I've seen a bunch of times requests for terrain types with Biome Terrain http://www.minecraftforum.net/viewtopic.php?f=25&t=76184, especially with questions about how the variables work. Having tweaked around a lot, I can say that I might know a thing or two (others may chip in as they wish) about generating different land types.
Sometimes there are multiple ways to achieve an effect, and some variables take a little time to figure out what they 'mean'. Thanks to recent work by its creator, this mod now has variables that have a bit more regular format - in particular the terrain manipulation variables all default to 0. Nice!
So with all that said, here are a few things I've discovered with my work making worlds with the mod. If you wish, please refer to the creator's own guide which covers the basics.
What does Fracture do?
Fracture seems to make larger or smaller the rate of fracture on the horizontal or vertical planes. The effect feels like there is a noise-map of bumps that is being stretched or shrunk - based on the value you put it.
It seems that while fracture has a high effectiveness in shaping the general character of a terrain, it can and will be overridden by Volatility.
Vertical fracture will primarily be used to create overhangs, floating chunks, etc, and can be utilized to create massive underground caves. With the current lag issues, sometimes Vertical Fracture will create lag when it generates a massive underground vault near the Adminium layer (below 32 or so.)
The opposite is true, if you want smoother hills and less cliffs, Vertical fracture can be turned into the negatives and it will smooth out terrain features, primarily the sides of things like hills and cliffs.
Horizontal fracture is primarily about the roughness of the terrain surfaces. It basically determines the rate at which things fracture along the horizontal. But there's a special caveat here: it doesn't just mean the hills and dips but also the whole shape of the entire world. So if you want to generate a chaotic world like a space moon a high horizontal fracture is great. But I've discovered that the best emulation of real terrain involves fairly decent negative values of Horizontal Fracture. This is because this value effects the 'size' of the horizontal noise in the terrain. High negatives mean that the hortizontal features are really big - and thus stretched out and flatter overall.
What does Volatility do?
Volatility has two values, which as far as I can tell represent 'layers' to the terrain generation. The way to think about it is that you first have the fracturing of the world, and then you apply two volatilities to it to generate chaotic terrains. This way your terrain is a combination of three layers of random noise - first the fracture, second the first volatility and third the second volatility. The weights determine how much they factor in, and the values determine how severe that factor is when it occurs.
So if you want flat land with rare but violent cliffs, you would have low horizontal fracture, and one volatility at 0 and the other one high, like 5+ (or more!) with a low weight, like .05 or something. While the weights may add up to no more than 1, I'm not sure what happens if they don't add up to one. Someone else might be able to give that information (is .5 and .5 the same as .25 and .25? or is the 'unused' weight create a percentage of terrain that cannot be volatile?)
Also:
Quote from SevenDragons »
I believe that volatility1 is in charge of the "higher" portion of a hill or structure, so if you put that high it seems to produce big hills or even floating islands, and volatility2 is the gradient land going up to the 'tip' or higher portion of a hill. Correct me if I'm wrong though.
Weights differ than volatilities because they are not magnitude but a kind of measure of frequency. So no matter how high the weight is on Volatility1 if it has a low value, you'll never get the extreme cliffs you'd get from a high value. Likewise, a high volatility with a low weight will produce extreme terrain, but with a lower frequency.
What does MaxHeight and MaxDepth do?
Other than the basic description provided by the creator of the mod, be warned that 'maxdepth' with negative values will not just make water bodies shallower but will also in places simply raise the terrain. Maxheight being lowered will also lower oceans. In some situations, these values can seem to cancel each other out, so mixing and matching them may not be as effective as we'd like. Anyone who has worked with them a little more deeply can certainly contribute here.
Some common terrain requests follow, with how to create them or where to start.
Floating Islands
High vertical fracture, High volatilities. To adjust the size of the islands, tweak HorizontalFracture.
A vertical fracture of 20, and volatilities of 10 each should suffice. Remove deserts (by setting minimum moisture above .25 or so) to avoid massive sand-falling lag.
Great Continents with lakes and rivers.
Negative horizontal fracture (try -10 or lower). Take one volatility and raise it above 1 and give a small vertical fracture (<1) so you don't end up with endless flatness (or gradual hills anyway.) If you aren't tweaking other things, set tree densities for savannah and scrubland down to -2. You'll thank yourself for this...
