[Mod] Ethereal [1.16] [ethereal]

[Sokomine]

In my "fork" of Nore's mg mod I'm making flat area for each building. I copy the nodes there were and copy them up to 10 times. If there were no nodes below for 11 or more meters, then I use default:cobble as a basement material.

Ah! I took a similar approach at first - caching some nodes and copying them up if the area was too low. That approach however proved to be non-working under the circumstances that exist at mapgen time. That is, it did work. To a degree. But...those "copies" of buildings burried below the village where really really odd :-) I'll explain later on, but: this approach can't be recommended.

This way I always have the same nodes that were there before my "manipulations". Look at the picture:

That I aim at to a degree as well - and it does work. The default:dirt and default:dirt_with_grass withhin the buildings is replaced by whatever ground node the biome comes with. If it's for example desert sand, then there will also be one more desert sand below, and below that there'll be desert stone. And similar for other biomes where I know the structure of (i.e. dark red baked clay on top, orange baked clay below for one ethereal biome). I do not keep plants or "hills". The area around the village is a bit special and filled up with wheat, cotton or the occasional grass/dry shrub. This is intentional for my villages - I want them to have diffrent vegetation there. Seems you have other preferences :-) However, keeping the original plant might under some circumstances be a good idea. Especially if the ground cannot be turned into soil and is therefore left alone by my mod.

As you can see, all the buildings are on their own altitude.

Buildings need to be spaced further appart for that to work. By default, there's only one block between two buildings. That's not enough for any significant height changes. But that can be configured.

structures try to adapt to biomes, thus using desert stone in desert instead of cobble

As explained, that happens in mg_villages as well. Ethereal required some special adaption there (=the mod needed to be told which nodes may be considered dirt with grass replacements).

memorizing villages positions

Same here, although that is mostly for further usge. The /vmap command shows a map of villages.

loot in chests

Coming soon, but as I said, that needs to be adapted anyway :-)

flying villages

I've limited villages to the ground chunk in order to speed up mapgen. As long as there are no two villages abvoe each other, there's nothing which ought to prevent flying villages. They may need a diffrent terrain blending algorithm as there's no terrain to blend into. Perhaps that part could be left as air.

water-villages (those right above the water with channels instead of roads)

Impractical. Leaving water and entering a house will become tricky for players. And those poor mobs which might want to run around there would drown!

basesments for every building (so those do not hang in the air)

Hmm, I used to construct platforms for the random_building houses. Terrain blending IMHO looks nicer and works better. People have to get to the front door somehow. Basements as such are of course possible. Some of Taokis houses have them. The ones from Nore are mostly too small to warrant a ceallar.

potentially, underground villages

Might range from incredibly difficult to almost trivial, depending on what exactly you have in mind.

The thing is, LVM is too buggy, does not consider decorations, fail to save structures from mapgen's caves, collides with other LVM usages (one may want to use only ONE LVM if he/she wants consistence, since LVM copies a part of a map and then writes it back, no one can really tell which LVM would be the one to "win" and preserve it's changes), does not set is_generated flag (so mapgen may not know there's something already generated!), takes more memory than minetest.set_node() etc etc...

I'm using the LVM version that is available in the on_generated call - same as Nore did. By now, it works pretty well. And after some talk with Hmmm and Paramat, I managed to understand mapgen sufficiently to undo most of the cavegen griefing and mudflow spam. The combination of voxelmanip, schematics and set_node was too much, but with voxelmanip alone, I'm quite satisfied with the result.

The essential point about mapgens is that they have to be reproducable. When a chunk (usually 80x80x80 nodes) gets thrown at your mapgen, it always has to answer with the same result. A misplaced plant here and there may be less critcial, but plain random cannot be used. It all has to be created using some form of pseudorandom functions.

What is beeing worked on in on_generated is not only that 80x80x80 nodes area (or diffrent with diffrent minetest.conf), but an area slightly larger - usually 111x111x111 nodes. That is, 16 nodes are added at each side and overlap with other mapchunks. This overlapping is used for cavegen and mudflow. Even if the area in that "shell" hasn't been generated yet, it will afterwards contain nodes that are air (where a cave from this chunk extends into its neigbouring chunk and a future cave will be). When we get a mapchunk in on_generated and work on it (place our villages inside), that is fine so far - the caves in that chunk have been generated before the on_generated function has been called, and our flattening algorithm will make sure that there won't be any open caves left on the surface for visitors or mobs to fall in. So far so good. Now a neighbouring chunk is generated. 16 of its nodes will overlap with our already generated chunk - and cavegen will happily eat holes into the houses (unless they consist of material where ground_content = false) and spill mud on whatever will be in the way. Using is_ground_content=false for all building materials for the houses - effectively creating copies of all the nodes in order to be sure - would be possible but also spam the server with nodes. What we can do in order to get rid of the undesired caves and mudflow is to not only generate the central 80x80x80 nodes, but also those in the shell. In order for that to work, we have to make sure that the area is generated exactly the same each time it needs to be generated.

