Better Terrain Addon v3.2.2 (BTW CE 2.0.2+)

[dawnraider]

Version 1.3.2 has been released!
Download here

Version 1.3.2 changes:

• Added edge variants to rainforest and jungle in new worlds which have slightly less dense vegetation, and which will not spawn melons. This helps provide a transition into the heavy vegetation of these biomes, and makes easy melons harder to obtain by preventing them from spawning at the very edge of these jungle variants.
• Added an edge variant to tropics in new worlds, causing it to be much more likely to spawn as islands instead of connecting to neighboring biomes. When tropics does connect via land, it is likely to do so through sandy beaches.
• Added a BTA version of the vanilla beach, for the same reason as I previously did the same for rivers. This again will not affect anything in your world, but simply allows me to do more with beaches down the line if I wish.
• Added frozen beaches. Snowy woods, frozen springs, siberia, and tundra will now spawn frozen beaches when connecting with oceans. This only affects new worlds.
• Changed how reeds generate in frozen springs slightly to make them a bit more common.
• Changed (increased) the thickness of the border created by all edge variants. This only affects new worlds.
• Changed (increased) the chance of melons spawning in jungle, rainforest, and mangal to offset the large amount of vegetation present (or water in the case of mangal) which could prevent them from spawning.
• Changed (decreased) the chance of melons spawning in tropics given that it is easier to traverse than other jungle variants and has less vegetation.
• Fixed an issue where the game would crash when trying to smooth between climates when no biomes of the transition climate were enabled. The game will now not attempt to smooth climates if no biomes are available for smoothing.
• Fixed an issue where particularly wide rivers could generate with a standard river along the center even if the rest of the river was a different variant. This was most notable as a change in water color but could also show up as missing ice, mismatching riverbed material, or having a random spot of rain in the middle of the river in desert variants.

[yany]

• Changed the formatting of the generator options string. The old format will still be processed correctly for old worlds but will not contain any new options. The new format ignores whitespace, has labels for all options, and is order-agnostic.

I might be misunderstanding something here, but after playing around with this for some time I have concluded that the server crashes on startup when I try to generate a new world if basically any whitespace is present in the generator settings string. For reference, my server.properties had:

Code: Select all

generator-settings=Version:1.3.2;OceanSize:2;BiomeSize:1;Climates:true;Shorelines:true;Biomes:100=true,101=true,102=true,104=true,105=true,106=true,107=true,108=true,110=true,111=true,112=true,113=true,114=true,116=true,117=true,119=true,121=true,122=true,123=true,124=true,125=true,126=true,127=true,129=true,130=true,132=true,133=true,134=true,135=true,136=true,137=true,138=true,139=true,140=true,141=true,132=true,143=true,144=true,145=true;

Putting a single space between "Version:" and "1.3.2" caused a crash when creating a new world for example.

Also, a '\' is inserted before every single '=' and ':' in the string when I start the server, so I don't really know if this is a bug, inaccurate documentation, or just me being dumb.

[dawnraider]

I'll take a look as that seems very strange to me. Probably on my end though.

[dawnraider]

Version 1.3.3 has been released!
Download here

Version 1.3.3 changes:

• Added new red sandstone desert pyramids which can spawn in outback and badlands.
• Added the ability to double click biomes in the biome configuration menu to toggle whether they are enabled.
• Changed world configuration to have deco generation enabled by default if deco is also installed. Deco generation may still be disabled if you wish.
• Changed world configuration so that enabling deco automatically enables all deco exclusive biomes. Previously it was possible to enable deco but then not get deco biomes because you had to specifically re-enable them.
• Fixed an issue where frozen springs, plains, temperate forest, and patagonia were not properly generating reeds.
• Fixed an issue where the game would crash if spaces were present in the generator options string.

[dawnraider]

Version 1.3.4 has been released!
Download here

Version 1.3.4 changes:

• Updated to Extended Addon API 1.1.0.

[dawnraider]

So something I did with beaches fucked up and is generating frozen beaches where it shouldn't be. Still investigating the issue.

Edit: Found and fixed the issue. Any existing frozen beaches will revert to regular beaches in the next release. Frozen beaches will then generate properly but in frozen biomes may create borders of snow.

