For those of you that are familiar with the physics of reality and time travel and those who mod and program time travel can seem like a near impossible feat, but i believe it is quite possible to program and do. I am requesting modders, programers, creative people to do the impossible and i will lead that team into the unknown to be the first real virtual time travelers. This mod will be a base mod/engine for other future mods (i.e. DOCTOR WHO MOD) and it will cause alot of attention if we can pull this off.
For reasons of complexity i have compiled a few milestones to get to proper time travel:
#1: First Steps Into The Past And Future
What better place to start than living in your own past/future? but we are not delving into the hard stuff just yet. this will just be a test phase for the mod and our skills as programers. Travel into the past will be more like resetting the entire world and loading it again from the seed code starting fresh again. For travel into the future, it will just be simulating the world until you reach your time destination. although, nothing much will go on because mostly everything in minecraft happens in a short period of time (except for redstone contraptions).
#2: Commands And Controls
within the time mod there will be 3D controls and 4D controls. The 3D controls will deal with where the time traveler/time machine will be, how fast its going in a normal time, in which direction, where it will dematerialize/materialize, etc. The 4D controls will be more focused on time travel itself. The controls in this can and/or will be anything be it sign, text, item, block, redstone, or mob. The controls for this mod will be made malleable for outside modding support and for other mods. There will be 3 main controls for this:
Select Control: This will allow you to select the time period you wish to go to within your minecraft map up until the when it first loaded. Each time period will be an hour in real life and we will be able to set up a date system later on (ex: mm/dd/yyyy but different, like: tp/dd/yyy?) if you decide to go into the future then the map will only simulate the world until your time destination. the past however will only replay what you did, obviously of course.
Save Control: This will allow you to save time periods as 'bookmarks' enabling you to go back to your favorite spot faster; although it is not recommended since interacting with yourself multiple times can cause a time loop paradox (paradoxes will cause instant death and reload the last successful time period in this game instead of error messages that kill the map). Selecting these bookmarks would be in the same menu under The Select Control.
Update Control: This feature will be semi-automatic (semi being you will have the option to change the auto setting in the options menu) and will update the time period and future time periods when you decide to or not. The auto feature comes into play, if its turned on, when you begin to time travel to another time period. this feature may be a bit hard on the mod since it will be simulating the world until the end of time as well. (the end of time being the very last recorded time period in which you time traveled from. it will not matter which one you were coming from or going to. it will only record the last time period you were in at the end of the events.)
#3: Time Periods
A time period is defined by hourly events that happen on a time line. every time a time period is loaded everything will start from the beginning of the time period instead of specific points in time within the time period. This is more of a defining step rather than a technical step in this process.
Time Periods are approximately 3 minecraft days.
#4: Programing An Engine For The Time Mod
Having an Engine for this mod would help out a lot as it could process all of the input and output recordings, all the path finding, and all the saves for the mod.
#5: Recording Blocks Placed/Destroyed/Updated By The Player And Other Mobs
In my short experience on the forums this is where most people give up. I am aware of how much memory this may or may not take but we may be able to do something and still run this mod just fine. [s]The mod will record all the blocks changed by the player and the mobs every hour in real time.[/s] this will only happen so long as the player is playing. these hourly recordings will be time periods and every time period will have a save that can be called and loaded when needed. However these saves will not mimic every last detail, more like load every block that was ever changed in that time period in one go. (when a time period save is called for it will load every block that changed within that time period once.)[/s]
As an idea posted by Charmus earlier, the mod can save a level.dat every hour and can load a specific save when needed. this would bypass any need to record what the player was doing and just simply change the blocks according to the level.dat file of the time period. this may lead to some memory problems in the end. who knows, we will see it if we see it.
#6: Player Path Finding And Path Finding Way Points
Within the time periods, the player will be tracked and his movements will be recorded and set into way points for the time period saves. If the player stands idly by, the mod will record how long the player will be at each spot. If the player makes a few short walks (The player only moves 1-5 blocks between points) then the mod will only set those points within a radius, as if it is recording the players movements in alignment to the chunk grid. When the player time travels to the past to a certain time period, those way points get called from that time period and a clone of yourself (the clone is your past self) will be created to follow what you did in the past. You can also see a past version of yourself time travel to your time period and see a clone generated and follow what you did.(go check out Citizens plugin at bukkit plugins if you want to explore path finding more, dont come back here and complain if your NOT A MODDER OR PROGRAMER.)
#7: Bug Fixes With Path Finding
at this step every now and then your past self will run into another of your past self and if they interact they will cause a paradox. The best way to solve this would be to make all of your past self's not collide with one another, and by that i mean phase right through another. however, you yourself would not and would be able to interact with your past self (this would be an option however and a concept to make this mod more realistic.) If the player destroys some blocks holding a path however, that will definitely cause a paradox to happen and would cause instant death and reload the mod from the last successful time period.
#8: Paradoxes, Instant Death, And Reloading
When a paradox happens, the player is killed and the mod reloads the world from the last successful time save when an error or crash happens. I have no idea on how to set up a safety net for this step to prevent the entire game from crashing and was hoping some of you would have some input on this.
