My pack (which uses Misa's biome coloring template) is suffering from random pastel colors appearing in biomes following the 13w36a snapshot... so I did a little experimentation in hopes of fixing it, and found something interesting:
In this screenshot, I have my biome palette open in an image editor on the left, and a Plains biome in my MC window to the right. By adding pixels directly adjacent to the 'plains' pixel, I found that there are two other biome colors randomly interspersed in the biome, determined from the two pixels to the right of the original pixel. The indigo and cyan colors don't appear anywhere else in the biome, leading me to believe that the yellow and red pixels are the only ones randomly applied to the grass/etc. Not sure where the lime color is taken from... Also tested to work with the River biome.
I'll be running more tests to determine where the pixels for the new biomes are. sadly, I haven't the programming knowledge to actually read the game's code to figure out where they are.
Anyway, just an interesting observation. . Feel free to post any other info you have about the changes to biome shading in 13w36a!
UPDATE:
I've just about given up on this... after an hour of experimentation with the snowless Taiga biome (and about 30 edits to my colormap), the best I can come up with is this:
if you were to rotate this colormap 45° clockwise (make the colored bit stick straight up, rather than at a diagonal, like it is now) like so...
then up/down Y-axis would represent depth, with the bottom being Y=256 and the top being Y=64 and below. The X-axis is the random fluctuation in color. The X-axis changes in color seem to become more frequent the higher up you go in-game, i.e. grass at a low depth doesn't fluctuate at all, but grass at X=256 varies immensely.
It's all very confusing, and I really hope Mojang considers changing biome shading back to how it originally was. The new system seems to be geared toward their own palette, which contains about... oh, maybe three different colors. Not much room for variation.
Also, partial transparency is now disabled on all textures (ice, water, portal), unless you use fancy graphics. Why, Mojang? WHY?
for those who are wondering on how those coordinates work... its something like this.
Orange is temperature, blue is humidity. Took me like forever to figure this out... stupid me.
Anyway, now you can estimate/calculate coordinates for other than the standard values. (I needed this for custom biomes)
About desert and jungle - its true, the values would actually be outside the image - but from what I get, the values are "cropped" to a range between 1 and 0, before the are passed on:
So then this means that the coloring actually IS the temperature/humidity of the block. As you go higher up the temperature gets colder and farther down the temperature gets warmer. The humidity seems to be semi random on the xz plane, and the reason that the color fluctuates more at higher elevations is that your rainbow has parallel lines but the humidity lines fan out, so a humidity change at a higher temperature covers a larger distance on the triangle than a low temperature, causing a greater change in coloring using your rainbow.
What?!?! WHY ARE YOU ANNOYED! This is an amazing feature, this way we can add variation to the colours of the grass instead of it all being one flat colour, this is something that I wish we always had: now a proper Cube World texue pack can be made.
What?!?! WHY ARE YOU ANNOYED! This is an amazing feature, this way we can add variation to the colours of the grass instead of it all being one flat colour, this is something that I wish we always had: now a proper Cube World texue pack can be made.
Because, this:
Or you know, the first image in the thread! Mojang could have made a template for us, or I don't know, made default to be a pixel-perfect biome colormap instead of well, the one they've been using for a majority of the game that's just a basic gradient?
It used to use 11 points, they could have changed it to use an entire 128x128 image with a square grid instead of a 256x256 image with a triangular grid using only half of it.
They could have told us ahead of time saying, "hey, biome coloring is about to get a bit more complex, make sure your color maps don't have funky colors near the old points".
And no, you still can't make a "proper cube world texture pack" unless instead of item textures, you made something in your pack that, when used with a mod, made all of the items 3D voxel models. Because otherwise, people take "Cubeworld" as an excuse to make bucketfill packs. And then there are other issues with it besides that, such as mobs and non-biome recolored blocks. Minecraft isn't cubeworld. In fact, they're pretty much different types of media. It's like comparing a basic 3D textured game (say, newer GTA games) to something more stylized with shaders (like Borderlands, or better yet, Okami).
"I'm an outsider by choice, but not truly.
It’s the unpleasantness of the system that keeps me out.
I’d rather be in, in a good system. That’s where my discontent comes from:
being forced to choose to stay outside.
My advice: Just keep movin’ straight ahead.
Every now and then you find yourself in a different place."
-George Carlin
What?!?! WHY ARE YOU ANNOYED! This is an amazing feature, this way we can add variation to the colours of the grass instead of it all being one flat colour, this is something that I wish we always had: now a proper Cube World texue pack can be made.
