Hytale-documentation.github.io

World & Chunk Management

The world system in Hytale is hierarchical and heavily integrated with the ECS.

Hierarchy

1. Universe (com.hypixel.hytale.server.core.universe.Universe)
   • The top-level container.
   • Manages multiple World instances.
   • Handles global player connections and routing.
2. World (com.hypixel.hytale.server.core.universe.world.World)
   • Represents a single dimension or instance.
   • Contains two ECS stores: EntityStore (Game Objects) and ChunkStore (Map Data).
   • Manages the game loop for that specific dimension.
3. ChunkStore (com.hypixel.hytale.server.core.universe.world.storage.ChunkStore)
   • A specialized ECS provider for identifying and loading chunks.
   • Integrates with IChunkLoader (Disk IO) and IWorldGen (Generation).

Chunk System

Chunks in Hytale are Entities within the ChunkStore.

• Identification: Chunks are indexed by a long hash of their X, Z coordinates.
• Loading: Asynchronous loading pipeline using CompletableFuture.
  • ChunkLoadState: Tracks the status of a chunk (Loading, Generating, Ticking).
• Components:
  • WorldChunk: Contains metadata (index, flags).
  • ChunkColumn: Contains the actual block data (sections).

World Generation

• Interface: IWorldGen.
• Process:
  1. ChunkStore requests a chunk.
  2. If not on disk, IWorldGen.generate() is called.
  3. Resulting GeneratedChunk is converted to a Holder (ECS entity template).
  4. The new Chunk Entity is added to ChunkStore.

Threading Model

• Ticking Thread: Each World (or group of worlds) has a ticking thread.
• Async Loading: Chunk I/O and Generation happen on separate thread pools to avoid stalling the tick loop.