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One decade later, Minecraft world generation is interesting again

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Re: One decade later, Minecraft world generation is interesting again

#151

Post by sudosysgen »

honkdaddy wrote: post #72
ninth_ant wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm no Microsoft apologist, but I believe you've misunderstood the intention and the effect of the changes. Previously, the time-optimal strategy to acquire iron and diamonds was to dig a hole deep into the earth and then bore straight paths. This was exceptionally grindy (fans would say zen, detractors would say tedious), but effective. With 1.18, the optimal strategy is now to enter a cave and find the resources th…

Is the strategy you're talking about (digging straight down upon spawn, as I've seen people do) just applicable to speedrunning, or does your average player learn to do that eventually as well?

It's also what I figured out when I was a kid.

Re: One decade later, Minecraft world generation is interesting again

#152

Post by moffkalast »

tehbeard wrote: post #46
jl6 wrote: post #16

The new terrain is great, but I have mostly exhausted my patience with Minecraft survival. I hope future releases will put some effort into reducing the grindyness. I know many things can be automated but they tend to rely on extremely arcane game mechanics rather than feeling like an intentional part of the game. Some elements of Factorio were inspired by Minecraft. I think Minecraft could now use some inspiration f…

Have you considered modded to get a little more Factorio in your minecraft? I'm playing the "Create: Above & Beyond" pack. There is grind, the pack gives you a goal (build rocket, go to moon), but how you get there is up to you and the automation isn't quite so arcane as vanilla, and doesn't rely on "magic blocks" (Where you plonk down a single block and it magically does all the things) instead relying on you making…

The problem with those packs, especially ones like tekkit is that they just mash in a thousand different mods of barebones compatibility, some adding the same kind of ore or item slightly differently and you end up with a billion items, some of which are duplicates, no idea where to start from or what to use with what, and all in all a general unbalanced clusterfuck.

Create mod by itself is fine as it is imo, no extra stuff required.

Re: One decade later, Minecraft world generation is interesting again

#153

Post by bombcar »

eropple wrote: post #149
goblin89 wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IMO the worst among the things Microsoft is doing to Minecraft is introducing an in-game currency (to an already paid game!). They target Bedrock for this, and I strongly suspect once it starts bringing in extra money they will essentially kill further Java edition development.

IMO, the Java edition doesn't really need additional development, though. It's absolutely nice to have, but the reason (for me) to play the Java version is the community.

Correct - many modpacks are still on 1.7 or 1.12 anyway.

Re: One decade later, Minecraft world generation is interesting again

#154

Post by eesmith »

poser-boy wrote: post #33
eesmith wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The article suggests that "more realistic" is correlated with "boring". "Real" is an interesting concept. Any such simulation couldn't really be based on Earth geophysics. Who wants to spend months crossing the steppes? Real magma isn't something you find by accident. Real tunnels can collapse. And so on. So these intelligent developers will need to create a new system of geophysics. I've read that Dwarf Fortress use…

> The article suggests that "more realistic" is correlated with "boring". I wouldn't say so. With the increased mountain height I'd argue the terrain is more realistic than ever, and not boring.

I'm referring to this part of the article:

> In the b1.8 update [September 2011], the terrain generator was subject to a rewrite aimed to make the code simpler, and make the terrain more realistic. ... at the time it caused quite a controversy, a thread on the Minecraft Forums decried the new terrain as "boring".

What does "realistic" mean to you? Are you looking at it like a geologist? If we follow rland's idea to completion, Minecraft players should look for kimberlite pipes to find diamonds, etc.

I'm certain some people would love virtual prospecting like this. But I strongly doubt the game would be as popular.

Re: One decade later, Minecraft world generation is interesting again

#155

Post by peeters »

honkdaddy wrote: post #72
ninth_ant wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm no Microsoft apologist, but I believe you've misunderstood the intention and the effect of the changes. Previously, the time-optimal strategy to acquire iron and diamonds was to dig a hole deep into the earth and then bore straight paths. This was exceptionally grindy (fans would say zen, detractors would say tedious), but effective. With 1.18, the optimal strategy is now to enter a cave and find the resources th…

Is the strategy you're talking about (digging straight down upon spawn, as I've seen people do) just applicable to speedrunning, or does your average player learn to do that eventually as well?

Digging straight down is a speedrun strategy of last resort for modern versions. The typical progression to enter the Nether is to start by getting 7 iron (3 for an iron pick, 3 for a bucket, 1 for a flint and steel). You want to get that, grab some food, and be in the nether at around 3 minutes.

Doing that by digging down is not really feasible. There are two main routes.

In the village route, you spawn next do a village with a blacksmith. You get some iron or an iron pick from the blacksmith, kill the iron golem for the remaining iron, grab some wheat and then find a nearby lava pool or completable ruined portal. There are variations where you can trade with a villager for a bucket, but by then most speedrunners would have already reset.

