I feel like the map size is just right for single player. Although, the more people play on a "dedicated" multiplayer map (me and a few friends only play on it together, I don't touch it in single player), the more it starts to feel cramped. I find myself trying not to gather resources too far from my own base as to try and save some things for everyone else. Same goes for mining. I tend to be more conservative with how far and how many holes I dig. Same for cave exploring. Nothing is more annoying then walking around and finding a cave entrance only to discover somebody else's torches inside. When I host my server on the pc, people tend to venture further out to explore and gather and save the inner map for building. The problem I foresee is putting so much time and effort into a single map, only to run out of resources or have everyone get bored of the same terrain.
Being able to carry inventory with your player into another map, like in Terraria, could be a decent compromise; excluding the ability to take certain things like TNT, of course. (Although one could just take sand and gunpowder and craft it. The best anti-grief tool is still to only allow trusted friends.)
Crossing time = at 2 blocks per second on flatland.
1000 / 60 = 16.6666667 / 2 = 8.33333333 (8 minutes 33 seconds)
Total blocks per world = if all blocks were filled.
1000 * 1000 * 128 = 128.000.000 (I would half this for most worlds, that's 64.000.000)
So as you can see there not that small, it would take more that 15 minutes to cross most worlds, due to then not being flatlands & have water & large enought to get lost in, if they never supplied a map oO.
its either 256 or 512, cant remember but yeah its not a brilliant machine, its specs cant cope with an infinite, or even too big map, it struggles now with the 1024x1024 version by crashing and such, so dont expect any updates to the size of the map any time soon.
I have read mostly all of the posts and have come to realize everyone thinks the ram is a huge limiting factor. If you can play it now, then just increasing the world size will not make it unable to play. Minecraft only renders so many chunks at any given point, which means that making the world larger would only use up more HDD space, not use up more ram. Also, saying that the save files would be too large is ridiculous because I have a map that is pretty damn large and it's only 160mb. anyone with a hard drive or flash drive could have a map that size, and anyone without one could go buy a 4 gig flash drive at walmart for 10 bucks. No reason to limit the world sizes at all.
The save files may have been a bit bigger in that version. Minecraft updated to a new file format that had better compression. But that probably isn't that much of a difference. I've never done a test before.
Making the world size bigger is something that 4J Studios probably can't do because of restrictions that Microsoft place on the size of save files for XBLA titles. But the current world size of 1024x1024 could be OK provided that they find alternative solutions to the problems that the PC version's effectively infinite worlds fix e.g:
Animals going extinct locally.
The initial state of the world not having enough resources to complete your megaproject.
Griefers going into the deepest cavern and throwing all the diamonds into lava and the host saving and overwriting the last ungriefed copy of the world without ever being aware that it's been griefed.
Terraria-style separation of player save files and world save files complete with a Terraria-style piggy bank in the player save file should solve all of them without exceeding any limits.
No, it is quite easy to get around the restrictions
I have read mostly all of the posts and have come to realize everyone thinks the ram is a huge limiting factor. If you can play it now, then just increasing the world size will not make it unable to play. Minecraft only renders so many chunks at any given point, which means that making the world larger would only use up more HDD space, not use up more ram. Also, saying that the save files would be too large is ridiculous because I have a map that is pretty damn large and it's only 160mb. anyone with a hard drive or flash drive could have a map that size, and anyone without one could go buy a 4 gig flash drive at walmart for 10 bucks. No reason to limit the world sizes at all.
Posted in another wavoring thread these ideas though:
I sent a PM suggestion to Steve about 5 days ago saying the same thing and asking others. No reply yet but meh.
It could work like this:
1. Travel system
Player walks/swims/boats into a soft barrier and a countdown in the corner initiates. After this time is up it asks you if you if you want to travel. If no then go about your business. The hard barriers are always there so no glitchy-ness.
Problem:
Would get annoying if you don't want to travel.
Solution:
Make an option to turn it off and on so you don't have to worry about annoying messages. Also a 10 minute cooldown could be initiated before you can travel again or something. Don't forget you can turn back too with the timer as it would give you time.
2. Portal
Acts like the nether, but teleports you to a random world. Can't see any problems with this.
LIMIT:
1-3 max.
3. Cave
A special cave door could be generated near the end of the map and allow it too look like you are travelling underground to a new land. You would come out at the other side in a similar cave entrance.
Can't see anything wrong here either, just needs to be generated properly.
LIMIT:
1-3 max.
WE really need someone from 4J to tell us what is going on and why it was not bigger. I know the Xbox is like 7 years old (nearly) but why can't the above have been done already?
I think the main problem is that Minecraft is in the 1.6.6 version on Xbox, so they did this as a fix because of file-size limits. I like the idea of portals too, but I think that it would be a little easy to get a nice cave system if all you had to do was make a portal to it.
I agree but the portal then would perhaps meet certain conditions on the other side. Obviously on the other side it would be randonly generated near your spawn point. To be honest it's up to you though where you create the portal. I also didn't mean these portals linked to each other, but merely generated a new world for you to explore each time. The portal idea is not my favourite one though.
To be honest thinking about it and all the stuff 4JStu has told me it seems a bit sketchy. He said that it's not just down to the RAM and that other things are in play. I assume he means the graphics chip or maybe something else? It certainly does not look like CPU as the Eurogamer article claimed it ran well and there are different tasks running on each core.
I have asked and asked though and it seems there is no one qualified to tell us what is going on. I wish someone whos job it is to render the world would come on and explain, it is frustrating because I love this game.