If the way the new system works made more sense, then I wouldn't be quite as annoyed... but there's still the issue of all the biome colors crossing into eachother, which kinda forces you to use Mojang's 3-point gradient of colors, rather than having a colorful mix of biome colors.
I think it would be best if they continued to use the usual shading system, having various pixels in the map represent various biomes, but also have the 8 adjacent pixels available for choosing random variation. I really don't think height-based shading is necessary... it can, to a limited extent, be done with CTM instead.
It's all very confusing, and I really hope Mojang considers changing biome shading back to how it originally was
I really hope that mojang continues trying to add more variation to the biome colors, and doesn't revert, but makes the system work better. This is the first snapshot-- expect unfinished and broken things.
And no, you still can't make a "proper cube world texture pack" unless instead of item textures, you made something in your pack that, when used with a mod, made all of the items 3D voxel models. Because otherwise, people take "Cubeworld" as an excuse to make bucketfill packs. And then there are other issues with it besides that, such as mobs and non-biome recolored blocks. Minecraft isn't cubeworld. In fact, they're pretty much different types of media. It's like comparing a basic 3D textured game (say, newer GTA games) to something more stylized with shaders (like Borderlands, or better yet, Okami).
woah... dude you seem to be reading way more into my passing comment of a cube world pack than is entirely reasonable... I'm just saying that now having a bucket fill grass texture can look good using subtle biome colours. I definitely didn't say or even imply that MC = CW. It's an art style, is it wrong to make a classic RPG themed texture pack because minecraft isn't an RPG? No, it's just applying an art style to a game that hardly has one.
*sigh*
They add a revolutionary layering system and completely destroy biome-shading in the same update. Hope they explain how it works before actually releasing 1.7. Otherwise texture makers will go nuts for a while.
Different parts in a biome will take a color from a location on the colormap that vary a few pixels in X and Y -- so you can have nice variations in color.
Increasing elevation steadily moves the color-picking point to the right. (to the side that's "colder")
Does not sample colors outside of the traditional triangle shape.
AMPLIFIED worlds are good for seeing the elevation effect at work.
I'm going to try to make a complete color map and see if there are any other oddities, but it looks very useful as is to me.
EDIT:
This system would work a lot better if nearly all the biomes weren't nearly on that diagonal edge. You don't have any room to progress to different colors at a high frosty altitude with this setup. Biomes, like Taiga, Extreme, and mountains which could naturally show a really nice progression as the go higher are prevented from doing so by their position on the colormap.
woah... dude you seem to be reading way more into my passing comment of a cube world pack than is entirely reasonable... I'm just saying that now having a bucket fill grass texture can look good using subtle biome colours. I definitely didn't say or even imply that MC = CW. It's an art style, is it wrong to make a classic RPG themed texture pack because minecraft isn't an RPG? No, it's just applying an art style to a game that hardly has one.
I'm just trying to say that you AREN'T just trying to recreate an art style, but trying to recreate an art-style that is based on a technology nonexistent in the destination game. It's like making a borderlands texture pack because you like they art style of it, so making everything with a black outline in 16x.
I'm trying to say just because you are one *tiny* step closer to if being possible, the technologies of the 2 games are fundamentally different and thus it is a futile attempt to recreate either insider of each other. Minecraft is a 3D block-based sandbox with bitmapped textures, and Cubeworld is a 3D voxel-based RPG with voxels to actually *display* depth and have independent colors.
It's no coincidence that Cubeworld packs have so far pretty much been the worst bucket-fill packs ever, and more advanced biome coloring will not change that simplecraft fact.
Sure, more advance biome coloring could be cool, but it's annoying for now, and something tells me Mojang is going to change it again before 1.7 releases (and then maybe again in 1.8).........
It needs heavy refactoring still AND the default color maps actually need to be MADE for how the game will use it SO WE CAN ACTUALLY SEE HOW IT WORKS
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
"I'm an outsider by choice, but not truly.
It’s the unpleasantness of the system that keeps me out.
I’d rather be in, in a good system. That’s where my discontent comes from:
being forced to choose to stay outside.
My advice: Just keep movin’ straight ahead.
Every now and then you find yourself in a different place."
-George Carlin
I'm just trying to say that you AREN'T just trying to recreate an art style, but trying to recreate an art-style that is based on a technology nonexistent in the destination game. It's like making a borderlands texture pack because you like they art style of it, so making everything with a black outline in 16x.
