Truly infinite worlds (poll)

Would you like to have truly infinite worlds in Minetest?

Yes
60
56%
No
25
23%
That depends/difficult to say
23
21%
 
Total votes: 108

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Linuxdirk
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Re: Truly infinite worlds (poll)

by Linuxdirk » Post

Galaxies! Of course. And another one for universes!

0,0,0:0,0,0:0,0,0:0,0,0:0,0,0

And even better: All prefixed with a dimension!

modname:dimension_name;0,0,0:0,0,0:0,0,0:0,0,0:0,0,0

And then use 64 bit integers for all directions in all coordinate systems.

It's all about to have, not about to need :D

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Re: Truly infinite worlds (poll)

by voxelproof » Post

Linuxdirk wrote:
voxelproof wrote:Frankly making limitless "voxel universe" through multiple planets wouldn't make much sense for me
I'd love it! Imagine No Mans Sky but with voxels! Different planets and solar systems where you can freely travel between. This would be fucking awesome!
I get the irony, however no need to make another botched Universe. NMS and the one we live in are more than enough. BTW if anyone would like to see how it would be with a practically infinite and very realistic virtual universe, should definitely try Space Engine. Not a game, it's true, but gives a deep insight into the idea, and it's free.
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Re: Truly infinite worlds (poll)

by Kilarin » Post

TenPlus1 wrote:but having a properly implemented and layered mapgen so we could add vertical stacks of biomes would help make use of all that space so we could add other worlds to the current mapgen. Lets make use of what we have already available and make it feel like we have infinite worlds :)
Exactly! A built in layered generator would be an awesome way to increase the footprint of the world.

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Re: Truly infinite worlds (poll)

by yw05 » Post

Linuxdirk wrote:Galaxies! Of course. And another one for universes!
0,0,0:0,0,0:0,0,0:0,0,0:0,0,0
Linuxdirk wrote: And then use 64 bit integers for all directions in all coordinate systems.
So a single world with ((2^64)^3)^5 = 9.7453140114e+288 nodes?! That's too much.
Kilarin wrote: Exactly! A built in layered generator would be an awesome way to increase the footprint of the world.
"After creating the world, the admin spawned at a random layer. He looked around and said, Let there be light..."

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Re: Truly infinite worlds (poll)

by Linuxdirk » Post

yw05 wrote:So a single world with ((2^64)^3)^5 = 9.7453140114e+288 nodes?!
A single world with the possibility of 9.7453140114e+288 nodes, yes. As said earlier: it's about to have, not about to need.

Of course would no-one ever need all the nods let alone being able to store all of them with current and near-future technology. But since only changed mapblocks are stored the size of worlds wouldn't change much. But you still have a whole multiverse to explore.

This means that the mapgen has to be greatly improved and massively extended. Otherwise we'll have the same boring nonsense that NMS had when launched a few years ago (they improved greatly since then).

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Re: Truly infinite worlds (poll)

by voxelproof » Post

Linuxdirk wrote: This means that the mapgen has to be greatly improved and massively extended. Otherwise we'll have the same boring nonsense that NMS had when launched a few years ago (they improved greatly since then).
I watch gameplays from NMS from time to time on YT. It seems that Sean Murray has still no idea how to implement rivers, high mountains or vast deserts. (Or just players aren't lucky enough to find them ;)) It's simply outrageous that a game which was announced, marketed and hyped as an ultimate exploration experience was apparently made just to proove that there's nothing interesting to explore in an infinite world (hence the game's title, I suppose, in regard to those who were tricked into believing in this scam).
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Re: Truly infinite worlds (poll)

by Linuxdirk » Post

voxelproof wrote:It seems that Sean Murray has still no idea how to implement rivers, high mountains or vast deserts. (Or just players aren't lucky enough to find them ;))
Yes, the engine is very limited but compared to launch the quality was greatly improved. Unfortunately the engine can't create large moving objects an has a rather limited height on planets (the "no skybox" is a lie. Planets of course have a generated skybox and you can only build within the skybox and the skybox is very small for performance reasons in the default game).
voxelproof wrote:It's simply outrageous that a game which was announced, marketed and hyped as an ultimate exploration experience was apparently made just to proove that there's nothing interesting to explore in an infinite world (hence the game's title, I suppose, in regard to those who were tricked into believing in this scam).
It's far more complex, involving Sony as sponsor pushing this into release and other dumb things happen. Keep in Mind that HG was an indie game developer having a side-scrolling racing game as only experience.

The launch was heavily rushed and most of the content was missing. But they recovered very well. The only two REAL lies were rotating planets and no skyboxes. Both are impossible due to engine limitations.