[dawnraider]

Version 1.4.0 has been released!
Download here

Version 1.4.0 changes:

• Added a new surface builder system which allows much finer control over how biomes are generated. This includes incorporation of K.JPG's OpenSimplex2 (more information in credits section of OP).
• Added areas of podzol and coarse dirt to coniferous forests and snowy coniferous forests in new worlds when deco is enabled.
• Completely overhauled badlands in new worlds. They now match vanilla badlands much more closely. This is detailed more in the changes below.
• Changed badlands plateaus to actually be plateaus instead of just normal mountains.
• Changed badlands plateaus to use normal terracotta as the topmost block at high elevations.
• Changed badlands plateaus to spawn occasional wooded sections atop the plateaus.
• Changed how terracotta layers generate in badlands to be more common and to be random based on the world seed instead of fixed and periodic. This only affects new worlds.
• Changed badlands plateau to use regular badlands as its edge biome rather than having a dedicated badlands edge. Badlands edge will continue to generate in existing worlds but has been deprecated for old worlds.
• Changed grass and foliage color of badlands.
• Changed (reduced) the width of badlands edges in new worlds.
• Changed (reduced) the number of trees slightly in coniferous forest variants in new worlds.
• Changed how sandy shorelines generate to use simplex noise instead of perlin to remove occasional directional artifacting. This only affects new worlds.
• Changed how grass generates in outback to make it based on simplex noise instead of random decorators. This only affects new worlds.
• Changed how surface stone generates in arid forest, chaparral, and shield in new worlds in the same way as outback grass above.
• Changed how trees generate in alpine, steppe, orchard, heathland, coniferous forest, snowy coniferous forest, and icy peaks in new worlds. Instead of relying on sub-biomes to modify tree type or density, tree generation is now based on simplex noise. As a part of this, aspen grove, wooded steppe, orchard clearing, heathland woods, coniferous forest clearing, snowy coniferous forest clearing, and forested icy peaks have been deprecated. These sub-biomes wil continue to generate in existing worlds but have been removed from new worlds.
• Changed alpine to generate fewer trees at high elevations in new worlds.
• Changed oasis (for real this time!) and steppe to not spawn sandy shorelines in new worlds.
• Fixed an issue where large oak trees (the vanilla ones) would sometimes all generate at the exact same size in an entire biome.
• Fixed an issue where beaches were generating with grass. This may cause surface material seams but can be manually fixed relatively easily (or old chunks can be deleted in MCEdit and they will regenerate)
• Fixed an issue where frozen beaches were generating in places they shouldn't. Existing frozen beaches will revert to normal beaches.

New badlands:

Spoiler

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[dawnraider]

Version 1.4.1 has been released!
Download here

Version 1.4.1 changes:

• Fixed an issue where some of the changes to badlands edges were not checking the world version and thus could create seams.

[dawnraider]

Version 1.4.2 has been released!
Download here

Unfortunately the big fix in this release will require you to make a new world if you made one on 1.4.0 or 1.4.1. I messed up the initialization of terrain generators causing them to be extremely volatile and not stable across releases (or even across installs with other mods). I fixed this by anchoring a new random generator to the seed instead of simply passing the existing random generator which had already been used for things, but this necessitated one last change to the terrain. Worlds created before 1.4.0 are unaffected.

Version 1.4.2 changes:

• Fixed an issue where any changes using random generators would result in the terrain noise being initialized in a different way, causing large world seams if anything was changed (to the point where unrelated mods could affect the generation). This only affected 1.4.X worlds so older worlds are fine. However, the fix for this necessitated causing one more world seam, so any worlds that were generated with 1.4.0 or 1.4.1 will have different generation now. I apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused, but damage should be minimal given the same day release and the fact that old worlds were unaffected by the bug as they do not use the new generator system that 1.4.X worlds do.
• Fixed an issue where frozen beaches and red sand beaches would spawn normal beaches at their edges.

[dawnraider]

Working on a fully custom world generator!

Still in early stages but first prospects are exciting :)

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I decided to switch to the simplex noise generator added in the last major release as that is much easier to work with than Mojang's perlin noise generator. As an added benefit, simplex noise does not have the same directional artifacting that perlin noise has, meaning cliffs and mountains will be far less boxy.

Additionally, with this world generator mountains can be taller and the ground much deeper, opening the ability for me to add caves in the same manner as the new vanilla caves.

The biggest thing for me to do is make the generator respect biome-specific heights, then just refinement.

[dawnraider]

New critical bug: The first world you generate locks the generation seed for all worlds until you restart. Rushing a fix out right now but be careful when making new worlds.

