Special Streaming Event Announcement!

Hello everyone!
As you probably know, my last project Infinity City includes a self-building metropolis: a real functioning terraforming Redstone device. This is the current apex of self-replicating machines, a technological field that I've basically invented myself in the last years :-)

Are you curious to learn more on how they work and do you want to discover how self-building cities are designed?

If yes, I have great news! I'm announcing a special streaming event on Twitch:
it'll be a guided tour in the Minecraft world I use as a laboratory for the Infinity Project. In the stream I'll show you how all the city's components function, how they are designed, and also some other cool things!
Special guest PMC will partecipate to the tour too, don't miss this unique event!

Interaction is important! During the event, feel free to ask anything you want in the Twitch chat; like any guided tour, I'll be there to answer your questions in real time :-D

The stream will be on Saturday 12 at 9.00 EST (15.00 Central Europe time)

Let me know if you're interested in participating or if you can't; in that case don't worry, I'll upload the stream on YouTube, so you will still be able to see it.

See you soon,
-Gheppio

Hey, sorry for not giving any news for so long. (4 months now? Wow)
Today I saw a comment asking me if my "Mo' Structures" datapack project was abandoned, if we they should still be waiting for it. It made me realize that quite a few people were waiting without knowing what they should expect from me. So today I want to make an announcement about that.

No, I do not abandon the project. I care about it a lot, and I want to bring it to completion. Sadly, I do not have the time to work on it anymore as I'm starting my art studies. I do have a lot of ideas, maybe people I'd like to work with and so many potential for this project.
So here we are : the project is paused. I want to come back to it when I'll have the time but yeah... I won't give any date of when I'll be back, because I have honestly no idea but hopefully I can do it before Mojang actually add this as a feature.
So see you, I may not completely disappear but I hope you'lll understand. Bye

Check out this live stream lesson on building terrain! This is a GREAT opportunity if you've ever wanted to learn!

When:  5th October[Saturday] 8pm Central time

    which is the 6th of October [Sunday] in EU at about 03:00AM

Infinity City System Optimization

The 2048 contest is finally over. Even if Infinity City has failed to win absolutely anything, I'd like to thank all the people who appreciated the project, and that supported it through the contest. It has been nice to see so many of you getting involved with the basics of self-replication and the concept of a self-building city! A special thanks goes to DinowCookie for featuring the project on her page; and another goes to eagoy for his suggestions and advice. :-D



As I said, the project doesn't end here and I will build many more city elements and buildings to enrich the final cities of several orders of magnitude in terms of variety.
Anyway I'll perform first a system optimization to make the whole machine smoother for computers to run.
But how it's possible to accomplish this optimization?

I'd like to share with you what I've been working on in the last days, while I was waiting for the contest results... I'm writing a software that emulates with the highest possible fidelity the expansion behavior of the Infinity City engine. It's not an easy task since it must emulate hundreds of machines interacting between each other and all synchronized together at the tenth of a second.
In this way I can easily test different variations of the key components to see their growth profiles.
As you can see even a deterministic model can behave in unexpected ways, and small changes in the redstone circuit design can bring to significant shape changes of the final cloud.

After that I'm able to collect quantitative data of useful performance parameters on order to study and compare the different variations. The final objective is to select the circuit specifications that allow
to achieve the perfect compromise between high growth efficiency and reduced computational requirements for the computer to hopefully avoid any lag.

The software is also able to emulate a structured expansion, replicating the road elements of the minecraft counterpart. This type of growth instead is random, and the final result is different every time, exactly like the engine in minecraft. What you see here are some examples of growth of the structured urban tissue.

The average density and overall structure of these road networks strongly depend on the probability distributions programmed via redstone in the road randomizers. Even in this case it's possible to monitor critical quantities like the current number of active modules (modules that are currently doing redstone operations) and the number of open ends (current number of growing road extremities). You can see an example below.

The project will continue from here, please notice that what is shown above is only a part of the whole Infinity City engine, which instead includes also much more complicated system dynamics for what concerns the procedures of building assignment and construction!
Now please notice that the project was judged, at a technical level, with a mark of 69/100.
I hope that this post can give you at least an insight of the amount of work behind something like Infinity City, a necessary approach that makes the difference between a cool concept that it's impossible to realize (because of lag and complexity), and something that actually exists and that works just fine.
There is still a lot to do and to decide, alongside the level of public availability of future developments.
Whatever happens, these machines will continue to create new worlds beyond my imagination. I can't wait to see what they can do at their full potential...

Thank you for reading all this long post!
Have a nice day,
-Gheppio

Infinity City update 1.0.1

Fortunately I've succeded in completing this update before the end of the 2048 contest :-D
More variety on the road modules has been introduced.
Trees, flower pots, parkings, bus stops, benches and more!
The city now feels much more alive also at ground level...
Download the new version and see it for yourself!

Infinity City is finally out!

It’s the 50^th submission for the Project 2048 contest.
Check it out, and eventually give it a diamond to help it in the contest :-D




Year 2048. Earth is overpopulated and resources are scarce, but there is still hope, a machine that can save us all.

They call it the “Seed”.

When activated on a planet surface, the Infinity Seed is capable to create a limitless city potentially capable of housing even billions of humans, accordingly to the planet’s resources.

Every time the Seed is activated a different city is generated: different road topology and different building placement. Even buildings of the same type will have infinite variations at every instance.

Download now, become a Seeder and create your own city!

Imagine if technology could help us shaping new worlds,
the possibility to create entire new civilizations among the stars...
Waht could be the shape of such machine?

Here is a trailer I made for my upcoming submission for the Project 2048: space exploration build contest
Even though this will be the biggest project I've ever created, works are proceeding well.
Estimated release during the next week.
Stay tuned!