This is a playable proof-of-concept of a Minecraft-like voxel game mapped onto a large-scale spherical planet. It is written in C# and HLSL and created in Unity3D.
Movie_003.mp4
This video demonstrates a 12km wide flatgrass planet with rings at y=6025 x=2 z=2 using a mod that adds Minecraft content (examplemod.zip)
- A 12km wide spherical planet made of cubical voxels
- Basic JS modding API
- Flood-fill voxel lighting w/ ambient occlusion
The planets in Planetcraft consist of cubical voxels on a flat spherical surface. It is mathematically impossible to map any sort of plane (like a cube) to a sphere without distortion. Planetcraft does not try to fake anything using shaders, instead it explores several different techniques to try to minimize distortion while still being a true planet.
Rather than a single continous mapping, the world structure is arranged into 6 different grids, and mapped using this equation:
As you increase your altitude, blocks will start to stretch horizontally until they become ~2m wide, at which point the chunks will subdivide to try to minimize distortion. This project was designed with large-scale planets in mind which reduces the amount of subdivisions a player would encounter around sea level.
The final result is an uniquely shaped world structure. A 2D slice of which can be seen below:
Below are screenshots of an earlier version that supported planets only up to 200 meters wide. In this version, the core contained a highly distorted Nether layer.
