1.8.1. i made my first world. lots of epic mountains, caves inside of them... 1.0.0 made another seed. the biome terrain was always the same, the villages were always the same. there was no good place to build house. I APPROVE THIS!
1.8.1 has almost same generator as 1.0.
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My UA on laptop: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Ubuntu; Linux i686; rv:27.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/27.0 SeaMonkey/2.24 Lightning/2.9b1; I use Ubuntu 13.10 here.
And on desktop: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux i686; rv:20.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/20.0; Here I use openSUSE 12.2.
Shreaders, I disagree with you on this one. I think having seemingly endless caves is a wonderful thing. The only bad thing is that that is the ONLY type of cave we see.
I thought you thought the same way - maybe you just misinterpreted his statement.
No, I interpreted it just fine. I just feel like endless caves should be very rare. They are far too abundant and common with the current generator. That's my own opinion. Like I said, I don't want to get lost in a cave every single time I decide to go out exploring.
How about this, Endless caves, two of them near spawn, and rare elsewhere. Then you can choose. Endless caves, or go out about ten chunks, and THEN you will have the normal caves. Also, make the endless caves have a TON of inter-sections. Like those huge spherical caves. Put them in for intersections, but make them sightly imperfect. (e.g. Liquid Flow, Slightly misshapen [Oval, mounds in ground and the like!] That way, you will get a good open area, [Here come the creepers!] but you could also build a small base. How about that?
Hell yeah bro! I completely agree. I have played minecraft from BETA 1.3 so I know how epic the terrain generation was back then. The most intresting thing you can find now is some big mountain that isn't breathtaking in any way with a tiny ledge that looks like an Assassins creed leap of faith. All the mountains are spammed together now and frankly, I think that all biomes are boring now.
Anyone else remember the seed "gargamel"? try it now. It used to be epic hills & cliffs FER DAYZ but now its just a jungle with a single mountain, a river, and a bunch of swamp. It's a perfect example of what you're talking about. I've had minecraft since early beta, and I always loved the randomness aspect that was much,MUCH better then as opposed to now. This concept is really love-hate, as most people I know didn't own minecraft since beta 1.8 or later and they can't stand the old world generator.
I am posting this message from my barely running laptop! I am lucky to be able to get on because the AC adapter for my Laptop went as did the battery. The wire has a short so even at the slightest movement I could lose all power to my computer and no longer be able to access it. That being said, I am looking into getting a new Gaming PC that shouldn't have these types of issues. I will try to get onto these forums as often as possible and as often as my laptop will allow me until I have a new stable PC that can allow me to be on frequently.
Until then, I do hope our loyal and passionate supporters will help to keep this thread alive (I'll try to get on to update at least daily) until my return. When I come back I can update the support list and let you all know how things are going. I do apologize for posting my PC issues on here, but I wanted to make everyone who is actively posting here aware of my absence and do not think that I am leaving the cause because after the 1.4.4 update I still feel we are very very much in need of change and I will continue to actively support this cause.
Thank you all,
and I hope to see you/talk to you all within the daily hour that I am able to access the forums
- Shread
I am posting this message from my barely running laptop! I am lucky to be able to get on because the AC adapter for my Laptop went as did the battery. The wire has a short so even at the slightest movement I could lose all power to my computer and no longer be able to access it. That being said, I am looking into getting a new Gaming PC that shouldn't have these types of issues. I will try to get onto these forums as often as possible and as often as my laptop will allow me until I have a new stable PC that can allow me to be on frequently.
Until then, I do hope our loyal and passionate supporters will help to keep this thread alive (I'll try to get on to update at least daily) until my return. When I come back I can update the support list and let you all know how things are going. I do apologize for posting my PC issues on here, but I wanted to make everyone who is actively posting here aware of my absence and do not think that I am leaving the cause because after the 1.4.4 update I still feel we are very very much in need of change and I will continue to actively support this cause.
Thank you all,
and I hope to see you/talk to you all within the daily hour that I am able to access the forums
- Shread
I agree, we do need more diversity, but it is't seeds fault. It would be almost impossible to get anything even 5% like what you want without seeds, and Antvenom does videos that show seeds, not for villages and revens but for mountainous.
If notch can here this... If he is not going to accept his idea we are going to give him diamond to death! Right guys?
