So, about that square/sphereical planet debate...

Which is why we were going to have the world be a cylinder, to consolidate the seams to just around the arctic circles. It's not ideal, but you are limited in what you can do when your entire planet is a grid pointing out exactly where the seams lie.

I like Macks idea better...

fr0stbyte124 wrote:

Which is why we were going to have the world be a cylinder, to consolidate the seams to just around the arctic circles. It's not ideal, but you are limited in what you can do when your entire planet is a grid pointing out exactly where the seams lie.

I don't see the logic in a cylindrical planet.

Make them 5 dimensional objects. Easier than loading screens.

A cylinder world could actually be square as a flat world. The world would have to be six squares if it was going to be a cube, that would probably be a little strange.

Make every world halos, try to do gravity for that, especially in the middle of them.

hyperlite wrote:

Make every world halos, try to do gravity for that, especially in the middle of them.

"Gravity" meaning centrifugal force or real gravity?

The first version of planets will probably be flat planes, and the second will be ring worlds. After that we can mess with spheres/cubes.

fr0stbyte124 wrote:

The first version of planets will probably be flat planes, and the second will be ring worlds. After that we can mess with spheres/cubes.

Will I be able to shoot at it from space?

catsonmeth wrote:

fr0stbyte124 wrote:

The first version of planets will probably be flat planes, and the second will be ring worlds. After that we can mess with spheres/cubes.

Will I be able to shoot at it from space?

Of course. The question is if you will hit something or not.

Daynel wrote:

catsonmeth wrote:

fr0stbyte124 wrote:

The first version of planets will probably be flat planes, and the second will be ring worlds. After that we can mess with spheres/cubes.

Will I be able to shoot at it from space?

Of course. The question is if you will hit something or not.

Let me reword that. Will I be able to see landscape, cities, etc. of the planet from space, aim my weapons at a target on the surface, fire said weapons, and hit that target?

Ummmm, why are we so worried about planets when there are more important things to discuss. Space toilets! How will they work? How will they look? I want to see some techne models of them!

catsonmeth wrote:

Daynel wrote:

catsonmeth wrote:

fr0stbyte124 wrote:

The first version of planets will probably be flat planes, and the second will be ring worlds. After that we can mess with spheres/cubes.

Will I be able to shoot at it from space?

Of course. The question is if you will hit something or not.

Let me reword that. Will I be able to see landscape, cities, etc. of the planet from space, aim my weapons at a target on the surface, fire said weapons, and hit that target?

Hard to say at this point. What you see at orbital level won't be the actual terrain, but instead will be flat textures generated either by the server or the client, which are then pasted onto some approximated geometry. To make the surface update in realtime would be non-trivial, but it's worth investigating.

I think hitting something with a missile is doable, though. In order to pull it off, the server needs to be able to quickly load terrain information and calculate the physics of the scenario without anyone being present. This, in turn, could open the door for overloading the server with missile spam (which if it is offered is definitely going to be a pretty common occurrence).

Perhaps useful physics metadata could be stored as a separate layer of the world file which could then allow for physics processing while maintaining a minimal footprint on the system. I wonder what sort of data would be useful besides block resistance?

fr0stbyte124 wrote:

Which is why we were going to have the world be a cylinder, to consolidate the seams to just around the arctic circles. It's not ideal, but you are limited in what you can do when your entire planet is a grid pointing out exactly where the seams lie.

But how can cuboid chunks fit into a circle (the poles) or a loop (the cylinder)?

Mackeroth? wrote:

fr0stbyte124 wrote:

Which is why we were going to have the world be a cylinder, to consolidate the seams to just around the arctic circles. It's not ideal, but you are limited in what you can do when your entire planet is a grid pointing out exactly where the seams lie.

But how can cuboid chunks fit into a circle (the poles) or a loop (the cylinder)?

Black magic.

you could actually do this by giving the generation system a worth based on the distance to the mid of the planet.Would be perfectly spherical.

Mackeroth? wrote:

fr0stbyte124 wrote:

Which is why we were going to have the world be a cylinder, to consolidate the seams to just around the arctic circles. It's not ideal, but you are limited in what you can do when your entire planet is a grid pointing out exactly where the seams lie.

But how can cuboid chunks fit into a circle (the poles) or a loop (the cylinder)?

I'm sure we've discussed this before. There's no good way to do it. Up in the air it won't be visible anyway, but at close range it needs to be obscured. You could do something like have heavy storms and making the fog set to zero visibility and then teleport the player to the other side. Think the deserts in Zelda games. That's the best I've been able to come up with. If you've got another idea I'm all ears.

Tyranid_Player wrote:

you could actually do this by giving the generation system a worth based on the distance to the mid of the planet.Would be perfectly spherical.

Terrain generation isn't the problem in this case. We can pretty much blend the noise functions any way we like to make it fit. It's the expression of that terrain on a cubic grid that causes the issue, because it is mathematically impossible to fit a square grid to a spherical surface without significant distortion somewhere.

Gosh frostbyte, I don't know why we are so lazy. I mean, we had chunks like pillars, now we will use chunks as cubes. But I have an idea! CircleChunks! Get coding! Bye!

This is the best idea I've heard all day. By making the chunks out of circles, we circumvent (pun very intended) the grid problem entirely. Now that's what I'm talking about. That's how you get stuff done.
The rest of you clowns could learn a thing or two from Keon.

If we go with a cylinder, the square peg/round hole problem can be solved by creating a normal, flat world and merging the edges, so that its essentially 4d. I believe you allready had this idea, right Frost?

Buggy1997123 wrote:

If we go with a cylinder, the square peg/round hole problem can be solved by creating a normal, flat world and merging the edges, so that its essentially 4d. I believe you allready had this idea, right Frost?

Not sure where the 4d part comes into play, but that's the general idea. You could do other shapes, too, but cylinders seems the most manageable.

fr0stbyte124 wrote:

Buggy1997123 wrote:

If we go with a cylinder, the square peg/round hole problem can be solved by creating a normal, flat world and merging the edges, so that its essentially 4d. I believe you allready had this idea, right Frost?

Not sure where the 4d part comes into play, but that's the general idea. You could do other shapes, too, but cylinders seems the most manageable.

Maybe 4d wasn't the right word, more like impossible shape. Like if you were to make a cylinder out of a flat sheet of paper without bending it.

You're thinking of topology, where any shape that can be deformed into another is considered congruent to that shape.

I thought topology was mountains and terrain!?

Lord Tiel wrote:

I thought topology was mountains and terrain!?

That's topography, if I remember right.