[Mod] Loud Walking (Bio-pods) Mapgen [loud_walking]

[duane]

Loud Walking is a play on the name of an old science fiction movie about an attempt to preserve Earth's endangered life in sealed pods in space. This mod creates pods with more or less normal terrain inside, including vegetation and minerals. They each have one of the version 7 biomes inside.

It's unusual in being fully three-dimensional. There are pods above, pods below, pods to all sides, and they all work basically the same (giving it almost one hundred times as much surface area as the typical game). Bridges are provided to move horizontally. Moving vertically is more challenging. (Look for the alien control complexes.)





Note that altitude can affect the operation of other mods, such as Mobs Redo -- a sunny forest pod can exist at +/-25000 meters. On the other hand, no more long climbs to get to your mese farm. Since this mapgen is based on singlenode, it does not use the decoration manager, so any decoration-based mods will be limited here. (Simple decorations will be planted.)

The source is available on github.

Code: CC0 and others, textures: CC0 and others

Mod dependencies: default

Download: https://github.com/duane-r/loud_walking ... master.zip

[duane]

Problems:

- It's slow. There's not much I can do about that. It's a consequence of making the pod size and spacing variable.
- Lighting issues. This is as much a problem with the minetest engine as this mod, and isn't likely to change.
- Changing mod parameters WILL BREAK existing worlds. Don't do it. This cannot be fixed.

[paramat]

Ah that film was so melancholic.
These diamond shaped pods are better than spheres.

[benrob0329]

Interesting idea.

Perhaps you could generate some steel ladders in the center of each pod?

[duane]

Things look very different now. I darkened the sky, changed the respawn to always occur on a bridge (much easier), and added code to implement the default biomes (v7). Each pod has a random biome, including ocean and swamps. All simple decorations are present. Schematics are troublesome, as always, so I'll have to figure out some work-around.







Note that the mod will interpret any registered biome or simple decoration, so it will work with other mods to some extent. I'd like to get the ethereal biomes to work in here, just for fun.

I'm considering a default layer of lava over any exposed scrith in the bottom of the caves. Since these are obviously artificial, I don't think random lava is all that important. I'd also like to put in some really alien pods -- something impractical for a regular map.

Edit: I also added control rooms.

[duane]

The dark sky outside is nice, but it was getting depressing, so I gave the domes some color. I think I've quashed the lighting issues as well. (See the first post.)

[Don]

The dark sky outside is nice, but it was getting depressing, so I gave the domes some color. I think I've quashed the lighting issues as well. (See the first post.)

You do want you think you should do, it is always amzing. Don't stop being imagintive. You are awesome!

[D00Med]

awesome mod! The name is a bit confusing though, I thought it would just be a mod to change the walking sound effect.

[nyje]

Utterly astonishing. I just span up a server to test it, it's fantastic.

I have to reflect what my players will say, so, is it difficult to make each 'pod' bigger? like a lot bigger?
can we have some adjustable settings for sizes etc?

Ideally i would like a long view area so 300-400 nodes x/z, would it be easy? not looked at the code yet ;-) and they don't need to be so deep, i like the idea of 'flat plate with terrain' if you could do that...

[duane]

I have to reflect what my players will say, so, is it difficult to make each 'pod' bigger? like a lot bigger?
can we have some adjustable settings for sizes etc?

Ideally i would like a long view area so 300-400 nodes x/z, would it be easy? not looked at the code yet ;-) and they don't need to be so deep, i like the idea of 'flat plate with terrain' if you could do that...

Thanks for the complements, everyone.

I don't know much about the view range. On my system, I can see the next pod if I'm at the nearer edge, but that's about it.

The pods are each one map-chunk, so making them larger would be complicated. Honestly, if you make them much larger, you might as well use a traditional mapgen. You won't be able to see all of one very well. That was the problem with my integral trees.

I'm working on the interior of the control complexes. I'm not happy with the look so far, and I want to put something interesting in there. Maybe somebody will come up with a robot mob pack to patrol them.

[paramat]

No problems with translucency?

[duane]

No problems with translucency?

I get the occasional overly bright texture when I turn in a particular direction, but it doesn't come up much except near the force fields.

