The Gliesa Project – An Alien World

In this post I want to explain the motivation behind the project and give an outline of its structure and content. Although specific content is not the focus of this post, I will touch a bit on it.

Gliesa is a fantasy super-earth, a giant habitable planet inspired by the planets around the Gliese planetary system. With this project I want to give myself the creative freedom to explore some truly out-of-the-box concepts that I’ve been contemplating for years. Gliesa will coalesce some of the most immersive and lush biomes into one world package.

The world will have some of the coolest alien landscapes Minecraft has ever seen. Being an alien planet, Gliesa has the freedom to explore fantastic out-of-this-world formations and fauna, while still getting inspired by the most beautiful earth landscapes.

I will be experimenting with extremely complex terrain structures that will bring a new meaning to world exploration. The world will be separated into mega-biomes, each made up of biomes. Each mega-biome will be based around a unique general terrain architecture, and each biome within a mega-biome can have completely different fauna, materials and feel. To give an idea of how important mega-biomes are within this context, one could classify Minecraft’s vanilla biomes to all be part of a single mega-biome. The first mega-biome will be based on layered terrain, a concept I’ve experimented with in the past, and even in its prototype stage, was extremely fun to play on and explore.

The Stack – First Mega-Biome

The basic idea behind The Stack terrain is that the terrain above water level is composed like a sponge, with layers of air pockets and connections. The last layer can be very high, reaching over y:200. Each layer has its own surface structure and features, some with rivers draining into the lower levels, others with lava and rocks. Giant openings carve through the entire stack exposing all the layers to sunlight. Each layer contains its own mini biome of fauna and life adapted to its specific environment. The bottom layer will be the water layer holding the lakes, oceans and largest river bodies. Occasionally, hovering above the whole stack will be some floating islands with giant roots sometimes connecting them together.

Fauna – Organic Props

The fauna will be created with DWG-like organic generator, and also for the first time environment-aware organic generator. In this first biome the top layer will be an oak-like dense forest, with giant trees surrounded by smaller ones. The trees will link stack layers with their roots and vines, and the floating islands will occasionally be linked together and to the ground with organic formations. Deeper layers contain life forms that don't require light, and use the ground water or lava as energy source.

Traces of The Past – Procedural Architecture

Underneath the lush nature, Gliesa is hiding traces of ancient alien civilizations. The buildings and ruins will be generated procedurally and integrated into their surroundings (as opposed to pasted from a schematic). The world will have a history to discover full of mysteries and beauty.

The dungeons and ruins will be extremely well integrated into their environment, accurately looking like they’ve been there for thousands of years.

This has been an overview of the project. I want Gliesa to be so beautiful, complex and abundant that it truly feels like you’ve dropped off onto a real alien world. I aim to provide useful content as soon as possible, and that is why I’m going to start with a mega-biome and design a few biomes for it before working on the next mega-biome. I will post the first JAR once the first biome is complete, with screenshots all throughout development. I will rework the oasis desert biome as part of The Stack and improve it massively. The mountain biome will have to wait until its own mega-biome since it doesn’t fit well with The Stack.

I'll see you soon with some screenshots.