Infinite world size

[Linuxgamer94]

And what is the advantage? Did ANYONE ever experience a too small world? No.

yes. I like big worlds for factions, also why would anyone want an hampered experiance. If mods can do it then why can't the devlopers, and don't get all savy on the bloody end users.

[kaeza]

yes. I like big worlds for factions, also why would anyone want an hampered experiance. If mods can do it then why can't the devlopers, and don't get all savy on the bloody end users.

Did you even try exploring the entirety of the *surface* of the map? I'm not even talking about underground constructions, or floating castles; I'm talking about *just the surface*.

For reference, one of the oldest servers still alive, Redcrab's server (first post is dated April 2012, more than 2 years ago), still hasn't exhausted the available *surface* space as far as I know.

Think about it.

[thetoon]

For reference, one of the oldest servers still alive, Redcrab's server (first post is dated April 2012, more than 2 years ago), still hasn't exhausted the available *surface* space
as far as I know.

Sure thing, but still : not every MT server strives to be some block-based Second-life, with nicely packed lots. Some of us like freedom, especially freedom to explore in any direction without fear to meet world's end.

64km is a really small world, from that perspective. Mind you, it's not even a country (well, you _could_ reproduce the entirety of Vatican in it, granted, but still).

Vertical space is a great thing, one that MC kinda misses, so yeah : MT wins here. But just because we have a looot of vspace don't mean we couldn't use a little more horizon.

On the upper "factions" stance, I do get it as well. It's nice to spawn players to remote locations, with rather low odds of meeting one another (hence putting a lot more "stress" on such meetings when they occur).

No-one "needs" more horizontal space, that's for sure. But for that matter, no-one really needs a Minecraft-inspired block-game either. Nor Minecraft itself, or any other video game.

Think about it.

[Krock]

64km is a really small world, from that perspective.

I don't get what you mean.

Area
- Total 587,041 km2 (47th)
Population
- 2012[4] estimate 22,005,222 (53rd)
- Density 35.2/km2 (174th)

And minetest has 64km * 64km * 35.2 = space for 144'179 real minetest players in with very much nature.

[twoelk]

Think about it.

Well ther you are.
Thats's the problem right there!
So instead of enjoying what is there and exploring what is given, all what a certain kind of people can think is "oh my God, a hardcoded limit. This must be bad."

The world MT offers in theory is, as far as I know, if fully explored, include up and down, larger than any practically accessable hardware can hold at the moment.

I guess this sort of shows, among other things, that the horizontal extends are way more important than vertical limits. MC has horizontal "soft" limits that are farther away and yet people complain there is a limit, are totally fascinated about reaching the farlands and seem pretty content with what vertical limits are offered in contrast to the discussion noise around the horizontal limits.

What can be learned from this constantly coming up though might be that this description of the game may need some rewording:

Minetest is an infinite-world block sandbox game

[Vazon]

The only way I think the world could be enlarged would be leave the map as is but people want some thing that is similar to a "Nether" parallel added to the game. It would not be access about just by walking all the way to it though. Blocks can be added at the edge of the map that are not mineable and does not let you see the "parallel" world. This would give you a full nether world, would be the same size as the regular world, and other things can be added since there are 3 other sides.

[Linuxgamer94]

you devlopers are just giving us BS. In my latest world the world gen was all screwed up. I ended up spawning up near the end of the world. I could littery walk over to it and the eniter world was one stupid mountain island which I could not dig yet alone walk up. Again this is bull CRAP. I walked to the edge in minetest 3.x and it was not that hard, I even fell out of the world witch does not seem to happen any more. At least that time there was land on my spawn. Minetest is a clone of minecraft, GET OVER IT and stupid things like this is why no one wants to do a lets play of it. While it is fun at first you need mods to make the game usefull. Just look at the world gens:

v6 ok
v7 just why
math wtf
indev what is even diffrent
singlenode ahhh I am falling and I can't get up, or move, or fly or place blocks.
mods like fire, hud, wool, and xdoors should not have to exist! What is worse is that you don't give a single reason why, and yes I am complaining to the few devlopers who actualy read the forums! Everybody just calls Minetest a cheap low budget minecraft clone that is a waste of time from youtubers, LAS, and most open source jounalests. As an end user who likes the game it furstates me that the realy small user base has to defend and make mods for minetest. How offten do you here news about minetest making a new update or adding a new item or feature, I have never, the only way I know if there is a new version is when someone ports it over to the bloody repos!