[dawnraider]

Version 1.4.3 has been released!
Download here

Version 1.4.3 changes:

• Updated to API 1.1.1
• Fixed an issue causing noise generators to not respect the seed after the first world generated after booting the game.
• Fixed an issue where attempting to create a vanilla world type with BTA and deco installed would create the wrong world type if you did not toggle deco beforehand.
• Fixed an issue where beta and skylands worlds generated far too few trees.

[dawnraider]

Version 1.4.4 has been released!
Download here

Version 1.4.4 changes:

• Fixed an issue where the game could crash when generating sand when better shores is disabled.

[dawnraider]

Version 2.0.0 has been released!
Download here

Version 2.0.0 changes:

• Updated to BTW CE 1.1.X.
• Added blobs of deco slate in third strata.
• Changed ancient forests to have varying tree density and to be slightly less dense overall. This should make it just a little safer as there will be fewer spaces that mobs can spawn in during the day, and hopefully should reduce the impact fire can have on the biome.
• Changed the internal name of BTA's desert hills to "Better Desert Hills" and jungle hills to "Better Jungle Hills" for compatibility with MCPatcher's biome specific textures.
• Fixed an issue where the /biome command always gave the biome at the current coordinates in the overworld instead of respecting the current dimension of the player.
• Fixed an issue where structure-specific mobs could not spawn in any BTA biomes (this doesn't actually have any impact right now, but if any other addons added mob spawns to structures they previously would not have worked without this fix).
• Fixed an issue where fortress mobs could not spawn in skylands.

[dawnraider]

Version 2.0.1 has been released!
Download here

Version 2.0.1 changes:

• Fixed an issue where simplex noise surface decorators were creating artifacts along chunk boundaries. This was most noticeable in outback but affected several other biomes.
• Fixed an issue where the game could crash when trying to generate a village.

[dawnraider]

Version 2.0.2 has been released!
Download here

Version 2.0.2 changes:

• Fixed an issue where the last release caused slate to stop generating.

[dawnraider]

Version 2.0.3 has been released!
Download here

Version 2.0.3 changes:

• Added Nether Wastes as a new nether biome, replacing the default nether in deco worlds. This is exactly the same as the vanilla nether, but with the following features added:
• Added dried up lavafalls made of basalt.
• Added clusters of magma blocks near the lava ocean.
• Added large clusters of infused stone near the lava ocean.
• Changed (refactored) how surface generation is handled to significantly reduce code duplication and make individual tweaks per biome easier.
• Changed savannas in new worlds to generate plateaus instead of hills.
• Changed how gravel beaches are formed in new worlds.
• Changed desert, dunes, and badlands to no longer generate surface lakes in new worlds.
• Changed the name of Woods Hills to Wooded Hills.
• Fixed an issue where soil depth conformed to chunk boundaries.
• Fixed an issue where certain unfinished features would attempt to generate, potentially causing a crash if deco was not installed.
• Fixed an issue where decoration generation was affected by the first world generated after starting the game.
• Fixed an issue where skylands were not being decorated properly.
• Fixed an issue where badlands terracotta layers were always black in beta and skylands.
• Fixed an issue where the game would crash on load if deco was not installed.

[dawnraider]

Version 2.0.4 has been released!
Download here

Version 2.0.4 changes:

• Fixed an issue where soul sand was not generating in the nether.

[dawnraider]

Version 2.0.5 has been released!
Download here

Version 2.0.5 changes:

• Updated to BTW CE 1.3.0
• Fixed an issue where some random generators were not being initialized in the correct order and so could sometimes cause a crash when generating trees.
• Fixed an issue where gravel beaches would not flood with water properly when generating 1 block below sea level.

[Soupy Delicious]

Hey man, being 'mirin your work (mainly deco) for a while now, but upon returning for the first time since even a while before FC's farewell anouncement, I'm kinda awed at all this. Reading the community edition changelogs, it does seem like you're staying true to FC's vision (insofar as I can [barely] tell ;P).

But when I saw this mod, I basically squeeee'd! 1.5.2 MC terrain gen was always the biggest thing I disliked about BTW, and never thought I'd see the day that issue would be tackled. So, THANK YOU! :D

I do wonder, though, because I remember FC used to say that he very finely tailored the terrain & biome gen for BTW, and that it was a delicate balance. I know that you can't exactly make the terrain vastly more interesting without potentially upsetting that balance, and I'm willing to accept some degree of that collatteral damage, but could you possibly reassure us as to how much effort has gone in to "staying true" to FC's intended gameplay?