I'm trying to say just because you are one *tiny* step closer to if being possible, the technologies of the 2 games are fundamentally different and thus it is a futile attempt to recreate either insider of each other. Minecraft is a 3D block-based sandbox with bitmapped textures, and Cubeworld is a 3D voxel-based RPG with voxels to actually *display* depth and have independent colors.
It's no coincidence that Cubeworld packs have so far pretty much been the worst bucket-fill packs ever, and more advanced biome coloring will not change that simplecraft fact.
Sure, more advance biome coloring could be cool, but it's annoying for now, and something tells me Mojang is going to change it again before 1.7 releases (and then maybe again in 1.8).........
It needs heavy refactoring still AND the default color maps actually need to be MADE for how the game will use it SO WE CAN ACTUALLY SEE HOW IT WORKS
You seem to have inferred that I am in support of bucket fill packs and that I have some intention to create/use a CW themed pack... I don't. I hate crappy simple packs as much of any of us that frequent the texture pack section of MCF, I'm just saying that now there can be a CW that has some sort of artistic/technical value instead of the crappy stuff we have now.
I'm pretty exited to see what we can figure out with this system to make the game look pretty.
Also, I don't know if anyone has noticed, but the foliage colours (at least the foliage, it might be grass as well) seems to blend to a different colour as the altitude increases. It's not a smooth transition across multiple pixels on the colourmap, just a blend between two points.
Also, I don't know if anyone has noticed, but the foliage colours (at least the foliage, it might be grass as well) seems to blend to a different colour as the altitude increases. It's not a smooth transition across multiple pixels on the colourmap, just a blend between two points.
No idea how it works, though.
Check out the post by eleazzaar up above, he explains it pretty well (the whole elevation variation thing)
Anywho, all this is very useful information but I'm sorta getting the feeling that they're (mojang) gonna change everything in one of the future snapshots so I'm holding off doing any biome tweaking now. I'm sorta hoping they do change it (and explain what they did) but also sorta not, at least if they don't tell us what they did because it will be a pain to get used to the new style.
Check out the post by eleazzaar up above, he explains it pretty well (the whole elevation variation thing)
Actually i'm less sure than when i posted-- i'm getting some results i can't easily explain with that system.
It's starting to look like the the sampling points for increasing elevation move in a curve -- it starts out moving to the right, and then starts to curve downward.
EDIT2:
It is not a curve -- it is a straight line pointing towards the bottom right corner.
EDIT:
One of the things that makes this tricky is the color you see on the grass doesn't have to be in the color map-- it shows colors that are blended. For instance you may have a color map all red and blue, but the grass may be purple. It looks like it many/most cases, the color you see is the mixture of two colors sampled from the colormap.
OK, after further minecraft science, here's how colormaps really work:
Sea level and below are colored as normal, from that single pixel on the colormap.
The new biome variants don't necessarily use the same pixel -- "birch forest" samples from a different place than "forest".
Increasing elevation slowly moves the color selection in a straight line towards the bottom right corner-- however the selection point "wobbles" randomly by about 2 pixels
Some of the colors you see may not be present on your colormap, some are created by interpolation (i think when the mathematical point it wants to sample on is nearly in between two pixels on the color map)
Swamps & Mesa now totally ignore the color map, but at least swamps have two nicer default colors.
When blending between biomes there is a two block border of in-between colors.
This applies to both grass.png and foliage.png
I'm pretty sure i have this figured out, but of course i thought that before, getting close to the truth is the goal.
Anybody have the coordinates of the the other biomes that aren't on misa's little guide, "river" "nether", etc.
And see, this new system has the potential to make really nice grass:
OK, after further minecraft science,
here's how it really works:
Sea level and below are colored as normal, from that single pixel on the colormap.
The new biome variants don't necessarily use the same pixel -- "birch forest" samples from a different place than "forest".
Increasing elevation slowly moves the color selection in a straight line towards the bottom right corner-- however the selection point "wobbles" randomly by about 2 pixels
Some of the colors you see may not be present on your colormap, some are created by interpolation (i think when the mathematical point it wants to sample on is nearly in between two pixels on the color map)
When blending between biomes there is a two block border of in-between colors.
I'm assuming the same rules apply to the foliage, but all my testing was done with the grass.png
I'm pretty sure i have this figured out, but of course i thought that before, getting close to the truth is the goal.
Anybody have the coordinates of the the other biomes that aren't on misa's little guide, "river" "nether", etc.
