[mod] Underground Realms [0.8] [caverealms]

[HolyPhoenix]

That meeting half way works for me, and sounds even better. :D

I'll have to put this on our server once its ready.

[paramat]

This speed increasing commit https://github.com/HeroOfTheWinds/minetest-caverealms/commit/c85a4295b7e4abcbe63649dc47de3ed007ec54b8 has been very useful, i am changing my mods to use that and generation time is reduced by roughly half a second. Since the on-generated voxelmanip always 'emerges' a chunk plus an extra 16 nodes (one mapblock) of space around the chunk, it can be used to scan the nodes in the chunk below.

[HeroOfTheWinds]

Version 0.2.7 is now released! Glaciated biome has been added, complete with two kinds of ice: default ice and thin ice, the latter of which borders the biome and is found in the ice stalagmites and stalactites. Speaking of which, the ice stalactites hold a lethal surprise: every time you break a block of ice from an ice stalactite, there's a 33% chance that the whole stalactite will come crashing down on the ground below, hurting (and probably killing!) anyone unlucky enough to be standing beneath.

This version also introduces a few crafts... Mycena Essence can be crafted from mycena mushrooms directly, and then used with 8 Mese Crystal fragments (place a Mycena Essence in the center and surround it with the fragments) to create the glowing yellow mese crystals. Likewise, a glowing mese crystal can be crafted into 8 mese crystal fragments.

As always, enjoy!

This speed increasing commit https://github.com/HeroOfTheWinds/minetest-caverealms/commit/c85a4295b7e4abcbe63649dc47de3ed007ec54b8 has been very useful, i am changing my mods to use that and generation time is reduced by roughly half a second. Since the on-generated voxelmanip always 'emerges' a chunk plus an extra 16 nodes (one mapblock) of space around the chunk, it can be used to scan the nodes in the chunk below.

I know, great, isn't it? However, the credit isn't due to me; it's due to Zeno- from GitHub, who is on IRC as Zeno`. If you see him, send your thanks his direction. :)

[Chinchow]

This is a really nice mod! Keep it up.

[Zeno]

Draft 1 of HDX textures is getting there (slowly). Thanks also to VanessaE for fixing my textures and contributing the large crystal textures!

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HDX-128

[HeroOfTheWinds]

Another set of small changes pushed to the repo. Mostly just a heavy cleanup, with the init file being split up into separate luas, including ones for nodes and functions. More values were moved to the config file, so that is pretty much the go-to for simple aesthetic changes (the settings for actual cave generation parameters, i.e. perlin parameters, remain in the init file). Code was given more comments, certain areas cleaned up.

Also, Zeno created another pull request that I had to merge by hand, partly because the changes were made to the old init, partly because I had a few revisions to his code, but the stuff he did is still quite nice. Most notably: stalagmite and stalactite generation code was cleaned up to be much easier to expand and simpler to read, with fewer logic calls as well. Additionally, the glow gems dotting the landscape in the blue crystal biome now vary in size, with 5 different possibilities. On which note, welcome to the forum, Zeno! Glad to see you join.

[Zeno]

More screenshots of the HDX support. Thanks again to VanessaE for invaluable help and the icicle textures (mine were terrible).

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[Kilarin]

This is looking really awesome!

[HeroOfTheWinds]

Made another performance update... Now there are two more settings at the start of the init file (which may or may not be stolen from paramat's floatindev mod), CLUSAV and CLUSAM.

CLUSAV controls the rarity of the caves, ranging in value from -1 to 0, with -1 being the smallest and rarest and 0 being the most common. The default is -0.5, which still yields a fairly large amount of caverns of considerable size, close to what they were before.

CLUSAM is the size and density threshold of the caves. This value goes from 0 (least variation) to 1 (most variation). 0.5 is the default, which also works fairly well.

These settings probably won't matter much to single players, but I know that some server owners will at least gain some benefit from this addition. A few other tweaks to the parameters were made under the surface, so a few things may be more out of the ordinary than before, but I didn't notice anything especially off. Actually, there should be some slightly more interesting terrain features now, although I'm not a huge fan of the way the caves currently taper off. Hopefully for version 0.3, I can get rid of those nasty chunk border cutoffs. (In other words, I've procrastinated long enough :P )

In any case, enjoy!

