So I watched Notch's video he just posted and the diversity is great! Don't get me wrong, it'll be awesome to have the different biomes at all, so I don't want to sound like a whiner. I'm offering this up as more of a constructive criticism.
Ok, that said, I've got some issues with it. To me, the way it currently looks is too "random" for my tastes. In the video he basically picked a direction, a little north of due west (assuming sun sets in the west like on Earth), then flew over the landscape. You can see several different biomes that go all along the temperature/humidity range from dry desert to cold taiga and tundra. The thing is, these biomes look more like somebody threw a bucket of "taiga" paint into the air and let the drops fall where they may. So you can have a taiga biome fairly close to a hot desert biome if not right next to each other. The real world doesn't work that way.
Notch said that he was going for two deciding factors in biomes: Temperature and moister. In the real world, these two variables are mainly dictated by a few sources such as the location (latitude) on the globe and proximity to bodies of water. Hence the temperature/humidity concept. This makes biome placement, if you will, fairly predictable. The further from the equator you go, the colder the climate gets. Or how about this example: The Rocky Mountains in the USA block moisture from the Pacific Ocean from reaching over them. As the moisture laden air rises to flow over the mountains, the water falls out as rain or snow on the west side of the range, leaving little moisture left when the air finally reaches the other side. This creates deserts in the southwestern United States.
Notch's implementation basically says that, ok, this random area here has generated a temperature of 90% and a humidity of 10%, make this a hot desert biome. Then a few chunks away you generate another set of random numbers: 10% temperature and 70% humidity. This one's going to be taiga.
Now, what do I think would add some more realism to the biomes? Add four more variables to the biome generation. They'd be elevation, location/direction, and proximity to water. I'll talk about the fourth at the very end because it's already kind of in the game.
Elevation: Notch is trying to actually address this, so I'm not as concerned with this one.
Location: Notch should nail down the cardinal directions. Make the side of the map where the sun goes down a specific direction. Preferably west. Then, as you walk north or south on the map, the greater your odds of generating colder temperature regions becomes. However, this creates a problem! The world of Minecraft can be, theoretically, roughly eight times the surface area of the real Earth, including oceans! That's a lot of area! Say that your spawn point is placed at the equator of the world. You're in the tropics. Now you want to go visit the tundra. You face north and start walking. If things aren't too insane, you'll reach the tundra relatively shortly. Cool! But what happens if you keep walking north? More tundra... hmm. So it could be that you could have a LOT more area covered by cold regions than not. My solution to this would be, again, to look at the real world! What happens if you were to walk north? Eventually, you'd reach the North Pole, right? What happens when you pass it? You're traveling south! As you travel, the climate should start to get warmer as you get closer to the equator again. That's great, but Minecraft's world is flat, not round. The solution: Bands. To give the illusion of a round landscape, create bands of warm "equatorial" regions where you'll find deserts and rain forests and then as you walk north or south, reach a band of cold regions with taiga and tundra. Stay in the same direction, reach another warm band. This can keep continuing as you move north and south.
Proximity to water: If you've got water, you can have rain. I know what you're thinking, "But Umbris, there are deserts in the real world right up next to the ocean! Look at the Sahara in Africa!" You're right! So what's up with that? That brings me to the fourth variable: prevailing wind. Believe it or not, this is actually currently in the game! Watch the clouds and see which direction they move! In my example before about the southwestern United States, I explained how the elevation and winds create a dry climate on the eastern face of the Rocky Mountains. This is why the wind is important. It is what moves the moisture around on the planet and allows for deserts like in the Arabian Peninsula to exist. Notch could use the already in game prevailing winds to tweak the other variables to create more realistic biomes.
Here's my thinking on the variables. Proximity to water and location determine humidity. Warm band + lots of water = lots of humidity. Trace the prevailing winds from that area to another and there you should have a warm wet climate. That's where you put the rain forest. Say that mountain has been generated downwind of that rain forest. What should be on the opposite side? A desert. What kind? Depends on which temperature band you're in! Hot band = hot desert. Cold band = tundra.
