FOSS gamedev and creative worlds

I just set up some code to build a pine forest durring map generation, but it's messing with the lighting. Most of the blocks that the trees are in are now dark, as if in a cave. Does anyone have any ideas as to how to compensate for this effect and set the lighting back to normal?

It is a known bug. Mapfix helps.

I don't know if I'm using it wrong or something, but that code doesn't seem to work. Niether does "<voxelmanip>:set_lighting({day=15, night=15})".

Placing a schematic file seems to work in fixing all shadows, but you make things easier you could add the Admin Stick to your game and right-click a node inside the shadow area to remove ANY node and fix lighting...

> some code to build a pine forest durring map generation

How are you doing this?
It's best and fastest to use the biome API decoration code to do this, using schematic trees, the decoration code works in mgv6 too.

I tried integrating the effect of the admin stick into the map generation code, but it doesn't seem to work at map generation time. I can't use an administrator-only tool manually, as my planned server will be a bit of an anarchy server and will have no administrators.

The problem with placing scematics is that it is a duplication of functionality. Every time an update is made, I have to figure out how to make the same change both in the schematic code and in the minetest.spawn_tree() code. It's hard enough trying to get the minetest.spawn_tree() function alone to play nicely. I can't switch to also using schematic files for saplings because, as demonstrated in minetest_game, schematic files eat nodes. If someone places a schematic-using sapling under another player's locked chest, that locked chest and all its contents will be destroyed. Schematic saplings are far too dangerous to have in a non-PVP-type subgame.

Further testing seems to indicate that this bug happens in map generators v5 and v7, but not v6. I'm not sure why.

My code looks like this:


The code is a bit hard to read, but basically, it uses simple decorations to place saplings, then finds all the saplings with minetest.find_nodes_in_area(), and causes them all to grow by removing the sapling, removing the snow node (placed as a dust) on top of the sapling, then calling minetest.spawn_tree() at the location the sapling used to be.

y.st. wrote: If someone places a schematic-using sapling under another player's locked chest, that locked chest and all its contents will be destroyed.

There's a parameter for schematics so that they don't replace existing nodes.

y.st. wrote:The problem with placing scematics is that it is a duplication of functionality. Every time an update is made, I have to figure out how to make the same change both in the schematic code and in the minetest.spawn_tree() code. It's hard enough trying to get the minetest.spawn_tree() function alone to play nicely.

Understandable. I'm currently also having problems with the trees. Their code envolves - that's fine - but that also means that my version is outdated. I'm using the "manual" minetest.spawn_tree function(s) to place trees into the voxelmanip area luavoxelmanip is working on. I don't want to keep a slightly modified copy of the trees from default forever. Hope it can somehow be mixed up again :-) My code can read schematics and analyze them on the lua level without going through minetest.place_schematic if that's any help.

This is probably because 'spawn_tree' (l-system tree) includes a lighting update, it is meant for occasional use not many times at once during mapgen. Minetest has lighting bugs when many lighting updates are triggered at once, it is also very slow to do this, and unnecessary because only 1 lighting update is needed after all l-system trees are spawned. What is needed is an additional spawn_tree function that does not include a lighting update.

Sokomine wrote:...

Alright, I'll have to look into schematics. I definitely want to use them for something, though I'm not sure I want to use them for trees. Part of my goal is to learn the Minetest API, so if I skip the minetest.spawn_tree() function, that's one part I won't learn to use. Does that make any sense?

paramat wrote:...

That explains why the bug happens so much less often when used in the ABM, though it still does cause the whole block to go dark sometimes. I suppose for now I will just spawn saplings and let them age as they happen to get set off by the ABM. It will look a bit funny for players, but not as funny as huge shadows covering the overworld.