some interesting questions that came up when thinking about the implications of having infinite maps ingame.
1: transitions with the sky and the floor.
will these be possible? if they are, have you considered generating floating island maps in the sky at Z+1 and hell type maps at Z - 1? would that require too many graphics state changes between map transitions?
2: macro terrain randomness.
if you are going to distribute the world over more then 1 map, it starts to make sense to have larger terrain features on a single map because that way the noise is distributed over the sum of all the maps. this could lead to a single coastal map, or a map representing a mountain range, instead of having a general distribution on every map that looks more or less the same
3: where will we respawn
will it be in the map we died in? or back at our start location?
4: simulation of the passage of time
it is unreasonable to update the entire map when it is stored to the hard drive, but couldn't you keep a timer for each stored grid and then run a single big update pass when we return to a grid? or would you not seperate the map into discrete grids?
5: map transitions
i think a lot of people are assuming you would get to the edge of the current map and see the next map pop into existance, but from what Notch said it sounded like it might be more continuous. if there is more then 1 option here, people might want to debate having fog vs having a load time between zones?
5: map transitions
i think a lot of people are assuming you would get to the edge of the current map and see the next map pop into existance, but from what Notch said it sounded like it might be more continuous. if there is more then 1 option here, people might want to debate having fog vs having a load time between zones?
They're not going to pop into existence. The generator will most likely load chunks outside of your fog just before you reach them. We're not going to only have one 16^3 area loaded at a time per player. That'd be ridiculously small.
Yeah, it's probably going to load every adjacent area in a 3x3 grid of 16^3 areas. Once you pass into the next area it will add on the next 3 areas in the direction you're going.
i wonder if notch has considered making it switch a whole map at a time. it seems like either we are going to see lag spikes every xx steps in the same direction, or we are going to be walking through a thick fog all the time, and since no block can know if it is going to be updated or not you can't even attempt to run a simple simulation of the passage of time.
on the other hand loading screens suck.
but because these 2 things are about equally sucky, i would guess there are a lot of people who might prefer the option that's not being considered. i for one would, because moving between cube shaped regions in a world made entirely out of cubes is not going to spoil my immersion any.
1: transitions with the sky and the floor.
will these be possible? if they are, have you considered generating floating island maps in the sky at Z+1 and hell type maps at Z - 1? would that require too many graphics state changes between map transitions?
2: macro terrain randomness.
if you are going to distribute the world over more then 1 map, it starts to make sense to have larger terrain features on a single map because that way the noise is distributed over the sum of all the maps. this could lead to a single coastal map, or a map representing a mountain range, instead of having a general distribution on every map that looks more or less the same
3: where will we respawn
will it be in the map we died in? or back at our start location?
4: simulation of the passage of time
it is unreasonable to update the entire map when it is stored to the hard drive, but couldn't you keep a timer for each stored grid and then run a single big update pass when we return to a grid? or would you not seperate the map into discrete grids?
5: map transitions
i think a lot of people are assuming you would get to the edge of the current map and see the next map pop into existance, but from what Notch said it sounded like it might be more continuous. if there is more then 1 option here, people might want to debate having fog vs having a load time between zones?
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They're not going to pop into existence. The generator will most likely load chunks outside of your fog just before you reach them. We're not going to only have one 16^3 area loaded at a time per player. That'd be ridiculously small.
on the other hand loading screens suck.
but because these 2 things are about equally sucky, i would guess there are a lot of people who might prefer the option that's not being considered. i for one would, because moving between cube shaped regions in a world made entirely out of cubes is not going to spoil my immersion any.