Too long don't want to read OR quick results:
Based on this test and other user's statements, villager will likely occupy/socialize around the West area of a village the most. (They may also have a slight preference for the south, if those 2 factors interact, then they may be said to have a southwest preference.)
Full text:
I've read a bunch of posts talking about how the villagers tend to crowd around certain houses and have experienced that myself. I've seen a few posts suggesting that they crowd a specific compass rose direction, however I didn't find much consensus on exactly which direction of the village they crowd. I have no doubt in my mind that someone has tested this out, but I searched (including the wiki) and couldn't find conclusive evidence about where they crowd.
So I decided to do some experimentation to figure it out myself.
I made a little test village (see below, figure 1) and spawned 2 in there and let them be. (12 doors, so max of 4 villagers will be there naturally)
The testing village is KyoShindadesign. Figure 1.
This village is 23 by 23, 2 blocks tall at maximum. Every space is lit up beyond the range of monster spawn. This test village is symmetric. The corner "rooms" are not actually houses and as such villagers nor enemies can enter or spawn there.
I watched them merrily do whatever and took a LOT of screenshots so I could count their movements (and to make sure I don't confuse who is moving with who is just standing still inside a house). I took screenshots when one of them entered a house. Of course, by the time 4 of them were running around, I missed a few screenshots. However, I bet I got a pic of them 85% of the time when they entered a new house!
I broke the map up into "sectors" and used that to help keep track of which houses they entered. (see below pic, figure 2).
Figure 2.
After I took 70 photos of them I placed a dot in each sector that they visited. So if one of them entered and left A1 (Also known as S1, which is at the bottom row on the left in pic above) ten times. I would put 10 dots on a drawn map in the corresponding sector. (see below for pic, figure 3)
Figure 3.
(In reference to the above pic, figure 3) There are 70 dots in grand total. (took a while to watch them for so long). The numbers next to the letters indicate how many dots are in the corresponding row/column. For example, B has 31 dots. Those 31 dots are from counting B1, B2, B3. C has 11 in it's row (C1, C2, C3).
In depth Results/Conclusion:
See figure 3. The villagers first and foremost, have a preference toward the West end of this village. They also have a preference towards the South area of a village, but that preference is not as strong. They are equally likely to spend time in the North or East, however both of those directions had fewer visitors then W or S. If their preference towards S and W combine, (which I suspect they do from simply playing survival.) they should spend the majority of their time in the SW rather than only the W. Combined with anecdotal evidence (see the next section) provided from other users, there is evidence that they will likely crowd the SW of a village if they are present in sufficient numbers.
Possibly anecdotal evidence:
The following users have commented stating a belief about villager behaviour and the SW. I am not sure how they arrived at these conclusion, however if someone is really interested, try asking them.
How is this useful?
If you are designing/making a village, bare in mind that the villagers might crowd to the SouthWest area of the village. You might want to try to have double doors there or some other measure to prevent them from becoming stuck on doors. I haven't tested any anticrowding/antidirectional measure though, but if you know any ways to prevent this, post away!
Someone already did this AND found different results OR they don't do this in my game.
Maybe it's because I use optifine? haha, I doubt it but never know. Villagers may not always do this. Maybe the crowding is affected by the size/shape/distances/radius/iron golems/zombies/etc. I made this map symmetric and didn't interact with the villagers and kept zombies from interacting with them (well, I kept zombies behind the wood fence). Maybe that has something to do with it?
I know a way to prevent villagers from going to one side OR I know how to stop crowding.
Can you tell me how to do this magic? I'll make you a cake .
Other random observations: (I didn't specifically look for these, so these are only somewhat accurate at best)
Young villagers tend to go into more houses and move more. Villagers can see each other through cobblestone walls. The priest and librarian become lovely dovely at equal rates.
What mods do you use?
Optifine all the time. I use the village info mod by trunkzOccasionally to help locate village and such. I mistakenly left it on for part of this experiment. Both of those mods appear to have no side effects.
