Half height terrain blocks / gradual elevation changes?

[Avimimus]

This may seem like anathema - but has anyone considered a worldgen option where the terrain/elevation changes are half-height blocks?

It'd make it much easier to navigate rough terrain, and it would look more realistic. I know it violates the minecraft-like aesthetic, but I think it would also make them game more distinctive, and it could have a lot of practical benefits.

What do you think? Yes or no?

[Thorfinn]

Cool thought. Do those half-height blocks remain half-height? Are drops halved? If so, it the "durability" of the block halved too? Or do they become half blocks in inventory. (A bad, bad thing with current inventory.)

For me, it would largely depend on how much it would impact mapgen and render times.

[Streetwind]

This is actually a suggestion that's been made several times in the past. Unfortunately, there are a number of major issues which prevent it from being feasible in practice.

 

First, you need to add a half-block for every possible top-layer material. Which, as it turns out, can be a lot. Practically any block placed by the terrain generator, including every possible type of rock, every possible ore in every possible type of host rock, including ores hosted in other ores (gold in quartz etc), every variant of sand, every variant of gravel, every variant of dirt. Possibly others.

So what happens when you mine such a half-block? What does it drop? For blocks that have drop chances of secondary items, this can be handled fairly transparently - you simply halve the drop chances. But for blocks that drop themselves, you have a problem. Do you make the block drop itself? Then you've just clogged the player's inventory with a potentially useless single item that won't stack with any of the full blocks of the same material type. Or does it not drop anything, or maybe a full block at 50% chance? Then players will be confused, and/or complain that the half-block isn't avilable for decorative purposes.

And then you get into what those half-blocks actually do. Like, imagine that you found a half-block of terra preta. What do you do with it? Pretty sure you can't make that into farmland, because crops only grow on surfaces level with full blocks. Are you supposed to place the half-block floating in the air, so you can plant a crop on it? Immersion goes out the window.

And in general, plants and vegetation are a huge problem in a world generated this way. Imagine a slope like the ones you are asking for with this suggestion, a nice smooth slope using alternating full and half blocks. Unfortunately, only the full blocks can have any vegetation generating on them. So now your grass, your trees, your bushes, your flowers and everything are banded into alternating strips of growth and no growth, all the way up and down that slope. That'll look terrible!

Those aren't even all the issues. It keeps going as you examine everything that exists in the game.

 

Now, you might go through all of these issues one by one, and think 'hey, I can come up with a solution for this'. And as you keep doing this, and solve each problem, and aggregate all these solutions into a collection of changes that would need to happen to support this feature smoothly, you'll eventually realize: your collection of changes is more and more approaching the point where it begins to resemble a different change altogether. Namely reducing the base block size of the game from 1x1 meter cubes to 0.5x0.5 meter cubes. That is the ultimate destination this suggestion is heading to. Only when every part of the engine, from the ground up, thinks natively in half-meter steps, can you really achieve proper support for world generation using half-meter blocks without something breaking, and for players collecting and using natural half-meter blocks for every imaginable application.

And that pretty much devolves down to "rewrite the entire engine and game from scratch".

Hence this suggestion is not feasible, and never will be.

 

Edited December 3, 2023 by Streetwind

[Steel General]

I'd rather see all the powdery substances act in layers like stacked charcoal or snow.  Digging could be so much work.  Landslides would be so cool.  Heck, do it to water, too

[Avimimus]

On 12/3/2023 at 10:45 AM, Streetwind said:

This is actually a suggestion that's been made several times in the past. Unfortunately, there are a number of major issues which prevent it from being feasible in practice.

 

First, you need to add a half-block for every possible top-layer material. Which, as it turns out, can be a lot. Practically any block placed by the terrain generator, including every possible type of rock, every possible ore in every possible type of host rock, including ores hosted in other ores (gold in quartz etc), every variant of sand, every variant of gravel, every variant of dirt. Possibly others.

