README

= CreeperView = 

An attempt at making a "live" isometric Minecraft map, displayed with a
Google Maps interface.

The view will be resembling the view used by pigmap 
(see https://github.com/equalpants/pigmap).

Benefits to pigmap:
 - Almost live data.
 - Rotating view?

Cons:
 - Requires service(s) running.
 - Memory usage may be high, at least if using nginx+memcached to speed things
   further.
 - Disk usage will be high due to extensive caching of rendered data.

Programming language:
 - Initial version will probably be in Python.
 - If Python version turns out to be too slow, rewrite all or critical parts
   in C/C++.


Request pipeline:
 - Get tile request
 - Figure out what chunks/regions are required.
 - Check if said chunks/regions are updated since cached tile was created.
  - NO: Return cached tile, job done.
  - YES: Re-render updated chunks if updated since last chunk render.
         Render tile.

Pre-render tasks:
 - Render block templates from terrain.png, fire.png.
 - Initial render of all chunks as seperate command from live server. Will
   take time.

Thoughts on cachability
 - Farther zoom levels: longer cache time.
 - Closest zoom: Short cache time.
 - Use nginx with memcached for instant updates of tile data. Avoids querying
   the map generator unless a tile has expired.
 - Zoom 1: (inner) caches 2 minutes.
 - Zoom 8: (furthest?) caches 16 minutes? (Zoom x 2 minutes).

Disk usage:
 - Heavy disk usage anticipated.
   - All rendered tiles stored on disk
   - Prerendered chunks stored for faster tile creation. 
     (each chunk is a 512x2544 pixel .png ~1MB of data, a server often has 
     lots and lots of chunks...)
   - Prerendered regions stored for faster tile creation on far zoomlevels.
     (Stored at zoom level)