Minecraft Forums

I will not disclose what this project is, it may seem strange reading this but strange people exist :D. I will update the post with a link to it if I ever do complete it.

There has been something I've been wanting to do since freshmen year. It's now over 4 years later and college starts within 2 days. It's been in my mind every day never leaving since last I've stopped. I have not really been that happy since. Some days I just didn't feel like I had any emotion but rather an empty feeling in me, when I did have any it was usually anger and irritation. It probably didn't help playing video games every night (Didn't want to but usually I did this so that I can get a quiet time to work, although by the time night came I got addicted.)

I'm not entirely sure what happened but I believe I know the general reason of it. Anxiouty, stress and worry have had a big impact along with possibly ocd and being discouraged from doing it. (Thinking the ocd was caused by worrying about it, basically it turned into repetitive thoughts which made it extremely hard to visualize things at times.)

Now if I see anything similar to it I completely avoid that object. This goes with movies and games or even knowledge. I've avoided fallout 4 because of it. I'm just afraid that I can't move on without completing this.

I'm wanting to go back and continue working on this project but I fear it may be to late now. I remember a lot about it and documented quite a bit but am no longer in the same mindset that it was created in. I'm afraid that it won't be as good as it used to be or that it's just simply to late. The main thing about it I sometimes (a lot) have problems still visualising it.

I probably will still try, I don't think I can move on with my life if I don't

Closing note

What do you think internet?

Why tell the internet? Sometimes it's easier to be vague with people who you have and will never have a connection to or even meet. Also don't let extreme stress go unnoticed by others, talk to some one or go see a consouler.

Graphics card: AMD Radeon R9 200 series

Processor: Intel Core i7-3770 CPU 3.40GHZ 4 cores (8 threads that show up as cores.)(This is first generation and was ahead of games [being that they requires ussually around 2.2 ghz])

Ram: used to be 4 gigabytes but then magically grew to 8 (8GB DIMM DDR3 clocked @ 1600 MHz)

Storage: WDC WD10EZEX-60ZFa5 (An older HD 1 terabyte.)

http://www.userbenchmark.com/UserRun/1496399

Looking to update for computer science classes. Probably graphics but I don't know how old my processor is, probably 4-5 years.

Quote from default_ex»

Technically speaking this would be an absolute nightmare to implement in Minecraft.

First you would want a way to represent the world as a height map minus the trees. Forget about holes in the surface geometry.

Second you would need a piecewise planar algorithm which produces the signature blocky look of Minecraft. As far as I know this is new territory as all research I've ever read and experimented with in that regard tries it's best to produce smooth curvature.

Third you would need a way to stitch chunks together. This is where it gets really complicated and really ugly. Imagine representing a 256x256 region of a Minecraft world with just 16x16. You loose so much detail that players are thrown aback by the detail popping, even when geomorphing is used to smoothly transition between the detail layers. Look at it in numbers, each layer being double the area of the original: 16 -> 32 -> 64 -> 128 -> 256. You likely wouldn't need more than 5 detail layers, but each step your halving the amount of visible detail.

Now trees those are easy. You take a random sample of trees from your distant area. Render them to a texture (diffuse and normal map will suffice). Draw these textures both ordinary orientation and mirrored orientation in place of the trees. Perform the lighting in a full screen post process pass using only the sky light. This is the imposter method and a lot of games pull it off so well you don't even notice it until someone points it out.

Better off coming up with better fogging algorithms to hide the world's edge. Traditional distance fog looks silly. It can easily be replaced by a 2 pass additive method that could even incorperate biome properties to yield some different colored hazes depending on what's at the visible world's edge. In fact I might get on working this into a mod. I already have the algorithms written up for Direct3D9, translating to OpenGL should be relatively simple since it's not using anything particulalr to Direct3D9.

From what I'm reading this is possible but current knowlege does not know how to get this done. I'm sure the fact the its in Java does not help.

Quote from macadamia238»

Feel free to use the picture, you can also wait until I release an update for my pack if you want better pictures taken by yourself (like here's a desert shot)

Can confirm this is a pretty good looking pack.

Quote from SparkytheHellcat»

I have one question.

How?

Now, I'm not saying I know anything about this. If you can disprove my argument with facts, wonderful, good show. But I'm seeing some flaws here.

How would this work, exactly? From what I know, in the game you've shown, terrain and structures are made out of polygons. You have lots of polygons that make up a tree, a bunch of them to make a hill nice and smooth, yadda yadda yadda. They're what the world you see is made out of; Flat shapes with textures arranged into objects. To get "distant terrain", you just render things with fewer polygons, or remove things like trees entirely. This makes them look kind of bad, but you're not looking at them up close, so it doesn't really matter.