Again, I really think having biomes at all is going to make Minecraft better. But I think implementing these ideas could make it even greater!
But I think he won't be able to code this before Halloween if he wants to keep his promise.
Oh no, I didn't mean to imply that he fixed that right away lol. No any update on Sunday is welcome to me! I'm just excited as all get out about this! This type of thing would be in a future update for sure. Perhaps when he gets to doing seasons/weather. :smile.gif:
But, I think that with anything you love, you want it to be better. So this is why I offered up these suggestions.
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Thanks for bringing all of the whiner's wants into a non-whiny way.
Haha, no prob! Yeah, I've had years of practice on my wife. :wink.gif:
Right now, I'll be satisfied with the dotted-biome landscape (afterall, Notch said he'll make the biomes bigger, so you won't see 5 in a single area). But I think all of your ideas should be implemented over time, to give it that real life feel of how temperature and things work in the real world. Notch certainly can't do this is only a few days, but it would be nice to see something like this eventually upgrade the system we're getting on the 30th/31st.
If he scaled biomes to the real earth, you couldn't possibly explore all of them on your world. You'd have to do the equivalent of walking from one pole to the other to see all the variety, and if you spawned in a cold place, well, if you want out you have to walk for WEEKS. welcome to 100+ meg files. No thanks.
The worlds rotation does not have to correlate with temperature, and the rotation on this planet doesn't even have to work logically as if it were earth, both in size, shape, magnetic field, etc. And given that this is a fantasy world, he is also allowed a certain amount of creative leeway with how the natural geography of the world is constructed, so long as it looks and feels good (high degree of verisimilitude so long as there is a plausible suspension of disbelief, but it doesn't have to be real world physics within its own realm of consistency).
I think some of your ideas are pretty sweet, but others try too hard to make it geographically similar to earth, which I am against. I want this world to be more fantastical and geographically exciting than earth, which means that some things will naturally have to be somewhat out of place for that to happen, such as illogical weather systems and dramatic and exciting geographic features.
The geography in many worlds, star wars worlds, fantasy setting worlds, video game worlds, are often extremely illogical in function, but they have to do that to accomplish the magnitude of wonder that they convey.
Notch's implementation basically says that, ok, this random area here has generated a temperature of 90% and a humidity of 10%, make this a hot desert biome. Then a few chunks away you generate another set of random numbers: 10% temperature and 70% humidity. This one's going to be taiga.
But I doubt this is how it works. I'm guessing that humidity is a perlin noise map, or simplex, or whatever Notch happens to be using, with smooth transitions, and temperature is another noise map, and they are overlaid on top of each other, and the combination of those actually DOES create smooth transitions, they are just hard to see right now because the biomes are smaller than intended. I'm guessing this because this is how Notch has done his generation in the past. Simplex and Perlin noise do not just randomly choose values. They have smooth transitions, like this:
More importantly, these maps CAN work across an "infinite" data set, which makes them ideal for Minecraft. Notch cannot resort to "patterns", such as going north creating more colder temperatures, because on an infinite map, there is no north, and no end. If patterns did exist then you are arbitrarily sizing the map by saying "Hey after six chunks north, everything will be snow." So what is the point of going further than that? Noise maps are the only way to do this properly, or everything would get dull a certain distance from spawn.
Patterns cannot exist...but smooth transitions can, and do. It's just that in this basic demonstration, they are so small that it's hard to tell.
I get what you're saying, but I have to agree with wintermuet a bit. Predictability could kind of ruin the experience, even with the occasional exception. As with most of my "compromise" suggestions, make an option for it. Maybe make it so each world has set options/variables that you decide when you first start, and can later change to affect new chunks.
