If you don't already follow Notch on twitter, you don't know about every detail about the rivers. He is also working heavily on biomes, specifically very large (HUGE) bodies of waters, and very large biomes to associate with the land mass.
I think it is bloody amazing! We can finally make realistic RPGs
Actually, I just realized I messed up my earlier calculations. I somehow did an accidental m-> km tranlation, which made my calcualtion s nonsensical, and I resorted to estimating based on river pixels.
Corrected version:
a chunk is 16x16, or 256 blocks of surface area. 256*70,000 = 17920000 m^2, or a 4233km per side, if it was square. The map is 1765x994, or 1,754,410 pixels. This translates to 10 blocks per pixel, so each pixel is approx a 3x3 area. the image is therefor 5658x3180, approx 5.7kmx3.2km, for a surface atrea of 18.24 km^2
The river is approxamately 20 to 30 blocks wide. the river is approxamately 3 or 4 pixels wide. This gives a scale of roughly 7 blocks per pixel. The image is 1765x994, , which means it is 12.3kmx6.9km, for a surface area of 85 km^2.
the entire island is approximately 3.4 kilometers long then, and crossing 5 biomes gives an approximate size of 680 meters per biome
This estimate is right around the factor of 2 error I had guess from operating off river pixels.
A minecart's max speed is 8m/s. This means it will take approx 85 seconds, or a minute and a half, to cross a biome via minecart. On foot, it is approx double that, or 3 minutes, without accounting for slowdown due to terrain.
Traversing across the entire island by minecart would take 7 minutes, or 14 minutes on foot. Since a minecraft day only lasts 10 minutes, you will not be able to cross the entirety of the island in a single day without braving the night.
Sprinting may reduce these travel times.
I'd say this sounds like a good balance. A biome has some heft to it, without being unmanageable.
Tweets:
notch Markus Persson
Deep oceans; check.
7 hours ago
notch Markus Persson
But the bigger the islands are, the bigger the biomes can be. And deserts want to be big.
7 hours ago
notch Markus Persson
Trying to balance gameplay against scale is interesting. I can do HUGE oceans with HUGE islands very easily and fast now, but it plays bad.
My question to you! Do you like the idea of larger everything?
The four textures in my picture is a small preview of my upcoming 32x RPG pack.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
A Minecraft Alpha veteran. 1.0.17 Alpha If I helped you, press the white plus in the green circle, over here >.
While this is very exciting, I don't think "bigger biomes" is exactly what we're looking at.
I'm going to quote myself from another thread, in reference to another screenshot that Notch posted.
Quote from GorgeousTaylor »
Usually, the color of leaves is dependent on biome, so the screenshot would seem flawed, as there only appears to be one biome. Similarly, snow is usually confined to taiga and tundra biomes, where it is everywhere. But I suspect Mojang has altered biome generation drastically.
If you look at the new map that Notch has tweeted, there are only three discernible biomes. One is orange, one is dark green and one is light green. Currently, there are about nine biomes on the Overworld, not three. But what has probably happened is this: Instead of nine distinct biomes, with noticeable borders, there are now three "mega-biomes", each with the features from three previous biomes. For example, the mega-biome we are seeing in this screenshot is probably the dark green one, which I will call "boreal". This one seems to have elements from forest and taiga biomes, and probably has tundra elements as well. We can assume that the orange mega-biome ("arid") would have features from the desert, plain and savannah biomes, and that the light green mega-biome ("lush") would have features from the jungle, swamp and temperate biomes.
While this is very exciting, I don't think "bigger biomes" is exactly what we're looking at.
I'm going to quote myself from another thread, in reference to another screenshot that Notch posted.
That is an incredible theory. But as it stands right now, this new has not yet spread to the front page of the forums, so there is still tweaking before he can confirm anything.
EDIT: Oh, I don't think you understand, even though there might be 3 large biomes with 9 mini biomes, the sheer size of the map is indescribable. As it stands right now, each pixel represents a chunk. Even if that were true the biomes would still be 5x larger than current.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
A Minecraft Alpha veteran. 1.0.17 Alpha If I helped you, press the white plus in the green circle, over here >.
While this is very exciting, I don't think "bigger biomes" is exactly what we're looking at.
I'm going to quote myself from another thread, in reference to another screenshot that Notch posted.
I think it is bloody amazing! We can finally make realistic RPGs
Here is some statistics about the size.
Tweets:
My question to you! Do you like the idea of larger everything?
The four textures in my picture is a small preview of my upcoming 32x RPG pack.
If I helped you, press the white plus in the green circle, over here >.
If I helped you, press the white plus in the green circle, over here >.
Yes, that would benefit us ALL.
If I helped you, press the white plus in the green circle, over here >.
See my About Me section for info about me.
I know right?
I'm going to quote myself from another thread, in reference to another screenshot that Notch posted.
That is an incredible theory. But as it stands right now, this new has not yet spread to the front page of the forums, so there is still tweaking before he can confirm anything.
EDIT: Oh, I don't think you understand, even though there might be 3 large biomes with 9 mini biomes, the sheer size of the map is indescribable. As it stands right now, each pixel represents a chunk. Even if that were true the biomes would still be 5x larger than current.
If I helped you, press the white plus in the green circle, over here >.
Thats pretty genius.
I believe that image is just a small part of that map.
If it is, then I can see 7.