Yeah, I liked the beaches on the side of forests with mountains which you could build in. and you can't find these things in world without using creative mode first to explore in the world for just the right spot.
Notch isn't an ignorant moron. Also: The hole Adventure-Update would have been pointless without a beautiful world to explore. Who wants to adventure in a boring and ugly world? :smile.gif:
Sadly, I'm not very convinced that map generation has taken a very high priority in their schedule. They seem to be focusing on adding adventure elements to the game. Those are great and all, but all the gameplay is based in and on the world that the map generating code builds. If the world itself isn't in a polished state, what you're doing there becomes rather superfluous if you are forced to keep remaking your world by starting a new game in order to experience new content. Having bizzare borders between chunks of different versions, and old map regions that do not function properly should be things to be avoided.
Having the map generation versions be regularly backwards incompatible is OK during beta, but it will be much less so after release.
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More Ocean Life: Kelp, Coral, Crabs and Jellyfish; Coconut Palm trees for beaches and islands. Terrain Generation Changes: Which biomes and world-building features are most in need of change?
A few hours ago Jens implied that it is likely changes to the map generator are being delayed.
Quote from jeb_ »
...it would be fun to make the biomes more diverse... Not before Minecon, though =)
It's very unfortunate that the 1.9 world building code is unlikely to change significantly before the game goes gold. Functional or suitable are disappointingly low targets for such a literal and figuratively foundational part of the game.
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More Ocean Life: Kelp, Coral, Crabs and Jellyfish; Coconut Palm trees for beaches and islands. Terrain Generation Changes: Which biomes and world-building features are most in need of change?
What I think really needs work are the generations of mineshafts and strongholds, since they usually get buried in rock or destroyed by ravines. Gets annoying if most of the chests and the end portal are buried.
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Your a such a great friend that if we were both in a falling plane and there was only one parachute... I would feel really bad and think of you often.
What I think really needs work are the generations of mineshafts and strongholds, since they usually get buried in rock or destroyed by ravines. Gets annoying if most of the chests and the end portal are buried.
I'd like to see the strongholds at the surface as well. Having them buried under 20-30 meters of earth/stone is very annoying and nonsensical. As well as being protected from other features, so we don't get portals cut in half.
I know one speculation made by Mojang on why the portal damage was happening was that the chunk in which the portal was physically located didn't get generated on the first pass.
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More Ocean Life: Kelp, Coral, Crabs and Jellyfish; Coconut Palm trees for beaches and islands. Terrain Generation Changes: Which biomes and world-building features are most in need of change?
oh well, at least we know now that they recognize the problem. Still they should have fixed it before 1.0. Changes to the landscape generation are always gonna cause trouble, so you should clear that as soon as possible.
There haven't been any statements recognizing the big issues here. Just an implication that Jens wants to fiddle around with biomes. I would love to some remarks about filling out the Ocean biome, restoring topographical variation to all the biomes, and converting to cubic chunks from collumns to make a 1k Y limit. These map generating problems are the things that cause major conversion issues when new updates come out. They really ought to take a higher precedence early in development.
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More Ocean Life: Kelp, Coral, Crabs and Jellyfish; Coconut Palm trees for beaches and islands. Terrain Generation Changes: Which biomes and world-building features are most in need of change?
IMO there are 3 things I don't like about biomes now, and 2/3 were stated in the OP, here are my little tweaks too them:
Mountain Biomes are too steep. There shouldn't be an "OMFG NEW GLACIER TYPE MAP" in Every mountain biome. Most mountains that fit the MC hieght limit have a relatively round top, not a plateau, and usually won't go over 2/1 in steepness. Also, they should have trees. As someone who lives in North America it pains me to see mountains with little or no trees. (These trees should mostly be pine above a certain hieght).
Everything else is too flat. Pine forests have some variation, which is nice, but its usually not more then 10 blocks, while ideally it would be 20 or 30 at a 1/3 slope.
Also, Biomes should sort of have some sort of equatorial difference, but It may be hard to program this that way minecraft worlds work. For example, swamps/deserts occur closer to this equator, and then plains/forests can be mixed up with a plains buffer zone of atleast 1 horizon, then pine forests, then tundra, with Mountains occuring everywhere except plains and swamps.
SPARKNOTES: Mountain biomes should mix with others.
I'd really like to see massive holes in the ground instead of ravines, maybe crevices too.
