Gameplay
Cubic Chunks: Reduced lag, infinite height, and more [The #1 Suggestion Thread of all time!][Updated! 6/14]
Poll: Which parts of this system do you like?
Ended May 15, 2014
Poll: Which parts of this system do you NOT like?
Ended May 15, 2014
Poll: Do you support this system's implementation overall? (If yes, if
Ended May 15, 2014
I meant the things hinted by "7/2 Tiny things you will never find!" In other words, the ones Calacbolg put in the OP, not those in Minecraft.
What are you talking about?
As it will be in the future, it was at the birth of Man
There are only four things certain since Social Progress began.
That the Dog returns to his Vomit and the Sow returns to her Mire,
And the burnt Fool's bandaged finger goes wabbling back to the Fire;
And that after this is accomplished, and the brave new world begins
When all men are paid for existing and no man must pay for his sins,
As surely as Water will wet us, as surely as Fire will burn,
The Gods of the Copybook Headings with terror and slaughter return!
-The Gods Of The Copybook Headings, by Rudyard Kipling.
The topic title now shows: "Updated 7/2: Tiny things you will never find!"
Oh I see.
As it will be in the future, it was at the birth of Man
There are only four things certain since Social Progress began.
That the Dog returns to his Vomit and the Sow returns to her Mire,
And the burnt Fool's bandaged finger goes wabbling back to the Fire;
And that after this is accomplished, and the brave new world begins
When all men are paid for existing and no man must pay for his sins,
As surely as Water will wet us, as surely as Fire will burn,
The Gods of the Copybook Headings with terror and slaughter return!
-The Gods Of The Copybook Headings, by Rudyard Kipling.
Hello everyone! Today I want to talk about MineCon. More specifically, talking to the developers and YouTube personalities.
I think the most effective way of getting support for this would be to get a popular YouTuber like CaptainSparklez or SkyDoesMinecraft to make a video telling their subscribers why they like Cubic Chunks and explaining why they support it. Obviously the most effective way of getting it put in Minecraft would be to talk directly with a developer and get their support of it. And the best way to do that would be to talk to them about it at MineCon. If they have a Questions & Answers segment at MineCon, (and I am sure they will,) it would probably be very effective to tell them about it there, because there is a good chance there will be several popular YouTubers in the room and we could kill two birds with one stone.
We probably all agree that it wouldn't be a good idea for someone to stand up in front of the developers and say something like, "Hey do you guys know what Cubic Chunks is? It's this really cool thing that takes the lag away and makes the build height unlimited so you guys should put it in the game ASAP!"
So, I would like to suggest we create a rough draft of a statement someone could make when addressing the developers in the Questions & Answers segment of the convention. It should be concise, and include the most important parts of the suggestion. It should also include a short explanation of the current Chunk system, and the most important differences between the two. (It could also be the model for a letter or E-Mail to Mojang.)
The statement should include the most up to date numbers of the supporters and post count, which I predict to be 1,500+ supporters and 2,000+ posts. It should also include the fact that this topic is the 15th most replied to topic on the Minecraft forums.
Everyone interested in this suggestion should try to contribute, but in the end I think Calacbolg and I should have the final word about the composition of the statement. We will try our best to use impeccable grammar.
Now, this assumes that someone who strongly supports this will be going to MineCon, so we will need to find out who will be going and give this important task to them. I will most likely be going, but if someone else is going and really wants to do it I have no problem with that person doing it. I have a strong Southern accent and I fear if I speak I will sound rather Hillbilly-ish.
Please do not be afraid to suggest something we could put in the statement or a change of the wording. But remember, we cannot put everyone's suggestions in it, if it is too long they might stop the person speaking and tell him or her they need to give the people with other questions a chance. It would be very good if it were short enough to memorize, because if they see the person speaking intends to read from a paper they might stop him or her. The speaker should be well versed in the arguments for or against Cubic Chunks so they will be able to answer any questions the developers might have.
Until MineCon, we should continue as we are, discussing the good and bad aspects of Cubic Chunks and preparing arguments for the critics.
I apologize for the length of this post, and I hope you all approve.
As it will be in the future, it was at the birth of Man
There are only four things certain since Social Progress began.
That the Dog returns to his Vomit and the Sow returns to her Mire,
And the burnt Fool's bandaged finger goes wabbling back to the Fire;
And that after this is accomplished, and the brave new world begins
When all men are paid for existing and no man must pay for his sins,
As surely as Water will wet us, as surely as Fire will burn,
The Gods of the Copybook Headings with terror and slaughter return!
-The Gods Of The Copybook Headings, by Rudyard Kipling.
What about this:
"What would you think about a new type of chunk system that allows for infinite height, 3D biomes, and at the same time reduces lag? By changing the current chunk system from linear to cubic, this can be accomplished. A Minecraft Forum suggestion has all of the technical details worked out, which includes things such as how lighting works and an example of this done by a modder in the past"
They ask questions, "but how would X work?", and we answer them. Whoever goes to make this speech must have a sufficient understanding of the technical details of this suggestion and of Minecraft in general. Preferably someone who has already memorized the basics of the OP. BTW: I will not be attending MineCon.
