J3553x Posted August 30 Report Posted August 30 So awhile ago I had put out a request for someone to help me recreate a minecraft mod that I could not find. The mod essentially changed how cubes were rendered based on a set of rules and it changed the voxel world into a PSX style terrain that reminded me of the original Tomb Raider games. Very simplistic, but apparently doesn't exist. So ignoring the fact that I might have slid timelines again; I set out to make the mod myself. Especially since I have received a few requests from what I could only describe as 'bots' to pay them to make my mod for me. I decided not to do that. I also decided that this may not be a mod that I share, because I pulled up blockbench, made all of the shapes that I wanted. Created 90-ish textures, and then deleted them, grabbed some code from other places to create a probe block that changes behavior based on what is around it. And gave up. It worked... ish. But I am an idiot. Maths is not my strong suit and looking at code makes my eyes cross in the opposite direction. So, I used my one advantage: My house is solar powered, on a battery, and I have my own server stack. Hosting my own AI, giving it a 30 page manual on it's behavior, instructions, and purpose for existing, I gave it my old code and access to all of my assets that I had created for this mod. And it said, and I quote, "Dude, wtf is this?" Anyway, a week of vibe coding later I have a functional block behavior model. It add nothing to the game except some new shapes for blocks to model based on a series list of prerequisites. I have only turned it on for sand, currently. But eventually I will have it working for all top soils and other sedimentary blocks.
J3553x Posted August 31 Author Report Posted August 31 So, further testing my block behavior idea has proven to be correct. If I want to alter the way that the world generates I don't actually need more assets to the game I just needed to change how the blocks themselves behave. Unfortunately my understanding of how things work verses my ability to make things work has proven to be my only constraint. Two things that broke a little when I did this... Or well three things. Block culling behind the blocks that now dynamically change shape lead to me being able to cleanly see through the world. Water surfaces no longer touching the shore because the shoreline itself shrank back by half a block. Grass and other ground cover floating above the slopes because they're still technically constrained by the world being voxels... So, I created a custom plane for each behavior shape that takes on the texture of the block that the shape its touching at it's connection points. So if there is air: no texture. If theres a rock: the plane is a rock. That way the block is still being culled, but you can see it because I'm projecting the blocks texture onto the custom filler. Then I changed water at the world generation level to flood the coast by a block. And finally I gave all "ground cover" Inverse Kinematics. Their bounding box still sits where it would in the voxel world, but the visual object itself now adjusts to the floor. The next thing I'm considered if I want to add slopes to is Glacier Ice blocks... Because the slope has mesh. And standing on a glacier slope might be shenanigans..
Recommended Posts