This is why i kinda stopped playing the game after paying for it and patiently await content additions.
I would like to see a deeper crust on the Minecraft earth, if i had a wish it'd be 300% deeper, the landscapes are beautiful, i won't deny it, and exploration is awesome, but it's way too easy to get to the bottom and get diamonds.
OP, Minecraft is made up of groups of blocks called "Chunks". When the player is travelling, blocks are updated a "chunk" at a time. These chunks include all the blocks from the bottom of the map to the top. Increasing the height of the maps would cause the size of chunks to increase, thus increasing the amount of CPU time and RAM required to modify the chunks.
Not to mention all the natural caverns that would be created by having land that deep, you would also be spawning monsters down in those caverns, but it would be 3 times more than it already is, not to mention it would require 3 times more chunk updates, and monitoring of block interactions for 3 times more blocks...
There's a lot going on in Minecraft "under the hood" that the player doesn't see.
it's kinda funny to me that a game based on mining has such a short depth, moreso that someone as intelligent as yourself doesn't realize that "chunks" can be updated on the Y axis just as easily as any other. Furthermore, the game need not render, nor update, "chunks" i cannot see so if they currently are, the processor is under undo stress to begin with. The plausibility of having the mining game have a mineable area 300% or even 200% deeper is not only possible and feasible, it is quite necessary.
The way it is now, is tantamount to having a flying game where you can only fly high enough to do a loop, otherwise you bump your head.
It is pretty obvious to me that the easiest way to add content to this game is to widen the actual play area which is far too small, vertically. And let us not overlook the fact that the game is capable of having a "surface" area that is 800% the square mileage of Earth; according to some math rendered by a reviewing site of this game. The capabilities of the game code should be well beyond that of being able to make the ground a little thicker. Your video card may not be, but, that's on you.
it's kinda funny to me that a game based on mining has such a short depth, moreso that someone as intelligent as yourself doesn't realize that "chunks" can be updated on the Y axis just as easily as any other. Furthermore, the game need not render, nor update, "chunks" i cannot see so if they currently are, the processor is under undo stress to begin with. The plausibility of having the mining game have a mineable area 300% or even 200% deeper is not only possible and feasible, it is quite necessary.
The way it is now, is tantamount to having a flying game where you can only fly high enough to do a loop, otherwise you bump your head.
It is pretty obvious to me that the easiest way to add content to this game is to widen the actual play area which is far too small, vertically. And let us not overlook the fact that the game is capable of having a "surface" area that is 800% the square mileage of Earth; according to some math rendered by a reviewing site of this game. The capabilities of the game code should be well beyond that of being able to make the ground a little thicker. Your video card may not be, but, that's on you.
A chunk is a method used to divide up the game world. They are 16 blocks wide, 16 blocks long, and 128 blocks deep. When wandering the world the nearest 81 chunks are loaded, arranged in a 9 by 9 grid around the player. These chunks may have activity (mobs spawning, trees growing, water flowing, dropped items disappearing etc. etc.), while the other world chunks are stored on your hard drive. If a player was to go to an area that is beyond the already generated chunks, new chunks will be generated and stored to the drive.
It has nothing at all to do with the video card. All the stress in this game comes from CPU usage and RAM usage.
that's great, what's your point?
I think you are confusing laziness with inability
I don't think the devs are nearly as lazy as you would like to believe
And if you try and convince me that the game is fundamentally incapable of handling more than 128 blocks you should just /facepalm now.
You going to tell me you can see 500 blocks in any direction, but the game can't load 2 more chunks into memory?
Would decreasing the maximum area of each map help at all in allowing the game to go deeper and higher? Supposedly each map is 8x the surface area of Earth. There are 6 billion people on Earth and a ton of empty space left. Even if EVERY, SINGLE Minecraft player played on the same map in a massive MMO experience, there would be even more empty space on a Minecraft map.
My point is that you don't need to generate maps 8x the size of Earth. How about the same size as Earth and use the extra "memory" - or whatever - to expand the bottom and top of the world?
that's great, what's your point?
I think you are confusing laziness with inability
I don't think the devs are nearly as lazy as you would like to believe
And if you try and convince me that the game is fundamentally incapable of handling more than 128 blocks you should just /facepalm now.
