Oh my lord! You found that cave that way? How are you able to find places like this? Are you on foot like Iron_Kevin walking non-stop in your world?
I found all of this by exploring interconnected caves underground - the only way I explore the world (besides when I find a stronghold to get to the End):
That is an animation of what I explored over a 30 day period, with a total of 167 different underground (and a few surface) features found, not including normal caves, with an average distance walked of 20.7 km per day, nearly all underground (even with an average of only about 100 chunks explored per play session the length of caves underground is quite a lot - in 1.6.4 100 chunks averages about 45 cave tunnels, each of which averages about 150 blocks long when including the length of all branches, for a total length of about 6.7 km. Ravines average about 98 blocks long and there are an average of two per 100 chunks, with the effective length being much longer when you include all the ledges on the sides (a single set of ledges would triple the effective length), and there is an average of one mineshaft every 100 chunks, with around 1.6 km of corridors, so that's easily 8.8+ km of underground features, and I go through much of that more than once).
Also, you can hardly compare the variety in world generation in TMCW to newer versions, where Mojang is literally forcing the player to have to travel far to find anything; for example, I analyzed a random seed and found 76 out of 93 biomes within 1536 blocks of the origin (corresponding to 3x3 level 3 maps, the maximum area I plan to explore in most of my worlds), and at least one of every major underground feature, including caves and ravines even larger than any that I've found so far:
This shows special cave variations within 1536 blocks of the origin; the lack of caves near the center is due to an exclusion zone with a radius of 512 blocks that prevents most variations from generating (aside from "vanilla" large caves. There is a patch that you can install that disables this). The largest single cave is to the northeast of this zone while the largest ravine (fully on the map) is on the western side of a network cave region near the upper-left corner:
Here are some screenshots of what I found, mostly within 500 blocks of spawn, as well as the largest caves and ravines within 1536 blocks; the largest cave was at 536, -600, not that far away at all by any means. One of the most notable features of this seed is the most extreme terrain that I've ever seen, in a Savanna Mountains biome just to the northwest of spawn, with the highest peak reaching y=189:
Spawn was in a Mega Tree Plains, near 172, 224, with a Jungle to the east with a jungle temple at 245, 310:
To the northwest is an insane Savanna Mountains biome with the highest peak that I've ever seen, reaching y=189:
There is also a savanna with a village at -80, -240:
To the south of spawn is a Winter Taiga and Roofed Forest (near -80, 550):
Around 430, 612, I came across a Bushlands and Big Oak Forest:
To the southwest of spawn (-330, 260) is a Mesa and Volcanic Wasteland, the latter a relatively rare biome:
To the west of the Volcanic Wasteland is a Rocky Mountains (-700, 0), the only biome where ruby ore generates (I recently made it so you can use rubies in the anvil to lower the prior work penalty, making them quite valuable as you can now indefinitely repair items which would be too expensive to repair if you put Mending on them, which stops the prior work penalty from increasing):
Further to the south (-550, 750) I came across Extreme Hills and TMCW Mega Taiga (my own version of Mega Taiga which I added before the vanilla variants, with huge 3x3 spruce trees, which can also be player-grown):
To the north (around -80, -520) I came across a Mixed Forest (foreground), Bushlands (left), Flower Forest (right), and Extreme Hills reaching y=170) background):
This is the largest cave within 1536 blocks of the origin, at 536, -600, with a volume of more than 272000 blocks, about 20000 larger than the largest cave that I've found so far in TMCWv4:
This is the second largest ravine (the largest ravine was under the ocean), at -1000, -1240 with a volume of about 314000, about 47000 larger than the largest ravine that I've found in TMCWv4, and a length of 336 blocks and maximum width of 33 blocks:
Also, the ravine is in an Ice Plains with multiple Ice Plains Spikes, as well as a village and Ice Hills (the second screenshot is on the other side of the mountain in the distance):
Of course, not every world is guaranteed to be like that; in particular, you can get a seed that spawns you in the middle of an ocean with little land for a thousand blocks out but even that will no longer happen with the next major version of TMCW (vanilla has code that forces land to generate near the origin but it doesn't seem to work very well due to the random "fuzzing" applied when zooming successive layers; I make the area within 1000 blocks of the origin guaranteed to be nearly all land by adding land at later stages, but still early enough that it looks natural). Likewise, the only types of caves that are guaranteed to generate within a certain distance of the origin are colossal cave systems and giant cave regions (the rarest types) but everything else is much more common (only one giant cave region generates per 2048x2048 block area).
I have seen caves almost as big in vanilla 1.5 and 1.6 including one that nearly hollowed out a mountain. They are very rare though.