The second and more typical modern route is using ocean. You locate a shipwreck which gives you iron and food. Then you find a ravine that has magma blocks (indicating there's lava underneath) and use that to build your portal. To my knowledge this isn't viable in 1.18's world gen though.

When speedrunners do go underground in the overworld, they'll usually try to find a cave first to find exposed iron and lava. Digging down is the last choice.

Re: One decade later, Minecraft world generation is interesting again

#156

Post by goblin89 »

eropple wrote: post #149
goblin89 wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IMO the worst among the things Microsoft is doing to Minecraft is introducing an in-game currency (to an already paid game!). They target Bedrock for this, and I strongly suspect once it starts bringing in extra money they will essentially kill further Java edition development.

IMO, the Java edition doesn't really need additional development, though. It's absolutely nice to have, but the reason (for me) to play the Java version is the community.

The problem in this scenario will be feature disparity. If they want, they can add cool stuff to Bedrock, and make vanilla Java version feel old and obsolete just the way 1.12 (which probably has the most mods) looks now when compared with fresh 1.18.

Then, by making Bedrock available to people who paid for Java, they would give a hassle-free way for players and modders to try it, and many will probably stick to the latest version.

I do hope, if this scenario comes about, the community will keep the Java version alive by maintaining feature parity, but there’re fundamental issues where some features might not be easily backported on Java due to performance limitations, plus community fragmentation as different modders try to backport same new features in different mutually incompatible ways.

Re: One decade later, Minecraft world generation is interesting again

#157

Post by Levitz »

honkdaddy wrote: post #72
ninth_ant wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm no Microsoft apologist, but I believe you've misunderstood the intention and the effect of the changes. Previously, the time-optimal strategy to acquire iron and diamonds was to dig a hole deep into the earth and then bore straight paths. This was exceptionally grindy (fans would say zen, detractors would say tedious), but effective. With 1.18, the optimal strategy is now to enter a cave and find the resources th…

Is the strategy you're talking about (digging straight down upon spawn, as I've seen people do) just applicable to speedrunning, or does your average player learn to do that eventually as well?

At some point every player goes "Where, oh where in the world is the goddamned iron I need?", they google it, find ores spawn differently at certain heights and go from there.

Re: One decade later, Minecraft world generation is interesting again

#158

Post by [deleted] »

seanwilson wrote: post #108
mysterydip wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

maps only generate as far as players have seen. So an old world would have old features until you explore new areas. To expand: Any generated chunk is considered "user modified" and saved whole, since a player could put houses or change blocks there. New areas are generated by the algorithm once reached. This works for new versions of the game as well as mods that add/change biomes.

How do you deal with e.g. a chunk saved from the old generator with a low mountain transitioning into a chunk generated by the new generator with a huge mountain? It blends between them somehow so all the old chunks are surrounded by old/new blended chunks until all of those are surrounded by new chunks from then on?

[deleted]

Re: One decade later, Minecraft world generation is interesting again

#159

Post by sudosysgen »

pests wrote: post #65
herghost wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh wow. I did not realise this was the case. Thank you!

I think this actually might be a slight negative tbh - since everything is split into chunks and generated on demand, you lose the ability to do larger passes over multiple chucks at gen time. No real way to do tectonics or weather patterns as you don't necessarily know what's in your chunk neighborhood.

There is a biome system that solves this issue. You can compute biome borders and use them for tectonics or w/e else.

Re: One decade later, Minecraft world generation is interesting again

#160

Post by orbital-decay »

ninth_ant wrote: post #53
MildlySerious wrote: post #50

Man. I really do want to like it, but this update is the first one that gives me the Microsoft-finally-took-over vibes. Traversal and with that exploration just became so much harder. The landscape is now riddled with holes that you either build scraggly bridges over, or lead to massive detours. The sides of bodies of water are much higher and steeper on average, making it impossible to see the landscape you're passi…

I'm no Microsoft apologist, but I believe you've misunderstood the intention and the effect of the changes. Previously, the time-optimal strategy to acquire iron and diamonds was to dig a hole deep into the earth and then bore straight paths. This was exceptionally grindy (fans would say zen, detractors would say tedious), but effective. With 1.18, the optimal strategy is now to enter a cave and find the resources th…

> Previously, the time-optimal strategy to acquire iron and diamonds was to dig a hole deep into the earth and then bore straight paths. This was exceptionally grindy (fans would say zen, detractors would say tedious), but effective.

I'm not a big Minecraft player, but I'm pretty sure the time-optimal strategy for getting diamonds consistently was to set up a deliberate mine topology which is mathematically efficient, not just dig forward in straight lines. AFAIK diamond mining was the only thing that couldn't be automated; for iron the time-optimal way is to construct an iron farm, i.e. engineering, not grinding.

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