Notch doesn't develop Minecraft anymore, so him hearing this won't help. Jeb and Dinnerbone already know, but don't listen.
And I'm a bit surprised nobody here's against the idea. There's usually haters.
Notch doesn't develop Minecraft anymore, so him hearing this won't help. Jeb and Dinnerbone already know, but don't listen.
And I'm a bit surprised nobody here's against the idea. There's usually haters.
There were a lot of people against this concept but all of them have been proven wrong. Not even exaggerating.
I was a total pre-1.8 gen supporter until I saw this. I only read the first page, but most particularly, when I saw the OP's point about mining and how often did I ever want to mine before 1.8, and Redyoshi101's statement about how terrain should generate first then biomes according to terrain, it struck a chord.
My full opinion (is a bit long:)
It didn't take me long to have a problem with the 1.8 generator. I was painfully bored just 10 minutes into the first new world I created with 1.8 and probably one of the first people to be rudely told to a)downgrade or b)use a mod (which didn't exist at the time) if I didn't like it. I didn't downgrade because I liked everything else but ultimately, I pretty much stopped playing. The few sporadic times I have played in the year since were short-lived and mostly spent underground, mining. Something I didn't realize until I saw this thread (note above) I almost never did before the change. I used to spend almost everyday above ground and couldn't be assed to keep just one permanent base. In fact, as I recall, I got into minecraft by watching my cousin play nomad-style through the kick ass terrain. And I also recall, that it didn't matter where he spawned or where he went or after I started playing, where I spawned or went, it was always kick ass terrain.
I don't think I can even comment on eternal caves because I just don't recall spending any more time underground than absolutely necessary before 1.8.
I thought biomes were the problem. Nasty, horrible biomes that put you to sleep! Well, I've realized I was wrong. I like everything about post 1.8 minecraft except the terrain. Even biomes, I've come to realize, as a concept though not as terrain. They're so big and far too repetitive, but if you applied the concept backwards as Redyoshi101 suggests to 1.7-esque terrain? That's just what 1.7 gen was missing. I think a little evening out will be just fine as well, sometimes it was hard to find a suitable building spot with pre-1.8. And that, in sum, is basically what this is suggesting, correct? Somewhat less extreme than 1.7 terrain generation with biomes (call it height variation if you want, same thing to me.)
I don't know why this suggestion hasn't already been implemented. Especially if current custom world gens large biomes and superflat are kept as is, I don't know what anyone could complain about.
Btw, whoever thinks the current gen is "realistic" must live in a really, really boring place, terrain wise. Where I live the terrain is much more like, well, this suggestion, and people travel from all over the world to see this terrain. Even I appreciate it and I'm no hiker or scenery lover. To me, this suggestion would be truly realistic, yet pleasantly so. Adventurously so.
Terrain how I would prefer it:
Rainfall, Temperature, and Geology control the Biome type, these factors are generated by the terrain generator as maps.
Geology would control things like hill-creation, as well as lava and some ores underground.
Rainfall: controls the generation of rivers and ravines in an area, as well as trees, other flora, and whether or not grass will generate and sustain itself in the sun. Sand would be the predominant thing usually.
Temperature would control whether life could exist in otherwise hospitable environments, If the temperature was too high, dirt and grass would generate as sand, too low, and it starts snowing instead of raining.
Geology would generate in a very sharp, fractal-ish way, high-geology areas would have mountains, or even floating mountains, low geology ones would be oceans. Diamonds would be present in higher numbers, as would lava and extreme caves.
Temperature would have random areas that are extremely hot, usually deserts if they are on land. these propogate heat to further-away areas, but to different degrees based on the Geology.
In areas of low Geology, temperature propogates but does not get stuck anywhere during generation, this makes flat areas very uniform in temperature, being most likely all very close to eachother, but making biomes spread out over a huge area.
temperature would also bleed into oceans, where it would essentially rush out into the oceanic void, stabilizing the temperature near beaches. Since during the terrain generation, temperature would spawn randomly, oceans would usually be fairly equal in temp, having no resistance to changing during the generation step of spreading temperature around.
Rainfall would Generate based on Temperature and Geology, the higher the temperature and lower the geology, the higher the rainfall generated.
It would move then spread in much the same way as temperature and move very slowly through high-geology areas, but very quickly through low-geology ones. this would likely cause mountains to get a lot of it.