So what happens when you mine such a half-block? What does it drop? For blocks that have drop chances of secondary items, this can be handled fairly transparently - you simply halve the drop chances. But for blocks that drop themselves, you have a problem. Do you make the block drop itself? Then you've just clogged the player's inventory with a potentially useless single item that won't stack with any of the full blocks of the same material type. Or does it not drop anything, or maybe a full block at 50% chance? Then players will be confused, and/or complain that the half-block isn't avilable for decorative purposes.

And then you get into what those half-blocks actually do. Like, imagine that you found a half-block of terra preta. What do you do with it? Pretty sure you can't make that into farmland, because crops only grow on surfaces level with full blocks. Are you supposed to place the half-block floating in the air, so you can plant a crop on it? Immersion goes out the window.

And in general, plants and vegetation are a huge problem in a world generated this way. Imagine a slope like the ones you are asking for with this suggestion, a nice smooth slope using alternating full and half blocks. Unfortunately, only the full blocks can have any vegetation generating on them. So now your grass, your trees, your bushes, your flowers and everything are banded into alternating strips of growth and no growth, all the way up and down that slope. That'll look terrible!

Those aren't even all the issues. It keeps going as you examine everything that exists in the game.

 

Now, you might go through all of these issues one by one, and think 'hey, I can come up with a solution for this'. And as you keep doing this, and solve each problem, and aggregate all these solutions into a collection of changes that would need to happen to support this feature smoothly, you'll eventually realize: your collection of changes is more and more approaching the point where it begins to resemble a different change altogether. Namely reducing the base block size of the game from 1x1 meter cubes to 0.5x0.5 meter cubes. That is the ultimate destination this suggestion is heading to. Only when every part of the engine, from the ground up, thinks natively in half-meter steps, can you really achieve proper support for world generation using half-meter blocks without something breaking, and for players collecting and using natural half-meter blocks for every imaginable application.

And that pretty much devolves down to "rewrite the entire engine and game from scratch".

Hence this suggestion is not feasible, and never will be.

 

Very interesting. There is a lot I hadn't considered.

That said, usually the outer layer of any material (whether it be sand, gravel, or soil) is pretty contaminated by rain, roots, and oxidisation. This is even true of some types of rocks, where the outermost layer will have oxidised. So with the exception of some rocks, having the first half block produce nothing of use for the player might be pretty immersive.

The issue with vegetation might be more difficult (requiring producing plant variants for half-height bricks)? A nuisance but doable?

Beyond that I don't see any other issues (assuming the half-blocks are just there for aesthetics and locomotion). I'm curious if you know of more (beyond those you've raised)? I'm quite curious.

 

[idiomcritter]

aside from temporal storms, where the drifter spawns occur in mid air, most spawns look for a valid whole block to spawn on in the wild (least thats my understanding).

 

Not exactly a real fix, I enjoy using the mod stepup to ease the spacebar tapping

Edited December 16, 2023 by idiomcritter

[Avimimus]

On 12/16/2023 at 8:23 PM, idiomcritter said:

aside from temporal storms, where the drifter spawns occur in mid air, most spawns look for a valid whole block to spawn on in the wild (least thats my understanding).

Not exactly a real fix, I enjoy using the mod stepup to ease the spacebar tapping

For spawns that move - how would that be a problem? They'd just initially spawn over an area that is twice as wide (i.e. every second block), and that is only if they are on a slope). I could see needing to make half-height variations for every plant (which would be a chore, but doable), but all of the animals shouldn't be an issue because they don't stay in the same place anyway.

P.S. Thanks for the tip about the step-up mod. It doesn't fix the really cliff-like terrains (which you can't climb because they are too steep), but it is definitely less tiring.

[Avimimus]

I just thought I'd leave a note, coming back 18 months later - I do find that this is one of the most glaring features as someone who hasn't been habituated by Minecraft... there are both visual and navigability issues... so, in the long term, if this could be addressed - I do think it would really make the engine clearly a cut above other Minecraft-Likes, and increase the breadth of its appeal and landscapes.

Apologies for necro-posting - I just wanted to indicate that this is an enduring impression, and it might be useful information that I didn't just overcome this reaction.