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Re: Truly infinite worlds (poll)

by yw05 » Post

@Linuxdirk:
So you are also expecting rotating planets/stars? I hope that the moon would look better :D

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Re: Truly infinite worlds (poll)

by Linuxdirk » Post

yw05 wrote:@Linuxdirk:
So you are also expecting rotating planets/stars? I hope that the moon would look better :D
For NMS: Yes. Orbiting planets would be stunning but even more impossible than rotating. For Minetest static planets would be fine, I guess. But rounded with gravitation in the center would be nice.

But for both games this would need a complete rewrite of large parts of the engine.
Last edited by Linuxdirk on Thu Jun 06, 2019 14:47, edited 1 time in total.

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Re: Truly infinite worlds (poll)

by yw05 » Post

Linuxdirk wrote:But for both games this would need a complete rewrite of large parts of the engine.
That's exactly what I'm afraid of. If we keep rewriting code at a massive scale it could be better, but that would create another non-bcakwards-compatitable version (6.x or something like that maybe) - users are already having conflicts between 0.4.x and 5.x.
Also, using multiple 3d systems and 64-bit addresses would also create problems for modding - the coords swould be written like (x1,y1,z1,x2,y2,z2,x3,y3,z3,x4,y4,z4,x5,y5,z5) - nobody wants that. Those servers using AdvTrains for a long time (such as LinuxWorks, as far as I know) would have to choose between rewriting old LuaATC code or useing station/stop tracks in most cases - both would be a lot of work.

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Re: Truly infinite worlds (poll)

by Linuxdirk » Post

The engine should append the coordinates automatically, so when giving 0,0,0 only the engine should append the current planet, system, galaxy, universe, and dimension, when giving 0,0,0:0,0,0 the engine should append current system, galaxy, universe, and dimension automatically.

This would still end up in massive coordinates, but modders and players can still use 0,0,0 if they do not care for planet, system, etc. Mods using coordinates would also remain functional.

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Re: Truly infinite worlds (poll)

by yw05 » Post

Linuxdirk wrote:The engine should append the coordinates automatically, so when giving 0,0,0 only the engine should append the current planet, system, galaxy, universe, and dimension, when giving 0,0,0:0,0,0 the engine should append current system, galaxy, universe, and dimension automatically.
This would still end up in massive coordinates, but modders and players can still use 0,0,0 if they do not care for planet, system, etc. Mods using coordinates would also remain functional.
Ok, so let's hope we have AdvRockets to travel around :)
That would still be a lot of code rewriting though, and I would say that we should start from allowing multiple coordinates.
Anyway, I think the world itself would become practically infinite, but this has become much different from simply extending the axis limits.
I expect we would be using 64-bit coords according to your plan? That would create planets that are even larger than the sun.

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Re: Truly infinite worlds (poll)

by Linuxdirk » Post

yw05 wrote:That would still be a lot of code rewriting though, and I would say that we should start from allowing multiple coordinates.
This would basically mean that we throw away anything we currently have and re-write the engine from scratch. I am pretty sure adding those features to the current engine would lead to much more work that resetting everything. The API front-end would basically be the same except for gravity and stuff, mods would still work, etc. But the back-end is completely new. This will absolutely explode :)
yw05 wrote:Anyway, I think the world itself would become practically infinite, but this has become much different from simply extending the axis limits.
Yes, that's just made-up things dreams. But with the "latest version" with universes and named dimensions the possibilities are endless. You absolutely do not need to care about space anymore with 9.7453140114e+288 places you can put nodes in. Possible named dimensions not even counted.
yw05 wrote:I expect we would be using 64-bit coords according to your plan? That would create planets that are even larger than the sun.
Realistically speaking changing to 64 bit integers (or at least 32 bit integers) for world coordinates would be possible with some work. I don't expect any changes on this (most vocal devs do not care or do not want it as the several issues and forum post replies show) in the foreseeable future. But maybe, one day, we'll have a larger size world, but not anytime soon.