Caves will never get even close to this size in vanilla; in fact, the largest single cave in vanilla is only about 22,500 blocks in volume, while the largest caves in TMCW can exceed half a million blocks (the thin lines are vanilla 1.6.4, as well as any other vanilla version since sometime in Beta, when a chance of a larger tunnel was added. The majority of tunnels range in width from 3-9 blocks, with 10% able to reach up to 27. The length of caves can also be much greater in TMCW, with the largest having a total length of all tunnels of 924 blocks, compared to 196 for vanilla, and branches are 1/3-2/3 of the width of the parent tunnel, while in vanilla they are always 3-5 blocks wide):
This was from an older analysis; the maximum width only goes up to 26 since I only included integer values, so 26 is actually 26-26.999... (the chart above rounds so a width of 27 is 26.5-27):
Note that hollow mountains are not true caves (i.e. generated by carving tunnels separately from the base terrain), as even distinguished by the Wiki:
Caves will never get even close to this size in vanilla; in fact, the largest single cave in vanilla is only about 22,500 blocks in volume, while the largest caves in TMCW can exceed half a million blocks (the thin lines are vanilla 1.6.4, as well as any other vanilla version since sometime in Beta, when a chance of a larger tunnel was added. The majority of tunnels range in width from 3-9 blocks, with 10% able to reach up to 27. The length of caves can also be much greater in TMCW, with the largest having a total length of all tunnels of 924 blocks, compared to 196 for vanilla, and branches are 1/3-2/3 of the width of the parent tunnel, while in vanilla they are always 3-5 blocks wide):
This was from an older analysis; the maximum width only goes up to 26 since I only included integer values, so 26 is actually 26-26.999... (the chart above rounds so a width of 27 is 26.5-27):
Note that hollow mountains are not true caves (i.e. generated by carving tunnels separately from the base terrain), as even distinguished by the Wiki:
It may have been a hollow if not for the cave being stone on the bottom, not grass.
It was an intersection of several large caves.
Either way, large caves of the sort I regularly find in TMCW, even the smallest and most common sizes, are extremely rare in vanilla; for example, here is a map of all caves with a maximum width of at least 15 blocks within a 4096x4096 block area centered at 0,0 in the seed for my first world (-123775873255737467); the largest cave had a measured volume of 12851 (for comparison, TMCW's "CaveFinder" utility only lists caves with a volume of at least 25000. In either case, only parts of caves between lava level and sea level are measured; some caves may actually not exist at all in vanilla, at least not without manipulating the seed or world type, due to oceans, or may be extend above sea level due to deeper terrain*):
Likewise, the largest cave within a 16384x16384 block area (over a million chunks) in the seed "TMCWv4" in vanilla 1.6.4 had a volume of 20530 (interestingly, quite close to the origin at -662, 34, -331):
For comparison, this is what the seed for my first world has in TMCW, within a 16384x16384 block area centered at 0,0; I set the results to the maximum allowed (999) and the smallest cave listed had a volume of 35991, with 648 caves exceeding 50000, 358 caves exceeding 100000, 65 exceeding 200000, and 8 exceeding 300000:
This is a comparison of the largest cave in "-123775873255737467" in TMCWv4 to the largest cave found in "TMCWv4" in vanilla (upper-right); the former has over 16 times the volume:
*One of the caves I found recently is an extreme example of this; I made a Superflat world with a depth of 128 layers and it still went all the way to the surface, with more than double the overall volume when including the part above sea level (CaveFinder measured it as 31042 while I found over 53000 blocks above y=62 with MCEdit for a total volume of over 84000):
After having explored about half the map centered at -1024, 1024 I decided to go back to to map centered at 1024, 0 to finish exploring a small strip along the northeastern corner, extending into the map to the north, the final map that I've created (all 9 maps centered around 0,0):
For the third time in a row I found yet another Savanna Mountains biome with even more extreme terrain than before, this time reaching y=184 (the previous two reached 179 and 181):
This is a list of the highest peaks that I've found within an instance of a biome (only the highest peak within a single biome is listed). There is actually another instance not listed; I found a single block at y=128 in a Winter Forest but terrain was otherwise much lower and I don't consider this to be enough to count:
This was the first peak that I scaled, reaching y=170:
The second and highest peak, reaching y=184:
Another peak reaching y=182:
The lit-up areas are large overhangs which were pitch black (I light them up if there are caves in them):
I also found a quite large hollow, with overhangs inside:
Also, I found two double dungeons (a special type of dungeon which has a 5% chance of generating in place of a normal dungeon) in the same day; one of them also had a bugged triple chest (it rendered as a double chest and opened up a double chest GUI which differed depending on which chest you clicked; the third chest was invisible except for the selection box and breaking animation), an unforeseen consequence of placing up to 3 chests in a double dungeon (chests can generate if they are adjacent to one other "solid" block, including other chests as it checks the material and Material.wood is considered to be solid regardless of the block); this is the first time I've encountered such a chest though:
