What's the major issue with the post 1.8 Minecraft update? It's not things like potions and enchantment. Those things aren't always seen. It's not dragons, endermen, mooshrooms, or snow golems. Those are rare or man-made. It's the terrain generation. The idea behind it is great, and I love how the new biomes are all distinct from one another. But what is the issue? What makes everything feel the same? What would you guys change in the terrain generation? Reverting to pre-1.8 is not a good answer. I'm looking for an intelligent discussion, not a barbaric old versus new flame war that far too many topics devolve into on this board. What's the best way for minecraft to make progress?
what most people want;
remove the mountain biome and add mountains to every biome except grassland and desert (for villages to spawn). bring back the transition biomes like beaches, savanna, etc. this way we wont have ugly formations like an ice waste right next to a desert. make it snow in other places like on top of mountain and in forests and we'll have a great terrain generator.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
No, there has never, ever been a sandbox game with a story or ending... except Grand Theft Auto... and Saints Row... and Red Dead Redemption... and Crack Down... and Assassins Creed...
They could expand biomes like we have now and keep a couple flat biomes, but otherwise 1.7.3 terrain was pretty spot on.
Also remove oceans. Why limit the world with a big lot of pointless nothing? You used to be able to travel/explore to your hearts content, now you hit an ocean and well that's it may as well turn around. Not to mention everything looks pretty much the same anyway so why go anywhere unless you run out of resources or caves to explore.
Give us variation, I could not care less if it makes no sense, if I wanted reality i'd go outside or poke myself in the eyes. I want to go out on an expedition and find some kick ass landscape that begs me to start a new base, 1.7.3 had that.
edit - bare mountains were a bad idea, rivers awesome, huge lakes are awesome, oceans are retarded, ravines awesome, beaches awesome, lagoons awesome, love swamps, etc etc
If you are going to make a comment about the terrain generator not being finished, then you should expect a confirmation from Mojang that they will continue to fix the terain generator regardless if sales slow on the game. That's what this bickering is all about really. They are calling this a full game and they have claimed that the terain gen tweaks would be "finished" by full release.
Well if this is going to be what the finished terain gen is going to remotely look like then without a mod, a lot of people are going to quit Minecraft. This is a serious subject that I cannot fathom how horrible of a decision it would be to sweep this situation under the rug. It will not blow over. The poll has shown that there is a 78 percent disapproval rating of the new terrain generator. You just cannot account for that kind of a response to error.
In my time on this forum, I have NEVER seen the amount of disapproval from the community. I'm not stupid. I know that people will complain about every update. What makes this situation so different is that there is not only a majority disapproval, but there is a massive majority disapproval the likes of which no update has ever seen. They just can't ignore this, we deserve changes.
They said they would be more open with us about future releases. Well where is the future plans for the game. By now if Mojang was really cooperating with the community they would have made a LONG post responding to the community about upcoming features like every other community based game does. They need to step up to the plate and start taking Minecraft serious or their core playerbase might just fall apart and it will be their fault and not the players.
I think one reasonable observation is: in 1.73 and earlier, there was effectively one "terrain generator" that received all the attention of the developer. Now, there are several biomes, and the effort of the developer is split between all of them, with mixed success because each biome has a separate algorithm for details such as topography. Most of the new biomes need work to become as interesting as the old terrain, but it's just a matter of them getting some attention.
Some details, like the sand on ocean floors just being a smattering of randomly sized and placed circles, are just embarrassing. Many sophomore programmers could invent or find a better-looking idea for surface decoration. Obviously transitions such as beaches and the large, monotonous areas need work as well. Oceans also have poorly thought out interactions with caves and mineshafts because of the newly increased water depth.
Swamps could benefit from things like a new tree type somewhere between the current small and big tree, more terrain variation such as small hills or overhangs where the water has cut into the shoreline. It's possible to make swamp trees have larger roots, like mangroves. Also, there's the frequent criticism of the abrupt and jarring color transitions.
