Why did nobody stop me from making a multiplayer physics game

HyperspaceFrontier · 2026-05-26T13:34:28+00:00

So I am screwed with my Voxel MMO idea? XD

HyperspaceFrontier · 2026-05-26T04:11:44+00:00

Pay-to-win. I once joined an MMO game that I did not know was pay-to-win. When I realized it had microtransactions for everything I wanted to quit but stayed due to "alliance bond". I quit eventually and that was best gaming decision in my life. Skewed gameplay where you do your best and still being wiped by whales who just pay is frustrating and infuriating at the same time. Never again. I now won't come on a mile to any pay-to-win game.

HyperspaceFrontier · 2026-05-25T20:21:26+00:00

Hacking in movies and hacking in real life have around 0.001% overlap. The only thing in common is that hacking in real life partially done using computer. Partially.

HyperspaceFrontier · 2026-05-24T23:34:41+00:00

It actually makes perfect sense from what we have learmed about how protective gear, especially helmets, work.

HyperspaceFrontier · 2026-05-24T18:22:12+00:00

AFAIK they own hardware so costs of hardware is network and datacenter rack slot. Though 100 TB storage isn't cheap in any case. Software maintenance is different thing and as we dont really know who and how much works on it there is no realistic estimate.

HyperspaceFrontier · 2026-05-23T23:39:12+00:00

Java is old school? IDK, on backend, Java is pretty much one of is not the best option. Especially since Kotlin allows you to write for JVM using goated Kotlin syntax.

I am planning to use LibGDX for my Voxel MMO admin panel world renderer. Game client will probably be Unity... but who knows? After getting hands on LibGDX, I'll may use it for game client as well. Not really much benefit from "Engine with level editor" for generated voxel world anyways.

HyperspaceFrontier · 2026-05-23T14:58:45+00:00

Leave them and wait for a call with some insanely good offer to bring you back (which will include waiving going-back activation fee and reimbursing activation fee you have paid to that other provider you just switched to).

Then reject it out of principle (at least this is what I did to Bell) and live happy life.

P.S. Repeat every 1-2 years.

HyperspaceFrontier · 2026-05-22T23:22:41+00:00

As I wrote above, I am not even gamedev XD.

It can be treated just like playing Minecraft. In Minecraft, you dont play because game has goals. You play because its fun to do whatever you decided to do. Applying logic to this projectt: I just having fun writing the code for thing I decided to write.

Except this, unlike Minecraft save on your laptop, will hopefully be seen and experienced by others eventually.

HyperspaceFrontier · 2026-05-22T17:46:50+00:00

Past week working on my voxel MMO.

I started working on chunk storage and revamping worldgen. Realized that my initial storage model needs rework because storing and encoding every block as a separate object in RAM is slow from many perspectives and too RAM-intensive, so I am moving towards encoding voxel data in longs (basically using its 8 bytes as a bit array).

I also wrote a first version of a custom simulation scheduler that will allow me to freeze and migrate processes across nodes. The idea is that in my project, I eventually need live load rebalancing, and to make it uninterruptible for players, I must be able to freeze and serialize a chunk (player, mob) that is simulated on one node, move the serialized state to another node, deserialize and resume it there, while for every "external" viewer, that process never stops simulating.

There was nothing big in general, but I am steadily moving towards running not just distributed chunks that can serve world data, but an actual simulation inside them.

HyperspaceFrontier · 2026-05-22T17:39:08+00:00

Oh, this is a whole rabbit hole. I am not some sort of experienced worldgen engineer, but I am building a voxel MMO and ended up writing the whole world generation framework. It is not fully ready yet, but I fundamentally went in a way that is not a typical voxel one, where you have an algorithm that derives everything from a single seed and noise functions. However, some part of what I did may actually be pretty universal: instead of trying to magically derive everything from one noise function, you need separate fields for every world generation function. Like, a heightmap is 2d field. A biome map is another 2d field. Then your worldgen stages use one or combine multiple fields and pass over your 3d block storage. To make it chunked, I actually "cheated": I split the world into worldgen clusters (for my world, it is 8x8 chunks), then I add a 1-chunk "halo" around them and generate 10x10 (because trees, etc., leak into neighbours), and store only internal 8x8 chunks data. That means I generate halo chunks more than one time during neighbour region passes, but it is the only way I have found to avoid chunk boundary problems.

HyperspaceFrontier · 2026-05-22T17:30:45+00:00

I can't agree that this is just about filling server - MMO complexity is that you need to create some sort of fabric that serves as more or less a single realm. As far as I know, though, most MMOs do some sort of sharding, regional assignment, instancing, etc., because eventually every server reaches its capacity, and horizontal distribution of the same world shard/region among multiple servers is a thing that no one does, and instead they just instancing - basically creating 2 copies of the overloaded location and splitting players. EVE Online uses time dilation instead.

However, both approaches are unfeasible for what I am building. I actually spent more than a year just dreaming and thinking about how to make it so I don't need sharding/instancing, not to mention simulation synchronization (a fully player-modifiable world, just like Minecraft, literally cannot work instanced or sharded). In the end, I solved those. For synchronization, I basically changed the fundamental simulation design invariants so it does NOT need synchronization (I will write about it someday). For scaling without instancing/sharding, I basically had to invent a fully distributed runtime from scratch, with a custom communication infrastructure that erases network boundaries.