There is actually a chest here but it doesn't render (I discovered it when something blocked my way while mining the floor):
Note the the lower half of the first chest inventory is the same as the top of the second, as the double chest inventories share the same chest (apparently, in vanilla you are supposed to get a triple chest inventory but I rewrote the code to be cleaner and only double chests are allowed):
I've already released a fix for this, which will also work in the case of two normal dungeons intersecting, by checking only allowing chests to be placed if there is no more than one adjacent chest and it is not a double chest; interestingly, the dungeon I found actually had two attempts in a row of placing the third chest next to the others:
This is the debug output while testing the fix; the location corresponds to the dungeon that I found and the first attempt at placing a triple chest corresponds to one of the chests i found (the second location would have placed them in a line); failed attempts will retry up to a maximum of 20 times per chest:
12:32:56 - Generated double dungeon at 1148 47 -590
12:32:56 - Tried to place triple chest at 1147 47 -586
12:32:56 - Tried to place triple chest at 1148 47 -587
This is the same dungeon after I applied the fix, with the third chest now placed in another location with different loot, otherwise dungeons are the same (I flew around for a while and there were no other cases of attempts at placing a triple chest so this was quite rare with no other known occurrences):
Also, I found something interesting; the other double dungeon I found had a normal dungeon intersecting it when I teleported to its location after it was generated to confirm that it was the same (this can't be the result of any change to the decorator RNG sequence due to my fix as even if there were a failed attempt at a triple chest my dungeon generator uses its own RNG, only pulling a single value from the main RNG to seed itself; this is likely an example of how world generation can differ depending on the order chunks are generated in):
I found also a medium-sized large ravine and large cave; one of the double dungeons was connected to another ravine, one of three, that intersected the large ravine, which was also larger than usual (only one is listed as the volume was less than 25000):
Also, I've found a stronghold while caving for the second time in this world, three if you count the first one (originally found with eyes of ender); unlike vanilla this isn't the final one though as there are an infinite number of strongholds, generating once every 8192 chunks outside of a 640 block radius around the origin, the minimum distance in vanilla 1.6.4 (for comparison, the area ringed by the 3 strongholds in vanilla is 9852 chunks at the average distance of 896 blocks and 16286 chunks at the maximum distance of 1152 blocks; in 1.9+ the average area of the innermost ring is 51472 chunks and as much as 88668 chunks; the rest are even more spread out):
It has been a while since my last update, partly because I didn't find much of interest for a while but also because I'm working on an update which will add most of the non-world generation-altering features from TMCWv5 (which at this point will simply be the next major update that changes world generation and requires making a new world to avoid disruptions, much as TMCWv1-4 did, with each version having multiple updates. In this sense, if applied to vanilla 1.7 would be Minecraft 2 while e.g. 1.13 would be an update to 2 and Minecraft 3 would be whenever they make changes that break existing worlds by changing biome/land/ocean borders).
This also means that caves will soon become much more interesting once I explore into newly generated chunks after applying the update; for example, deserts will replace all stone down to bedrock with sand/sandstone (or rather, a variant of stone that looks like and drops sandstone) and ores based on sandstone with sandstone stalagmites and stalactites (currently, underground biomes extend down to around y=40 and use their actual blocks, e.g. sandstone. The change to a variant of stone makes mining consistent (e.g. "snow" blocks require a pickaxe to mine and have the same hardness as stone) and makes world generation much simpler). There will also be many new mobs added (husks, strays, baby skeletons, rabbits, endermites, more cat and mooshroom variants, and so on). While most of these features were implemented and tested long ago they do need to be integrated into the current "engine", as I completely refactored many things from rendering to world generation.
That said, I've continued exploring the southern part of the map centered at 1024, -1024 and found a massive cave with a volume of over 150,000 blocks as well as a "colossal cave system" naturally generated from an extremely dense cluster of normal cave systems (as opposed to a "real" colossal cave system, which are a special type of cave system), much like the cave system at -800, -1050 in my first world (which colossal cave systems are based off of, including the same distribution of caves). I also found an igloo with a basement, the 4th and 2nd ones in this world (there is a 50% chance of a basement, which is nearly the same as in vanilla except there is no brewing stand with the potion in the chest).
