A Study on Virtual Environment Distribution

Over the years, video games have become increasingly popular and complex, leading to the need for faster development cycles. To assist developers, game engines have been created to enable the reusability of code and assets, effectively reducing the time required to develop increasingly complex games. However, game engine architectures have limitations due to their monolithic and centralized nature, which can hinder scalability, particularly when creating an online multiplayer game. These issues are also evident in video games with procedurally generated worlds, such as Minecraft, where the number of players a server can support is limited. In this work, we will explore the possibility of distributing a Minetest game world using zoning. First, we will analyze existing solutions used in Minecraft and the complications that zoning can introduce. Then, we will examine how Minetest world generation behaves when two worlds share the same seed. Specifically, we will analyze and quantify the differences during the generation of two identical worlds and determine if these differences could pose problems when considering distributing the game world through zoning.