I found a short write-up on the API. It shows
setBlocks(x1, y1, z1, x2, y2, z2, blockType, blockData) - set lots of
blocks all at the same time by providing 2 sets of co-ordinates (x, y,
z) and fill the gap between with a blockType
If a similar function is available for get blocks, that would speed up
your code hugely. Every single command sent over TCP has overhead
associated with it, so attempting to read 128^3 times over a network is
going to take a while. The main advice I can give is to do as much as
possible per command. "Reasonable" lisp code will be 1000000000000x
times faster than network commands, so whatever you can do "all at once"
in lisp will save time, especially if you have to wait for round trips,
e.g. getting a block to determine how to set another block and sending
them sequentially like that. Ideally, you'd get a bunch of blocks with
as few commands as possible, then set a bunch with as few as possible,
or whatever, but mainly try to avoid the network portion as much as
possible.
As for the data structure, lisp has multi-dimensional arrays:
http://www.ai.mit.edu/projects/iiip/doc/CommonLISP/HyperSpec/Body/fun_make-array.html
(make-array '(128 128 128))
with a variety of keywords to control how its created. That website in
general has everything on lisp.
For a modern computer, such data is in no way too large (~2 million *
size of data...say 64 bits = 8 bytes so 16 MB total). BUT sending 2
million TCP commands is too many!
On 06/10/2013 09:01 PM, grant centauri wrote:
hello, i've been exploring the educational possibilities of connecting
a Lisp language to the Minecraft Pi Edition. I started by writing a
tutorial using Common Lisp
http://www.lincolnix.net/gcentauri/build-tower.html which uses a basic
connection API I wrote. This is really my first attempt at a coding
project, and I'm scraping together understanding of things from a
variety of sources.
the code i have now establishes a socket connection, and i have
written a "send-command" function with its own helper functions to
prepare the proper string for the Minecraft API. There are only a few
functions that receive data, so I decided to have each one handle its
reading of the input socket on its own. this is very basic, and i'd
actually like to write this in a better way, if possible. i have only
included one example function here. i'd like the writing of this
library to serve as a tutorial as well, because it has helped me
understand a lot about some basic programming tasks. here's the code:
https://gist.github.com/anonymous/5745976
my question is mainly about creating a data structure to represent the
whole 128x128x128 world, and then sending the "get-block" command to
the Minecraft server for every coordinate, and retrieving all of the
integers. is this feasable?
I have been able to write a function to set a column of blocks
recursively (see the build-tower tutorial in CL) which performs very
quickly, even when sent from another machine on the network. but the
function i wrote (and must have deleted?) to GET a column of block id
numbers took a few seconds to complete. i don't know enough about TCP
connections and how to send and receive data properly. i'm also
unsure of the best way to process this function, as what i'd like to
end up with is a "world" data structure containing coordinate/block-id
pairs. the idea is that then you could write a function to perhaps
turn all the "water" blocks into "air", draining the oceans and
rivers. i don't know if this kind of function even makes sense to try
with the way the Minecraft API works. I'm unsure about the size of
the data, and if it is too big to efficiently operate on in this way.
i'm sure i'll have more questions too. but i'm hoping to document the
process of learning about this so other learners can benefit from my
struggle.
thanks,
-grant
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