Hey CivMCers! Oldfriend GTAIV here to share the news of a project involving the amazing mod Distant Horizons.

Do you want to see this when you look out of your tower in Mt. Augusta? Have you dreamt of seeing the majestic Icenian skyline from a distance? Have you always wished you could see the great mountain ranges that surround the valley Danzilona is nestled in?

Well, now you can, at very little performance cost. The Distant Horizons LOD Project is a collaboration between multiple CivMC players to centralize CivMC LODs in a Gitlab Repository. Our mappers are diligently working to render a continuous, non-interrupted LOD network for the major cities and surrounding countryside of CivMC.

"What's the point? I just go download mod myself who cares about your cringe project lol"

Well, if you just rely on yourself to map out LODs during regular play, you might wind up with something like this or this: jarring, floating LOD chunks from the very limited areas you yourself have explored. By hooking up to the network, not only do you instantly get access to massive, fully-rendered sections of the map (see the Mta screenshot), you also get to participate and help the project by uploading your contributions at the click of a button!

We're currently using the CivWiki Discord server ( https://discord.gg/HgDRv8Grmn ) with a dedicated channel to collaborate and coordinate our progress.

"GTA! I'm a noob when it comes to this sort of technical stuff! How do install mode? how work?"

The sharing and collaboration of this project involves a GitLab repository and the use of GitHub Desktop. If that sounds scary and technical, don't worry! I've written a full, comprehensive guide (with pictures!) to help guide you through EVERY step of the set-up process. From start to finish, it only takes about 5 minutes to get hooked up, and then you can pull and push data just by pushing a button.

"Woah woah what about the SECURITY RISKS? I don't want people finding my bunker/vault!"

The server LOD data saved is comparable to JourneyMap data, but with even less detail and nefarious use. It only saves surface-data, and doesn't save anything underground. It also saves the LODs in proprietary Distant Horizons ".0.0" files that can't be opened or exploited, meaning no one can use the data from our project for malicious purposes. (What I meant by this is that you can't open it in a text editor and get coordinates or something). The data that is shared is also only LOD-related, there's no information regarding player attributes or information that could lead to problems.

Hope to see you all in the Discord channel soon! Happy exploring and happy very high view distances!

https://preview.redd.it/ngq40g8rmw9a1.png?width=266&format=png&auto=webp&s=dedd9763c7bf021e908e7ef0c4442ce2dacefe78