You can also try to raise maxheight a point or two instead of volatility. This will give you less cliff-shores and more flat terrain with mesas/plateaus. Your choice!
Subterranean Galleries
High vertical fracture with at least one volatility above 1. Horizontal fracture can be slightly negative, like -.25 so that they will have some reasonable size to them. But if you raise horizontal fracture too much you will lose the size of the terrain horizontally, meaning the underground areas will be smaller just like the hills and plains and lakes. The volatility seems to ensure that there are in some places crazy cliffs that will overhang and get a bubble of air into them. Lower the water level to ~36 so they aren't completely full of water. Turn underground lakes to on.
Cliffs and highlands.
Both volatilities high ~ 8, negative horizontal fracture (~-8), and drop max height siginificantly - to like, -25 (this takes some experimentation.) This will give you very jutty and exaggerated rises, but smoothly rising and falling slopes with relatively flat areas. Also, you'll get lots of low water down to the bedrock.
Sky-lands.
To take any world and make it actually float, whether it be with floating islands or with other terrain types, set maxdepth to 25, water level to 0, and disable bedrock. This seems to still generate a lot of lag (last tested 1.2.5 I think.)
Big Sky
To take any terrain and make the world taller, in a sense to give yourself by default more 'height' on which to build, you may take a terrain type and do the following:
subtract four from max height.
add four to max depth.
Set Water level to ~36 (lower values can sometimes cause lots of lag.)
Additionally, you may wish to lower the strata at which various minerals occur (divide it by two) including lava pools so diamonds will still occur ABOVE the lava pool level. Same with the min level for caves.
You will have about ~30 more blocks to build up!
Deep world
You can also do the reverse, though it works better with less severe terrains.
Add four to max height.
Subtract four to max depth.
Set water Level at 96.
You may also desire to double the level at which each mineral occurs and double its frequency. This is not actually cheating; the distribution will be identical to what it was, but since there is double the stone for it to occur in, doubling the frequency results in the same rate of finding that mineral. Anyone who knows how to safely raise the caves frequency to permit better caving at upper levels please let us know!
You will have a lot more cave to explore!
Underground World that is not INSANE (uh, maybe not)
Basically, if you don't have the sun, monsters are going to spawn gangbusters on you, and with no moon, you're screwed as to seeing your enemies and avoiding them. This is experimental, so do it with caution.
Take a world like underground galleries, and make it so extreme that you start underground. This is achieved with negative horizontal fracture and highly positive vertical fracture with a lot of volatility. Tweak the values for your preferred setting.
Now, you need some light. Lava is your only hope.
Raise lava pool level to 64
Increase lava deposit frequency.
~ Try raising the lava pool level even higher to see if you get more lava falls. The basic plan is that you need lots of lava to see by when in the larger caves.
Getting muddy or clay swamps
The real characteristic of swamps is their special pools which have clay or mud. But in order for this to happen, they currently must be near water level. Swamps are a fairly rare biome type and as such with a BiomeSize below about 4 they'll be eensy-weensy. Turning on the settings is not enough, you need the right kind of world where swamps are being generated at water level.
This being said extreme worlds are currently bad for swampyness, and worlds with negative horizontal fracture will not generate as much pools (more ponds and shores.) Until we get more variation of terrain based on biome to 'see' your swamps you'll need to make sure the settings are pretty close to vanilla, with a raised water level or lowered maxheight, raised maxdepth (very, very slight like .2)
Also using the graphic provided you can restrict your world to have swamps and forests, for instance, with these settings:
TempMin: .5
TempMax: .7
MoistureMin: .75
MoistureMax: 1
The result should be about 50% swampland.
Also note that you'll still get snow and ice unless you drop out the Snow and Ice setting to zero or below.
Snow World
There are two kinds of snow worlds: Those that are tundra and taiga and ice desert (naturally snowy biomes) and those that are winter worlds (other biomes with snow and ice added.) To get a winter world just amp the Snow and Ice settings to 1. To get a snow world set temperature max to .5. It's that simple. Apply these to another world setting above for extra fun...
Works great with Cliffs and Highlands.
Dry World
Dry worlds are simple: we want no snow and ice, and we want dry biomes. Set snow and ice to -1 first of all, this is constant. (Note, if you don't do this, higher altitudes will contain snow, and maybe some lower altitudes! Adjust this accordingly.)