Feel free to modify it, that's my two cents on how to do this.
Geez. Just think of how faction/towny servers would be with this. This would allow for a huge range of land locations in smaller distances with more people allowing greater interaction in most servers. Example: A city state at the top of a mountain with a rival at the base of the same mountain except with cubic chunks (Especially Noctes engine one shown in the pics section) there is a good distance between them.
Great suggestion, and for the Youtuber I would suggest Sethbling, because he has had a lot of input into the game already (he regularly speaks to Dinnerbone and had a four parter video on redstone with Grum) and because he does a lot of stuff with the technical side of minecraft, so he would understand all the possibilities immediately. The good Captain and Sky would surely understand and sympathize with our cause, but may have a little difficulty explaining it to their fans, who in turn might have less interest in it because they didn't subscribe for redstone contraptions or anything technical on those channels.
For the minecon idea, it's brilliant, and I hope it works. I won't be going (Florida is a little out of my price range), but I hope the people who do get things across.
Good start, but I think that we shouldn't advertise it like that. It sounds just a smidge condescending, if you catch my drift. How I would put it is like this:
"There is a brilliant suggestion in the forums, and since we didn't know if you'd seen it, we decided to show it to you here. The idea is Cubic Chunks. I am sure you can guess the advantages and possiblitities; Less lag (due to better chunk handling), easy infinite height and depth, 3D Biomes, and much more. There is definite interest in this: It is the fourteenth most repiled to topic (with all the topics above it posted in the years 2012 to 2010 - This was posted in february this year.) and has over a thousand supporters already. So, what do you say?"
I am sure that it needs improvement, but it is what I have so far.
We can use some of that, I think we should definitely point out the difference between cubic and linear chunks. And being able to answer all of their questions is very important too.
Well, I think if Sky or the Captain would explain the amazing terrain generation and biome possibilities, and emphasize the amazing impact it would have on Adventure maps, a good chunk (pardon the pun) of their subscribers would come support it.
I truly wish you could come to MineCon.
I like your suggestion for the statement, but we should put more emphasis on the good things about it. It should be short, but not quite that short.
As it will be in the future, it was at the birth of Man
There are only four things certain since Social Progress began.
That the Dog returns to his Vomit and the Sow returns to her Mire,
And the burnt Fool's bandaged finger goes wabbling back to the Fire;
And that after this is accomplished, and the brave new world begins
When all men are paid for existing and no man must pay for his sins,
As surely as Water will wet us, as surely as Fire will burn,
The Gods of the Copybook Headings with terror and slaughter return!
-The Gods Of The Copybook Headings, by Rudyard Kipling.
OcD Simple Add-On!
Using 3 dimensional terrain maps we can make subterranean height maps that lie below the previous height map.
Of course, this is just a hypothesis.
I said that what is and is not cheating is decided by the person in charge of the given world. If the admin installs X-Ray and encourages people to use it in order to save time, it's not actually cheating. Minecraft is about freedom of creativity, and therefore there is no activity that we can globally define as cheating. Cubic Chunks simply gives admins just that little bit more ability to enforce the rules of their server, and not just in regards to X-Ray. End of discussion.
As for the minecon thingimy...
Performance is the most important issue. Infinite world height and better world gen tie for second due to how heavily interrelated they are. Note that better world gen also incorporates 3D biomes and more complex structures. Everything beyond this is just a bonus, or will be used only by a very small number of people [aka, better redstone will really only help people who make things like redstone computers]
First, we explain how the current system negatively impacts game-play.
"The current linear chunk system places many restrictions on the game. It enforces a hard limit on world height, it imposes many serious limitations on terrain generation, and most importantly, the sheer size of each chunk has many negative impacts on the game's performance. Performance can be such a serious problem for many players that there are even mods, like Optifine, dedicated solely to giving players stable and playable frame rates."
Then, we introduce Cubic Chunks, explaining it's support, viability, and history.
"Gathering 2000 supporters since February of this year, and with some of the strongest and most sustained support on the forum, a very popular suggestion is 'Cubic Chunks' ; replacing the two dimensional grid of 16x16x256 chunks with a three dimensional array of 163 chunks. Several proof-of-concept 'mods' have been made, and countless users have contributed their thoughts and suggestions to greatly improve the original idea."
Finally, we summarize the key strengths and advantages of the system, and then pose it to the Dev team.
"Cubic Chunks has many major advantages over the existing linear system. Not only does it remove the height limit and allow for vastly superior world generation, it also offers various optimizations and massive performance improvements, all of which will greatly reduce lag, a serious problem facing a significant part of the community.
"What are Mojang's thoughts on this?"
