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• FPS boost (examples) - doubling the FPS is common - decreases lag spikes and smooths gameplay

• Support for HD Textures (info) - HD textures and HD fonts (MCPatcher not needed) - custom terrain and item textures - animated terrain and item textures - custom HD Font character widths - custom colors - custom block color palettes - custom lighting - unlimited texture size

• Support for Shaders (info) - based on the Shaders Mod by Karyonix

• Dynamic Lights - allows handheld and dropped light emitting items to illuminate the objects around them. It is similar, but not related to the Dynamic Lights mod

• Variable Render Distance (example) - from Tiny to Extreme (2 x Far) in 16m steps - sun, moon and stars are visible in Tiny and Short distance

• Configurable Smooth Lighting (examples) - from 1% - smooth lighting without shadows - to 100% - smooth lighting with full shadows

• Performance: VSync Synchronizes framerate with monitor refresh rate to remove split frames and smooth gameplay

• Smart Advanced OpenGL - more efficient, less artifacts - Fast - faster, some artifacts still visible - Fancy - slower, avoids visual artifacts

• Fog control - Fog: Fancy, Fast, OFF - Fog start: Near, Far

• Mipmaps (examples) - Visual effect which makes distant objects look better by smoothing the texture details - Mipmap level - OFF, 1, 2, 3, Max - Mipmap type - Nearest, Linear

• Anisotropic Filtering (examples) - Restores details in mipmapped textures - AF level - OFF, 2, 4, 8, 16 (depends on hardware support)

• Antialiasing (examples) - Smooths jagged lines and sharp color transitions - AA level - OFF, 2, 4, 6, 8, 12, 16 (depends on hardware support)

• Better Grass Fixes grass blocks side texture to match surrounding grass terrain

• Better Snow (examples, credit) Fixes transparent blocks textures to match surrounding snow terrain

• Clear Water (examples) Clear, transparent water with good visibility underwater

• Custom Sky (info) Use custom textures for the day and night skies. Multiple layers, blending options, time configuration.

• Random Mobs Use random mob textures if available in the texture pack

• Connected Textures (examples) Connects textures for glass, glass panes, sandstone and bookshelf blocks which are next to each other.

• Natural Textures (examples, idea) Removes the gridlike pattern created by repeating blocks of the same type. Uses rotated and flipped variants of the base block texture.

• Faster Math Uses smaller lookup table which fits better in the L1 CPU cache

• FPS control - Smooth FPS - stabilizes FPS by flushing the graphics driver buffers (examples) - Smooth Input - fixes stuck keys, slow input and sound lag by setting correct thread priorities

• Chunk Loading Control - Load Far - loads the world chunks at distance Far, allows fast render distance switching - Preloaded Chunks - defines an area in which no new chunks will be loaded - Chunk Updates per Frame - allows for faster world loading - Dynamic Updates - loads more chunks per frame when the player is standing still

• Configurable Details - Clouds - Default, Fast, Fancy - Cloud Height - from 0% to 100% - Trees - Default, Fast, Fancy - Grass - Default, Fast, Fancy - Water - Default, Fast, Fancy - Rain and Snow - Default, Fast, Fancy - Sky - ON, OFF - Stars - ON, OFF - Sun & Moon - ON, OFF - Depth Fog - ON, OFF - Weather - ON, OFF - Swamp Colors - ON, OFF - Smooth Biomes - ON, OFF - Custom Fonts - ON, OFF - Custom Colors - ON, OFF - Show Capes - ON, OFF (supports HD capes)

• Configurable animations - Water Animated - OFF, Dynamic, ON - Lava Animated - OFF, Dynamic, ON - Fire Animated - OFF, ON - Portal Animated - OFF, ON - Redstone Animated - OFF, ON - Explosion Animated - OFF, ON - Flame Animated - OFF, ON - Smoke Animated - OFF, ON - Void Particles - OFF, ON - Water Particles - OFF, ON - Rain Splash - OFF, ON - Portal Particles - OFF, ON - Dripping Water/Lava - OFF, ON - Terrain Animated - OFF, ON - Items Animated - OFF, ON

