[HN Gopher] One decade later, Minecraft world generation is inte...
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One decade later, Minecraft world generation is interesting again
Author : poser-boy
Score : 438 points
Date : 2021-12-05 05:09 UTC (17 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (dither8.xyz)
(TXT) w3m dump (dither8.xyz)
| lloydatkinson wrote:
| One of the best features of the terrain generation that was
| removed (in beta 1.8 like the article mentions) was overhangs
| like this: http://i.imgur.com/AHDDS.jpg
|
| I wonder if this new update adds similar generation again?
| PicassoCTs wrote:
| I always found they had missed a chance regarding biomes. Giant
| trees, whos tops basically look like hillside if you walk towards
| them unknowingly..
| jl6 wrote:
| 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 from Factorio.
| dane-pgp wrote:
| I think Mojang should reconsider its objection to adding an
| auto-crafting system into the game. There are legitimate
| concerns that, if it was too easy, it would make one of the
| defining aspects of the game obsolete, but I think it could be
| balanced so that users wouldn't bother doing it for simple
| items like pickaxes.
|
| As an example, the "auto-crafter" block could be powered by
| chorus fruit, which means the player would not have access to
| it until after beating the Ender Dragon. That would also mean
| that truly automating crafting would also require an automated
| chorus fruit farm, which would give the system a minimum space
| requirement.
| tehbeard wrote:
| 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 a
| machine/factory line from multiple blocks.
| moffkalast wrote:
| 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.
| tehbeard wrote:
| I specifically called out Above & Beyond because it isn't a
| "kitchen sink" pack thrown together over a weekend with a
| dozen different game crashing interactions between mods, or
| 4 ways to create dupe item cycle. Or a hell inducing
| grindfest like the Gregtech focused packs are.
|
| It's a pack with one goal (build rocket, goto moon), that
| puts you in the SANDBOX that is the core of minecraft and
| says, "here are the tools, here's a bit of guidance on what
| you should automate to progress, but figure it out from
| tools at hand and have fun in your own way".
|
| The mods are from different authors, but all the recipes
| have been tweaked and tuned to integrate with each other
| and provide a cohesive progression curve. Even the textures
| have been tweaked to make the pack visually cohesive.
| shhsshs wrote:
| > no idea where to start from or what to use with what
|
| A lot of recent packs give you a quest book to guide your
| progress and push you into the different mods slowly. You
| get maybe 70-80% through one mod's tech tree and then
| you're pushed to start on another section before you can
| progress into that last 20%. The Project Ozone series does
| a REALLY good job of making sure the different mods balance
| each other and interact in a way that feels good.
|
| > you end up with a billion items
|
| Yeah that gets bad. Most packs have some sort of inventory
| organization system (basically a computer you can stick all
| your items into with no organization and then search them
| up later) to help alleviate that.
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| The trailer for Create Above and Beyond made it look pretty
| integrated. They added a lot on top and did a lot of mod
| editing.
| curiousgal wrote:
| I honestly never understood the appeal of vanilla Minecraft.
| I only bought the game because of the mods! Mods like AE2 or
| Thermal Expansion is where the fun is at!
| willis936 wrote:
| I've pushed java far past its breaking point in previous
| modded minecraft worlds (30 second GC every 30 seconds, some
| AE2 leak when millions of items are stored).
|
| I like many aspects of bedrock edition, most related to
| performance. I want a gregtech-like experience in bedrock so
| badly that I'd go as far as making it myself. I just wish the
| command interface wasn't so janky. When I've done test blocks
| and interactions in the past I've run into limitations that
| would prevent my vision. This was maybe 18 months ago, so I
| don't think much has changed yet.
| madeofpalk wrote:
| Bedrock does have a Javascript-based behaviour pack system.
| No idea about it's capabilities.
| willis936 wrote:
| That's what I'm referring to. Behavior packs are json
| files + assets. It's a real trip to try to have your own
| variables for things like items inserted, energy level,
| etc. In java you could edit tile entity metadata with
| your own java code.
|
| In bedrock minecraft commands must be used to update
| these states. This is where my understanding started to
| fall apart.
| itronitron wrote:
| MC 1.19 has a new 'Allay' mob planned that will pick up and
| move items for the player. I can see people using this to
| create some interesting automated systems.
| cmrdporcupine wrote:
| My kids don't play survival at all really and although I have
| kept trying for years I can't find an actual enjoyable game in
| there at all really. Like you say, too much grinding, and then
| it just starts to feel completely pointless and arbitrary.
| baby wrote:
| One thing I always hoped, but that never happened: get people's
| creations into the game. Randomly get vetted buildings as biomes.
| People have created insane things and it's a shame they couldn't
| have been integrated directly into the game. Even a few would
| have been cool. I guess one thing is that structures without life
| feels empty, so you'd have to generate random monsters or NPCs
| for each of them.
| madeofpalk wrote:
| They _kind of_ have this, within the limits and goals of
| Minecraft.
|
| They've spoken recently about one of their intentions for
| Survival is for the world to be a blank slate for players own
| creations. Adding more and richer structures detracts from
| that. There's also the part where it's still a game that needs
| balancing, and just importing arbitrary structures and
| resources detracts from Survival.
|
| There is the marketplace which has community
| servers/worlds/levels that showcase what other people have
| built. I think that's the right level for this.
|
| Otherwise, stuff like this is perfect for the data pack
| ecosystem they created.
| globular-toast wrote:
| Isn't that what servers are for? I joined a server once many
| years ago and found all kinds of truly amazing things that
| people had built. My favourite was a vast hollowed out
| mountain. The only way in was through a door right at the top
| of the mountain which caused you to descend into this
| beautifully lit cavern. Exploring this server was like
| exploring an art gallery.
| tehbeard wrote:
| This might be more feasible-ish in a community effort?
|
| I'm not entirely sure how the jigsaw system (the subsystem the
| game uses for building villages and bastions from a large
| palette of pre-builts using a set of rules and connectors)
| integrates with the custom world generator options, but that
| would seem the best bet for it in a vanilla game.
|
| The problem with an "official" player creations is both vetting
| them and the social backlash because you didn't pick little
| Timmy's shack. As well as the disjointedness of theme that
| could occur with a player's playstyle.
|
| I play a modpack. Create: Above & Beyond, they've added a bunch
| of new random structures to the game, but they're all within a
| similar theme of quasi-medieval for the surface structures, and
| a few of the underground ones stray a bit more modern.
| WithinReason wrote:
| I think you could completely automate this by training a neural
| network on local neighborhoods to generate a voxel probability
| distribution for the center voxel, so a randomly initialized
| world would converge to a world that has pieces that resemble
| the worlds that the network was trained on. So in 1D you would
| take a sequence of voxels ABCDE, and the network would learn to
| predict C from A,B,D,E.
|
| Similar idea without neural networks:
|
| https://github.com/mxgmn/WaveFunctionCollapse
|
| I'm surprised no one applied this idea to Minecraft yet.
| There's even a 3D version:
|
| https://i.imgur.com/IEOsbIy.png
| jokoon wrote:
| They should really enable a sharded server networking protocol to
| allow some MMO elements. Each server would handle a limited area
| and players would automatically connect to a server when they go
| to a certain distance.
|
| I'm sure players would pay to access it if it worked.
| jon-wood wrote:
| This is how the big multiplayer servers available via Bedrock
| edition work, not so much for distance, but for different game
| modes. Unfortunately players pay by buying predatory micro-
| transaction items, which I find near unacceptable in a game so
| squarely targeted at children.
