Hello,
Sorry for my crazy posting lately, I have just add so much more time! I thought Id inform those of you interested in how Dukandia works, as a planetary body. This idea was one I decided was a must, if I'm going to have biomes, monsters, and make it like a real world, why not make it work like a planet? (This feature actually makes me wonder if c++ would be a better home for this game since I have been told that java can be very limited as far as speed)

Note all information here is just my ideas, I want this in the game, but the methods are just hypothetical and have not yet been tested.

The first bit of information will be travel, the world will have a "wrap around" effect or as some call it the "Pacman" effect. Course I don't mean if you go north you'll end up at the south pole, you'll just end up going down the other side of the world. The size of the planet that is Dukandia is well to say the least going to be hard to make the starter maps. (might make it auto map) The size of the titles is a sq foot. the alpha world will be 80% of the earth so:

if the earth is:
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5,490,383,247,360,00[sup] [/sup]ft[sup]2[/sup]

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then the alpha world will be about:

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4,392,306,597,888,000 ft[sup]2[/sup] or 4,392,306,597,888,000 tiles

The full game will be 160% of earths so that means:
8,784,613,195,776,000 ft[sup]2[/sup] or 8,784,613,195,776,000 tiles

Now this is just counting the ground level, below the surface are 15 underground worlds that will be "reverse mapped" (where I remove areas to form cave systems) so in total the tiles the game will have to handle (Including the 3 sky layers) is:

79,061,518,761,984,000 tiles, so about 79 quadrillion tiles for the alpha (so I'm guessing I WILL be using an auto mapper for the extra layers and I'll just map the ground level to ensure no weird rivers through mountains occur)


Now lets move onto night:
Night will work like any planetary object. I will manage night by making night an object that is half of the planet, then I will split this object into 12 sectors, the middle 2 will be midnight, the 2 on on either side will be 11 so on so forth. The map will then see how far away a tile is from the absolute center of night and roughly calculate minutes, the object that is night will then move every few mins.

weather:
weather will be local every body of water will have a "precipitation rate" this rate is effected by the day-time of the tile. when a "water molecule" evaporates it adds an integer to the sky tile above it. The sky tile then has a "soak" time before it goes into the 2 sky layer used for weather. While the soak time is taking effect the tile can soak up as well as distribute water to other tiles, and a wind variable will effect if the tile moves in any direction. When in the second sky level the tile will move at a very slow pace if pushed at all, and the tile can no longer distribute but can soak up water. When the "water" level reaches 15 or so it will rain.

Wind will be calculated by having the sun heat and the night cool the air value at ground and sky levels, then high moves to low and certain areas and objects will make wind move or stop.

Seasons:
Dukandia will have two seasons summer and winter, winter is optimized so that a new player can survive although it will be a bit difficult.

That's about all the ideas I have floating around right now. Lemme know what you think, and that includes if you think c++ might be a better option.