Minecraft clone, improved graphics and GUI.

[itsbth]

Curses! I was starting to make one with Ogre3d!

Anyway, you could check if the block is surrounded on all adjacent grid spaces, and if it is, not render it, because it would be impossible to see. (My friend's idea)

Also, do module loading!

That's probably too slow.

[feha]

I haven't gotten to that yet. Now it just draws everything :P

Yes you have, I saw the vid, blocks behind other blocks wasnt rendered. And if a block was partly covered it was only partly rendered.

Or do you put all polygons in a table, sort by distance and then render them, so the closest always get rendered last (and thus cover the old stuff)

[M4T1A5]

This thing looks like Sauerbraten

[itsbth]

Yes you have, I saw the vid, blocks behind other blocks wasnt rendered. And if a block was partly covered it was only partly rendered.

Or do you put all polygons in a table, sort by distance and then render them, so the closest always get rendered last (and thus cover the old stuff)

You are confusing Hidden surface determination with Z-buffering.

[feha]

Hidden surface determination uses z-buffering.

Or you mean he z-buffering but need hidden surface determination for performance boost (culling mentioned earlyer)?

Also its very late here, so I am bound to make errors :P

[itsbth]

Ugh. Link fail.
Hidden surface determination - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
I linked to Z-buffering because it's the de facto standard solution to the visibility problem.

[Colonel Thirty Two]

That's probably too slow.

Not if you cache the blocks that need to be drawn, and run the check for each adjacent block when you add/remove a block.

[-HP-]

The music <3

[Matte]

As of now, the engine is drawing all cubes, no matter where they are, XNA just sorts it by distance. This causes a lot of lag when dealing with a huge number of blocks, so suggestions on how to solve/work around this is appreciated.

Rewriting the whole thing for readableness now. Thanks for all the suggestions, I really need ideas on how to solve the hidden surface determination problem.

The music <3

You're the first one that noticed it. After compiling the video, I discovered that the line "The lunatic is on the grass" is very fitting in the first song :P

[Syranide]

As of now, the engine is drawing all cubes, no matter where they are, XNA just sorts it by distance. This causes a lot of lag when dealing with a huge number of blocks, so suggestions on how to solve/work around this is appreciated.

A number of things you can do:

Separate rendering for different view distances... close up: accurate, far away: low resolution, very far away: approximate with points.

Above mentioned solution to mark cubes that cannot be seen from the outside, however, noclipping through will be weird (noclipping makes optimizations harder). Especially if you only render visible surfaces, as most sides of the cubes will be hidden.

It's important to realize that you need to batch rendering (vertex buffers) if you really want to it to be quick. Perhaps some kind of grid system where each cell is already cached in a vertex buffer.

I do believe Minecraft uses occlusion queries to approximate which blocks that cannot be seen for the next frame, exactly how I don't know, probably testing by way of some quad-tree structure. Approximating occlusion is important for larger worlds, either create/approximate occluding surfaces when the world is modified or find some other way, or use the afforemented solution.


Etc, etc, it depends a lot on how you intend for players to traverse the world, etc. Whether they will mostly walk on blocks, fly around... if the world will be based in caves, open areas, etc.