Here are renderings of the area I've explored, with the MCMap rendering showing the entire area northeast of 512, -448 and the CaveFinder renderings (showing all caves and only special caves; there were several other smaller large caves and ravines in the area) centered around the giant cave and cave system, near the upper right of the MCMap rendering :
Also, I've seen 5 more mobs in diamond armor, including two on the same day for the second time (third time in all my time playing), again so close together (in the same cave) that I could have seen them at the same time:
These were seen within minutes of each other (after this I'll start taking two screenshots at a time so the time is in the screenshot):
2020-09-27 22:33:01 [CLIENT] [INFO] [CHAT] Saved screenshot as 2020-09-27_22.33.01.png
2020-09-27 22:38:15 [CLIENT] [INFO] [CHAT] Saved screenshot as 2020-09-27_22.38.14.png
This was in a medium-sized large cave:
Interestingly, I discovered the igloo while caving, though that is hardly surprising given my playstyle; for a moment I though it was the stronghold I previously found but it was too far away, I previously passed nearby on the surface but didn't see it since it blends in with the surroundings, especially since I have my "better grass/snow" enabled (snowy grass renders as snow blocks):
This is the largest cave that I found, with a volume of 151,000 blocks; there were also a lot of magma cubes in it thanks to a recent addition where slimes that die in lava split into magma cubes:
If you look closely you can see several magma cubes near the center, with an enhanced image below (note that no matter how much you enhance brightness/contrast dark areas remain completely featureless - one of the biggest flaws in vanilla is the lack of true darkness, I even made it so that fog and the sky are completely black when below sea level without skylight; the sun/moon/stars/sunset colors darken and stop rendering as well so caves that go out of render distance smoothly fade into blackness, as seen in the third screenshot below):
The mineshafts in this screenshot (in the distance near the center and upper-right_ are two completely separate mineshafts:
This "colossal cave system", one of the largest and densest naturally generated cave systems that I've seen. Also, even without analyzing the area with CaveFinder I knew that this couldn't be a real colossal cave system because it was too close to a stronghold; the minimum distance between them is 512 blocks, averaging 1024, and up to 1536, as one of either generates per 1024x1024 block region with a relative offset of 0-512. This means that there will usually be one of either per level 3 map, alternating from map to map in a checkerboard pattern (the actual number per map ranges from 0-4 except when the world seed-derived random offset applied to the region grid causes them to align with in-game maps):
While working on the next major update to TMCW I made an interesting discovery; there is a desert temple at -726, 330 which I missed because it was almost entirely buried (the top of one of the towers is level with the surface but it is not easy to spot); I discovered it after I made a change that allows them to generate up to 16 blocks above sea level or 3 blocks above the lowest elevation above sea level (whichever is less, to avoid temples with one side placed far off the ground. For comparison, vanilla 1.6.4 always places them at y=64; I previously changed this to sea level + 1 so they would generate on the surface in Superflat worlds unless they were less than 15 layers deep):
This is from the original world:
That said, I'm just going to ignore it the next time I play on this world, which will be after I've finished the update (I did check out the loot in the updated version but it won't be the same due to changes to loot tables, including the addition of new loot, which also applies to all other structures, with dungeons not even generating in the same locations anymore).
Also, so far I've transferred about 80% of the features originally planned for TMCWv5 to TMCWv4.5, with about half of them transferred previously (plus many new features, largely the changes to rendering and other base code), and additional new features (even the current release has more source files than TMCWv5 had without all the rendering and base code changes); most of the remaining features in TMCWv5 are ones which require large-scale changes to world generation and as a result old worlds would get major chunk walls (sub-biomes will be added since they do not change the overall biome map; likewise, a few new variants of caves and mesa mineshafts and mineshafts with biome-specific wood types and platforms under stairs and rooms will be added since they do not affect the generation of other caves, as well as changes to underground biomes, which will now go all the way down to bedrock (this means no stone but these biomes, such as desert, aren't very hospitable anyway and the game tries to avoid placing spawn in them, the exception being Oasis in Desert M), and minor decorations like plants and ores (which now have variants for sandstone, hardened clay, snow, etc), "dim torches" instead of redstone torches, etc).
Some block IDs and data values will also change but I've implemented my own "data fixer" which converts them, much as newer vanilla versions use to upgrade data to newer formats; e.g. I added a thin variant of cactus which uses the same ID as vanilla cactus, which uses data values 0-15 for growth stages, with data values now split between 0-7 and 8-15, the latter of which will be converted to 0-7 when an old chunk is first loaded. Some other blocks now use new IDs, such as empty monster spawners, which are now a single block ID as my lighting engine differentiates between data values, this includes vanilla blocks like redstone lamps, which frees up block IDs (not that I'm even close to running out since I've used data values so heavily).
Probably the biggest impact on old worlds will be the addition of new leaf blocks and saplings for mega trees, acacia trees, palm trees, and dark/swamp oak trees, which will require finding new biomes in order to grow them, but aside from special variants like jungle trees with cocoa pods all tree types can now be grown in any biome (this won't affect my world since I haven't been using any of these trees, 2x2 spruce is the best tree type for farming torch wood, otherwise there are still only 4 types of wood).
There's a good chance the loot in that temple exploded by now due to mobs spawning in the treasure room, or did you remove that from happening in your mod?
There's a good chance the loot in that temple exploded by now due to mobs spawning in the treasure room, or did you remove that from happening in your mod?