| lom wrote:
| I remember seeing a project like that (maybe even here, on HN),
| but unfortunately I can't find it
| Malp wrote:
| WorldQL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28401224
| c-fe wrote:
| Maybe this one? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28401224
| lloydatkinson wrote:
| That was notch's original idea for portals in multiplayer I
| recall reading. A portal would take you to another server.
| [deleted]
| arshingleton wrote:
| looks pixelated to me
| hypertele-Xii wrote:
| Minecraft world gen has never been interesting, and still isn't.
| All of the comparison screenshots look exactly alike: Some trees,
| some cliffs, some water. And a mixture of dirt, grass, sand and
| snow. To call such bland a landscape "interesting" is an
| admission of complete lack of imagination.
|
| And now we're having a massive celebration because... Microsoft
| added _caves?_ What a joke. Caves are among the oldest of
| inventions in human history.
|
| Where's the _factory_ biome with weird machinery and pipes
| running around? Where 's the _dead_ biome thick with fog and
| populated with graves and zombies? Where 's the airship biome
| that floats high above in the sky and takes building effort to
| get to?
|
| There's so much creative potential, totally unrealized, for
| decades. Minecraft never went anywhere. It will die the moment a
| more imaginative clone pops on the market. It might by Hytale, or
| something else.
| pleb_nz wrote:
| This has me pumped. Time to try it out again.
| haolez wrote:
| Something similar happened to No Man's Sky. After a specific
| update, all planets became very similar regarding their topology.
| It became boring :(
| jccalhoun wrote:
| Even though I'm a videogame player, I hadn't played Minecraft
| until it was recently added to the XBox Game Pass on windows. I
| can see why it is so attractive to kids. I didn't know a lot
| about it so the first time I came across a village was really
| surprising. Then I got lost and spent tons of time trying to find
| my way back to my base. Minecraft is a pretty amazing game. I'm
| only a decade late to finding it out!
| bagels wrote:
| Does anyone know if the new generator is used on unexplored parts
| of previous save games?
| zeta0134 wrote:
| Yes! This update goes so far as to blend chunks around the
| seams, and will fill out the new cave generation at the bottom
| of your existing world, replacing the bedrock with deepslate.
| I'm itching to dive in again once the holidays settle down
| nottorp wrote:
| Also, you can use mcaselector to delete the parts of your old
| saved games where you haven't built anything and let them regen
| with the 1.18 algo. I just did that with a save and the new
| terrain smoothly blended in with the old.
| shawnz wrote:
| Yes, and not just unexplored areas, but even underneath
| previously explored areas in the new space created between Y=0
| and Y=-64.
| fermentation wrote:
| Super excited to try this out, I haven't played much since the
| alpha ended. Does anyone know how well the RTX support is? I
| could never tell if that was meant to be a tech demo or an actual
| feature.
| willis936 wrote:
| I've used it with a 3070. I love it. Getting it running
| requires a little reading and experimenting rather than a
| toggle in a menu, but when it's running it's wonderful. I stop
| and stare at many things. Sunset on a village is great, the
| soft glow around my house is great, true black and light
| occlusion in caves is great.
|
| Mob spawn light rules are unchanged and don't match up with the
| RT front end, but that rarely matters.
| lom wrote:
| RTX support isn't a thing in the java edition, which is showed
| off in the article here. But you can get minecraft for windows
| for free if you already have a java key that's older than 2018.
| jonwinstanley wrote:
| Presumably this is just for the PC version? Or do console
| versions ever get the terrain updates?
| gambiting wrote:
| All versions get this update(well, apart from ones which are
| unsupported already - Vita, 3DS, WiiU)
| ykl wrote:
| It's for both Java and Bedrock, so it should be on all
| currently supported PC, mobile, and console versions. In
| general Mojang keeps PC and mobile/console at feature parity
| with each other and releases updates at the same time across
| all supported versions now, which is nice.
| jonwinstanley wrote:
| Really nice. Didn't expect that to be the case.
| gambiting wrote:
| Minecraft has supported cross platform multiplayer for a
| while now, so it would be really weird if they broke
| compatibility with PC like this.
| lhoff wrote:
| Mimd you, there are two versions of Mimecraft. Java and
| Bedrock. Both support PC but only Bedrock supports other
| plattforms. Cross Plattform multiplayer therefore only
| works with bedrock. Java isn't compatible with bedrock
| servers and the other way around.
| kuschku wrote:
| Although there are mods for the Java edition to allow
| Bedrock clients to connect to Java servers.
| nottorp wrote:
| > Both support PC but only Bedrock supports other
| plattforms.
|
| You mean Bedrock supports consoles.
|
| Java supports Mac and Linux, so it's also multiplatform.
| Just different platforms.
| garmaine wrote:
| A bit confusing, but I think he was drawing a PC/mobile
| distinction, and it probably would have been better to
| say "desktop" instead of PC.
| lhoff wrote:
| Yes,
|
| i used PC because in the parent comment PC was used as
| well.
|
| Desktop is also not ideal because it runs on Laptops as
| well.
| MayeulC wrote:
| > Both support PC but only Bedrock supports other
| plattforms.
|
| Both support windows, but only Java supports other open
| platforms (where you can install external software, like
| Linux and Mac PCs, or others OSes/HW architectures).
|
| Bedrock is only published on closed platforms (games
| consoles, mostly, and app stores) and windows.
|
| Java is the only edition that supports mods.
|
| The android version of bedrock is also unofficially
| playable on Linux.
| [deleted]
| smoldesu wrote:
| It's kinda remarkable how much the new update overhauled world
| generation. If you've been standing on the sidelines, waiting for
| "the big one" to draw you back in, I was greatly surprised at how
| much fun I had exploring some surprisingly realistic and cool
| vistas. Canyons don't feel sheer, savannas have remarkable
| valleys and hills, and the cave generation feels... well, "next-
| gen" for a lack of a better phrase. I have admittedly been pretty
| unimpressed with Microsoft's handling of the game up until this
| point, but I've been pleasantly surprised by how fresh it feels
| now.
|
| Bravo, nu-Mojang.
| CodeGlitch wrote:
| I'm new to Minecraft. Does anyone know if I will need to start a
| new world to benefit from the 1.18 terrain improvements, or will
| it work it's way into an existing save game?
| CodeGlitch wrote:
| Ok from pcgamer:
|
| > Always remember to back up your old save files before loading
| them into the newest version of the game. With the new changes
| to world generation, Mojang say that new chunks generated in
| worlds you bring forward to 1.18 should better blend with the
| existing terrain in your save file. So long to big flat chunk
| borders in old worlds!
| tehbeard wrote:
| It should work with an existing world, but as always, make
| backups!
|
| As for integration.
|
| This time round instead of the "harsh" borders we've gotten
| before (where new and old chunks meet, often resulting in sheer
| cliffs due to height differences) the borders will be blended
| and smoothed.
|
| Your old chunks will also be upgraded, the bedrock that was at
| Y0-5 will turn into the deepslate block, and you get the full 0
| to -64 Y generated underneath.
|
| Ethoslab, a youtuber with a very old world save, is on 1.18
| now, and they've got one of the new lush caves in the new
| negative Y generation under their base.
| CodeGlitch wrote:
| Great reply thanks
| [deleted]
| Tepix wrote:
| Usually you will have to go to areas you haven't been to
| previously to get to see the new world generation. If you have
| done a ton of exploration it may be a long walk from your spawn
| point.