Personally, I'm hoping I get lucky and find a few "biome islands." Like a snow island, a desert island, etc. It'd just kind of add to the weird/fantasy setting.
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Hmm... to make things simplier, I think all Notch needs is bigger biomes and a elevation variable. That we could have mountainous regions and oceanic regions pretty easily, and the rest will be good enough.
Christ you havent even played them yet and you're already bitching.
Those who have nothing to add to the conversation should stay out of it. :smile.gif:
And I'm coming around to Arsonide's and Wintermuet's sides. They both make good arguments.
I sometimes have trouble with suspension of disbelief and sometimes I do not. For example, hearing noises in space in a Star Trek movie... That drives me nuts. Freakin' laser beams and aliens: Doesn't faze me. Let's take that to Minecraft: Biomes how they currently are, while I like it a lot and really do look forward to them, just irk me in certain respects. Floating islands? Sign me up! I think the issue here is that Notch is actually trying to mimic real life with the biomes, but to a degree. His degree and my expectation are where the mismatches happen.
Like I said, I love Minecraft and I want to see it better! If I didn't like the biomes, I would post, "Well screw this! I'm quitting Minecraft because these biomes are ****!" That's exactly the opposite, in my opinion, of what I posted. :wink.gif:
Also, I realize that the look of the biomes being close together in the video was due to the speed of the traveling/time in the video as well as it just being a test. I don't think I was making the argument that they were too small... Perhaps somebody could point out where I did?
Very nice suggestion you have here. I completely agree that the biomes Notch displayed in this video are far from finished, but they are perfect for wwat he promised by halloween. They give us enough variety to keep the game interesting and leave us enough so that there is plenty of good things to look foward to in the coming months!
As for me, I completely agree that elevation should be a factor, and so should proximity to water, but instead of making them an absolute, give them something more along the lines of a probability factor, so that we can still see wildly out of place geography that is exciting and strange, but have it be the exception to the rule. That way we get our fantastic out of place canyons in the middle of the desert, while still having a believable world. As biomes mature, this would be nice (especially with seasons and weather!!!), but right now biomes are more like placeholders for the future diversity we will probably see.
I think that, for now, though, it will be hard to criticize things accurately until he has seasons and weather in place.
Also, I agree with Enjay (I always end up agreeing with Enjay D:)
Ha! I knew this thread was eventually gonna pop up...
He said that Biomes will be larger and more expansive, and that there is much more work to be done...
Which leads to my second point - its also extremely obvious that this is the the ground work for what will eventually take some time to develop into its full potential. If you follow the news of Minecraft regularly it should have came to no surprise that this wasn't going to be the full monty we was once expecting.
I trust in the Notch, no need for solution suggestions when I'm sure the creator of said features has already concluded such within his own parameters. They'll come.
Ok, that said, I've got some issues with it. To me, the way it currently looks is too "random" for my tastes. In the video he basically picked a direction, a little north of due west (assuming sun sets in the west like on Earth), then flew over the landscape. You can see several different biomes that go all along the temperature/humidity range from dry desert to cold taiga and tundra. The thing is, these biomes look more like somebody threw a bucket of "taiga" paint into the air and let the drops fall where they may. So you can have a taiga biome fairly close to a hot desert biome if not right next to each other. The real world doesn't work that way.
Notch said that he was going for two deciding factors in biomes: Temperature and moister. In the real world, these two variables are mainly dictated by a few sources such as the location (latitude) on the globe and proximity to bodies of water. Hence the temperature/humidity concept. This makes biome placement, if you will, fairly predictable. The further from the equator you go, the colder the climate gets. Or how about this example: The Rocky Mountains in the USA block moisture from the Pacific Ocean from reaching over them. As the moisture laden air rises to flow over the mountains, the water falls out as rain or snow on the west side of the range, leaving little moisture left when the air finally reaches the other side. This creates deserts in the southwestern United States.
