How to load stacking chunks on the fly? (545759)

Unity Engine
1

First: I’m not sure if this is the correct sub-forum for this question. Please feel free to move it to the correct place.

I’m currently working on an infinite world, mostly inspired by minecraft.
A Chunk consists of 16x16x16 blocks. A block(cube) is 1x1x1.

This runs very smoothly with a ViewRange of 12 Chunks (12x16) on my computer. Fine.
When I change the Chunk height to 256 this becomes - obviously - incredible laggy.

So what I basically want to do is stacking chunks. That means my world could be [∞,16,∞] chunks large.

The question is now how to generate chunks on the fly?
At the moment I generate not existing chunks circular around my position (near to far). Since I don’t stack chunks yet, this is not very complex.

As important side note here: I also want to have biomes, with different min/max height. So in Biome Flatlands the highest layer with blocks would be 8 (8x16) - in Biome Mountains the highest layer with blocks would be 14 (14x16). Just as example.

What I could do would be loading 1 Chunk above and below me for example.
But here **the problem would be, that transitions between different bioms could be larger than one chunk on y.

801×555 4.04 KB

My current chunk loading in action

For the completeness here my current chunk loading “algorithm”

  private IEnumerator UpdateChunks(){
        for (int i = 1; i < VIEW_RANGE; i += ChunkWidth) {
            float vr = i;
            for (float x = transform.position.x - vr; x < transform.position.x + vr; x += ChunkWidth) {
                for (float z = transform.position.z - vr; z < transform.position.z + vr; z += ChunkWidth) {

                    _pos.Set(x, 0, z); // no y, yet
                    _pos.x = Mathf.Floor(_pos.x/ChunkWidth)*ChunkWidth;
                    _pos.z = Mathf.Floor(_pos.z/ChunkWidth)*ChunkWidth;

                    Chunk chunk = Chunk.FindChunk(_pos);
              
                    // If Chunk is already created, continue
                    if (chunk != null)
                        continue;

                    // Create and load a new Chunk..
                    chunk = (Chunk) Instantiate(ChunkFab, _pos, Quaternion.identity);
                }
            }
            // Skip to next frame
            yield return 0;
        }
    }

This is basically a repost of this question on answer

2

Well just iterate over 3d coords insted of 2d if u want to stack chunks.
If i recall correctly minecraft doesn’t stack chunks, but uses a fixed height of ex: 256. But both solutions should be doable. I would recommend doing the generation on a background thread to prevent any fps drops when loading chunks.

I wouldn’t go the route of having chunks with different resolutions, that sounds like alot of work with making sure there’s a valid transistion between resolutions.

    for(int i = -xzViewRange; i < xzViewRange; i+= chunkWidth)
     {
       for(int j = -viewHeight; j < viewHeight; j+= chunkHeight)
       {
         for(int l = -xzViewRange; l < xzViewRange; l+= chunkLength)
         {
           float x = Mathf.Floor( (this.transform.position.x + i) / chunkWidth ) * chunkWidth;
           float y = Mathf.Floor( (this.transform.position.y + j) / chunkHeight ) * chunkHeight;
           float z = Mathf.Floor( (this.transform.position.z + l) / chunkLength ) * chunkLength;
           if( ! ChunkExists(x,y,z) )
             CreateChunk(x,y,z);
         }
       }
     }