Grasslands, snow biomes and deserts share the problem of lack of variation, and obviously forested mountains and foothills are missing. Pine forests also need something to distinguish them, possibly an altitude transition from deciduous trees at low altitude to pine trees higher up?
In general, if each new biome individually gets the same attention and effort that was put into the original terrain generator, we should be in great shape.
There's been good progress on some things, though!
The new fractal biome edges are a great, and 1.0 has a much richer subterranean world than 1.7.3, with the better balanced mineshafts, ravines, and wider and more common cave systems.
- Make oceans a lot smaller. We need space to build, and going by boat to find more land for that can take from 20 minutes to 1 hour. Plus it removes the point of the Nether for fast travel, since you always end up at an ocean. I don't see how they make the game more fun since they're not interesting at all, just less space to play.
- Remove the mountain biome and make the other biomes extremely random again. Do I even need to explain this one?
I recall being a nice discussion on reddit about this.
There was a guy who came up with a system to make rivers flow from high altitude to oceans, basically like in real life : imagine a small pound on a mountain and there's this river flowing to the sea.
Notch's response to that was something along these lines "yes it's cool but i'm not gonna implement it unless it has an impact on gameplay".
I suspect Notch couldn't care less about current biomes being boring, based on what he said that time.
Damn, Notch wants to forget creativity and awesome landscape (both things that made MC successful) for "gameplay" (crappy combat). I'm glad Jeb took over.
Like most people, I feel that the biome archetypes are too strict and distinct from each other. The problem lies in the fact that they are hard-coded. The many different types of landscape aren't allowed to mingle.
What Notch should have done for the land-based biomes is mapped 4 different attributes:
Then generate the terrain based upon the magnitude of each of those. There wouldn't be preset numbers for these attributes or preset biomes for certain attribute combinations to fall into. Each simply affects the way the landscape is drawn.
An area with high terrain variability has very erratic terrain. Steep hills, deep valleys, cliffs, etc. Low terrain variability means flatter terrain, though not necessarily at sea level.
Areas with low temperatures would mean snow and ice. Areas with higher temperatures would preclude that. Temperature would affect which plants and animals are likely to be found there.
Areas with a low amount of wetness would be more like deserts or tundras. Trees and certain livestock probably wouldn't appear in these areas (other vegetation and animals would, though). Areas with high amounts of wetness would be swamps or jungles or wetlands or very snowy areas (depending on temperature, vegetation).
Areas with lots of vegetation would be similar to forests, dense jungles, or heavily-shrubbed deserts. Low vegetation would be more like plains or tundras. Again, which animals show up and how abundant they are would be affected by this.
Anyways, that's just a basic example of what could have been done. The point is that having a preset number of biomes and randomly selecting between them isn't what procedural generation is about. Creating a 4-dimensional matrix and creating landscapes based upon where they plot into that is a much better way of doing it.
remove the mountain biome and add mountains to every biome except grassland and desert (for villages to spawn). bring back the transition biomes like beaches, savanna, etc. this way we wont have ugly formations like an ice waste right next to a desert. make it snow in other places like on top of mountain and in forests and we'll have a great terrain generator.
I suspect there will be mods soon enough for those that prefer another method.
After all, there has to be a "Vanilla" generator, and that is whatever notch and jeb want it to be. You can't make everyone happy.
Also remove oceans. Why limit the world with a big lot of pointless nothing? You used to be able to travel/explore to your hearts content, now you hit an ocean and well that's it may as well turn around. Not to mention everything looks pretty much the same anyway so why go anywhere unless you run out of resources or caves to explore.
Give us variation, I could not care less if it makes no sense, if I wanted reality i'd go outside or poke myself in the eyes. I want to go out on an expedition and find some kick ass landscape that begs me to start a new base, 1.7.3 had that.
edit - bare mountains were a bad idea, rivers awesome, huge lakes are awesome, oceans are retarded, ravines awesome, beaches awesome, lagoons awesome, love swamps, etc etc
In this community. And this community has devolved to one whiny post after another. I don't take much stock in polls here.