Notch's implementation basically says that, ok, this random area here has generated a temperature of 90% and a humidity of 10%, make this a hot desert biome. Then a few chunks away you generate another set of random numbers: 10% temperature and 70% humidity. This one's going to be taiga.
Now, what do I think would add some more realism to the biomes? Add four more variables to the biome generation. They'd be elevation, location/direction, and proximity to water. I'll talk about the fourth at the very end because it's already kind of in the game.
Elevation: Notch is trying to actually address this, so I'm not as concerned with this one.
Location: Notch should nail down the cardinal directions. Make the side of the map where the sun goes down a specific direction. Preferably west. Then, as you walk north or south on the map, the greater your odds of generating colder temperature regions becomes. However, this creates a problem! The world of Minecraft can be, theoretically, roughly eight times the surface area of the real Earth, including oceans! That's a lot of area! Say that your spawn point is placed at the equator of the world. You're in the tropics. Now you want to go visit the tundra. You face north and start walking. If things aren't too insane, you'll reach the tundra relatively shortly. Cool! But what happens if you keep walking north? More tundra... hmm. So it could be that you could have a LOT more area covered by cold regions than not. My solution to this would be, again, to look at the real world! What happens if you were to walk north? Eventually, you'd reach the North Pole, right? What happens when you pass it? You're traveling south! As you travel, the climate should start to get warmer as you get closer to the equator again. That's great, but Minecraft's world is flat, not round. The solution: Bands. To give the illusion of a round landscape, create bands of warm "equatorial" regions where you'll find deserts and rain forests and then as you walk north or south, reach a band of cold regions with taiga and tundra. Stay in the same direction, reach another warm band. This can keep continuing as you move north and south.
Proximity to water: If you've got water, you can have rain. I know what you're thinking, "But Umbris, there are deserts in the real world right up next to the ocean! Look at the Sahara in Africa!" You're right! So what's up with that? That brings me to the fourth variable: prevailing wind. Believe it or not, this is actually currently in the game! Watch the clouds and see which direction they move! In my example before about the southwestern United States, I explained how the elevation and winds create a dry climate on the eastern face of the Rocky Mountains. This is why the wind is important. It is what moves the moisture around on the planet and allows for deserts like in the Arabian Peninsula to exist. Notch could use the already in game prevailing winds to tweak the other variables to create more realistic biomes.
Here's my thinking on the variables. Proximity to water and location determine humidity. Warm band + lots of water = lots of humidity. Trace the prevailing winds from that area to another and there you should have a warm wet climate. That's where you put the rain forest. Say that mountain has been generated downwind of that rain forest. What should be on the opposite side? A desert. What kind? Depends on which temperature band you're in! Hot band = hot desert. Cold band = tundra.
Again, I really think having biomes at all is going to make Minecraft better. But I think implementing these ideas could make it even greater!
But I think he won't be able to code this before Halloween if he wants to keep his promise.
Thanks for bringing all of the whiner's wants into a non-whiny way.
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Oh no, I didn't mean to imply that he fixed that right away lol. No any update on Sunday is welcome to me! I'm just excited as all get out about this! This type of thing would be in a future update for sure. Perhaps when he gets to doing seasons/weather. :smile.gif:
But, I think that with anything you love, you want it to be better. So this is why I offered up these suggestions.
Haha, no prob! Yeah, I've had years of practice on my wife. :wink.gif:
I think some of your ideas are pretty sweet, but others try too hard to make it geographically similar to earth, which I am against. I want this world to be more fantastical and geographically exciting than earth, which means that some things will naturally have to be somewhat out of place for that to happen, such as illogical weather systems and dramatic and exciting geographic features.
The geography in many worlds, star wars worlds, fantasy setting worlds, video game worlds, are often extremely illogical in function, but they have to do that to accomplish the magnitude of wonder that they convey.
http://notch.tumblr.com/post/123343045/my-vision-for-survival (follow this link if you need proof)
Biomes Version: 1.0a
Christ you havent even played them yet and you're already bitching.
