Block World

The most basic concept of Terasology is the block world. The entire world is made up of blocks, each with one x-y-z-coordinate and a side-length of 1 unit.

Blocks are organized in chunks, which contain a larger area of blocks. In Terasology, each chunk has a size of 32x32 blocks and a height of 64 blocks. [1] A chunk has it’s own x-y-z coordinates, similar to a block but in a larger space.

The world size is not hard-limited by the engine. Instead the maximum height/width/depth of a world is restricted by the coordinate value ranges (Java integer values) or memory/disk limitations to store the world.

Blocks have a limited number of attributes. This makes them an efficient data format for storage on disk or serialization over the network. If additional properties or behavior for blocks are required (e.g. a chest which has it’s own inventory), then blocks can be backed up to entities (see the Entity System for details).

Have a look at the blocks developer guides for further topics like the block attributes, shapes, or entity-based properties.

[1]	Chunk size definition is contained in ChunkConstants.