How many pictures did you analyze?
56, some pictures had multiple villager entering houses, others had only one, which is why the total adds up to 70 locations.
Someone already did this.
Unfortunately I already did all of this sooooo the person has more proof for the theory. If you could, post a link to their post.
I want to take this experiment further.
If you want to use this info, feel free to use it as you please. Credit is nice, but not required.
try having a larger number of pictures for testing and more time between. ive done simmilar experiments and the longer the test runs the more balanced it becomes. another issue with this test is that villagers group together to socialise. "The villagers will "socialize" with each other and passive mobs. This involves two villagers facing each other and making occasional sounds. Villagers can socialize with the player as well, if they approach and stand still (they will start moving their heads in a bobbing fashion)." minecraft wiki http://www.minecraftwiki.net/wiki/Villager
the socialising causes the villagers to group together rather than go wandering off.
try having a larger number of pictures for testing and more time between. ive done simmilar experiments and the longer the test runs the more balanced it becomes. another issue with this test is that villagers group together to socialise. "The villagers will "socialize" with each other and passive mobs. This involves two villagers facing each other and making occasional sounds. Villagers can socialize with the player as well, if they approach and stand still (they will start moving their heads in a bobbing fashion)." minecraft wiki http://www.minecraft...t/wiki/Villager
the socialising causes the villagers to group together rather than go wandering off.
Thanks for the input. Technically speaking, to have a representative sample, only 30 pieces of info are needed. Another way of saying that is that in order for results to accurately represent any population of villagers, I only need to have 30 pictures and/or photos (statistic class theory). I used 70 villager positions and 56 pictures (i didn't mention how many pictures were used in the original post) which should satisfy that criteria.
However, I get your point. I agree that given the time frame. I'll try with a longer time frame and see if they spread better.
Yeah socialization helps group them together, but their social groups seem to occupy a specific compass direction rather than slowly walk along the compass. Like theoretically, if I were to kill of the current villagers and replace them, there should be a 1/8 chance that they will have preference to any given compass direction. But if they choose to occupy the SW area again, then the odds of it simply being due to socialization is small. (Odds of SW the first time = 1/8. Odds of SW the 2nd time = 1/8. The odds of SW the first AND then second time = 1/8*1/8 = 1/64 = 1.5%).
EDIT: I read over this posts, and it could be taken as fightsy, I'm not trying to start one lol
Is it possible that crowd direction preference is the wrong variable?
After all, the villagers don't move completely at random, but tend to interact (stick together).
This biases their movement. Tendencially, they will spend more time in the vicinity of other villagers than wandering of allone.
What would be the result of a single villager in your modell village?
Also, I would test what happens if you rerun your experiment. If you run just one experiment, albeit a long one, your results are distorted by the initial conditions.
What are the results if there's a bigger group of villagers? I would bet that they are more conservative in their choice of doors, i.e. tend to use the same doors even more.
It could be possible (indeed, I think so) that villager crowding is not due to direction preference but their tendencey to interact and stand still for the while they interact. (This is like a adhesive force between them.) If you can help out, it'll be faster to get to the stage where I can try to look for a way to spread them to different areas of a village.
In regards of your statistics:
What you state is true only if your experimental results aren't influenced by your starting values, i.e. each villagers chooses his door at each time completely at random. That most likely isn't the case. (They choose doors which are in their vicinity, which doors are in their vicinity is influenced by their starting point and other villagers.) So, if you are unlucky you will have to repeat that WHOLE SETUP 30 times to get significant results. (At least one repeat of the experiment would be nice ...)
Haha I like your thinking .
Crowd direction could very well be the wrong variable.
Not sure what a single villager would do or more than 4. I'm hoping 2 - 4 generalize for other numbers.
Like you said, the interaction might be the cause.
I'm not sure exactly what you mean about the stats. However, I do understand that starting variables could cause a problem and that repeats are good. I somewhat disagree with an experiment needing to be done 30 times, but no matter, we aren't on a minecraft forum to discuss indepth stats .
