Creating Infinite Possibilities with the Atlas System

Another way to make original experiences in The Sandbox

Swap between summer daytime and autumn dusk with the Atlas System

Minecraft’s blocks and biomes are varied and each has its purpose, but what happens when you want to make, for example, a racing-themed game or an outer-space experience — there are no blocks nor biomes for that! However, players and creators in The Sandbox can take advantage of our game’s Atlas System to bring your own set of cubes to create wholly custom biomes for your games.

In order to understand what a biome is, consider it as a chunk of the map, composed of a set of cubes. For example, the plains biome has grass, dirt, stone, and water cubes.

Representation of how a biome is composed of a set of cubes

We will, of course, provide a varied set of default biomes to be used right away in The Sandbox, but those creators who wish to go all the way to create something unique will be able to take advantage of this system.

Some of the biomes we currently support are:

• Beach
• Sea
• Desert
• Pasture

When terraforming their BOX (game world), the user will be able to use a special biome tool to alter the biome of big chunks of the map into whichever biome they wish, be it a default one or a player-made custom one.

Creating a new custom biome

In order to create a new custom biome, the player will have to prepare the cubes that will compose it. For each new custom cube in the biome, the player will create up to 6 2D images of 32x32 pixels. These will represent the sides of the cube. If the player wishes, some of the sides can be repeated or be the same, for example, the top and bottom of a vertically symmetric cube.

Once the 2D images are complete, the player will assign them to whichever side of the cube they want them to be on and the Atlas System will generate a cube ready to be placed in the game.

Assigning 2D Images to the faces of a 3D cube

Then, the player will be able to pick any existing biome and replace all of their cubes with the new custom cubes and save it as a new biome, thus finishing the biome creation process.

Replacing an existing biome’s cubes with original ones

Through this simple process, you will now have a new fully unique biome ready to be deployed on your game, to provide a new and never before seen game experience.

What are you planning on creating?

How far will you go with the Atlas System?