For your deserts and plains and such to be the right size, make sure you increase biomeSize to at least 4.
Drop savanna tree density to -2 or below.
An innovative concept for water in this world is to turn underground lakes on, up their frequency, and lower water level to about 36. This way, only the deepest natural areas have any water.
For a completely bare world, (note, use desert dirt and up the tree frequency in deserts if you want to SURVIVE) simply set minTemp to .99 and maxMoisture to .44. This will select only plains and desert. Waterless desert is useful as well.
For a dry place (like Arizona or Afghanistan) Drop minTemp to .75 from those settings.
For a dry world devoid of deserts, you can do either of the following:
Wow this thread is a huge help. I was getting a fair idea of how some of the variables worked myself, but not this extensive. I kind of work myself into a corner after I find what I want and experiment less, so I'm really glad you put this up. I didn't even realize that putting the horizontal fracture at negative values would produce longer terrain structures, I have been trying to get that effect for some time.
Kudos to you! This thread is filled with win!
EDIT: Also I would like to add that your explanation of the volatility variables was good! The illustration of "layers" is a good way to think of it. I believe that volatility1 is in charge of the "higher" portion of a hill or structure, so if you put that high it seems to produce big hills or even floating islands, and volatility2 is the gradient land going up to the 'tip' or higher portion of a hill. Correct me if I'm wrong though.
A good way I try to imagine it is, if you can picture two people drawing a picture, the first person draws the 'top' of the mountain, the second person draws the rest. I believe that the volatility weight can have an effect on the way they draw it, but the variables before that should work the way I described.
7D: wow, okay. I need to test that out. I always thought that 1 and 2 were just two different volatility passes which do basically the same thing, but I need to try this out some more.
7D: wow, okay. I need to test that out. I always thought that 1 and 2 were just two different volatility passes which do basically the same thing, but I need to try this out some more.
I could be misinterpreting things, I definitely haven't done as extensive of testing as you have.
The volatility values are the ones I change around the most (probably true for the lot of us). I have been trying to get a nice looking desert to spawn, so some of the values I have looked at are:
volatility1:0.1 - 0.5 ish
volatility2:10-20 (or even higher if you want taller hills*)
weight1:0.9
weight2:0.1
*That sounds a bit different than what I wrote up earlier, but I think these values can somehow overlap if the numbers difference is big enough. These settings should produce tall mountains and not steep cliffs (I did however write these off the top of my head).
If you reverse the settings and do:
volatility1:10-20 (or even higher I suppose)
volatility2:0.1-0.5
weight1:0.1
weight2:0.9
You should get huge cliffs jutting out from the ground and then steep and deep ravines. The weight on the second volatility is higher but it also occurs less.
I can't remember when I thought of my illustration, but it certainly seems that way to me. I could be totally off though sorry if I am :sad.gif:
I have done some other testing but I didn't write it down, I will definitely put what I find in this thread though :smile.gif:
This seems to work, actually. I'll be fooling around with it on bigger negative HorizontalFracture values; seeing also what lower weights for both with more extreme values will do.
Increasing HorizontalFracture will make the horiztonal 'pattern' smaller, so whatever kind of pattern you're getting with the other settings, it'll make the landforms smaller horizontally but leave them the same vertically. (More or less.)
Adding some positive volatility1 will help, since it seems to produce more violent/earthquake-like land masses...
Now I'm testing desert biomes. I've been mostly successful, sand as far as the eye can see, very inhospitable terrain. But I can't get any vegetation to spawn. What settings do I need for a desert that will have sparse vegetation?
ok wht settings do i need to make a world with reasonably sized floating islands with rivers on them extra kudos if they create massive water falls and possibly a swampy biome for the lower levels
Is this possible and how do I do it if it is ?
thanks
EDIT: Where do I put the biometerrainsettings.ini file because atm Its just in my.minecraft folder and It dosnt change anything I kinda get higher mountains and they're more frequent but no floating islands and even if they are they're only about one or two blocks wide
I was wondering what settings would produce the most earth-like world, with biomes that stretch for 50+ KMs, and small and large lakes and rivers as well as vast oceans that can reach the bedrock and are 1000+ KM wide. The oceans should be separated by continent-like land masses that vary between 500 and 3000 KM across, along with the occasional scattering of small islands. Elevation should be very level, but variate between 0 and 30 m above sea-level, with hills, mountains and valleys rising or sinking relative to the local elevation. I'm also looking for settings that would make mineral deposits (coal, iron, gold, diamond) just as rare as they are on earth, and at accurate relative depts (relative because diamond is more than 64 m underground). If possible, I would also like tree densities for each biome as similar as possible as it is on earth. I'm basically looking for settings that would create a world most similar in every sense possible to what is found naturally on earth. If anyone knows any settings that would produce a similar world to what i have described or can help me find the settings, it would be greatly appreciated. thanks!