You going to tell me you can see 500 blocks in any direction, but the game can't load 2 more chunks into memory?
At this point i think you're just trying to troll
You need to chill out dude.
I never said the devs were lazy. My point was that I was just telling about how the game currently works. Forgive me if I thought knowing about how the game currently functions would be helpful in suggesting changes to how the game functions.
The game can be programmed however Notch wants it to be, but changing the chunk dimensions would most likely make all existing saves and worlds incompatible. A lot of people would raeg... unless some kind of save game conversion can be done.
You shouldn't accuse people of trolling just because they disagree with you... and the stupid thing is, I'm not even disagreeing with you about the depth, it would be cool to, say, double it. But I just don't see it being done anytime soon, if at all. IIRC, Notch wanted the next patches to be about content (possibly a new monster?)
EDIT : Actually, I just had an idea about how increased depth could possibly be done, without a large amount of additional resource usage, AND without making existing worlds unusable. Basically it involves having a 2nd layer of chunks underground ( " Deep Chunks " ) that are only created when you get low enough, so that if you are just running around above ground, they aren't being generated. I might make another topic about this after I think it out more, I don't want to hijack your thread with another idea.
that's great, what's your point?
I think you are confusing laziness with inability
I don't think the devs are nearly as lazy as you would like to believe
And if you try and convince me that the game is fundamentally incapable of handling more than 128 blocks you should just /facepalm now.
You going to tell me you can see 500 blocks in any direction, but the game can't load 2 more chunks into memory?
At this point i think you're just trying to troll
You need to chill out dude.
I never said the devs were lazy. My point was that I was just telling about how the game currently works. Forgive me if I thought knowing about how the game currently functions would be helpful in suggesting changes to how the game functions.
The game can be programmed however Notch wants it to be, but changing the chunk dimensions would most likely make all existing saves and worlds incompatible. A lot of people would raeg... unless some kind of save game conversion can be done.
You shouldn't accuse people of trolling just because they disagree with you... and the stupid thing is, I'm not even disagreeing with you about the depth, it would be cool to, say, double it. But I just don't see it being done anytime soon, if at all. IIRC, Notch wanted the next patches to be about content (possibly a new monster?)
I'm with Vechs, man. The fact is that if we increase the size of a chunk, it will dramatically increase the strain on RAM as a player travels horizontally. If Notch were to change the way chunks are handled to, say, making chunks stack on top of each other, it would break current gamesaves, so a conversion routine would have to be included, which takes more time to develop, so people would be hounding Notch to stop making it and instead focus on game content.
I'm with Vechs, man. The fact is that if we increase the size of a chunk, it will dramatically increase the strain on RAM as a player travels horizontally.
At some point you will have to break compatibility to make any progress. (The current map format is an abomination IMHO - a lot of performance problems are directly related to hard drive thrashing)
Until someone clearly explains why the game uses 250+MB of RAM just loading to the main menu, and uses 500+MB of RAM to load a level that occupies ~3.5MB on disk (including file system overhead), I can't accept that the game's memory requirements are anything but the result of some really sh*tty programming.
Do what needs to be done: redo the map format from scratch. The sooner it gets done the less it will hurt, and you can leave save converters up to third party tool developers.
=Smidge=
Vechs, I call people trolls when they clearly have no intention in the thread beyond some fail attempt at a flame.
You keep giving me excuses of why it can't happen, and oddly, that's your only whine.
You never said this was a bad idea, you just said the game can't currently handle it. My reaction is i don't give a F.
If you want to say, no it's a bad idea because the idea is flawed in any way, fine, do it. But to say my idea sucks because the game engine is flawed is stupid on your part.
They are the ones that built a game which is not dynamic in design, not me, or my idea.
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To Smidge, The save games/ game saving/ the whole process is trash anyway. Have you ever had the game crash while you are playing? You lose your map. It is just unflagged and sitting on your HD somewhere waiting to be written over and upon starting the game over, empty slot.
I'm with Vechs, man. The fact is that if we increase the size of a chunk, it will dramatically increase the strain on RAM as a player travels horizontally.
