Ape Apps

I was thinking about the planet surface ground textures for MC2. Taking a look at the standard grass texture of Minecraft, to me it looks like a 16x16 tile of randomly generated noise:


I am wondering if, using this concept, the game engine could just automatically generate different ground textures on the fly, so that new textures for different planets and biomes would not have to be designed manually.

For instance, when creating a biome, you would simply have to specify the desired topsoil color, whether it is a red shade for a red planet or gray for the moon, etc, and then maybe specify a secondary lower level soil color for cliff sides and whatnot.


The engine would then just create 3 or 4 variants of each color by making it lighter/darker and then automatically build the texture with random noise.

Anyway, it could be an easy way for modders (and myself) to define new world types, or different biomes within existing worlds, without having to manually create ground textures.

That should work!
Indeed it would be nice if it's not the same 16x16 pattern repeated, but look like continuous.

I think you said in an other thread that slopes are planned, in which case there needs to be 3 types of slopes: inside corner, outside corner and flat (just like staircases in Minecraft). How would it work for them?

Here is my first attempt at generating ground textures, using the lander made by @GeneralWadaling and the colonist I threw together yesterday. Also has some testing of sun/shadows plus sky hue. You can see a bit of cliff side in the foreground:


@Sobeirannovaocc I don't know exactly how the slopes will work yet, I still need to fiddle with it 🤔

This is another angle, that line represents the ray of sunlight coming down (only there for testing purposes). This one demonstrates the sky better, since it was just sort of pale blue in the first pic.

One final test, getting the lander to cast a shadow onto the colonist. You can see by the bottom of his foot that it works.


Probably shadows will be an engine setting that you can toggle on or off.

Terrain elevations


So lonely and desolate 😢

One more, with the draw dist turned up. Still performs pretty well, there are several hundred chunks loaded at once in all directions, and I was originally planning on having the default draw distance set to 2 or 3 chunks (with a chunk being 32x32 area). Really makes it seem like you landed all alone on a big empty world. I want to play the game now!

I want to play as well!! It looks good!

Having played Minecraft it's a bit weird that the block is 4 times the size of the colonist.. but I'll get used to it quickly!

Any chance to make the terrain generate like...50 or 100 variations (if it's too consuming to do it on the fly) of the soil texture and spread it randomly, so that the ground looks random instead of the repetition of the same 16x16 pattern?

Sobeirannovaocc said:
Any chance to make the terrain generate like...50 or 100 variations (if it's too consuming to do it on the fly) of the soil texture and spread it randomly, so that the ground looks random instead of the repetition of the same 16x16 pattern?

That shouldn't be a problem, the engine generated textures are only 16x16 in size themselves, so the memory impact should be minimal. If it's an issue, there can also be an engine setting to choose the number of random ground textures that are generated.

Ah, so mc2 will be more like infinite terrain/chunk style terrain and region style. In that case, for things like resource deposites, “Factorio ” could be a good place to get inspiration from because it’s infinite terrain and the deposits are procedurally generated.

I posted an idea on your rover thread about resources and building construction, but I didn’t know mc2 was to be chunk based. Even so, most of what I put could still apply in a chunk based map.