blockengine

This project is for fun and aims to create a little engine with the following main ideas:

About the Data

• Everything consists of blocks on a two-dimensional square grid.
• Creatures in the world are bound to the grid, although this may change in the future for better game play.
• The world is composed of two-dimensional layers, each marked with one letter (symbol), and has their own constant dimensions (functions can be written to change the dimensions).
• Each layer is divided into chunks which are square and have their own size.
• Each chunk contains the blocks themselves.

World Behavior

• Block behavior is determined either by Lua scripts or C functions (for better performance).
• The world is updated ten times per second. Each block in a loaded chunk runs its own update function, if it has one.
• Only loaded chunks are updated. Inactive chunks (for example, those without updates for 100 ticks) are unloaded to disk.
• If a chunk attempts to access a block from an unloaded chunk during a chunk update, it is loaded and marked as active.
• A given block can access any block in the current world and can do anything with it.

Graphics and More

• Blocks can interact with SDL2 (you would have to register functions for Lua), allowing for control over what the player sees and hears.
• Blocks can decide which textures to use to render themselves on the screen.

In summary, developers can create a layer of game logic (marked "d", for example) and build a "mechanism" from the blocks that accepts user input and moves the player around on the game layer, as well as create other mechanisms for monsters, interfaces, and more.

Roadmap

• Basic operations on blocks
• Block memory control
• Chunk memory control
• Saving and Loading
• Tests for everything above
• Basic game cycle
  • Loading or generating a world
  • Inactive chunks unloading from memory
  • World update and update rate setting
  • Test for everything above
• List of permanent block parameters
• Saving and loading permanent block parameters
• Lua scripting for blocks
• Graphics

That's the list I'm currently aiming for. Hope this helps!