I'll try to do another one of these within a week. I'll post the results here, follow this thread? Would you like to help? lol it's time consuming and watching villagers wonder about for so long isn't exactly top of my to do list. If you helped out, i'll/we'll be able to get to the stage where I/we try to spread them reliably amongst the village. (get to that stage faster I mean)
I had an issue with a large village I built with them all congregating in one building, almost 30 of them, they couldn't even all fit in but damn they tried every night. I found a Villager AI Revamp mod that corrected it nicely. It also has the added benefit of increasing the draw distance for mobs and preventing them from going idle when you can still see them. I haven't used it yet, but it claims to have a feature which allows you to have cave villages, ie villages completely underground without access to skylight.
Revamp: Enhanced Villager and Mob Performance by rivvest.
Sorry, but I can't find a link atm.
Edit: I should also add that this is 1.6.2 compatible.
I had an issue with a large village I built with them all congregating in one building, almost 30 of them, they couldn't even all fit in but damn they tried every night. I found a Villager AI Revamp mod that corrected it nicely. It also has the added benefit of increasing the draw distance for mobs and preventing them from going idle when you can still see them. I haven't used it yet, but it claims to have a feature which allows you to have cave villages, ie villages completely underground without access to skylight.
Revamp: Enhanced Villager and Mob Performance by rivvest.
Sorry, but I can't find a link atm.
Edit: I should also add that this is 1.6.2 compatible.
Given that I now have a mod for this crowd problem, I'm not going to work on my testing anymore unless the mod goes bad or something.
Additionally, I fished out a little more evidence which I added to the OP. Possibly anecdotal evidence: The following users have commented stating a belief about villager behaviour and the SW. I am not sure how they arrived at these conclusion, however if someone is really interested, try asking them.
I'm glad you like it. Let me know how it works out for you. It's still doing wonders for me. In a matter of a few MC days, my village increased enough in size to go from 3 iron golems to 10, without me adding in any new buildings. It would appear to almost "force" the village to recognize new structures. I did notice it works almost too good, as a few of my villagers have wandered to the far side of my compound and lost their way back. I had to go mount a rescue mission lol. Make sure to build a fence with this mod!
I also forgot to add in my original post that I too can confirm the crowding in vanilla, but the grouping seemed more westerly than southern.
I'm glad you like it. Let me know how it works out for you. It's still doing wonders for me. In a matter of a few MC days, my village increased enough in size to go from 3 iron golems to 10, without me adding in any new buildings. It would appear to almost "force" the village to recognize new structures. I did notice it works almost too good, as a few of my villagers have wandered to the far side of my compound and lost their way back. I had to go mount a rescue mission lol. Make sure to build a fence with this mod!
I also forgot to add in my original post that I too can confirm the crowding in vanilla, but the grouping seemed more westerly than southern.
Haha, glad to hear it's working. I don't play mc evy day, work/school/social and such, but when I eventually get around to it, I'll def let you know!
K lol i'll try to avoid rescue missions, thanks for the tip
and thanks for the input.
I'm glad you like it. Let me know how it works out for you. It's still doing wonders for me. In a matter of a few MC days, my village increased enough in size to go from 3 iron golems to 10, without me adding in any new buildings. It would appear to almost "force" the village to recognize new structures. I did notice it works almost too good, as a few of my villagers have wandered to the far side of my compound and lost their way back. I had to go mount a rescue mission lol. Make sure to build a fence with this mod!
I also forgot to add in my original post that I too can confirm the crowding in vanilla, but the grouping seemed more westerly than southern.
Worked like a charm, great mod! Like you said, they really do wander far. My game plan is too find them in vanilla survival, once I got them fenced in, change to this game mod. Thanks again!
I've always noticed they tend to crowd in the north-west buildings. Odd... IMO, Mojang needs to work on the villager AI. They are far too stupid and annoying.
To all of you people who think Notch is still working on the game, he stopped working on Minecraft in late 2011. Get your facts straight and stop spamming his twitter about Minecraft updates.
