Support for liquid blocks

[andersarpi]

I realise this is quite a big feature. I've tried dabbling with some ideas a bit and been stumbling just as much. Maybe liquid blocks are best done in an iterative fashion? There are a few things needed:

• Transparent (0-1) blocks. (see #9) They should neither be solid (like stone) nor non-solid (like leaves). If you have a 4x4x4 cube of liquid blocks you want to be able to see through them to the back-facing (i.e. stone) blocks, but you don't want the inner blocks to render their faces as this would provide a weird additive effect. This also would apply to e.g. glass that looks more realistic than the cutout solution Minecraft uses.
• Blocks with animated faces. Not a requirement, but without it liquid would look rather stale. Would also help in creater other more refined blocks (e.g. a glittering magic block, a smoldering magna block etc).
• Block physics (e.g. falling blocks). Would be a first step in creating water that spreads. Also would apply to blocks like "sand" and "gravel" in Minecraft lingo.
• Liquid spreading/physics. This is probably the hardest one to solve. Blocks replicating themselves to air blocks under/beside them isn't super difficult, but any liquid spreading that wants to look better than that will need a mesh that updates over time as the water spreads and water level changes.

Like I said I realise this is quite a big one - just wanted to write it down here for future reference and discussion.

[thegreatpl]

Block physics such as falling blocks are handled in minecraft by spawning an entity that falls, then readds it wherever it lands. Now, that would be simple for things like falling straight down (in theory), but if you want to blow up a portion of the terrain and have wreckage go everywhere... Well, would look funny to land and suddenly jump to align with blocks. Something I've been thinking about as I want to make a proc-genned super hero game, and voxels seem the best way to make the map.

[HeadClot]

So - Thought I would chime in here.

There is a game called Seed Of Andromeda and they use cellular automata in conjunction with physics to simulate mass physics simulations with blocks. He does it by batching and instancing elements of the simulation.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eKQYRFYXCWk

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sw_HrcGUoS4

Watch the videos I have linked and see what I mean there is no slow down and there is no hiccups either. These are some very big simulations :)