There are 12 variants of desert temples, some of which have trapped chests instead of a pressure plate and/or both, and/or mob spawners in the upper part (these mobs can't get into the treasure room):
Each of the following has a 10% chance:
1. Pressure plate (vanilla)
2. Pressure plate with skeleton spawners
3. Pressure plate with zombie spawners
4. Pressure plate with skeleton spawner and zombie spawner
5. Trapped chests
6. Trapped chests with zombie spawners
7. Trapped chests with skeleton spawners
8. Trapped chests with skeleton spawner and zombie spawner
Each of the following has a 5% chance
9. Pressure plate and trapped chests
10. Pressure plate and trapped chests with skeleton spawners
11. Pressure plate and trapped chests with zombie spawners
12. Pressure plate and trapped chests with skeleton spawner and zombie spawner
This also means you have to be extra cautious before opening the chests - the presence of a pressure plate doesn't mean the chests aren't trapped (there are also 4 additional TNT under them so the explosion will be bigger, and since the surrounding ground is sandstone instead of stone the crater will be much larger in either case).
He mods his game for better cave variety.
I have seen caves almost as big in vanilla 1.5 and 1.6 including one that nearly hollowed out a mountain. They are very rare though.
I found all of this by exploring interconnected caves underground - the only way I explore the world (besides when I find a stronghold to get to the End):
That is an animation of what I explored over a 30 day period, with a total of 167 different underground (and a few surface) features found, not including normal caves, with an average distance walked of 20.7 km per day, nearly all underground (even with an average of only about 100 chunks explored per play session the length of caves underground is quite a lot - in 1.6.4 100 chunks averages about 45 cave tunnels, each of which averages about 150 blocks long when including the length of all branches, for a total length of about 6.7 km. Ravines average about 98 blocks long and there are an average of two per 100 chunks, with the effective length being much longer when you include all the ledges on the sides (a single set of ledges would triple the effective length), and there is an average of one mineshaft every 100 chunks, with around 1.6 km of corridors, so that's easily 8.8+ km of underground features, and I go through much of that more than once).
Also, you can hardly compare the variety in world generation in TMCW to newer versions, where Mojang is literally forcing the player to have to travel far to find anything; for example, I analyzed a random seed and found 76 out of 93 biomes within 1536 blocks of the origin (corresponding to 3x3 level 3 maps, the maximum area I plan to explore in most of my worlds), and at least one of every major underground feature, including caves and ravines even larger than any that I've found so far:
This shows special cave variations within 1536 blocks of the origin; the lack of caves near the center is due to an exclusion zone with a radius of 512 blocks that prevents most variations from generating (aside from "vanilla" large caves. There is a patch that you can install that disables this). The largest single cave is to the northeast of this zone while the largest ravine (fully on the map) is on the western side of a network cave region near the upper-left corner:
Here are some screenshots of what I found, mostly within 500 blocks of spawn, as well as the largest caves and ravines within 1536 blocks; the largest cave was at 536, -600, not that far away at all by any means. One of the most notable features of this seed is the most extreme terrain that I've ever seen, in a Savanna Mountains biome just to the northwest of spawn, with the highest peak reaching y=189:
To the northwest is an insane Savanna Mountains biome with the highest peak that I've ever seen, reaching y=189:
There is also a savanna with a village at -80, -240:
To the south of spawn is a Winter Taiga and Roofed Forest (near -80, 550):
Around 430, 612, I came across a Bushlands and Big Oak Forest:
To the southwest of spawn (-330, 260) is a Mesa and Volcanic Wasteland, the latter a relatively rare biome:
To the west of the Volcanic Wasteland is a Rocky Mountains (-700, 0), the only biome where ruby ore generates (I recently made it so you can use rubies in the anvil to lower the prior work penalty, making them quite valuable as you can now indefinitely repair items which would be too expensive to repair if you put Mending on them, which stops the prior work penalty from increasing):
Further to the south (-550, 750) I came across Extreme Hills and TMCW Mega Taiga (my own version of Mega Taiga which I added before the vanilla variants, with huge 3x3 spruce trees, which can also be player-grown):
To the north (around -80, -520) I came across a Mixed Forest (foreground), Bushlands (left), Flower Forest (right), and Extreme Hills reaching y=170) background):
This is the largest cave within 1536 blocks of the origin, at 536, -600, with a volume of more than 272000 blocks, about 20000 larger than the largest cave that I've found so far in TMCWv4:
This is the second largest ravine (the largest ravine was under the ocean), at -1000, -1240 with a volume of about 314000, about 47000 larger than the largest ravine that I've found in TMCWv4, and a length of 336 blocks and maximum width of 33 blocks:
Also, the ravine is in an Ice Plains with multiple Ice Plains Spikes, as well as a village and Ice Hills (the second screenshot is on the other side of the mountain in the distance):
Of course, not every world is guaranteed to be like that; in particular, you can get a seed that spawns you in the middle of an ocean with little land for a thousand blocks out but even that will no longer happen with the next major version of TMCW (vanilla has code that forces land to generate near the origin but it doesn't seem to work very well due to the random "fuzzing" applied when zooming successive layers; I make the area within 1000 blocks of the origin guaranteed to be nearly all land by adding land at later stages, but still early enough that it looks natural). Likewise, the only types of caves that are guaranteed to generate within a certain distance of the origin are colossal cave systems and giant cave regions (the rarest types) but everything else is much more common (only one giant cave region generates per 2048x2048 block area).
