Above-ground dungeons?

[y.st.]

Does anyone know why dungeons sometimes (but rarely) spawn above ground? Between recent discussions I've read and a particular dungeon I've been playing with, I have a theory and wonder if I'm anywhere near correct.

Using the same seed every time, I've found that the dungeon in a particular location spawns fully-intact and with one room (complete with a one by two node entry point from the outside world) above the ground and forms a really cool bunker-like place. However, it only seems to spawn the upper room, which is probably the most important room, when I come at the dungeon from certain angles during mapgen.

I think maybe this has to do with the outer boundaries of map chunks being generated. I think the dungeon lies on one of these boundaries and is being generated outside the chunk in the one block buffer of ignore nodes. I think if the chunk the dungeon's top lies within is generated before the chunk beside it that actually trigers the dungeon's placement, the air has already been added and the dungeon ends up "leveled". Does anyone know if this is even close?

[Sokomine]

I think maybe this has to do with the outer boundaries of map chunks being generated. I think the dungeon lies on one of these boundaries and is being generated outside the chunk in the one block buffer of ignore nodes. I think if the chunk the dungeon's top lies within is generated before the chunk beside it that actually trigers the dungeon's placement, the air has already been added and the dungeon ends up "leveled"

I don't know if that is the case here - but it is a plausible explanation. Once a structure of some kind has to be adjusted to the scenery, and the scenery is not known beforehand, it gets tricky. I had this problem with the villages as well - in particular regarding their height.

[paramat]

y.st. correct, the unbroken above-ground part of the dungeon is the part that generates across a mapchunk border into a neighbour mapchunk that is ungenerated and full of 'ignore' nodes, when that mapchunk is later generated the terrain is built around the unbroken dungeon and doesn't replace it.
In already-generated mapchunks dungeons are chopped by air or water nodes.

[Hybrid Dog]

y.st. correct, the unbroken above-ground part of the dungeon is the part that generates across a mapchunk border into a neighbour mapchunk that is ungenerated and full of 'ignore' nodes, when that mapchunk is later generated the terrain is built around the unbroken dungeon and doesn't replace it.
In already-generated mapchunks dungeons are chopped by air or water nodes.

Wouldn't that mean that dungeons floating in air always have a connection to ground somewhere?

[y.st.]

No, not necessarily. If the dungeon spawned in mid air, perhaps it would be clipped to the chunk border, but part would remain in the ignores waiting for the neighboring chunk to be generated.

Huh. Maybe this is part of what is up with those odd dungeon rings we see about. Next time I see one, I'll calculate out where it lies in relation to the chunk boundaries.

[Wuzzy]

I don't know the technical reasons, but I know this:
Above-ground dungeons appear because of political reasons. Paramat thinks they're cool.

Read here the mind-blowing discussion:
https://github.com/minetest/minetest/issues/2384

At least I managed to convince paramat to add a setting to get rid of floating dungeons, but by default, those floating dungeons are enabled. Af far I know, this setting is not yet part of Minetest 0.4.12, but is in the development version, so it will be in the following release.

Add this to minetest.conf to get rid of them:

enable_floating_dungeons = false

[y.st.]

Actually ... I think they're cool too. My problem is when this particular dungeon *doesn't* spawn the above-ground part. When the above-ground part is present, it's a cool bunker. When it's missing, the rest of the dungeon is of no particular interest to me.

It's nice to have both options available through that setting though. I really wish there were more configuration options for several features that don't have them.

EDIT: From that issue page you posted, it sounds like this is exactly what is going on with those dungeon rings. Little by little, I will understand the map generator more.

[paramat]

Yeah the rings are disabled by that setting, so we know they are generating in ignore nodes of an ungenerated neighbouring mapchunk, they are slices of floating/projecting dungeons, i still can't see why they appear.
These slices are now unfortunately too common and are losing their charm, i want to remove them while keeping the more interesting floating/projecting dungeons.
The slices seem to appear flat against a mapchunk border.

[Hybrid Dog]

How about converting dungeon generation to lua?

[paramat]

That would be insanely slow.

There are some dungeon parameters that will probably become settable in future. I might be abe to add an option that makes dungeons complete, but only allow generation if they emerge from the ground, to avoid too many floating dungeons.
Celeron55's original idea for the dungeons was that they are dungeon ruins. As far as i know Minetest was initially very much a dungeon game, they were a primary feature.