[Thorfinn]

@Streetwind already covered most of my initial thoughts, but I think he's understating what would be involved. Not only do you need to do a half-block version of every block that mapgen can place on the top layer (which is a prodigious amount -- each dirt, clay and peat type has, what, 5 grass variants) but also half-blocks of everything that could be placed on top of it. Otherwise trees, bushes, animals, etc. are all hovering if they are standing on one of the half blocks. You can already see how this works with slabs in the existing game. Everything looks wonky.

I think I'd like to see it as a mod first, particularly if it turns out the only way you can get textures to align is to double the size of the atlas. Occlusion culling might end up taking way too many cycles with that many possible renders affected.

[EDIT]

I do agree it would be visually distinctive. I'm just wondering if there's a technological reason no one has done it.

Edited October 21, 2025 by Thorfinn

[Tabbot95]

the most practical way I see it is to just have it be "it's all half blocks actually" at least as far as having a 3d array is concerned;

 

I think half-blocks, quarterblocks, etc.  would be good if only because it makes travel in overland vehicles something that could be more easily envisioned;

 

[Thorfinn]

1 hour ago, Tabbot95 said:

the most practical way I see it is to just have it be "it's all half blocks actually" at least as far as having a 3d array is concerned;

 

I think half-blocks, quarterblocks, etc.  would be good if only because it makes travel in overland vehicles something that could be more easily envisioned;

 

Fair. Couldn't you accomplish the same thing by just doubling the size of your models? It's not like anyone actually cares about having a 14m ceiling anyway. That's sports arena stuff. Few great rooms are much over half that.

[Diff]

On 12/3/2023 at 5:45 AM, Streetwind said:

So what happens when you mine such a half-block?

On 12/3/2023 at 5:45 AM, Streetwind said:

And then you get into what those half-blocks actually do.

This is getting a little off-topic, but I think the answer to both of these is lurking within the game itself, as well as some of the problems that you mention. When I'm clayforming or smithing, I place down one whole item, and that item vanishes and is replaced with a handful of cubelets. In the case of smithing, I can see those cubelets. But for clayforming, they just kind of vanish behind the curtain and we only see them as we place them down. And the game already engages with this on some levels and suffers currently unsolved issues from it, like the fact that the little bit of dirt or snow can't be excavated from buried stone ruins. All of those hint at blocks being made of voxels. This is also well supported by the entire chiseling system. The problem with half blocks of terra preta evaporates if instead of getting blocks, you get voxels of a certain material. To place down a whole block, you need the appropriate amount of voxels.

This isn't a magic solution to every problem. And it introduces a lot of problems itself. Building with voxels would be unwieldy, how do you tell the game you want to place these voxels down as a block vs a slab? Something like satisfactory where you have to declare your intent and the game draws from your inventory automatically? And it all starts coming apart at the seams when you think about the different between a log, a plank, and a stick and discrete items as a whole. Can I make a log out of sticks if they both dissolve into wood voxels? Why would I need a saw to create planks from a pool of arbitrary wood voxels that I can magically reconstitute logs from? But I think it's interesting to think about. Some items like dirt, sand, clay, and metal that are just pure materials are really easy to think about in this way, and a lot of those items overlap with terrain blocks. Half ore block just gives you less units of metal, the intermediate representation that everything ends up as anyway.

Edited October 22, 2025 by Diff

[Avimimus]

Just to cap this off, it looks like there is a mod that does basically what I was looking for:

https://mods.vintagestory.at/terrainslabs

Of course, I'd also seek to have some of the terrains be slightly less steep/more traversable overall... so a few other worldgen tweaks perhaps  - but this mode looks like 90% of what I described (including some of the potential work-arounds)!

[Tabbot95]

On 10/22/2025 at 1:30 PM, Thorfinn said:

Fair. Couldn't you accomplish the same thing by just doubling the size of your models? It's not like anyone actually cares about having a 14m ceiling anyway. That's sports arena stuff. Few great rooms are much over half that.

nah; you want everything to be half blocks so you can put anything on top of a half block without it hanging randomly in the air;