![\"Image](\"https:\/\/jacksontech.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/02\/progress_2_20_2016.png\")
<\/a>Textures courtesy of public-domain SoarTex pack<\/p><\/div>\n
<\/p>\n
<\/a>Procedurally generated terrain using OpenSimplex noise. Fully pathfindable.<\/p><\/div>\n
<\/p>\n
<\/a>Pathfinding in a procedurally-generated 3D environment using A*<\/p><\/div>\n
<\/p>\n
<\/a>More 3D pathfinding<\/p><\/div>\n
<\/p>\n
Current Features<\/h1>\n\n- Infinitely-generated terrain (a-la Minecraft) using OpenSimplex noise.<\/li>\n
- Brute-force meshing algorithm to remove unseen faces.<\/li>\n
- AI pathfinding using A*.<\/li>\n
- Entities that can jump to navigate terrain.<\/li>\n
- Passable terrain physics for players and entities.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
Technical Details<\/h1>\n
The engine is implemented using OpenGL 2.1 (plus VAO extension) via the Lightweight Java Game Library, version 2<\/a>. I targeted OpenGL 2.1 so the engine would run on my laptop, which has a 1st gen Intel HD Graphics integrated GPU. However, after seeing the abysmal performance of that GPU, I will probably drop support for older versions of OpenGL and move up to OpenGL 3.x. The engine is very performant on an Intel Atom + 4th gen Intel HD Graphics tablet, getting 60FPS even on battery, at least until you explore enough terrain to make it bog down.<\/p>\nTerrain is generated using a public-domain OpenSimplex Noise<\/a> implementation that generates a heightmap on the fly from a seed. (No caves yet!)<\/p>\nRoadmap<\/h1>\n
AIBlocks started as a “what-if” project, and I didn’t plan it out very well; my goal was essentially “see what I can make in a day”, which grew to two days, then three…<\/p>\n
While this was a great way to impart impetus on an exploration-style project like AIBlocks, random flailing and “chasing the shiny” wasn’t going to see the project through to completion. At the very least, I needed goals that I could break down into smaller tasks to focus on one at a time. Even better would be an end goal so I could declare the project done (or as close to done as possible) at some point in the future. So I sat down and laid out some constraints for the project.<\/p>\n
Major “must-have” features:<\/strong><\/p>\n\n- Terrain generation: done<\/strong>!<\/li>\n
- NPC Pathfinding (A*): done!<\/strong><\/li>\n
- NPC behavior (Behavior Trees, Boids)<\/li>\n
- Block placement\/removal<\/li>\n
- Very simple combat system<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
“Nice-to-have” features:<\/strong><\/p>\n\n- Improved engine architecture (I’m eying Entity-Component systems<\/a>)<\/li>\n
- Biomes<\/li>\n
- Cave generation<\/li>\n
- Generated world structures (houses, etc): partially done if you consider trees.<\/li>\n
- Networked support for multiple players<\/li>\n
- World saving\/loading<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
“Definitely not doing unless I get lots of free time” features:<\/strong><\/p>\n\n- Mining mechanics<\/li>\n
- Crafting recipes<\/li>\n
- XP<\/li>\n
- Enchanting<\/li>\n
- Basically anything else from Minecraft<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
The project covered a lot of ground (no pun intended) since I started it a few weeks ago. The next few blog posts will be retroactively analyzing various parts of the engine before I move on to new features.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
AIBlocks This is the first in a series of posts describing my current development project, AIBlocks. It is a voxel game engine (similar to Minecraft) that I am developing to study various techniques for procedural world generation, networked game systems, video game artificial intelligence, and Java optimization. I’m also brushing up on my OpenGL knowledge … more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":573,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[82,28,9],"tags":[87,83,86,85,84,89,60,63,88],"class_list":["post-568","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-aiblocks","category-personal","category-projects","tag-ai","tag-aiblocks","tag-artificial-intelligence","tag-games","tag-java","tag-minecraft","tag-programming","tag-project","tag-video-games"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jacksontech.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/568","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jacksontech.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jacksontech.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jacksontech.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jacksontech.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=568"}],"version-history":[{"count":12,"href":"https:\/\/jacksontech.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/568\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":584,"href":"https:\/\/jacksontech.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/568\/revisions\/584"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jacksontech.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/573"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jacksontech.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=568"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jacksontech.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=568"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jacksontech.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=568"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
Technical Details<\/h1>\n
The engine is implemented using OpenGL 2.1 (plus VAO extension) via the Lightweight Java Game Library, version 2<\/a>. I targeted OpenGL 2.1 so the engine would run on my laptop, which has a 1st gen Intel HD Graphics integrated GPU. However, after seeing the abysmal performance of that GPU, I will probably drop support for older versions of OpenGL and move up to OpenGL 3.x. The engine is very performant on an Intel Atom + 4th gen Intel HD Graphics tablet, getting 60FPS even on battery, at least until you explore enough terrain to make it bog down.<\/p>\n Terrain is generated using a public-domain OpenSimplex Noise<\/a> implementation that generates a heightmap on the fly from a seed. (No caves yet!)<\/p>\n AIBlocks started as a “what-if” project, and I didn’t plan it out very well; my goal was essentially “see what I can make in a day”, which grew to two days, then three…<\/p>\n While this was a great way to impart impetus on an exploration-style project like AIBlocks, random flailing and “chasing the shiny” wasn’t going to see the project through to completion. At the very least, I needed goals that I could break down into smaller tasks to focus on one at a time. Even better would be an end goal so I could declare the project done (or as close to done as possible) at some point in the future. So I sat down and laid out some constraints for the project.<\/p>\n Major “must-have” features:<\/strong><\/p>\n “Nice-to-have” features:<\/strong><\/p>\n “Definitely not doing unless I get lots of free time” features:<\/strong><\/p>\n The project covered a lot of ground (no pun intended) since I started it a few weeks ago. The next few blog posts will be retroactively analyzing various parts of the engine before I move on to new features.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" AIBlocks This is the first in a series of posts describing my current development project, AIBlocks. It is a voxel game engine (similar to Minecraft) that I am developing to study various techniques for procedural world generation, networked game systems, video game artificial intelligence, and Java optimization. I’m also brushing up on my OpenGL knowledge … more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":573,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[82,28,9],"tags":[87,83,86,85,84,89,60,63,88],"class_list":["post-568","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-aiblocks","category-personal","category-projects","tag-ai","tag-aiblocks","tag-artificial-intelligence","tag-games","tag-java","tag-minecraft","tag-programming","tag-project","tag-video-games"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jacksontech.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/568","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jacksontech.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jacksontech.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jacksontech.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jacksontech.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=568"}],"version-history":[{"count":12,"href":"https:\/\/jacksontech.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/568\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":584,"href":"https:\/\/jacksontech.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/568\/revisions\/584"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jacksontech.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/573"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jacksontech.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=568"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jacksontech.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=568"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jacksontech.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=568"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Roadmap<\/h1>\n
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