Relatively new poster but I've been playing since Alpha days and I can't help but agree. While I love some of the new spelunking features I'm left wondering (in Pre 5 especially) if I'll ever be able to build a reasonable drift mine again. The abandoned mine shafts were a really neat idea, the new ravines as well, but the sheer density of both in any given world generation seems to be almost like spam code.
I realize there are some changes up coming and I'm looking forward to them but instead of spending time in creating a new world to actually play a survival map, I feel like I'm just building for vanity and the ability to test out a few new features.
Relatively new poster but I've been playing since Alpha days and I can't help but agree. While I love some of the new spelunking features I'm left wondering (in Pre 5 especially) if I'll ever be able to build a reasonable drift mine again. The abandoned mine shafts were a really neat idea, the new ravines as well, but the sheer density of both in any given world generation seems to be almost like spam code.
I realize there are some changes up coming and I'm looking forward to them but instead of spending time in creating a new world to actually play a survival map, I feel like I'm just building for vanity and the ability to test out a few new features.
The density of ravines does seem rather high. I've seen many maps with several of them within the space of an in-game map around the spawn. I can only hope the density we have now was done to test them, and they won't be so abundant in release.
Quote from Bumber »
The mod actually manages to increase it to over 65k (probably way more than anybody actually needs.)
I was just using 1k as an example of a much preferable target than the mere 128 we have now, and the principles of cubic chunks rather than the mod Cubic Chunks. The fellas as Mojang are quite talented, I'm sure they could make a better map parceling system than the legacy column chunks it has now if they took the time and made the effort. The point being that they should try, because it's an unfortunate and unpleasant limit on the game's potential.
The video that chezzymann posted a link for reminds me of the type of helicopter panorama shots often seen in movies, which frequently pass over mountains. It's a shame that an unmodified version of Minecraft can't produce such a stunning landscape.
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More Ocean Life: Kelp, Coral, Crabs and Jellyfish; Coconut Palm trees for beaches and islands. Terrain Generation Changes: Which biomes and world-building features are most in need of change?
The fellas as Mojang are quite talented, I'm sure they could make a better map parceling system than the legacy column chunks it has now if they took the time and made the effort. The point being that they should try, because it's an unfortunate and unpleasant limit on the game's potential.
Exactly. I think it would be worth the effort.
If Notch had done this earlier it would have been much easier. Now, unfortunately, it is much harder since there is so much depending on the current system that a lot of stuff would need recoding. Still, if a modder can do it then Notch or Jeb should be able to do it (eventually...)
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Mostly moved on. May check back a few times a year.
OP is right. The main problem with the current biomes are the large bland biomes. The trees go on forever with no variation at all. That's my main problem.
The vertical limit really bothers me for both building and natural terrain possibilities. I believe every biome has a lot more potential. I really hope they focus more on these things than adding more features to the game sometime soon. A patch dedicated to nothing but terrain generation (including a vertical height limit option) would be fantastic.
If Notch had done this earlier it would have been much easier. Now, unfortunately, it is much harder since there is so much depending on the current system that a lot of stuff would need recoding. Still, if a modder can do it then Notch or Jeb should be able to do it (eventually...)
Quote from Kleevage »
The vertical limit really bothers me for both building and natural terrain possibilities. I believe every biome has a lot more potential. I really hope they focus more on these things than adding more features to the game sometime soon. A patch dedicated to nothing but terrain generation (including a vertical height limit option) would be fantastic.
I would love to see an update dedicated to updating the world building code as well. At this point, it would take a major update to accomplish all the tweeks and rebalancing that will be necessary.
I know I've used mountains as an example of a biome that needs a greater Y limit many times, but Kleevage is right, it does impact them all. Especially those that contain trees. We've lost our tropical forest biome for now, but any good jungle is going to have trees 50-80m tall, and that's not a giant bramble of branches. When we get our topographical variation back, I'd like to be able to look at some forested hills without seeing them all shorn flat at the top.
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More Ocean Life: Kelp, Coral, Crabs and Jellyfish; Coconut Palm trees for beaches and islands. Terrain Generation Changes: Which biomes and world-building features are most in need of change?
Sadly, I'm not very convinced that map generation has taken a very high priority in their schedule. They seem to be focusing on adding adventure elements to the game. Those are great and all, but all the gameplay is based in and on the world that the map generating code builds. If the world itself isn't in a polished state, what you're doing there becomes rather superfluous if you are forced to keep remaking your world by starting a new game in order to experience new content. Having bizzare borders between chunks of different versions, and old map regions that do not function properly should be things to be avoided.