That approach above will restore the buildings. There might still be holes left below/next to the buildings. In such a case, the information about what type of node was "ground" there may have been lost (cavegen ate the ground node). In such a case, I'm still searching for a possible ground node (perhaps it can now be found on the cave's floor) and use fallbacks if nothing suitable is found. This approach is not 100% reproducable (diffrent input, diffrent output) and may lead to parts from previous buildings beeing considered as new ground. That's not particulary nice, but acceptable. Some diversity for villages is ok.

Mudflow is eliminated by removing nodes which are suspected of beeing mudflow (dirt, dirt with grass, sand) and which are located above the village ground. Those are set to air. After the repair of holes from cavegen and elimination of mudflow, the houses are placed again. See also mg_villages.repair_outer_shell

place_schematic ought to be avoided in this particular case. It is a very practical function, and in effect I had to recreate what it does. The function place_schematics loads and forces creation of not yet existing chunks when necessary. This may lead to a chain reaction if buildings in your village reside on the border between chunks. Doing everything through LVM is much cheaper in this case.

But the only thing I really want to figure out is how one can use perlin noises to get a number of positions to spawn vilages that are not connected.

PS: It's true, that there is this kind of a code within Nore's mg and therefore my villages, but I don't understand it. Anyone care to explain?

I didn't change that basis. The positions for the villages are determined by Nores code. Perhaps Nore and/or Paramat can explain how it works in detail :-)

Hope my explanations of mapgen help you a bit.

[paramat]

Village placement is done by 'mg_villages.villages_at_point' in villages.lua.
First there is a check for no nearby villages within the 'village check radius' of 2 chunks.

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if noise1:get2d({x = x, y = z}) < -0.3 then return {} end -- Deep in the ocean

This check stops villages spawning in the ocean of mg mapgen, it seems that 'noise1' controls terrain height and noise1 < -0.3 is ocean (therefore in other mapgens mg_villages mod may spawn in the sea often).

Finally, whether a village centre is placed is in a chunk decided by a pseudorandom number of 1 to 400 being less than the 'village chance' of 28, meaning an average of 28 villages per 20x20 chunks. Because it's pseudorandom village placement is deterministic and repeatable with the same world seed.

In my 'meru' mod i used simple perlin noises to give me X and Z co-ordinates for the one meru tower per world, although pseudorandom may be a better way to do this.

[4aiman]

Sokomine

But...those "copies" of buildings burried below the village where really really odd :-) I'll explain later on, but: this approach can't be recommended.

There are no burried copies of buildings, only solid ground made of cobble or whatewer nodes there were.
SOME part of a building is already connected with the ground, I only need to fill-in the gaps w/o changing any nodes which is not "air".

I do not keep plants or "hills".

I don't keep plants too :) I change only needed areas + 1-2 nodes around each particular "building" (not for all, though).

Buildings need to be spaced further apart for that to work.

That is working already - look at the screen ;)
There are hills and mountain ridges everywhere.
Besides, even difference of 1-2 nodes is good. I like villages MC-way: buggy & ugly, like a series of huts built by villagers in a desperate try to defend themselves from any hostile mob.

As explained, that happens in mg_villages as well. Ethereal required some special adaption there (=the mod needed to be told which nodes may be considered dirt with grass replacements).

I don't think it's necessary to be so precise, as I need only 4 variations for any biome there is and there will be: cobble+stone, desert_stone+desert_cobble, stone bricks+stone, wood+trees. That's the idea :)

The /vmap command shows a map of villages.

Good idea! :)
But memorizing positions is smth that I had to implement. I'm using minetest.get_ground_level() along with the noise. If I won't memorize positions, then the former one will add a new building above the generated one on the next launch.

Coming soon, but as I said, that needs to be adapted anyway :-)

When making a game that make you adapt almost everything, it's not a big deal.
What IS important is support for as many mods as possible, e.g. one can easily get the list of all registered items, but there should be default "value" values for everything.
Prove me wrong, but I think that most people just download mods "as-is" and ask maintainers of those if they want to change smth.

