Spherical Demo of Minecraft-Style Planet: Game adopts Minecraft's blocky mechanics, transforming a flat earth surface into a rotund celestial body

In an intriguing diversion from the popular game Minecraft, a team of developers, including Jordan Peck, have created a captivating demo called Blocky Planet. This innovative project, developed by the same team behind the original Minecraft mod, offers a fresh take on the classic block-building game, allowing players to construct on a planet rather than a flat plane.

Bowerbyte, the software developer responsible for Blocky Planet, has introduced a unique gravity mechanic that focuses on the central point of the planet instead of just downward, ensuring players stay planted on the planet's surface even if they traverse all of its sides. This mechanic sets Blocky Planet apart from Minecraft and provides a more realistic planetary experience.

One of the key challenges in developing Blocky Planet was converting the flat Minecraft world into a planet. To tackle this issue, Bowerbyte broke the flat surface into six equal pieces and mapped them onto a cube. Each face of the cube was further broken down into smaller squares, and the corners of each shape were pushed out to a specific distance from a central point. To maintain block size consistency as you move from the surface of the planet to its core, Bowerbyte pre-distorted their square grid, which they now refer to as quads.

To solve the problem of misaligned layers, Bowerbyte added more blocks only when the distortion becomes too obvious and increased it by a whole number. They also grouped multiple layers into shells to make them easier to process. As you go deeper and closer to the center, the blocks will become thinner and thinner, eventually turning into a triangle.

Despite its potential, Bowerbyte has no intention of turning Blocky Planet into a full game due to the time-consuming nature of such a project. The developers built Blocky Planet during their free time and intend to do more work on it in the future. The demo is currently available for download and installation on a PC or can be played through a browser.

In keeping with the spirit of Minecraft, Blocky Planet remains free for players, with no plans for monetization. The developers have not revealed any plans for a commercial release of the demo, but fans of the original game can look forward to more updates and potential developments in the future.

Blocky Planet offers a more realistic surface resembling that of a planet, as opposed to Minecraft's flat, expansive world. This demo is a testament to the creativity and innovation of its developers and a promising step towards more immersive and realistic block-building experiences.

Spherical Demo of Minecraft-Style Planet: Game adopts Minecraft's blocky mechanics, transforming a flat earth surface into a rotund celestial body