If it's so hard to render a "little" more world then please tell us why!
This is what I want to know:
1. Yes the game is pretty complex and with each chunk it has to render and update, but why can't the map size be expanded if the game loads in and out chunks on the fly? Yes it has to remember stuff I have done and interacted with, but shouldn't that only be updated when I'm in/near these chunks?
2. If we do get a valid explanation, why can't they do loading screens? Also how would these make any difference as it would still have to update the chunks in the other world right? On the other hand though the Nether works fine so why didn't they do something like that?
3. To what extent are they "looking into this"? Are there any updates to share?
4J are a great studio, but they fall into the lower bracket for keeping people updated. There are only about two devs who randomly post here and the 4J twitter account seems to answer the same boring questions over and over. It's been suggested they do a blog and they said no. Loads of companies have a blog! It saves this nonsense of scrounging for information.
I don't want it to be huge, I just want more room to explore and allow more space for a few more biomes and unique terrain. Also it's going to feel so cramped when strongholds, mines and villages are added. That's not much to ask is it?
I think that your point about villages/strongholds is very valid. Does anybody have any ideas on how they could do this besides regular infinite generation?
I actually enjoy a smaller map, because of limited resources. I think the map size is plenty big and filled with resources still. It would be nice if you could have a bigger map or even infinite map, but really what is the point of an infinite or even a bigger map except to hold more biomes. At least for now the map size is perfect, when updated to 1.8 or full version the map size should be bigger. I think if you can find everything Minecraft has to offer in world then the map size is perfect.
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"If it already has been done then it can be done again" or
"If its a mod its possible to be a feature"
I don't really mind smaller maps. Resources without strip mining can some times be a pain but mine shafts and ravines will fix this when 1.8 rolls around.
Also, a common misconception is that the 360 worlds are 1024x1024. It's actually around 860x860 since there's more empty space around the map(compare a full 360 map with the map in the OP, it's pretty noticable). A few people on gamefaqs even counted.
Credit of the first pic goes to Rocky5. It was the most convienent pic of the 360 map I could find. Hope you dont mind.
What about Mooshroom biomes? With this small of a world if you don't spawn on one you will most likely never find one, and it can be impossible to find snow. The world is not bid enough, I know that half the fun of Minecraft is the exploration and finding epic places to build.
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The redstone is coming, you just have to find it now. Redstone Glory
I went adventuring (finally) last night just to check it out and it was plenty big enough for me, at least for now. I'm certainly not against a larger map by any means but I'm not upset about the size either.
-File sizes are certainly not the issue here, the minecraft world file sizes are tiny.
-The real issue is the Xbox's 500 odd megabytes of RAM. However games such as Castleminer (NOT fortresscraft) are able to generate infinite worlds and with higher resolution textures so, theoretically, it should be capable.
-4J on numerous occasions have said that they are going to be looking at ways to expand map size.
-The game is not intentionally lesser than its PC cousin, the code translation from Java to C++ started back when minecraft PC was in beta version 1.6.6. It was always the intention to release that version and then catch up to the current PC version features.
Ram wouldn't be an issue, but one server has to handle all of the players loaded chunks. And, just nitpicking, it is Java to C#.
I don't believe I have seen this suggestion but why don't they do something like Terraria that has 3 different world sizes that you can chose from Small, Mediuem, Large each one is a different size and has a different amount of resources (according to size)
(Yes I know its Terraria and this is Minecraft but Terraria is simpiler so why can't you do something similer in a more advaced game)
the problem is when the new bioms come out we will not be able to have them introduced into currnet map and i know alot of people that play minecraft to explore and these maps u can explore the whole surface in 45 min
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Being able to carry inventory with your player into another map, like in Terraria, could be a decent compromise; excluding the ability to take certain things like TNT, of course. (Although one could just take sand and gunpowder and craft it. The best anti-grief tool is still to only allow trusted friends.)
Crossing time = at 2 blocks per second on flatland.
1000 / 60 = 16.6666667 / 2 = 8.33333333 (8 minutes 33 seconds)
Total blocks per world = if all blocks were filled.
1000 * 1000 * 128 = 128.000.000 (I would half this for most worlds, that's 64.000.000)
So as you can see there not that small, it would take more that 15 minutes to cross most worlds, due to then not being flatlands & have water & large enought to get lost in, if they never supplied a map oO.
No, it is quite easy to get around the restrictions
I think people should get over it or play PC.
Me: Facepalm
I think the main problem is that Minecraft is in the 1.6.6 version on Xbox, so they did this as a fix because of file-size limits. I like the idea of portals too, but I think that it would be a little easy to get a nice cave system if all you had to do was make a portal to it.
I think that your point about villages/strongholds is very valid. Does anybody have any ideas on how they could do this besides regular infinite generation?
"If its a mod its possible to be a feature"
Also, a common misconception is that the 360 worlds are 1024x1024. It's actually around 860x860 since there's more empty space around the map(compare a full 360 map with the map in the OP, it's pretty noticable). A few people on gamefaqs even counted.
Credit of the first pic goes to Rocky5. It was the most convienent pic of the 360 map I could find. Hope you dont mind.
Redstone Glory
Ram wouldn't be an issue, but one server has to handle all of the players loaded chunks. And, just nitpicking, it is Java to C#.
(Yes I know its Terraria and this is Minecraft but Terraria is simpiler so why can't you do something similer in a more advaced game)