True modifiable terrain

[Cube_]

well, how large of a fully customizable map could I store in a let's say... 20GB file asuuming that it is one big ball that could technically be completely destroyed...
but how large could it be... (pref compared to an IRL value, like 200 meters (probably not that small xD))

Anyway, nice planet!
And some natural-ish forest, tho that is one small planet, or some flippin huge trees!
and that planet is far to symetrical for my taste, could you show some completely random terrain generated as a big ball? (is that even possible?)

and by completely random I mean something that looks completely random but that is actually pseudo random or calculated using some ingenious algorithm....

[Virror]

Of course the real planet will be a lot bigger and with generated terrain, this was just a small and simple test ; )

[Cube_]

well, can't wait to see the true potential of this

now, any number on how large terrain I could squeeze into a 20GB file?(assume that textures are not part of this and the same goes for entities, terrain ONLY)

[hendu]

I know someone working on yet another MineCraft clone; the approach he chose was to only store differences to a procedurally generated map in an octree.

Thus the unmodified map takes 0kb on disk no matter the world size. Modified depends on how the player works, but IMHO it's a fairly good representation, because humans tend to do large similar surfaces (ie: castle wall built of the same stone).

[Cube_]

but if the map isn't taking any space at all if it isn't modified, doesn't that mean that the game can only use one map?
for fully dynamic maps, the seed used to generate it and the map itself has to be stored....

[hendu]

Config data like that could go to the save file, etc.

[Virror]

You can store only the seed needed to generate the map, that way the map will be exactly the same every time you generate it, then you just apply the changes you have saved on that generated map.
But even if you save the whole map you could probably store a very huge world on 20GB file if you use some clever compression. A good thing with this approach is that its a lot faster then generating on the fly.

[hendu]

You don't really need to generate that much; only the seen surface, the rest on-demand.

[Virror]

Ofcourse, but load from file should still be faster. But generating from same seed is a very good way of making it space efficient. Still have not decided exactly how i will do with my terrain.

[Cube_]

indeed.
so... a HuGE map...

Minecraft maps are relatiely small, and well they are 8x the size of earth ^^

[serengeor]

indeed.
so... a HuGE map...

Minecraft maps are relatiely small, and well they are 8x the size of earth ^^

What?!

[Cube_]

I could create a HUGE map in the 20GB limit I set for my maps

and minecraft maps are small (just a few mb, well might be larger if fully explored, but that's never going to happen!)
And yes they are 8xearth in size.

[rubenwardy]

This looks great!

Are you going to release the source?

[chronologicaldot]

Sadly, it looks like Virror, the developer, hasn't been on for a year. No one else has started anything similar that I know of.

[Cube_]

But polyvox is still under development? no?
According to volumesoffun.com the latest version is PolyVox-GIT-2e4bf67.zip (11th December 2011)....
And fyi the source *is* released.