I wrote a small explanation of the usage of 3D noise to create voxel landscapes. It was useful for somebody, so I guess I should share it.
Let me know if you would like me to expand on that.
Hmm, thought I’d post something today.
Regarding to the development of Minetest there are many kinds of stuff going on all the time, altough it might be not very visible to outside of the various IRC channels where the dev-kind-of people seem to mostly hang around.
Lately I have been figuring out the tricky bug of decapitated trees in the output of the new map generator. I haven’t pushed too hard but managed to find the Mother Bug ™ that caused it. Killing that one however caused a bunch of others which I am now working on. I am also planning to add some new features on my own too.
Volumetric clouds in Minetest
I have been hanging around on #minetest-delta. We have discussed about the map generator, the merging of the audio branch and the possibility of music. And, well, many other things that I don’t remember. Those guys seem to be working on at least volumetric clouds, translations and slightly improved water physics. There is also a key configuration menu, it seems. Oh, and they have created a shortcut icon too.
I am looking forward to merging the work in Delta and stuff some other people have done into my main branch, for the benefit and convenience of everybody.
The next version will be released when there is a good amount of new things to be released. It would be nice to get it ready before 4th of August, because the Assembly Summer 2011 computer festival (i think that’s what they call it these days) takes place at that time in Helsinki, Finland. I will most probably go there, like I have done since 2007. Or was it 2006? Well, whatever.
Here goes 0.2.20110704_0. I am releasing this in order to not leave new code hanging around without usage.
Changelist isn’t long:
- Many small fixes
- Code reorganizing to aid further development
- Renewed map generator
Oh, and actually, there are two new blocks: gravel and mossy cobblestone.
Expect further development in Minetest Delta, or some other fork. I will keep you informed, the site running and I will make sure there are Windows packages available of the game at all times. (surprisingly few people are interested in taking care of that…)
I am working on some side projects right now, so main development is handed to Minetest Delta.
Stay tuned for the first release of Delta.
An excerpt from the README of Minetest Delta:
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Minetest Δ (“Minetest Delta”) is a fork of Minetest-c55
New features:
* Submenu for key assignment (changes apply after restart)
New bricks:
* Sandstone (crafted from 4 sand, yields sand)
* Cactus (plant that grows on sand)
* Clay (found in sand at sea level, yields 4 lumps of clay)
* Brick (made from 4 clay bricks, yields 4 clay bricks)
* Papyrus (plant that grows in shallow water, yields paper)
* Book shelf (made from 6 wood and 3 books, sandwhiched)
* Rail (made from 6 iron ingots and 3 sticks, vertically sandwhiched) <- not functional, though
New materials:
* Lump of clay
* Clay brick (made from lumps of clay in the furnace)
* Paper
* Book (made from 3 paper)
Alternate graphics:
* Player
* Omsk birds (instead of Oerkki ghosts)
* Rat
* Glass
————————–
So… there is not much included currently, but it’s a start.
The main reason I tried this out is that this allows the player to better choose where to go without huge data transfers, huge memory consumption and huge burden on the GPU. I am aiming for the low-end machines, after all.
I think it already gives a lot better feel to the environment, and if I used this, it would allow me to create a lot more varied maps because the player wouldn’t need to randomly choose where to start travelling even if the destination is very far away. And it would make sense to have some really large-scale features. Currently there is no point in having a mountain 400 blocks high, because you couldn’t see it anyway, just a small part of the slope. I love it that it actually makes sense to climb up a hill to see better into the distance when using this.
It currently is completely unoptimized which causes the lower FPS. This is not a problem when it is optimized.
Also, because it currently simply refers to the map generation noise functions, it doesn’t represent what there actually currently exists. The generator does some things that are not possible to determine from the noise functions at all, and small terrain features which are not representable with the small polygon count.
Also, on an old world, the algorithms might have changed a bit. So, you should create a new world for testing this out and getting the right feel to it.
It is possible to make the server calculate simple properties for the surface from what there actually is, and make it send the data to the client instead of the client using the noise functions. In addition to ground height, ground type and plant content, there could for example be flags telling if there is artificial light in some place or a small building or a large building.
The client would be able to light up the torch-illuminated places at night and draw some simple building mock-ups, which would make it easy to spot player-built structures from the distance. You wouldn’t see how they actually look, but you would see that there is something interesting and worth visiting at.
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