[1.16] Creating a W value alongside X, Y, and Z

[BliX5]

I'm developing a Minecraft 4th dimension concept mod, so I'm starting by adding a W value (trength) that the game can take into account when generating and rendering blocks, or at least make it show up on the F3 screen. I just wanted to know if this was possible, and where I should even start to look into how I could implement this in my mod. 

[B3tcha]

What would the difference be between a w cord and the World dimension as I feel it already is very hard to miss if you are in overworld or the end?

[BliX5]

40 minutes ago, B3tcha said:

What would the difference be between a w cord and the World dimension as I feel it already is very hard to miss if you are in overworld or the end?

I'm not making a mod between the normal Minecraft dimensions, but the mod will generate 60 million different alternate versions of your normal world, with many things slightly different, which is why I need a W value. It's kind of complex

[B3tcha]

Then its a -p cord for parallel is it not?

 

[Draco18s]

That's basically dimensions.

Also, no computer would be able to run 60 million dimensions at once.

[BliX5]

1 minute ago, Draco18s said:

That's basically dimensions.

Also, no computer would be able to run 60 million dimensions at once.

I don't think you understand. The computer doesn't run all 60 million dimensions at once, just like how a computer doesn't run all 60 million by 60 million blocks in the world at once. It will use the seed and each 60 million W values to generate new terrain in a certain distance from the player, which will probably be 10 chunks. There will definitely be a performance drop, but nothing too severe, maybe only twice the load. 

Also, what I'm making is not normal Minecraft dimensions. It's naturally generating the same world multiple times except with one more variable when generating, which will create a W axis with 60 million blocks. There will be two keys to press on the keyboard to move left and right across this axis, and as you do so, the world will deform just slightly. Rivers may change shape; mountains and valleys may shrink or grow; and forests, lakes, oceans, vegetation, and biomes may also do the same, therefore becoming 3D instead of 2D including the W axis. Structures will get larger and smaller as well depending on your W axis. Try researching into a 4th dimension concept to understand it better. This video perfectly describes it, except that game is in a small, enclosed space, while Minecraft is much larger. 

9 minutes ago, B3tcha said:

Then its a -p cord for parallel is it not?

 

?

[BliX5]

If you don't understand the post above, that makes sense because I suck at explaining things. I just wanted to know if there was some way to add a W axis to the world, or at least in the F3 screen.

[Beethoven92]

I understand what you mean, its kinda something like shifting between differents planes of existance, where things might change slightly from plane to plane. I suppose when you press your key that moves across the "W" axis you would need to manually recreate the chunks in a certain radius around the player taking into account the elements that were contained into the chunk and applying the new generation accordingly, though the performance would drop critically and i am not sure you would be able to achieve all the modifications you listed above, for example the structures one.

Probably there are better ways to do that (if it is even possibile to do that)? But to me this sound like a very difficult thing to achieve without changing the inner core workings of minecraf itself

[Draco18s]

9 hours ago, BliX5 said:

It will use the seed and each 60 million W values to generate new terrain in a certain distance from the player, which will probably be 10 chunks. There will definitely be a performance drop, but nothing too severe, maybe only twice the load. 

I don't think you understand the math involved here.

 

Area of a circle:

πr^2

Volume of a sphere:

4/3 πr^3

 

Plugging "5" in as our chunk radius...

Circe: 78

Sphere: 523

 

And I know what Miegakure is, and they've been working on it for literally decades, you're not going to achieve something similar in Minecraft in only a few weeks. Especially if you want to let the player rotate their view in such a way to swap one of X/Z for W.

 

I also don't know how you're going to generate "the same world, but actually not" because that's not how Minecraft seeds work. Even the Miegakure folks don't have a 4D model editor.

[BliX5]

1 hour ago, Draco18s said:

Plugging "5" in as our chunk radius...

Circe: 78

Sphere: 523

Since it's 4D projected into 3D, the entire area of generation won't be projected at once, so the load will maybe be more than twice, but not as much as you would think. 

1 hour ago, Draco18s said:

And I know what Miegakure is, and they've been working on it for literally decades, you're not going to achieve something similar in Minecraft in only a few weeks. Especially if you want to let the player rotate their view in such a way to swap one of X/Z for W.

I didn't say, making the mod would take a few weeks. It could take a year. All I'm saying is Miegakure was a useful resource in making the mod concept. Also, a lot of the time making Miegakure was probably spent on the levels and their 4D counterparts, especially since everything is those levels were made from scratch, while Minecraft should do it instantly. Also, in Miegakure, objects aren't blocks, they're 3d models. Blocks are a lot easier to work with when switching between 4 dimensions because (with enough time) you could possibly make some algorithm that finds different planes around a changing block to deform accordingly. 

