Was wondering on people’s opinions on if minecraft added an update renewing the sky, like higher sky boxes, structures on clouds and new star systems that could maybe be integrated with navigation such as North Star.
One thing to note, making the sky limit higher requires a lot of work to optimize, because every chunk is slightly larger, taking up more processing power. Everything else, like structures on clouds and navigating with stars, is really cool and I wouldn't mind it tbh.
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Floating islands already exist, but they should be able to spawn at higher altitudes and have more 'to do' things on them. Not sure about structures though as the above poster says, they will block the sun and could cause hostile mob spawning in the daytime. Maybe loot chests, 'sky treasure' kind of thing yes, but not large structures. Sky treasure could contain things like phantom membranes, cloud blocks and a new 'cloud' armour trim perhaps. Also being able to silk touch mine cloud blocks would be super cool, or collect cloud in a bucket. I do like this idea because it would give players an even bigger incentive to beat the game early on, meaning these sky islands are much easier to explore with elytra.
If you want to experience something similar to this, play skyblock or create an amplified Java world. For amplified you will need a pretty powerful PC with a decent processor and GPU in order to run it smoothly. Amplified is one of my favorite worlds to play, however it can affect spawns. The huge sky chunks cast shadows which spawn hostile mobs during the day, and obviously fall damage is your biggest danger.
Simply making chunks taller won't have any significant impact on resource usage unless there are actual blocks in the extended area; since 1.2 chunks have been split into 16x16x16 sections or "sub chunks" (fun fact: while it doubled the height limit from 128 to 256 1.2 is the most lightweight version of the game because not only do chunks generally use less resources (the average height would be 5-6 sections instead of always 8, except in the Nether; most of the End would be 0, plus a bit of additional data for the entire chunk column in any case) but it was still using a true singleplayer model so the world is only loaded once, instead of twice, on an internal server and client (of course, versions before 1.3.1 did come with their own issues, namely, only using a single thread but 1.2 still had the lowest overall CPU and memory requirements, not that say, 1.6.4 really needs much, either, a few hundred MB for a max-height Superflat world at 16 chunks, and I played on modded worlds with up to 3 times the original ground depth and caves on a computer from the mid-2000s, Amplified wasn't an issue either*).
*The impact of doubling the ground depth in vanilla 1.6.4 and Amplified in 1.7.2 on said computer (not really visible in memory usage since most of what you see isn't live memory, especially with the default garbage collector on older 32 bit versions of Java, which just let it pile up to 100% before performing a full GC); triple the depth didn't make much of a difference either (one reason for the lack of an impact on FPS is occlusion culling, which is removing almost twice as many hidden sections in the double height screenshot):
Vanilla:
"Double Height Terrain":
Amplified (remember, this was a computer from the mid-2000s, already way obsolete by the standards of 2013, and 8 chunk render distance was still considered "normal" as the game even called it until they simply used the number of chunks in 1.7, and even modern versions still default to 12 chunks, approximately what the old "far" was. I actually had this set to 16 chunks but a bug in 1.7 limited it to loading 8 (this still has some impact since the game has to sort through 4 times the render sections, a shown by the "C:" value):
This is a better "beefy" computer test since there is so much more to render, yet I never had issues with such biomes, except with Fancy leaves (again, memory usage is meaningless since it is just rising all the way to 100% before dropping to a more normal level, newer screenshots use a proper garbage collector which keeps it down):
Also, more content doesn't have to mean more resource usage as this comparison between vanilla 1.6.1 and TMCW, which adds up to a thousand features (500+ blocks and items, 100+ biomes, dozens of mobs, enchantments, structures, etc, plus many changes to game mechanics and other changes and additions not so easily visible as "features") shows, the only reason modern versions use more is because of how they are coded, same for most mods (all that really impacts the game is the number of blocks / sections and entities loaded):
Vanilla 1.6.1:
TMCW at the same settings; a Plains biome will have less sections loaded (the "lc" value of 95 means that there are 6 sections loaded, both show the same value but the former is from the top of a village house while here you can see that I'm lower than a lot of the treetops):
Also, this is a max-height (256 high) Superflat world at 16 chunks, which is still able to run within only 512 MB, hardly "beefy" when Amplified, probably even in 1.18+, averages much lower, and my current computer would have been something one could get back in 2013, if high-end by the standards of most players who seem to use decade+ old or the cheapest and lowest end systems available (I'll also note that this is not any ordinary world but has all normal features except for surface features, this includes normal passive mob spawning, with 383 loaded, and cave generation, hence the 71 hostile mobs present, features unique to TMCW):
The biggest issue with adding anything in the sky is the effect on light propagation, i.e. shadows, where sky light is assumed to be emitted from the world height limit (actually, the lowest block that doesn't block light, but effectively the same thing) so anything substantial would have to be fully transparent to light.
Adding actual constellations wouldn't be an issue for lower render distances, which currently has no effect whatsoever on the skybox (older versions would hide the sun/moon/etc on low render distances but this was more of an optimization than any technical issue, I only had to remove a single check to make them always visible), although this wouldn't work that well with the way the stars currently move, which in itself is good enough for navigation (i.e. they move towards the west and otherwise are fixed in place relative to the player, unlike how clouds are relative to the terrain).
Was wondering on people’s opinions on if minecraft added an update renewing the sky, like higher sky boxes, structures on clouds and new star systems that could maybe be integrated with navigation such as North Star.