Very helpful guide, however I've found that when trying to create a 'big sky' type of world (where the water level and land masses are lower than the norm, ie, around altitude 30) my efforts have been continually frustrated. Is this sort of thing even possible with this mod, or am I mistaken?
Sometimes there are multiple ways to achieve an effect, and some variables take a little time to figure out what they 'mean'. Thanks to recent work by its creator, this mod now has variables that have a bit more regular format - in particular the terrain manipulation variables all default to 0. Nice!
So with all that said, here are a few things I've discovered with my work making worlds with the mod. If you wish, please refer to the creator's own guide which covers the basics.
What does Fracture do?
Fracture seems to make larger or smaller the rate of fracture on the horizontal or vertical planes. The effect feels like there is a noise-map of bumps that is being stretched or shrunk - based on the value you put it.
It seems that while fracture has a high effectiveness in shaping the general character of a terrain, it can and will be overridden by Volatility.
Vertical fracture will primarily be used to create overhangs, floating chunks, etc, and can be utilized to create massive underground caves. With the current lag issues, sometimes Vertical Fracture will create lag when it generates a massive underground vault near the Adminium layer (below 32 or so.)
The opposite is true, if you want smoother hills and less cliffs, Vertical fracture can be turned into the negatives and it will smooth out terrain features, primarily the sides of things like hills and cliffs.
Horizontal fracture is primarily about the roughness of the terrain surfaces. It basically determines the rate at which things fracture along the horizontal. But there's a special caveat here: it doesn't just mean the hills and dips but also the whole shape of the entire world. So if you want to generate a chaotic world like a space moon a high horizontal fracture is great. But I've discovered that the best emulation of real terrain involves fairly decent negative values of Horizontal Fracture. This is because this value effects the 'size' of the horizontal noise in the terrain. High negatives mean that the hortizontal features are really big - and thus stretched out and flatter overall.
What does Volatility do?
Volatility has two values, which as far as I can tell represent 'layers' to the terrain generation. The way to think about it is that you first have the fracturing of the world, and then you apply two volatilities to it to generate chaotic terrains. This way your terrain is a combination of three layers of random noise - first the fracture, second the first volatility and third the second volatility. The weights determine how much they factor in, and the values determine how severe that factor is when it occurs.
So if you want flat land with rare but violent cliffs, you would have low horizontal fracture, and one volatility at 0 and the other one high, like 5+ (or more!) with a low weight, like .05 or something. While the weights may add up to no more than 1, I'm not sure what happens if they don't add up to one. Someone else might be able to give that information (is .5 and .5 the same as .25 and .25? or is the 'unused' weight create a percentage of terrain that cannot be volatile?)
Also:
Weights differ than volatilities because they are not magnitude but a kind of measure of frequency. So no matter how high the weight is on Volatility1 if it has a low value, you'll never get the extreme cliffs you'd get from a high value. Likewise, a high volatility with a low weight will produce extreme terrain, but with a lower frequency.
What does MaxHeight and MaxDepth do?
Other than the basic description provided by the creator of the mod, be warned that 'maxdepth' with negative values will not just make water bodies shallower but will also in places simply raise the terrain. Maxheight being lowered will also lower oceans. In some situations, these values can seem to cancel each other out, so mixing and matching them may not be as effective as we'd like. Anyone who has worked with them a little more deeply can certainly contribute here.
Some common terrain requests follow, with how to create them or where to start.
Suggestion: Look at the BiomeTerrain thread (http://www.minecraftforum.net/viewtopic.php?f=25&t=76184) and it's accompanying terrain sharing thread for ideas (http://www.minecraftforum.net/viewtopic.php?f=25&t=93573), if you'd like a pregenerated type. If you'd like to make your own, this guide should help you to know where to start.