And see, this new system has the potential to make really nice grass:
Thank you for your work on this, eleazzaar! Even though I still don't really understand it. My brain isn't sciency-enough for this type of stuff. :P. The River uses Ocean shading, and the Nether uses Desert shading, but that might've changed along with the new system as well...
In this screenshot, I have my biome palette open in an image editor on the left, and a Plains biome in my MC window to the right. By adding pixels directly adjacent to the 'plains' pixel, I found that there are two other biome colors randomly interspersed in the biome, determined from the two pixels to the right of the original pixel. The indigo and cyan colors don't appear anywhere else in the biome, leading me to believe that the yellow and red pixels are the only ones randomly applied to the grass/etc. Not sure where the lime color is taken from... Also tested to work with the River biome.
I'll be running more tests to determine where the pixels for the new biomes are. sadly, I haven't the programming knowledge to actually read the game's code to figure out where they are.
Anyway, just an interesting observation. . Feel free to post any other info you have about the changes to biome shading in 13w36a!
UPDATE:
I've just about given up on this... after an hour of experimentation with the snowless Taiga biome (and about 30 edits to my colormap), the best I can come up with is this:
if you were to rotate this colormap 45° clockwise (make the colored bit stick straight up, rather than at a diagonal, like it is now) like so...
then up/down Y-axis would represent depth, with the bottom being Y=256 and the top being Y=64 and below. The X-axis is the random fluctuation in color. The X-axis changes in color seem to become more frequent the higher up you go in-game, i.e. grass at a low depth doesn't fluctuate at all, but grass at X=256 varies immensely.
It's all very confusing, and I really hope Mojang considers changing biome shading back to how it originally was. The new system seems to be geared toward their own palette, which contains about... oh, maybe three different colors. Not much room for variation.
Also, partial transparency is now disabled on all textures (ice, water, portal), unless you use fancy graphics. Why, Mojang? WHY?
If I were to make a guess, I'd say it's getting the lime from the pixels above, below, or to the left of the original.
This is a great find! I've really been looking forward to the return of semi-random grass colors. This is really an awesome discovery!!!
Now to figure out how it works...
So then this means that the coloring actually IS the temperature/humidity of the block. As you go higher up the temperature gets colder and farther down the temperature gets warmer. The humidity seems to be semi random on the xz plane, and the reason that the color fluctuates more at higher elevations is that your rainbow has parallel lines but the humidity lines fan out, so a humidity change at a higher temperature covers a larger distance on the triangle than a low temperature, causing a greater change in coloring using your rainbow.
Because, this:
Or you know, the first image in the thread! Mojang could have made a template for us, or I don't know, made default to be a pixel-perfect biome colormap instead of well, the one they've been using for a majority of the game that's just a basic gradient?
It used to use 11 points, they could have changed it to use an entire 128x128 image with a square grid instead of a 256x256 image with a triangular grid using only half of it.
They could have told us ahead of time saying, "hey, biome coloring is about to get a bit more complex, make sure your color maps don't have funky colors near the old points".
And no, you still can't make a "proper cube world texture pack" unless instead of item textures, you made something in your pack that, when used with a mod, made all of the items 3D voxel models. Because otherwise, people take "Cubeworld" as an excuse to make bucketfill packs. And then there are other issues with it besides that, such as mobs and non-biome recolored blocks. Minecraft isn't cubeworld. In fact, they're pretty much different types of media. It's like comparing a basic 3D textured game (say, newer GTA games) to something more stylized with shaders (like Borderlands, or better yet, Okami).
"I'm an outsider by choice, but not truly.
It’s the unpleasantness of the system that keeps me out.
I’d rather be in, in a good system. That’s where my discontent comes from:
being forced to choose to stay outside.
My advice: Just keep movin’ straight ahead.
Every now and then you find yourself in a different place."
-George Carlin
If the way the new system works made more sense, then I wouldn't be quite as annoyed... but there's still the issue of all the biome colors crossing into eachother, which kinda forces you to use Mojang's 3-point gradient of colors, rather than having a colorful mix of biome colors.
I think it would be best if they continued to use the usual shading system, having various pixels in the map represent various biomes, but also have the 8 adjacent pixels available for choosing random variation. I really don't think height-based shading is necessary... it can, to a limited extent, be done with CTM instead.
I really hope that mojang continues trying to add more variation to the biome colors, and doesn't revert, but makes the system work better. This is the first snapshot-- expect unfinished and broken things.