This might not be the best way to present it, and it's certainly more wordy than the previous suggestions. Regardless, even if we toss 100% of what I've written, I think the "problem -> solution" approach is what we should use. Cubic Chunks are indisputably better than the linear system, but there is no reason for Mojang to spend time upgrading the existing system if "it works fine already". Therefore, as well as promoting cubic chunks, we should also highlight why they are essential. After all, the more essential it is, the more likely that they are to implement it.
I have also been thinking about how to store chunks. The best I can think of is very similar what is used; 16 16x16 matrices of block ID's or 16 lists containing 256 elements each, using a basic dictionary to simplify consecutive occurrences of the same block [ie, Q represents 8 consecutive blocks with ID X and meta Y].
I will post later once I finish thinking about the shape of the view area and some possible ways to reduce the chance of falling into unloaded chunks.
I believe in the Invisible Pink Unicorn, bless her Invisible Pinkness.
You're right, the possibilities for adventure maps and such would most likely interest their fanbases. I never thought of that.
And I agree that it's a bit short, and putting more emphasis on the good things is a good idea.
I think your problem -> solution idea is a very good one. If only we had someone here who was trained in rhetoric and giving presentations. They would know the correct way of putting it.
As a side note, I am going on holiday tomorrow for three weeks, without internet access, so I won't be posting here for some time. Untill then, unless someone posts something I have to answer to today.
Well... They actually just accepted a suggestion that was hated that you can't break blocks with swords in creative... *facepalm* well... It looks like mojang is accepting pretty much anything now. Good news...
As for falling into an unloaded chunk, I propose we change how clients handle unloaded chunks. The client should take any chunk not sent over from the server and pretend that it is a 16x16x16 cube of invisible bedrock. A bonus to this is that this way we can prevent glitches such as things falling into floors due to slight latency in loading chunks. It will also go a bit easier on the render engine due to OpenGL not having to consider the sides of chunks next to unloaded ones.
The point of that change is so that you can still fight things without annihilating your creations. I personally think that it's a worthwhile change, and given that it would take them less than 10 minutes to fully implement, test, and finalize, I see no problem with that one. That one. I do admit that Mojang often seem like they are using a decision tree made by an LSD abuser.
For example, let's look at performance, and the renowend Optifine. Simply put, Optifine gives a lot of people a lot more fps, and has been doing so for more than a year or two. But 'tis not magic, as many would have you believe. All Optifine does is touch up on Mojang's code in a few places.
In reality, the existence of a mod such as Optifine only stands as proof of the fact that there are some serious problems in the vanilla code that should have been fixed more than a year or two ago.
However, one or two years down the track, these problems are still in the code and Optifine remains an essential mod for a large number of players.
This is because Mojang spent their time adding things ponies and unicorns while failing to realize that Her Pinkness is spiritually present in all of everything, rendering every other unicorn, and shaggy hornless imitation thereon, completely and utterly nonfunctional.
Of course, none of this is to say that I do not actually like or appreciate the updates that come; I just can't help but feel like there are things on which their time may be better spent (*cough* cubic chunks).
Pretend that, whenever 10 stone blocks are seen in a row, we replace all 10 entries with one single "X". To the game engine, finding an "X" would be exactly the same as finding 10 consecutive stone blocks.
If I jump from y=1000, there's no reason to stop me falling until I actually hit a solid block. The problem is that we can't tell if there is a solid block in an unloaded chunk, and hence the player has to be stopped until we can find out. There is no problem stopping the player or pretending the chunk is totally solid, the hard part is removing the jarring that would be caused when the game stops the player and loads the chunk.
Anyway, I'm going to bed.
I believe in the Invisible Pink Unicorn, bless her Invisible Pinkness.
-
View User Profile
-
View Posts
-
Send Message
Curse PremiumFor as far as I can understand it, Minecraft has only one array for both block and item ID's (which is 32 thousand and something long) and uses quite a direct way of just writing down what ID goes at what position in which chunk. That is a simple way, but not the most efficient one. The rendering changes, however, are a bit beyond the scope of this suggestion (maybe a followup suggestion? The whole rendering system of MC could be made much and much more efficient if some more advanced and elegant code is used).
I also think that the solution you proposed (treating every unloaded chunk as bedrock) isn't viable, since that'd mean that every unloaded chunk is treated as a loaded chunk (filled with bedrock). This would cause extreme lag on larger maps (since there'd be so many chunks that are not loaded but still loaded as if they were filled with bedrock. The only solution (IMO) is using a variable tickrate, that is limited to 20 ticks/second, but can go down if the workload on the client/server becomes too large. If you fall into unloaded chunks, minecraft can then slow down your fall by slowing time (actually just slow down everything everywhere in the loaded world, including the rendering, by lowering the tickrate), so that the chunks can be loaded fast enough.
If I'm not mistaken the above way is also used by here to provide lagless ingame footage regardless of performance or workload on the client/server.
The rendering uses another timeline so it doesn't disrupt the game timeline if it can't render.
OcD Simple Add-On!