Ravines, Caves, "mud-slide" trenches in mountains, lakes, and a lot of other features would generate based on rain fall and geology.
one major problem would be, of course, how to generate the world on-the-fly in this manner.
so, geology is independent, it relies on nothing but randomness.
temp. is dependent on geology and propagates in a Path-finding manner, however this can be easily compensated for by generating huge areas around the player for geology, say, a radius of 3072 (after all, it shouldn't be that tough to generate a giant fractal).
then generating temperature in an area that would be un-observable to the area outside where geology exists. so, perhaps, assuming that temperature has a maximum range of effect of 1024 over ocean from its spawnpoint, the temperature spawns could be generated up to 2048 away, then spread inward or outward, all areas within 1024 would be locked to the temperature they had reached. regardless of how the world was explored, temperature would generate the same.
finally, rainfall would be generated within the finalized area of temperature, and spread based on geology all the way to 2048 and all the way inward to the chunks being loaded.
the default geology would be 1, it could get very high in some areas, creating giant mountains, floating islands, lava-falls or if there is rainfall, swiss-cheese caves on the surface. a geology of 1.1 would be sufficient to generate a beach. a plains or swamp might have a geology of 1.1-2. while mountains would be more like 10, 20, or higher.
the default temp of the world would be 10, a temp spawn would start with a temp of +-10,000,000 in one square block, and spread to a larger area.
any given square block would have a geology/1,000,000 to generate a temperature spawn.
any temperature spawn would automatically reduce in magnitude proportional to the geology it spawned in, this is so that mountains don't generate with +-1000s of temperature, a geology score of 20 would still be enough to make a cold-spawn only spread over a 100-block-wide area though, and so the temperature would change by an average of -50 in that area. of course, there would be an average of 20 extreme regions like that in a given square km of that area. whereas an ocean would generate each square km with an average of +-2.5 from a given spawn, and the spawns would mostly cancel each-other out.
spawns themselves would not completely randomly select, they would do so based on a large-scale fractal, making some areas warmer for multiple km, and others cooler. snow biomes would usually only occur in areas where most of the temperature spawns affecting an area turned were cold, either by randomness, or more often by the larger probability fractal.
rainfall would then generate as (temp^2)/(2^geology) meaning that, while oceans and swamps generate rainfall, mountains generate essentially zero. rainfall generation would automatically capped at not going negative (in the case of frozen areas.)
rainfall would also spread in a very similar manner to temperature, except that it would "finalize" more with higher geology. every generation tick would "finalize" geology / 2048 of the rainfall in a given square block. up to 1000 ticks. this could make mountains and hills very rainy in some cases, most likely turning them to rain-forest.
Extreme biomes could generate in certain exceptional cases:
if the temperature exceeds 50, peaceful mobs no longer spawn. Water does not naturally generate on the surface. Grass and mycelium will revert to dirt above sea-level. dirt will slowly revert to sand if not exposed to water
if the temperature exceeds 70, water has a chance of boiling away.
if the rainfall exceeds 1000, lakes will generate in most low areas, the biome will resemble swamp, and slimes spawn in abundance, normal mobs don't spawn, and lots of short shrubs that inhibit movement spawn everywhere. Rain generates puddles of non-spawn water as well, wiping out torches, etc.
if the geology exceeds 40, very bizzare and complicated mountains form, grass does not spawn, and gravel is very common, no animals or plants grow here. lava will be a very common site on the surface, and most land will be shaded by overhangs and floating islands.
if temperature somehow exceeds 90, all surface water instantly evaporates as in the Nether. Rainfall also generates a thick steamy cloud of fog that lowers the light-level significantly, usually low enough that hostile mobs can spawn.
if the temperature is below -30, grass and mycelium revert to dirt if placed above or at sea-level. the lower the temperature, the more often they revert. they can still grow, however, so these biomes will most-likely be coated in occasional splotches of grass. Leaves other than spruce automatically decay even on the tree.
if the temperature is below -60, spruce leaves will automatically decay, and a layer of snow blocks will pile up if it snows. water touching air above sea-level will near-instantly turn to ice.
if the temperature, god-forbid, ever reaches -100 or lower, an ice-shelf will form, causing massive amounts of ice to go up to 20, 30, or even 50 meters above the glacier-crushed ground (which would not have any dirt, and be up to 10 blocks lower in terms of stone.).
if the rainfall is below 10, grass will start to decay into dirt above sea-level. dirt will also slowly decay into sand.
all this would basically generate:
A: highly realistic terrain.