| seanwilson wrote:
| For random world generation like this, how do you make changes to
| the generator (like adding taller mountains) without breaking
| saved games and world seeds that people have written down?
|
| Guessing you could let the saved game or the player pick which
| world generation algorithm to use and you need to keep the code
| for the old and new generator around? It's probably less of a big
| deal for e.g. rouge-like games are over for good in a few hours,
| but not for games like Minecraft.
| mysterydip wrote:
| 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.
| seanwilson wrote:
| 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]
| Matrix89 wrote:
| Yup, starting with 1.18 the started blending old chunks
| with the new ones. Earlier there was a hard transition,
| personally I prefered the hard cut, there was something to
| it, something mysterious about it, but I get why they wated
| it removed
| [deleted]
| MildlySerious wrote:
| 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 passing, and getting up
| there to take a look is tedious.
|
| So you're basically stuck near spawn unless you want to spend
| much more time getting around.
|
| A lot of surface iron was replaced with copper, which is useless,
| meaning progress is now slower than ever, and grinding becomes
| even more of a necessity. Generally, many of the items that now
| clutter the inventory are mostly useless, and the inventory needs
| constant attention.
|
| Minecraft is a fantastic game that I have spent well over a
| thousand hours on over the last decade, with many more to come
| very likely. That being said, with the account transition to
| Microsoft/Xbox and this update that gives me personally the
| "Microsoft knows whats best for its users" vibes that I still
| distinctly remember from WLM and Skype, I am definitely less
| optimistic about the game's future than I was a few years ago. I
| do hope my caution proves to be unwarranted.
| [deleted]
| ninth_ant wrote:
| 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 there. The holes in the ground that you dislike
| are entry points to that system, where many resources are
| available -- though at the risk of encounters with monsters.
|
| So the transition is _from_ a static grind to the new system
| based on cave exploration and risk. It 's more dynamic and
| engaging, directly the opposite of your claim here. You mention
| iron, claiming that progress is slower, but in actuality it's
| significantly easier to acquire useful amounts of iron now.
| Jump into any random cave and it's all over the place. Sure,
| there's a lot of relatively useless copper too, but no one is
| forcing you to mine it. Just skip what you don't need and you
| don't need to manage it in your inventory.
|
| Likewise, the new topology with increased heights means that
| rivers are significantly more important for exploring. You
| point out that it makes it more difficult to go from one peak
| to the next, which is accurate (though in my opinion you
| overstate the difficulty), but regardless it is quite easy to
| make long journeys if you follow the rivers and low terrain.
|
| So yeah it's harder to go directly in a straight line than it
| was in before, but now you're paying attention to the terrain
| in the world and adapting your gameplay as a result. It just
| requires different navigation techniques. Like it or not,
| you're absolutely not stuck at spawn.
| honkdaddy wrote:
| 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?
| peeters wrote:
| 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.
| joconde wrote:
| After doing the basics (stone tools, safe base, light and
| food), I'd always do that as soon as possible. Diamond
| stuff is very useful for later parts of the game, and
| you'll need a lot of redstone to build interesting
| circuits.
|
| It's its own form of exploration, at least in the versions
| with fun cave generation: you always end up in some cave
| complex that you can then explore. But I'm happy to see
| that it's less needed now, because interesting caves are
| more commonly accessible from aboveground.
| Levitz wrote:
| 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.
| officeplant wrote:
| I've been playing since the release of beta and once it was
| understood in what layers diamond spawned more frequently
| it became very common. I've seen some people refuse to do
| it just because it kinda kills the wandering exploration
| vibes.
| sudosysgen wrote:
| It's also what I figured out when I was a kid.
| lemoncookiechip wrote:
| It's called strip/branch mining (https://minecraft.fandom.c
| om/wiki/Tutorials/Mining#Branch_Mi...) by players.
|
| Everyone (including children) learns this method over time,
| be it by checking tutorials online, reading a wiki, or just
| naturally due to how simple and efficient it is.
|
| You just had to mine straight down to y 8/13 (this changed
| in the new patch), make a long corridor and then just
| branch out of that corridor in lines.
| MildlySerious wrote:
| _> I believe you 've misunderstood the intention and the
| effect of the change._
|
| No, and I don't think I have made any comment on the
| intention. I understand what they were going for. My point is
| specifically what you are saying: It massively changes the
| game play. If I wanted different game play I would play a
| different game. Every update so far, including the ones since
| MS takeover have felt like natural progression of the game to
| me. I enjoyed those updates and have lots of good things to
| say about them and the way they expanded the game.
|
| This update feels to me like it should have been a different
| game, or a mod. That's the contrast I was trying to highlight
| with my comment.
|
| It's worth noting I'm not claiming anything as a fact. I was
| stating my personal opinion and concern for the direction the
| game is headed in, relative to my own expectations, after a
| decade of playing Minecraft. I explained why I think that
| way, because we're on HN.
|
| _> The holes in the ground that you dislike are entry points
| to that system_
|
| Those existed before, just that covering them and getting the
| materials for it if you're not a fan of big craters and
| abysses in the ground wasn't a project of its own before.
|
| _> So the transition is from a static grind to the new
| system based on cave exploration and risk._
|
| Cave exploration and mob bashing is still grinding. This will
| get old fast if you just want to get to it and build your
| base or whatever self assigned goal you have.
|
| _> It 's more dynamic and engaging, directly the opposite of
| your claim here._
|
| That is entirely subjective.
|
| _> You point out that it makes it more difficult to go from
| one peak to the next, which is accurate (though in my opinion
| you overstate the difficulty)_
|
| That wasn't my claim, no. I said it is now more difficult to
| see directly from the water, because the landscape is raised
| so much relatively the water. Overcoming that is just
| tedious, not difficult, because you have to get out of the
| boat every so often to get a view of the landscape.
|
| For me it is comparable to amplified maps no longer being
| opt-in, basically. It's fun for a change, but not the game
| experience I am looking for most of the time. Now I no longer
| get to pick unless I stick with old versions, which of course
| sucks for online play.
| orbital-decay wrote:
| _> 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.
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| Unless you're really working to hit ore in a limited space,
| you pretty much just want to make a bunch of long parallel
| tunnels at the right height.
| orbital-decay wrote:
| If I recall correctly (I've played it years ago),
| efficient mining methods make use of 1x1 branches and
| optimized spacing between branches, which exposes more
| potential ore spots in less time than a simple 2x1
| tunnel. Someone solved the optimization problem and
| calculated the optimal branch spacing to minimize the
| time spent on removing the blocks per one block of ore.
| Tumblewood wrote:
| Feather mining (the style that uses the 1x1 branches) is
| more efficient per block mined, but it requires a lot
| more attention compared to a straight 2x1 hole because of
| all the turning you need to do. So 2x1 is what most
| people do. People who have enough resources to make
| beacons usually speed-mine instead, though. That's
| because with a beacon giving you Haste II and an
| Efficiency V pickaxe, you can mine stone blocks
| instantly, allowing you to clear out 2-tall spaces
| rapidly. This destroys more blocks per ore but is much
| faster than anything else in terms of time. That said, in
| the 1.18 update, diamond ore can only be found at levels
| where deepslate generates instead of stone. Deepslate
| cannot be instant-mined, so caving is once again the most
| efficient way to find ores. I consider this more fun than
| the old style of mining, so I'm glad they made this
| change.