[paramat]

Saw you having problems on IRC ... i guess you're looking to make an inverted form of the unlimited version of 'floatindev' mod? That will be the most helpful mod for what you want to do.
Except you may not want to invert floatindev's caves because they become floatlands inside your caverealms, you can make them smaller though. The floatlands in your mod are very cool looking but having large crystals and rock spikes attached to their thin edges looks wrong to me. Beautiful mod and getting prettier, the unlimited caves are what i'm waiting for ;)

[HeroOfTheWinds]

Saw you having problems on IRC ... i guess you're looking to make an inverted form of the unlimited version of 'floatindev' mod? That will be the most helpful mod for what you want to do.
Except you may not want to invert floatindev's caves because they become floatlands inside your caverealms, you can make them smaller though. The floatlands in your mod are very cool looking but having large crystals and rock spikes attached to their thin edges looks wrong to me. Beautiful mod and getting prettier, the unlimited caves are what i'm waiting for ;)

Pretty close, yeah. I was basically trying to implement the changes that made skylands unlimited, but having only limited success. I'm trying to look at anything I can that I think might be helpful. As far as inverting floatindev goes, I definitely avoid inverting caves as well. I also looked at your subterrain mod, and was thinking of trying to strike out in that direction as well.... It's all in the air right now, anything can happen. However, I'm leaving the current engine untouched, instead putting up experimental versions in a dev branch. Some way or another, I will get unlimited caves, as well as a solution to the floating islands popping up uninvited. :)

[HeroOfTheWinds]

I am pleased to announce that CaveRealms has now reached version 0.3!



This version was the product of a radical re-code from the ground up, changing the base generation code from inverted skylands to paramat's subterrain mod. Not only did this greatly clean up and clarify the code, but it also shaved a whole 100 ms at the bare minimum from the generation time! The impetus for this change was to create caves that aren't cut off at the top and bottom chunk borders, which has been achieved with this change. In order to shake things up though, I applied an additional, wavy perlin noise to the already-present 3D noise that generated the caves, thus causing plentiful overhangs and various land formations. Several other tweaks were made to cut down on visual errors involving stalagmites and stalactites, as well as the (rather hushed up) bugs that caused the majority of glow worms to be buried in the ceiling.

In any case, I created a separate release tag on GitHub for those who preferred the old cave style, as well as a link to it in the OP.

Hope you guys enjoy this new version!

[Zeno]

Excellent work

hdx-128:

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[Zeno]

For those interested, here are the parameters configurable/modifiable using minetest.conf

The values given are the current defaults.

Your phone or window isn't wide enough to display the code box. If it's a phone, try rotating it to landscape mode.

Code: Select all

# bottom realm limit
caverealms.ymin = -33000

# top realm limit
caverealms.ymax = -700

# cave threshold
caverealms.tcave   = 0.5

# enable/disable falling icicles
caverealms.falling_icicles = true

# chance of icicles falling when dug
caverealms.fallcha = 0.33

# chance of stalagmites
caverealms.stagcha = 0.002

# chance of stalactites
caverealms.stalcha = 0.003

# max height for stalagmites
caverealms.h_lag = 15

# max height stalactites
caverealms.h_lac   = 20

# chance of glow crystal formations
caverealms.crystal = 0.007

# max height of glow crystals
caverealms.h_cry = 9

# max height of glow crystal stalactites
caverealms.h_clac = 13

# chance of small glow gems
caverealms.gemcha = 0.03

# chance of mushrooms
caverealms.mushcha   = 0.04

# chance of mycena mushrooms
caverealms.myccha  = 0.03

# chance of glow worms
caverealms.wormcha = 0.02

# chance of giant mushrooms
caverealms.giantcha = 0.001

# chance of icicles
caverealms.icicha = 0.035


[HeroOfTheWinds]

At long last, a new update to CaveRealms!



The Dungeon Masters' Lair realm now appears between y = -4000 and -5000. In this treacherous biome, expect to find hot cobble that hurts you if you become buried in it, perpetual fires, red glowing crystals, and pre-generated, lava-surrounded statues of Dungeon Masters as well as fortresses with treasure inside.

Yes, you heard right. TREASURE! Up to 5 item stacks will be inside the chest that appears at the back of the fortresses, ranging from sandstone blocks to diamond pickaxes. For those of you using PilzAdam's Simple Mobs and the included Dungeon Master mob, add this to the init.lua of the mobs mod: mobs:register_spawn("mobs:dungeon_master", {"caverealms:dm_statue"}, 14, -1, 100, 1, -4000)
That should help make that you need to earn the treasure inside in some cases.

TODO: Move some of the new parameters into the config file.

As always, I hope you enjoy this new version of CaveRealms!

[HeroOfTheWinds]

Small update, moved the new settings into the config.lua file. I also made a simple fix to the chest filling code to allow the minimum number of items in a chest be configurable as well, also from the config.

[HeroOfTheWinds]

Another new update for the config, fortresses and fountains can be disabled from the config in a nice, clean way. (Thanks Zeno for the idea)

[Zeno]

Some people just can't stand the coolness.

hah! :)

[HeroOfTheWinds]

Some people just can't stand the coolness.

hah! :)

Eheheheh, so people DO read the sub comments for new commits on GitHub....

