Nowadays it seems like every forest or taiga looks the same. Seriously. It's pretty obvious that when you look at the terrain updates, Mojang has been focusing much more on terrain content rather than variety or appearance.
I think the terrain in every biome besides Extreme Hills, Swamps, or Plains, Ocean, other water biomes, or technical biomes should have the same variation that Beta had, in terms of elevation. Shouldn't we be able to have both our new biomes and our majestic hills? So that not every biome looks the same and you could actually get cool stuff such as this:
Nowadays every forest looks like this:
Remember that this isn't trying to get completely Beta terrain in the game, just in terms of hills and mountains should spawn in forests just as often. Yes, we will still keep the grass colors, biomes like Roofed Forest, the new trees, and other terrain stuff added in B1.8 through r1.7. You might think that Amplified mode will give you back the mountains, but it really isn't the same because everything is so unusually bumpy and cliffy that you can't even walk across it without destroying a bunch of blocks.
I don't think this change should be permanent and Beta hills aren't perfect, but for now this is much better than leaving the terrain generator as it is now.
Q: Will seeds from Beta work?
A: Probably not, because biomes such as oceans will not be affected and might change the map. And I think the biome size now is different from Beta.
The current terrain, to put it bluntly, is downright boring. Whenever I hike through forests, plains, or deserts, it's the same, flat landscape. Downgrade to beta, and sure, there's less biome variety, but the land itself is amazing. While I love the cool biomes, I miss the old mountains and cliffs. Why can't we have both? Mojang focuses too much on the biomes themselves, ignoring the actual lay of the land.
Instead of cool mountains generating due to the terrain generator, cool mountains generate despite the terrain generator.
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If you want a response, quote me.
I have too slow an internet connection to be a lurk. If I wate time opening the page, I might as well reply.
Yes. Yes I do.
Too much sense in one post!!!!
Here's a banner tell me how to tweek it. I know it needs to be resized but other than that what do you want me to chamge?
My Avatar is a Dalek, therefor your argument is... EXTERMINATED!!!
You know who can tell me something I already know? Me. All the time. I'm really good at telling me stuff I already know. I don't need help in that department. I don't know about others, but I can't imagine I'm alone here.
I've even modded the game to increase height variation (aside from beaches, which require separate handling of height variation to keep them flat near sea level), so obviously I support this suggestion; there is also an entire thread about "boring" terrain so a lot of other people think the same way (I've never played Beta myself, other than testing it, but I can see the differences).
Here's various examples of actual terrain (some are x-hills subbiomes but regular biomes also have increased height variation; you basically have more hills while the x-hills subbiomes can have Extreme Hills-type mountains; note that for deserts and plains I made separate biomes for the "hiller" variants so villages have flat areas to generate in):
Of course, I also think there should be more than just more height variation (and yes, you still have flat areas outside of plains, etc and smaller ravines/caves):
Meh, even in the X-Hills you don't really get anything close to the Beta. MasterCaver, are those pictures of actual vanilla or your modded game? I'm afraid that those pictures are a bit biased. Cause this is normally the best I ever see for the X-Hills:
Meh, even in the X-Hills you don't really get anything close to the Beta. MasterCaver, are those pictures of actual vanilla or your modded game? I'm afraid that those pictures are a bit biased. Cause this is normally the best I ever see for the X-Hills:
That's the point I was making; vanilla doesn't have much variation so I increased it myself.
Yes, I completely support. Maybe just have mountainous variations of existing biomes as separate biomes.
The problem with that is that there are only 256 possible biomes (limited by the save format*) and some biome mods are already running into space restrictions because of how many biomes are taken up by vanilla (more than you think because every biome ID from 0-127 has a corresponding "M" variant from 128-255, even if they aren't actually used). Only desert and plains really need new variants to ensure that villages have flat areas to generate in (they can even make the "village" biomes flatter to reduce the amount of badly generated villages); that said, a hilly plains variant would probably be better off as a "Grassy Hills" biome or such as the name "plains" suggests a flat area).
*Although it would be easy to convert the byte array used to hold biome IDs to a short, allowing 65,536 different biome IDs, with minimal impacts on save size (512 bytes instead of 256 bytes per chunk; by comparison, a single chunk section, up to 16 per chunk, contains 4,096 bytes of block IDs plus 2,048 bytes each of metadata, extended block IDs, block light and sky light).
If it were for all biomes, it wouldn't even be very hard. Just add some Perlin noise multipliers for the existing noise functions. There would be a mild performance hit, but it wouldn't be the end of the world and you could probably manage some caching to address it.
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Geographicraft (formerly Climate Control) - Control climate, ocean, and land sizes; stop chunk walls; put modded biomes into Default worlds, and more!
RTG plus - All the beautiful terrain of RTG, plus varied and beautiful trees and forests.
*Most* biomes would do fine with more variation in the terrain noise. Swamps are flat because they reduce the noise by a high divider; even if you doubled it they'd still be relatively flat. Plus, sometimes, increased noise *variation* means biomes would be *flatter* than they are now (and that would be good too).
Roofed Forest M is actually quite rugged and it's a cool biome to look at although really tough to travel through in survival. I suspect that if there were problems from increased variation they'd mostly affect the mountainous biomes. But I suppose you could just avoid extremely rugged terrain - that's largely what we do in real life, and we get by.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Geographicraft (formerly Climate Control) - Control climate, ocean, and land sizes; stop chunk walls; put modded biomes into Default worlds, and more!
RTG plus - All the beautiful terrain of RTG, plus varied and beautiful trees and forests.