| II2II wrote:
| One of the great things about Minecraft is game play can be
| tailored to a player's particular tastes. In this instance:
| if you want to dig straight down and build a branch mine to
| get diamonds and iron, you can; if you want to take the more
| risky route of exploring caves, you can. Personally, I fall
| into the former category since my main interests lay in
| exploration and building. Dropping down to the bottom of the
| world is a quick way to get the resources required to craft
| an enchantment table and suit up in armor, leaving more time
| to explore the surface for things like jungles, mesas, sunken
| ships, and anything else that will provide the resources for
| my latest build.
|
| Does 1.18 change things? I'm trying to keep an open mind,
| trying to convince myself that the new ore distribution adds
| nuance to my opening moves. When that conviction fails, I
| look for other things that hold promise. Something that I've
| toyed around with doing in the past is creating a Zork-esque
| underground empire, but have always held back on those plans
| since the old cave networks were bland and cramped. Yet the
| new underground biomes make such a project more appealing.
| c7DJTLrn wrote:
| I haven't tried but I believe I can't play Minecraft anymore
| because all players have been forced to convert their Mojang
| accounts, which is something I simply don't want to do. Funny
| how a company can just take away something you purchased and
| you have no recourse.
| ezfe wrote:
| The game files continue to work, even without an account
| actually. You can simply keep the old launcher and/or run the
| game directly.
|
| While I agree with you in principal, the truth is that if you
| don't update the launcher it doesn't break - and if you do
| update the launcher it also doesn't break, it just requires
| you to complete an account migration.
| shawnz wrote:
| Why does it matter who administers the account you use to log
| in to the game?
| Tepix wrote:
| Nope. You can still play with a Mojang account. I do.
| nathanaldensr wrote:
| You can, but you have to use the old launcher, which is
| buried on the Minecraft site _and_ avoid the dark pattern
| prompts to upgrade.
| Shared404 wrote:
| And eventually it will be forced they say.
|
| Edit: They == Mojang/Microsoft
| [deleted]
| jacobmartin wrote:
| It's extremely easy and quick to go >>1k blocks away from spawn
| looking for good territory if you want to, and I've done so now
| in three separate worlds. And I didn't have a bunch of
| resources when I did that either. Iron is easier to find than
| ever now that it spawns on the surface in mountain biomes. I
| got over a stack just taking the surface iron on a mountain.
| Sure, there were also copper veins, but there was plenty of
| iron. This was the first thing I did after punching down a tree
| and getting a stone pickaxe btw.
|
| I do agree with you on inventory clutter, but that has been a
| problem for as long as I have played the game (since about
| 2010? I don't remember which version). I am disappointed that
| they have delayed the introduction of the bundle.
| nathanaldensr wrote:
| You are mostly correct. My kids and I played Minecraft 1.18
| survival even in beta. The new ore distribution rules,
| especially for iron, greatly increase the grindiness of the
| beginning of the game. We were compelled to immediately dig
| down to Y=16, where iron is most common (except for extremely
| tall mountains that are rare biomes).
|
| https://minecraft.fandom.com/wiki/Ore?file=1-18-ore-distribu...
|
| We did not find the world "riddled with holes," though, and
| gaps in Minecraft have always been easy to traverse by simply
| placing blocks.
|
| 1.18 ore distribution sucks. Going caving virtually requires
| full armor due to mobs, but now to get full armor you need to
| go caving (or get extremely lucky).
| spiderice wrote:
| My friends and I converted an existing world to 1.8 (hard
| difficulty). Even with full iron armor I got wrecked the
| first time I dug down to the cave beneath our base. Was not
| expecting the sheer number of mobs.
| egberts1 wrote:
| Why did that headline come across to me starting out as
| "'MICROSOFT' world generation ...".
|
| Oh wait, they both are "one and the same."
|
| https://news.microsoft.com/announcement/microsoft-purchases-...
| gswdh wrote:
| I love gaming as much as the next person - I spent most of my
| teens playing Half Life and the like.
|
| I have a genuine question as I'm very naive to Minecraft. I see a
| lot of time / thought / energy dedicated to making things in
| Minecraft and can't help but feel it's a bit of a waste of time.
| I think I feel this way because I don't know much about Minecraft
| or the community. Other than for pleasure (which is a plenty good
| enough reason on its own) is there any value generated here?
| People can obviously do what they like with their time but I
| would much rather spend my precious hours working on something to
| add to the real world.
| zimmund wrote:
| It depends a lot on who's playing. For me it's entertainment,
| and yes... it may be a time waste? but sometimes I need it. Why
| should we work every single hour we are awake?
|
| I've found positive outcomes from playing the game as well,
| beyond gaming: for example it helped me realize that you can
| have a lot of things (in game: build materials) but it doesn't
| mean anything if you don't use them (in game: build
| something!). It also helped me reconnect with old friends (we
| play together in our server, hop into a voice channel sometimes
| and we also share unrelated stuff outside the game). I know it
| helped some people get through the pandemic.
|
| It's also a good motivation for kids (and grown-ups!) to learn
| basic server administration, plugin development, community
| moderation, and some people also like to fiddle with textures
| as well.
|
| The game is a creativity source, very much like Lego bricks.
| The things you do in-game may not have much value, but I'd say
| it yields great results in the players :)
| newah1 wrote:
| Are you trying to make a statement in the form of a question?
| It is a video game, take of it what you will.
| qeng-ho wrote:
| Why do people go for pottery classes, watch tv, ride bicycles,
| run, read books, or otherwise do anything other than work? I
| don't mean to be antagonistic but I find your question to be
| flawed in the first place; why do we have to always "generate
| value"?
|
| Also, what is "the real world"? At this point, considering how
| massively popular Minecraft is, Minecraft __is__ an extension
| of the real world at this point. It's very unlikely that we
| will ever lose Minecraft to history. Commit the worldsave to a
| repo and that world is as good as the real world.
| brarsanmol wrote:
| I've been playing Minecraft on-and-off for the better part of the
| decade now (since I was 9 or 10 wow!), I've been amazed at some
| of the recent changes that Mojang has made with improving game
| engine performance and now this new caving update.
|
| I hope they once again push for a revival of modding multiplayer
| servers, although that is most likely a pipe dream because of the
| Bukkit DMCA issues in 2013-2014 :(.
| CyborgCabbage wrote:
| Here's a video by one of the developers talking about some
| technical aspects of the new terrain:
| https://youtu.be/TycBrFKEteU
| teekert wrote:
| It was a pleasant surprise this morning when my son and I
| discovered the vast cave systems below Y=0 in our existing world!
| Very well done, really cool, we're having a blast!
| globular-toast wrote:
| > I have stopped in recent years since I find it dangerously
| addictive
|
| I forgot this, but that's actually why I stopped playing it. I
| was in uni around 2007-08 and realised it was using a serious
| amount of my time and energy. I just quit cold turkey back then.
| I've barely played any video games since this point, in fact.
|
| What I loved about Minecraft initially was the exploration. I got
| into it during the beta (I think) when there was no mini-map or
| any "lifelines" you expect from a normal game. One thing that was
| possible was to go down into cave system, run out of torches,
| fall somewhere and just be trapped in the dark. The game was so
| simple there was a very real fear of losing your save file
| because you got trapped in a cave forever.
|
| Are there any other games that have real stakes in them like the
| early Minecraft versions?
| simonh wrote:
| A fair few games have an Iron Man mode where they only save on
| exit, so you can't revert.
