FOSS gamedev and creative worlds

In MineCraft, I know that there are several random "natural" cave systems that are accessable only through digging. Do these also occur in MineTest? I know that if I dig about 500 blocks straight down from my "house", I find a few small structures that resemble the inside of a small house, but I've never found any "natural" caves the were remote and underground myself.

There are natural cave systems but I think are connected to the other caves that lead to the surface. These new caves are too narrow and are difficult to move around in without flying. I loved the terrain maker they had before the release in July. They had the most beautiful mountains and caves. I kind of got off track. The things you did find are dungeons. They're new and don't have anything in them yet.

I've found one small dungeon and a ton of natural caves and I haven't been more than 150 blocks underground so far.

hmmm wrote:There are natural cave systems but I think are connected to the other caves that lead to the surface. These new caves are too narrow and are difficult to move around in without flying. I loved the terrain maker they had before the release in July. They had the most beautiful mountains and caves. I kind of got off track. The things you did find are dungeons. They're new and don't have anything in them yet.

Many people, including me, loved the previous terrain generator. It kind of had it's own soul, compared to eg. what is in minecraft.

It was replaced by what it is now because of a lot clearer design, less wasteful output (the previous one generated lots of unneeded terrain, which added to the saved world size) and better maintainability.

EDIT:

Here is the windows package of the last version with the older generator. It's actually called "mapgen v2". http://celeron.55.lt/~celeron55/minetest/packages/win32/minetest-0.2.20110602_0-win32.zip

Dunno what the current generator is called... probably mapgen v5 or something. 8)

I started a world a few weeks ago and spawned right next to a giant "natural" cave system. Entrance is almost at sea level and from there it gets down underground. Did not yet fully discover the system, but it contains of several large halls at different levels, which are interconnected. Found at least one hall with underground water as well (through a connection with the ocean). Many chambers still to explore, though.

It can be challenging, to move through the cave and explorethe full extent without flying, just with digging and building. The perfect thing for me, being a real-life geologist :-D. It also makes ladders really usefull :-)

Keep on your great work, celeron. And make sure future versions will continue to build caves.

IMO the best caves were made with the map generator from around feb/march 2011.
See by yourself: https://bitbucket.org/celeron55/minetest/changeset/34b45866e532

They were huge and sometimes filled with water (which doesn't happen anymore).

It happens. You have very huge caves now,sometimes partial/total filled with water/lava or both. You even have very rare volcanoes. The only missing effect yet is, when lava meets water.
In the underwater caves or oceans - some rare watersnakes would be nice :D
The actual mapgenerator is - in my eyes - excellent compared tu it's predecessors.
Very nice are huge ruins with dungeons in the jungles - a missing thing yet are waterfalls. Maybe they are generated too (but then very rare), because with lava I already had the effect when passing mountains. Suddenly, one lava block spawned - and seconds later - you had a huge volcano.
Cornfields would be another nice feature - and ice on high mountains - or specifig areas, far away from deserts and djungles.

saschakb: When I talk about giant caves, I mean THIS: http://img703.imageshack.us/img703/8397/minetest.jpg :cool:

cisoun: Very nice world.
But - yes, that kind of caves I was speaking of. The mapgenerator still does them, but maybe not that often like you would like them. It has much more possibilities now.
If you look at my screenshots, that's a nice little Dungeon entry. It goes through the dungeon, the dungeon is a hole in the ground that goes deeper - into a huge water cave and deeper into ever more caves that grow on and become even more huge, the deeper you go. There are even bound in more dungeons, water caves, lavastreams, etc.
The old generator could do huge caves - and very often - this one is a bit more tricky.

http://saschakb.tumblr.com/post/10762921934/there-if-youre-lucky-you-can-climb-down-till
http://saschakb.tumblr.com/post/10762646696/this-one-is-for-cisoun-its-a-dungeon-that
http://saschakb.tumblr.com/post/10741269006/in-a-thread-of-the-minetest-forum-there-was

If I see you're map, I would like a mixup. A tool, that could join two maps to a new one, where both worlds are completely integrated ^.^

Okay, after searching and looking around a bit, is that cave huge enough?
http://saschakb.tumblr.com/post/10763519559/there-this-cave-is-thousands-of-blocks-wide-and

That's what I call a cave! xD

cisoun wrote:saschakb: When I talk about giant caves, I mean THIS: http://img703.imageshack.us/img703/8397/minetest.jpg :cool:

Based off of the screen shot, the current map generator is crap.

The caves were great but I prefer the landscapes from the current map generator. :)

hmmm wrote:

cisoun wrote:saschakb: When I talk about giant caves, I mean THIS: http://img703.imageshack.us/img703/8397/minetest.jpg :cool:

Based off of the screen shot, the current map generator is crap.

Well, so far 51 people on tumblr like that giant cave system. And some off them even reblogged it. :)
So it's good, that everyone might have an own oppinion, isn't it?

saschakb wrote:

hmmm wrote:

cisoun wrote:saschakb: When I talk about giant caves, I mean THIS: http://img703.imageshack.us/img703/8397/minetest.jpg :cool:

Based off of the screen shot, the current map generator is crap.

Well, so far 51 people on tumblr like that giant cave system. And some off them even reblogged it. :)
So it's good, that everyone might have an own oppinion, isn't it?

I've seen many cave systems just like the ones in your screenshots. They're more like tunnels than caves. They're hard to move around in without flying because they're so steep. And since they're all connected, you can never be sure a ghost mob wont sneak up on you. I agree that it's good everyone has their own opinion. That's why cave systems should have more variety and have many types of caves.

celeron55 wrote:

hmmm wrote:There are natural cave systems but I think are connected to the other caves that lead to the surface. These new caves are too narrow and are difficult to move around in without flying. I loved the terrain maker they had before the release in July. They had the most beautiful mountains and caves. I kind of got off track. The things you did find are dungeons. They're new and don't have anything in them yet.

Many people, including me, loved the previous terrain generator. It kind of had it's own soul, compared to eg. what is in minecraft.

It was replaced by what it is now because of a lot clearer design, less wasteful output (the previous one generated lots of unneeded terrain, which added to the saved world size) and better maintainability.

EDIT:

Here is the windows package of the last version with the older generator. It's actually called "mapgen v2". http://celeron.55.lt/~celeron55/minetest/packages/win32/minetest-0.2.20110602_0-win32.zip

Dunno what the current generator is called... probably mapgen v5 or something. 8)

You wouldn't happen to have an executable for Linux or the source would you?