One thing to note, making the sky limit higher requires a lot of work to optimize, because every chunk is slightly larger, taking up more processing power. Everything else, like structures on clouds and navigating with stars, is really cool and I wouldn't mind it tbh.
The structures will block the sun. This is just another attempt to work around the fact that the aether/buffer dimension isn't happening.
Star navigation won't work for players on low render distance or low graphics settings.
Floating islands already exist, but they should be able to spawn at higher altitudes and have more 'to do' things on them. Not sure about structures though as the above poster says, they will block the sun and could cause hostile mob spawning in the daytime. Maybe loot chests, 'sky treasure' kind of thing yes, but not large structures. Sky treasure could contain things like phantom membranes, cloud blocks and a new 'cloud' armour trim perhaps. Also being able to silk touch mine cloud blocks would be super cool, or collect cloud in a bucket. I do like this idea because it would give players an even bigger incentive to beat the game early on, meaning these sky islands are much easier to explore with elytra.
If you want to experience something similar to this, play skyblock or create an amplified Java world. For amplified you will need a pretty powerful PC with a decent processor and GPU in order to run it smoothly. Amplified is one of my favorite worlds to play, however it can affect spawns. The huge sky chunks cast shadows which spawn hostile mobs during the day, and obviously fall damage is your biggest danger.
Simply making chunks taller won't have any significant impact on resource usage unless there are actual blocks in the extended area; since 1.2 chunks have been split into 16x16x16 sections or "sub chunks" (fun fact: while it doubled the height limit from 128 to 256 1.2 is the most lightweight version of the game because not only do chunks generally use less resources (the average height would be 5-6 sections instead of always 8, except in the Nether; most of the End would be 0, plus a bit of additional data for the entire chunk column in any case) but it was still using a true singleplayer model so the world is only loaded once, instead of twice, on an internal server and client (of course, versions before 1.3.1 did come with their own issues, namely, only using a single thread but 1.2 still had the lowest overall CPU and memory requirements, not that say, 1.6.4 really needs much, either, a few hundred MB for a max-height Superflat world at 16 chunks, and I played on modded worlds with up to 3 times the original ground depth and caves on a computer from the mid-2000s, Amplified wasn't an issue either*).
*The impact of doubling the ground depth in vanilla 1.6.4 and Amplified in 1.7.2 on said computer (not really visible in memory usage since most of what you see isn't live memory, especially with the default garbage collector on older 32 bit versions of Java, which just let it pile up to 100% before performing a full GC); triple the depth didn't make much of a difference either (one reason for the lack of an impact on FPS is occlusion culling, which is removing almost twice as many hidden sections in the double height screenshot):
"Double Height Terrain":
Amplified (remember, this was a computer from the mid-2000s, already way obsolete by the standards of 2013, and 8 chunk render distance was still considered "normal" as the game even called it until they simply used the number of chunks in 1.7, and even modern versions still default to 12 chunks, approximately what the old "far" was. I actually had this set to 16 chunks but a bug in 1.7 limited it to loading 8 (this still has some impact since the game has to sort through 4 times the render sections, a shown by the "C:" value):
This is a better "beefy" computer test since there is so much more to render, yet I never had issues with such biomes, except with Fancy leaves (again, memory usage is meaningless since it is just rising all the way to 100% before dropping to a more normal level, newer screenshots use a proper garbage collector which keeps it down):
Also, more content doesn't have to mean more resource usage as this comparison between vanilla 1.6.1 and TMCW, which adds up to a thousand features (500+ blocks and items, 100+ biomes, dozens of mobs, enchantments, structures, etc, plus many changes to game mechanics and other changes and additions not so easily visible as "features") shows, the only reason modern versions use more is because of how they are coded, same for most mods (all that really impacts the game is the number of blocks / sections and entities loaded):
TMCW at the same settings; a Plains biome will have less sections loaded (the "lc" value of 95 means that there are 6 sections loaded, both show the same value but the former is from the top of a village house while here you can see that I'm lower than a lot of the treetops):
Also, this is a max-height (256 high) Superflat world at 16 chunks, which is still able to run within only 512 MB, hardly "beefy" when Amplified, probably even in 1.18+, averages much lower, and my current computer would have been something one could get back in 2013, if high-end by the standards of most players who seem to use decade+ old or the cheapest and lowest end systems available (I'll also note that this is not any ordinary world but has all normal features except for surface features, this includes normal passive mob spawning, with 383 loaded, and cave generation, hence the 71 hostile mobs present, features unique to TMCW):
The biggest issue with adding anything in the sky is the effect on light propagation, i.e. shadows, where sky light is assumed to be emitted from the world height limit (actually, the lowest block that doesn't block light, but effectively the same thing) so anything substantial would have to be fully transparent to light.
Adding actual constellations wouldn't be an issue for lower render distances, which currently has no effect whatsoever on the skybox (older versions would hide the sun/moon/etc on low render distances but this was more of an optimization than any technical issue, I only had to remove a single check to make them always visible), although this wouldn't work that well with the way the stars currently move, which in itself is good enough for navigation (i.e. they move towards the west and otherwise are fixed in place relative to the player, unlike how clouds are relative to the terrain).
TheMasterCaver's First World - possibly the most caved-out world in Minecraft history - includes world download.
TheMasterCaver's World - my own version of Minecraft largely based on my views of how the game should have evolved since 1.6.4.
Why do I still play in 1.6.4?
They just don't want to make an End/Overworld 2.0. There is hell in this game, but no heaven. Oh well.