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Vertical Cubic Expansion

Minecraft is practically infinite horizontally, but not vertically due to the height limit. This can be seen due to the impenetrable layer of bedrock preventing any further vertical exploration or expansion. The addition of cubic chunks generation would liberate this, and unlock new possibilities and freedoms to everyone.

For example: Players would not be limited to the 256 block limit and have practically infinite caves to explore.

Smaller chunks could be utilized more efficiently for better performance.

As for how all this will be implemented.

(1:Cubic Chunks) By reducing chunk sizes to 16x16x16 It should allow the 60 million block limit to now be applied to the vertical plane.

(2:Vertical Biome Generation)

Allowing biomes to spawn above and below each other thus allowing for new and unique biomes to spawn deep below the surface.

(3:The Void) The void will work differently. If you fall for x distance it will trigger the void and you will start taking damage until you die or stop falling. All dropped items will be deleted on death. This applies to all entities.

(4:Surface Terrain) Surface terrain will not be affected by this update.

These are just the core features that I believe would move Minecraft forward. And be further expanded upon in the future. I hope you read and take my suggestion into consideration. It might be a lot to ask for but I'm sure if we go down this route we will never look back. Just like when the horizontal plane was made infinite. 

 

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  • 4
    Registered User commented
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    I love the idea but I feel like the game would crash a lot more, also 60million by 60million by 60million is INCREDIBLY huge, too huge, I get maybe raising limit to 1000 max, no more.

  • 2
    Registered User commented
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    If cubic chunks was officially implemented There would be no point in limiting it to 1000 It won't really help performance and it would just be limiting people the only reason consuls have such a limit is because it would break their terms of service That's why your phone can handle infinite world generation but your console can't its to protect consumers from potential bloatware

  • 4
    Registered User commented
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    I do see a potential issue with players causing lag by falling great distances in the same way if you use a elytra you can generate new chunks at alarming speeds that can lack servers. However you can't really load new chunks with this method and the new void mechanics would just kill you if you fall too far.

  • 0
    Registered User commented
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    Ellendaur has a valid point. I would suggest 256 blocks from bedrock to sea level but most of the 60 million block limit would be in the sky for building insanely large things not previously possible.

  • 1
    Registered User commented
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    I'd like to see the Nether being incorporated into the Overworld and having vertical chunks would allow for this, it would also allow the aether to exists up in the sky.

    There are already mods out there that add the nether to the Overworld.

  • 3
    Registered User commented
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    I think the nether and end should remain separate diementions. The nether maybe but the end definitely not.

  • 2
    Registered User commented
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    If the nether remains a separate dimension It would be great to see the nethers surface If there is one. It should generate at a very high elevation not intended to be reached quickly or easily.

  • 5
    Registered User commented
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    I think that the cubic chunks idea would be great and I was going to suggest the same thing, because it would help with most of the things you said I just think that they could expand the height limits not make them infinite.  Also a way to help with loading chunks and using less space is that if you have a chunk that is completely air it is not stored as a file, instead when you load a chunk that is all air it will set the chunk to have no file for it because it knows that it is all air.  The only time it will load these is if the player is in a certain radius from them limiting the amount of air blocks above and below the player.

  • 5
    Registered User commented
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    jakeZulu7913206 the world would only be generated in a cube (or sphere) around you, so not too much distance. right now its generating from top to bottom, because chunks are that large. but there is no need for generating all 60 million blocks of height.

    i made a new post about the cubic chunk world generation: it could only generate things you can or could see. so maybe only 2 16 block chunks down from the surface, or even 16 blocks only, in the distance. this would free up resources to maybe make mountains in the distance visible, improving far-sight

  • 0
    Registered User commented
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    Instead of just taking damage after falling a large distance a void phantom could come out and attack you

  • 0
    Registered User commented
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    The void phantoms could maybe be a new mob in a variant of the deep dark but shouldn't have any correlation with the void death mechanic aside from maybe a reference at most. it exists to prevent soft locking and lag just like entity cramming and the current void.

  • 6
    Registered User commented
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    Chunk generation wouldn't be very difficult for the server to generate at high altitudes, so generating chunks at an altitude as high as, say y=2550 would be very easy because of the lack of blocks. All the server would have to do would be to generate a 16x16x16 cube of air, and only save the chunk if the player modifies it.

    It might even be worth it for performance to expand the chunks from 16x16 to 32x32, because moving from a chunk of 16x16x256 that contains 65536 blocks, to a chunk size of 32x32x32, it would contain half that (32768 blocks). This would mean that the new chunk dimensions would cover a similar-ish area so hopefully wouldn't be much more work for lower end systems.

    Mojang has shared their ideas regarding extending the world height limit. I think making chunks to be 32x32x32 would be alot of work, but so would extending the height limit to 512. Doing something like this would make it possible to have everything at the same level, such as the surface be at y=~70. The deeper caves and the deep dark could be well below y=0. An advantage to doing something like this is: say Mojang wants to add more stuff to the game, the average consumer hardware has improved alot, so they might otherwise extend the world height limit to 1024, or even 2048. If they add cubic chunks to the game, all they have to do is expand the world generation code if they want to go deeper/higher.

  • 1
    Registered User commented
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    Vertical Cubic Chunks would actually improve performance because technically the height limit is a variable that can be changed rather than technical limitation, Vertical Chunk generation generates everything above and below you which is performance intensive for low powered computer rather than Vertical Cubic generation which generates a set amount of chunks above and around you which can drastically improving performance for low powered devices and make Minecraft worlds bigger.