Impractical. Leaving water and entering a house will become tricky for players.

It's impractical for you :)
Those villages contains extra loot, so there ARE reasons to cope with the fact it can be tricky to get in the house.

And those poor mobs which might want to run around there would drown!

If they're stupid ones, then it's for sure. Who or what prevents anyone from creating swimming mobs if that particular someone knows Lua and writes other mods? I knew the risks and created my own mobs which, among many other things, can swim.
Anyway, swimming is a matter of 3-4 more lines of code added to on_step of the prototype.
That shouldn't be a problem of villages mod.

ceallar

My fault I wasn't able to find appropriate name. By "basement" I meant "foundation", "base". Hope that clears it.

Might range from incredibly difficult to almost trivial, depending on what exactly you have in mind.

The latter one. Huge cave with village inside. Same ground_level() usage, just below the surface. All I need is presence of a big enough caves.

Thanks for the long explanation and your hints, Sokomine!
I'll look into your code. But I'll try to create mini villages of 80x80x80 nodes that are connected by roads instead of creating a huge village also. I'd like to try different chunk sizes too.

Doing everything through LVM is much cheaper in this case.

The thing is, Magichet is targeted towards Freeminer in the first place and Minetest in the second. And, sad but true, FM's VM is more unstable. But the thing is, FM's set_node() was "speed-upped". Buggy VM or reliable set_node which is almost as much effective as the former one? I guess it's obvious.
Why FM? Well, I'd like to make Magichet to work in both engines, but there are changes I need that will require protocol version bump. W/o those Magichet would be inconsistent as a game. But changes like that get approved here with more precociousness (at least they were). I can understand why, but I really need the engine to be changed.

Besides, LVM should set is_generated flag so neither mapgen nor cavegen would mess with nodes that have been generated already. It shouldn't matter whether minp & maxp are within 1 and the same chunk. I'd say: "if LVM copies a map and then writes it back, it MUST either do it when both chunks have been generated or set some flag which will prevent anything besides another LVM instance to mess around with generated and only generated by it nodes."



Paramat
Thanks a lot! That is REALLY helpful! :)

[Sokomine]

There are no burried copies of buildings, only solid ground made of cobble or whatewer nodes there were.

These copies of buildings happened to my version some time ago. The area was generated, and then the border area was generated again. The roofs of the houses looked like a very fine ground node, so...

I like villages MC-way: buggy & ugly, like a series of huts built by villagers in a desperate try to defend themselves from any hostile mob.

Urgs :-) Even cavegen usually can't do so bad as the standard MC villages sometimes seem to be :-) Poor inhabitants! I aim for extremly nice villages.

What IS important is support for as many mods as possible, e.g. one can easily get the list of all registered items, but there should be default "value" values for everything.
Prove me wrong, but I think that most people just download mods "as-is" and ask maintainers of those if they want to change smth.

The chests from random_buildings already support some mods. At least those mods I thought might fit for that kind of buildings. Creators of games might just override that function and place what they seem fitting.

Who or what prevents anyone from creating swimming mobs if that particular someone knows Lua and writes other mods? I knew the risks and created my own mobs which, among many other things, can swim.
Anyway, swimming is a matter of 3-4 more lines of code added to on_step of the prototype.

Most mobs can't swim. They don't even get a single brain cell for running away from players on sight :-) And even if you teach them to swim, your village will still need a special setup. Players can't climb out of the water if there's no convenient node nearby.

I'll look into your code. But I'll try to create mini villages of 80x80x80 nodes that are connected by roads instead of creating a huge village also. I'd like to try different chunk sizes too.

Diffrent village sizes are no problem. Connecting roads are not easy. Those Paramat programmed are very promising, but I need to take a closer look at them in order to integrate them.

And, sad but true, FM's VM is more unstable. But the thing is, FM's set_node() was "speed-upped". Buggy VM or reliable set_node which is almost as much effective as the former one? I guess it's obvious.

I then hope that Freeminer will get the faster code as well, and that Minetest may profit from some of Freeminers improvements. It's good to see if both develop.

[TenPlus1]

1.16

Added new tree schematics(random leaves, fruit and height)
Changed frost dirt so that it no longer freezes water
Torches cannot be placed next to water, otherwise they drop as items
Added farming redo Bean Bushes to mapgen

1.15

• Added Staff of Light (thanks Xanthin), crafted from illumishrooms and can turn stone into glostone and back again
• Changed how Crystal Spikes reproduce
• Crystal Ingots now require 2x mese crystal and 2x crystal spikes to craft
• Tidied and optimized code.