[drkwv]

I don't get what you mean.

In minecraft, when playing on the public servers, I usually travel 20'000 blocks away from spawn to just not get griefed (territory privates are for little girls). Map boundaries is not about square territory. It's about how far you can travel away from spawn. For example, one can simply travel 300'000 blocks in a straight line for a 1-2 weeks of gaming.

All this nagging you can see here is not about available place. It's about feelings of freedom and game immersion.

Personally, I believe infinite world size is not something that is required on current stage of minetest development, but is something that necessarily needs to be implemented in future (and that is why it is better to think about this today).

Also, I do think that solution of this problem is not to add 2^32*2^32 maps, but to implement servers shared maps. Which means that every 64*64km map will be processed by a different server instance to allow scaling map processing through different servers. This would bring not only infinite map, but also an infinite players server limit. Or even ability to merge friendly servers together. Isn't that would be great?

[twoelk]

...
Isn't that would be great?

If Minetest would be designed that way yes ...

but

... the way it is built by design now - that would be pretty difficult to achieve and would probably not work as you might expect or hope. Besides we would need some dedicated volanteers that run a 24/7 grid service, unpaid of course.

On the other hand why play on a server if you want to play alone?

(says a guy who more often than not builds at some distance from the busy spawn area)

for further thoughts and discussions you might want to study these forum topics to name only the more recent threads on subjects related to world size and the concept of the word infinity.

Mineteset as global virtual world
Multi Map Teleport System
[idea] a second world!

oh and not to forget these three pages worth of discussion:
Infinite world size but you might have read that allready.

edit:
Just noticed your join date so you even may know almost all forum discussions on this subject ever made
or at least since this one: When the map will be infinite? from August 23rd 2012.

oh well
/me runs and hides

[Kilarin]

My walkabout from around the middle of my singleplayer map to the edge of the world.
https://forum.minetest.net/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=9651
It's a LONG way there.

[thetoon]

My walkabout from around the middle of my singleplayer map to the edge of the world.
https://forum.minetest.net/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=9651
It's a LONG way there.

Not everyone starts from the middle of the map. On multiplayer environments, it makes sense to dispatch players here and there, especially if you don't want them to meet too soon.

64km is a long trip by foot, that for sure. But people want to add cars, choppers and UFOs.

[HeroOfTheWinds]

To me, the logic goes something like this:
I want to build an amazing building that will make people green with envy.
If I want people to see it and go green, I better build it nearby, or they won't want to trek out into the middle of nowhere to see something someone *claims* is awesome.

In other words, I don't think it's a matter of whether the edge is there; people should focus on being a community of friends, not hermits. :/

[Sokomine]

or they won't want to trek out into the middle of nowhere to see something someone *claims* is awesome.

Exactly. I want to be able to find and enjoy good buildings, and I hope that other builders will enjoy mine as well. Singleplayer is diffrent, and I guess other server types (PvP?) have diffrent needs. Such a long walk seems like a nice idea for a singleplayer world.

[Kilarin]

A possible suggestion for those who want more horizontal exploration space. An approach that MIGHT require a smaller engine rewrite.

Increasing the number of bytes in the coordinates for each node would be a major rewrite of the system. But what if we could have a LOT more horizontal exploration space WITHOUT changing the size of the coords at all?

Currently minetest is a 64k cube. And a lot of players only use a thin layer of this. Usually no more than a few thousand nodes below the surface and perhaps a few hundred nodes up. So what if we split the vertical space up into slices and connnected them via wraparound logic?

So, for example, if we divided our 64k cube into 9 vertical slices, they would each be about 7,000 nodes tall. Each of these 9 slices is a 64k x 7k x 64k cube. Put the surface at about 6000k, since users dig down more than they climb up and you would have room for caverns and mines going down 6000 nodes, and enough sky that most players would never get even close to the top. Now we take those 9 slices and arrange them in a horizontal matrix like this:

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01 02 03
04 05 06
07 08 09

And now you would have a map that is 192k x 7k x 192k

So if you were in slice 01 and walked along the X axis, instead of hitting the "end of the world", you would just walk into slice 02. Smoothly, with no visible transition. And you could keep walking for another 64k distance until you hit slice 03. You wouldn't hit an "end of the world" until you finally hit the far end of slice 03.

