It would be fun to raid them. 

Yeah, I think with Minecraft's basic mechanics, massive moving objects would be quite difficult. There would have to be so much updating of things going on.I'm not sure how somethign like that would work Robert without rediculous amounts of lag.
We already know blocks can move due to gravity, and the Piston Mod takes it a bit further. What I think we haven't seen is a large collection of blocks moving in tandem, which is what would be needed to make it work. You are probably right that there are technical reasons why this wouldn't work well.
if you quickly destroy a lot of blocks (such as with TNT) game performance drops dramatically.
We already know blocks can move due to gravity, and the Piston Mod takes it a bit further. What I think we haven't seen is a large collection of blocks moving in tandem, which is what would be needed to make it work. You are probably right that there are technical reasons why this wouldn't work well. The game never has a lot of blocks moving at once, and in fact if you quickly destroy a lot of blocks (such as with TNT) game performance drops dramatically. Given the number of constant chunk updates that would be required, it is probably not feasible. Ah well.
I expect moving blocks have been implemented by having a location property, and a target location property, and the block moves in a straight line from one to the other over time.
When a block moves, it will add surrounding blocks to a queue, so that you get a cascade effect for the gravel or lava, or whatever.
Having a large object moving would mean turning it into a sprite, rather than terrain, as it has to be capable of rotating and moving independent of the terrain grid.
Boats could also be made in funny shapes, and funny shaped things are hard for collision detection. Imagine if you made lots of boats that were tangled/knotted together. How would you handle that? Too may collision tests would cripple the engine.![]()
The only alternative I can think of is maybe turning your custom vehicle into an entity, which would eliminate all of its block properties.
Not necessarily. The boat-made-of-blocks could be a second instance of the game grid, and the engine renders both game grids ~ superimposed... as long as Notch hasn't defined the game grid using the dreaded singleton pattern.which would eliminate all of its block properties.
The only alternative I can think of is maybe turning your custom vehicle into an entity, which would eliminate all of its block properties.
This is what I meant by 'sprite'.
I'll guess that moving blocks (gravel) are also sprites while they are moving.
chunk update sees that gravel can fall --> delete gravel block -> create gravel sprite -> sprite moves to destination. When sprite arrives at destination --> delete sprite --> create gravel block
Not necessarily. The boat-made-of-blocks could be a second instance of the game grid, and the engine renders both game grids ~ superimposed... as long as Notch hasn't defined the game grid using with the dreaded singleton pattern.
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