B: some extremely flat terrain, alongside vast mountains, some of which could be just highlands and hills, others could be massive peaks with caves and interiors and spires and floating islands.
C: A good, less repetitive direction sense, and the ability to semi-predict terrain and continents hundreds of blocks out. yet still sometimes run into great surprises, such as giant mountains, a glacier, a valley with a separate biome inside (such as a desert encircled by hills, surrounded in plains)
D: a good border between biomes, it is extremely unlikely, with a system like this one, that deserts would ever generate within 500 meters of a snow-biome except if there were quite a few mountains in between (it would still be highly unlikely though).
I have completely agreed to your topic. Even though I am new to this forum, and there are only like three big posts about this on this forum, I will notify mojang
Terrain how I would prefer it:
Rainfall, Temperature, and Geology control the Biome type, these factors are generated by the terrain generator as maps.
Geology would control things like hill-creation, as well as lava and some ores underground.
Rainfall: controls the generation of rivers and ravines in an area, as well as trees, other flora, and whether or not grass will generate and sustain itself in the sun. Sand would be the predominant thing usually.
Temperature would control whether life could exist in otherwise hospitable environments, If the temperature was too high, dirt and grass would generate as sand, too low, and it starts snowing instead of raining.
Geology would generate in a very sharp, fractal-ish way, high-geology areas would have mountains, or even floating mountains, low geology ones would be oceans. Diamonds would be present in higher numbers, as would lava and extreme caves.
Temperature would have random areas that are extremely hot, usually deserts if they are on land. these propogate heat to further-away areas, but to different degrees based on the Geology.
In areas of low Geology, temperature propogates but does not get stuck anywhere during generation, this makes flat areas very uniform in temperature, being most likely all very close to eachother, but making biomes spread out over a huge area.
temperature would also bleed into oceans, where it would essentially rush out into the oceanic void, stabilizing the temperature near beaches. Since during the terrain generation, temperature would spawn randomly, oceans would usually be fairly equal in temp, having no resistance to changing during the generation step of spreading temperature around.
Rainfall would Generate based on Temperature and Geology, the higher the temperature and lower the geology, the higher the rainfall generated.
It would move then spread in much the same way as temperature and move very slowly through high-geology areas, but very quickly through low-geology ones. this would likely cause mountains to get a lot of it.
Ravines, Caves, "mud-slide" trenches in mountains, lakes, and a lot of other features would generate based on rain fall and geology.
one major problem would be, of course, how to generate the world on-the-fly in this manner.
so, geology is independent, it relies on nothing but randomness.
temp. is dependent on geology and propagates in a Path-finding manner, however this can be easily compensated for by generating huge areas around the player for geology, say, a radius of 3072 (after all, it shouldn't be that tough to generate a giant fractal).
then generating temperature in an area that would be un-observable to the area outside where geology exists. so, perhaps, assuming that temperature has a maximum range of effect of 1024 over ocean from its spawnpoint, the temperature spawns could be generated up to 2048 away, then spread inward or outward, all areas within 1024 would be locked to the temperature they had reached. regardless of how the world was explored, temperature would generate the same.
finally, rainfall would be generated within the finalized area of temperature, and spread based on geology all the way to 2048 and all the way inward to the chunks being loaded.
the default geology would be 1, it could get very high in some areas, creating giant mountains, floating islands, lava-falls or if there is rainfall, swiss-cheese caves on the surface. a geology of 1.1 would be sufficient to generate a beach. a plains or swamp might have a geology of 1.1-2. while mountains would be more like 10, 20, or higher.
the default temp of the world would be 10, a temp spawn would start with a temp of +-10,000,000 in one square block, and spread to a larger area.
any given square block would have a geology/1,000,000 to generate a temperature spawn.
any temperature spawn would automatically reduce in magnitude proportional to the geology it spawned in, this is so that mountains don't generate with +-1000s of temperature, a geology score of 20 would still be enough to make a cold-spawn only spread over a 100-block-wide area though, and so the temperature would change by an average of -50 in that area. of course, there would be an average of 20 extreme regions like that in a given square km of that area. whereas an ocean would generate each square km with an average of +-2.5 from a given spawn, and the spawns would mostly cancel each-other out.