"This is all wonderful," you might say. "But what's your point?"

My point is, Minecraft just doesn't work like that. Sure, everything there is made out of polygons, too, but instead of structures, you have blocks. That tree? In your lovely example game, that's probably one object. But in Minecraft, it's several blocks, and each block is large and important. How does the game know it's a tree? It could just as easily be the support pillar of a magnificent mansion, or a signpost, or a hut. That mountain you were talking about? In your example, it's a bunch of terrain polygons all linked together; Smooth them out and you're good to go. But in Minecraft, to do that at all, the game needs to know where every block is to put the smoothing textures over them. And what about waterfalls? Snow? Trees? Buildings? With how ambiguous Minecraft is, it would be ludicrously complicated to even begin with this. It might take more processing power to render the distant terrain then it would to just show the blocks! And that's not even going into the bugs that would need to be ironed out.

And for what? It's just not worth it.

I'm sorry, but no support. Disprove my point as you will.

I see what you're saying here I think. The trees that any one can see in the pictures are actually one of the only things that are not blocks. Everything else is a block. I also think you misunderstood the second picture a bit, the trees that are there are within render distance. It seems like the developer of the game did not make them appear in the distant terrain.

What do you mean by "It might take more processing power to render the distant terrain then it would to just show the blocks"? More than showing what, regular rendered in blocks?

Quote from jdc997»

This wouldn't be able to work in the traditional method, however, it could work, although it would cost performance. Ideally, you'd be able to toggle it in the video options and choose the "far chunk" render distance.

Every block in these "far chunks" would be rendered as having an opaque texture one pixel in size, and this same single-color texture would occur on all faces, the exception being grass, snow, podzol, mycelium, and path, which would use a different color on the top. This color could either be hard-coded into game for slightly improved performance, or created by averaging all the colors in the texture provided in the resource pack. Every block in the "far chunks" would also be a full block, including slabs, stairs, windows, and iron bars. Small blocks, like redstone dust, buttons, and torches, would not render at all.

"Far chunks" also wouldn't be lit, they would only be psuedo-shaded depending on the time of day.

Also, only a certain range of blocks would be rendered. This range is between a few blocks below the surface, to the maximum block generation height. On a normal world, this is from y64-128. Right below the bottom range are blocks that are white in snowy biomes and green elsewhere to fill up any holes.

Finally, none of these blocks are considered by anything other than rendering engine, so these blocks won't be solid, won't be effected by ticks, and basically just don't exist.

Anyway, I do support this if it doesn't take up more effort and computer resources than it's worth. Being able to see beyond your render distance can really improve immersion, especially in custom maps.

Quote from macadamia238»

Sort of like this?

Btw it's a skybox texture for my resource pack to simulate the effect

Quote from a321b74»

I see you didn't even address my point of making it a settings option. And, as stated by others (since I'm no expert at game design) it might not work, and these problems need to be addressed too.

Quote from a321b74»

Meh. Since it's mostly aesthetic it's more of a "why not" suggestion. Also, I don't believe colored light was ever added... Using the argument above doesn't help this in any way. 30 fps is not unplayable. If it doesn't increase lag, I see no flaws, but implementing it and expecting people to rush out and get new graphics cards wouldn't work. Although "making it optional" usually ends badly, I think it would be better if this would be a Video Settings option.

As of now, 10% Support.

It just ruins my immersion in the game when the land just suddenly ends. I have suggested this before but now that I have an entire new concept it might as well be a new topic for what has changed.(Since you know the community has to get technical and demand every aspect of a suggestion to be told or else it wont work or work.)

In servers and single player distant chunks should spawn in with less detail but be further than the render distance. Confused? Here is some history. Previously I made a suggestion similar to this allowing us to load more chunks on a server. This allowed players to see above the Server view distance without affecting the server load. It involved chunks you have previously visited to just become fake chunks and no longer load in for the server but still are visible to the player. (Thanks Badprenup» for the help.)

Going back to the main idea now. Basically what would happen is the game loads in distant terrain based on what seed you're on. Mountains and villages can be seen from afar in much lower detail though. For any block out there like grass it would probably be just one continuous texture and depending on the distance you're probably not going to see 1 by 1 blocks. Further villages would be harder to see in the distance. It's hard to see through text but imagine the terrain simply not stopping at the world border.

Some examples include

Something like This

Turning into This, but in minecraft form.

