I implemented the procedural terrain as a part of the first milestone. I chose to implement my chosen feature by using fractal brownian motion (FBM), and I used 2D FBM to create procedural noise. In addition, I implemented the ray casting to allow the users to add blocks and remove blocks based on where they are facing. I used the ray marching method of starting from the “eye” to see where the position of the character is and using the “look” vector to see where the character is looking. Then, using an incrementing value (“t”), I was able to ray march and find block intersections. For removing blocks, I simply removed the intersected block. For adding blocks, I found the exact cube intersection and the face and direction to which I need to add the block. 

 

For the second milestone, I implemented L-System rivers. I did so by creating a turtle class and kept track of the position and orientation of the turtle. Using grid intersections at each step of creating the river, I was able to draw between each current and previous turtle to create a series of lines that would represent the schema of the river to be placed in Minecraft. Through creating a set of grammar rules, I was able to create a linear river and a delta river to render on the first chunks of land that the player starts in. The river branches out and also has walls that are “cut out” with staggered block walls to make it look more like a natural river rather than blocks that have just been deleted at an arbitrary location. 

 

For the last part of the project, I created the GUI for Minecraft. In this GUI, I made use of shaders and textures to create a GUI inventory, which users can click on different blocks that they want to be able to put down. I wrote functionality such that when the player pulls up the inventory, it's similar to "pausing" the game (i.e. player does not move) and the mouse icon appears so that the player can see where they are clicking, and click on the appropriate type of block that they want to put down.

 

Another feature that I added was the ability to load in .obj files. Using a program called MagicaVoxel, I made a little turtle monster (his name is Burtle, because he looks like a burger) and he is a static asset, placed on the terrain. To make him look a little more animated, I applied an animation to the texture that makes him appear in psychedelic colors. He's a fun addition to Minecraft and gives our terrain a little more personality!

We also chose to implement biomes as an environmental change in Minecraft. I helped conceptualize how to implement biomes (i.e. what classes we should modify, what types of biomes to add, how to create them), and Han Yan actually implemented the additions to the chunking class.