• Fast Texturepack Switching Switch the current Texturepack without leaving the world

• Fullscreen Resolution Configurable fullscreen resolution

• Debug - Fast Debug Info - removes lagometer from debug screen - Debug Profiler - removes profiler from debug screen

• Time Control Default, Day Only or Night Only - works in only in Creative mode

• Autosave - Configurable Autosave interval - A fix for the famous Lag Spike of Death

Quote from Badprenup

Alright, I made some quick and dirty mockups with Creative Mode and MCEdit, and it shows a basic implementation of what I was getting at. So I'll go over what I said before, but with images to go with it.

1. An example of a bare-bones hallway pattern. This one is just a tiny one I made, and only has space for 5 rooms. But Mojang could easily make them larger or take up several floors as they do now. This is just a simple design. You might notice the Redstone and Lapis Blocks, those are examples of the markers that help align the rooms to the structures, more on those later. And in place of the Silverfish spawner I used a Jukebox so I could have music while I worked. Also, you may note that I only used one Brick type, that was strictly for simplicity's sake.



2. Here is a close up of the Portal Room, just to show it off.



3. Finally, a close up of a set of markers. The Redstone Block is always right in the doorway oh the hallway pattern, and the Lapis Block is always one block inside the room. This assures everything always lines up correctly.



4. Now, here are some quick and dirty rooms I made. If you didn't see what I said before, each room could have a specific number of times it can generate per Stronghold, which would be based on the loot that can be found or the usefulness of the room. I will note how many times each one can appear:

Throne Room (1 Time)


Sleeping Quarters (2 Times)

Note that there could be a chance that some beds or chests had rotted away over time, so each time this room spawned the number of beds/chests could vary slightly, as could loot in the chests.

Enchanting Room (1 Time)

The same thing that happens with the Sleeping Quarters could happen here as well. You could find this room 100% complete, or it could be missing bookshelves or even the Enchanting Table

Forge (2 Times)

As with the above two rooms, the Anvil could be a different damage level or gone completely, and there could be randomized loot/fuel in the Furnaces

5. So as you can see, each room had markers like the hallway, a blue one that is in the room and a red one that denotes where the hall is. With this system or a similar one, it assures that the rooms are rotated properly and aligned every time, unless the actual room or hallway file stored in the code was built incorrectly. Here is a GIF of showing how a room lines up:


6. So as you saw from the first image, there were 5 places where rooms could be generated, but a total of 6 possible rooms (1 each of the Throne Room and Enchanting Room, and 2 possible Forges and Sleeping Quarters each). This is where the random generation comes in, so let's see how they happened to generate this time:

Room 1: Sleeping Quarters (1 Sleeping Quarters, 4 empty rooms remaining)
Room 2: Forge (1 Forge, 3 empty rooms remaining)
Room 3: Enchanting Room (0 Enchanting Rooms, 2 empty rooms remaining)
Room 4: Sleeping Quarters (0 Sleeping Quarters, 1 empty room remaining)

And finally, with a chance for it to be a Forge or Throne Room (drum roll)...

Room 5: Throne Room (0 Throne Rooms, 0 empty rooms remaining).

So that is how it happened to generate that time, but a different seed could have generated differently.

7. An image of the finished Stronghold

Quote from dommenick

As promised, I started working on my version of the Stronghold rooms and corridors, based on the system Badprenup explained, with the connection points in-between corridors and rooms, to prevent overlapping or "stupid" corridors.

For now it are only basic builds. I haven't reached a far enough point to determine if everything works with each other and how many of each room could be added, but I hope to be able to work that out in the future. I'm also really really waiting for SPC and WE for Minecraft 1.7.4, so I can do some copying and I can make an actual stronghold with the pieces. That being said, all the things on the pictures are hand build, block after block, without using any utensil like world edit.

