ZGameEditor forum

I had been considering this for a while now,. and had discussed it with kattle a bit., however I have yet to make an attempt at it. Sorta' inspired by Sauerbraten and Love and such,. as well as the idea of a just having a simple to edit level designer, for many game ideas,. and now having played around with this very cool version of the idea,.

http://www.minecraft.net/

I really am going to try this. The basic idea I am after is a simple implementaion of a cube based editable level system.

what I am wondering is what ideas people have for storing the data for all the cubes,. just a giant 3d array seems a bit too much data, is there a better way to store less info,. like only the data that is existante and not all the empty space? as eve na small level of 64x64=4096x64=252144,. humm not too big, perhaps this is the best way? Storing less data still needs to be able to hold data that changes when edited,. so perhaps I do need all the empty space,.

any how, just interested in your thougts on implementing this befor I start an attempt,. .

Serendipity. It just so happens that right now I am part of a situation elsewhere that has some bearing on this.

A developer created many demos of his app and used the Zlib zip library to compress his content into .zip / .dat files. His program would unzip and load .dat content as needed.
He does not understand tho, that although all the .zip apps can pass their files between themselves without issue, they are all using slightly different file formats. His app only loads the exact format used by Zlib, and no other.

He neglected to include a zipUp program for Zlib, relying on generic programs, and the creative pipeline is broken.

EDIT - He has coldly informed me that he uses Winzip to make his files, and has no idea what this 7zip app I am talking about is. Fine. I'm currently sifting thru the old Winzip versions, looking for one that works and won't nag me excessively.

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On another thread, minecraft looks a lot like the content produced with the Ken Silverman Voxel apps. His work has the appeal of deformable terrain. However, it seems you have to take the long and winding road of learning all about voxel programming before producing anything yourself.

Hey jph,

It all depends .. just keep in mind that games often use different data structures for files, collision, rendering etc.

Have a look at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spatial_index or hit me up in the ZGE IRC Channel if you need some help on deciding what to go with.

* I usually go with something based on Octrees.

K