T w e n t y S i d e d

Several people have left comments. Others have sent emails. Still others have written messages on bricks and heaved them through my window in a storm of profanity. Just a moment ago someone attached a note to an arrow, and shot it through my dear friend Concorde. The impression I’m getting from these missives is that people would like me to write more about Project Hex. I am not opposed to this suggestion in any way. In fact, I am eager to do this. I can think of few things that would be as productive and satisfying as writing about my latest programming fiasco in a way that leaves the reader with the impression that I know what I’m doing.

Unfortunately, I can’t write about Project Hex until I work on Project Hex, and I have not been able to find an ample enough supply of adjacent minutes in which to accomplish this. I could, I suppose, write a pair of long, meandering paragraphs detailing the fact that nothing has been accomplished, and if you are very observant you may notice I have just done exactly that. But I don’t anticipate this will satisfy the constant and sometimes hazardous requests I’m receiving from eager readers.

But!

Michael Goodfellow has not been slack. In his about page he claims to have retired from work. This is obviously false. He has only retired from being paid. He is working, at a terrifying pace, on his massively multiplayer game, and if you can’t find amusement in his trials and frustrations then you are kind and empathetic to the point of defect.

In part five he talks about the many directions his project could go. Then in part 6 he has the delightfully clever idea to import the data from the Twenty Sided Minecraft server and use that as input data for his world. The stuff in part 6 is of particular interest to me. He’s working to light the world. It’s trivially easy to come up with something that is bland, but serviceable. Simple shadowless directional lighting is easy to achieve, and gives the world a bit of visual texture. But from there almost any improvement becomes mercilessly difficult, particularly when you’re dealing with a Minecraft-like world where any scenery can change at any moment.

So my advice is to save your bricks for a later date, and be pacified by Goodfellow’s writings.

If you are wondering about my archaic and gleefully unorthodox writing voice today, then I will offer the explanation that I have been reading a great deal of Jane Austen, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, and Oscar Wilde as of late. I’ve become enamored of the sometimes absurd ways people allowed themselves to speak. I am like a man who has suddenly fallen in love with bowler hats and resolved himself to un-ironically wearing one with his jeans and sports jersey.

Shamus Young is a programmer, an author, and nearly a composer. He works on this site full time. If you'd like to support him, you can do so via Patreon or PayPal.