Minecraft Forums

The list of changes in the weekly build had me pretty excited to see it in action. And in some ways it is a step in the right direction for terrain generation. But it's got some issue.

One thing I noticed while wandering around is that there were far more rocky mounds, uncovered by any soil or sand, than I was used to seeing. I don't know if this was intentional or a consequence of the recent tinkering but it's truly fugly.

I like the apparent added shades of color between the swamp biome and surrounding terrain. The issue here is that the transition distance is the same as the old so there's this abrupt color wipe instead of a smooth transition between biomes. It's different, but I wouldn't say it's better than what was there before. Work with your biome code to surround biomes in ecotones that incorporate elements from both biomes and color fading that is smooth and has space to play out. These ecotone wrappers around the biomes should be large, all in all probably about the size of the biome itself. (This would go a long way to addressing my long standing gripe that, even now, biomes are a bit too small. I have proposed doubling their current size and ecotones would nicely work with that request without actually increasing the size of primary biomes.)

I enjoyed the newer, more dynamic terrain generation, over all, though I had some reservations with how it was implemented. First off, I didn't see much evidence that it was biome specific. The trouble with this is that grassy savannahs are supposed to be more or less flat. In several test maps I saw large rolling hills that utterly defeated the purpose of having a savannah. Deserts as well should be primarily flat, though more terrain dynamic would be acceptable there than the savannah. All in all, while the terrain is more dynamic over all, it has become a mishmash of nonstop hills that has somewhat defeated the purpose of the tweaking. For the hills to seem special, you need flatter areas to contrast with and these flatter areas should be taken in context with the mentioned biome traits.

I was very excited to see beaches were returning! Then I saw the patchy sand splattering that does not follow the coast line well at all. Again, step in the right direction but it needs some serious tinkering.

Thoughts? Suggestions? Random acts of fanboy hatred?