At some point you will have to break compatibility to make any progress. (The current map format is an abomination IMHO - a lot of performance problems are directly related to hard drive thrashing)
Until someone clearly explains why the game uses 250+MB of RAM just loading to the main menu, and uses 500+MB of RAM to load a level that occupies ~3.5MB on disk (including file system overhead), I can't accept that the game's memory requirements are anything but the result of some really sh*tty programming.
Do what needs to be done: redo the map format from scratch. The sooner it gets done the less it will hurt, and you can leave save converters up to third party tool developers.
=Smidge=
Agreed. There's no reason why - with most people having 4 or more gigs of RAM - the game couldn't be programmed to go deeper and higher. I just wish Notch would get away from JAVA and make or use a real game engine.
maybe, if you went further, only blocks 10 away from you would render. So from the inside it looked like the underground, but outside it looked like stuff was hanging of of the bottom of the map. This would mean no caves below a certain point.
Vechs, I call people trolls when they clearly have no intention in the thread beyond some fail attempt at a flame.
You keep giving me excuses of why it can't happen, and oddly, that's your only whine.
You never said this was a bad idea, you just said the game can't currently handle it. My reaction is i don't give a F.
If you want to say, no it's a bad idea because the idea is flawed in any way, fine, do it. But to say my idea sucks because the game engine is flawed is stupid on your part.
They are the ones that built a game which is not dynamic in design, not me, or my idea.
You know, you have a point regarding the way the game has been programmed. But remember that everything the game is right now is an addition to an older version of the game. If the game had been planned to be this big from the start, then Notch would likely have begun it differently.
But that's not the case. The fact is that this game is made in Java, doing something Java's not too good at doing: 3D.
On top of that, imagine for a second that Notch decided yesterday to rebuild the game's engine to handle chunks better. Would you be patient while he takes the time to do that? Or would you ***** and moan that he's not adding content?
Finally, don't call Vechs a troll, he is making a valid statement. The fact is, the game IS NOT able to handle all that, and if Notch took the time to redesign the engine, PEOPLE WOULD FLIP. So what's the lesser of two evils, adding content to make the majority of his fanbase happy, or taking months to rebuild the engine to function on your machines just to appease the small minority of people that are complaining that the maps JUST HAVE to be taller.
But that's not the case. The fact is that this game is made in Java, doing something Java's not too good at doing: 3D.
Actually the game uses OpenGL via the Lightweight Java Game Library. Or at least it should be, since it DOES reference it.
Quote from Nazzer »
On top of that, imagine for a second that Notch decided yesterday to rebuild the game's engine to handle chunks better. Would you be patient while he takes the time to do that?
Yes, because that is more important to playability and long-term stability. I'd rather he took three or four weeks (or more) to really polish the inner workings than to have some basic functionality of the game break with every other update.
Quote from Tigax »
Have you ever had the game crash while you are playing? You lose your map.
Absolutely, but I never lost a map. Corrupted, sure - but there are ways to recover depending on the problem. Most often the level.dat file gets trampled, and recovery requires deleting it. If things get extreme you can start a new map and copying over the chunk data from the old map until you find any corrupted chunks.
=Smidge=
But that's not the case. The fact is that this game is made in Java, doing something Java's not too good at doing: 3D.
Actually the game uses OpenGL via the Lightweight Java Game Library. Or at least it should be, since it DOES reference it.
My mistake.
Quote from Nazzer »
On top of that, imagine for a second that Notch decided yesterday to rebuild the game's engine to handle chunks better. Would you be patient while he takes the time to do that?
Yes, because that is more important to playability and long-term stability. I'd rather he took three or four weeks (or more) to really polish the inner workings than to have some basic functionality of the game break with every other update.
You know, I'd frankly be alright with it if he did so as well. But are we in the majority or the minority?
Quote from Tigax »
Have you ever had the game crash while you are playing? You lose your map.
Absolutely, but I never lost a map. Corrupted, sure - but there are ways to recover depending on the problem. Most often the level.dat file gets trampled, and recovery requires deleting it. If things get extreme you can start a new map and copying over the chunk data from the old map until you find any corrupted chunks.
