Blocks & Chunks

Last updated 4 months ago

Blocks & Chunks

In HYTOPIA, a world's terrain is made up of blocks. A block is a 1x1x1 sized cube or any subdivided shape that can fit within a 1x1x1 cube.

These blocks are then organized and arranged in a structure called a chunk, which is made up by 16x16x16 blocks (4,096).

Blocks also have textures, which are a single image applied to all faces for the block, or alternatively can be a texture image for each face of the block.

Manipulating blocks and chunks is key to creating games that have dynamic terrain, or terrain that can be constructed / destructed by players (Think similar to breaking/placing blocks in Minecraft).

The BlockType, BlockTypeRegistry, Chunk and ChunkLattice classes are all key to managing and manipulating the terrain blocks of a world.

Let's explore some very common uses of blocks, block types and chunks.

Setting And Removing Blocks

Here's a quick example showcasing setting and removing blocks. We'll set or remove a block every 1 second based on if a block is already set or not.

// You could place this code in your game setup function, or any callback, etc.
// There's no SDK opinionation on where or how you set/remove blocks.

// Create and register a new generic block type for gravel.
// Note: When you use world.loadMap, a number of block types will
// be preloaded. You can view them by console.log(world.blockTypeRegistry.getAllBlockTypes());
// Or look at the "blockTypes" property in your assets/map.json
const gravelBlockType = world.blockTypeRegistry.registerGenericBlockType({
  id: 1, // must be between 1 and 255, cannot be 0, 0 is reserved for air or "no block".
  textureUri: 'blocks/gravel.png',
  name: 'Gravel',
});

setInterval(() => { // Every second, if a block is set, remove it. If not, set it.
  const coordinate = { x: 0, y: 1, z: 0 }; 
  const hasBlock = world.chunkLattice.hasBlock(coordinate);
  const blockTypeId !hasBlock ? gravelBlockType.id : 0; // 0 = no block, which removes the block
  
  world.chunkLattice.setBlock(blockTypeId);
}, 1000)

Limitations Of Blocks

Within HYTOPIA, blocks are fixed cubes that cannot be translated or rotated. Think of them like the ground, walls, etc that are unmovable.

In some cases, you may want blocks that can interact with the physical world, be pushed around, perhaps a block that is a moving platform, etc. For this, you'll want to use Block Entities.

Next Steps

We strongly recommend you check out the following guides to get a better idea of different things you can do with block types, a block type registry, chunks and a chunk lattice.

PreviousAudio Manager NextBlock Types