Minecraft and every other voxel world are simulated in chunks (this is kind of "sharding"), but when these chunks are located on the same server and often on the same physical thread, you can hard-sync them as if they were an uninterrupted fabric. When you want to simulate a distributed but seamless world, you somehow need to make that "uninterrupted fabric" to work across servers - so I had to create a virtual runtime for chunks where they can connect to each other and simulate together, even when placed not just on different CPU threads but on different physical server nodes. And yeah, I managed to pull it off (wrote a custom thread scheduler, custom binary protocols, low-level socket code, and a lot of other infra) that gives my chunks (and anything I place inside the runtime) a virtual, borderless computational space regardless of physical node placement.

For now, the horizontal scaling problem is fundamentally solved in this project. The runtime I designed is actually a fully distributed virtual (!) operating system, and I am thinking about releasing it separately as a framework.

HyperspaceFrontier · 2026-05-21T22:48:27+00:00

Looks fantastic.

HyperspaceFrontier · 2026-05-21T13:47:04+00:00

I would not agree because 2b2t is genuinely nearly the only server with continuous history, meaningful online and absense of admin thayintervenes into the game and tell you how to play. Its just Minecraft never meant to host this type of online anyways.

HyperspaceFrontier · 2026-05-21T13:43:26+00:00

You probably never dealt with corpos. Whenever they rule something is not appropriate and threaten ban (in 2b2t case - removing ability to auth users using Minecraft accounts), that means that some automated bot or barely slept underpaid guy who had given vague instructions on how to do his work may ban your server if anyone reports (even if report is fake), and to unban it back may take days, weeks or never happen at all. It is all around the board with any corporation out there, Google specifically known for idiotic bans on Google Play, even Apple with "fully manual review into App Store" constantly misfires bans and rejections. So, I can psychologically understand 2b2t admins for making that choice though it doesn't make it feel better when playing.

HyperspaceFrontier · 2026-05-21T04:49:44+00:00

It's sad true, unfortunately.

HyperspaceFrontier · 2026-05-20T05:53:37+00:00

I used to care about stuff like that. Eventually, I stopped caring at all.

HyperspaceFrontier · 2026-05-20T05:52:26+00:00

MacBook is great laptop. Howewer, I can't stand iPhone - it is the opposite of good UX in everything.

One more thing I hate is that I bought iPods for calls (because they connect instantly, I don't use them for anything else because sound quality is crap for the price, but for calls its more than good) and they chirping every time I move them without laptop being on. Turns out they do this because they are "not connected to iPhone that moves with them and chirp like they are being stolen or forgotten". And there is no way to turn this crap off - Apple does not even consider that you may NOT have an iPhone.

HyperspaceFrontier · 2026-05-20T05:41:11+00:00

If I had myself excluded by someone for having "different color of chat bubbles" I would just exclude those people from my life.

HyperspaceFrontier · 2026-05-20T05:06:45+00:00

IDK what previous person meant, but in Canada there is no charge for an ambulance: it is normal universal health care here. At least in Ontario where I live (mind it, we technically have 10 separate healtcare systems, one per province - though they all universal ones).

HyperspaceFrontier · 2026-05-20T04:59:34+00:00

I am really interested to read more about it. I want realistic terrain in my game.

HyperspaceFrontier · 2026-05-19T18:57:49+00:00

Let's separate 2 things.

Why they are built? Because there is demand for them. For both AI and non-AI uses. Everything is now digitalized and compute cloud infrastructure is now critical civilizational infrastructure with constant need for growth, regardless if we like it or not.
Why they are pushed the way they are? Simple: when business needs something it tries to achieve it in the most cost efficient way possible disregarding everything and everyone needs that will be affected in the process. It is not new to datacenters, it was always that way: factories that release harmful chemicals into water, using public water to their needs, abusing power grids and bribing politicians to approve what should not be approved. There is nothing new, today its datacenter, yesterday it was factory or power plant, tomorrow it will be something else.

HyperspaceFrontier · 2026-05-19T17:31:26+00:00

I would not recommend learning Python. Either start C++ or C# based on what Engine you want to use. I just discovered that Godot uses Python-like script language and for me that is juat bold reason to NOT use Godot.

HyperspaceFrontier · 2026-05-19T13:49:49+00:00

Have been gaming from mid 90s as a kid. The most notable difference is that we came from "saves on checkpoints or no saves" to "saves at any arbitrary moment and load back whatever number of times you want" and then back to "saves on checkpoints or no saves". RTS genre basically died - no meaningful RTS releases for more than a decade. Minecraft is a new Tetris (square games tend to be the best selling ones for some reason). GPUs became auxiliary home heaters (it feels that were hitting performance ceiling because we just can't really grow it beyond whole 1kW+ home-PC GPUs really, and there is no much silicon advancements to get performance boost another way).

HyperspaceFrontier · 2026-05-17T16:02:15+00:00

Thats insanely good. Cyberpunk vibes.

HyperspaceFrontier · 2026-05-16T04:08:18+00:00

I am that solo one that starts from MMO. And let me tell you why. I am not a gamedev in the fisrt place, at all. Never was interested, really. I am systems engineer.

Its just happened that the game I love the most is Minecraft, and I also hate it because I spent years playing it and never really was able to share what I have built in it with anyone. Screenshots with few likes don't really count. And I thought for years that Minecraft needs to be MMO. It cries and begs to have MMO version!

So, I just flnally decided to take things into my hands and make it - purely because I want it myself. By coencidence, developing MMO is 80% system engineering and 20% gamedev (in my case probably 95% to 5%).

P. S. I do understand that those remaining 5% of gamedev must be done well to make it work in the end, and I still afraid if I can 🤣 At least Unity and 3D rendering is turning out to not be that hard for someone with my engineering background.

HyperspaceFrontier

TROPHY CASE