As for the rotation, I have an idea to have all of the axes visible, as well as the W, but that's not important right now. 

 

7 hours ago, Beethoven92 said:

Probably there are better ways to do that (if it is even possibile to do that)? But to me this sound like a very difficult thing to achieve without changing the inner core workings of minecraf itself

I'm not sure if this is possible, which is one of the reasons I asked this question here in the first place. 

[Draco18s]

13 minutes ago, BliX5 said:

It could take a year.

It too me a year to make a standard mod that did things that Minecraft and Forge already supported. You're doing something that requires completely rewriting whole swaths of the codebase to do something it doesn't already do.

 

15 minutes ago, BliX5 said:

while Minecraft should do it instantly.

No.

No it will not. Minecraft's world generation system is not in any way set up to handle 4D terrain in a sensible manner. Yes it is "just cubes" but no, there is not some "easy to write" code that will do what you want. And you're going to need to write that code yourself.

[BliX5]

Here's my dumb rotation diagram idea:

I don't know how long this thing will take me and I don't even think I'll finish it. If it requires a good PC, then that's fine because the mod is just for me and my friends anyways. I'll just do some research on displaying a value on the F3 screen

[ChampionAsh5357]

A fourth dimensional concept is problematic for many reasons. You would almost need to rip out all physics handled by minecraft to write a custom engine that can handle all the data properly. Graphics-wise, yes, the computations would be the same in regular world movement. However, transition spaces would cause a terrible amount of lag as chunks would be loaded and unloaded and drawn every time you move along this axis. This is not even to discount the fact that Draco is completely right on the math there. In three dimensional space, all you have to is load a circle of the required information. Four dimensional space requires a sphere to be loaded at all times which is a dramatic increase.

 

For reference, there is no nth-dimensional tool out there for rendering or physics. Closest that's been achieved is through 4d Toys, and that barely meets that requirement. It would take an expert in either field upwards of about 10 years to get a semi-efficient concept working well with current day technology. A non-euclidean environment in minecraft would take less time and work much more efficiently and that requires a good amount of work too.

 

You can attempt to make one, but you're better off writing an entirely new game instead.

[Draco18s]

2 hours ago, ChampionAsh5357 said:

For reference, there is no nth-dimensional tool out there for rendering or physics. Closest that's been achieved is through 4d Toys, and that barely meets that requirement. It would take an expert in either field upwards of about 10 years to get a semi-efficient concept working well with current day technology.

4D toys was made by the same guy as Miegakure, he published a paper about it, and had it accepted to SIGGRAPH within the last year, and oh yes, it took him 10 years. 

[BliX5]

I know this topic is kinda dead, but I wanted to bring a different way to implement this mod. I'm removing all of my ideas before as well. 

 

Each W value can be a dimension, and this may sound extremely CPU-intensive, but there is a solution. 60,000,000 total dimensions is possible. Granted, the player won't be going through every single dimension, just as the player doesn't go through every single Minecraft chunk. The game doesn't register every dimension on startup, but it generates these dimensions like chunks. Take Minecraft's April Fools snapshot from this year. You can write anything in a book and chuck it into a portal, and as soon as you jump through, it generates a completely random dimension. If I could come up with some method to make a 3D biome map and I just made every generated dimension a new overworld, this could be possible, of course with some major tweaks to structures and mob AIs. 

The gameplay will act similar to Miegakure's, so instead of clicking two buttons to move left and right across the W axis, there are two buttons to rotate left and right, or rather, ana and kata. I'm still deciding whether I should make the rotation a full 360 degrees or just 4 selections of rotation: XYZ, WYZ, XWZ, and XYW. A 360 degree rotation function would have a mix of all the values depending on how long the player holds each button for. While I don't entirely know how the splicing of dimensions will be done, I'm sure there's some way to do this. 

While this idea is most likely nearly impossible for Forge, I'm not dropping the concept just yet. I've been working with datapacks recently, and since dimensions are written in json now, most of these concepts will be performed via a datapack. 

For now, the rendering is the least of my worries. 

 

I'm not giving up on this concept, and I'm not dropping any of these ideas unless anyone has any better method, which is likely the case. 

[Draco18s]

6 hours ago, BliX5 said:

While I don't entirely know how the splicing of dimensions will be done, I'm sure there's some way to do this. 

The Miegakure team had to write a custom rendering engine for it.

Have fun.