Floating Islands
High vertical fracture, High volatilities. To adjust the size of the islands, tweak HorizontalFracture.
A vertical fracture of 20, and volatilities of 10 each should suffice. Remove deserts (by setting minimum moisture above .25 or so) to avoid massive sand-falling lag.
Great Continents with lakes and rivers.
Negative horizontal fracture (try -10 or lower). Take one volatility and raise it above 1 and give a small vertical fracture (<1) so you don't end up with endless flatness (or gradual hills anyway.) If you aren't tweaking other things, set tree densities for savannah and scrubland down to -2. You'll thank yourself for this...
You can also try to raise maxheight a point or two instead of volatility. This will give you less cliff-shores and more flat terrain with mesas/plateaus. Your choice!
Subterranean Galleries
High vertical fracture with at least one volatility above 1. Horizontal fracture can be slightly negative, like -.25 so that they will have some reasonable size to them. But if you raise horizontal fracture too much you will lose the size of the terrain horizontally, meaning the underground areas will be smaller just like the hills and plains and lakes. The volatility seems to ensure that there are in some places crazy cliffs that will overhang and get a bubble of air into them. Lower the water level to ~36 so they aren't completely full of water. Turn underground lakes to on.
Cliffs and highlands.
Both volatilities high ~ 8, negative horizontal fracture (~-8), and drop max height siginificantly - to like, -25 (this takes some experimentation.) This will give you very jutty and exaggerated rises, but smoothly rising and falling slopes with relatively flat areas. Also, you'll get lots of low water down to the bedrock.
Sky-lands.
To take any world and make it actually float, whether it be with floating islands or with other terrain types, set maxdepth to 25, water level to 0, and disable bedrock. This seems to still generate a lot of lag (last tested 1.2.5 I think.)
Big Sky
To take any terrain and make the world taller, in a sense to give yourself by default more 'height' on which to build, you may take a terrain type and do the following:
subtract four from max height.
add four to max depth.
Set Water level to ~36 (lower values can sometimes cause lots of lag.)
Additionally, you may wish to lower the strata at which various minerals occur (divide it by two) including lava pools so diamonds will still occur ABOVE the lava pool level. Same with the min level for caves.
You will have about ~30 more blocks to build up!
Deep world
You can also do the reverse, though it works better with less severe terrains.
Add four to max height.
Subtract four to max depth.
Set water Level at 96.
You may also desire to double the level at which each mineral occurs and double its frequency. This is not actually cheating; the distribution will be identical to what it was, but since there is double the stone for it to occur in, doubling the frequency results in the same rate of finding that mineral. Anyone who knows how to safely raise the caves frequency to permit better caving at upper levels please let us know!
You will have a lot more cave to explore!
Underground World that is not INSANE (uh, maybe not)
Basically, if you don't have the sun, monsters are going to spawn gangbusters on you, and with no moon, you're screwed as to seeing your enemies and avoiding them. This is experimental, so do it with caution.
Take a world like underground galleries, and make it so extreme that you start underground. This is achieved with negative horizontal fracture and highly positive vertical fracture with a lot of volatility. Tweak the values for your preferred setting.
Now, you need some light. Lava is your only hope.
Raise lava pool level to 64
Increase lava deposit frequency.
~ Try raising the lava pool level even higher to see if you get more lava falls. The basic plan is that you need lots of lava to see by when in the larger caves.
Getting muddy or clay swamps
The real characteristic of swamps is their special pools which have clay or mud. But in order for this to happen, they currently must be near water level. Swamps are a fairly rare biome type and as such with a BiomeSize below about 4 they'll be eensy-weensy. Turning on the settings is not enough, you need the right kind of world where swamps are being generated at water level.
This being said extreme worlds are currently bad for swampyness, and worlds with negative horizontal fracture will not generate as much pools (more ponds and shores.) Until we get more variation of terrain based on biome to 'see' your swamps you'll need to make sure the settings are pretty close to vanilla, with a raised water level or lowered maxheight, raised maxdepth (very, very slight like .2)
Also using the graphic provided you can restrict your world to have swamps and forests, for instance, with these settings:
TempMin: .5
TempMax: .7
MoistureMin: .75
MoistureMax: 1
The result should be about 50% swampland.
