Hello everyone. Unfortunately, over the past few days I've had some inflammation in my tendons, so I haven't been able to work on too much.

I do have a rudementary 'paging' system for the terrain - that is, it will dynamically load different chunks of terrain as I move around the map.

Here is a quick video:

It's still pretty rough - you will see a bunch of slowdown as I move around. Also, sometimes chunks of terrain keep rendering, even if I am far away. Not sure why that is yet.

I've been thinking alot recently about how to design the terrain loading. I don't think I'll actually have procedurally generated terrain for the final game - it will be more of a tool to help build the world. So far, I'm thinking of saving chunks of terrain in a bunch of text files, and just loading them in as needed. I would also need to allow for saving of voxel data if a user makes modifications to the terrain. I was also considering using SQLite for terrain data, but I'm not sure that would be fast enough (plus, with all the terrain data, I really need to optimize for storage space as well). I do think I will be using SQLite to store all of the game data (i.e. player information, world information, etc).

I've also been contemplating how I'm going to get this sucker out there and funded :) I think I need to make a prototype that will show off the key features of the game. Ideally, I would like it to be relatively functional in other ways as well - kind of like a 'taste' of what the full game would be like. My thought is to build a small world that would feature a town, some npcs, some mountainous/rocky/hilly terrain, some forest, maybe a 'bad guy' to beat, and maybe some quests. It doesn't sound like too much, but I'm pretty sure that would keep me busy for months, at least.

My current guess is 3-4 months to build up the prototype. Then once I have something, I can try and get it funded via something like Kickstarter or IndieGoGo.

Community and communication I think are incredibly important if this project is to succeed. I need to build something that people will get excited about. I also really like the idea of enabling people to build new parts, or 'mods', for the game (ala Elder Scrolls Construction Set).

Anyway, lots to think about! :)

Cheers

Jarrett