Geography / Landscape

[kylerchin]

Hello! I suggest that there be a natural landscape, including plains, mountains, and occasional large bodies of water. We can then assign landscapes based off an algorithm based off a "biome". We then generate random sets of rocks, grass, trees, terrain, water as see fit. This allows for more creativity with objects such as tropical beaches or hikes in the jungle, climbing mountains, house in the forest, etc. Cities would most likely settle near bodies of water or flat areas. People then can modify the landscape as they see fit. Hopefully, this is better than our current infinite "desert". Can we integrate this also with https://github.com/decentraland/proposals/issues/6 and #10 ?

====================== THIS POST DOES NOT NEED MANA. THIS IS JUST A REQUEST FOR A CHANGE IN THE CODE.

[dwrowley]

Macroverse.io is another blockchain-based virtual world initiative that uses procedurally generated terrain - they don't see to be as far along as the DCL team though, but perhaps a procedurally generated terrain model could be added into DCL.

[kylerchin]

Hmmm... Marcoverse makes the user pay too. Sad! I would like that. My little sister (she is 11 yrs old) said that she will buy a bunch of mana and make a huge jungle island with waterfalls and nature stuff. Then invite all her friends over. Thats how I came up with it. Users can explore for the perfect plot, then claim it. Terrain is awesome. @dwrowley

[saskakol]

I love the idea of terrain, but there's the problem of execution. Since terrain would have to be the default model of your tile, you would be able to change it to whatever you want. This means that if you have height differences across tiles, the adjacent tile's owner could easily switch the 3D model, effectively ruining the aesthetic. Terrain could work if you have a list of models generated/created in advance, that are tilable. Basically the sides of the tiles will always be at the lowest possible height, but the center parts of the tiles can have plants/trees and variations in height. That means that large pools of water, such as oceans would be hard to coordinate, if not impossible, as someone might just change their land and the look of the ocean would be ruined. The same applies to larger areas with height differences, such as mountains.

[kylerchin]

@iSasFTW I think map builders could simply take advantage of large amounts of flat land, i.e. Plains, deserts, beaches. However, some variation is necessary for a beautiful and meaningful experience.

[saskakol]

@kylerschin Yeah, definitely. The real problem are the trolls, although I hope the price of land will discourage them.

[kylerchin]

@iSasFTW Describe Trolls....

[saskakol]

@kylerschin People who intentionally want to ruin the aesthetic or simply just annoy others. It's the internet, so there's bound to be people like that. Also people who only hold land for value/just for the sake of having it, but never upload any meaningful content. They're not trolls per se, but have a similar effect on the scenery/value of surrounding tiles.

I hope the price of land would discourage the former kind of people, but there's nothing that can be done to stop people from buying tiles.

[kylerchin]

@iSasFTW Oh. I understand. Let's say someone buys a tile, then fills it with random blocks and inappropriate symbols, hate speech, or things intended to bully or harass others. Or dig a giant pit and make a giant tower that fills the entire grid.

[kylerchin]

I guess the only way is just to go out to some far out place and buy a bunch of plots next to each other. :( @iSasFTW @dwrowley

[pookage]

Whilst the obvious goal of decentraland is to be decentralised, every fictional metaverse has fundamental base rules - ie. you can't interact with someone's possessions without their permission etc. I'm in agreement that the terrain should be interesting in and of itself - the best art is built around constraints; nobody will build bridges unless there are rivers to cross.

SO, given that, I don't see any reason why we shouldn't normalise the edges of adjacent land to maintain a natural and contiguous feel. Add it into the fundamental rules of the universe - the edges of your LAND will be normalised to match nearby LAND, and you cannot terraform the edges of your LAND in any case where it will affect adjacent LAND without their permission.

We could add a collaboration mechanic where adjacent LAND owners need to work together if they want to adjust LAND that borders each other's plots?

Thoughts?

[kylerchin]

@pookage people could simply add code that prevents crap on their plot.

[pookage]

@kylerschin - I was proposing a way to ensure the terrain was contiguous, unless you were saying why it wouldn't work?

[dwrowley]

What do you all think about the current size of a LAND plot? (10m x 10m / 33ft x 33ft) - seems on the small side to me... (which makes having visual continuity between plots even harder). The smallest Second Life plot is 1/128th of a region, which is 512 square meters (vs. 100 currently for DCL). I'm thinking 25m x 25m (625 sq meters) might make more sense...

[pookage]

Agreed that it seems small - but this article from the blog indicates that land would be 100m x 100m, not 10m x 10m, so plenty to play with there - and also plenty of room to tweak your terrain if we do have contiguous landscapes :

The world will be divided into 100m² (about 1078 ft²) parcels, with a non-fungible digital asset for each plot of land.

[kylerchin]

@pookage hmmmm.....

[dwrowley]

The blog says it is 100 square meters - which would be 10m x 10m ... not 100 meters squared.

[pookage]

Aah, my bad. Good shout, @dwrowley

[kylerchin]

@pookage @dwrowley What do you think about oceans, islands, and other water stuff like rivers and lakes, waterfalls and stuff like that?

[pookage]

@kylerschin - I think that different types of terrain lends itself to different activities; water could open up boating as a transport and diving as an activity - just as mountains could open up skiing and climbing. Plus the more natural aesthetic diversity - the better as far as I'm concerned!

It looks like some people have already created some good work along these lines in A-Frame as well, which gives us a good starting point...

[dwrowley]

it will be interesting to see how this works out... we have to set the right balance between giving the LAND owner control over their plot, while making the overall experience as compelling for visitors as possible (having a good browsing experience while moving from LAND to LAND, good continuity, interesting and unique domains). Procedurally generated terrain is a good idea, I believe, but that will also make certain coordinates more attractive than others (which is fine).

If the team wants to do procedurally generated terrain, they need to get to it quickly, before the genesis block, since doing it afterwards would be problematic. I'm not sure I see that happening by then.

[pookage]

haha, well, in the event of procedural land not occurring at genesis - consider this my vote for joining a collective of LAND owners willing to run some generation on our own combined plots 😆

[dwrowley]

There are a number of impressive terrain generators out there, like this one: http://www.world-creator.com/home-tmp/

(has an integration w. Unity too)