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| Surely you could always punch your way out? And an unlit cave
| was never pitch black as far as I'm aware.
| globular-toast wrote:
| Maybe, but I think there was still a risk you'd end up under
| water? I don't think it ever actually happened to me as I was
| genuinely scared of getting stuck so I was always prepared
| and careful.
| kuschku wrote:
| That's what the hardcore mode in Minecraft is for: if you die,
| the save is deleted.
| Hinrik wrote:
| >I was in uni around 2007-08 and realised it was using a
| serious amount of my time and energy.
|
| The first public version of Minecraft came out in May 2009.
| globular-toast wrote:
| Wow, that's strange, I could have sworn it was earlier. It
| must have been 2010-2011 when I stopped playing it then.
| rland wrote:
| It's been a while since I've played Minecraft, so I can't speak
| to the newer terrain. But I always thought they could
| significantly improve the world gen.
|
| Perlin noise is cool, but why not try to fully simulate plate
| tectonics, weather patterns, drainage? It would go a long way if
| deserts were in the rainshadow of mountain ranges, islands
| corresponded to real volcanic activity, etc.
|
| I guess there is a limit to what you can do with the chunk-by-
| chunk approach, but I think a certain type of minecraft player
| stays basically put within a couple dozen chunks. Having worlds
| "load" on exploration would be a worthwhile tradeoff.
|
| I get that this is a hard, but it is interesting, and it's a
| problem that would captivate an intelligent developer. They have
| like a million dollars, why not?
| vidarh wrote:
| You can do something like this by layering. E.g. generate a
| high level coarse map that sets some features like average
| elevation, and calculates climate from that and derives biome
| from that, as an input into the lower level worldgen
| sk0g wrote:
| Reminds me of the AutoBiomes paper! Waiting for something to
| be integrated into EG a terrain creation tool (no!-MC games),
| should produce pretty interesting results.
|
| https://cgvr.cs.uni-bremen.de/papers/cgi20/AutoBiomes.pdf
| madeofpalk wrote:
| I believe this is exactly how minecraft's new "3D" worldgen
| works. It calculates a high-level terrain map, then a
| temperature map, and then biomes are placed on top of them
| that fit the characteristics.
| eesmith wrote:
| 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 uses a process more like what you
| describe.
| poser-boy wrote:
| > 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.
| eesmith wrote:
| 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.
| arketyp wrote:
| I think a SimClimate could become a hit. Maybe the dynamics
| could be gamified for kids, but I bet there are lots of
| adults who'd also want to just "spend months crossing the
| steppes" following the seasons pretty much.
| pbronez wrote:
| Hmm are there any Climate Change strategy games?
|
| There are games for nuclear war and pandemics that are fun
| and educational about the globe-spanning dynamics of those
| catastrophes. There are also games like Universal
| Paperclips that provide an intuition for the exponential
| dynamics of complex systems.
|
| Seems like there should be a way to fuse these concepts
| around climate change.
| acdanger wrote:
| Civilization VI tacked on climate mechanics with one of
| its addons.
|
| https://civilization.fandom.com/wiki/Climate_(Civ6)
| kuschku wrote:
| Doesn't the ultra-realistic mod terrafirmcraft already do
| exactly that?
| RugnirViking wrote:
| It is stunningly difficult to do something like this within
| procedural generation. Remember a given xyz coordinate has to
| generate given only the coordinate number itself and a seed.
| You couldn't do stuff like plate tectonics within an "infinite"
| world because that would require generating every block which
| is akin to generating every digit of pi
| willis936 wrote:
| You could set up domain boundaries where everything in that
| domain is relatively isolated from other domains. When
| nearing an ungenerated domain, do the procedural +
| evolutionary generation and handle the borders blending.
| Domains could be tectonic plates. This would cause hitches on
| exploration, but they would be relatively infrequent and
| overall few since domains would be so large.
| adam_arthur wrote:
| Hmm, I'm not sure that's true.
|
| If you generate a noise function that dictates where the
| "plates" are, then the location of the "plates" is already
| predetermined from the construction of the function. Then the
| output of that function could be used to alter the
| mountain/terrain functions.
|
| Thus, no need to pregenerate everything. You pregenerate all
| of the functions in advance, but not all of the outputs.
| ThalesX wrote:
| I also find it stunningly difficult, however, when I look at
| Sebastian Lague's channel [0] (no affiliation, just one of
| the best channels I follow), I feel like this could be a not
| so stunningly difficult project for him.
|
| [0] https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCmtyQOKKmrMVaKuRXz02jbQ
| pests wrote:
| What do you mean having then load on exploration? That's the
| current state - a chuck isn't generated until you need to load
| it. This means when you take an old save to a new version any
| already-loaded chucks you're stuck with but any new exploration
| causes new world gen on the new version.
| herghost wrote:
| Oh wow. I did not realise this was the case. Thank you!
| pests wrote:
| 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.
| namrog84 wrote:
| You can by generating Metadata for an area larger than a
| chunk itself.
|
| Also frequently when using things like peeling noise is
| to use different scale and resolution of the noise
| itself. While on smallest scale there might be 1 noise
| value per minecraft block. You can can also use a
| different scale in that 1 noise value is used per 10x10
| minecraft chunk (16x16 blocks?)
|
| Also not sure how familiar you are with noise generation
| like perrin but things have slopes to them and isn't just
| completely random per point. So even without seeing
| generated data. You can infer a little bit about the next
| value depending on the intensity and resolution.
|
| Lastly, you can just not use noise at all and just place
| things at given coordinates and make the game incorporate
| them into the proc gen at chunk time. E.g. you want a
| city always at 1000,1000 coordinate far away from 0 0.
| When you get near you can apply smoothing filters in and
| around the 1000 1000 position thru various math and
| layering systems so no matter the proc gen at that point.
| City can be there and it not look completely out of
| place.
| sudosysgen wrote:
| There is a biome system that solves this issue. You can
| compute biome borders and use them for tectonics or w/e
| else.
| alvarlagerlof wrote:
| You could do much larger chunks on gen.
| rland wrote:
| Yes, I think (maybe) the reason they use perlin noise is
| because it's fast. I'm saying have an actual loading screen
| when you go to a new area and spend some CPU cycles doing
| advanced plate tectonics or whatever.
| danielvaughn wrote:
| Other people are pointing out that real == boring, but I
| disagree. Perhaps we wouldn't want a literal real world, but
| hyper interactive terrain like you suggest could be used to
| explore new and interesting gameplay ideas.
| ykl wrote:
| The new worldgen is incredible, both above and below the surface.
| Hats off to everyone at Mojang that worked on this!
|
| One of my favorite game memories of all time was the first time I
| played Minecraft during the alpha days and immediately got lost
| in the world. For me, going into a 1.18 world and finding a giant
| mountain chain and then finding a cave on the peak of the
| mountain that falls all the way into a giant underground ocean at
| the bottom of the world in a huge cavern complete with
| underground vegetation... it brought me right back to that sense
| of exploration and wonder that I remember from the very first
| time I played Minecraft.
|
| Also, I found this datapack (sort of like a mod but doesn't
| require patching the game since the game natively supports
| loading datapack files) called Terralith [1] that extends the
| 1.18 worldgen with even more cool stuff. Wandering around the new
| 1.18-style mountains is incredible, and then stumbling across
| something the resembles Yellowstone National Park added by
| Terralith is even more incredible. It's worth a try if you like
| just wandering around in Minecraft marveling at the scenery.
