FOSS gamedev and creative worlds

I suppose the current terrain output of Mapgen V7 isn't too horrible, but I would like to make some major changes.
V7 was never formally released, but it somehow got added to the main menu selection box and users began to unironically use it. Since people now rely on V7's output, I'm wondering if I should resume experimentation with V8 instead. What are your thoughts?

Note to all: I am *not* asking what you're looking for in a mapgen, or the next mapgen, I am simply asking if V7 is used widely enough to make modifying it a bad idea.
Mapgen suggestions should go into a separate thread. But the thing is, you don't need to make suggestions anymore, you could just do it yourself with Lua. I have a specific goal in mind with the mapgen that I haven't been able to technically accomplish quite well so far. Making a decent mapgen is a real time sink.

hmmmm wrote:I am simply asking if V7 is used widely enough to make modifying it a bad idea.

No, it is not.

(btw. It is stupid that posts get deleted because they are not exactly the topic the original poster intended. Some people spend thoughts and time to write their opinion.)

I vote 'No' for the sake of the many players and the few mods, games and servers using v7, and also for more variety and choice of mapgen. I would like to see v7 left as it is (apart from fixing the biome discontinuities, large caves and lighting glitches at mapchunk borders) and you start a fresh v8.
The default noise parameters of v7 perhaps need some tuning, but this can be done easily by anyone by modifying them using minetest.conf. The terrain can be reshaped dramatically through the noise parameters, consider that changing only a single number in a single noise definition resulted in the screenshots i recently posted in the screenshot thread.

@hmmmm
I thought v7 created a bare world (I see now with grass) to be edited with some nice mods. From that point of view, just leave it as it is, it's nice to have a world edible like that.

Good luck with v8!

Topywo, the grass is just a simple default biome to avoid comments like 'Why is mgv7 only stone?' and 'seems bleak'. V7 is still designed to be used with the biome API or any biome generating mod such as paragenv7.

Topywo wrote:@hmmmm
I thought v7 created a bare world (I see now with grass) to be edited with some nice mods. From that point of view, just leave it as it is, it's nice to have a world edible like that.

Good luck with v8!

From what i remember, biomes were meant to be defined in minetest_game and minetest_game use v7 by default. But no one ever decided to define the biomes. Or add documentation on describing biomes.

Yes, hmmmm never got around to that because v7 was never officially released. Now we have mgv5 too it's my job to get a biome system into MTgame for both mapgens, hopefully for next stable release.

I vote yes only for the addition of some new features:

- Map layers to create underworld / floating biomes
- Decoration height limits (only spawns in specified levels)
- spawn_by feature for schematic placement

How drastic are these changes that you have in mind hmmmm?

Personally I think the base terrain generated by V7 is good. With the only issue I have being the extreme depth of rivers. I find it enjoyable in it's current state because it is quite different from the bog standard terrain generation found in other voxel sandbox games.

TenPlus1 wrote:- Decoration height limits (only spawns in specified levels)
- spawn_by feature for schematic placement

The first one above was added last night, and both of these are actually biome API issues nothing to do with v7.

hmmmm wrote:Note to all: I am *not* asking what you're looking for in a mapgen, or the next mapgen, I am simply asking if V7 is used widely enough to make modifying it a bad idea.

What kind of impact would such changes have on existing worlds? Will those worlds (and mods) break, or will they just create diffrently shaped terrain?

There are some that use v7, and apparently even some bare v7 worlds without biomes that do attract players due to their intresting and challenging terrain. Ethereal (maintained by TenPlus1) uses features from v7, namely biomes and spawning of schematics.

In general, creating a new mapgen and keeping the old v7 sounds better than changing something beyound recognition.

Okay, it's settled. Aside from giving V7 caves an upgrade (V5 cave routes with V6 large_caves) it's going to stay pretty much stable.
Any major new development will happen in V8.

And it's me who offered to maintain v7 if it is kept.
This doesn't mean there will be no improvements or modifications, i plan to fix the discontinuous biome surface at y = 47 and will be adding the v5 style tunnels. There may be other improvements in future but i will try to keep it reasonably backwards compatible using options.
As far as i can tell the most significant use of v7 currently is the Xanadu server. Lord of the Rings game has moved to v5, and BFD is using either. I will try to not break the Xanadu world, obviously the new caves will create discontinuity underground but that will not make visable mess.