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Re: Truly infinite worlds (poll)

by yw05 » Post

Linuxdirk wrote:This would basically mean that we throw away anything we currently have and re-write the engine from scratch. I am pretty sure adding those features to the current engine would lead to much more work that resetting everything. The API front-end would basically be the same except for gravity and stuff, mods would still work, etc. But the back-end is completely new. This will absolutely explode :)
That's exactly what I'm afraid of - another non-backward-compatitable version of Minetest.
Linuxdirk wrote: Yes, that's just made-up things dreams. But with the "latest version" with universes and named dimensions the possibilities are endless. You absolutely do not need to care about space anymore with 9.7453140114e+288 places you can put nodes in. Possible named dimensions not even counted.
Yes, that would be practically infinite.
Linuxdirk wrote: Realistically speaking changing to 64 bit integers (or at least 32 bit integers) for world coordinates would be possible with some work. I don't expect any changes on this (most vocal devs do not care or do not want it as the several issues and forum post replies show) in the foreseeable future. But maybe, one day, we'll have a larger size world, but not anytime soon.
What I just found out: Using 32-bit integers would create planets that are about 0.98x the size of the sun (comparing the circumference) - taking a AdvTrains Japanese train around the planet would take about 2485 real-life days.

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Re: Truly infinite worlds (poll)

by voxelproof » Post

yw05 wrote: What I just found out: Using 32-bit integers would create planets that are about 0.98x the size of the sun (comparing the circumference) - taking a AdvTrains Japanese train around the planet would take about 2485 real-life days.
There's a similar project that recently has been abandoned and made open-source -- "Seed of Andromeda". I walked through several landscapes and, well, it made me quite impressed however due to the lack of many basic functions (like teleportation) you could probably spend long days striving to get ashore if you were unlucky to land on sea (the planets are of real size).
And I don't think it's a right direction in which such enlargement of MT worlds should proceed.
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Re: Truly infinite worlds (poll)

by yw05 » Post

voxelproof wrote:
yw05 wrote: What I just found out: Using 32-bit integers would create planets that are about 0.98x the size of the sun (comparing the circumference) - taking a AdvTrains Japanese train around the planet would take about 2485 real-life days.
There's a similar project that recently has been abandoned and made open-source -- "Seed of Andromeda". I walked through several landscapes and, well, it made me quite impressed however due to the lack of many basic functions (like teleportation) you could probably spend long days striving to get ashore if you were unlucky to land on sea (the planets are of real size).
And I don't think it's a right direction in which such enlargement of MT worlds should proceed.
Yes, transport is the real problem. Even with real Japanese trains it would still be a long time - at 300km/h it would take about 600 RL days to go around it. If we do not have teleports or vehicles that can move at higher speed, 600 real-life days is very long : I haven't been playing MT for 600 days yet.
With fast vehicles this would lead to a problem - chunks get loaded too fast. If we have automated airplanes (maybe AdvAirplanes?) at 900 km/h it would go through at least 16 chunks in a second. If we have rockets that would probably crash some servers - their speed is at least 7.9km/<b>s</b> = loading over 490 chunks every second.
And with teleports - teleporting is already unrealistic, and now we're teleporting between plaets?! That should only be for admins and moderators...
Personally I do think that the current map is large enough - to get to one edge of the map from another edge that would take about 54 mins on a japanese train - nobody wants to spend 54mins travelling on a train in-game. What I said about map expansion is only as much as for those who want a larger map.

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Re: Truly infinite worlds (poll)

by voxelproof » Post

yw05 wrote: Personally I do think that the current map is large enough - to get to one edge of the map from another edge that would take about 54 mins on a japanese train - nobody wants to spend 54mins travelling on a train in-game. What I said about map expansion is only as much as for those who want a larger map.
And this is also my opinion. Huge worlds are an interesting option as a spin-off and a worth some future consideration experiment and I don't think this idea could or even should make its way to the main development course. Since what's also important to notice about voxel sandboxes: their blocky and somewhat toyish appearance make them closer to a carpet of a kid's room than to the real wide, immense world.
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Re: Truly infinite worlds (poll)

by wziard » Post

What I would really like is a way to automatically connect a player to another server, passing on the password. And creating the player on that server if it didn't yet exist.

And I'd also like a server setting with a sort of referrer-id, so you could only let players in if they would get sent there by another server.

This way you could set up different worlds with different settings (pvp on or off, monsters on or off, different mapgens) and still in a way have them connected together.

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Re: Truly infinite worlds (poll)

by yw05 » Post

wziard wrote:What I would really like is a way to automatically connect a player to another server, passing on the password. And creating the player on that server if it didn't yet exist.
And I'd also like a server setting with a sort of referrer-id, so you could only let players in if they would get sent there by another server.
This way you could set up different worlds with different settings (pvp on or off, monsters on or off, different mapgens) and still in a way have them connected together.
That's different from larger/infinite world(s).