=Smidge=
I've never had the game crash, and I've been playing since 0.0.3 or something.
You know, I'd frankly be alright with it if he did so as well. But are we in the majority or the minority?
Forums have just over 100k members, there's more than 800k clients sold, so we forum junkies are probably a bit less than 1/8th the game population.
So yeah, we're a minority.
You can't say definitely that we are in a minority just because other people aren't in the forum. Did you ever consider that perhaps other people who aren't on the message boards agree, but simply aren't on the forums?
This is why i kinda stopped playing the game after paying for it and patiently await content additions.
I would like to see a deeper crust on the Minecraft earth, if i had a wish it'd be 300% deeper, the landscapes are beautiful, i won't deny it, and exploration is awesome, but it's way too easy to get to the bottom and get diamonds.
Patch Notes, Ability to moderate your threads, Copper, Tin, Silver, Bronze, and Steel, Depth Increase, Layers in the ground of water/lava, Moar Forum Icons, Moar realistic ore veinsYou need a new video card.
Patch Notes, Ability to moderate your threads, Copper, Tin, Silver, Bronze, and Steel, Depth Increase, Layers in the ground of water/lava, Moar Forum Icons, Moar realistic ore veinsSo no, this is not a viable option.
^^My blog^^
There's a lot going on in Minecraft "under the hood" that the player doesn't see.
The way it is now, is tantamount to having a flying game where you can only fly high enough to do a loop, otherwise you bump your head.
It is pretty obvious to me that the easiest way to add content to this game is to widen the actual play area which is far too small, vertically. And let us not overlook the fact that the game is capable of having a "surface" area that is 800% the square mileage of Earth; according to some math rendered by a reviewing site of this game. The capabilities of the game code should be well beyond that of being able to make the ground a little thicker. Your video card may not be, but, that's on you.
Patch Notes, Ability to moderate your threads, Copper, Tin, Silver, Bronze, and Steel, Depth Increase, Layers in the ground of water/lava, Moar Forum Icons, Moar realistic ore veinsStep 2: Incorporate Y into chunks
Step 3: 300% deeper
Step 4: ???
Step 5: Profit
The Sun rises in the North!Now these points of data make a beautiful line...
A chunk is a method used to divide up the game world. They are 16 blocks wide, 16 blocks long, and 128 blocks deep. When wandering the world the nearest 81 chunks are loaded, arranged in a 9 by 9 grid around the player. These chunks may have activity (mobs spawning, trees growing, water flowing, dropped items disappearing etc. etc.), while the other world chunks are stored on your hard drive. If a player was to go to an area that is beyond the already generated chunks, new chunks will be generated and stored to the drive.
It has nothing at all to do with the video card. All the stress in this game comes from CPU usage and RAM usage.
I think you are confusing laziness with inability
I don't think the devs are nearly as lazy as you would like to believe
And if you try and convince me that the game is fundamentally incapable of handling more than 128 blocks you should just /facepalm now.
You going to tell me you can see 500 blocks in any direction, but the game can't load 2 more chunks into memory?
At this point i think you're just trying to troll
Patch Notes, Ability to moderate your threads, Copper, Tin, Silver, Bronze, and Steel, Depth Increase, Layers in the ground of water/lava, Moar Forum Icons, Moar realistic ore veinsMy point is that you don't need to generate maps 8x the size of Earth. How about the same size as Earth and use the extra "memory" - or whatever - to expand the bottom and top of the world?
The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim
You need to chill out dude.
I never said the devs were lazy. My point was that I was just telling about how the game currently works. Forgive me if I thought knowing about how the game currently functions would be helpful in suggesting changes to how the game functions.
The game can be programmed however Notch wants it to be, but changing the chunk dimensions would most likely make all existing saves and worlds incompatible. A lot of people would raeg... unless some kind of save game conversion can be done.
You shouldn't accuse people of trolling just because they disagree with you... and the stupid thing is, I'm not even disagreeing with you about the depth, it would be cool to, say, double it. But I just don't see it being done anytime soon, if at all. IIRC, Notch wanted the next patches to be about content (possibly a new monster?)