spawns themselves would not completely randomly select, they would do so based on a large-scale fractal, making some areas warmer for multiple km, and others cooler. snow biomes would usually only occur in areas where most of the temperature spawns affecting an area turned were cold, either by randomness, or more often by the larger probability fractal.
rainfall would then generate as (temp^2)/(2^geology) meaning that, while oceans and swamps generate rainfall, mountains generate essentially zero. rainfall generation would automatically capped at not going negative (in the case of frozen areas.)
rainfall would also spread in a very similar manner to temperature, except that it would "finalize" more with higher geology. every generation tick would "finalize" geology / 2048 of the rainfall in a given square block. up to 1000 ticks. this could make mountains and hills very rainy in some cases, most likely turning them to rain-forest.
Extreme biomes could generate in certain exceptional cases:
if the temperature exceeds 50, peaceful mobs no longer spawn. Water does not naturally generate on the surface. Grass and mycelium will revert to dirt above sea-level. dirt will slowly revert to sand if not exposed to water
if the temperature exceeds 70, water has a chance of boiling away.
if the rainfall exceeds 1000, lakes will generate in most low areas, the biome will resemble swamp, and slimes spawn in abundance, normal mobs don't spawn, and lots of short shrubs that inhibit movement spawn everywhere. Rain generates puddles of non-spawn water as well, wiping out torches, etc.
if the geology exceeds 40, very bizzare and complicated mountains form, grass does not spawn, and gravel is very common, no animals or plants grow here. lava will be a very common site on the surface, and most land will be shaded by overhangs and floating islands.
if temperature somehow exceeds 90, all surface water instantly evaporates as in the Nether. Rainfall also generates a thick steamy cloud of fog that lowers the light-level significantly, usually low enough that hostile mobs can spawn.
if the temperature is below -30, grass and mycelium revert to dirt if placed above or at sea-level. the lower the temperature, the more often they revert. they can still grow, however, so these biomes will most-likely be coated in occasional splotches of grass. Leaves other than spruce automatically decay even on the tree.
if the temperature is below -60, spruce leaves will automatically decay, and a layer of snow blocks will pile up if it snows. water touching air above sea-level will near-instantly turn to ice.
if the temperature, god-forbid, ever reaches -100 or lower, an ice-shelf will form, causing massive amounts of ice to go up to 20, 30, or even 50 meters above the glacier-crushed ground (which would not have any dirt, and be up to 10 blocks lower in terms of stone.).
if the rainfall is below 10, grass will start to decay into dirt above sea-level. dirt will also slowly decay into sand.
all this would basically generate:
A: highly realistic terrain.
B: some extremely flat terrain, alongside vast mountains, some of which could be just highlands and hills, others could be massive peaks with caves and interiors and spires and floating islands.
C: A good, less repetitive direction sense, and the ability to semi-predict terrain and continents hundreds of blocks out. yet still sometimes run into great surprises, such as giant mountains, a glacier, a valley with a separate biome inside (such as a desert encircled by hills, surrounded in plains)
D: a good border between biomes, it is extremely unlikely, with a system like this one, that deserts would ever generate within 500 meters of a snow-biome except if there were quite a few mountains in between (it would still be highly unlikely though).
Sounds good in theory. In practice I foresee it adding unnecessary labor to a cpu to run those calculations on even an five minute interval.
Highly realistic terrain is not what I support.
Fantasy terrain is much more worthy of my labors, realistic is what I see every day I look outside or go hiking.
I totally agree with flat... only if there is some not-so-flat terrain to survey it.
Biome patterning is something that should be considered... but there is some irony of a snow biome between two jungles... minecraft being a fantasy world. (it does have dungeons and a dragon... realistic kinda flies out the window.)
Those are my thoughts on it...
I'd rather get some fancy terrain that also takes advantage of the new height, maybe they can then consider true underground caverns. Not the current superworm maze underground.
Realistic? Nah, that won't bring back the wonder of what a new seed has in store would bring.