|
| [1] https://www.planetminecraft.com/data-pack/terralith-
| overworl...
| matthberg wrote:
| I also recently (today in fact) encountered the Terralith
| datapack, it's rather impressive and I'm tempted to try it out.
| From what I know it doesn't add any new blocks, instead it just
| reuses existing vanilla ones.
|
| There's a trailer they made for a recent update that shows off
| some of the terrain results:
|
| https://youtu.be/zmIvURR_-eg
| teekert wrote:
| I added the Terralith datapack to a new world on my server, but
| am I not getting it? Everybody gets the same world right? Yo
| have to download other seeds? I don't see massive changes, any
| coordinates that are particularly interesting in the default
| world?
|
| Edit, I think I found something nice (a cave) at -281, -15,
| 436, that's not something 1.18 generates by default I guess?
| toastedwedge wrote:
| Thank you for mentioning this. I've been out of the
| "MCraftsphere" for a long time now, so jumping from ~1.6.4 to
| 1.18, alongside the plethora of mods (data packs now?) is
| absolutely mind blowing. I had no idea the depth to which it
| has been taken, but it looks like I now have an afternoon
| project.
| tehbeard wrote:
| The one thing that always stuns me is how in the hell did they
| (both Mojang and terrain pack creators) figure this out from
| math?
|
| Like, it's perlin noise and a bunch of algorithms and it makes
| mountains and caves and overhangs that are all decorated and
| such and a river bleeding into a ravine that leads into a giant
| cave network.
| lmilcin wrote:
| It is not that difficult if you apply yourself.
|
| Just yesterday I watched this fantastic explanation of how to
| generate realistically looking ocean surface:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kGEqaX4Y4bQ
|
| The fantastic part about this video is just how little of
| actual physics you need to know to create convincing, complex
| waves. You can skip entire fluid dynamics and condense it to
| "water molecules move in circles when subjected to a wave".
|
| Forget about Perlin noise, it is useful to getting
| _something_ but it is IMO dead end if you are for realistic
| looking world. There isn 't a way to fix it because,
| fundamentally, it is completely disconnected from how land
| features are created in real life. To get asymptotically to
| realism you have to start taking into account more and more
| of physics and passage of time and Perlin noise just
| completely ignores this.
|
| To get realistic representation you need to build a little
| model that knows a little bit about how the features are
| created.
|
| You can even go Dwarf Fortress direction and model processes
| that create various features of the world over time.
| morsch wrote:
| Don't underestimate the role of the human observer focusing
| and exploring the most interesting parts.
| radicalbyte wrote:
| Didn't we all do that as kids with the Mandelbrot set
| viewers? Just explore it to find some cool visualizations..
| then zoom in and repeat %)
| Causality1 wrote:
| I wonder how many if those alpha worlds are preserved. I
| started when the alpha was free and the beta was pay, and the
| scope of those alpha worlds was just incredible. There wasn't
| much in the way of nature in the alpha so all those worlds were
| more art project than construction.
| ykl wrote:
| With the current launcher, you can actually pick which
| version/update to play, including old versions. For Java
| Edition, it lists versions all the way back to alpha as
| options.
| rightbyte wrote:
| This is so user-unhostile I wanna cry. Most companies just
| want the power to force antifeutures on the users nowadays.
| RugnirViking wrote:
| The Microsoft acquisition of Minecraft is inexplicably
| one of the few big tech acquisitions that hasn't
| completely destroyed the product. It's impressive
| fnord123 wrote:
| Eh, aside from making java and bedrock incompatible,
| requiring Xbox live accounts to play, deleting customer
| accounts in the transition to Xbox live, making realms
| which are different somehow from java and bedrock (many
| parents had a devil if a time figuring out how to setup a
| server for kids playing on all the platforms during
| lockdown)... Aside from this they didn't ruin it.
| wolrah wrote:
| > Eh, aside from making java and bedrock incompatible
|
| The "Minecraft Pocket Edition" (MCPE) code that became
| Bedrock predates Microsoft's involvement by over three
| years. Bedrock is actually Microsoft's effort to unify
| versions, eliminating the separate legacy console
| editions and providing cross-play with PC, mobile, and
| other console users.
|
| Java remains separate because the consoles will never run
| Java and the modding community that exists around the
| Java version just can't be replicated on the Bedrock
| codebase. If it weren't for mods I guarantee Java edition
| would be dead.
| CrazyStat wrote:
| Java and Bedrock were already incompatible before
| Microsoft for involved, that wasn't their doing.
|
| Realms are obviously different because the two versions
| are incompatible.
| goblin89 wrote:
| 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.
| eropple wrote:
| 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.
| goblin89 wrote:
| 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.
| xboxnolifes wrote:
| > 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
|
| It would be hassle free for vanilla players, but
| certainly not for modders. There are years of community
| support built around the Java version that would need to
| be moved to bedrock to make moving the modding scene
| hassle free.
| bombcar wrote:
| Correct - many modpacks are still on 1.7 or 1.12 anyway.
| CursedUrn wrote:
| Also they added microtransactions on many platforms. I
| did expect them to ruin it more by now though.
| aceazzameen wrote:
| Yeah, I'm a parent that was new to Minecraft during
| lockdown. It didn't take me long to figure out Bedrock
| and Java are incompatible, but I did have to explain it
| to other parents with kids that wanted to play with my
| kids (my kids play on Bedrock to be most compatible).
|
| My biggest issue is the amount of friction when creating
| a new Microsoft account for a child. I have to walk
| through other parents in creating a MS account for
| themselves (if they don't have one), then how to make a
| child account with a username, then finding and ticking a
| bunch of checkboxes to allow online play, then launching
| Minecraft and signing in with the new child account. It's
| way too many steps with email verifications. It's >30
| minutes. In just my circle there's several parents who
| gave up and sadly their kid can't play with their group
| of friends. People outside of tech don't have patience
| for that crap. This is all outside the fact that each
| console has their own form of friction in allowing kids
| to play online.
|
| C'mon Microsoft, you can improve the new user process.
| Just make an optional in-game wizard asking parents a
| bunch of questions so kids can play ASAP. And if the
| issue is that it wouldn't fit in with the one-size-fits-
| all MS accounts used for everything else, then flag the
| "wizard-built" accounts as incomplete so parents can go
| through making a 360 account another day. Damn metrics.
| mimimi31 wrote:
| Also mass locking Microsoft accounts that were created
| without providing a phone number[1].
|
| For some reason they locked my completely unused
| Microsoft account, that was created for the sole purpose
| of migrating my Minecraft account to, due to "unusual
| behavior" (or "activity that violates our Microsoft
| Services Agreement" if you go by the error message
| instead of the corresponding knowledge base article).
|
| The reasonable thing to do in such a case if of course to
| require users to "[verify] [they] are the account owner"
| by receiving an SMS verification code on an arbitrary
| phone number (they explicitly mention the possibility of
| "asking a trusted friend or family member" for this).
