[Mod] Snow Biomes [3.2] [snow]

[irksomeduck]

I would love to see some snow physically falling, and bigger biomes. That would make this perfect.

[GJH105775]

Great mod! +1

[Michael Eh?]

One gripe, there is nothing to do with pine needles. ie. you can't use them in place of leaves in furnace. They won't burn. Maybe something for the next release.

Still looking for moss. I took some of the pine seedlings to plant around my buildings. Nice if the tree stump was 2 blocks high than 1. I place dirt then the seedling. Once it grew up, I replaced it with a log so I could walk under it.

[leo_rockway]

Still looking for moss.

Moss is definitely there and it spreads.

[SegFault22]

Hmm. Could you make some of the ice-bergs have more ice blocks above/below them? That would look cool. And the larger icebergs should have more ice below them than above them. Just an idea.

[Inocudom]

This mod works and generates as well as the default biomes of Minetest-c55. Hybrid Dog created a mod that makes swamp biomes, which I hope will be as stable as this mod one day.

Is there a way you could make an icy stone to be beneath your snow biomes just like desert stone is beneath desert biomes and swamp stone is beneath Hybrid Dog's swamps?

[Splizard]

Version 1.3 out! Now you can make igloos, but be sure not to put a torch in them :D

[Temperest]

Awesome! Is snow renewable? Does it regenerate occasionally?

If not, I think it might be possible to add with an ABM (like the one that turns dirt into grass) that would test against the perlin noise for if the dirt was inside a snow biome and regenerate it if it was.

[Splizard]

Awesome! Is snow renewable? Does it regenerate occasionally?

If not, I think it might be possible to add with an ABM (like the one that turns dirt into grass) that would test against the perlin noise for if the dirt was inside a snow biome and regenerate it if it was.

No, snow is not renewable yet. Thanks for the idea, I will try to include that in the next version.

[Splizard]

Updated to version 1.4
There are two new biomes, Snowy and Plain.
Christmas trees can be found when digging pine needles:

Now there is also snowfall which falls in snow biomes, this can be disabled in config if it is too laggy for your server.

[Temperest]

Snowfall is the best! Thanks for the update.

[J-Block]

Works well for me, thanks!

[Inocudom]

Something new known as L-Systems has been created and it has a part dedicated to tree generation. This might be useful to you one day.

[LazyJ]

First, great mod!


Second, some issues with the snow falling where ever I go in the map, even in the deserts.The snow falls very sporadically. One or two falling snow nodes will drop down, and then nothing for a minute, then another falling snow node. This leaves very scattered, single, dirt/sand_with_snow nodes. I was expecting snow fall to be more concentrated and consistant to create a snow blanketed area.

I tested your snow biomes mod in a vanilla world, your's was the only mod installed, and there was *no* snow fall in the deserts. When I tried the snow biomes mod in a world with several other mods installed, there *was* snow fall in the deserts. So maybe it's a glitch caused by one of the other mods?

The mods I have installed are:
ambience, bookmarks, craft_guide, landup, multinode,walking_light, watergone, WorldEdit, Calinou.Mods-master (moreblocks, moreores, stairsplus, maptools), moretrees, plantlife, noncubic, xdoors2, xfences, xpanes

For now I've disabled the falling snow in the config file as suggested in an earlier post. However; I'm still getting this error message repeatedly in the chat:

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

Code: Select all

ERROR[ServerThread]: LuaEntity name "snow:fall_entity" not defined

Third, some suggestions for future versions of the snow biomes mod.
"/nosnow" A chat command to designate an already generated area as a no-snow zone for places in a map that have been built in and the player doesn't want the snow to fall there.

"/snow" A chat command to designate an already generated area to become a snow biome.

"/blizzard' A chat command to designate an area to have constant snow fall.

An option to work with the landup mod (or future versions of minetest that have hight altitude mountains) to make mountain tops automatic snow biomes.