EDIT : Actually, I just had an idea about how increased depth could possibly be done, without a large amount of additional resource usage, AND without making existing worlds unusable. Basically it involves having a 2nd layer of chunks underground ( " Deep Chunks " ) that are only created when you get low enough, so that if you are just running around above ground, they aren't being generated. I might make another topic about this after I think it out more, I don't want to hijack your thread with another idea.
I'm with Vechs, man. The fact is that if we increase the size of a chunk, it will dramatically increase the strain on RAM as a player travels horizontally. If Notch were to change the way chunks are handled to, say, making chunks stack on top of each other, it would break current gamesaves, so a conversion routine would have to be included, which takes more time to develop, so people would be hounding Notch to stop making it and instead focus on game content.
^^My blog^^
At some point you will have to break compatibility to make any progress. (The current map format is an abomination IMHO - a lot of performance problems are directly related to hard drive thrashing)
Until someone clearly explains why the game uses 250+MB of RAM just loading to the main menu, and uses 500+MB of RAM to load a level that occupies ~3.5MB on disk (including file system overhead), I can't accept that the game's memory requirements are anything but the result of some really sh*tty programming.
Do what needs to be done: redo the map format from scratch. The sooner it gets done the less it will hurt, and you can leave save converters up to third party tool developers.
=Smidge=
You keep giving me excuses of why it can't happen, and oddly, that's your only whine.
You never said this was a bad idea, you just said the game can't currently handle it. My reaction is i don't give a F.
If you want to say, no it's a bad idea because the idea is flawed in any way, fine, do it. But to say my idea sucks because the game engine is flawed is stupid on your part.
They are the ones that built a game which is not dynamic in design, not me, or my idea.
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To Smidge, The save games/ game saving/ the whole process is trash anyway. Have you ever had the game crash while you are playing? You lose your map. It is just unflagged and sitting on your HD somewhere waiting to be written over and upon starting the game over, empty slot.
Patch Notes, Ability to moderate your threads, Copper, Tin, Silver, Bronze, and Steel, Depth Increase, Layers in the ground of water/lava, Moar Forum Icons, Moar realistic ore veinsAgreed. There's no reason why - with most people having 4 or more gigs of RAM - the game couldn't be programmed to go deeper and higher. I just wish Notch would get away from JAVA and make or use a real game engine.
The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim
You know, you have a point regarding the way the game has been programmed. But remember that everything the game is right now is an addition to an older version of the game. If the game had been planned to be this big from the start, then Notch would likely have begun it differently.
But that's not the case. The fact is that this game is made in Java, doing something Java's not too good at doing: 3D.
On top of that, imagine for a second that Notch decided yesterday to rebuild the game's engine to handle chunks better. Would you be patient while he takes the time to do that? Or would you ***** and moan that he's not adding content?
Finally, don't call Vechs a troll, he is making a valid statement. The fact is, the game IS NOT able to handle all that, and if Notch took the time to redesign the engine, PEOPLE WOULD FLIP. So what's the lesser of two evils, adding content to make the majority of his fanbase happy, or taking months to rebuild the engine to function on your machines just to appease the small minority of people that are complaining that the maps JUST HAVE to be taller.
^^My blog^^
Actually the game uses OpenGL via the Lightweight Java Game Library. Or at least it should be, since it DOES reference it.
Yes, because that is more important to playability and long-term stability. I'd rather he took three or four weeks (or more) to really polish the inner workings than to have some basic functionality of the game break with every other update.
Absolutely, but I never lost a map. Corrupted, sure - but there are ways to recover depending on the problem. Most often the level.dat file gets trampled, and recovery requires deleting it. If things get extreme you can start a new map and copying over the chunk data from the old map until you find any corrupted chunks.
=Smidge=
My mistake.
You know, I'd frankly be alright with it if he did so as well. But are we in the majority or the minority?
I've never had the game crash, and I've been playing since 0.0.3 or something.
^^My blog^^
Forums have just over 100k members, there's more than 800k clients sold, so we forum junkies are probably a bit less than 1/8th the game population.
So yeah, we're a minority.
You can't say definitely that we are in a minority just because other people aren't in the forum. Did you ever consider that perhaps other people who aren't on the message boards agree, but simply aren't on the forums?
^^My blog^^