Will we ever move away from Blocks?

[Megamillionare22]

The whole way the worlds are constructed are nice and simple since everything fits into a block area but will the Team ever have a major world overhaul to something more freeform? I feel that if the world could be destroyed in a more "Realistic" fashion it would look very appealing for gameplay, also perhaps tools could take larger chunks out of the ground depending on tier and type? Just ideas but I do hope the team will consider moving away from the blocky approach because having to jam things such as those industrial railings into a single block space is annoying for traversing through because I constantly end up going over the side of the railing if I decide to go for a light jog but I suppose that's realistic for running on such a tiny railing in the first place.

[Ti2xGr]

Just talking outloud and trying to make some sense from what you're stating - The world is voxel-based. 

22 minutes ago, Megamillionare22 said:

The whole way the worlds are constructed are nice and simple since everything fits into a block area but will the Team ever have a major world overhaul to something more freeform? I feel that if the world could be destroyed in a more "Realistic" fashion it would look very appealing for gameplay, also perhaps tools could take larger chunks out of the ground depending on tier and type? Just ideas but I do hope the team will consider moving away from the blocky approach because having to jam things such as those industrial railings into a single block space is annoying for traversing through because I constantly end up going over the side of the railing if I decide to go for a light jog but I suppose that's realistic for running on such a tiny railing in the first place.

Industrial railings for traversing? Light jog? I'm having a really hard time following what you're trying to bring up as a discussion. You can use a rocket launcher or dynamite if you want to take out larger chunks. I assume you mean with a pick? That doesn't fit how a pick would normally work. I could see less stamina loss or working faster, but a pick works on one spot at a time. So does a shovel. Why would a shovel be able to take more than one scoop if you were stronger?

 

Could you rephrase your discussion as I'm having trouble following what specific problem you're trying to solve. What does running on railings have to do with how many chunks you can remove at a time?

[myrkana]

Well this is a voxel game, they are built around blocks of stuff making everything up, like minecraft.  Tools taking multiple blocks out at once doesnt make sense, a shovel wielded normally can only move around a block or less of material in one swing.

 

[Megamillionare22]

9 minutes ago, myrkana said:

Well this is a voxel game, they are built around blocks of stuff making everything up, like minecraft.  Tools taking multiple blocks out at once doesnt make sense, a shovel wielded normally can only move around a block or less of material in one swing.

 

That is not exactly what I meant, my idea is throw out the part where the game is built around blocks and to then focus it more on voxels and compressing those voxels into smaller bits so that they can be removed in a more natural fashion, like say if you took an axe to a piece of plywood and a chunk flew off instead of it disintegrating and having a health bar like it does in game now. This is only an idea for far off in the future but still something I would like to discuss.

[Megamillionare22]

19 minutes ago, Ti2xGr said:

Just talking outloud and trying to make some sense from what you're stating - The world is voxel-based. 

Industrial railings for traversing? Light jog? I'm having a really hard time following what you're trying to bring up as a discussion. You can use a rocket launcher or dynamite if you want to take out larger chunks. I assume you mean with a pick? That doesn't fit how a pick would normally work. I could see less stamina loss or working faster, but a pick works on one spot at a time. So does a shovel. Why would a shovel be able to take more than one scoop if you were stronger?

 

Could you rephrase your discussion as I'm having trouble following what specific problem you're trying to solve. What does running on railings have to do with how many chunks you can remove at a time?

The part about railings is an example about a small problem I have with how the world is constructed around blocks, if these railings weren't stuffed into single block spaces my character wouldn't end up going over the railings constantly. As for the part where you mentioned taking out several chunks with explosives, that is not what I meant; my idea was something more along the lines of removing the way the world is segmented into blocky chunks and instead compress those chunks into even smaller spaces, for example what if the equivalent of one block right now had like 20 tiny block chunks inside of it in a future alpha, and when you swing a tool at it, some of those chunks would fall off instead of the block having a health bar, and depending on the tool type more or less chunks would fall off? If Im still not elaborate enough send another reply and I will do my best to explain.

[Liesel Weppen]

The blocks are a compromise on both ends. Both how the player builds and also on caclulation power of the machine you are running on.

 

If you make blocks into subblocks to allow more ganular building, it becomes also more complicated for players to handle this. I'm still just playing a game, i don't want to end up in CAD or 3D-modelling.

On the performance of hardware side 7d2d is also a heavy lift for CPUs and RAM. Introducing subblocks would increase that by powers. Just by providing it. World data size would explode, not just on disc but also in memory. That further effects streaming the world between disc and ram. If you fly around in god mode you can see how structures pop up when moving fast, that is because loading the next chunks from disc already takes time. If additional subblocks where used  it would be even harder to stream fast enough because you then need to transfer a lot more data.

Not mentioned things like structural integrity, collsision detection or shadow casting yet.

This is somehow worked around by having blocks showing various states of degradation. If you hit a block it starts showing cracks. You could also change the model of the block to make a more plastical degradation visible (e.g. like wrenching cars), but it still would only be a set of predefined states, not a visually physically correct representation. Means, it would still just show a generic block, but not show a notch in the tree exactly where your axe hit it.

The performance reason might become solved once if computing power keeps increasing. But atm we are still lightyears away to make such things possible in the way you expect them.

[Ti2xGr]

What Liesel stated - Considering the load on existing CPU's, I'm thinking this would be limited by current CPU/GPU technology/power. We're not at a technological point where the Unity Engine could reasonably perform at that level of detail for blocks as the whole world would then have to be made of those chunks. I get the concept and think it's cool, but I don't think our technology is at a realistic point of being able to handle it, even optimized. Give technology another five years. Based upon our current progress, that could become a reality down the road. This game is nearing Beta/Gold so I don't think this is going to be that game.

[Boidster]

On 6/29/2020 at 11:25 AM, Megamillionare22 said:

The part about railings is an example about a small problem I have with how the world is constructed around blocks, if these railings weren't stuffed into single block spaces my character wouldn't end up going over the railings constantly.

I experienced what you're talking about today for the first time. It's about the 45 degree metal catwalks as shown below where the path is only 1-block wide and the railings have to fit into the block. If you don't walk directly down the center of the catwalk, you will auto-hop up onto the railing. The straight catwalk segments don't have this problem.

 

The fix is to make railings on the 45-degree catwalk not auto-jumpable.

 

[Kirtonos]

17 hours ago, Boidster said:

The fix is to make railings on the 45-degree catwalk not auto-jumpable.

Agreed. I have a high rise in anxiety when walking around the top of the Shotgun Messiah tower on that catwalk because of this. Maybe that is "as intended" though.

[Dracula]

The only area where I'm bothered by the "blocky" nature of the Voxel world is with farm plots and the terrain texture bug.  Other than that, the buildable world is the reason that I have stuck with this game for all these years.