For those using v7, how many of you are disabling the 3D noise mountains? I guess this option was added for speed on slow computers but v7 is really boring without them.

paramat wrote:And it's me who offered to maintain v7 if it is kept.
This doesn't mean there will be no improvements or modifications, i plan to fix the discontinuous biome surface at y = 47 and will be adding the v5 style tunnels. There may be other improvements in future but i will try to keep it reasonably backwards compatible using options.
As far as i can tell the most significant use of v7 currently is the Xanadu server. Lord of the Rings game has moved to v5, and BFD is using either. I will try to not break the Xanadu world, obviously the new caves will create discontinuity underground but that will not make visable mess.

For those using v7, how many of you are disabling the 3D noise mountains? I guess this option was added for speed on slow computers but v7 is really boring without them.

Because I like having "rivers", but also insane mountains to climb.

Jordach wrote:

paramat wrote:And it's me who offered to maintain v7 if it is kept.
This doesn't mean there will be no improvements or modifications, i plan to fix the discontinuous biome surface at y = 47 and will be adding the v5 style tunnels. There may be other improvements in future but i will try to keep it reasonably backwards compatible using options.
As far as i can tell the most significant use of v7 currently is the Xanadu server. Lord of the Rings game has moved to v5, and BFD is using either. I will try to not break the Xanadu world, obviously the new caves will create discontinuity underground but that will not make visable mess.

For those using v7, how many of you are disabling the 3D noise mountains? I guess this option was added for speed on slow computers but v7 is really boring without them.

Because I like having "rivers", but also insane mountains to climb.

+1

The "just test" server seems to also use the v7 mapgen

The biggest problem with mapgen i see now, is that it not always honor existing map blocks. (at least in version i use now)

While i was testing my map copy script,, i saw this horrible disaster, when rivers destroy player villages:

There have been some changes to mgv7 recently:

The watery abysses below rivers running vertically to the world base have been removed, they were a bug, occasionally interesting but often ugly and badly shaped.
Rivers are slightly narrower and generation simpler, the riverbeds are smoother, this also speeds up mapgen. The river channels used to end abruptly when approaching deeper water, now the beautiful curving channels run for longer through shallow waters.
Mgv6 style small caves have been replaced by 3D noise tunnels and there are far fewer large caves, 1 per 4 mapchunks instead of 1 per mapchunk, this will improve mapgen speed and reduce load on liquid processing.
Noise calculation and mapgen have been speed optimised.

Apparently there are already terrain discontinities in the Xanadu server and there will be a few more as mgv7 is worked on, remember it is unstable so theoretically the devs are free to change it without notice. There might be changes to the default noise parameters, however you will of course be able to use the old parameters if you want to avoid discontinuities in your existing worlds.

I do not think this is all the work of river code having changed. Something else must be reorganising the terrain on the "just test" server. Some places are hit quite badly

twoelk in the just test server thread wrote:I once posted this picture of the settlement about 1000 nodes south of spawn


now after mapgen decided to redesign some areas it looks a little different

btw if you look west from the same spot you will see lots of large skyblocks.

The changed cavegen has triggered quite a number of underground changes. Some large caves with lots of hanging lava have been filled in part with new stone and in other places new caves have generated, leaving clusters of ore untouched but destroying structures of cobble as it seems. The new terrain and caves seem to emphizise the vertical component a little more and new caves seem to be less round. Also sometimes dugout structures are left intact but components of stone have been replaced resulting in caverns with pillars of ores instead of default stone as originally built.

Apparently there is a bug that sometimes regenerates mapchunks of old worlds, perhaps that is the cause. Where the regenerated terrain does not match the existing terrain i guess is where the world is so old it was generated by a previous version of mgv7. I have not (yet) changed the shape of surface terrain myself, apart from making rivers narrower. Hmmmm changed the pseudorandom blockseed recently, which will affect the shape and location of large caves and dungeons.