1.14

• Changed Ethereal to work with Minetest 0.4.11 update and new mapgen features
• Changed Pine tree's to use default pine wood
• Changed Ice and Icebrick textures
• Added pine wood fence, gate and stairs
• Crystal Spikes now re-generate in crystal biomes
• Removed layer mapgen, keeping spread as default

1.00 previous

+ Spoiler

1.13

• Changed melting feature to work with 0.4.10 dev now that group:hot and group:melt has been removed

1.12

• Added ability to disable biomes in the init.lua file by setting to 1 (enable) or 0 (disable)
• Supports Framing Redo 1.10 foods

1.11

• Added Stairs for Ethereal wood types, mushroom, dry dirt, obsidian brick and clay
• Added Green Coral which can be used as green dye
• Craft 5x Ice in X pattern to give 5x Snow
• Added Snow and Ice Bricks with their own stairs and slabs which melt when near heat

1.10

• Added Stone Ladders (another use for cobble)
• Craft 5x Gravel in X pattern to give 5 dirt, and 5x dirt in X pattern for 5 sand
• Added Acacia tree's to desert biome (a nice pink wood to build with, thanks to VanessaE for textures)
• Added Acacia fences and gates
• Added Vines, craftable with 2x3 leaves

1.09

• Fixed Quicksand bug where player see's only black when sinking instead of yellow effect, note this will only work on new maps or newly generated areas of map containing quicksand
• Hot nodes will melt ice and snow in a better way
• Few spelling errors sorted for sapling and wood names

1.08

• Saplings produce better placed tree's when grown, routines have been redone
• Orange tree's now spawn in prairie biomes
• The usual code tidy and few bug fixes along the way

1.07

• If Farming Redo mod detected then it's growing routines will be used for Ethereal plantlife instead of default
• Leaftype and Mapstyle settings can be changed within init.lua file, new layered style maps are being tested
• Changed crafting recipe for Fences, they tie in with Gates a little better

1.06

• Added support for Farming Redo mod, all plants spawn on newly generated areas
https://forum.minetest.net/viewtopic.php?id=9019

1.05b

• Added Gates for each of the fence types (thanks to Blockmen for gate model)
• Players can no longer jump over fences unless they wear crystal boots < REMOVED

1.04

• Farming of Mushrooms, Wild Onions and Strawberries now use minetest 0.4.10 functions
• Strawberries can be grown by using actual fruit, seeds no longer needed
• Tree leaves are no longer walkable, player can go through them
• Saplings now fall if block underneath disturbed

1.03

• Changed Fence recipe's so it doesn't interfere with 3d armor's wooden boots
• Tweaked textures to bring down file sizes
• Flowers, Sprouts and Ferns now spread over ALL grassland

1.02

• Fences added for each type of wood in Ethereal
• Changes to biome settings, less artifacts

1.01

• Quicksand generates throughout world near sandy water
• Bamboo as well as Papyrus now grow on dirt near water
• Fixed Coral textures and light

1.00

• Seaweed now spawns in deep water and can grow up to 10 high
• Coral also spawns in deep water and glows slightly (orange, pink and blue)
• Above items can be crafted into dye, also Seaweed is edible
• So long as sand isn't disturbed under the ocean, sealife will re-generate
• Fixed Leaves inventory images and Mushroom selection box (thanks Wuzzy)

0.0.9

+ Spoiler

0.0.9p

• Willow Trees now spawn in grey biome instead of tiny grey trees (model by Phiwari123)
• Redwood Trees now spawn in Mesa biome (model by Wes42033)
• BakedClay mod no longer required for Mesa biome but used if found
• Paper Wall added

0.0.9o

• Added Obsidian Brick craft for building
• Changed Illumishroom cave levels
• Changed is_ground_content to false for ethereal dirt so mapgen doesn't carve it up with caves

0.0.9n

• New textures for farming mushrooms and spores
• Illumi-shrooms spawn in caves to brighten things up a little
• Crafting a wooden sign now gives 4 instead of 1

0.0.9m

• Changed Bamboo biome slightly, Bamboo Sprout has new image
• Abm timings changed and a few bugs fixed
• Crystal Gilly Staff has to be used (left-click) to replenish air while underwater
• Crystal Shovel now works with protection mods
• Tidied code and changed ladder recipe's to double output

0.0.9L

• Scorched Tree's are now different sizes
• Crystal Shovel with soft touch can now be used to dig up sand and gravel
• Bamboo and Papyrus drop entire stalk when bottom node dug
• Crystal Spikes require steel pick or better to dig and fall when dirt below is removed
• Few changes to mapgen and water functions

