FOSS gamedev and creative worlds

shupa mod mapgen works (yay) but how big should i make it?

there is a tradeoff with size versus pretty versus detail


a happy thanksgiving to those in the usa - i still do not understand having a feast to celebrate a massacre, but that is the usa!

I usually only use 2000 in each direction.

I'm using mostly about 500 until -3000 (or -20000 when nether used)

sweet,thanks!
i choose -2500 to 2500
5000 wide is a big map for singleplayer
and the north to south constant wind now works so we can have sails and sailing ships to help get around faster
not assasins creed black flag but basically like that - with more sail to go faster, etc
thanks again

Realisticly, buildings seldom exceed 50m in height. There have to be some exceptions for towers, and sometimes the land is pretty high already. For almost all purposes, 200m up ought to be enough. As for down, since some materials (i.e. mese blocks) do not spawn above -1024, mines can get pretty deep.

With natural mountains up to ~120 and mines mostly 300 deep (because of mese). The normal ranges from -300 to +150.
The important thing is, the height is not necessary for normal gameplay, it is for all the unusual things to find and to do. Also with flowlands when you go up and void/hell when you go down, the environment will change depending on where you are, so it will be more fun to explore all the different layers of the world in the future.

i have a vertical gen plan that is hard coded with a nether-like void, caves, etc,

what i'm banging up against now is the biomes/areas/terrain - as we saw in fm (freeminer) it is weird to have a glacier next to a normal desert, but if that desert was an arid snowy "desert" like the peruvian andes, then that fits

anyway, here's the progress so far:


biomes are derived from height as specified by the terrain map, plus they are mixed with base area types as defined by the areas map

i had a problem visualizing high cold dry jungles until i checked out Machu Pichhu in Peru - it is a very high cold dry yet snowy jungle - the snow is dry like in the high mountains and the arctic (will not make a snowball) not wet like in lower area (will make a snowball)

lol 17 responses to a yahoo question "do cactus grow above the treeline" - 50/50 split yes or no - i will make it no

I personally think that minetest could run MUCH faster in servers if the world length was not *infinite*. As you see usually Minecraft is fast and it can hold many many more players, so lets say you take it down to -5000, 5000, i think it would be much faster

nolan wrote:I personally think that minetest could run MUCH faster in servers if the world length was not *infinite*. As you see usually Minecraft is fast and it can hoold many many more players, so lets say you take it down to -5000, 5000, i think it would be much faster

Actually, It all depends on how much you explore. I only go for about 5000 radius, so I don't do mass exploration.

nolan wrote:I personally think that minetest could run MUCH faster in servers if the world length was not *infinite*. As you see usually Minecraft is fast and it can hold many many more players, so lets say you take it down to -5000, 5000, i think it would be much faster

Only the amount that you explore is generated. Nothing else is. The less you explore, the smaller map you get. The entire -31000 to 31000 is NOT generated[citation needed]

nolan wrote:I personally think that minetest could run MUCH faster in servers if the world length was not *infinite*.

I don't think that would have much impact. In general, generating new areas does cost CPU time. If most of your world is already generated or your mapgen is fast and simple, the server will have less to do. One way to reach this might be to explore most of the map automaticly (there was a mod for that) before letting players log in and/or decrease motivation for exploration tours (i.e. by making sure all ressources are available everywhere).

shupa mapgen is only a few hundred milliseconds for a block of nodes because i am using a pre-defined map, but using a pre-defined map is where the size limit comes in.