Blockology (Part 1) - What is a block?

Blockology is a series of tutorials shedding more light on the core systems that make up and allow the manipulation of blocks in Landmark. It is heavily based on an advanced guide composed by Smokejumper in 2014. In accordance with Smokejumper and on popular demand by the players, I am now adding his work with some fine adjustments and visualizations to the TR3TORIALS project.

Please keep in mind that what is now officially called a "block" was formerly (and falsely) known as a "voxel". But since we will probably unravel the misconception of what exactly a voxel was, it will be easier to just follow this tutorial and reach a proper definition of the term: block.

"First of all…and this might hurt your brain a bit…a voxel is NOT a shape. It’s not the1x1x1 cube shape you add with the smallest ADD brush.

Actually, a voxel is a point. The different points (voxels) are connected to each other by lines (vectors). Those vectors form the outlines of the “cubes” that you see in the world when you use the ADD brush. (In other words, it takes many voxels to add enoughvectors to make a shape.)" Smokejumper

"Imagine a grid of dots. (Each dot is a voxel.) Now imagine that each of those dots is connected to its neighboring dots by lines (vectors). Now, stack that up so that it’s in three-space. Voila. You have a decent representation of the voxel points in their natural “healed” cube-like state." Smokejumper

"When you move one of the voxels, the vectors connected to it also move. Thus, you changethe shape of any cube seen as soon as you move a voxel.

So just remember…everything is connected. You can’t move one thing without moving another. All the different welding, recopying, and smoothing tricks you may hear about are just different techniques to get these dots to end up in positions that make cool shapes." Smokejumper

The position of a voxel can be determined with various techniques and tricks. However, because the game world is basically a 3 dimensional voxel grid connected with vectors, changes to that grid can only happen with certain limitations. A voxel can only be pulled so far before causing visual glitches or other unwelcome results. No matter what, a block and all its voxels can always be returned to their initial position. The natural cube-like space of a block is refered to as "cube space".

"Normally, voxels need to stay within their cube space. However, there are building techniques that let a voxel wander out of its normal cube space. This is how shapes that are bigger than a cube are created. Voxels can also be smashed down into the center of that cube space, which allows the creation of smaller shapes as well." Smokejumper

The various techniques and methods that allow the creation of these shapes will be discussed in upcoming articles.

Stay tuned and soon you will major in Blockology with your fellow Luminaries!

#basics #advanced #tutorial #Landmark