0.0.9k

• Fixed bug in charcoal lumps (no more placing as unknown nodes)
• Added Crystal Shovel with soft touch, can be used to dig up dirt with grass intact
• Fixed bug in Crystal Shovel, now works with dirt_with_snow and has sounds
• Tweaked Fiery Biomes slightly, smaller craters on outside, large in hotter areas

0.0.9i

• Cleaned up mapgen_v7.lua file, maps now generate a little faster
• Removed cactus.mts, no longer required
• Removed mushroomtwo.mts, no longer required
• Removed bamboo.mts, no longer required
• Removed deadtree.mts, no longer required
• Few new textures added
• Papyrus also spawns on jungle dirt near water
• Replaced dead tree's with scorched tree's
• Each scorched tree trunk crafts into 2x charcoal Lumps (fixed)
• Torches can also be crafted from Charcoal

0.0.9h

• Added Strawberry farming, Strawberry Seeds and new Textures
• Tidied up mapgen_v7.lua for better spawning of plants and trees
• Player can no longer walk through Bamboo Stalks

0.0.9g

• Changed Ethereal's growing routine for Saplings, it now uses 1 single abm to grow all tree's

0.0.9f

• Added Fishing to Ethereal, Fishing Rod, Worms, Fish and Cooked Fish
  (Left-click the water with a Baited Rod in the hope of landing your prize)

0.0.9e

• Changed textures for Bowl, Mushroom Soup, Crystal Spike, Banana Loaf, Strawberry & Bush
• Added Hearty Stew Recipes
• If BakedClay mod is installed, Mesa Biome will be added to the mix

0.0.9d

• Added Bamboo Grove and Bamboo Sprouts )
• Craft Bamboo into Paper and Bamboo Flooring
• Cactus is now edible when crafted beside empty bucket

0.0.9c

• Code re-worked so mod now uses sections for each function (easier to read and edit)
• New textures for Strawberry Bush and Crystal Spikes

0.0.9b

• Pine Tree Leaves have new texture and sometimes give Pine Nuts
• Jungle Tree's now use default Jungle Wood as texture

0.0.9

• Prairie, Grove, Jungle and Snowy biomes have their own dirt
• Saplings will only grow in the biomes they were taken from
• Mapgen tweaks and code changes for new dirt added

0.0.8 Changes

+ Spoiler

0.0.8m

• Added Banana Trunk and Wood
• Added Boston Ferns to Grove biome
• Added edible Fern Tubers
• Mushroom Biome now has different sized mushrooms
• Changed Pine Needles texture

0.0.8k

• Added Desert Sand biome
• Added Alpine biome with Pine Trees and Snow
• Added Grove biome with Banana Tree's (saplings only grow in that temperate area)
• Added Bananas, Banana Dough and Banana Bread
• Changed biome generation to be more like real-world environs (e.g. shrooms like hot & humid so that's where they spawn)
• Tidied up code and removed redundant lines

0.0.8e

• New Plains biome added between Fiery and Green areas to hopefully stop forest fires, these have dry dirt and dead trees
• Placing water near Dry Dirt turns it into normal dirt, cooking normal dirt changes it into Dry Dirt

Note: if your Ethereal world does have a few forest fires appearing you can always add this line to your minetest.conf file:

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disable_fire = true

0.0.8

• Healing Tree (grows on high snowy peaks, leaves are edible and golden apples heal all hearts)
• Added some new images for Cooked Mushroom Soup, Mushroom Spores and Palm Trees
• 2D leaves or 3D leaves option, both wave in wind if enabled
• All new saplings can grow on their native dirt, and palm tree's on sand
• Crystal Spike or Crystal Dirt freezes nearby water, Heat can also melt ice
• Wild Mushrooms now give Spores, plant these to grow edible mushrooms
• Cobble in water turns mossy
• Palm Leaves can be cooked into Palm Wax and made into Candles