|
| [1] https://github.com/MultiMC/Launcher/issues/4093
| DonHopkins wrote:
| One way Microsoft improved the product was to remove all
| mentions of Markus "It's OK To Be White" Persson's name
| from the game.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Markus_Persson#Controversy
|
| >Controversy
|
| >Persson has received criticism for political and social
| opinions he has expressed on Twitter, such as referring
| to feminism as a "social disease" and claiming that most
| feminists are "overtly sexist against men."[50][51] In
| June 2017, Persson faced criticism for referring to video
| game developer Zoe Quinn as a "cunt".[50] Later in June
| 2017, he tweeted in support of a heterosexual pride day,
| calling opponents to the idea "cunts" and stating that
| they "deserve to be shot".[51] After facing backlash, he
| deleted the tweets and rescinded his statements, writing
| "So yeah, it's about pride of daring to express, not
| about pride of being who you are. I get it now."[52] In
| November 2017, Persson was criticized for posting a tweet
| which reads "It's ok to be white."[53] In follow-up
| tweets, he said he believed privilege is a "made up
| metric".[54]
|
| >A March 2019 Minecraft update removed all mentions of
| Persson from the game's menu, though his name is still in
| the credits.[55] Microsoft did not explain this action,
| but its timing led multiple news outlets to conclude it
| was related to the controversies associated with
| him.[55][56] Persson was not invited to the game's tenth
| anniversary event later that year, with Microsoft saying
| that his views "do not reflect those of Microsoft or
| Mojang".[8][57] Microsoft then dissociated from Persson
| due to his controversial comments on his Twitter
| account.[8]
|
| "It's okay to be white":
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/It%27s_okay_to_be_white
|
| Minecraft Creator Tells Women on Twitter 'Act Like a
| Cunt, Get Called a Cunt':
|
| https://observer.com/2017/06/minecraft-gamergate-markus-
| pers...
|
| Minecraft's Creator Excluded From the Game's 10th
| Anniversary Due to Racist, Sexist, Transphobic Comments
|
| https://www.themarysue.com/notch-minecraft-bad-comments-
| and-...
|
| Minecraft Creator Sparks Cries of Homophobia
|
| https://fortune.com/2017/07/02/minecraft-markus-persson-
| homo...
|
| 'Minecraft' Creator Excluded From Anniversary Due to
| 'Comments and Opinions' (EXCLUSIVE)
|
| https://variety.com/2019/gaming/news/minecraft-creator-
| exclu...
|
| The Creator of Minecraft Tweeted Some Dumb Stuff About
| Race
|
| https://www.gq.com/story/notch-whiteness-tweets
|
| Microsoft removes references to game creator Notch in
| latest Minecraft update
|
| https://www.techspot.com/news/79403-microsoft-removes-
| refere...
|
| Some References to 'Minecraft' Creator Notch Removed From
| Game
|
| https://variety.com/2019/gaming/news/notch-removed-
| minecraft...
|
| Minecraft creator Notch won't be included in the game's
| 10 year anniversary event
|
| https://www.vg247.com/minecraft-creator-notch-absent-
| from-an...
| bavxo wrote:
| Is the argument that liberals write better code or...?
| I'm completely lost in this sea of links.
| DonHopkins wrote:
| Who said "liberal" or "better code"? It's about White
| Supremacy and Racism and Sexism and Homophobia and
| Transphobia.
|
| Those articles simply quoted his own words, and Wikipedia
| doesn't declare whether he's liberal or conservative, or
| a good or bad coder.
|
| You're the one who's revealing their assumption that
| White Supremacists and Racists and Sexists and Homophobes
| and Transphobes are usually right wing, not liberal.
|
| Unfortunately you're correct and totally justified in
| that assumption, of course, but that's beside the point,
| and not what the article said.
|
| Nobody said anything about liberals or conservatives, or
| writing worse or better code, either.
|
| And if he was "just joking", then Popehat's Rule of Goats
| applies:
|
| https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Popehat%2
| 7s%...
|
| >Popehat's Law of Goats
|
| >He who fucks goats, either as part of a performance or
| to troll those he deems has overly delicate sensibilities
| is simply, a goatfucker.
|
| >He claimed he was just pretending to be racist to
| trigger the social justice warriors, but even if he is
| telling the truth, Popehat's Law of Goats still applies.
| bavxo wrote:
| Since you said "Microsoft improved the product" and this
| is a software product, I don't see any other possibility
| than talking about writing better code.
| DonHopkins wrote:
| A product is a whole lot more than code. Sounds like
| you've never shipped one.
|
| So back to the point: What did you think of the words
| that Markus said?
|
| Do you agree with Markus Persson that Zoe Quinn is a
| "cunt", and think that Markus was right to tell her so
| publicly and personally on Twitter?
|
| Do you think it's a good business decision for Microsoft
| to associate themselves with those words?
| bavxo wrote:
| >Do you agree with Markus Persson that Zoe Quinn is a
| "cunt", and think that Markus was right to tell her so
| publicly and personally on Twitter?
|
| I don't know either person but I think they both should
| have a right to say whatever they want.
|
| >Do you think it's a good business decision for Microsoft
| to associate themselves with those words?
|
| I think people will care for two days and then forget
| about it. It's irrelevant. Some people will boycott the
| product if they stay associated but then some will like
| what happened and will buy if they let the guy stay as a
| way of supporting him. Overall it will make zero
| difference.
| [deleted]
| rightbyte wrote:
| Ye well MS can't wish the old offline installers out of
| existence I guess.
| Wowfunhappy wrote:
| ...is there an offline installer for Java Minecraft? I
| think it always downloads most of the real game at first
| run.
| null4bl3 wrote:
| They soon plan to only allow logging in with Microsoft
| accounts no?
| trotFunky wrote:
| Minecraft is one of the biggest games of my teenage years,
| starting in Alpha, and I always was a bit paranoid, making
| backups and copies of things. As the sibling comment points
| out, you can go back in versions from the game launcher
| itself and I recently did a nostalgia trip loading up those
| worlds again, seeing how the game has evolved, how my playing
| style evolved... By loading them into a few intermediate
| versions, you can even get them to load in the latest one ! I
| really appreciate to be able to do that. (Even if I still
| have a couple of copies of the older versions I could play
| with !)
| littlestymaar wrote:
| If you like voxel world generation, I strongly advise you to
| check out Veloren[1], it has a much much deeper worldgen that
| what Minecraft offers.
|
| [1]: https://veloren.net/ the game is still under development but
| it has been playable for more than a year now.
| moffkalast wrote:
| Or more like open terrain generator for spigot, it's so much
| better than stock minecraft it's laughable.
|
| https://i.imgur.com/YtDraMh.jpg
| skitter wrote:
| I wouldn't say that it has deeper worldgen, but because it
| replaces voxel terrain with a lower lod after a certain
| distance, the world has a feeling of massive scale. You can see
| a far away mountain range on the horizon and actually journey
| there, then glide down it to an even further sea. Afaik the new
| site2 system also shows lod levels for generated structures.
| phit_ wrote:
| there's some mods that add lod to minecraft with some
| stunning results
|
| https://www.curseforge.com/minecraft/mc-mods/lod-level-of-
| de...
|
| https://github.com/PorkStudios/FarPlaneTwo
| littlestymaar wrote:
| The world feels massive because it is actually: a medium-
| sized hill in Veloren is taller than the entire horizontal
| dimension in Minecraft.
|
| I'm personally not fond of the (pretty crude) lod view,
| especially because of the moire in it.
| littlestymaar wrote:
| Edit: vertical obviously.
| shynrou wrote:
| Looks like a really cool open source project, will definitely
| check it out.
| dEnigma wrote:
| This seems like a recreation of Cubeworld, which unfortunately
| seems pretty much dead now (but the developer disappeared for
| years at a time in the past too, so who knows). Too bad they
| changed a lot of the systems that made the game great for the
| Steam release.