Based on this test and other user's statements, villager will likely occupy/socialize around the West area of a village the most. (They may also have a slight preference for the south, if those 2 factors interact, then they may be said to have a southwest preference.)
Full text:
I've read a bunch of posts talking about how the villagers tend to crowd around certain houses and have experienced that myself. I've seen a few posts suggesting that they crowd a specific compass rose direction, however I didn't find much consensus on exactly which direction of the village they crowd. I have no doubt in my mind that someone has tested this out, but I searched (including the wiki) and couldn't find conclusive evidence about where they crowd.
So I decided to do some experimentation to figure it out myself.
I made a little test village (see below, figure 1) and spawned 2 in there and let them be. (12 doors, so max of 4 villagers will be there naturally)
Figure 1.
This village is 23 by 23, 2 blocks tall at maximum. Every space is lit up beyond the range of monster spawn. This test village is symmetric. The corner "rooms" are not actually houses and as such villagers nor enemies can enter or spawn there.
I watched them merrily do whatever and took a LOT of screenshots so I could count their movements (and to make sure I don't confuse who is moving with who is just standing still inside a house). I took screenshots when one of them entered a house. Of course, by the time 4 of them were running around, I missed a few screenshots. However, I bet I got a pic of them 85% of the time when they entered a new house!
I broke the map up into "sectors" and used that to help keep track of which houses they entered. (see below pic, figure 2).
After I took 70 photos of them I placed a dot in each sector that they visited. So if one of them entered and left A1 (Also known as S1, which is at the bottom row on the left in pic above) ten times. I would put 10 dots on a drawn map in the corresponding sector. (see below for pic, figure 3)
(In reference to the above pic, figure 3) There are 70 dots in grand total. (took a while to watch them for so long). The numbers next to the letters indicate how many dots are in the corresponding row/column. For example, B has 31 dots. Those 31 dots are from counting B1, B2, B3. C has 11 in it's row (C1, C2, C3).
In depth Results/Conclusion:
See figure 3. The villagers first and foremost, have a preference toward the West end of this village. They also have a preference towards the South area of a village, but that preference is not as strong. They are equally likely to spend time in the North or East, however both of those directions had fewer visitors then W or S. If their preference towards S and W combine, (which I suspect they do from simply playing survival.) they should spend the majority of their time in the SW rather than only the W. Combined with anecdotal evidence (see the next section) provided from other users, there is evidence that they will likely crowd the SW of a village if they are present in sufficient numbers.
Possibly anecdotal evidence:
The following users have commented stating a belief about villager behaviour and the SW. I am not sure how they arrived at these conclusion, however if someone is really interested, try asking them.
zfz andMondef said that villagers have a tendency to go to the SW in this link:
http://www.minecraft...ous-working-on/
Sir_Starkey also said villagers like the SW in this link:
http://www.minecraft...gers-and-doors/
How is this useful?
If you are designing/making a village, bare in mind that the villagers might crowd to the SouthWest area of the village. You might want to try to have double doors there or some other measure to prevent them from becoming stuck on doors. I haven't tested any anticrowding/antidirectional measure though, but if you know any ways to prevent this, post away!
Someone already did this AND found different results OR they don't do this in my game.
Maybe it's because I use optifine? haha, I doubt it but never know. Villagers may not always do this. Maybe the crowding is affected by the size/shape/distances/radius/iron golems/zombies/etc. I made this map symmetric and didn't interact with the villagers and kept zombies from interacting with them (well, I kept zombies behind the wood fence). Maybe that has something to do with it?
I know a way to prevent villagers from going to one side OR I know how to stop crowding.
Can you tell me how to do this magic? I'll make you a cake .
Mod fix:
Rivvest's enhanced villagers and mobs can fix this: http://www.minecraft...update-for-161/
Additional information:
Young villagers tend to go into more houses and move more. Villagers can see each other through cobblestone walls. The priest and librarian become lovely dovely at equal rates.
What mods do you use?