It is possible, another game with voxel based generation has done it and if the developers have enough knowledge in java then they would know how to do this. For a video on the game thats about to add this visit this . Note that this game has gore in it and might be unsuitable for younger ages. It's not super graphic at all.

Questions or (rude) statements younger players might ask or state.

Will it load in mobs?

No, it won't load in anything except for something you could consider a block.

It will lag servers

No, no it won't. All the server would need to do is send the seed to the player. If there are any player built structures than that information as well.

Its not possible

Colored stained glass was once considered impossible by the community, so was colored light.

It would be super laggy

Not at all, its not like every chunk will be loading in from sky to bedrock 30+ chunks. I don't think they even generate but its just a visual affect. It would only be laggy if you already have problems playing minecraft (30 fps or below.) If so upgrade your computer because the game is already nearly unplayable for you.

Problems I didn't address

Player built blocks

They would show up along with any major change in the terrain I just can't explain how.

On a separate note I'm having problems with the R3D 256x256 pack, can anyone else help me with this?

http://i.imgur.com/wRc2TUY.png

http://i.imgur.com/TgamTpX.png

I think this isn't the way the Resource packs were intended to be, all the textures look flat and shows random flat lines through some blocks. This is using the latest version of Continiuum with pom on, Alternate blocks off, connected textures off.

Sadly the S K photo realism doesn't work as the base resource pack is broken (Default textured texture.)

I didn't see a mod discussion, only a place to post created mods so it goes in the general discussions unless I missed it.

You have a mod that adds explosive missiles known as ICBM. It adds in many explosives as a\well as concrete to to counter them (Dynamic reflection, a nuke with enough concrete will protect everything below and cause more of the explosion to go up.)
Currently its going through a major 2 year rewrite and the developer is looking for suggestions on new types of missiles. Currently he is looking for non violent missiles like deliveries. Personally I would just say get all of the main content working well enough for survival worlds before going and adding these. Get it working and a base of a few missiles first! But anyways thats off topic...

Post here any ideas on what missiles or features you can think of. Even if its a lemon missile.

Will be giving a link to the developer later.

Quote from oCrapaCreeper»

There are sections for discussing mods as well as ideas or requests for mods.

http://www.minecraftforum.net/forums/mapping-and-modding/minecraft-mods/mods-discussion

http://www.minecraftforum.net/forums/mapping-and-modding/minecraft-mods/requests-ideas-for-mods

This is a really weird topic I'm going to bring up, but how is every ones imagination? Let met tell you why I'm wondering this.

I've used to have a very very vivid imagination that I could control whenever I wanted to, the surrounding would fade away and I would drift into my own world. I was there imagining things and ect. Now however it is not the case, I struggle to get into those places that I used to go into and even though every once in a while (every few months, or month?) I can but its not always as vivid. Sometimes they're however not all the time.

This is why i'm asking everyone this question. It seems that some factor in my life has changed that, heck I used to be able to close my eyes and see things without imagining. I don't know what went wrong, perhaps its the addition of stress and other factors that severely made this get less vivid.

P.s This thought came to me when I was looking at topics about the third eye (and that from white noise) and then I googled it. It seems to me that these people just found their imagination or something.... its probably something completely different like predicting the future or something. Hey... you've just read the "Please skip" section (P.s)

I didn't see a mod discussion, only a place to post created mods so it goes in the general discussions unless I missed it.

You have a mod that adds explosive missiles known as ICBM. It adds in many explosives as a\well as concrete to to counter them (Dynamic reflection, a nuke with enough concrete will protect everything below and cause more of the explosion to go up.)
Currently its going through a major 2 year rewrite and the developer is looking for suggestions on new types of missiles. Currently he is looking for non violent missiles like deliveries. Personally I would just say get all of the main content working well enough for survival worlds before going and adding these. Get it working and a base of a few missiles first! But anyways thats off topic...

Post here any ideas on what missiles or features you can think of. Even if its a lemon missile.

Quote from Badprenup»

I like the idea but don't think it would work that well in reality. From how it sounds it would occur if you aren't loading any chunks for a while. But the only way that happens is if you sit within one chunk, or a 16x16 area. The odds of an active player staying in that small of an area for long are slim, and this wouldn't matter to people who are AFK or idling because they probably aren't paying attention. I don't think it would really give any benefit to the player.

What could work instead is if you move and it causes a chunk to not be in server range but is still in client range, the server could unload it and leave it loaded on the client until they move to the point where it would be out of range on the client side. If they move towards it again it would update to the real version once the server reloads it. That relies less on idling and wouldn't have the server do any extra work.