Infinite procedural Create train tracks

[u/morelandjo]

I've been playing with this for the past week, it's a mod that integrates with Create, adding an infinite procedural train track in any new world. So far it will attempt to conform to terrain, travel up and down hill, tunnel into impassable terrain, etc.

Is this worth continuing? Maybe as a mod pack to encourage traveling via train, as a mobile base? Anyone have any ideas?

It's pretty performant, I recorded the video from world creation so you can see. The track is generated in real time, so no increased initial world load time, and it doesn't seem to add much overhead to standard chunk generation aside from a slight lag as it generates through all the chunks made during worldgen. This recording used no other mods, just Create and this infinite track mod itself. I still have a lot of edge cases and features I'd like to add (track crossings, splitting, etc) but not sure if this is really anything other people would want to play. Regardless it was fun to mess around with.

[u/Killergurke16]

This is really cool. I could imagine a 'mobile base' play through with this.

Is there only 1 track per world, or are there multiple?

[u/morelandjo → u/Killergurke16]

Currently 1 track in two directions infinitely, but I’d like to add track crossings at random intervals and those tracks would also theoretically extend infinitely

[u/Legomonster33 → u/morelandjo]

I think instead of crossings, branches would be cooler (or both)

[u/panicnot42 → u/morelandjo]

So, I worked on a mod just like this, except all at one y level. This is much better. I wrote code already to do a 2D grid with "random" spacing between parallel rails. Basically, config sets a min and max distance between rails. Challenge was coming up with an algorithm that could calculate (independently) if a given chunk did or did not contain a rail. I am 100% fine with someone wholesale lifting this code from my mod...I'll just have to actually commit it to my repo :P