I've added some more detail to the control complexes.

[benrob0329]

What movie is this based off of?

[twoelk]

do the opposite to "loud walking" :-)

+ Spoiler

final scene in film

[Inocudom]

I do believe that OldCoder would find this mapgen to be very appealing. You should tell him about it sometime.

[Sokomine]

The movie was a very impressive one, and so is the mod. Combining it with the space world (moontest based) on one of OldCoders servers like Inocudom suggested sounds like a very good idea.

Schematics are troublesome, as always, so I'll have to figure out some work-around.

In how far?

[TheReaperKing]

How did I miss you posting this mod? I love that neon room, it looks so surreal and foreboding. Can't wait to test this bad boy with the kiddos!

[duane]

How did I miss you posting this mod? I love that neon room, it looks so surreal and foreboding. Can't wait to test this bad boy with the kiddos!

If you climb up to the control room in each pod, you can fiddle with the alien controls, causing random hijinks. Have fun.

[Milan*]

Thanks for this awesome mod!

Illuna has now a testserver featuring this at illuna-minetest.tk:30001.
Minetest crashed a view times into a coredump, i guess thats caused by the mentioned memory issue but i look forward. :)

I will run it in production when ready and sync the users accounts between the two instances.
Also looking forward for the Minetest feature to join from one world into another one, this would be awesome.^^

[duane]

Thanks for this awesome mod!

You're welcome. I've also started a branch to make the pod size independent from chunk size, but it's very slow so far, and I haven't had much time to work on it.

[paramat]

Video review.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8d2gi15OFpY

[Milan*]

Huh, does it overwrite the spawnpoint?
Didn't saw that in the code but i am unable to set it.


Edit: Got it!

[Milan*]

- lots of potential hijinks as people walk off the narrow bridges and fall forever

I've tweaked the physics on my server to just be more spacy.
This causes more movement possibilitys and the people are able to rescue themself. :)

[ClaudiusMinimus]

Duane, you recently labeled this mod “Obsolete”. I am concerned because you also stated, “I think I'll just chalk this up as a learning experience.” I hope it does not mean you are dropping this mod and any future development.

I am currently playing this game on the Podworld of Illuna and am truly enjoying it. While there may be some kinks to work out, this mod is still lots of fun. The issue Milan reported of: “fixing a shadow glitch can cause a completely dark pod” can be repaired using WorldEdit for individual pods. So far this seems to be working.

If you are discontinuing any further development of this mod, please let us know, because we don’t want it to die.

Thank you,
ClaudiusMinimus

[duane]

I'm not sure that it matters, because I haven't had much time to work on it anyway, but I'll probably keep tinkering with the unlimited branch. It's already capable of varying the spacing between levels, which cuts down on lighting issues a bit.

[ClaudiusMinimus]

Thank you for letting me know! It helps us moving forward to know what your intentions are.
Thank you,
ClaudiusMinimus

[paramat]

Duane, i added a bool to prevent shadows being propagated from the mapchunk above, essential for floatlands, stacked realms etc.
For use see https://github.com/paramat/planets/blob/master/init.lua#L402

[duane]

Duane, i added a bool to prevent shadows being propagated from the mapchunk above, essential for floatlands, stacked realms etc.
For use see https://github.com/paramat/planets/blob/master/init.lua#L402

Thanks, but I already use that. The terrain generates with the correct lighting (more or less). The problems seem to occur with the lighting updates when schematics are placed, and using calc_lighting again at that point just makes it worse. (I know it's not supposed to be used after generation, but it usually works in more normal mods.)

The best I've been able to do so far is space the levels out more so as to avoid the issue. And the problems get much worse after that. In the new branch, I can't get lighting to calculate correctly below altitude zero no matter how the boolean is set. I get dark chunks everywhere.

[duane]

I think I managed to fix some of the shadowing by changing the water level, which is apparently being used as a shortcut for whether something is underground.

[paramat]

Yes, if the mapchunk above is ungenerated lighting assumes sunlight or darkness depending on above or below 'water_level'.

Lighting bugs due to the 'update_map' lighting update used with schematics and the non-mapgen-object vm are known and a major problem.