Vertical Chunks

It would be nice to have a possibility to use vertical chunks if there is a special mod on client.
Like this: http://www.minecraftforum.net/forums/minecraft-discussion/suggestions/77631-cubic-chunks-reduced-lag-infinite-height-and-more#server

Would be something like that implemented in Sponge? If so, all the server logic should be built on top of this idea.

This is so much of a base edit, that it could not happen without a rewrite of minecraft, I would suggest you bug the developers of minecraft about it, since it is not possible with forge.

It isn’t? Everything is possble with Forge… xD
But seriously you could only really do that in a custom implementation of the mc server cause you’d have to rewrite chunkloading, rendering (if on client, but you could work around it on a server) and Minecraft’s glorious lighting System ^^

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Ah, the sarcasm is strong with this one. xD

Really, though, the other guys are right. Minecraft itself would have to be rewritten to support all that extra info.

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This is quite the insane mod, it would certainly require a coremod, as has been said before this would require a super major rewrite of how minecraft essentially handles everything:

  • Transmitting data to the client
  1. Rendering light
  2. Calculating positions
  3. World generation code (insane changes here)
  4. Block placing and breaking changes
  5. Redstone changes
  6. World data storage changes
  7. Biome / weather changes. That is only the beginning.

The chunk system is a core aspect of how minecraft works and making a major change to that can only result in a giant cascade of changes to accommodate that. I really believe the OP of the post you linked to severely underestimated the amount of rewriting that would be required.

EDIT: Also, a mod like this would break anything that wasn’t specifically built for this. i.e. Every other mod or plugin in existence.

In fact there was (maybe still is?) a mod that did that, but it was a jarmod and it broke everything.

With sponge it won’t be possible. Although it is possible to send blocks above the limit to the client. That was even possible with bukkit. The only problem will be that the player will not be able to interact with these blocks, because the client/server has no idea that he can build higher.

I really hope mojang implements this system. That mountain its looks so amazing :smiley:. Than they only need to add a slope blocks. And we can make a snow piste :smile:. And than they can make the world a bit deeper… . Going to bedrock needs to take longer. Lets say sea level is 8 Chunks up and generation code goes 8 chunks above sea level. I would be pretty amazed. That would I call cave-exploring.

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At least factions can be harder.

Aside from trying to implement this into sponge, this definitely needs to be added by Mojang, the concept is quite awesome and has many merits. Also, if Mojang does decide to do something like this it would be much less difficult to them to rewrite their own code. That terrain generator is just awesome.

On the other hand this would cause a fair amount of work for the forge team, the spigot team and the sponge team and other minecraft dev teams (granite,glowstone,etc.) as the respective APIs and implementations would have to be substantially modified. As a result many mods and plugins would lose future-compatibility and backwards-compatibility across the version this is implemented in resulting in many of them having to be greatly modified if not basically rewritten.

All in all my opinion is that this is a great feature that we need but, if this is going to be implemented it needs to be implemented soon so we can go ahead and start switching things over. This is a great idea and I don’t see any reason Mojang has for not doing it or why they haven’t done this earlier.

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I point all of you to this mod.

Yeah, this was mentioned before. Sadly it would break everything :frowning:

I just want to point out that this thread gave me an insanely beautiful and awesome dream last night, and that an infinite, themed bottom-to-top approach minecraft adventure map would be incredibly cool.

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I gotta say, I really love teh idea of vertical chunks, but as mentioned above, that would mean a huge change in basically everything. Also, adding this as a mod is very difficult and basically impossible without breaking everything else as chunkloading is at the very core of the whole game.
It would allow for extremely awesome things though.

For what it’s worth, Minecraft has vertical chunks. The suggestion link is proposing cubic chunks.

But it isn’t vertically chunked :trollface:

I loved the original Cubic Chunks mod, but it didn’t last all that long. I understand Cuchaz is working on his own Modloader (M3L) that is supposed to enable a new version of the mod. Development is very slow, unfortunately. This mod is unlikely to have any compatibility with much else, but at least it’s supposed to enable folk to write stuff that does work in the system. It looks like it will develop its’ own modding ecosystem, if it ever bears fruit.

If it were ever to work with Sponge (or Bukkit, or whatever), it would need some serious mind-melting integration, which is probably far beyond the scope of the original plan. However, I’d be delighted if anyone wanted to try :wink:

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I have to admit it would be awfully nice to be able to have REAL mountains. Not just craggy hills … a mountain range a thousand blocks tall dividing a continent in two.

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I have a question, we can currently extend the top build limit right? The problem is just chunks would get so tall that loading them would be insanely laggy so vertical chunks would be used to load the existing chunks in chunks to put less load on the server. So is the real lag being put on the client having to load all those blocks? Or on the server? Or both? Im sure an insanely tall chunk would stress the server a little but I think the main stress would be on the client. So going off of that premise…

Could there be a plugin that emulates vertical chunks? It would only send block data for blocks so high above the player but if the player started getting higher it would start sending those blocks on the upper end, and maybe if they got high enough it could send updates to unload the lower blocks that are further away.

This might be technically possible, it would require some serious packet handling. Do you think something like that could work. Or if it would even be possible? I know its pretty “out-there”.

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this is a good idea but i think the best way for it to work would be to make chunks cubes instead of rectangular prisms with a 255 height but that would be a change for Mojang

Update: Cuchaz wants to use the Sponge API in M3L !!!
It’s early days yet, but this is certainly an interesting convergence.

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