Valence 0.2.0 Roadmap

[rj00a]

Roadmap

Here are some things that should happen before Valence 0.2.0 is released. Not all of these are extracted into issues yet, but they could be with some added detail.

Things to do, roughly in this order:

• Reorganize system schedule.
• Update to Minecraft 1.19.4 #291
• Divide McEntity into smaller components, closing Dividing Clients and Entities into smaller components #199.
• Mapping the entity inheritance hierarchy to the ECS #269
• Decoupled serverbound packet handling #296
• Merge valence and valence_protocol #308
• Reimplement client self-exclusion. Don't send packets for the client's own entity.
• Redesign player list. Make every entry an entity.
• Consider making valence crate a thin wrapper over valence_anvil, valence_command, valence_core, valence_network, etc. This would avoid circular dependency problems and improve compile performance.
• Consider moving network code to separate crate and plugin for more modularity.
• Move block entities and chunks into the ECS World. Consider caching chunk handles in view of the client to reduce hashmap lookups. Sort chunk updates nearest to furthest to reduce lag in the client.
• Rework valence_anvil. Events should be used to indicate loaded/unloaded/missing chunks. Chunk providers will listen for missing chunks. Make AnvilLevel a component for Instance.
• Think about making valence more data-driven. Make blocks and block types entities. This may fix the poor compile times of valence_block. Postponed at least until improvements to bevy_ecs are implemented. Possibly never going to happen.
• Proper validation for serverbound inventory packets. Inventory Packet Validation #292
• Make a TagRegistry resource in valence_registry. initialize with default minecraft tags. Send SynchronizeTagsS2c packet on join. #349
• Consider adding #[derive(Reflect)] to things in valence_protocol and possibly elsewhere. Put it behind a feature flag. bevy_reflect only supports 'static types.
• Move every example into its own package.
• Visibility Layers #424
• More generic layers #443
• New particle API.
• New sound API.
• Centralize packets #400
• Add proper bounds checks to packets. Fix inconsistencies with the yarn mappings. Implement size limit while encoding and decoding binary NBT.
• Extractor output is non-determinisic. #359. Fix entity components having incorrect default values.
• Entity velocity not working?
• Revive valence_spatial_index #366
• valence_inventory v2.
• Make the packet inspector work when encryption is enabled. #404
• Improve client events #256
• Packet rate limiting #4
• Examples: Make some complete minigame examples demonstrating bevy states and a variety of valence features.
• Make website with (Hugo or Zola) and mdbook. (no javascript dev environments please). Started website #382
• Document everything.
• Populate mdbook getting started guide on the website.

Some other things to look into, but are not strictly necessary for 0.2 (unordered):

• Entity Passengers
• Redesign Text API #411
• Inventory Items as Entities #319
• Are non-vanilla dimensions bugged? Needs testing.
• Consider allowing for multiple player lists instead of a single global list.
• Implement visibility system. Allow some entities to be visible only to certain clients. Visibility Layers #342 and Visibility layers for Minecraft Entities #362.
• Serialization support for anvil worlds.
• Serializing and deserializing entities in anvil worlds?
• Reduce the frequency of sent entity movement updates using a configured component?
• Some entities disappearing in cow sphere example? Extract this into issue?
• Pretty printing for SNBT in valence_nbt.
• Set up nix dev env. Is Add Nix development environment for the Nix users out there #9 sufficient?
• Use fixed-point angle units instead of floats?
• Update aes and cfb8 dependencies #42
• Handle legacy server list pings #282
• Optional component for Instance used to control time, weather, world border, etc. #210
• Implement MOTION_BLOCKING heightmap. #104
• Brigadier (Command API) #332
• Implement most of the block placement rules, closing Wall blocks not placed right #115, Add block placement rules. #503 and making the building example mostly complete. Consider if valence should have first-class support for placement.
• Figure out how to improve the performance of the terrain example.
• stresser is missing some basic functionality.
• Fill in miscellaneous missing abstractions for the protocol.