Having the map generation versions be regularly backwards incompatible is OK during beta, but it will be much less so after release.
Terrain Generation Changes: Which biomes and world-building features are most in need of change?
It's very unfortunate that the 1.9 world building code is unlikely to change significantly before the game goes gold. Functional or suitable are disappointingly low targets for such a literal and figuratively foundational part of the game.
Terrain Generation Changes: Which biomes and world-building features are most in need of change?
This thought gruntles me greatly.
I'd like to see the strongholds at the surface as well. Having them buried under 20-30 meters of earth/stone is very annoying and nonsensical. As well as being protected from other features, so we don't get portals cut in half.
I know one speculation made by Mojang on why the portal damage was happening was that the chunk in which the portal was physically located didn't get generated on the first pass.
Terrain Generation Changes: Which biomes and world-building features are most in need of change?
There haven't been any statements recognizing the big issues here. Just an implication that Jens wants to fiddle around with biomes. I would love to some remarks about filling out the Ocean biome, restoring topographical variation to all the biomes, and converting to cubic chunks from collumns to make a 1k Y limit. These map generating problems are the things that cause major conversion issues when new updates come out. They really ought to take a higher precedence early in development.
Terrain Generation Changes: Which biomes and world-building features are most in need of change?
Mostly moved on. May check back a few times a year.
Mountain Biomes are too steep. There shouldn't be an "OMFG NEW GLACIER TYPE MAP" in Every mountain biome. Most mountains that fit the MC hieght limit have a relatively round top, not a plateau, and usually won't go over 2/1 in steepness. Also, they should have trees. As someone who lives in North America it pains me to see mountains with little or no trees. (These trees should mostly be pine above a certain hieght).
Everything else is too flat. Pine forests have some variation, which is nice, but its usually not more then 10 blocks, while ideally it would be 20 or 30 at a 1/3 slope.
Also, Biomes should sort of have some sort of equatorial difference, but It may be hard to program this that way minecraft worlds work. For example, swamps/deserts occur closer to this equator, and then plains/forests can be mixed up with a plains buffer zone of atleast 1 horizon, then pine forests, then tundra, with Mountains occuring everywhere except plains and swamps.
SPARKNOTES: Mountain biomes should mix with others.
I'd really like to see massive holes in the ground instead of ravines, maybe crevices too.
Relatively new poster but I've been playing since Alpha days and I can't help but agree. While I love some of the new spelunking features I'm left wondering (in Pre 5 especially) if I'll ever be able to build a reasonable drift mine again. The abandoned mine shafts were a really neat idea, the new ravines as well, but the sheer density of both in any given world generation seems to be almost like spam code.
I realize there are some changes up coming and I'm looking forward to them but instead of spending time in creating a new world to actually play a survival map, I feel like I'm just building for vanity and the ability to test out a few new features.
Mostly moved on. May check back a few times a year.
The density of ravines does seem rather high. I've seen many maps with several of them within the space of an in-game map around the spawn. I can only hope the density we have now was done to test them, and they won't be so abundant in release.
I was just using 1k as an example of a much preferable target than the mere 128 we have now, and the principles of cubic chunks rather than the mod Cubic Chunks. The fellas as Mojang are quite talented, I'm sure they could make a better map parceling system than the legacy column chunks it has now if they took the time and made the effort. The point being that they should try, because it's an unfortunate and unpleasant limit on the game's potential.
The video that chezzymann posted a link for reminds me of the type of helicopter panorama shots often seen in movies, which frequently pass over mountains. It's a shame that an unmodified version of Minecraft can't produce such a stunning landscape.
Terrain Generation Changes: Which biomes and world-building features are most in need of change?
If Notch had done this earlier it would have been much easier. Now, unfortunately, it is much harder since there is so much depending on the current system that a lot of stuff would need recoding. Still, if a modder can do it then Notch or Jeb should be able to do it (eventually...)
Mostly moved on. May check back a few times a year.
I would love to see an update dedicated to updating the world building code as well. At this point, it would take a major update to accomplish all the tweeks and rebalancing that will be necessary.
I know I've used mountains as an example of a biome that needs a greater Y limit many times, but Kleevage is right, it does impact them all. Especially those that contain trees. We've lost our tropical forest biome for now, but any good jungle is going to have trees 50-80m tall, and that's not a giant bramble of branches. When we get our topographical variation back, I'd like to be able to look at some forested hills without seeing them all shorn flat at the top.
Terrain Generation Changes: Which biomes and world-building features are most in need of change?