0.0.7 Changes

+ Spoiler

0.0.7c

• Gravel can be found under lake biomes (or craft 5 cobble in X pattern)
• Papyrus is found and grows on dirt near water (also craft 2x3 string for paper)
• Mushroom Heads have a chance of giving Mushroom Sapling (craft 1 head = 4x Mushrooms ready for Planting)
• Trees and Mushrooms have a chance of giving Saplings
• Frost Trunk and Mushroom Trunk are rotatable (craft 1 Mushroom Trunk = 4x White Dye)
• Desert areas have Dry Shrubs added
• Crystal Spikes added to Crystal Biome (watch out they hurt)
• Crystal Ingots added to make Sword and Pick
• New Pine Tree model added to snowy biome which adds Pine leaves and drops Pine Saplings
• Fixed GrassyTwo biome so that BigTree now spawns and grows from sapling
• Added Crystal Gilly Staff to allow breathing underwater (so long as it's in hand)
• Added Palm Trees, Trunk, Wood, Sapling, Coconuts, Coconut Slice (to eat)
  - Thanks to VanessaE's for the Palm textures

[/list][/list]

Code: https://github.com/tenplus1/ethereal

Note: Use Ethereal 1.13 if you are using any version of Minetest older than 0.4.11

[Achilles]

1.10

• Added Stone Ladders (another use for cobble)

Iron Rungs or Iron Ladders would also be a good idea...

[4aiman]

Craft 5x Gravel in X pattern to give 5 sand

I'd rather had a grinder or a hammer + gravel recipe. Craft can replace a hammer with it's wore copy (Like in GregTech).

[TenPlus1]

5x cobble in X shape = 5x gravel...
5x gravel in X shape = 5x dirt...
5x dirt in X shape = 5x sand...

[4aiman]

That's why I've removed 5x Cobble from Ethereal-magichet ;)
The thing is, if there's a way to convert cobble to sand then either the opposite process should be possible or, say, sandstone should be of the same "hardness" (e.g. have the same digging times and other properties).
If not... well, then you may end up with tons of useless sand/sandstone and no material to make a furnace within miles...
The other thing is that now it's possible to make glass out of cobble without any downside.
My point is, there may appear the why-bother-to-find-sand-if-I-can-use-cobble-and-there's-a-lot-of-it-around attitude. While cobble requires a bit more time, it can be dug with any pick within any biome.

What are your objectives concerning Ethereal, Ten?
I'm asking, 'cause every time I think there's nothing to add you still find smth to be added :)

Also...
I want to say that I will accumulate changes of Ethereal (e.g. download all upcoming versions), but won't be able to push any of those till November the 1st. (I'm in a middle of my last examination session before becoming a superior to both Bachelors and Masters (and getting a pretty useless in international terms diploma), so it is intensive).

Thanks for your notifiers, dude! :)

[Sokomine]

f not... well, then you may end up with tons of useless sand/sandstone and no material to make a furnace within miles...
The other thing is that now it's possible to make glass out of cobble without any downside.
My point is, there may appear the why-bother-to-find-sand-if-I-can-use-cobble-and-there's-a-lot-of-it-around attitude. While cobble requires a bit more time, it can be dug with any pick within any biome.

People in general tend to have tons of useless cobble, while sand can only be obtained from coasts and deserts - where, using normal mapgen, the amount of sand/desert sand on top of stony blocks is pretty limited, and the remains of such a digging look extremly ugly. With Ethereal, that's far less of a problem due to its biomes beeing structured diffrently. There's even sandstone spawning, so no shortness of sand.

It's important to motivate people to use other materials than ugly cobble for their buildings. The choice of texture and color has a huge impact on how it will eventually look like. Almost anything that keeps the amount of cobble buildings down is good.

[4aiman]

Pardon moi, but if you hate cobble texture so much, then why haven't you change it? :)

Also, we're not talking about "other" mapgens here.

Besides, "useless" cobble can be converted into stone and stone bricks.
Not without a cost, true, but that's the main point.
It's essential to use resources otherwise there will be pretty much useless stuff in one's inventory.
Having NO cost to convert cobble to stone or iron lumps to iron would've been a disaster and resulted into having too much coal.
Look at how IC2 balanced Minecraft: One can have TONS of useless coal or cobble. But once he\she decided to build a nuclear reactor - those "tons" would be insufficient.

Same here. There always should be a way to spend every material, so there would be lack of it and a gamer would have to get more. It's NOT creative, it's survival. People who want creative should find an appropriate server.

Furthermore, if some game does not provide a way to spend some material - there should be a way to get rid of it.
But /pulverize or giveaway should not be an option. However useless cobble may seem to you, it costs time spend on digging and exploring. People generally don't like being deprived of something they've earned, however useless that something is.

Ergo, let people convert that useless material into smth that is of initially the same but subconsciously greater (reads like "people should want smth else, pretty useless like the stuff they already have, but nevertheless needed ATM") value than that material. The key words "subconsciously greater". And for that "greater" people willingly "pay" with their time or resources. Being able to afford smth is more fun than just cheating - it shows status, skills, superiority if you please. So, we're killing 2 hares - giving a chance to enjoy the game and themselves while dealing with to much resources.