• Follow Lithos on Twitter for release announcments
* Join the Lithos Discord for previews and to help
woah... dude you seem to be reading way more into my passing comment of a cube world pack than is entirely reasonable... I'm just saying that now having a bucket fill grass texture can look good using subtle biome colours. I definitely didn't say or even imply that MC = CW. It's an art style, is it wrong to make a classic RPG themed texture pack because minecraft isn't an RPG? No, it's just applying an art style to a game that hardly has one.
They add a revolutionary layering system and completely destroy biome-shading in the same update. Hope they explain how it works before actually releasing 1.7. Otherwise texture makers will go nuts for a while.
To put is simply this is how it seems to work:
I'm going to try to make a complete color map and see if there are any other oddities, but it looks very useful as is to me.
EDIT:
This system would work a lot better if nearly all the biomes weren't nearly on that diagonal edge. You don't have any room to progress to different colors at a high frosty altitude with this setup. Biomes, like Taiga, Extreme, and mountains which could naturally show a really nice progression as the go higher are prevented from doing so by their position on the colormap.
• Follow Lithos on Twitter for release announcments
* Join the Lithos Discord for previews and to help
I'm just trying to say that you AREN'T just trying to recreate an art style, but trying to recreate an art-style that is based on a technology nonexistent in the destination game. It's like making a borderlands texture pack because you like they art style of it, so making everything with a black outline in 16x.
I'm trying to say just because you are one *tiny* step closer to if being possible, the technologies of the 2 games are fundamentally different and thus it is a futile attempt to recreate either insider of each other. Minecraft is a 3D block-based sandbox with bitmapped textures, and Cubeworld is a 3D voxel-based RPG with voxels to actually *display* depth and have independent colors.
It's no coincidence that Cubeworld packs have so far pretty much been the worst bucket-fill packs ever, and more advanced biome coloring will not change that simplecraft fact.
Sure, more advance biome coloring could be cool, but it's annoying for now, and something tells me Mojang is going to change it again before 1.7 releases (and then maybe again in 1.8).........
It needs heavy refactoring still AND the default color maps actually need to be MADE for how the game will use it SO WE CAN ACTUALLY SEE HOW IT WORKS
"I'm an outsider by choice, but not truly.
It’s the unpleasantness of the system that keeps me out.
I’d rather be in, in a good system. That’s where my discontent comes from:
being forced to choose to stay outside.
My advice: Just keep movin’ straight ahead.
Every now and then you find yourself in a different place."
-George Carlin
You seem to have inferred that I am in support of bucket fill packs and that I have some intention to create/use a CW themed pack... I don't. I hate crappy simple packs as much of any of us that frequent the texture pack section of MCF, I'm just saying that now there can be a CW that has some sort of artistic/technical value instead of the crappy stuff we have now.
I'm pretty exited to see what we can figure out with this system to make the game look pretty.
No idea how it works, though.
Check out the post by eleazzaar up above, he explains it pretty well (the whole elevation variation thing)
Anywho, all this is very useful information but I'm sorta getting the feeling that they're (mojang) gonna change everything in one of the future snapshots so I'm holding off doing any biome tweaking now. I'm sorta hoping they do change it (and explain what they did) but also sorta not, at least if they don't tell us what they did because it will be a pain to get used to the new style.
Actually i'm less sure than when i posted-- i'm getting some results i can't easily explain with that system.
It's starting to look like the the sampling points for increasing elevation move in a curve -- it starts out moving to the right, and then starts to curve downward.
EDIT2:
It is not a curve -- it is a straight line pointing towards the bottom right corner.
EDIT:
One of the things that makes this tricky is the color you see on the grass doesn't have to be in the color map-- it shows colors that are blended. For instance you may have a color map all red and blue, but the grass may be purple. It looks like it many/most cases, the color you see is the mixture of two colors sampled from the colormap.
• Follow Lithos on Twitter for release announcments
* Join the Lithos Discord for previews and to help
here's how colormaps really work:
Anybody have the coordinates of the the other biomes that aren't on misa's little guide, "river" "nether", etc.
And see, this new system has the potential to make really nice grass:
EDIT: Added info about swamps.
• Follow Lithos on Twitter for release announcments
* Join the Lithos Discord for previews and to help
Thank you for your work on this, eleazzaar! Even though I still don't really understand it. My brain isn't sciency-enough for this type of stuff. :P. The River uses Ocean shading, and the Nether uses Desert shading, but that might've changed along with the new system as well...
Only when the original pixel for the biome is on that edge.
• Follow Lithos on Twitter for release announcments
* Join the Lithos Discord for previews and to help