We don't need to change the size of the coordinates here, we just need to add in some wraparound logic that tells the engine that slice 01 wraps into slice 02 on the X axis and slice 04 on the Z axis. I don't know how complicated coding that would be, but I suspect it might be simpler than changing the size of the coordinates.

We could get bigger than that. Make your vertical slices only 2560 high and you get 25 64k x 2.5k x 64k slices, which you could map like this:

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01 02 03 04 05
06 07 08 09 10
11 12 13 14 15
16 17 18 19 20
21 22 23 24 25

Into a 320k x 2.5k x 320k map. Put the surface at 2400 and that leaves 160 up for sky, which is still a bit higher, and a LOT deeper than minecraft.

Of course, if you write the wraparound logic right, you could allow virtually any arangement of slices to be determined at map creation time. Maps that want a lot of deep caves and sky islands would stick with the original 64k cube. Games that want to still have quite a bit of mining space but not as much sky could go with the 192k x 7k by 192k cube. You could even go all the way up to 81 regions 790 nodes high and have a 576k x .5k x 576k map that was STILL deeper and higher than minecraft.

And would the map even have to be square? Perhaps some game developer wants to create a riverworld that is 1 slice wide but 9 slices long?

A 15 x 16 slice map would match minecrafts depth, for a total area of 960k x .266k x 1024k.

Of course, this all depends upon the idea that writing wraparound logic would be simpler than changing the size of the coordinates. I haven't messed with the minetest c code, so I may be way off base with that.

Just an idea for consideration that IF it worked, would let people have a much greater flexibility in determining the dimensions of the game world.

[Sokomine]

That slices idea might currently be impossible due to the way everything is drawn. Best talk to the devs directly about it.

[thetoon]

A possible suggestion for those who want more horizontal exploration space. An approach that MIGHT require a smaller engine rewrite.

Don't get me wrong : I didn't expect such a thing to be doable without modifying the engine. The whole discussion has been mostly spent on "why would you ever need this?", but we're actually in the "Feature discussion" section, and I wasn't asking for help on doing that in a mod.

Your idea might be doable, but it MAY be more complicated than just using bigger coordinates. Still, every lead on how to do it is interesting, IMHO.

[Kilarin]

I wasn't asking for help on doing that in a mod.

Nope, it would still be an engine rewrite.

it MAY be more complicated than just using bigger coordinates.

Yep. That's why I was asking for the developers opinions. There is every possibility that wraparound logic might be far more complicated than just increasing the size of the coords. I can foresee possible problems with mapgen logic when crossing the edges? It all depends on how the code is structured.

[thetoon]

Nope, it would still be an engine rewrite.

My point, exactly. Well, rewrite might be a bit of an exageration, but that's certainly not just a matter of a changing a datatype declaration. I'm surprised, though, how well minetest behaves when you cross the boundaries : you can easily teleport beyond the limits and things keep working. Just without ground. That's encouraging.

What I'm calling here is not a patch, nor even an indication on how to do it, it's just collective brainstorm about how high the cost of an horizontally bigger map would be. Then we might eventually decide it's not worth it.

[rubenwardy]

It would be easier to change the way positions are serialised (stored) than doing wrap around. As in making it so it is a 192k etc map. From what I understand of the engine, anyway.

[paramat]

kilarin, i'm fairly sure your idea could be integrated into a lua mapgen ... but i'm not interested enough to do this myself.

[emugod]

I think the 'wraparound logic' that's being discussed would be a very valuable addition/change in its own right, with more good uses beyond fudging world space/size. Like creating 'spherical' worlds by removing any edge, having all four edges of the map loop back to the opposite edge. Or you could fake a 3D cube planet with six 'faces' and fourteen (did i count right?) looping/wrapping edges - possibly useful for letting you easily later generate an external view (as in a space game with multiple planets), by ripping just the visible surface geometry (and this might permit some limited external interaction, or assist in more seamless transition between zones).

And, am I the only one who feels this somehow connected to the VAE concept? I feel like the two would be similar in a lot of ways, in terms of what logical difficulties they present, and might both be best solved with the same root change.

[prestidigitator]

Or you could fake a 3D cube planet with six 'faces'....