TheMasterCaver's First World - possibly the most caved-out world in Minecraft history - includes world download.
TheMasterCaver's World - my own version of Minecraft largely based on my views of how the game should have evolved since 1.6.4.
Why do I still play in 1.6.4?
Caves will never get even close to this size in vanilla; in fact, the largest single cave in vanilla is only about 22,500 blocks in volume, while the largest caves in TMCW can exceed half a million blocks (the thin lines are vanilla 1.6.4, as well as any other vanilla version since sometime in Beta, when a chance of a larger tunnel was added. The majority of tunnels range in width from 3-9 blocks, with 10% able to reach up to 27. The length of caves can also be much greater in TMCW, with the largest having a total length of all tunnels of 924 blocks, compared to 196 for vanilla, and branches are 1/3-2/3 of the width of the parent tunnel, while in vanilla they are always 3-5 blocks wide):
This was from an older analysis; the maximum width only goes up to 26 since I only included integer values, so 26 is actually 26-26.999... (the chart above rounds so a width of 27 is 26.5-27):
Note that hollow mountains are not true caves (i.e. generated by carving tunnels separately from the base terrain), as even distinguished by the Wiki:
https://minecraft.gamepedia.com/Terrain_features#Hollows
TheMasterCaver's First World - possibly the most caved-out world in Minecraft history - includes world download.
TheMasterCaver's World - my own version of Minecraft largely based on my views of how the game should have evolved since 1.6.4.
Why do I still play in 1.6.4?
I want to explore those area in VR. Fascinating stuff.
It may have been a hollow if not for the cave being stone on the bottom, not grass.
It was an intersection of several large caves.
Either way, large caves of the sort I regularly find in TMCW, even the smallest and most common sizes, are extremely rare in vanilla; for example, here is a map of all caves with a maximum width of at least 15 blocks within a 4096x4096 block area centered at 0,0 in the seed for my first world (-123775873255737467); the largest cave had a measured volume of 12851 (for comparison, TMCW's "CaveFinder" utility only lists caves with a volume of at least 25000. In either case, only parts of caves between lava level and sea level are measured; some caves may actually not exist at all in vanilla, at least not without manipulating the seed or world type, due to oceans, or may be extend above sea level due to deeper terrain*):
Likewise, the largest cave within a 16384x16384 block area (over a million chunks) in the seed "TMCWv4" in vanilla 1.6.4 had a volume of 20530 (interestingly, quite close to the origin at -662, 34, -331):
For comparison, this is what the seed for my first world has in TMCW, within a 16384x16384 block area centered at 0,0; I set the results to the maximum allowed (999) and the smallest cave listed had a volume of 35991, with 648 caves exceeding 50000, 358 caves exceeding 100000, 65 exceeding 200000, and 8 exceeding 300000:
This is a comparison of the largest cave in "-123775873255737467" in TMCWv4 to the largest cave found in "TMCWv4" in vanilla (upper-right); the former has over 16 times the volume:
*One of the caves I found recently is an extreme example of this; I made a Superflat world with a depth of 128 layers and it still went all the way to the surface, with more than double the overall volume when including the part above sea level (CaveFinder measured it as 31042 while I found over 53000 blocks above y=62 with MCEdit for a total volume of over 84000):
TheMasterCaver's First World - possibly the most caved-out world in Minecraft history - includes world download.
TheMasterCaver's World - my own version of Minecraft largely based on my views of how the game should have evolved since 1.6.4.
Why do I still play in 1.6.4?