Sand may be an alternative, but not for everyone.
After a while there will be tons of sand and tons of cobble.
Then someone will invent a "soggy sand on a stick" item and make it into a charm with +3 to awkwardness and +1 to intelligence. After some more time someone else will make it into a ranged weapon that while damaging will add +0.1 of camouflage to the target on every hit.

If cobble->sand conversion will cost smth too then it would be justified.
It may be done in a different way:
- make glass/glass_panes drop nothing, so the increased amount of sand would be justified as well as making more use to charcoal, trees and any materials that'll help to dig more naturally spawned coal;
- make it possible to build only from soggy sand, otherwise "mudflow" it over time;
- having made sand less useful by the 2 above, make some more uses for cobble, like adding more types of decorated stone blocks;
- but make it so that new blocks are to be created with some tool\within a special node.

TL;DR: Without some cost any conversion is not so good. (This statement is insufficient to get my point, though...)

[TenPlus1]

Added Stairs for each of the wood types, mushroom, dry dirt, clay and obsidian brick... Also Green Coral...

[4aiman]

I'm back and have updated the repo @github.com already! :)
Have fun!

[pepprim]

Hi guys!

At first, sorry for my poor English...

I also apologies if I make a silly question... but I've already checked this entire thread. Also de changelog for the mod in Github. I've done a search within entire forum and the wiki too.

Where and how can I find out the crystals spikes? Underground mining just like all the mineral ores? What depth? So far i found all the other ores... Or maybe it is another way: somewhere I read something about digging dirt. Crystal dirt?

If it matters, I'm playing at Xanadu server.

Thanks in advance!

[Kilarin]

Where and how can I find out the crystals spikes?

Crystal spikes appear on the surface growing in blue biomes (the ones with the giant blue trees with purple leaves) BUT, crystals do not regrow. So on Xanadu, almost every crystal biome near spawn has already had all of it's crystals harvested.

So you need to find an unexplored crystal biome. and that isn't hard to do anymore. Go through one of the stargate teleport portals (there is one down the green path, I think the other one is down the blue path from spawn?) These will take to you newer territory a long way away from spawn. Pick a direction, and just start walking. You will run into unexplored crystal biomes pretty quickly and be able to harvest all the crystal your heart desires.

Sometimes the spiders that haunt crystal biomes will drops crystals when you kill them. But it's fairly rare. That's the only other source of crystal that I am aware of.

[pepprim]

Oh! Thanks Kilarin,

Well, I'll keep travelling far away with my boat. Until now, I still have not found any crystal biome in my trips (virgin or not). But I hope, I have much to explore.

Cheers!

[fireuser]

good mod i like it! i think it has one problem. it has to many biomes. is it possible for you to make it so you can change how many biomes you have while configuring mods? i thought that would make the mod nicer and better for user like me who are almost clueless when it comes to modding. that just my opinion. :)

[Chinchow]

good mod i like it! i think it has one problem. it has to many biomes. is it possible for you to make it so you can change how many biomes you have while configuring mods? i thought that would make the mod nicer and better for user like me who are almost clueless when it comes to modding. that just my opinion. :)

Give me a bit, and I'll see what I can do. You'll still have to open it with a text editor, but should be able to do it with if statements, and if I set the variables to things like: grayness_biome_switch you should be able to easily understand what you're reading.. If anyone versed in lua better than I am is reading then I'd like to know what you think.

[TenPlus1]

Fireuser: Strange request but I've added the ability to disable biomes in version 1.12 by editing the init.lua file and setting each biome to 0 or 1 (off/on)...

[4aiman]

The request isn't that strange at all.
I think it's a good thing to have the ability to choose the type and the number of biomes.
Minetest_game lacks this functionality ('cause neither v6 nor v5 mapgens can't be configured via settings).

PS: the git is up-to-date :)

[TenPlus1]

You have a good point, having settings for jungles and such in default game would have been very nice indeed when setting up a map... also, mod settings would be a nice feature for minetest_game so you could maybe have a settings button next to the listed mods and configure without editing text files...

[Inocudom]

TenPlus1, you may not be aware of this, but recent commits to Minetest allow for this mod to be used with mapgenv5. Have you ever attempted to do such?

