T w e n t y S i d e d
I have to thank Michael Goodfellow for the great series he’s been working on over at Sea of Memes. His project to create a Minecraft-esque world based on a ring of floating asteroids has made for an interesting read, and the problems he’s faced (and mostly overcome) has shaped my thinking on my own project. I actually had to stop reading for a while, because reading his site made me want to code, and I had other projects I was trying to work on.
He’s come to a crossroads now. He’s got several interesting ideas for how the asteroids should be formed and what the geography will be like. With this step he’s moving away from “Minecraft clone” and doing something really new. Stuff like this:
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That’s just one of several approaches. He’s actually got a poll up if you want to have a look and express a preference.
Do check out the whole series, if you haven’t already. He’s more regular with his updates, and he’s usually got some videos of the project. And source code. (Although I’ll have a video later today!)
Free Radical
The product of fandom run unchecked, this novel began as a short story and grew into something of a cult hit.
Shamus Plays LOTRO
As someone who loves Tolkein lore and despises silly MMO quests, this game left me deeply conflicted.
Marvel's Civil War
Team Cap or Team Iron Man? More importantly, what basis would you use for making that decision?
The Brilliance of Mass Effect
What is "Domino Worldbuilding" and how did it help to make Mass Effect one of the most interesting settings in modern RPGs?
Programming Vexations
Here is a 13 part series where I talk about programming games, programming languages, and programming problems.
If that’s gonna be a game, I want to play it. Give me it now.
Pfft. What an amateur. He doesn’t even have flowers!
“Like” :-)
Yes, I really need to reverse-engineer all of Shamus landscape code… It looks really nice.
i reckognize so many of these structures, whats your minecraft username? im interested in having a chat sometime
Is this to me? I don’t craft mines, sorry. (I have the Sims for my obsessive-compulsive behaviour sink)
I’m on twentymine.com pretty rarely, but my userid is mgoodfel.
I have a really old save file from the world that I cut pieces out of.
Why would the asteroids (either bare, or green) not have enough of their own gravity? Make them massive enough (if someone asks, they have a core of some kind of really-dense material, but honestly who’s going to care? :-P ), and you’re done.
Of course, the problem there is going to be trying to simulate their effects on each other — but honestly, I’d go with the Shamus rule here. Don’t bother. As long as it looks good enough, you don’t need more simulation. Just string them out in a large ellipse around a star, or something; if you want they could even orbit it, but that starts to get into too much simulation again.
In the next episode: Minecraft on a hyperbolic plane.
Then snakes on a hyperbolic plane.
Then snakes on minecraft.
Then the world.
I found this page because I had wondered whether or not that had been done. Cubes don’t tesselate in hyperbolic space but dodecahedra do.