For the people favoring biome-biome transitions as the terrain feature most in need of improvement, are you just considering the current Swamp issue, or is it a more broad issue of needing a greater distance for all transition to take place over? I know there are some complaints, particularly related to deserts, which generally go along the lines of perceiving abrupt transitions into/out of desert as especially aesthetically displeasing.
I don't see this as much of an issue for other biomes. With the forests, if the variation in tree density that I suggested were implemented, transitions out of forest could easily be perceived as part of the natural variation within the biome. Plains must certainly be the easiest transition to make, though foliage coloration can be easily detected. Ocean could use a bit more of a border in transitions, this would solve some of the percieved loss of beaches if Ocean transitions were rich in Sand/Gravel (and give a place for some Coconut Palm trees to grow).
I was playing the 1.9 pre-release 3, and I went to the nether to collect materials to try making potions. Anyway, the ground all around the nether side of the portal was all soul sand. So I started walking toward some nether ruins I saw in the distance. It was taking forever to get there, even while sprinting. Anyway, the point is, there was a ledge that I had to jump up on to continue, so I jumped while sprinting on the soul sand, and flew forward at the speed you go while sprinting on any other surface in the game. It's a much faster way to get around the nether, but I figured I should say something so they can fix it. Have fun with it while you can before the next release comes out :wink.gif:.
Edit: In Layman's terms, you go faster on soul sand when you sprint and jump.
I'm pretty sure sprinting and jumping is the magic for fast, the soul sand has nothing to do with it. When sprinting was new I remember seeing videos about building runways that had a ceiling you jumped against to make super fast sprinting possible.
I'm a bit surprised to see so many votes in favor of "all biomes need significant updates." I'll take that to mean the weather and topographical changes that would apply to all biomes as a general improvement.
Can someone drop me a line on if a pre-1.7.3 world can generate strongholds? I've been slowly expanding the borders in my only world, both overworld and Nether, hoping to see a fortress, village or stronghold come in so I can get ahold of Blaze Rods and such. I'm running the 1.9.3 Prerelease 3.
I'm up to a 42 MB world, I've got a ton of abandoned mines, but no stronghold yet, and nothing in the Nether so far, according to MCMAP Live, which is up to indicating Lapis Lazuli, dispensers and repeaters, but nothing new after that.
Any thoughts?
Strongholds are very rare, currently with a limit of 3 per seed. If the seed your world has become would have had strongholds in the 1.7 area, it may take a great deal of expansion. Additionally, they can be entirely subterranian, so you may have generated three of them and not known, because there were no observable structures (unless you've been "x-ray" scanning underground, then its the first reason).
Villages are most commonly found in Desert and Grassland, they're not terribly uncommon. I'd guesstimate 15-20% of those two biomes will have one, just keep looking.
... nothing official means for me no update because my server like 1000's of others is based on Bukkit with out an official update Bukkit will NOT update.
You're arguing that you want to update your SMP server every week? Most admins would hate that, and it would mean no persistant world for the players.
If you want the latest, bug ridden, unfinished, unpolished version of the game, get over the fact that your mods aren't all going to be compatible.
One of my favorite things about Minecraft is observing what the terrain generator can come up with, and imagining uses for these different landscapes. With each update to the terrain generator I have explored and observed dozens of worlds, with recent updates it has been hundreds. There is always room for improvement in what can or should be possible, and some improvements are more needed than others.
There have been many threads related to one or another biome in need of further attention, but with limited time for work on any one aspect of the game, which is/are most in need? Aside from changes to the flora and fauna of biomes, which general features of the terrain/map generator are most in need of fine tuning or being altogether updated?
For the biomes most in need of attention I would list the top three as:
Ocean: I am pleased that we now have a proper Ocean biome, but it is severely lacking in content.
Basic flora and fauna need to be added such as Kelp and Crabs.
Some secondary flora and fauna, Coral (superfluous but colorful) (put sponges back in?), and Jellyfish (a slow but dangerous "predator").
An excellent location for another adventure location, such as shipwrecks (since villages or strongholds may be innapropriate)( but this can wait for later).
Swamp: It is a biome type that was needed, and has recieved moderate development, some features need to be tweaked.
Transitions here were obviously in need of fixing.
A new tree type might be more appropriate than just recoloring (a lower priority).
Passive mobs seem out of place in a swamp.
Mushroom: Is an amusing new rare biome with unique features, it needs minor touch-ups.
A secondary type of foliage might be needed, perhaps even a second animal type, both fairly low priority.
From most to least important, the major issues I have with how the world is made (aside of bleak Oceans) are predominantly in the general terrain features:
Topography Variation: most biomes appears to be sculpted with very little variation in their topography.
Some features need this strict restriction, such as the river transition, and to some extent the Swamp biome. Most do not.
The Mountain biome should be the extreme, stony barren heights under high erosion. However, other biomes, particularly the forests and desert, should be capable of being extremely hilly as well as flat - they are currently only flat - they used to exhibit extreme heights and should do so again.