|
| https://picroma.com/
| sorenjan wrote:
| > Veloren is a multiplayer voxel RPG written in Rust.
|
| This is such a meme by now, I have to assume it's an inside
| joke. Even games mention that they're "written in Rust" in the
| first sentence in their official presentation, what other
| programming language communities does this? Why would anyone
| except other Rust programmers care?
| Shish2k wrote:
| In a winamp discussion thread a couple of days ago somebody
| linked to https://www.strawberrymusicplayer.org/ , and I had
| the same reaction to their "It's written in C++ using the Qt
| toolkit and GStreamer. Strawberry is compatible with both Qt
| version 5 and 6."
|
| It's definitely weird for end-user software to promote itself
| based on internal implementation details, but it's by no
| means a rust-exclusive phenomenon.
| SahAssar wrote:
| That line is the last line of their "About" section, and
| for open source software it is relevant since OSS projects
| often want people to contribute.
| littlestymaar wrote:
| Veloren is a community-developped game that's still far
| from done, at this point they are looking for
| contributors much more than players at this point, so
| that makes sense.
| Shared404 wrote:
| Much like Veloren?
| kgwxd wrote:
| Every sentence on the page is focused on developers, the
| community developing it, and technical details of the game.
| It seems relevant.
| mtsr wrote:
| In the case of Veloren it's rather relevant since it's a
| community project and this way they actively recruit new
| contributors among people (interested in) using rust for
| gamedev.
| officeplant wrote:
| I'm not a programmer, but anytime I see something other than
| Java mention it usually bodes well for performance.
| xahrepap wrote:
| "Minecraft Java Edition" springs to mind :P
|
| Otherwise I mostly only see this when it's "for developers by
| developers"
| axefrog wrote:
| The Veloren developers seem to have forgotten to provide a page
| of information _anywhere_ giving a non-negligible overview of
| what the game is about. The main website has little more than a
| paragraph listing some other games as inspiration, followed by
| some Minecraft-like screenshots. It also has a manual which is
| clearly focused on developers and contributors, as it provides
| next to no information for a new person who just wants to know
| a bit more about the game without having to actually download
| it. How is it similar to Dwarf Fortress? How is it similar to
| Minecraft? How is it different? What do you do in it? Why is it
| so much work just to find an overview of the game and what it
| has to offer?
| ShamelessC wrote:
| Submit a pull request.
| jnovek wrote:
| With what? A manual?
|
| Parent is checking out a game because it was mentioned on
| HN and finds that the game's web page doesn't have a manual
| and your response is essentially: "Play the game sight-
| unseen, learn everything about it, write a manual and
| contribute it back to the project"? That's not very
| realistic.
|
| I could see creating an issue in the tracker, perhaps.
| ShamelessC wrote:
| Apologies; I said "submit a pull request" when indeed I
| just meant "make a contribution". Creating an issue is a
| reasonable action. Criticizing a volunteer-supported
| project on hacker news will possibly net you some upvotes
| but writing this entire complaint in an issue tracker is
| far more productive in my opinion.
| littlestymaar wrote:
| It's still under heavy development, AFAIK there is a long
| time vision but they are still far from there so it wouldn't
| make sense to discuss about it in the front page.
|
| And at this point they are clearly looking for contributors
| much more than for players, that's why all the documentation
| you'll find is targeting the former.
|
| Documentation and marketing material require a lit of work,
| and doing so continuously against a fast-moving target is a
| enormous effort.
| poser-boy wrote:
| Veloren is great. I'm pretty sure it's worldgen uses Simplex
| noise, rather than the Perlin noise like MC does.
| tormeh wrote:
| It uses simulation, like Dwarf Fortress. Of course randomness
| is involved, but there's a real attempt at realism in the
| geology, etc.
| astrobe_ wrote:
| See also Minetest, which has several native map/terrain
| generators [1]. In addition, one can define other generators as
| mods using Lua [2]. Mods can define new biomes [4], place
| buildings [5], roads [3], etc.
|
| If you add all that, though, you might there might be some
| glitches (roads passing through buildings..) but that's part of
| the fun.
|
| [1] https://wiki.minetest.net/Map_generator
|
| [2] https://forum.minetest.net/viewtopic.php?f=9&t=27374
|
| [3] https://forum.minetest.net/viewtopic.php?f=11&t=18529
|
| [4] https://forum.minetest.net/viewtopic.php?f=11&t=17096
|
| [5] https://forum.minetest.net/viewtopic.php?f=9&t=13589
| aliimran wrote:
| kenjken
| Kye wrote:
| I made a video exploring underwater caves in the new worldgen:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OusWYZ3yWW0
|
| They seem to go on forever.
| ralusek wrote:
| Other things to note. One big one is that the world height limit
| has increased from 256 blocks to 320, which allows for much more
| verticality.
|
| I think the whole field of world generation is awesome. Perlin
| noise, and the concepts of "smooth noise" that have come from it,
| and the clever ways people have found to layer noise and use it
| to map biomes and heights, and spawn locations, etc. And then,
| even more impressively, with games like No Man's Sky, you have
| this concept applied to spherical geometry. I just think it's all
| so cool.
|
| Incidentally, his (Sean Murray, creator of No Man's Sky) is the
| best talk I've ever seen on the topic:
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C9RyEiEzMiU
| dan-robertson wrote:
| My understanding of the height limit (originally 128 and later
| 256) was that the lighting algorithm was O(height limit), and so
| it was hard to increase it arbitrarily. And then most of the
| shape of the terrain is dictated by the height limit--you
| couldn't really have big mountains full of false summits, and
| indeed the terrain generation didn't really have many low-
| frequency features that spanned large areas (but maybe they are
| boring because they are slow to traverse). For comparison, the
| highest peak in the European part of the Netherlands is around
| 320m whereas the Minecraft limit wouldn't let you above 192m
| above sea level. Denmark has a highest peak of 170m so it would
| fit but the game wouldn't generate such a thing as you'd only
| have 22m above the top to build. I wonder if one way around
| raising the height limit would be to offset the base height of
| chunks relative to each other, but that might lead to strange
| behaviour in other parts of the game. Maybe Microsoft have
| figured out a better fix to allow increasing the limit.
| kibwen wrote:
| The extremely low height limit is also influenced by gameplay:
| many voxel games let you run up slopes that vary by only a
| single vertical step, but Minecraft forces you to jump to
| climb, which is much slower. Nobody wants to jump 16,000 times
| just to get over a mountain range. On the other hand, while I
| actually really like the traversal and movement in Minecraft
| and I wouldn't want to change it, the current height and
| generation limits really are just too low to create anything
| truly majestic. The new update has increased the limits by 128
| (64 blocks each above and below the prior limit, for new
| extreme Y coords of 320 and -64), which is a welcome change,
| but IMO they could have gone a bit higher.
| infogulch wrote:
| Actually +64 above/+64 below is only the new default. Custom
| worlds will be able to increase the world height limits to
| +2032/-2032. That leaves a lot of room for activities. I
| think custom terrain gen data packs like the one mentioned
| above still have to be adjusted to actually use the full
| height.
|
| I'm excited for mappers that can now build 1-1 scale
| recreations of real and fantasy locations like everest
| (~4000m from the base), minas tirith (300m), barad-dur
| (1400m), courisant senate building (600m), etc.
| [deleted]
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