#9: Beta Testing
Open Beta Testing for the mod. Especially with other time travel mods like the Doctor Who Mod.
More milestones to come later. they may just be bug fixes in the end.
With these in mind we can make a time mod. but as the old saying goes "theres a first for everything" and this first time mod will be hard, but i know we can do this.
Other Modding Support
Just to clarify, this is just A BASE MOD. its purpose is to be a time engine for other mods that want to have time travel in the mod. But that doesnt mean users cant use this mod directly.
A few more things i want to say here is that if your mod has multi world support and your time machine uses that, the past clone will not enter the multi world. it will just exit the game for now. however, you also cannot enter your past self's time machine. (or you may be able to, although hijacking your past self's time machine would cause another paradox, you may be able to just hitch a ride to the next time period.)
If the time mod's controls are connected to an item in your inventory and that item is dropped, it will just be deleted from your past self's inventory instead of being dropped. Additional recording may be required for this. Although, your past self may not need an inventory at all.
If the controls are connected to a block, sign, or redstone with out multi world support. then those blocks will just follow you through the time periods, or just be a one way ticket to another time period.
Check list:
1#: [s]First Steps Into The Past[/s] And Future
2#: Commands And Controls
3#: [s]Time Periods[/s]
4#: Programing An Engine For The Time Mod
5#:[s] Recording Blocks Placed/Destroyed[/s]/Updated [s]By The Player[/s] And Other Mobs
6#: Player Path Finding And Path Finding Way Points
#5: Recording Blocks Placed/Destroyed/Updated By The Player And Other Mobs
No reason to save an entire level every so often, you would quickly bloat your storage. Implement a difference engine, the way SVN works. Only the actual differences between the last "save" and the next are recorded, minimizing memory use, and any snapshot can easily be visited on the fly This will also enable greater snapshot density, so you could have many return points throughout a day, instead of one every 3 days. You could also have the potential for "time trunks" branching off much the same way as code versions in a repository... since that is exactly what it is.
Just throwing that out there. Mod sounds interesting, keep at it.
[WIP]Time Mod: Simple Time Travel Done Right! PLEASE READ IT ALL BEFORE COMMENTING! THANK YOU For those of you that are familiar with the physics of reality and time travel and those who mod and program time travel can seem like a near impossible feat, but i believe it is quite possible to program and do. I am requesting modders, programers, creative people to do the impossible and i will lead that team into the unknown to be the first real virtual time travelers. This mod will be a base mod/engine for other future mods (i.e. DOCTOR WHO MOD) and it will cause alot of attention if we can pull this off. For reasons of complexity i have compiled a few milestones to get to proper time travel: #1: First Steps Into The Past And Future What better place to start than living in your own past/future? but we are not delving into the hard stuff just yet. this will just be a test phase for the mod and our skills as programers. Travel into the past will be more like resetting the entire world and loading it again from the seed code starting fresh again. For travel into the future, it will just be simulating the world until you reach your time destination. although, nothing much will go on because mostly everything in minecraft happens in a short period of time (except for redstone contraptions).
#2: Commands And Controls within the time mod there will be 3D controls and 4D controls. The 3D controls will deal with where the time traveler/time machine will be, how fast its going in a normal time, in which direction, where it will dematerialize/materialize, etc. The 4D controls will be more focused on time travel itself. The controls in this can and/or will be anything be it sign, text, item, block, redstone, or mob. The controls for this mod will be made malleable for outside modding support and for other mods. There will be 3 main controls for this: Select Control: This will allow you to select the time period you wish to go to within your minecraft map up until the when it first loaded. Each time period will be an hour in real life and we will be able to set up a date system later on (ex: mm/dd/yyyy but different, like: tp/dd/yyy?) if you decide to go into the future then the map will only simulate the world until your time destination. the past however will only replay what you did, obviously of course. Save Control: This will allow you to save time periods as 'bookmarks' enabling you to go back to your favorite spot faster; although it is not recommended since interacting with yourself multiple times can cause a time loop paradox (paradoxes will cause instant death and reload the last successful time period in this game instead of error messages that kill the map). Selecting these bookmarks would be in the same menu under The Select Control. Update Control: This feature will be semi-automatic (semi being you will have the option to change the auto setting in the options menu) and will update the time period and future time periods when you decide to or not. The auto feature comes into play, if its turned on, when you begin to time travel to another time period. this feature may be a bit hard on the mod since it will be simulating the world until the end of time as well. (the end of time being the very last recorded time period in which you time traveled from. it will not matter which one you were coming from or going to. it will only record the last time period you were in at the end of the events.) #3: Time Periods A time period is defined by hourly events that happen on a time line. every time a time period is loaded everything will start from the beginning of the time period instead of specific points in time within the time period. This is more of a defining step rather than a technical step in this process.Time Periods are approximately 3 minecraft days. #4: Programing An Engine For The Time Mod Having an Engine for this mod would help out a lot as it could process all of the input and output recordings, all the