Vertical Limit: the Y limit of Minecraft is miniscule compared to its horizontal axes.
There is so much potential for Minecraft with a more realistic vertical limit, both in providing a proper canvas/sandbox for sculptors and builders, as well as in rendering lifelike landscapes.
I'll provide some numbers to put this in perspective:
Compare the Vertical limit of Minecraft (comparing the 64 blocks above sea level):
Sears Tower, 442m tall, tallest skyscraper in North America, (6.9*Minecraft).
Burj Khalifa, 828m tall, tallest manmade structure on Earth, (12.9*Minecraft).
Mont Blanc, 4,810m tall, highest mt. in the Alps, (75.2*Minecraft).
Mount Elbert, 4,401m tall, highest mt. in the Rockies, (68.8*Minecraft).
Mount Everest, 8,848m tall, highest mountain on Earth, (138.3*Minecraft).
Olympus Mons, 22km tall, highest known mountain in our solar system, (344*Minecraft). To the Horizontal Limit of Minecraft:
Minecraft X*Z covers an area of 576 million square kilometers of world.
Earth has a surface area of 510 million square kilometers.
While I think the payoff for increasing the vertical limit of Minecraft would be immense, I sadly do not expect this great improvement to actually happen, even though it should be a much greater priority than the folks at Mojang give it.
Weather: similar to the topographical variation, I think the distribution of snow:rain should be greatly changed.
The type of precipitation should have little to do with the terrain/biome. Perhaps none given the present array of biomes. Snowfall should be possible in any biome, with higher probability in some such as Mountain or Pine Forest.
Only Tropical Forest biome, which I am not certain exists anymore, should be excluded from the possibility of snowfall.
The sad current state of things are that only one biome exhibits snow, and does so 100% of the time. This biome should not exist at all, being nothing more than Plains with permafrost.
Tree Density: a similar problem to that above, treecover density should be more variant within any type of biome.
The placement of trees should be a varaible with great scale. Forests of all types should exhibit variation in the range of tree-tree proximity.
Secondary foliage (tallgrass, ferns, flowers) could have density countering that of the trees.
Biome Types: some have been lost that should come back, one or two we have now are unnecessary (if some of the above changes are implemented).
The current snow biome is unnecessary if better weather mechanics are implemented.
The current "Extreme Hills" biome could be replaced with a Mountain biome that exibits steep rocky snow capped peaks - if proper topographical variation is introduced to other biomes.
The Tropical Forest could be brought back into the current array of 9 biomes with the elimination of the redundant "snow" biome we currently have.
Better yet, we could have an array of 16 biomes instead of 9, making room for additional realistic or fantastic biomes.
*ps*
An additional excellent idea that cromlathe brought up was additional diversity in some of the biome categories. For example, we have already experienced several distinct types of forests (arboreal biomes). That kind of diversity could be applied to arid biomes to give us several kinds of deserts, as well as wetland biomes and oceanic biomes.
Quote from Dragonid »
They could be divided into these groups within their type: Arid: having three major distictions.
Dunes: being very much like the Desert we have now, with predominantly Sand covering the ground with perhaps a layer of Gravel under it, sparse Dead Bushes, and uncommon Cactus. No dirt or trees, except perhaps adjacent to rare oases.
This type of arid biome is reminiscent of cliche deserts, and the Sahara or Arabian deserts.
Rocky: would predominantly have Gravel cover followed by Stone and Sand in amounts roughly equal to one another - there could be a wide variance in the density of Cactus and Dead Bushes - trees would be uncommon.
This type of desert would be much like the GreatBasin of the southwestern US or parts of mostother deserts.
Verdant: representing those deserts and arid regions that are covered in foliage adapted to low precipitation - a mix of Sand, Gravel and Grass - dense Cactus, moderate Tallgrass and Dead Bushes, occasional trees.
Swamp: much as we have it today, with greater variation in tree density ranging upward from what we presently have.
Marsh: predominantly full of reeds / cattails, a variation on Sugarcane mechanics that grows in the shallow waters (1-2 deep) up to 3-4 blocks above water level, and is generally devoid of trees.
Having a set of oceanic biomes, rather than just one Ocean biome, would be very nice. Oceans being entirely barren and in need of some kind of content probably distracted me from the idea that was brought up earlier about desert and wetland diversity being applied to oceans as well. The oceans we have now are temperate, ocean diversity would be nice (in the same way that we have arboreal diversity with several kinds of forest).
There could be the temperate oceans we have, plus an 'arctic' variety with icebergs polar bears and walruses, and the one that I think a lot of people look forward to, tropical ocean, with corals and abundant small sealife like crabs, jellyfish, and all manner of little colorful fishes.
More importantly than sheep, which produce a unique resource in wool, that can be dyed to the users liking. Pigs need to drop a resource that makes them worth the trouble. I would think adding Bacon to be more important.