But I doubt this is how it works. I'm guessing that humidity is a perlin noise map, or simplex, or whatever Notch happens to be using, with smooth transitions, and temperature is another noise map, and they are overlaid on top of each other, and the combination of those actually DOES create smooth transitions, they are just hard to see right now because the biomes are smaller than intended. I'm guessing this because this is how Notch has done his generation in the past. Simplex and Perlin noise do not just randomly choose values. They have smooth transitions, like this:
More importantly, these maps CAN work across an "infinite" data set, which makes them ideal for Minecraft. Notch cannot resort to "patterns", such as going north creating more colder temperatures, because on an infinite map, there is no north, and no end. If patterns did exist then you are arbitrarily sizing the map by saying "Hey after six chunks north, everything will be snow." So what is the point of going further than that? Noise maps are the only way to do this properly, or everything would get dull a certain distance from spawn.
Patterns cannot exist...but smooth transitions can, and do. It's just that in this basic demonstration, they are so small that it's hard to tell.
Personally, I'm hoping I get lucky and find a few "biome islands." Like a snow island, a desert island, etc. It'd just kind of add to the weird/fantasy setting.
I was unaware that minecraft was based on realism. I'll be damned if i take the trash out and i hear a SSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS behind me.
[simg]http://img42.imageshack.us/img42/9803/minecraftsig.jpg[/simg]
Keep it up
http://notch.tumblr.com/post/123343045/my-vision-for-survival (follow this link if you need proof)
Those who have nothing to add to the conversation should stay out of it. :smile.gif:
And I'm coming around to Arsonide's and Wintermuet's sides. They both make good arguments.
I sometimes have trouble with suspension of disbelief and sometimes I do not. For example, hearing noises in space in a Star Trek movie... That drives me nuts. Freakin' laser beams and aliens: Doesn't faze me. Let's take that to Minecraft: Biomes how they currently are, while I like it a lot and really do look forward to them, just irk me in certain respects. Floating islands? Sign me up! I think the issue here is that Notch is actually trying to mimic real life with the biomes, but to a degree. His degree and my expectation are where the mismatches happen.
Like I said, I love Minecraft and I want to see it better! If I didn't like the biomes, I would post, "Well screw this! I'm quitting Minecraft because these biomes are ****!" That's exactly the opposite, in my opinion, of what I posted. :wink.gif:
Also, I realize that the look of the biomes being close together in the video was due to the speed of the traveling/time in the video as well as it just being a test. I don't think I was making the argument that they were too small... Perhaps somebody could point out where I did?
I think that, for now, though, it will be hard to criticize things accurately until he has seasons and weather in place.
Also, I agree with Enjay (I always end up agreeing with Enjay D:)
http://notch.tumblr.com/post/123343045/my-vision-for-survival (follow this link if you need proof)
He said that Biomes will be larger and more expansive, and that there is much more work to be done...
Which leads to my second point - its also extremely obvious that this is the the ground work for what will eventually take some time to develop into its full potential. If you follow the news of Minecraft regularly it should have came to no surprise that this wasn't going to be the full monty we was once expecting.
I trust in the Notch, no need for solution suggestions when I'm sure the creator of said features has already concluded such within his own parameters. They'll come.
However, instead of a plain elevation height, I think for areas there should be a:
Average elevation height variable base
And a...
Elevation height variation variable.
Then you could have mountainous regions in high places, plateaus, and other things of the sort.
Maybe biomes could influence some of those factors?
And also, if there would be a biome that would be far inland, it would be very neat to see some below sea level land areas. Perhaps deep valleys?
Also, I look forwards to a variation in water levels. If that were to be implemented, we could see wonderful inland lakes, and MOUNTAIN RIVERS.
Also, running rivers should probably erode the dirt under it, and change stone to gravel. Or something of the sort.
Having more gravel near rivers might work for that, however.