I'll be honest, when I played Alpha, I was a miner. When I played on my friend's server, I build one place, "Sam's Ores and Stone", a shop where I placed everything I ever mined into chest so others didn't have to spend their time mining. I quit playing about a year ago and within the last 6 months returned and I've noticed a big change underground. You were talking about how interesting it was above ground in the sun was, it used to be really wild below ground. I'd spend hours holding my breath because it was really dangerous, sand and grave falling down on you, opening up into caves that fell into oblivion. And you didn't see creepers every two seconds. They were green ninjas. You would kill zombies and skeletons and spiders, then one quiet minute "SSSSSSSSSSSSSSsssssssssssssssssssBOOOOM!" and that was it. Now, it's a hack and slash, every hostile mob you can think of it is coming for you every damn second. And the caves are just large holes or small tunnels. And ores are just too common. I use to spend hours collecting enough iron for a full outfit. Now, I don't even have to go far from the mouth to get a breastplate. And mineshafts. The most unrealistic ever. And they are everywhere. I was trying to strip mine an area to see how often ores show up in a 50x50 block area and everywhere I started to mine, I'd hit a shaft. If it wasn't for the mods I use, I'd be back playing Alpha again.
And lets not forget the Neither. It's all but forgotten. It's just as plain and boring now as it was during the 2010 Halloween Update.
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No, I interpreted it just fine. I just feel like endless caves should be very rare. They are far too abundant and common with the current generator. That's my own opinion. Like I said, I don't want to get lost in a cave every single time I decide to go out exploring.
- Shread
- Ice Caves
- Hilly Tundra
- Snow Hills (No trees)
- Chasms (Huge Dips in ground, like a crater!)
- Lakes
- Springs
- Copse
- More Distinctive Features? Jagged Rocks, Lakes.
- Seasons (It could just help with aesthetics)
- And.. Other stuff!

I know this doesn't really help with height variation, but it would make the game a whole lot more fun.Thanks, that was really needed.
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Curse PremiumI am posting this message from my barely running laptop! I am lucky to be able to get on because the AC adapter for my Laptop went as did the battery. The wire has a short so even at the slightest movement I could lose all power to my computer and no longer be able to access it. That being said, I am looking into getting a new Gaming PC that shouldn't have these types of issues. I will try to get onto these forums as often as possible and as often as my laptop will allow me until I have a new stable PC that can allow me to be on frequently.
Until then, I do hope our loyal and passionate supporters will help to keep this thread alive (I'll try to get on to update at least daily) until my return. When I come back I can update the support list and let you all know how things are going. I do apologize for posting my PC issues on here, but I wanted to make everyone who is actively posting here aware of my absence and do not think that I am leaving the cause because after the 1.4.4 update I still feel we are very very much in need of change and I will continue to actively support this cause.
Thank you all,
and I hope to see you/talk to you all within the daily hour that I am able to access the forums
- Shread
I'll definitely be keeping it alive.
Notch doesn't develop Minecraft anymore, so him hearing this won't help. Jeb and Dinnerbone already know, but don't listen.
And I'm a bit surprised nobody here's against the idea. There's usually haters.
There were a lot of people against this concept but all of them have been proven wrong. Not even exaggerating.
*Back to taking a few years break from Minecraft*
My full opinion (is a bit long:)
It didn't take me long to have a problem with the 1.8 generator. I was painfully bored just 10 minutes into the first new world I created with 1.8 and probably one of the first people to be rudely told to a)downgrade or b)use a mod (which didn't exist at the time) if I didn't like it. I didn't downgrade because I liked everything else but ultimately, I pretty much stopped playing. The few sporadic times I have played in the year since were short-lived and mostly spent underground, mining. Something I didn't realize until I saw this thread (note above) I almost never did before the change. I used to spend almost everyday above ground and couldn't be assed to keep just one permanent base. In fact, as I recall, I got into minecraft by watching my cousin play nomad-style through the kick ass terrain. And I also recall, that it didn't matter where he spawned or where he went or after I started playing, where I spawned or went, it was always kick ass terrain.
I don't think I can even comment on eternal caves because I just don't recall spending any more time underground than absolutely necessary before 1.8.