[Dragonop]

@paramat Do you remember dungeon_game for 0.3.0?

[FreeLikeGNU]

That would be insanely slow.

There are some dungeon parameters that will probably become settable in future. I might be abe to add an option that makes dungeons complete, but only allow generation if they emerge from the ground, to avoid too many floating dungeons.
Celeron55's original idea for the dungeons was that they are dungeon ruins. As far as i know Minetest was initially very much a dungeon game, they were a primary feature.

Dungeon Parameters! Oh mais oui! Optional chests and torches and mobs would be super!

[Sokomine]

Dungeon Parameters! Oh mais oui! Optional chests and torches and mobs would be super!

The location of the rooms of a dungeon can already be obtained at mapgen time. All it'd really need is something to actually put in these dungeons. I mean...why do they exist? Who created them? Are they the home of the mysterious dungeon masters?

Still, the main obstacle with dungeons is that they're rarely found. They're not connected to anything. There are far more of them floating around somewhere below ground than you'll ever see. Adding a shaft to them so that they'd connect to the surface might not work so well if the dungeon is very deep down. Adding tunnels might slightly increase the likelyhood of a dungeon ever to be found. Maybe those dungeons which are one or two mapchunks below ground could have a shaft with a ladder that leads upwards. And those other dungeons could be connected to the huge cave systems MT has. That would seem less strange than a dungeon in the middle of nowhere - connected to nothing, entirely empty...

[FreeLikeGNU]

If its not incongruent with the mese-lore idea that mese is some kind of artifact left by aliens, the dwellings may be remnants where ancient civilizations had been and subsequently buried or thrown into the air from misuse of mese or ??? Or perhaps the power of mese somehow teleported these dwellings from another realm or else where on map by some chaotic event.

[Hybrid Dog]

That would be insanely slow.

but there's vmanip and luajit

[benrob0329]

I have to say, I agree with paramat, the dungeons add to Minetest's character and origanalism...in my opinion at least.

[srifqi]

If its not incongruent with the mese-lore idea that mese is some kind of artifact left by aliens, the dwellings may be remnants where ancient civilizations had been and subsequently buried or thrown into the air from misuse of mese or ??? Or perhaps the power of mese somehow teleported these dwellings from another realm or else where on map by some chaotic event.

Agreed. There must be some MESE blocks as "bonus". Also, same as FreeLikeGNU, it also has historical value: "somebody was there".

[ArguablySane]

That would be insanely slow.

Why? Lua mapgens aren't that slow. How complex is the dungeon generation code?

[paramat]

I'm spoilt by core speed now, i mean slow compared to core.

[PoignardAzur]

I have to say, I agree with paramat, the dungeons add to Minetest's character and origanalism...in my opinion at least.

You don't need bugs to make a game original. Actually, you don't even need to actually try to make it original, especially if doing so detracts from the game's quality. The process of doing a good coherent game by thinking about the game's requirements and goals and finding clever methods to meet these is enough to make a game original. Only people who are insecure with their developing skills worry about the originality of their product.

Otherwise, if those floating dungeons do add to minetest's atmosphere, shouldn't they have grown into a feature instead of a bug ? That is, have their own generation patterns, their own materials, their own appearance, etc. Even if you don't worry about the realism of the game, environments always look better when they feel like they look the way they do for a reason. A dungeon built in the air would not have the same architecture as a dungeon dug in a cave : it would probably have lighter materials, defenses intended to keep people from climbing them, entrances located on the bottom instead of the side, structures on the ground (like stables, or a landing zone), etc.

[benrob0329]

I like that idea better.

[y.st.]

I have two thoughts.

First, if the air dungeons are indeed modified to look different than land dungeons, any dungeon that is partially underground but protrudes into the sky should be considered to be a land dungeon for generation purposes. Having air dungeons embedded in the ground doesn't make much sense, but ground dungeons could have either been built exposed or could later have been exposed by erosion or the like.

Second, if we really want to change and/or remove sky dungeons, I think I figured out part of how to do it. The map generator simply has to check the getGroundLevelAtPoint() function at each (x,z) combination used by the dungeon. If even one of the "y" values returned is at or below ground level, the dungeon should be generated and it should be a ground dungeon. If this distinction was made, it also would no longer be necessary to clip dungeons when they touch air in caves or at the surface. They could spawn whole every time.