In the pictures the most things are still very bright. I haven't added torches anywhere, except for redstone torches, as I feel like the Stronghold should be a dark and obscure place, long left behind by society, for only ghosts and mobs to dwell... *horror music* ... haha, no but seriously, I tried going for a dark and almost scary atmosphere.

Portal Room:

As you can see, I went for a different approach with the portal room. In stead of having the staircase to the flying portal in the middle, I decided to take it all down and place the portal on floor level, with lava and obsidian below it.
I also put obsidian behind the iron bars. Just a small difference, but I think it makes a great change to the atmosphere. The sponges you can see in the photos are supposed to be mob spawners.
I also changed the lava "pools" into lava "streams" coming from the walls and I gave the entire room a a little more circular feel (or that's what I tried) with the stairs around.




Library:

In the pictures I haven't added cobwebs yet, but apart from that it's finished. It is a one-floored version of the library, I haven't looked into a 2-floored yet.


This (photo above) are all the formations in which bookcases can spawn (they can be mirrored and altered as much as you wish). The biggest one in the middle are two smaller ones combined with a overhang. I believe that if this 'formula' for bookcases is used in stead of the old one, you have opportunities for way better looking and cooler libraries.

As you might have noticed, in the first picture of this library, there are 3 chests and 1 enchantment table to be found. Of course this would be randomized and some things might spawn more often than others. That what you see in the pictures above:
There will always spawn 1 chest, and on top of that you have 50% chance on a second chest and 25% chance on a third one. Also, an enchantment table or brewing stand can spawn, but only 1 of those two (maximum) per library!

Armory / Blacksmith:

I've had fun with this room! To be honest, I think it turned out great! The black thing on the left is a tool forge or something like that, in the back you have an anvil (take a look at the last picture for that ), on the right of that a little shelf with a chest and a cauldron, and in the corner a little lava "pit" and some furnaces.



Just like the enchantment table and the chests in the library, this item at the place the anvil is at, is random. In the picture above you see the items it can contain, including nothing. If it happens to be an anvil, you have 20% chance on a non-damaged anvil, 30% chance on a slightly damaged anvil and 50% chance on a very damaged anvil.

Bedroom / Barracks:

As suggested in the original post, the barracks! I also gave these a shot, and the out-come is a semi-two-floored bedroom with supporting wood and beds downstairs and bedrolls upstairs.

Junction / Intersection:

We've all seen them, the boring plain-looking intersections (see picture above). I always thought that particular room was extremely boring and should be way better.. So I gave it a go!

This is another build that really suited me. I - for some reason - absolutely love the idea of having supporting wooden beams, so that is what I did. The sponge in the middle is, once again, supposed to be a mobspawner.
The room has four exits, just as in the "vanilla" room, and in the corners you can just find some randomly placed fences, broken support beams, perhaps a crafting bench, whatever you like really. By the way - this room is also supposed to be pretty dark and gloomy, hence the spawner.

Hallways - WIP:

I wasn't sure how to start on these, but after some mental warfare I decided that I would try and create "presets" which could be molded together in as many as possible ways. This is still in a very early stage though. (Some of the walls and ceilings aren't even finished yet, but hey, it'll give you an idea

Plain corridors:

Long corridor (wall-less)


Small corridor (wall-less)


These are both just basic straight corridors, nothing special about them. Next up are the fun ones!

"Special" corridors:

Corridor with a chest in the wall


Corridor with a trapped chest and TNT behind it in the wall



Small corridor with a door (a connecting piece, really)


(I changed the wall into stained glass here to see how the inside is built up.

Collapsed corridor

! I'm having troubles uploading this picture, it'll be there ASAP !

[url="http://www.minecraftforum.net/topic/1701124-lets-talk-about-strongholds/"][img]http://i.imgur.com/tLB8qXh.jpg[/img][/url]