[Mod][Merged] Valleys Mapgen [valleys_mapgen]

[Gael de Sailly]

I got this:

That's still not what I expected… I'll work on it this today again.

[burli]

The lua version has no specific biomes, right? Plants are just hard coded by values

[burli]

Lua Valleys is sometimes a little bit messy. Don't know what that mean.



I didn't found a real desert or savanne, just small spots of desert sand or dry grass. And I found a small spot of snow which is also a little bit odd

How can I change this?

[TumeniNodes]

I am very excited to see wider rivers, with far less looping... I'm following this dev closely : )
I LOVE building bridges...

[azekill_DIABLO]

Lua Valleys is sometimes a little bit messy. Don't know what that mean.


?

LOL

[Gael de Sailly]

Lua Valleys is sometimes a little bit messy. Don't know what that mean.



I didn't found a real desert or savanne, just small spots of desert sand or dry grass. And I found a small spot of snow which is also a little bit odd

How can I change this?

I like this kind of biomes. They are simply places where dirt thickness falls to zero, leaving stone apparent.
Maybe you don't like the fact that 1 node out of 2 is grass (I do but I can understand that some people don't like it). A random factor is added to the dirt thickness value for every node (in mapgen.lua line 394) I'll add a way to tweak that.
If you don't want bare stone, you can tweak noise 7, by increasing the first parameter (average dirt thickness) and/or decreasing the second (amplitude of variation), like this:

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

vmg_noise_7 = 5, 1, (256,256,256), 1605, 3, 0.5, 2

Dirt thickness is also decreased by elevation, so you should also change vmg_average_stone_level, that is usually 180, to a higher value like 400.

[burli]

Thank you for explanation, but you misunderstand me a little bit. I just want to know why that happens.

But I can't find any larger deserts or savannah (what's the plural?). That's what I want to change.

[Gael de Sailly]

A random factor is added to the dirt thickness value for every node (in mapgen.lua line 394) I'll add a way to tweak that.

Done. The setting is "dirt_random_factor". 0 = clear limit between grass and stone. 1 is default.

[Tomas Brod]

How much of functionality is currently ported to the mapgen_valleys.cpp ?
(another way) Which one of the current versions is better? What are the gains of using (slower?) Lua version?
Thank you. I like this mapgen the most. The overview map by paramat looks good.
I did experiments with real-flowing rivers but unfortunately my algorithm is not chunk-local thus did not get far.

[Gael de Sailly]

This is the original Lua version, created more than a year ago. It has been merged in the core on January, thanks to paramat and duane. I've somewhat dropped the Lua version after this date (so it's a little outdated but should still work). But all has not been merged. In fact, the C++ valleys mapgen has only the terrain from Lua VMG. It uses the core's biome system (like v7) but with temperature decreased by elevation and humidity increased near the rivers, like in Lua VMG.
Lua VMG has a different biome system, more plants, and a different way to generate trees; that has not been merged. So, for me both are interesting. I may use the Lua VMG to experiment some new features.

I did experiments with real-flowing rivers but unfortunately my algorithm is not chunk-local thus did not get far.

Rivers are strictly the same between both versions. They are unfortunately not "real-flowing".
You can see the Canyon Mapgen by MillersMan, that implements real-flowing rivers. It still generates some strange square cliffs, but seems very promising. But I don't manage to understand the code. I would love to see a mix between both mapgens.

[TumeniNodes]

What I am about to say here will probably show just how "programming impaired" I am :P
I am about as far from being a programmer as could be but, I have a question regarding water/liquids flow.
My understanding is very limited so please excuse my ignorance.

Is it not rue that as long as liquids carry a "cube-like" definition, they will remain difficult to control in regards to "flowing"? in the manner which is discussed here?
My question is this, is it even possible to set up liquids as a default_mod (the same as doors, and others are), on their own..., and somehow try to work in some of the liquids aspects from, say, Blender using meshes? In order to give liquids more "liquid-like" properties? Which then may make liquids easier to work with?
So, once you're done laughing :D this is just something I have been wondering about...

[duane]

Is it not rue that as long as liquids carry a "cube-like" definition, they will remain difficult to control in regards to "flowing"? in the manner which is discussed here?
My question is this, is it even possible to set up liquids as a default_mod (the same as doors, and others are), on their own..., and somehow try to work in some of the liquids aspects from, say, Blender using meshes? In order to give liquids more "liquid-like" properties? Which then may make liquids easier to work with?
So, once you're done laughing :D this is just something I have been wondering about...

The mapgens and mapgen mods actually add liquids after the river channels have been created, so the behavior of the liquids is unrelated. The trick is designing river channels that follow gravity. Valleys doesn't do that because it's a devilish problem when you have to be able to generate any given 80m cube of terrain from scratch without necessarily being able to generate all the mountains and valleys around it.

If I tell you to generate any random volume of terrain from Earth, complete with rivers that might be flowing through it, how do you do it? Of course, you don't. You fake it so that it looks more or less right.

I don't know how MillersMan is doing it. I'm hopeful, but skeptical that his mapgen will be able to make more realistic terrain without an overwhelming resource cost or complications in the rest of the game.

[TumeniNodes]

Is it not rue that as long as liquids carry a "cube-like" definition, they will remain difficult to control in regards to "flowing"? in the manner which is discussed here?
My question is this, is it even possible to set up liquids as a default_mod (the same as doors, and others are), on their own..., and somehow try to work in some of the liquids aspects from, say, Blender using meshes? In order to give liquids more "liquid-like" properties? Which then may make liquids easier to work with?
So, once you're done laughing :D this is just something I have been wondering about...

