Ideas and suggestions for Farlands map generation

[MarkuBu]

Make Mapgen v7 default Farlands is made for mg v7, but it is still possible to select a different mapgen. This should be set to mg v7 in farlands.

Performance: A sandbox game looks better if there is something you can see. Bare ground nodes are boring. Most of the ground nodes should be covered by a plant. But add more plants means more faces. Players with low end PCs can't play the game because it is to slow, if you add too much plants. On the other hand some players are bored (like me) if a game looks monotonous, pale and "empty", even if the PC could handle more

As mentioned in the chat I suggest to add 3 different settings for the amount of visual additions. Low, mid and high range. Low is similar to MTG, mid has more plants and high adds whatever is possible plus mesh node leaves.

Landscape The default noise settings are really conservative. The results are "hilly", smoothed maps. It is my personal opinion, but I don't like that very much. And it is difficult to build. The tunnels are also not very interesting.

I suggest to make the landscape a bit more flat and more "rough" and detailed by changing some noise parameters, and change the mountains to be less "blobby". Also make the tunnels more twisted

Floatlands mg v7 has floatlands. These are floating islands above y=1200. We can use them as fantasy world with a completely different look. But water can't be used currently because water generation is buggy. To reach them something like a teleporter would be necessary.

Biomes Even with the new biomes there is not much variation. To get more biomes we can split the current biomes, for example snowy grassland into grassland and a snowy forest, but instead of leaves the trees have bare branches, or the grassland into a colder grassland that looks like the current one and one with more vegetation like more bushes and some single trees. And we have the cold desert where we can add some more interesting things like dead trees.

We should take the opportunity and let the biomes change by height, mostly to reduce the amount of trees

Ores Most ores in MTG are equally distributed everywhere. It could be interesting to make some ores more common in one biome and rare in the others. For example, if you need a lot of gold you have to find a desert

[MarkuBu]

This is what I mean with "flat"

[D00Med]

Make Mapgen v7 default

I don't think v7 should be forced, but it should be automatically selected when players create new worlds though (if that's possible?).

Performance:

This is why I think my grass idea (with improvement) would be good. The problem with having many plants is that it won't look very good without much variation, and if there is a plant on every node, it will make building a little bit painful (that's just my opinion though). I think more plants is preferable to emptiness though, so this is a good idea. Although I don't like things like too much grass on sand (it looks awful).

As mentioned in the chat I suggest to add 3 different settings for the amount of visual additions. Low, mid and high range. Low is similar to MTG, mid has more plants and high adds whatever is possible plus mesh node leaves.

This is an excellent idea, and it would be easy to implement too. Shall I add this, or would you like to?

Landscape I suggest to make the landscape a bit more flat and more "rough" and detailed by changing some noise parameters, and change the mountains to be less "blobby". Also make the tunnels more twisted

Nice idea, maybe we could have something in between? Also I don't really understand noise parameters.

Floatlands mg v7 has floatlands. These are floating islands above y=1200. We can use them as fantasy world with a completely different look. But water can't be used currently because water generation is buggy. To reach them something like a teleporter would be necessary.

That sounds good! Like the "heaven" @tobyplowy suggested. It'd be good to have a new ore there too. @tobyplowy Could you make a concept for this?

Biomes Even with the new biomes there is not much variation. To get more biomes we can split the current biomes, for example snowy grassland into grassland and a snowy forest, but instead of leaves the trees have bare branches, or the grassland into a colder grassland that looks like the current one and one with more vegetation like more bushes and some single trees. And we have the cold desert where we can add some more interesting things like dead trees.

I think the only ones that should be split are the boring ones like grasslands or deserts. Lots of trees is good imo.

Ores Most ores in MTG are equally distributed everywhere. It could be interesting to make some ores more common in one biome and rare in the others. For example, if you need a lot of gold you have to find a desert

That's not a bad idea, but it's often quite hard to find a particular biome, and the game gets slower and runs out of memory the further you explore (that might be just a windows problem).

[D00Med]

@MarkuBu Also that looks too flat and boring, but it'd be nice to have it like that just for swamp biomes

[tobyplowy]

This is why I think my grass idea (with improvement) would be good.

I really don't like the particle grass even if the performance is inproved

That sounds good! Like the "heaven" @tobyplowy suggested. It'd be good to have a new ore there too.

Did someone say Toby make the concept for this Becouse I will do it! 👌😂🔫

[tobyplowy]

@MarkuBu can you make the swamp flat?

[D00Med]

I really don't like the particle grass

Would that be because it looked like crap? xD

Did someone say Toby make the concept for this

@tobyplowy Could you make a concept for this?

;)

[MarkuBu]

If we want to use Flatlands we must force v7, cause this is the only mapgen with Flatlands

And grass, even a lot of grass, has not sooo much impact to the performance. Only really low end PC's may have a problem. And then also particles won't help

The flat land on the screenshot is extremely big. Normally they are smaller. And it looks great if you walk on. The only problem: the ocean are not very deep. I try to find a solution

[tobyplowy]

@D00Med yes I can!