Grey skys. Have you ever gone to a 30,000 edge of a minetest world? The "edge-of-the-world" is a medium grey. Maybe that could be used to replace the sky during a blizzard. No clouds, no stars, just grey skys. Also the time of day is changed to mid-dawn or early dusk when the ambient lighting is dimmed.

Slippery ice. Walking or running on ice messes up the controls. Turn too fast and you'll spin a couple times. Press the key to walk forward and you actually walk slightly diagonal. Stop walking on ice is a brief slide. Stop running on ice results in a long slide before actually coming to a full stop.


Thanks and keep up the good work!

[Splizard]

First, great mod!

Thanks! sorry for the late reply I have been on holiday for a week.

Second, some issues with the snow falling where ever I go in the map, even in the deserts.The snow falls very sporadically. One or two falling snow nodes will drop down, and then nothing for a minute, then another falling snow node. This leaves very scattered, single, dirt/sand_with_snow nodes. I was expecting snow fall to be more concentrated and consistant to create a snow blanketed area.

Snowfall at the moment is done sporadically to reduce load on servers.
I am waiting for this feature to be added into minetest, for a better snowing experience: (Lua-sided particles)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tep_ZQyDJIo
https://github.com/celeron55/minetest/pull/453
If that is added to minetest I will implement snowfall in a more realistic way.

I tested your snow biomes mod in a vanilla world, your's was the only mod installed, and there was *no* snow fall in the deserts. When I tried the snow biomes mod in a world with several other mods installed, there *was* snow fall in the deserts. So maybe it's a glitch caused by one of the other mods?

The mods I have installed are:
ambience, bookmarks, craft_guide, landup, multinode,walking_light, watergone, WorldEdit, Calinou.Mods-master (moreblocks, moreores, stairsplus, maptools), moretrees, plantlife, noncubic, xdoors2, xfences, xpanes

For now I've disabled the falling snow in the config file as suggested in an earlier post. However; I'm still getting this error message repeatedly in the chat:

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

Code: Select all

ERROR[ServerThread]: LuaEntity name "snow:fall_entity" not defined

Snowfall only falls in snow biomes which sometimes overlap with deserts I will try and fix this sort of thing in a later version of snow mod.
The error you get is nothing to worry about it should go away after a little while.

Third, some suggestions for future versions of the snow biomes mod.
"/nosnow" A chat command to designate an already generated area as a no-snow zone for places in a map that have been built in and the player doesn't want the snow to fall there.

"/snow" A chat command to designate an already generated area to become a snow biome.

"/blizzard' A chat command to designate an area to have constant snow fall.

An option to work with the landup mod (or future versions of minetest that have hight altitude mountains) to make mountain tops automatic snow biomes.

Thanks for the ideas, I am waiting on the Lua-sided particles (see above) which will make these things much more practical.

Grey skys. Have you ever gone to a 30,000 edge of a minetest world? The "edge-of-the-world" is a medium grey. Maybe that could be used to replace the sky during a blizzard. No clouds, no stars, just grey skys. Also the time of day is changed to mid-dawn or early dusk when the ambient lighting is dimmed.

Slippery ice. Walking or running on ice messes up the controls. Turn too fast and you'll spin a couple times. Press the key to walk forward and you actually walk slightly diagonal. Stop walking on ice is a brief slide. Stop running on ice results in a long slide before actually coming to a full stop.


Thanks and keep up the good work!

There is no way to change lighting or have slippery blocks in minetest mods yet but I
will be happy to add these features as soon as it becomes possible.
Thanks for your feedback!

[VanessaE]

SPLizard: regarding snow falling in deserts, someone pointed me to the perlin values used to generate deserts in-game, which I've integrated into Plantlife/plants_lib as a humidity map. Relevant excerpt from that mod:

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

Code: Select all

local humidity_seeddiff = 9130
local humidity_octaves = 3
local humidity_persistence = 0.5
local humidity_scale = 250
[...]
local perlin3 = minetest.env:get_perlin(humidity_seeddiff, humidity_octaves, humidity_persistence, humidity_scale)


A value of 0.4 is the edge of a desert; higher values are more dry.