I thought biomes were the problem. Nasty, horrible biomes that put you to sleep! Well, I've realized I was wrong. I like everything about post 1.8 minecraft except the terrain. Even biomes, I've come to realize, as a concept though not as terrain. They're so big and far too repetitive, but if you applied the concept backwards as Redyoshi101 suggests to 1.7-esque terrain? That's just what 1.7 gen was missing. I think a little evening out will be just fine as well, sometimes it was hard to find a suitable building spot with pre-1.8. And that, in sum, is basically what this is suggesting, correct? Somewhat less extreme than 1.7 terrain generation with biomes (call it height variation if you want, same thing to me.)
I don't know why this suggestion hasn't already been implemented. Especially if current custom world gens large biomes and superflat are kept as is, I don't know what anyone could complain about.
Btw, whoever thinks the current gen is "realistic" must live in a really, really boring place, terrain wise. Where I live the terrain is much more like, well, this suggestion, and people travel from all over the world to see this terrain. Even I appreciate it and I'm no hiker or scenery lover. To me, this suggestion would be truly realistic, yet pleasantly so. Adventurously so.
Basically, let's do it!
Rainfall, Temperature, and Geology control the Biome type, these factors are generated by the terrain generator as maps.
Geology would control things like hill-creation, as well as lava and some ores underground.
Rainfall: controls the generation of rivers and ravines in an area, as well as trees, other flora, and whether or not grass will generate and sustain itself in the sun. Sand would be the predominant thing usually.
Temperature would control whether life could exist in otherwise hospitable environments, If the temperature was too high, dirt and grass would generate as sand, too low, and it starts snowing instead of raining.
Geology would generate in a very sharp, fractal-ish way, high-geology areas would have mountains, or even floating mountains, low geology ones would be oceans. Diamonds would be present in higher numbers, as would lava and extreme caves.
Temperature would have random areas that are extremely hot, usually deserts if they are on land. these propogate heat to further-away areas, but to different degrees based on the Geology.
In areas of low Geology, temperature propogates but does not get stuck anywhere during generation, this makes flat areas very uniform in temperature, being most likely all very close to eachother, but making biomes spread out over a huge area.
temperature would also bleed into oceans, where it would essentially rush out into the oceanic void, stabilizing the temperature near beaches. Since during the terrain generation, temperature would spawn randomly, oceans would usually be fairly equal in temp, having no resistance to changing during the generation step of spreading temperature around.
Rainfall would Generate based on Temperature and Geology, the higher the temperature and lower the geology, the higher the rainfall generated.
It would move then spread in much the same way as temperature and move very slowly through high-geology areas, but very quickly through low-geology ones. this would likely cause mountains to get a lot of it.
Ravines, Caves, "mud-slide" trenches in mountains, lakes, and a lot of other features would generate based on rain fall and geology.
one major problem would be, of course, how to generate the world on-the-fly in this manner.
so, geology is independent, it relies on nothing but randomness.
temp. is dependent on geology and propagates in a Path-finding manner, however this can be easily compensated for by generating huge areas around the player for geology, say, a radius of 3072 (after all, it shouldn't be that tough to generate a giant fractal).
then generating temperature in an area that would be un-observable to the area outside where geology exists. so, perhaps, assuming that temperature has a maximum range of effect of 1024 over ocean from its spawnpoint, the temperature spawns could be generated up to 2048 away, then spread inward or outward, all areas within 1024 would be locked to the temperature they had reached. regardless of how the world was explored, temperature would generate the same.
finally, rainfall would be generated within the finalized area of temperature, and spread based on geology all the way to 2048 and all the way inward to the chunks being loaded.
the default geology would be 1, it could get very high in some areas, creating giant mountains, floating islands, lava-falls or if there is rainfall, swiss-cheese caves on the surface. a geology of 1.1 would be sufficient to generate a beach. a plains or swamp might have a geology of 1.1-2. while mountains would be more like 10, 20, or higher.
the default temp of the world would be 10, a temp spawn would start with a temp of +-10,000,000 in one square block, and spread to a larger area.
any given square block would have a geology/1,000,000 to generate a temperature spawn.
any temperature spawn would automatically reduce in magnitude proportional to the geology it spawned in, this is so that mountains don't generate with +-1000s of temperature, a geology score of 20 would still be enough to make a cold-spawn only spread over a 100-block-wide area though, and so the temperature would change by an average of -50 in that area. of course, there would be an average of 20 extreme regions like that in a given square km of that area. whereas an ocean would generate each square km with an average of +-2.5 from a given spawn, and the spawns would mostly cancel each-other out.
