aims to add support for such features to be created and try my hand at creating a few of them. The second facet of my project is to add an option to pause the world at the user's wish and fully explore it in "ghost mode" this would allow the user to debug gameplay in an easier manner by observing the world freely in a paused state. This would also open the doors for more gameplay debugging tools in Terasology

Find the Trello board briefly explaining my plans here

I'll be posting all my updates here

 

[Sin3point14]

Minutes of meeting 1530 GMT 6 June 2020

• This was the first meeting so most stuff discussed was to finalize the pre-TSOC stuff here
• 2 report threads will be made here weekly, one will be the minuted of meeting and other will be the work done in the week
• I will be starting a blog to document and present my work professionally
• More columns added the trello board to organise work better
• The Trello board is currently housing broad ideas of the work I plan to do since all of my work is based on experimentation and refinement, I will be refining my work cards as I progress

 

[Sin3point14]

Work for the week June 7- June 13 2020

• Read about how tillable noise are implemented link
  A note- Found another good noise generator for "blocky" noise in this- Contoli Noise
• Read the original papers from which Terasology's Simplex and Perlin noise implementation are taken link
• Discovered a mathematical way to make these tileable and control how noisy each tile is.
• Dealt with some Module issues will soon update the World Gen Tutorial Repo's wiki
• Prepared a POC showing this-
  
  
  
  
  (The red regions have same shapes hence showing that the noise pattern is repeating and tiled)

 

[Sin3point14]

Minutes of meeting 1530 GMT 13 June 2020

• Informed of all the progress and finding posted above
• Answered several queries regarding the specifics of work and why am I doing what I am doing(Answer)
• My next work- Control grid sizes in simplex noise generator and put up a PR
• Was given a couple of ideas by @Cervator regarding the use of tiles in proc gen, leaving it here so I don't lose it

 

[Sin3point14]

Work for the week June 14- June 20 2020

• Implemented my radial noise generator PoC using the tileable perlin noise-
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
• Tried to create a 2D tileable simplex noise but it is mathematically not possible for square-shaped tiling without artefacts. Managed a 1D implementation for any amount of grid dimensions(more grids = more wavy mountains as shown above).
  
  
  
  
  
• PR coming soon containing the changes I did to the noise generators along with docs on how to use the tileable ones. The custom noise generator will be PR'ed ones I start making Volcanoes as currently it is in a dummy module with no real purpose

 

[Sin3point14]

Minutes of meeting 1530 GMT 20 June 2020

• Showed the progress report of the above post
• Suggested to work on a new module for Volcanoes
• Suggested to look at Lakes/StaticCities modules to get inspiration for Volcano placement
• Radial Noise Generator will be added to CoreWorlds

 

[Sin3point14]

Work for the week June 11 - June 27 2020

• File PR for changes in Simplex and Perlin and got it merged
• File PR for the radial noise based region selector
• Made Volcanoes!
  
  
  
  (It will be filled with Lava soon)
  
  
• Also the blog is up! https://sin3point14.bearblog.dev/

 

[Sin3point14]

Work for the week(+1 day) June 28- July 5 2020

• Shifted Volcanoes to a facet based system taking inspiration from StaticCities and World Gen Turorial
• Filled the Volcanoes with lava
• Introduced more parameters to control volcano diversity
  
  
  
  
  
  Just some final tweaks remaining before the PR comes!

 

[Sin3point14]

Minutes of meeting 1430 GMT 5 July 2020

• Showed the work in the previous thread
• Idea- Active/Dormant Volcanoes, use water instead of lava? https://discordapp.com/channels/270264625419911192/708789552235544636/729347593787670579
  Trivia Time- Minecraft cacti block/soul sand is slightly smaller than 1 block to detect a player "entering" them and apply the relevant effects.
• An explanation for difference Facet's border annotation and applying extendBy/maxWith on it https://discordapp.com/channels/270264625419911192/708789552235544636/729354656832290836
• GenericRocks and Mineral modules have blocks that can used to introduce variety.
• I'll be taking the next week to clean volcanoes, add some documentation to Borders and updae World Generation tutorial

 

[Sin3point14]

Work for the week(-1 day) July 6 - July 11 2020

• Went through a lot of Border stuff in order to get the Volcanoes right
• Volcanoes now check for appropriate almost flat lands to spawn
• In the process of adding some docs to Borders
• PR by today!
  
  

 

[Sin3point14]

Minutes of meeting 1530 GMT 11 July 2020

• Change blocks in Volcanoes
• A small addition to the plans- take a deep dive into Worldgen and improve the existing docs/tutorial
• Refer StaticCities to find a way to stop trees getting into the volcano. Thanks @Skaldarnar - https://github.com/Terasology/StaticCities/tree/develop/src/main/java/org/terasology/staticCities/blocked
• If BlockedArea is good enough consider shifting it to CoreWorlds(if general enough) or CommonWorld(if not)

Note to self- figure out border annotations need only sides and .extend() needs bottom instead of the top while rasterizing we iterate from lower y to higher y

 

[Sin3point14]

Work for the week July 12 - July 18 2020

• Volcanoes now find an optimal lowest point to place start rasterizing, hence no more flying volcanoes
• Basalt is used at lower heights and slate at higher heights.
• Module PR is up! https://github.com/Terasology/Volcanoes/pull/1
• Oasis work started!
  
  

 

[Sin3point14]

Minutes of meeting 1530 GMT 18 July 2020

• Showed the work in the previous thread and informed about Lakes cleanup
• Note for worldgen deep dive- World Configurator values are being completely ignored
• Got the module tested and merged, thanks @Cervator !

 

[Sin3point14]

(last week was a break, as I had IRL work)
Work for the week July 26 - August 1 2020

• Got structural templates based worldgen running along with @ktksan
  
  
  
  
  
  
• Oasis spawn but currently use oak trees and are spawning outside of deserts as well

 

[Sin3point14]

Minutes of meeting 1530 GMT 1 August 2020

• Palm trees by @Qwertygiy "The blocks are in PlantPack; there are generators in ParadIce and GenericBiomes that might need some modification to get back up to date"
• Oasis PR will be up in a couple of days, next plans are to document as the worldgen related finding I have in TutorialWorldGeneration

 

[Sin3point14]

Work for the week August 2 - August 8 2020

• Refining ST worldgen/igloos with @ktksan
• Bigger Lakes forming in the Lakes module
  
  
  
  
  
  
• Trees spawning around lakes, also called Oasis(again thanks @ktksan )
  
  
  

 

[Sin3point14]

Minutes of meeting 1530 GMT 8 August 2020

• Showed my work for the week
• Next work would be "so the work i will be undertaking is to fix the performance issues of lakes module and figure out a way to not remove trees provided by DefaultTreeProvider ... fix the shape of Lakes"
• ParadIce module giving not RasterFilters defined, the solution suggested by @Qwertygiy https://discordapp.com/channels/270264625419911192/708789552235544636/741684558616854588
• Fun finding- RasterFilter was supposed to block rasterization of trees if the block underneath them is removed, but it gives NPEs when chunks are loaded in the incorrect order

 

[Sin3point14]

Work from last reported to 29th Aug 2020

• Lakes got the performance boost they needed, very low overhead caused by them now.
• Probabilities for underground lakes, lava lakes, oasis, normal surface lakes have been adjusted to make it more realistic.