I know that you could get hillier terrain via presets, but this is talking about getting it into the Default world type. Players shouldn't have to enter in a preset every time they want to create a more varied world, as I imagine that majority of the community would prefer this over Default.
I did try stuff like Neo-Beta preset a while ago; like Robfrans said it is cool but you get land in an ocean biome.
Too much sense in one post!!!!
Here's a banner tell me how to tweek it. I know it needs to be resized but other than that what do you want me to change?
I would support this as a form of a preset option in the "Customized World" option.
Actually, it would be nice to include a way to share customization option. Encode the various settings in one string. Player who wants a similar type of world just copy that string into their game.
I think the terrain in every biome besides Extreme Hills, Swamps, or Plains, Ocean, other water biomes, or technical biomes should have the same variation that Beta had, in terms of elevation. Shouldn't we be able to have both our new biomes and our majestic hills? So that not every biome looks the same and you could actually get cool stuff such as this:
Nowadays every forest looks like this:
Remember that this isn't trying to get completely Beta terrain in the game, just in terms of hills and mountains should spawn in forests just as often. Yes, we will still keep the grass colors, biomes like Roofed Forest, the new trees, and other terrain stuff added in B1.8 through r1.7. You might think that Amplified mode will give you back the mountains, but it really isn't the same because everything is so unusually bumpy and cliffy that you can't even walk across it without destroying a bunch of blocks.
I don't think this change should be permanent and Beta hills aren't perfect, but for now this is much better than leaving the terrain generator as it is now.
Q: Will seeds from Beta work?
A: Probably not, because biomes such as oceans will not be affected and might change the map. And I think the biome size now is different from Beta.
The current terrain, to put it bluntly, is downright boring. Whenever I hike through forests, plains, or deserts, it's the same, flat landscape. Downgrade to beta, and sure, there's less biome variety, but the land itself is amazing. While I love the cool biomes, I miss the old mountains and cliffs. Why can't we have both? Mojang focuses too much on the biomes themselves, ignoring the actual lay of the land.
Instead of cool mountains generating due to the terrain generator, cool mountains generate despite the terrain generator.
I have too slow an internet connection to be a lurk. If I wate time opening the page, I might as well reply.
Yes. Yes I do.
Here's a banner tell me how to tweek it. I know it needs to be resized but other than that what do you want me to chamge?
I support:
Thats the good I interpreted.
~yoshi9048
My best suggestion:
Mobs actually being varied???
Here's various examples of actual terrain (some are x-hills subbiomes but regular biomes also have increased height variation; you basically have more hills while the x-hills subbiomes can have Extreme Hills-type mountains; note that for deserts and plains I made separate biomes for the "hiller" variants so villages have flat areas to generate in):
Of course, I also think there should be more than just more height variation (and yes, you still have flat areas outside of plains, etc and smaller ravines/caves):
TheMasterCaver's First World - possibly the most caved-out world in Minecraft history - includes world download.
TheMasterCaver's World - my own version of Minecraft largely based on my views of how the game should have evolved since 1.6.4.
Why do I still play in 1.6.4?
I have a new account called "Mushroomsock" now, so please do not send me PMs.
That's the point I was making; vanilla doesn't have much variation so I increased it myself.
The problem with that is that there are only 256 possible biomes (limited by the save format*) and some biome mods are already running into space restrictions because of how many biomes are taken up by vanilla (more than you think because every biome ID from 0-127 has a corresponding "M" variant from 128-255, even if they aren't actually used). Only desert and plains really need new variants to ensure that villages have flat areas to generate in (they can even make the "village" biomes flatter to reduce the amount of badly generated villages); that said, a hilly plains variant would probably be better off as a "Grassy Hills" biome or such as the name "plains" suggests a flat area).
*Although it would be easy to convert the byte array used to hold biome IDs to a short, allowing 65,536 different biome IDs, with minimal impacts on save size (512 bytes instead of 256 bytes per chunk; by comparison, a single chunk section, up to 16 per chunk, contains 4,096 bytes of block IDs plus 2,048 bytes each of metadata, extended block IDs, block light and sky light).
TheMasterCaver's First World - possibly the most caved-out world in Minecraft history - includes world download.
TheMasterCaver's World - my own version of Minecraft largely based on my views of how the game should have evolved since 1.6.4.
Why do I still play in 1.6.4?
Beta had 128 blocks and now we have 256...
I support:
Geographicraft (formerly Climate Control) - Control climate, ocean, and land sizes; stop chunk walls; put modded biomes into Default worlds, and more!
RTG plus - All the beautiful terrain of RTG, plus varied and beautiful trees and forests.
If you are planning to make a suggestion, please read this.
If you want to know more, you can read this.
For those who complain about post-Beta generation, you might want to see this.
Roofed Forest M is actually quite rugged and it's a cool biome to look at although really tough to travel through in survival. I suspect that if there were problems from increased variation they'd mostly affect the mountainous biomes. But I suppose you could just avoid extremely rugged terrain - that's largely what we do in real life, and we get by.
Geographicraft (formerly Climate Control) - Control climate, ocean, and land sizes; stop chunk walls; put modded biomes into Default worlds, and more!
RTG plus - All the beautiful terrain of RTG, plus varied and beautiful trees and forests.
I did try stuff like Neo-Beta preset a while ago; like Robfrans said it is cool but you get land in an ocean biome.
Did you skip the this how to I tweak it?
I support:
We need more biome variety. They all just blend together after a while.
-Bayside308
Actually, it would be nice to include a way to share customization option. Encode the various settings in one string. Player who wants a similar type of world just copy that string into their game.