As was discussed in the topic for declaring games to be ready for bundling with MT, I decided to make a quick and dirty try at combining SkyLands and CaveRealms. The result? Rather mixed....

There are a few things that make this blend incredibly unwieldy, especially regarding lighting issues. At chunk borders, if the caves within the islands are cut off, it thinks there's sunlight around the hole made by the chunk border. This doesn't happen in regular CaveRealms because night is automatically assumed for areas below sea level. And while the idea of the two meeting seems really neat, it feels rather odd when you actually get to exploring it... While it could be an interesting challenge to code, I think for the time being I will file it under "not unless there was a considerable push for it."

[jenova99sephiros]

Cool. Amazing. and beautiful
very very goood

[rubberduck]

i really like this mod, so cool biomes.
and i have some more ideas for biomes too:

a salt-crystal biome: color could be rose/pink with cubic crystal structures representing salt crystals, size could range from 2x2 to 4x4 or 5x5.
ground could be transparent like in the glaciated biome, but light could come from under the ground
in these salt crystals could be glowing blocks too.

my other idea is a snowy biome, a bit like the glaciated biome, but with snow on it
there could be snowblocks making it look more bright and white.
adding these blue crystals could add more light too
in this biome you find a lot of quartz ore (if this mod is installed), also diamont could be a bit more common here

[HeroOfTheWinds]

i really like this mod, so cool biomes.
and i have some more ideas for biomes too:

a salt-crystal biome: color could be rose/pink with cubic crystal structures representing salt crystals, size could range from 2x2 to 4x4 or 5x5.
ground could be transparent like in the glaciated biome, but light could come from under the ground
in these salt crystals could be glowing blocks too.

my other idea is a snowy biome, a bit like the glaciated biome, but with snow on it
there could be snowblocks making it look more bright and white.
adding these blue crystals could add more light too
in this biome you find a lot of quartz ore (if this mod is installed), also diamont could be a bit more common here

Interesting ideas! Perhaps I can implement some over break. I like the salt biome idea, but I think snow is a bit of a stretch, since there isn't any rain/snow underground. I might try the quartz idea though...

[Zeno]

I made "deep realms" for MTZ. Pretty cool (IMHO)

[rubberduck]

i also have a mod idea that is based on this.
i have planned to make this mod, but that is a bit far away (a few month or later)

my idea is to make a mod where you can craft cool things out of stuff found there:

some examples i would like i implement first then:
a crystal block made from these glow gems
a glowing rope mode from glow-worms
mushroom-block/stairs/slabs
melting crystals (not these glow gems) to glass

you could implement some of these too, if you want.

also these glow-ores should drop crystal looking items (like mese-ore >> mese crystal) and not these ores
these crystals then could be used for recipes too.

[HeroOfTheWinds]

I made "deep realms" for MTZ. Pretty cool (IMHO)

I actually was thinking of officially making that concept part of CaveRealms. I saw your fork, and like what you've done! However, I think I'll do a different version of the obsidian deep-realm, using physically different looking obsidian varieties.

@rubberduck: Those are some neat ideas! I originally wanted to make my glow ores drop gems, but forgot to go back and do that. Maybe I can do that when I get back on the job... Actually, it isn't that hard to make mushroom blocks work with moreblocks, but I can't remember what exactly I'd have to do. I think it involves editing moreblocks' circular saw... But I don't think I'll get around to those right away, so feel free to make a mod! I like the glow-worm rope idea (however impractical / slightly gross it is. xD ).

[fireuser]

Could you make it so you spawn in these caves? I have tried to make you spawn in caves, but failed miserably. I love under ground and it would make it easy to find the caves. (because you spawn in them Du) Any ways it's kind of stupid so if you don't like it, forget about it. It would probably only cause trouble. Thanks : )

[HeroOfTheWinds]

Could you make it so you spawn in these caves? I have tried to make you spawn in caves, but failed miserably. I love under ground and it would make it easy to find the caves. (because you spawn in them Du) Any ways it's kind of stupid so if you don't like it, forget about it. It would probably only cause trouble. Thanks : )

This is an interesting post that I definitely should address. It is theoretically possible to make it so that you spawn in caves, primarily by adapting the same code paramat uses for spawning on his custom mapgens like watershed. I may add an option for this if I can successfully adapt the code, but I will state that it is a complicated problem. In particular, you usually cannot read perlin noise values from ungenerated parts of the world. The only chunk generated at run time is the one centered around 0,0,0... Or at least in a small distance from there.

EDIT: I guess one possible solution is to use register_on_newplayer() to teleport the player down some 1000 blocks (ideally toward the center of a chunk), then call a special spawnplayer() function adapted from watershed, most likely in minetest.after(). Probably also have to return a bool to see if a cave was found, or else spawn lower yet. Will get to it after the main push of college finals are over.