Well if this is going to be what the finished terain gen is going to remotely look like then without a mod, a lot of people are going to quit Minecraft. This is a serious subject that I cannot fathom how horrible of a decision it would be to sweep this situation under the rug. It will not blow over. The poll has shown that there is a 78 percent disapproval rating of the new terrain generator. You just cannot account for that kind of a response to error.
In my time on this forum, I have NEVER seen the amount of disapproval from the community. I'm not stupid. I know that people will complain about every update. What makes this situation so different is that there is not only a majority disapproval, but there is a massive majority disapproval the likes of which no update has ever seen. They just can't ignore this, we deserve changes.
They said they would be more open with us about future releases. Well where is the future plans for the game. By now if Mojang was really cooperating with the community they would have made a LONG post responding to the community about upcoming features like every other community based game does. They need to step up to the plate and start taking Minecraft serious or their core playerbase might just fall apart and it will be their fault and not the players.
http://www.minecraftforum.net/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=155932
Crates
http://www.minecraftforum.net/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=239467
Item Scrolling
http://www.minecraftforum.net/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=174539
Some details, like the sand on ocean floors just being a smattering of randomly sized and placed circles, are just embarrassing. Many sophomore programmers could invent or find a better-looking idea for surface decoration. Obviously transitions such as beaches and the large, monotonous areas need work as well. Oceans also have poorly thought out interactions with caves and mineshafts because of the newly increased water depth.
Swamps could benefit from things like a new tree type somewhere between the current small and big tree, more terrain variation such as small hills or overhangs where the water has cut into the shoreline. It's possible to make swamp trees have larger roots, like mangroves. Also, there's the frequent criticism of the abrupt and jarring color transitions.
Grasslands, snow biomes and deserts share the problem of lack of variation, and obviously forested mountains and foothills are missing. Pine forests also need something to distinguish them, possibly an altitude transition from deciduous trees at low altitude to pine trees higher up?
In general, if each new biome individually gets the same attention and effort that was put into the original terrain generator, we should be in great shape.
There's been good progress on some things, though!
The new fractal biome edges are a great, and 1.0 has a much richer subterranean world than 1.7.3, with the better balanced mineshafts, ravines, and wider and more common cave systems.
- Make oceans a lot smaller. We need space to build, and going by boat to find more land for that can take from 20 minutes to 1 hour. Plus it removes the point of the Nether for fast travel, since you always end up at an ocean. I don't see how they make the game more fun since they're not interesting at all, just less space to play.
- Remove the mountain biome and make the other biomes extremely random again. Do I even need to explain this one?
Damn, Notch wants to forget creativity and awesome landscape (both things that made MC successful) for "gameplay" (crappy combat). I'm glad Jeb took over.
What Notch should have done for the land-based biomes is mapped 4 different attributes:
-Terrain Variability
-Temperature
-Wetness/Aridity
-Vegetation
Then generate the terrain based upon the magnitude of each of those. There wouldn't be preset numbers for these attributes or preset biomes for certain attribute combinations to fall into. Each simply affects the way the landscape is drawn.
An area with high terrain variability has very erratic terrain. Steep hills, deep valleys, cliffs, etc. Low terrain variability means flatter terrain, though not necessarily at sea level.
Areas with low temperatures would mean snow and ice. Areas with higher temperatures would preclude that. Temperature would affect which plants and animals are likely to be found there.
Areas with a low amount of wetness would be more like deserts or tundras. Trees and certain livestock probably wouldn't appear in these areas (other vegetation and animals would, though). Areas with high amounts of wetness would be swamps or jungles or wetlands or very snowy areas (depending on temperature, vegetation).
Areas with lots of vegetation would be similar to forests, dense jungles, or heavily-shrubbed deserts. Low vegetation would be more like plains or tundras. Again, which animals show up and how abundant they are would be affected by this.
Anyways, that's just a basic example of what could have been done. The point is that having a preset number of biomes and randomly selecting between them isn't what procedural generation is about. Creating a 4-dimensional matrix and creating landscapes based upon where they plot into that is a much better way of doing it.