path finding, and all the saves for the mod. #5: Recording Blocks Placed/Destroyed/Updated By The Player And Other Mobs In my short experience on the forums this is where most people give up. I am aware of how much memory this may or may not take but we may be able to do something and still run this mod just fine. The mod will record all the blocks changed by the player and the mobs every hour in real time. this will only happen so long as the player is playing. these hourly recordings will be time periods and every time period will have a save that can be called and loaded when needed. However these saves will not mimic every last detail, more like load every block that was ever changed in that time period in one go. (when a time period save is called for it will load every block that changed within that time period once.)As an idea posted by Charmus earlier, the mod can save a level.dat every hour and can load a specific save when needed. this would bypass any need to record what the player was doing and just simply change the blocks according to the level.dat file of the time period. this may lead to some memory problems in the end. who knows, we will see it if we see it. #6: Player Path Finding And Path Finding Way Points Within the time periods, the player will be tracked and his movements will be recorded and set into way points for the time period saves. If the player stands idly by, the mod will record how long the player will be at each spot. If the player makes a few short walks (The player only moves 1-5 blocks between points) then the mod will only set those points within a radius, as if it is recording the players movements in alignment to the chunk grid. When the player time travels to the past to a certain time period, those way points get called from that time period and a clone of yourself (the clone is your past self) will be created to follow what you did in the past. You can also see a past version of yourself time travel to your time period and see a clone generated and follow what you did.(go check out Citizens plugin at bukkit plugins if you want to explore path finding more, dont come back here and complain if your NOT A MODDER OR PROGRAMER.) #7: Bug Fixes With Path Finding at this step every now and then your past self will run into another of your past self and if they interact they will cause a paradox. The best way to solve this would be to make all of your past self's not collide with one another, and by that i mean phase right through another. however, you yourself would not and would be able to interact with your past self (this would be an option however and a concept to make this mod more realistic.) If the player destroys some blocks holding a path however, that will definitely cause a paradox to happen and would cause instant death and reload the mod from the last successful time period. #8: Paradoxes, Instant Death, And Reloading When a paradox happens, the player is killed and the mod reloads the world from the last successful time save when an error or crash happens. I have no idea on how to set up a safety net for this step to prevent the entire game from crashing and was hoping some of you would have some input on this. #9: Beta Testing Open Beta Testing for the mod. Especially with other time travel mods like the Doctor Who Mod. More milestones to come later. they may just be bug fixes in the end. With these in mind we can make a time mod. but as the old saying goes "theres a first for everything" and this first time mod will be hard, but i know we can do this. Other Modding Support Just to clarify, this is just A BASE MOD. its purpose is to be a time engine for other mods that want to have time travel in the mod. But that doesnt mean users cant use this mod directly. A few more things i want to say here is that if your mod has multi world support and your time machine uses that, the past clone will not enter the multi world. it will just exit the game for now. however, you also cannot enter your past self's time machine. (or you may be able to, although hijacking your past self's time machine would cause another paradox, you may be able to just hitch a ride to the next time period.)If the time mod's controls are connected to an item in your inventory and that item is dropped, it will just be deleted from your past self's inventory instead of being dropped. Additional recording may be required for this. Although, your past self may not need an inventory at all.If the controls are connected to a block, sign, or redstone with out multi world support. then those blocks will just follow you through the time periods, or just be a one way ticket to another time period. Check list: 1#: First Steps Into The Past And Future2#: Commands And Controls3#: Time Periods4#: Programing An Engine For The Time Mod5#: Recording Blocks Placed/Destroyed/Updated By The Player And Other Mobs6#: Player Path Finding And Path Finding Way Points7#: Bug Fixes With Path Finding8#: Paradoxes, Instant Death, And Reloading9#: Beta Testing TEAM: MODDINGCharmus---------------------------- TIME MOD ENGINE----------------------------------- IDEAS/CONCEPTSTamtam18SelinisScizorDredcor------- Please support with these banners!
also the banners will be down temporary.
RvsB forevar!!!
It's all still early stage though. I'm not one of the coders but I'm an idea person and working on the paradox meter.
I used to be known as Scizor on the MC forums. I run a pony Ask blog!
Anyway... this mod looks awesome, can't wait till it's finished. Bookmarked.
Thanks for the reply, I'll give Charsmud a heads up :smile.gif: good luck with your mod.
-
View User Profile
-
View Posts
-
Send Message
Curse PremiumNo reason to save an entire level every so often, you would quickly bloat your storage. Implement a difference engine, the way SVN works. Only the actual differences between the last "save" and the next are recorded, minimizing memory use, and any snapshot can easily be visited on the fly This will also enable greater snapshot density, so you could have many return points throughout a day, instead of one every 3 days. You could also have the potential for "time trunks" branching off much the same way as code versions in a repository... since that is exactly what it is.
Just throwing that out there. Mod sounds interesting, keep at it.
information
-
View User Profile
-
View Posts
-
Send Message
Curse Premiumwhat forge does it use...
no seriously what forge