Looks like I have plenty to keep me busy. :)

[Napiophelios]

I use CaveRealms with an accelerated version of Catacombs and its nothing short of insane
Its so easy to just get completely lost in all of it.

Some CaveRealm specific mobs would be a nice touch.
But they would have to be "other worldly" and I think hard to create.
Right now I use DJ's Senderman as CaveRealms mob of choice just cuz its kinda creepy,
but I think something original is called for in such a place.

[Kilarin]

While we are bouncing around some Underground Realms ideas. I have one that may or may NOT fit with the CaveRealms theme.

I was wondering, what if, at a certain depth, and it would need to be really deep, 15,000? 20,000? Anyway, at some specific depth, would it be possible to create an underground world something like Professor Lidenbrock discovers in Jules Verne's "Journey to the Center of the Earth" ???

This would be a vast realm that was no longer cave like, but world like. With a high roof illuminated by something resembling the Aurora Borealis. Brighter than the moon, but not as bright as the sun. (can minetest handle that?)

Here is the description from "Journey to the Center of the Earth"

At first I saw absolutely nothing. My eyes, wholly unused to the effulgence of light, could not bear the sudden brightness; and I was compelled to close them. When I was able to reopen them, I stood still, far more stupefied than astonished. Not all the wildest effects of imagination could have conjured up such a scene! "The sea--the sea," I cried.

"Yes," replied my uncle, in a tone of pardonable pride; "the Central Sea. No future navigator will deny the fact of my having discovered it; and hence of acquiring a right of giving it a name."

It was quite true. A vast, limitless expanse of water, the end of a lake if not of an ocean, spread before us, until it was lost in the distance. The shore, which was very much indented, consisted of a beautiful soft golden sand, mixed with small shells, the long-deserted home of some of the creatures of a past age. The waves broke incessantly--and with a peculiarly sonorous murmur, to be found in underground localities. A slight frothy flake arose as the wind blew along the pellucid waters; and many a dash of spray was blown into my face. The mighty superstructure of rock which rose above to an inconceivable height left only a narrow opening--but where we stood, there was a large margin of strand. On all sides were capes and promontories and enormous cliffs, partially worn by the eternal breaking of the waves, through countless ages! And as I gazed from side to side, the mighty rocks faded away like a fleecy film of cloud.

It was in reality an ocean, with all the usual characteristics of an inland sea, only horribly wild--so rigid, cold and savage.

One thing startled and puzzled me greatly. How was it that I was able to look upon that vast sheet of water instead of being plunged in utter darkness? The vast landscape before me was lit up like day. But there was wanting the dazzling brilliancy, the splendid irradiation of the sun; the pale cold illumination of the moon; the brightness of the stars. The illuminating power in this subterranean region, from its trembling and flickering character, its clear dry whiteness, the very slight elevation of its temperature, its great superiority to that of the moon, was evidently electric; something in the nature of the aurora borealis, only that its phenomena were constant, and able to light up the whole of the ocean cavern.

The tremendous vault above our heads, the sky, so to speak, appeared to be composed of a conglomeration of nebulous vapors, in constant motion. I should originally have supposed that, under such an atmospheric pressure as must exist in that place, the evaporation of water could not really take place, and yet from the action of some physical law, which escaped my memory, there were heavy and dense clouds rolling along that mighty vault, partially concealing the roof. Electric currents produced astonishing play of light and shade in the distance, especially around the heavier clouds. Deep shadows were cast beneath, and then suddenly, between two clouds, there would come a ray of unusual beauty, and remarkable intensity. And yet it was not like the sun, for it gave no heat.

I'm just picturing a world where, above sea level, you have more floating islands than you could ever explore in a lifetime, changing to "heaven realms" and other interesting biomes as you go further upwards.

And below sea level, you have over 10,000 nodes worth of glorious cave realms with crystals, underground forest of mushrooms, lakes of lava, and fantastic stalactites and stalagmites. Keep digging and you hit the dangerous (but rewarding!) Dungeon Masters realm. And if you dig deep enough, you open up a whole new world with a glowing sky, jungles, seas, mountains, and perhaps even dinosaur mobs?

Like I said, I'm not certain if it fits with your vision or not. OR, if Minetest could handle the lighting requirements. But I think a world where you keep discovering, not just new realms, but entirely new kinds of realms as you explore the vast vertical space of Minetest is incredibly appealing. Your SkyTest and Underground Realms games are wonderful for achieving that feeling of endless discovery!

[indriApollo]

Wow that idea is really amazing !! With photorealostic shaders it could be a skyrimtest :D I really love this idea of levels. I'm do hyped now !!!!!!

Colored lightning and dynamic shadows would bring a massive immersion boost. Just imagine the shadow of your character enlightened by the purple halo comming from stalactytes on the roof xO (like trine 2)

I'm dreaming ...