FOSS gamedev and creative worlds

I've had a hard time finding caves underground by digging, yet the privilege of No-Clip offers a perfect view of all of the underground caves. My suggestion is to create a mod that is simply a tool for Technic that temporarily enables a No-Clip style view of the world, disabling the textures for the first objects that the player's camera looks at. This would not offer unfair advantages in finding ores since the result would look like No-Clip, instead of showing all of the ores and such. The power of this ability would require a rather short run-time for the battery charge so that it is balanced. I must admit that I don't know if this is possible, so any responses would be appreciated. Also, if this already exists, then please direct me to the thread. Thanks.

EDIT: Someone showed me this mod that does something very similar using blocks. Check it out.
viewtopic.php?f=9&t=10177

I don't think it would be currently possible. There's no way to "disable the textures" of nodes that would result in something like noclip groundvision.

Byakuren wrote:I don't think it would be currently possible. There's no way to "disable the textures" of nodes that would result in something like noclip groundvision.

That's a shame. Now, I'm curious how no-clip view even works.

It works because the whole map is a single object as far as the rendering engine is concerned and there are only textures on the outside of the object. When you are inside the object there is nothing to render on the side that you're looking and the engine doesn't render things that should be obscured to save processing time.

red-001 wrote:It works because the whole map is a single object as far as the rendering engine is concerned and there are only textures on the outside of the object. When you are inside the object there is nothing to render on the side that you're looking and the engine doesn't render things that should be obscured to save processing time.

Logically, there should be a way to trick the engine into hiding textures "to save processing time."

EDIT: Okay, I realized the answer to my own question. It's the same as clipping into an object. It becomes transparent because there is no texture on the inside layer of it. In no-clip, I can see the caves because it's like clipping inside a person and seeing their arm reaching out in front of them. I'm actually wondering if the game even hides any textures during no-clip. What's likely is that they are still rendered but cannot be seen from the back-side/inside. I've noticed that the processing efficiency during no-clip doesn't increase. The only way to create this type of x-ray feature, then, would be with some serious programming magic that adds a texture hiding feature that doesn't actually exist.

Here's a thought: the game separates the textures of the world by chunks and such. What if that system was used to hide the chunk (or smaller segment) that I'm in? Then, the effect of the no-clip x-ray would be achieved. I know that something like this is possible due to Minecraft chunk-loading errors where I could actually see through the ground and look at all of the caves below.

Have a look at that : viewtopic.php?f=9&t=10177

Naj wrote:Have a look at that : viewtopic.php?f=9&t=10177

Yep. Check the edit on the first post. It works, but I get an error where the skybox turns black while underground. It makes finding caves rather hard since they're also black.

Mmmh.. Interesting.
If you enable noclip, even without privileges, it may change sky color.

And anyway, you have the minimap to find caves.

xray mod exists. a bit slow on end but works

If your head (playerpos.y += 1.625) sticks in a drawtype "normal" node without noclip, the screen is set to black.
Mods can offset the camera position, so maybe if your head does not stick in such a node but the camera position is changed to e.g. the node below your feet, the screen is not set to black and you get the all-seeing behaviour.
https://github.com/minetest/minetest/bl ... .txt#L2864

Hybrid Dog wrote:If your head (playerpos.y += 1.625) sticks in a drawtype "normal" node without noclip, the screen is set to black.
Mods can offset the camera position, so maybe if your head does not stick in such a node but the camera position is changed to e.g. the node below your feet, the screen is not set to black and you get the all-seeing behaviour.
https://github.com/minetest/minetest/bl ... .txt#L2864

Thanks for contributing. That's some great info.

that very clever.