Unfortunately, mapgenv5 does generate IGNORE areas sometimes, but Jordach found a solution to them that might be useful to you somehow:
https://github.com/Jordach/big_freaking_dig/commit/22fd286e29afc0a9600f40fe4fe713476d7fd42a
It turns those areas into blocks of air nodes, but maybe you could turn them into ore clusters instead to give Ethereal an exotic new feature?

[paramat]

Important changes to the biome API heat and humidity noises https://forum.minetest.net/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=10621&p=164110#p164110
If you update to latest 0.4.10 dev, or, when you update to 0.4.11 stable, you will need to set the old default noise parameters in minetest.conf for biome continuity in your existing mgv5 or mgv7 worlds.

[Nomis]

I was trying for a more realistic approach to tree's so that they could only be grown in the biome they originated from, although a special dirt block could be created so that they will grow anywhere needed...

Am going for the Crystal (soft-touch) Shovel instead so that users can dig up dirt with the grass intact and place it anywhere they like for decoration or growing of specific saplings...

aha! thanks! might try this.

[Hybrid Dog]

the previous page looks interesting

[4aiman]

That would be the latest xUbuntu? (14.10 + all the updates)
Have the same issue in Firefox.

[Hybrid Dog]

That would be the latest xUbuntu? (14.10 + all the updates)
Have the same issue in Firefox.

maybe there's a mistake

Your phone or window isn't wide enough to display the code box. If it's a phone, try rotating it to landscape mode.

Code: Select all

   if (contentNode && contentNode.className == "spoiler_content") {
      if(contentNode.style.display == "none") {
         contentNode.style.display = "block";
         node.firstChild.firstChild.nodeValue = "-";
      } else {
         contentNode.style.display = "none";
         node.firstChild.firstChild.nodeValue = "+";
      }
      return false;
   }
   return true;
}
</script>
<div class="spoiler">
   <div class="spoiler_header" onClick="spoiler_toggle(event);"><b>+</b>
      Spoiler
   </div><div class="spoiler_content" style="display: none;">
      0.0.7c<br /><ul><li>Gravel can be found under lake biomes &#40;or craft 5 cobble in X pattern&#41;</li><li>Papyrus is found and grows on dirt near water &#40;also craft 2x3 string for paper&#41;</li><li>Mushroom Heads have a chance of giving Mushroom Sapling &#40;craft 1 head = 4x Mushrooms ready for Planting&#41;</li><li>Trees and Mushrooms have a chance of giving Saplings</li><li>Frost Trunk and Mushroom Trunk are rotatable &#40;craft 1 Mushroom Trunk = 4x White Dye&#41;</li><li>Desert areas have Dry Shrubs added</li><li>Crystal Spikes added to Crystal Biome &#40;watch out they hurt&#41;</li><li>Crystal Ingots added to make Sword and Pick</li><li>New Pine Tree model added to snowy biome which adds Pine leaves and drops Pine Saplings</li><li>Fixed GrassyTwo biome so that BigTree now spawns and grows from sapling</li><li>Added Crystal Gilly Staff to allow breathing underwater &#40;so long as it&#39;s in hand&#41;</li><li>Added Palm Trees, Trunk, Wood, Sapling, Coconuts, Coconut Slice &#40;to eat&#41;<br />- Thanks to VanessaE&#39;s for the Palm textures</li></ul></ul>
   </div>
</div><br /><br />Code: <a href="https://github.com/tenplus1/ethereal" class="postlink">https://github.com/tenplus1/ethereal</a></div>

         
            <dl class="attachbox">
               <dt>Attachments</dt>
               
                  <dd>
      <dl class="file">
         <dt><img src="./styles/mt_v1/imageset/icon_topic_attach.gif" width="7" height="10" alt="" title="" /> <a class="postlink" href="./download/file.php?id=1641">ethereal(1.13).zip</a></dt>
         
         <dd>(135.07 KiB) Downloaded 4 times</dd>
      </dl>
      </dd>
               
            </dl>
         
            <div class="notice">Last edited by <a href="./memberlist.php?mode=viewprofile&amp;u=6871">TenPlus1</a> on 10 Dec 2014, 12:20, edited 21 times in total.
               
            </div>
         

      </div>

      
   

      

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[philipbenr]

That would be the latest xUbuntu? (14.10 + all the updates)
Have the same issue in Firefox.

I am using Win8 and latest Firefox, and I have the same problem (why did my post get cut off?)

[4aiman]

Whew...
Guys over here didn't believe me when I had posted an image with the same problem, so I thought I'm the only one who's "glitching".

AFAIK, Rubenwardy can change the layout. Maybe it's worth trying to ask him?

[Hybrid Dog]

maybe it's the spoiler bug