[tobyplowy]

@MarkuBu force V7 but flat must still be available

[MarkuBu]

Why flat?

[tobyplowy]

@MarkuBu Because I like to use it for Creative Building

[MarkuBu]

Ah, misunderstanding. If you start a new MTG game you can select whatever you want from the menu, but if you create and start a farlands game the selected mapgen in the menu will be ignored. It can be coded in the script that a specific mapgen hast to be used for this subgame, but it has no effect to other subgames

[MarkuBu]

Oh, and as I mentioned before some time ago it is impossible to say for example, I want swamps only in flat biomes. The landscape and biomes are completely independent from each other

All you can do it to say, I want swamp water and trees between 0 and 20, between 21 and 40 only trees, but no water and above 40 just swamp grass and very rare trees. That would be possible. That's what I mean with

We should take the opportunity and let the biomes change by height

[tobyplowy]

@MarkuBu swamps should always generate next to oceans And the water in the swamp shuld always be at the same level as the ocean

I whant the swamp to look like this http://hydra-media.cursecdn.com/minecraft.gamepedia.com/1/1e/1.7swamp.png I whant the grass to do that thing it does in the picture but only close to water And the trees shuld be the ones we have in the current swamps in farlands

Can you do that?

[MarkuBu]

Short answer: no.

I have no control where a biome is generated. Could also be somewhere in the middle of a mountain

[MarkuBu]

maybe it does work, but it's difficult. I have an idea, but I have to try

[MarkuBu]

I modified the noise a bit and now the landscape is less flat and we have some lakes at sea level. I think, it looks amazing and even if you don't like it I want to preserve it as option.

For the swamp: I think it is possible, but it is a bit of work and I have to modify a few biome things. It's difficult to explain if you don't know how biomes work.

But I can't guarantee that it finally works or looks as expected. It might happen that we will have micro biomes

[tobyplowy]

But I can't guarantee that it finally works or looks as expected. It might happen that we will have micro biomes

How small will they be?

[MarkuBu]

Theoretically a biome can be 1 node small, already now in default MTG. And I already had tini tiny biomes, for example a very small cold desert, 20 nodes long and 5 nodes wide, between grassland and snow. The lava burned the grass xD. Just an hour ago I had an situation where I had 4 biomes in the minimap at the same time. A snowy grassland, a cold desert, a sandstone desert and a desert at the same time. I already hat a single grass node in the savanna.

The noises, that are used to generate the biomes and the landscape are not predictable and not controllable. You can't say "now I want a swamp, make a flat terrain" or "I want a mesa biome, make mountains".

You can say "I'm in a desert and the landscape is higher than 30 nodes, let's try to make a mesa biome". That might work, but it is also possible that you have just a hill of 32 nodes and you have just 4 or 5 nodes of mesa biome. Or the hill is that big that half of the hill is mesa, the other half is desert.

[tobyplowy]

@MarkuBu can you make an issue For That on the minetest github page? Having more control over the mapgen is a must (I dount know how to ask it also the devs dount really like me)

[MarkuBu]

I've already reported an issue, but if something happens, it's with a new map generator. It won't happen in v7. And the next mapgen will take a while, so we have to make the best out of what we have

[tobyplowy]

@MarkuBu I see I don't like the sound of micro biomes so leave the swamp as is

How is your progress on the 0.5.0 port

[MarkuBu]

Right now I found a nice example what can happen. This hill has 5 different biomes, from left to right cold desert, sandstone desert, desert, savanna and grassland and there is nothing I can do

Also micro biomes can happen just now in MTG or in Farlands. I can't stop it. That's the nature of perlin noise. I can show you if I find the next one

[tobyplowy]

@MarkuBu The terrain seems to generate less smooth I like that what I don't like is the size of the biomes they need to be bigger 5 times the size they are in the screenshot if possible :)

[tobyplowy]

@MarkuBu nice work so far :)

[tobyplowy]

@MarkuBu this looks nice https://youtu.be/Isrz_Oqe9V8 Can we make a new mapgen?

With this included https://youtu.be/DoHbO0RN8AU

[MarkuBu]

A new mapgen is really complex and written in Lua not really fast

I can increase the biome size, but that doesn't eliminate small biomes. Just reduce the chance. On the other hand large biomes will be more common, and I mean really large.

[tobyplowy]

@MarkuBu I don't whant them to be big but I also don't want them to be small :/

Also I'm testing your 0.5.0 port On the latest unStable

[tobyplowy]

@MarkuBu sand with sea grass is still called stone with sea grass XD

[MarkuBu]

Let's not complain about what we don't have, let's make the best of what we have.

And I know that it is still called stone with sea grass xD

But you don't have the noise changes I made to my map. Create a new world and before you open the world the first time, open the world folder and replace the map_meta.txt file with this file

map_meta.txt

And before you start again download my port again. I made an update just right now

[tobyplowy]

@MarkuBu i get this debug.txt