01-23-2015, 05:30 AM
I had something like this in mind when I created the Gallery server.
The biome definitions don't make much sense, because the client has a limited set of hard-coded biomes and the server needs to send the biomes to the client, so we can't really define any new ones. So what's left of your biome configuration is the ability to specify per-biome rules for spawning structures - trees, ores, villages, maybe more later.
I'll give you a counter-proposal to ponder:
Let's add a couple of folders to the server's executable folder - "Trees" and "Villages". Inside those there will be definitions for:
- groups of trees. Each group will have a list of individual tree images (blueprints) and may have a limit on the biomes, terrain height, top block etc.
- groups of houses. Each group will have a list of individual house images (blueprints) and may contain an override for the road blocktype and perhaps other village generator parameters relevant to a single village (Density and MaxDepth come to mind)
I'm not specifying the exact format on purpose, we can discuss it later, this is just for the idea.
Then in world.ini you could specify, as generator parameters, the groups of trees and groups of houses enabled for this particular world.
This enables several things:
- download and install new groups when they become available, as a whole group, rather than having to edit a config file
- re-use the same group across multiple worlds
- predefined groups may be hard-coded into the server data-wise, but could be turned off (>>Don't want the Japanese village? so turn it off in world.ini, as simple as that<<)
However, there's one big thing to consider: Someone has to code all this. And that someone won't be coding other stuff at that moment. And we're really needing the other stuff right now. I think the generator is okay now, unlike the AI or the networking or the Lua API or the server stability.
The biome definitions don't make much sense, because the client has a limited set of hard-coded biomes and the server needs to send the biomes to the client, so we can't really define any new ones. So what's left of your biome configuration is the ability to specify per-biome rules for spawning structures - trees, ores, villages, maybe more later.
I'll give you a counter-proposal to ponder:
Let's add a couple of folders to the server's executable folder - "Trees" and "Villages". Inside those there will be definitions for:
- groups of trees. Each group will have a list of individual tree images (blueprints) and may have a limit on the biomes, terrain height, top block etc.
- groups of houses. Each group will have a list of individual house images (blueprints) and may contain an override for the road blocktype and perhaps other village generator parameters relevant to a single village (Density and MaxDepth come to mind)
I'm not specifying the exact format on purpose, we can discuss it later, this is just for the idea.
Then in world.ini you could specify, as generator parameters, the groups of trees and groups of houses enabled for this particular world.
This enables several things:
- download and install new groups when they become available, as a whole group, rather than having to edit a config file
- re-use the same group across multiple worlds
- predefined groups may be hard-coded into the server data-wise, but could be turned off (>>Don't want the Japanese village? so turn it off in world.ini, as simple as that<<)
However, there's one big thing to consider: Someone has to code all this. And that someone won't be coding other stuff at that moment. And we're really needing the other stuff right now. I think the generator is okay now, unlike the AI or the networking or the Lua API or the server stability.