For the third time in a row I found yet another Savanna Mountains biome with even more extreme terrain than before, this time reaching y=184 (the previous two reached 179 and 181):
This was the first peak that I scaled, reaching y=170:
The second and highest peak, reaching y=184:
Another peak reaching y=182:
The lit-up areas are large overhangs which were pitch black (I light them up if there are caves in them):
I also found a quite large hollow, with overhangs inside:
Also, I found two double dungeons (a special type of dungeon which has a 5% chance of generating in place of a normal dungeon) in the same day; one of them also had a bugged triple chest (it rendered as a double chest and opened up a double chest GUI which differed depending on which chest you clicked; the third chest was invisible except for the selection box and breaking animation), an unforeseen consequence of placing up to 3 chests in a double dungeon (chests can generate if they are adjacent to one other "solid" block, including other chests as it checks the material and Material.wood is considered to be solid regardless of the block); this is the first time I've encountered such a chest though:
There is actually a chest here but it doesn't render (I discovered it when something blocked my way while mining the floor):
Note the the lower half of the first chest inventory is the same as the top of the second, as the double chest inventories share the same chest (apparently, in vanilla you are supposed to get a triple chest inventory but I rewrote the code to be cleaner and only double chests are allowed):
I've already released a fix for this, which will also work in the case of two normal dungeons intersecting, by checking only allowing chests to be placed if there is no more than one adjacent chest and it is not a double chest; interestingly, the dungeon I found actually had two attempts in a row of placing the third chest next to the others:
This is the same dungeon after I applied the fix, with the third chest now placed in another location with different loot, otherwise dungeons are the same (I flew around for a while and there were no other cases of attempts at placing a triple chest so this was quite rare with no other known occurrences):
Also, I found something interesting; the other double dungeon I found had a normal dungeon intersecting it when I teleported to its location after it was generated to confirm that it was the same (this can't be the result of any change to the decorator RNG sequence due to my fix as even if there were a failed attempt at a triple chest my dungeon generator uses its own RNG, only pulling a single value from the main RNG to seed itself; this is likely an example of how world generation can differ depending on the order chunks are generated in):
I found also a medium-sized large ravine and large cave; one of the double dungeons was connected to another ravine, one of three, that intersected the large ravine, which was also larger than usual (only one is listed as the volume was less than 25000):
1112 40 -376 (length: 184, width: 15, depth: 41, volume: 62127)
Also, I've found a stronghold while caving for the second time in this world, three if you count the first one (originally found with eyes of ender); unlike vanilla this isn't the final one though as there are an infinite number of strongholds, generating once every 8192 chunks outside of a 640 block radius around the origin, the minimum distance in vanilla 1.6.4 (for comparison, the area ringed by the 3 strongholds in vanilla is 9852 chunks at the average distance of 896 blocks and 16286 chunks at the maximum distance of 1152 blocks; in 1.9+ the average area of the innermost ring is 51472 chunks and as much as 88668 chunks; the rest are even more spread out):
TheMasterCaver's First World - possibly the most caved-out world in Minecraft history - includes world download.
TheMasterCaver's World - my own version of Minecraft largely based on my views of how the game should have evolved since 1.6.4.
Why do I still play in 1.6.4?
It has been a while since my last update, partly because I didn't find much of interest for a while but also because I'm working on an update which will add most of the non-world generation-altering features from TMCWv5 (which at this point will simply be the next major update that changes world generation and requires making a new world to avoid disruptions, much as TMCWv1-4 did, with each version having multiple updates. In this sense, if applied to vanilla 1.7 would be Minecraft 2 while e.g. 1.13 would be an update to 2 and Minecraft 3 would be whenever they make changes that break existing worlds by changing biome/land/ocean borders).
This also means that caves will soon become much more interesting once I explore into newly generated chunks after applying the update; for example, deserts will replace all stone down to bedrock with sand/sandstone (or rather, a variant of stone that looks like and drops sandstone) and ores based on sandstone with sandstone stalagmites and stalactites (currently, underground biomes extend down to around y=40 and use their actual blocks, e.g. sandstone. The change to a variant of stone makes mining consistent (e.g. "snow" blocks require a pickaxe to mine and have the same hardness as stone) and makes world generation much simpler). There will also be many new mobs added (husks, strays, baby skeletons, rabbits, endermites, more cat and mooshroom variants, and so on). While most of these features were implemented and tested long ago they do need to be integrated into the current "engine", as I completely refactored many things from rendering to world generation.
That said, I've continued exploring the southern part of the map centered at 1024, -1024 and found a massive cave with a volume of over 150,000 blocks as well as a "colossal cave system" naturally generated from an extremely dense cluster of normal cave systems (as opposed to a "real" colossal cave system, which are a special type of cave system), much like the cave system at -800, -1050 in my first world (which colossal cave systems are based off of, including the same distribution of caves). I also found an igloo with a basement, the 4th and 2nd ones in this world (there is a 50% chance of a basement, which is nearly the same as in vanilla except there is no brewing stand with the potion in the chest).
Here are renderings of the area I've explored, with the MCMap rendering showing the entire area northeast of 512, -448 and the CaveFinder renderings (showing all caves and only special caves; there were several other smaller large caves and ravines in the area) centered around the giant cave and cave system, near the upper right of the MCMap rendering :
Also, I've seen 5 more mobs in diamond armor, including two on the same day for the second time (third time in all my time playing), again so close together (in the same cave) that I could have seen them at the same time:
These were seen within minutes of each other (after this I'll start taking two screenshots at a time so the time is in the screenshot):
This was in a medium-sized large cave:
Interestingly, I discovered the igloo while caving, though that is hardly surprising given my playstyle; for a moment I though it was the stronghold I previously found but it was too far away, I previously passed nearby on the surface but didn't see it since it blends in with the surroundings, especially since I have my "better grass/snow" enabled (snowy grass renders as snow blocks):
This is the largest cave that I found, with a volume of 151,000 blocks; there were also a lot of magma cubes in it thanks to a recent addition where slimes that die in lava split into magma cubes:
If you look closely you can see several magma cubes near the center, with an enhanced image below (note that no matter how much you enhance brightness/contrast dark areas remain completely featureless - one of the biggest flaws in vanilla is the lack of true darkness, I even made it so that fog and the sky are completely black when below sea level without skylight; the sun/moon/stars/sunset colors darken and stop rendering as well so caves that go out of render distance smoothly fade into blackness, as seen in the third screenshot below):
The mineshafts in this screenshot (in the distance near the center and upper-right_ are two completely separate mineshafts:
This "colossal cave system", one of the largest and densest naturally generated cave systems that I've seen. Also, even without analyzing the area with CaveFinder I knew that this couldn't be a real colossal cave system because it was too close to a stronghold; the minimum distance between them is 512 blocks, averaging 1024, and up to 1536, as one of either generates per 1024x1024 block region with a relative offset of 0-512. This means that there will usually be one of either per level 3 map, alternating from map to map in a checkerboard pattern (the actual number per map ranges from 0-4 except when the world seed-derived random offset applied to the region grid causes them to align with in-game maps):
TheMasterCaver's First World - possibly the most caved-out world in Minecraft history - includes world download.