Optifine all the time. I use the village info mod by trunkz Occasionally to help locate village and such. I mistakenly left it on for part of this experiment. Both of those mods appear to have no side effects.
How many pictures did you analyze?
56, some pictures had multiple villager entering houses, others had only one, which is why the total adds up to 70 locations.
Someone already did this.
Unfortunately I already did all of this sooooo the person has more proof for the theory. If you could, post a link to their post.
I want to take this experiment further.
If you want to use this info, feel free to use it as you please. Credit is nice, but not required.
Evidence against this theory?
A few users posting in this thread and others. As well as some other research I did (nearly ironic huh? :P) http://www.minecraftforum.net/topic/1924949-village-walkway-dynamics-and-tidbits/#entry23735330
the socialising causes the villagers to group together rather than go wandering off.
Thanks for the input. Technically speaking, to have a representative sample, only 30 pieces of info are needed. Another way of saying that is that in order for results to accurately represent any population of villagers, I only need to have 30 pictures and/or photos (statistic class theory). I used 70 villager positions and 56 pictures (i didn't mention how many pictures were used in the original post) which should satisfy that criteria.
However, I get your point. I agree that given the time frame. I'll try with a longer time frame and see if they spread better.
Yeah socialization helps group them together, but their social groups seem to occupy a specific compass direction rather than slowly walk along the compass. Like theoretically, if I were to kill of the current villagers and replace them, there should be a 1/8 chance that they will have preference to any given compass direction. But if they choose to occupy the SW area again, then the odds of it simply being due to socialization is small. (Odds of SW the first time = 1/8. Odds of SW the 2nd time = 1/8. The odds of SW the first AND then second time = 1/8*1/8 = 1/64 = 1.5%).
EDIT: I read over this posts, and it could be taken as fightsy, I'm not trying to start one lol
Haha I like your thinking .
Crowd direction could very well be the wrong variable.
Not sure what a single villager would do or more than 4. I'm hoping 2 - 4 generalize for other numbers.
Like you said, the interaction might be the cause.
I'm not sure exactly what you mean about the stats. However, I do understand that starting variables could cause a problem and that repeats are good. I somewhat disagree with an experiment needing to be done 30 times, but no matter, we aren't on a minecraft forum to discuss indepth stats .
I'll try to do another one of these within a week. I'll post the results here, follow this thread? Would you like to help? lol it's time consuming and watching villagers wonder about for so long isn't exactly top of my to do list. If you helped out, i'll/we'll be able to get to the stage where I/we try to spread them reliably amongst the village. (get to that stage faster I mean)
Revamp: Enhanced Villager and Mob Performance by rivvest.
Sorry, but I can't find a link atm.
Edit: I should also add that this is 1.6.2 compatible.
WOW just the kind of thing I was trying to find! Thanks dude!
Link to the mod here: http://www.minecraft...update-for-161/
Also added link to OP.
Given that I now have a mod for this crowd problem, I'm not going to work on my testing anymore unless the mod goes bad or something.
Additionally, I fished out a little more evidence which I added to the OP.
Possibly anecdotal evidence:
The following users have commented stating a belief about villager behaviour and the SW. I am not sure how they arrived at these conclusion, however if someone is really interested, try asking them.
zfz and Mondef said that villagers have a tendency to go to the SW in this link:
http://www.minecraft...ous-working-on/
Sir_Starkey also said villagers like the SW in this link:
http://www.minecraft...gers-and-doors/
I also forgot to add in my original post that I too can confirm the crowding in vanilla, but the grouping seemed more westerly than southern.
Interesting, i'll keep that in mind when playing vanilla.
Haha, glad to hear it's working. I don't play mc evy day, work/school/social and such, but when I eventually get around to it, I'll def let you know!
K lol i'll try to avoid rescue missions, thanks for the tip
and thanks for the input.
Worked like a charm, great mod! Like you said, they really do wander far. My game plan is too find them in vanilla survival, once I got them fenced in, change to this game mod. Thanks again!