Bacon could harden ones arteries (making one/all of the hunger icons go white) temporarily, preventing hunger from falling no matter what intense activity is undertaken. As everyone knows, a hearty helping of bacon not only sustains ones body, but also the spirit. Overindulgence, however, should have some drawback.
Me too. If they stay in Ender they can be badass and destroy the terrain when they attack. If they show up in the regular world that kind of destruction is going to annoy people more than Endermen ever did. Plus it gives more reasons for people to want to go there.
But dragons are in the overworld too, as seen in some screenshots... I don't know... I'm pretty confused.
Enderdragons are to be found in the Ender. I really hope they never show up in default Minecraftia, so they can be badass and destroy things without pissing everyone off.
I don't know what differences there are "supposed" to be between the default world and Ender, that original screenshot could have just been a different night sky. The new ones with dragon models are just that, somewhere to plop the model so they can show off the model, not the Ender.
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Sadly, that ought to mean the only one they don't show up in is "Extreme Hills" biome.
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The two bimes villages are most commonly found in are Desert and Plains, with roughly equal distribution. I've seen a couple in Swamp as well.
Here are some seeds with a village near the spawn, the notes I took don't always tell me which biome it was in:
Those are the seeds I've noted with villages.
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I don't see this as much of an issue for other biomes. With the forests, if the variation in tree density that I suggested were implemented, transitions out of forest could easily be perceived as part of the natural variation within the biome. Plains must certainly be the easiest transition to make, though foliage coloration can be easily detected. Ocean could use a bit more of a border in transitions, this would solve some of the percieved loss of beaches if Ocean transitions were rich in Sand/Gravel (and give a place for some Coconut Palm trees to grow).
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I'm pretty sure sprinting and jumping is the magic for fast, the soul sand has nothing to do with it. When sprinting was new I remember seeing videos about building runways that had a ceiling you jumped against to make super fast sprinting possible.
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Strongholds are very rare, currently with a limit of 3 per seed. If the seed your world has become would have had strongholds in the 1.7 area, it may take a great deal of expansion. Additionally, they can be entirely subterranian, so you may have generated three of them and not known, because there were no observable structures (unless you've been "x-ray" scanning underground, then its the first reason).
Villages are most commonly found in Desert and Grassland, they're not terribly uncommon. I'd guesstimate 15-20% of those two biomes will have one, just keep looking.
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You're arguing that you want to update your SMP server every week? Most admins would hate that, and it would mean no persistant world for the players.
If you want the latest, bug ridden, unfinished, unpolished version of the game, get over the fact that your mods aren't all going to be compatible.
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You mean, except for several threads dozens of pages long in which the topic has been hotly debated?
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There have been many threads related to one or another biome in need of further attention, but with limited time for work on any one aspect of the game, which is/are most in need? Aside from changes to the flora and fauna of biomes, which general features of the terrain/map generator are most in need of fine tuning or being altogether updated?
For the biomes most in need of attention I would list the top three as:
From most to least important, the major issues I have with how the world is made (aside of bleak Oceans) are predominantly in the general terrain features:
Sears Tower, 442m tall, tallest skyscraper in North America, (6.9*Minecraft).
Burj Khalifa, 828m tall, tallest manmade structure on Earth, (12.9*Minecraft).
Mont Blanc, 4,810m tall, highest mt. in the Alps, (75.2*Minecraft).
Mount Elbert, 4,401m tall, highest mt. in the Rockies, (68.8*Minecraft).
Mount Everest, 8,848m tall, highest mountain on Earth, (138.3*Minecraft).
Olympus Mons, 22km tall, highest known mountain in our solar system, (344*Minecraft).
To the Horizontal Limit of Minecraft:
Minecraft X*Z covers an area of 576 million square kilometers of world.
Earth has a surface area of 510 million square kilometers.
*ps*
An additional excellent idea that cromlathe brought up was additional diversity in some of the biome categories. For example, we have already experienced several distinct types of forests (arboreal biomes). That kind of diversity could be applied to arid biomes to give us several kinds of deserts, as well as wetland biomes and oceanic biomes.
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Ocean's need some lovin' first.
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Bacon could harden ones arteries (making one/all of the hunger icons go white) temporarily, preventing hunger from falling no matter what intense activity is undertaken. As everyone knows, a hearty helping of bacon not only sustains ones body, but also the spirit. Overindulgence, however, should have some drawback.
1
Me too. If they stay in Ender they can be badass and destroy the terrain when they attack. If they show up in the regular world that kind of destruction is going to annoy people more than Endermen ever did. Plus it gives more reasons for people to want to go there.
0
Enderdragons are to be found in the Ender. I really hope they never show up in default Minecraftia, so they can be badass and destroy things without pissing everyone off.
I don't know what differences there are "supposed" to be between the default world and Ender, that original screenshot could have just been a different night sky. The new ones with dragon models are just that, somewhere to plop the model so they can show off the model, not the Ender.
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He moved the parts of the model (head/neck) around a bit to make it have a more menacing appearance as well.
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Pretty sure they're just obsidian. I'm more interested in why are they there?