TheMasterCaver's World - my own version of Minecraft largely based on my views of how the game should have evolved since 1.6.4.
Why do I still play in 1.6.4?
While working on the next major update to TMCW I made an interesting discovery; there is a desert temple at -726, 330 which I missed because it was almost entirely buried (the top of one of the towers is level with the surface but it is not easy to spot); I discovered it after I made a change that allows them to generate up to 16 blocks above sea level or 3 blocks above the lowest elevation above sea level (whichever is less, to avoid temples with one side placed far off the ground. For comparison, vanilla 1.6.4 always places them at y=64; I previously changed this to sea level + 1 so they would generate on the surface in Superflat worlds unless they were less than 15 layers deep):
This is from the original world:
That said, I'm just going to ignore it the next time I play on this world, which will be after I've finished the update (I did check out the loot in the updated version but it won't be the same due to changes to loot tables, including the addition of new loot, which also applies to all other structures, with dungeons not even generating in the same locations anymore).
Also, so far I've transferred about 80% of the features originally planned for TMCWv5 to TMCWv4.5, with about half of them transferred previously (plus many new features, largely the changes to rendering and other base code), and additional new features (even the current release has more source files than TMCWv5 had without all the rendering and base code changes); most of the remaining features in TMCWv5 are ones which require large-scale changes to world generation and as a result old worlds would get major chunk walls (sub-biomes will be added since they do not change the overall biome map; likewise, a few new variants of caves and mesa mineshafts and mineshafts with biome-specific wood types and platforms under stairs and rooms will be added since they do not affect the generation of other caves, as well as changes to underground biomes, which will now go all the way down to bedrock (this means no stone but these biomes, such as desert, aren't very hospitable anyway and the game tries to avoid placing spawn in them, the exception being Oasis in Desert M), and minor decorations like plants and ores (which now have variants for sandstone, hardened clay, snow, etc), "dim torches" instead of redstone torches, etc).
Some block IDs and data values will also change but I've implemented my own "data fixer" which converts them, much as newer vanilla versions use to upgrade data to newer formats; e.g. I added a thin variant of cactus which uses the same ID as vanilla cactus, which uses data values 0-15 for growth stages, with data values now split between 0-7 and 8-15, the latter of which will be converted to 0-7 when an old chunk is first loaded. Some other blocks now use new IDs, such as empty monster spawners, which are now a single block ID as my lighting engine differentiates between data values, this includes vanilla blocks like redstone lamps, which frees up block IDs (not that I'm even close to running out since I've used data values so heavily).
Probably the biggest impact on old worlds will be the addition of new leaf blocks and saplings for mega trees, acacia trees, palm trees, and dark/swamp oak trees, which will require finding new biomes in order to grow them, but aside from special variants like jungle trees with cocoa pods all tree types can now be grown in any biome (this won't affect my world since I haven't been using any of these trees, 2x2 spruce is the best tree type for farming torch wood, otherwise there are still only 4 types of wood).
TheMasterCaver's First World - possibly the most caved-out world in Minecraft history - includes world download.
TheMasterCaver's World - my own version of Minecraft largely based on my views of how the game should have evolved since 1.6.4.
Why do I still play in 1.6.4?
There's a good chance the loot in that temple exploded by now due to mobs spawning in the treasure room, or did you remove that from happening in your mod?
There are 12 variants of desert temples, some of which have trapped chests instead of a pressure plate and/or both, and/or mob spawners in the upper part (these mobs can't get into the treasure room):
This also means you have to be extra cautious before opening the chests - the presence of a pressure plate doesn't mean the chests aren't trapped (there are also 4 additional TNT under them so the explosion will be bigger, and since the surrounding ground is sandstone instead of stone the crater will be much larger in either case).
TheMasterCaver's First World - possibly the most caved-out world in Minecraft history - includes world download.
TheMasterCaver's World - my own version of Minecraft largely based on my views of how the game should have evolved since 1.6.4.
Why do I still play in 1.6.4?