BTW V4.72T: Hardcore Stratification test release

[icynewyear]

I'm getting a non significant increase in memory usage upon chunk generation. The Used Memory % is higher than normal but I don't "feel" any effects of it in game. On chunk loading I have no performance changes from other versions at all. Also....feels good man. Feels good.

[Pfilson]

My thoughts, there's a couple of ways to the first diamonds.. Easiest path would probably be finding a structure and hope it has diamonds.. Otherwise it's splunky till you find a cave that goes deep enough.

I found one in my initial explorations, but in the hour and a half I've been playing legit i'm still looking for a good cave in my starting biome.. I have a small pack of wolves though. I'd say a good ravine is going to be very helpful.

[FlowerChild]

Don't expect to be able to get through the initial part of the game in a couple of hours guys. It takes time and exploration.

Also, this isn't a balance discussion thread. I'm looking for feedback on the specific things I ask about in the OP.

[Elensaar]

I did some quick testing along the seams, and couldn't find any changes or seams above ground. It also doesn't look too jarring in caves. And must agree with others here that the new look of deep caves is amazing.

[Pfilson]

After playing from scratch for a few hours, I really only notice chunk lag when I spawn in a new area. When running around and even boating chunk creation and loading didn't have any noticeable effect on game play. At the end my memory usage seemed like it might be resting a little high, but that's not something that I have numbers to compare to.

As far as affect on exisiting worlds.. I personally wouldn't be bothered by it as it would really only be noticeable from the surface in a ravine that was half generated.. although I could see that bothering some people.

PS. the seed Hardcore Stratification is lousy for surface caves..

[FlowerChild]

Got a new test release for you guys (T3). Just updated the link in the OP to it.

-Fixed silverfish blocks not appearing in the color of their strata. Note, this will only affect newly generated blocks, so any you have already in your world will remain the default color.

-Added Looted Temples. These function similarly to Abandoned Villages in that temples within a distance of the player's initial spawn point will be looted in order to preserve the early game balance in cases where the player spawns near a temple, and to further add to the mod's back story.

-Changed the contents of dungeons chests for balance and added depth beneath the surface as a factor in how their loot is generated.

-Changed the chest minecarts in abandoned mineshafts in a similar manner to dungeon chests for balance.

-Fixed problem with axes no longer being effecient vs spider webs. Other blocks may have been potentially affected by this problem as well.

I doubt the new elements I put in their will mess up world gen, but wanted to include them in another test release just to be on the safe side.

[DaveYanakov]

The terrain appears to be the same (RIP iron ingot that made assaulting the zombie dungeon worth an early effort) but there has been a very odd change with this test update.

I have generated this seed twelve times in the past and every time there were more than a dozen cows demanding that they be harvested before first nights fall. With each of these updates, they have all been replaced with chickens.

[FlowerChild]

Hmmm...I took a look over the animal spawn code, and I don't see how this could affect it. I'm honestly not certain if animal spawns are supposed to be consistent with a seed either. I've never really heard anything about that.

[DaveYanakov]

Even if it was it's not something you should worry about fixing. I just found it odd that I got cows 12 times in a row followed by nothing but birds.

[FlowerChild]

Even if it was it's not something you should worry about fixing. I just found it odd that I got cows 12 times in a row followed by nothing but birds.

Maybe it's time for you to play some slots :)

[Zhil]

I can confirm that animal spawns are supposed to be consistent with seed. With the odd person experiencing a misplaced waterfall or single tree in previous versions, I assume this means that BTW slightly alters world gen, but only after generation of blocks has already occurred.

I wish I could be of more assistance than that, but all I know for sure is that animals are supposed to be consistent with seed, down to exact location and number.

Not that animal location is important and it wouldn't affect actual terrain generation.

[Kezza]

I tested it and I have to say that´s a very cool idea in giving some extra challenge into the game. Thank you
I had no problems at loading or any errors in generation.
I tested CTM and it functions like it should, made a extra Testversion for it (with Derivation), if someone wants to test the performance, here it is:
http://www.mediafire.com/?a63yaiedsymysgz

[FlowerChild]

I thought over the animal thing last night, and I think it's cool.

Because yes, I am modifying the terrain before mobs spawn on it. Thus, if the spawn conditions of a particular mob fails as a result of these changes, it will tend to have a cascade effect on the mobs still left to be spawned, and they too will turn out differently.

So yeah, it's all good. As long as I'm not causing seams in people's worlds with this stuff, I'm happy.

[piter_50]

I played a bit last night on a newly created world. World gen took a little longer than usual but otherwise, my performance difference was not that noticeable. I love the strata. I was mining surface Iron and came to a point in a cave where the stratum changed. Prior to this change, I think I would have kept exploring looking for more resources, but the darker color stone intimidated me into thinking going any deeper would be going in over my head and I returned to the surface.

I also found a spider spawner barely below the surface and not very far from my start point. The chests had some redstone, saddles, string, bread, and one wheat. Honestly at that point in the game for me the bread and chests themselves were the most valuable items to be taken away.

[FlowerChild]

I played a bit last night on a newly created world. World gen took a little longer than usual but otherwise, my performance difference was not that noticeable. I love the strata. I was mining surface Iron and came to a point in a cave where the stratum changed. Prior to this change, I think I would have kept exploring looking for more resources, but the darker color stone intimidated me into thinking going any deeper would be going in over my head and I returned to the surface.