The mapgens and mapgen mods actually add liquids after the river channels have been created, so the behavior of the liquids is unrelated. The trick is designing river channels that follow gravity. Valleys doesn't do that because it's a devilish problem when you have to be able to generate any given 80m cube of terrain from scratch without necessarily being able to generate all the mountains and valleys around it.

If I tell you to generate any random volume of terrain from Earth, complete with rivers that might be flowing through it, how do you do it? Of course, you don't. You fake it so that it looks more or less right.

I don't know how MillersMan is doing it. I'm hopeful, but skeptical that his mapgen will be able to make more realistic terrain without an overwhelming resource cost or complications in the rest of the game.

A very difficult task, overall.
I wonder then, if removing river water source, and only keeping river water flowing might make sense, or help any? This might eliminate riverwater from wanting to revert to river water source, when it meets larger areas?
Having river water source seems to not make much sense to me, personally... if it is "river water", it is always in motion/flowing.
A source would be in mountains, such as a lake or a spring..., feeding into streams, which feed into rivers, which feed into..... And then, at the same time, streams and creeks branch off from rivers, just as they feed into them.
It would be cool if flowing water, had the ability to erode a layer of terrain over a set period of time, to a set max of so many layers... the same as naturally happens, and possibly even erode in width as well. Which would create ever changing water ways. But I'm sure that would be an overly enormous task
I realize what you are saying, that it is mostly a terrain issue but... maybe completely eliminating river water source might help as I mention?
I may try my goofy theory out for myself tomorrow :P
Thank you very much for the answer duane, I appreciate it.

[Don]

The river water source could have an animated texture. If you could get the direction or the river and rotate the source so the animation goes the right way then rivers would look better imho. Might be a task and a half to do though.

[paramat]

> as long as liquids carry a "cube-like" definition, they will remain difficult to control in regards to "flowing"? in the manner which is discussed here?

What do you mean by difficult to control? Liquids work fine as they are and river water is tamed using 'renewable = false' and 'range = 2'.

To change liquid behaviour you need to work on 'transfomLiquids()' in the engine.

> This might eliminate riverwater from wanting to revert to river water source, when it meets larger areas

This doesn't happen. Source generates flowing.

It would be possible to have a single source node high up and have it gradually flow down, but that takes a huge amount of time and processing. Mapgen requires rivers to be complete from the moment of generation so only cubic sources are placed, a small number of sloping flowing nodes appear during the 2s after mapgen, minimising calculations.

[amadin]

How decrease amount of rivers? Minetest 0.4.14

[Gael de Sailly]

in minetest.conf, add this:

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

vmg_noise_2 = 0, 1, (512, 512, 512), -6050, 5, 0.6, 2
vmg_river_size = 3

for 2 times rarer rivers.

[amadin]

Did you mean:

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

mgvalleys_np_rivers = 0, 1, (512, 512, 512), -6050, 5, 0.6, 2.0
mgvalleys_river_size = 3

?

I changed parameters of mgvalleys_np_rivers in minetest.conf and then created new world (2222), but in worlds/2222/map_meta.txt still default values (nothing changed). I see changing (512, 512, 512) values just adjust of landscape smoothing.

[Gael de Sailly]

Did you mean:

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

mgvalleys_np_rivers = 0, 1, (512, 512, 512), -6050, 5, 0.6, 2.0
mgvalleys_river_size = 3

?

So you're using the core version. This should work. It will modify the landscape smoothness too (because less valleys).

[amadin]

How change value of min\max lava height (in mapgen_valleys.cpp)? What default maximum lava height is? Now i don't see lava underground. I mean compiled version.

[duane]

How change value of min\max lava height (in mapgen_valleys.cpp)? What default maximum lava height is? Now i don't see lava underground. I mean compiled version.

Large caves will (frequently) have lava in them, and should be fairly common by default:

mgvalleys_large_cave_depth = -33

You can add more lava by setting this higher, but it puts lava all over the place, so it will slow map generation:

mgvalleys_lava_features = 0

[paramat]

Gael-de-Sailly, next release is around 21st Dec, feature freeze 2 weeks or so before. If you are inspired to improve mgvalleys noise params that would be great.
My only request is that the pattern of the rivers tends to be a little too small-scaled because the 'spread' is small.
It's possible to increase the spread but keep the same amount of 'twistyness' by adding an octave each time you double spread.

[Gael de Sailly]

Gael-de-Sailly, next release is around 21st Dec, feature freeze 2 weeks or so before. If you are inspired to improve mgvalleys noise params that would be great.
My only request is that the pattern of the rivers tends to be a little too small-scaled because the 'spread' is small.
It's possible to increase the spread but keep the same amount of 'twistyness' by adding an octave each time you double spread.

I may try it the coming weeks, if I have the time.

[amadin]

Recommend this settings for realistic rivers without slope of the river width. Tested on Valleys merged in Minetest core:

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

mgvalleys_river_size = 6
mgvalleys_river_depth = 4
mg_valleys_np_rivers = 0, 1, (512, 512, 512), -6050, 5, 0.6, 2.0
mg_valleys_np_inter_valley_fill = 0, 1, (512, 1024, 512), 1993, 6, 0.8, 2.0
mgvalleys_np_valley_depth = 5, 4, (1012, 1012, 1012), -1914, 1, 1.0, 2.0