spawns themselves would not completely randomly select, they would do so based on a large-scale fractal, making some areas warmer for multiple km, and others cooler. snow biomes would usually only occur in areas where most of the temperature spawns affecting an area turned were cold, either by randomness, or more often by the larger probability fractal.
rainfall would then generate as (temp^2)/(2^geology) meaning that, while oceans and swamps generate rainfall, mountains generate essentially zero. rainfall generation would automatically capped at not going negative (in the case of frozen areas.)
rainfall would also spread in a very similar manner to temperature, except that it would "finalize" more with higher geology. every generation tick would "finalize" geology / 2048 of the rainfall in a given square block. up to 1000 ticks. this could make mountains and hills very rainy in some cases, most likely turning them to rain-forest.
Extreme biomes could generate in certain exceptional cases:
if the temperature exceeds 50, peaceful mobs no longer spawn. Water does not naturally generate on the surface. Grass and mycelium will revert to dirt above sea-level. dirt will slowly revert to sand if not exposed to water
if the temperature exceeds 70, water has a chance of boiling away.
if the rainfall exceeds 1000, lakes will generate in most low areas, the biome will resemble swamp, and slimes spawn in abundance, normal mobs don't spawn, and lots of short shrubs that inhibit movement spawn everywhere. Rain generates puddles of non-spawn water as well, wiping out torches, etc.
if the geology exceeds 40, very bizzare and complicated mountains form, grass does not spawn, and gravel is very common, no animals or plants grow here. lava will be a very common site on the surface, and most land will be shaded by overhangs and floating islands.
if temperature somehow exceeds 90, all surface water instantly evaporates as in the Nether. Rainfall also generates a thick steamy cloud of fog that lowers the light-level significantly, usually low enough that hostile mobs can spawn.
if the temperature is below -30, grass and mycelium revert to dirt if placed above or at sea-level. the lower the temperature, the more often they revert. they can still grow, however, so these biomes will most-likely be coated in occasional splotches of grass. Leaves other than spruce automatically decay even on the tree.
if the temperature is below -60, spruce leaves will automatically decay, and a layer of snow blocks will pile up if it snows. water touching air above sea-level will near-instantly turn to ice.
if the temperature, god-forbid, ever reaches -100 or lower, an ice-shelf will form, causing massive amounts of ice to go up to 20, 30, or even 50 meters above the glacier-crushed ground (which would not have any dirt, and be up to 10 blocks lower in terms of stone.).
if the rainfall is below 10, grass will start to decay into dirt above sea-level. dirt will also slowly decay into sand.
all this would basically generate:
A: highly realistic terrain.
B: some extremely flat terrain, alongside vast mountains, some of which could be just highlands and hills, others could be massive peaks with caves and interiors and spires and floating islands.
C: A good, less repetitive direction sense, and the ability to semi-predict terrain and continents hundreds of blocks out. yet still sometimes run into great surprises, such as giant mountains, a glacier, a valley with a separate biome inside (such as a desert encircled by hills, surrounded in plains)
D: a good border between biomes, it is extremely unlikely, with a system like this one, that deserts would ever generate within 500 meters of a snow-biome except if there were quite a few mountains in between (it would still be highly unlikely though).
Sounds good in theory. In practice I foresee it adding unnecessary labor to a cpu to run those calculations on even an five minute interval.
Highly realistic terrain is not what I support.
Fantasy terrain is much more worthy of my labors, realistic is what I see every day I look outside or go hiking.
I totally agree with flat... only if there is some not-so-flat terrain to survey it.
Biome patterning is something that should be considered... but there is some irony of a snow biome between two jungles... minecraft being a fantasy world. (it does have dungeons and a dragon... realistic kinda flies out the window.)
Those are my thoughts on it...
I'd rather get some fancy terrain that also takes advantage of the new height, maybe they can then consider true underground caverns. Not the current superworm maze underground.
Realistic? Nah, that won't bring back the wonder of what a new seed has in store would bring.
If only that stopped them. It's crazy how many people are willing to b*tch just so they can act like their defending Mojangs "honor".
And lets not forget the Neither. It's all but forgotten. It's just as plain and boring now as it was during the 2010 Halloween Update.