Hehe...I've had a similar experience where the depths seem so oppressive that I wind up thinking twice before going any further :)

I also found a spider spawner barely below the surface and not very far from my start point. The chests had some redstone, saddles, string, bread, and one wheat. Honestly at that point in the game for me the bread and chests themselves were the most valuable items to be taken away.

The changes I made to them are not intended to make them useless. I still want people to get a thrill out of discovering dungeons and temples. I still want you to feel like you've gained something by exploring them. What I don't want them to do is have their early game experience basically ruined in the process.

I had this happen to me on my last play through. I was having an absolutely amazing time and was building a stair-case down in an underground ravine I had stumbled across in my mining of the first strata, that looked like it went all the way down to the third. As I was building my staircase, very nervously, and having to put a lot more thought into it than usual since I couldn't dig out the rock walls I was navigating, I heard some spiders behind the wall of the ravine, and it happened to be behind a dirt patch I could dig out. So, I dug it out, found a spider spawner dungeon, and after looting the two chests had something like 20+ iron ingots.

After the initial "fuck yeah!" I proceeded to lose interest in playing that world, as the early game had been blown right out of the water for me. This event was what made me realize that, ok, I really needed to do something about temples and other forms of vanilla loot that you could stumble across, because they had the potential of completely spoiling people's fun.

[FlowerChild]

I wonder how feasible it would be to make a script or use MCEdit to stratify the stone in existing worlds...

Just wanted to make a quick statement on this point:

I've been thinking this one over for the past couple of days in terms of cost/benefit, and have decided I'll be implementing such a tool into the mod itself in the near future, providing players with the option of converting and "stratifying" their existing worlds. It won't be coming in the initial release for this, but I'll definitely take care of it over the next couple of weeks as I have some other related features I want to get into the mod at the same time.

So yeah, the above is definitely a valid point, I just wanted to think it through before making a decision as it'll be non-trivial to implement. For now, I'd say just keep playing with your existing worlds as is, knowing that a convertor is on the way.

Also worth noting: the version I posted last night (T3) represents the "finalized" world gen, so you guys need not worry about scrapping worlds you may be playing with these test releases. It's the same world gen you'll be getting in the official release when it comes, and other than the few minor visual bugs I corrected with some blocks, is also basically the same as the first test release I put out. So yeah, if you've been playing any worlds extensively with these releases, you should be able to keep them as is with no further issues.

[FlowerChild]

Wiped everything but my saves and re-installed (instead of just deleting the jar).. old world still had the issue, but created a new world and have not been able to replicate it. Must have missed something the first time, sorry.

I owe you an apology here dude. I was just about to release, and was running my final round of tests on a release version of MC, and ran into precisely this issue.

The world I generated for the test has this problem in a very specific area that I just happened to run into by pure fluke. Looks like it only happens very rarely and in very specific circumstances that I've yet to figure out, but at least I can replicate it now.

So sorry about that man. Turns out you discovered a legitimate issue, but one so rare I didn't think it credible.

[FlowerChild]

Whoa, ok, this one is tricky, and resolves a long standing question of mine about how MC works in terms of decorative elements that cross chunk boundaries such as ore veins and trees.

Turns out that when a chunk is generated it only "decorates" it (adding ores and stuff) if the neighboring chunks have also been generated. The decorator can then cross chunk boundaries , generating ore veins or trees or whatever across them.

However, my stratification code only considers the chunk that is being generated, and thus ignores anything that's being generated on the other side of the boundaries, leaving the occasional ore unconverted.

Will fix. Might take me a little while.

[FlowerChild]

Flawless victory! :)

Not only is it fixed, but in fixing it I also rearranged the code in a way that seems to have decreased the performance decrease. So yeah, very very very happy I spotted an instance of this right before I hit the big red release button.

[TheGatesofLogic]

Regarding the "Stratification for Old Worlds tool":
It's very much feasible and in fact I already slapped together a rough version to test it. (and by rough i mean "very rough") However I've officially dubbed that world unfit to use as reference if I ever come to find a bug in the mod (because that would be a new brand of theoretical wankery ;) )

[FlowerChild]

Regarding the "Stratification for Old Worlds tool":
It's very much feasible and in fact I already slapped together a rough version to test it. (and by rough i mean "very rough") However I've officially dubbed that world unfit to use as reference if I ever come to find a bug in the mod (because that would be a new brand of theoretical wankery ;) )

That's the thing man. No matter how good such a third party tool is, I suspect people would hesitate to use it unless I make it "official". In the end, I suspect it just better to rig it up myself and include it in the mod.

And yeah, I know it's totally doable, just like I mentioned before, I despise working on file management code with an eternally burning hatred born of eye gouging boredom with such things ;)

[Zhil]

I thought over the animal thing last night, and I think it's cool.

Because yes, I am modifying the terrain before mobs spawn on it. Thus, if the spawn conditions of a particular mob fails as a result of these changes, it will tend to have a cascade effect on the mobs still left to be spawned, and they too will turn out differently.

So yeah, it's all good. As long as I'm not causing seams in people's worlds with this stuff, I'm happy.

Slight theoretical wankery, so I'll keep this succinct.

From previous terrain gen tests and this one and your above post, it seems like you have slight alterations of the world gen after terrain generation, before the other generation. The result is a slight change of waterfall generation, tree generation (though that report was rather spotty and might not be true) and the already mentioned changes in mob spawns.

None of those seem to affect old worlds in a significant way, so it's all good.