That said, I have no problem with the current dungeon generation. I just wanted to add my input hoping that if changes are made, they could take these things into account and be done in a sane way.

[paramat]

The dungeon rings are fixed now and the floating dungeons disconnected from the ground are more rare.
See the last few comments here https://github.com/minetest/minetest/issues/2926#issuecomment-131467196 and https://github.com/minetest/minetest/pull/3118

[Sokomine]

Even the normal underground dungeons are usually unrealistic. Who dug those large systems of connected rooms - which are connected to nothing else? How did whoever built them ever get there? Why where they built? Sky dungeons are the least of our problems :-) At least goblins seem to like the dungeons...

[Hybrid Dog]

Even the normal underground dungeons are usually unrealistic. Who dug those large systems of connected rooms - which are connected to nothing else? How did whoever built them ever get there? Why where they built? Sky dungeons are the least of our problems :-) At least goblins seem to like the dungeons...

The dungeon masters are robots from aliens made to keep prisoners in dungeons. Their secondary task is repairing the dungeon if it gets broken, so if the prisoner tries to escape or someone wants to help it escaping, the dungeon master starts attacking. The dungeon masters did not repair the mines which led to the dungeons of course, else doing the primary task wouldn't work right because they would need to leave the prisoners.
So the mines crashed in time and the dungeon weren't longer connected to something.
The dungeons were made to jail prisoners for indeterminate time. So the prisoners died in time and their corpses became dust which disappeared, maybe in the reparation of the walls.
lt's not known how exactly the aliens made dungeon masters, maybe they are able to scan the resonance frequency of air and cobble and the effects of the wind onto it and so they know how to move that dungeons stay in sky and maybe will stay in sky in future.

[Sokomine]

The dungeon masters are robots from aliens made to keep prisoners in dungeons. Their secondary task is repairing the dungeon if it gets broken, so if the prisoner tries to escape or someone wants to help it escaping, the dungeon master starts attacking. The dungeon masters did not repair the mines which led to the dungeons of course, else doing the primary task wouldn't work right because they would need to leave the prisoners.

Aaaah! Finally I know the answer! Thanks for telling :-)

[Don]

Minetest - the story book
By Hybrid Dog

[benrob0329]

Once there was an alien race, known as the Orkkis. Now the Orkkis were very intelegent beings, in fact they were masters of Mesecons, Digilines, and Diginet. However, there greatest feat was the Mese Power Core, the thing that powered all of there creations. However one day terribly it became unstable and ripped a hole in the universe and scaddered the Mese everywhere!

So the Orkkis created the Dungeon Masters to go and find the Mese, and to create underground bases for them to take refuge in. The floating dungoens are the remnants of some of those bases that still have some of there power, which was orriganaly to protect them, but come to find out it made them float through the errotion and test of time.

Now the Orkkis are largly extinct, but they are still fighting for there return.

[Don]

Should rename the tread to story time.

[PoignardAzur]

I don't really have experience making video game stories, so don't quote me on this, but I'm 99% sure that's the wrong way to make a story for a minetest game.

The story of a game should be built and tweaked at the same time as it's gameplay and its technical aspects. Making a finished game designed, then slapping labels and explications on everything gets you a bland, unoriginal story that feels doesn't feel connected to the game itself. I can invent any number of stories about the origins and workings of the world of Minecraft, none of them will feel right because I wasn't around when the game was created, and didn't have any say about its mechanics and content.

The reason of this is, if you invent a story to try and fit the game, people will unconsciously notice the differences between the game as it is, and the game as it would be if it had been designed with "This world was colonized by super-advanced aliens who disappeared after a resonance cascade that scattered all their things everywhere".

A good example of top-down storytelling in a game is The Binding of Isaac. Anyone who played this game for a few hours can tell that the author didn't go "well, now that my levels full of warped disturbing sex, child abuse and Christian imagery are done, maybe I should think of a story for why the player is doing this ?"

Anyway, my point is, don't bother thinking up a story for minetest, it won't fit. If you want to make a good story about super-smart aliens creating voxel computers, make a subgame around it.