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Re: Truly infinite worlds (poll)

by Linuxdirk » Post

yw05 wrote:With fast vehicles this would lead to a problem - chunks get loaded too fast. If we have automated airplanes (maybe AdvAirplanes?) at 900 km/h it would go through at least 16 chunks in a second. If we have rockets that would probably crash some servers - their speed is at least 7.9km/<b>s</b> = loading over 490 chunks every second.
When traveling in such vehicles just do the calculations until the player stops the vehicle and then teleport to the calculated coordinates. Such vehicles can’t have windows though.

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Re: Truly infinite worlds (poll)

by wziard » Post

yw05 wrote: That's different from larger/infinite world(s).
yes :-)

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Re: Truly infinite worlds (poll)

by Yvanhoe » Post

voxelproof wrote:Since what's also important to notice about voxel sandboxes: their blocky and somewhat toyish appearance make them closer to a carpet of a kid's room than to the real wide, immense world.
Exactly.

I too am excited about the idea of an interplanetary sandbox game with accurate orbital mechanics but I would never use minetest for such a game and trying to shoehorn such an idea into something that has not even remotely been made for it can only end in despair, forks, and bitter calls for a total rewrite.

In game design it is important to have a good measure of the freedom you have and of the constraints you have. If you stay within the bounds of what the game engine can do, then you have a chance of your project succeeding one day.

Minetest is great at displaying a static pixel world and offering limited dynamics towards it as well as a very well designed modding interface that allows multiple mods to work well together with very minimal work. I am not sure how much people appreciate the treasure that are the clean modding API and the enforced separation between mods. You can add several industrial mods together, add a bunch of mobs, add a few ores and trees, and things generally work without additional intervention! That's crazy!

At one point I wondered how doable it would be to have buildable and navigable ships. I would love the idea of a waterworld-like universe with floating cities that could move around. Then I realized that you can't really do that without losing much of interest of having a voxel world. Suddenly you need to consider a group of voxel like a movable entity, collision detection becomes a pain and the database organization just becomes obsolete.

Play to the strength of the engine. It is a voxel engine that is easily customizable. Don't use it to do games that do not require these constraints.

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Re: Truly infinite worlds (poll)

by c56 » Post

Hume2 wrote:
Fri Jun 22, 2018 13:16
Krock wrote:Hume2, this idea was already mentioned in various topics but is finally not usable because
1) Objects can stand in between nodes, so we would need likely a 128 bit floating point number for such big maps (takes much computing time)
2) Breaks the map format. It would need a conversion from old to new (takes a very long time on large maps)
3) The potential of garbage increases enormously: Admins teleport to a far away location and the mapblock will never be used again
4) Effort to clean up above mentioned, unused mapblocks
5) Very painful to teleport far away. Where was my house again? 932355235,24,-53263443 or 932356235,24,-53263443 ?
6) Our code base is not made for this. It would mean rewriting basically all code with position values and Irrlicht itself if such enormous sizes are wanted.

Some server admins already limit their map to 5 or 10 km to limit the map size (garbage mapblocks) and to keep the players together. Already now it's painful without teleporters to get anywhere distant if there's no railway or street nearby.
So please, please could we just drop this idea? 64 km ought to be enough for everyone.
I agree with all these points. Indeed this would mean rewriting a large part of code. However, it's not definitely lost. It could be still done by server-side modding as I suggested above. If someone made a server with this feature, it might not be bad. Still, it would definitely require these things:
1) Rewriting a lot of code.
2) A way to delete garbage map blocks automatically.
3) Much more players to populate the world.

Mainly the third point is problematic. It would require at least thousands players if not millions. If anyone is willing to do this, it will be good but it's just a dream.
2) just not store garbage mapblocks in the map folder automatically and instead store them in a temporary file until theyr build on or the player moves away 1) at some point the code will get rewritten anyway so maibe just sneak those changes in (along with dimesion support ??????) ???
3) its not about us needing much players to populate the world the point of a "infinity" (very big) world is not finding the world borders until years later it should only appear infinity maibe warping the world with some shader could make it seem bigger , even if its in reality only like 10 times as big as now , for garbage mines maibe mined out mines could revert graduattely like by errosion (aka some kind of code that scans the map for abadoned mines and reverts them to original state graduatelly (or if the're are only cobble stone and torches there and noone was in it for a long time like 3 weeks

and 3) the players will come when they see a infinity world like mc and shadowmapping in my opinion the only reason to still have mc installed is because of the best mc mods like immerive engineering ,tektopia , create and some other very good mods that do not have minetest alternatives (like the top 100-400 mods )
plz tell me if i am wrong
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Re: Truly infinite worlds (poll)

by 56independent_actual » Post

I would love 15 Km, 12.5Km in each cardinal direction. Then, the max is 500 Km, but you have to configure it.
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