FOSS gamedev and creative worlds

Is it possible to generate a map of a map? It need not be ingame. Just a script that generates an image of the map with the spawning point or free coordinate in the center and maybe 1000 or 2000 nodes in each direction, just enough to see where are oceans, forests, jungles, deserts and so on

If the terrain already exists in the world's map database, you can use a mapping application:

MinetestMapperGui
Official Minetestmapper
Python & numpy mapper

I choose the Python mapper. Works ok. But I guess only for sqlite3. And only for existing map data.

Is it possible that minetest generates a map without playing everything?

You mean a world preview before generating terrain?
It's possible by reproducing core mapgen in a mod.

some sort of seed preview or tester might indeed be interesting as standalone program.

twoelk wrote:some sort of seed preview or tester might indeed be interesting as standalone program.

Didn't someone already make something like this? Might have been Krock but I am not sure if he released it.

I have a simple mod that teleports the player around a rectangular spiral to force the mapgen to generate blocks.
This is a simple way initialize a world and then I use minetestmapper to generate a map.

This gives you a rough idea of the different biomes and interesting area locations.
If you want to try it: https://github.com/oleastre/os_explore

Works nice, but it crashes after a while

Do you have some more info ?
Like the number of steps or spiral size you did ?
And where you playing in single player or in server mode with other people ?
And last but not least, can you monitor your memory usage while exploring ? Maybe it's too fast and your computer cannot keep up generating blocks and storing them (in that case, you can increase the "wait" parameter at the beginning of the file ).

Set delay to 20. Until now everything is ok. But this method doesn't work if the player is underground because of some high mountains. In the lower left area is just rock. Try it again with a flying player

Yes of course, a flying player is quite mandatory and the exploration is done on the starting height of your player.
I could add an option to automate the exploration at different altitudes.
I generally start at an altitude around 60.
And I often get gray zones as mountains goes higher; but at least I have a first map to help me manually explore the world.

On minetestville (shut down now) We had a slippy map to show map on the website. You can do a lot with the map.

oleastre wrote:Yes of course, a flying player is quite mandatory and the exploration is done on the starting height of your player.
I could add an option to automate the exploration at different altitudes.
I generally start at an altitude around 60.
And I often get gray zones as mountains goes higher; but at least I have a first map to help me manually explore the world.

Oleastre you're mod is sounds very similar to Echo's explore map mod and I always thought thats what his mod was missing
a way to automate exploration of different altitudes and depths.
I am definitely going to try yours out to see how they compare.

You can use minetest.emerge_area to force generate a block.

@Napiophelios: yes it's similar but follows a square spiral instead of a round one; the height automation is not already done but is quite easy to add.

@yyt16384: I was not aware of that one, I think I will just add a command to use this in a quick way.

Stay tuned :)

I added a /mapgen chat command to my small mod that uses the emerge_area.
Just call /mapgen 1000 to generate a 2000x2000 map around your player position.

And if you use /mapgen 1000 100; it will do the same but for a 2000x2000 box from your player's altitude up to 100.

oleastre wrote:@yyt16384: I was not aware of that one, I think I will just add a command to use this in a quick way.

There is also /emergeblocks chat command.

I think I will stop trying to re-implement existing stuff...
/emergeblocks is not documented in the minetest wiki and you could have tell everyone about that command in your first post.
But thanks anyway to make us aware of this.