Figured this would be useful for the snow mod, since I also use your mod's Perlin settings to establish a temperature map in Plantlife. :-)

[4aiman]

There is no way to change lighting or have slippery blocks in minetest mods yet

Have you tried to set acceleration to a player?

[Sokomine]

Snow in the desert is not such a big problem I think. Deserts can get cold at night. And not every desert is a hot place.

The mod works fine for me. I've even built a small house in my current singleplayer game right next to a snow biome. Only the trees could fit better to the moretrees-mod (if installed). The trees themshelves are fine; the thrunks still seem to be normal tree instead of a specific variant.

[Splizard]

Figured this would be useful for the snow mod, since I also use your mod's Perlin settings to establish a temperature map in Plantlife. :-)

Thanks for the info, I'll see if I can get that to work.

Have you tried to set acceleration to a player?

Yeah that only works for LUASAO entities.

The mod works fine for me. I've even built a small house in my current singleplayer game right next to a snow biome. Only the trees could fit better to the moretrees-mod (if installed). The trees themshelves are fine; the thrunks still seem to be normal tree instead of a specific variant.

The trunks are meant to be default wood.

[VanessaE]

I'm curious and haven't tried this myself - does moretrees work well alongside snow biomes?

[paramat]

Yeah concerning VanessaE's post, a quick note about the desert generating perlin i found looking through the minetest mapgen.cpp, there is an important co-ordinate offset too ..

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

Code: Select all

local perlin = minetest.env:get_perlin(9130,3,0.5,250)
local noise = perlin:get2d({x=x+150,y=z+50})

I like the icy deserts, and yes deserts can be cold places. The perlin you use for snow biomes seems to be becoming the standard minetest temperature map.

[Splizard]

I'm curious and haven't tried this myself - does moretrees work well alongside snow biomes?

It does not seem too, since moretrees spawn on grass and there is generally not a lot of grass in snow biomes.

@paramat
Thanks

[Temperest]

Regarding snowfall: perhaps it would be good to have ABMs generate the snow over things like dirt and such, and have snow falling as purely a visual effect?

Mainly because snow should be renewable.

[4aiman]

Regarding snowfall: perhaps it would be good to have ABMs generate the snow over things like dirt and such, and have snow falling as purely a visual effect?

Mainly because snow should be renewable.

That's natural way of things :)

Want to see different levels of snow also. Say, if there's 1/16 of a snow, then, if snowfall, make it 2/16.
If there 15/16 then make it whole block and prepare to add 1/16 on top of that :)

[Splizard]

Regarding snowfall: perhaps it would be good to have ABMs generate the snow over things like dirt and such, and have snow falling as purely a visual effect?

Mainly because snow should be renewable.

Yes when the lua-sided particles are merged to minetest I will do that.

Want to see different levels of snow also. Say, if there's 1/16 of a snow, then, if snowfall, make it 2/16.
If there 15/16 then make it whole block and prepare to add 1/16 on top of that :)

I have tried this once and it didn't work out very well... I might give it another go though.

[4aiman]

I have tried this once and it didn't work out very well...

What wasn't quite well? Performance?

[VanessaE]

I can adapt moretrees to also spawn on snow pretty easily, though for aesthetic reasons I guess I should limit that to just the various conifers. At which point I guess you could remove trees from your mod since mine will be faster. ;-)

[Inocudom]

I was thinking that the small pine trees of the snow mod could replace all of the default trees wherever snow biomes spawn.

[Sokomine]

It does not seem too, since moretrees spawn on grass and there is generally not a lot of grass in snow biomes

...which makes both mods work well alongside each other. Moretree-trees spawn outside snow biomes, and the snow world has its own trees. I was just asking to make the wood (optionally - if moretrees is installed) conforming to the type of wood moretrees uses. Everything else is fine - the snow biome has small trees, its own saplings...but it ought to have its own wooden trunk. Maybe conifer trunks would fit?

[Inocudom]

The various conifers and pine trees of the moretrees mod could spawn in the snow biomes.