Miniature Builds

[tulip scaffold]

I figured out a way to capture player builds into a 8:1 downscaled miniature version. This miniature can be rendered as an item or placed in the world as well! It's even very efficient as the mesh is only built once and then cached based on the structure it represents. For items it's still rendered every frame, but miniatures in block form get added to the chunk mesh for efficient rendering (no BlockEntityRenderer).
This mechanic is used in my new Chess mod: ImmersiveChess. More info here: https://github.com/JoeyDP/Immersive-Chess.

For now the lighting within the miniature is still uniform (same as the block it occupies in the world), but I have some work in progress to integrate the ambient occlusion algorithm into it 😃 . Computing the Minecraft lighting updates is still a bit too slow for my liking however so I'm trying to optimize it some more before releasing this addition.

[proper copper]

Reminds me of Modmuss' old Chunk in a Globe mod
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IDCR4p7ZGhA

[mighty field]

wow, you've put a lot of thought and features into this for "just" a chess mod. Nice job!

[tulip scaffold]

Thanks! I wanted to integrate it with the Minecraft style and gameplay as much as possible, hence the building of pieces and in the mod you also play chess by mining and placing the pieces.

[whole forge]

Honestly I think if you released this mechanic as a standalone mod, people would seriously eat it up because of the building capabilities

[tulip scaffold]

Yeah I was wondering the same thing. I might extract the concept of "miniature rendering based on structure" into a library. Then we can see if anyone wants to make a standalone mod with this feature using the library ^^

[whole forge]

Like, you know chisel and bits? It's like a mix of chisel and bits and armorer's workshop

Maybe even having an option to have a miniature structure based off either 8x8 or 16x16

Cause currently chisel and bits I think has some problems (idk we had to remove it from aof6 I think) but it's also annoying to build so small, so being able to just dish out the resources for miniatures like that would be awesome