That's an awesome idea! You could make use of a heck of a lot more of the 64k^3 volume that way. Use a cube with a "radius" (center to face distance) of up to 30k. Depending on which of six regions you are in (determined by which primary axis coordinate has the greatest magnitude and its sign), up/down would just be in a different direction (for determining camera orientation, gravity, and "height"). There'd be the +X region, and -X, +Y, -Y, +Z, and -Z.

[emugod]

Depending on which of six regions you are in (determined by which primary axis coordinate has the greatest magnitude and its sign), up/down would just be in a different direction (for determining camera orientation, gravity, and "height"). There'd be the +X region, and -X, +Y, -Y, +Z, and -Z.

What I was really suggesting was to 'fake' this, without any need for the gravity changing around, by instead using the wraparound/loop on a normal flat map, just arranged as an unfolded cube laid flat (most commonly shown as cross shaped). More because I really feel the true 3D cube world just wouldn't actually be any fun, but also just to avoid the fairly significant work of implementing that gravity changing.

[thetoon]

What I was really suggesting was to 'fake' this, without any need for the gravity changing around, by instead using the wraparound/loop on a normal flat map, just arranged as an unfolded cube laid flat (most commonly shown as cross shaped). More because I really feel the true 3D cube world just wouldn't actually be any fun, but also just to avoid the fairly significant work of implementing that gravity changing.

What would happen if people ... mine ?

[emugod]

What would happen if people ... mine ?

That's actually the exact problem I have with the true 3D cube world concept. If players are constantly changing the shape of the planet it would seem to me you'd quickly wind up with significant 'gravitational anomalies'. What happens when a player digs to the center? Do they become trapped, floating? Or what about when a player builds their space elevator, or their artificial mountain? Is the center of gravity shifted?

Whereas with what I'm describing to fake it, it's just a standard map of somewhat unusual shape (like an unfolded cube box, commonly depicted as cross made of six squares), with the wraparound/looping effect between faces. It would provide an expediency to generating a false external view, and probably even one that could support some degree of external interaction.

[drkwv]

What would happen if people ... mine ?

What happens when a player digs to the center? Do they become trapped, floating? Or what about when a player builds their space elevator, or their artificial mountain? Is the center of gravity shifted?

Just put a black hole in the center. If player digs into it, do anything you want. Kill, teleport, give superpowers. And the black hole would be the only source of gravity so you don't need to worry about gravitational shifts.

[spootonium]

A somewhat simplified method of faking a cube-world on a single map might be to use something like "Möbius" Farlands: a procedurally-generated border to the map that symmetrically joins one edge to its opposite.

This could be a Perlin mountain range, or a desert, or even a vast Tethys Ocean, but it would need to be just large enough to take you out of visual range of one map edge, before teleporting you to a corresponding point within the opposite Farland. The idea is that from the POV of the player, continually walking in one direction eventually takes you around the world.

To avoid storage cost, the Möbius Farlands might have to be intantiated as-and-when encountered, and thus any changes to them would be non-persistent.

[drkwv]

The idea is that from the POV of the player, continually walking in one direction eventually takes you around the world.

Unfortunately, this will not make the world larger. It'll become even smaller because travel distance between 32768,32768 and -32768,-32768 will be zero.

[prestidigitator]

What would happen if people ... mine ?

If players are constantly changing the shape of the planet it would seem to me you'd quickly wind up with significant 'gravitational anomalies'. What happens when a player digs to the center? Do they become trapped, floating? Or what about when a player builds their space elevator, or their artificial mountain? Is the center of gravity shifted?

Eh. We're not talking about perfect geometry, so just make it consistent:

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local xm, ym, zm = math.abs(x), math.abs(y), math.abs(z);
local xs, ys, zs = (x ~= 0 and x/xm) or 1, (y ~= 0 and y/ym) or 1, (z ~= 0 and z/zm) or 1;
up =
   { x = (xm >= ym and xm >= zm and xs) or 0,
     y = (ym > xm and ym >= zm and ys) or 0,
     z = (zm > xm and zm > ym and zs) or 0 };


Always an up. Jump/climb/fly that way (or the opposite, if you're in space) to go home.

[emugod]

I do have code that should make the world infinite, however, there are still a lot of limitations:
-> you still can't go further than 214748 because of the way floats are sent (a 32 bit integer)

Could you elaborate on this? And the nature, root cause, of the current codes 2^15 limit?