Also note that you'll still get snow and ice unless you drop out the Snow and Ice setting to zero or below.
Snow World
There are two kinds of snow worlds: Those that are tundra and taiga and ice desert (naturally snowy biomes) and those that are winter worlds (other biomes with snow and ice added.) To get a winter world just amp the Snow and Ice settings to 1. To get a snow world set temperature max to .5. It's that simple. Apply these to another world setting above for extra fun...
Works great with Cliffs and Highlands.
Dry World
Dry worlds are simple: we want no snow and ice, and we want dry biomes. Set snow and ice to -1 first of all, this is constant. (Note, if you don't do this, higher altitudes will contain snow, and maybe some lower altitudes! Adjust this accordingly.)
For your deserts and plains and such to be the right size, make sure you increase biomeSize to at least 4.
Drop savanna tree density to -2 or below.
An innovative concept for water in this world is to turn underground lakes on, up their frequency, and lower water level to about 36. This way, only the deepest natural areas have any water.
For a completely bare world, (note, use desert dirt and up the tree frequency in deserts if you want to SURVIVE) simply set minTemp to .99 and maxMoisture to .44. This will select only plains and desert. Waterless desert is useful as well.
For a dry place (like Arizona or Afghanistan) Drop minTemp to .75 from those settings.
For a dry world devoid of deserts, you can do either of the following:
'No Plains'
TempMin: .5
TempMax: .9
MoistureMin: 0
MoistureMax: .35
'Plains and Shrubs'
TempMin: .9
TempMax: 1
MoistureMin: .25
MoistureMax: .35
To add some forests just do
TempMin: .9
TempMax: 1
MoistureMin: .25
MoistureMax: .45
Jungle World
The idea is to have a wet, swampy, jungly world. Works best with rougher terrains.
TempMin: .55
TempMax: 1
MoistureMin: .95
MoistureMax: 1
Any other ideas? Let me at 'em!
Kudos to you! This thread is filled with win!
EDIT: Also I would like to add that your explanation of the volatility variables was good! The illustration of "layers" is a good way to think of it. I believe that volatility1 is in charge of the "higher" portion of a hill or structure, so if you put that high it seems to produce big hills or even floating islands, and volatility2 is the gradient land going up to the 'tip' or higher portion of a hill. Correct me if I'm wrong though.
A good way I try to imagine it is, if you can picture two people drawing a picture, the first person draws the 'top' of the mountain, the second person draws the rest. I believe that the volatility weight can have an effect on the way they draw it, but the variables before that should work the way I described.
I could be misinterpreting things, I definitely haven't done as extensive of testing as you have.
The volatility values are the ones I change around the most (probably true for the lot of us). I have been trying to get a nice looking desert to spawn, so some of the values I have looked at are:
volatility1:0.1 - 0.5 ish
volatility2:10-20 (or even higher if you want taller hills*)
weight1:0.9
weight2:0.1
*That sounds a bit different than what I wrote up earlier, but I think these values can somehow overlap if the numbers difference is big enough. These settings should produce tall mountains and not steep cliffs (I did however write these off the top of my head).
If you reverse the settings and do:
volatility1:10-20 (or even higher I suppose)
volatility2:0.1-0.5
weight1:0.1
weight2:0.9
You should get huge cliffs jutting out from the ground and then steep and deep ravines. The weight on the second volatility is higher but it also occurs less.
I can't remember when I thought of my illustration, but it certainly seems that way to me. I could be totally off though sorry if I am :sad.gif:
I have done some other testing but I didn't write it down, I will definitely put what I find in this thread though :smile.gif:
Same here. Thanks so much, RiverC! :smile.gif:
Adding some positive volatility1 will help, since it seems to produce more violent/earthquake-like land masses...
Now I'm testing desert biomes. I've been mostly successful, sand as far as the eye can see, very inhospitable terrain. But I can't get any vegetation to spawn. What settings do I need for a desert that will have sparse vegetation?
Is this possible and how do I do it if it is ?
thanks
EDIT: Where do I put the biometerrainsettings.ini file because atm Its just in my.minecraft folder and It dosnt change anything I kinda get higher mountains and they're more frequent but no floating islands and even if they are they're only about one or two blocks wide
Thanks!
A bit of research on Rarity and Frequency, I thought I'd share.