Either way, I'll be playing Beta Terrain, and I'm super hyped :) cheers

edit: how do I install this? I assume we just drag-drop into the version.jar, but I'm unsure and can't find any information on it ^^

editedit: Well, I did that and it seems to have worked :] Now I have another question! You state that using the Better Terrain option will enable more varied height-levels in terrain. I always felt 1.5.2 was too 'flat'. Does 'Beta Terrain' benefit from the same treatment?

[dawnraider]

Yeah I didn't include installation instructions since it is installed in exactly the same manner as BTW. Glad you got it working :)

Yeah overall I wanted to keep generally pretty close to FC's vision. The distribution of biome-specific features in particular is kept pretty similar to base BTW. If anything what I've heard from players is that it is slightly harder due to the increase in height variation.

Beta Terrain literally generates the old beta world gen. So in some places it will be super mountainous, while others will be pretty flat. I'd recommend just looking up old seeds for beta if you want to see what that will generate.

[Soupy Delicious]

Beta Terrain literally generates the old beta world gen. So in some places it will be super mountainous, while others will be pretty flat. I'd recommend just looking up old seeds for beta if you want to see what that will generate.

Damn! So it's quite actually the old beta gen? That's epic, I didnt realise it would be 1:1 :0

Thanks again ^^

edit: Hey, I was wondering about Beta terrain, and setting the biome size. Are biomes smaller with Beta Terrain than they are with regular BTW, or Better Terrain? Setting biome size to 'vanilla' in Beta Terrain would have biomes be the same size as 'vanilla' in Better Terrain?

I know the answer might be obvious, but I'm just making sure ^^

editedit: alright! So, a bit of feedback for ya :] As far as I can tell, Beta maps don't seem to really have large oceans separating things. IIRC, one of FCs (many) rites of passages intended for the player was that of crossing oceans. Perhaps include a warning somewhere targetted at new/hapless BTW players stating that 'deviates from intended gameplay' or something. And on the topic of oceans, perhaps the default ocean size for the Better Terrain map could be switched to Vanilla, for similar reasons?

Now, about Biomes and being able to disable/enable them (I really like that, thank you for it :] ), I don't know how convenient or possible this would be for you, but perhaps a player who disables all biomes would generate a world with your terrain, but vanilla BTW biomes. It makes sense, but I don't know how much work/if it's possible for you, so forgive my ignorance.
That's all for now ^^

[dawnraider]

Beta isn't strictly 1:1, but it's like 99% of the way. If you do a block for block comparison the shape of contours in some places may be off by a block, but it's so close that you really cannot tell without a side by side comparison.

Beta uses the exact same biome generator as normal BTA worlds, with the exception of not generating rivers or oceans, so the bone sizes will match up. That is the one main difference from the old beta gen, is that the biomes will not match up, and cannot be made to match up using the current generator, as biomes were organized in a completely different way in beta.

As for the oceans, realistically i don't think that's too big of a deal. Oceans are a relatively small aspect of balance and in my opinion more of a pain in the ass than anything with how absurdly oversized they were in vanilla (something like 80% of the world is ocean in vanilla 1.5 generation). With BTA you still get oceans, just not 15,000 block oceans that are impossible to cross because you can't go that far in a single day so the squids will get you. As for Betta terrain in regards to oceans, it is otherwise incredibly similar to normal BTA generation that i don't think that not having large oceans is really a big enough deal to warrant a disclaimer all on its own.

And unfortunately, generating BTA terrain with vanilla biomes isn't really how it works. The terrain is defined by the biome, and so generating BTA world with vanilla biomes would just give you a vanilla world. It wouldn't even give you the extras like beaches, stone types, flowers, etc, since those are also all tied specifically to the BTA biomes (and why BTA versions of vanilla biomes exist as completely different biomes).

However, if you want a world that generates similar to vanilla in terms of biomes, you can set oceans to max, turn climates off (i would recommend this anyway running with so few biomes enabled), and use the following biomes:
-Tundra
-Siberia
-Icy Peaks
-Woods
-Highlands
-Wetlands
-Jungle
-Desert
-Plains

[Soupy Delicious]

Appreciate the extensive reply - thanks for explaining everything! Alright, well that sounds good to me ^^ I'll defs be doing a bit of sweet-spot searching

Keep up the good work, LADY ;P

(huge fan of Heathlands and Bushlands biome by the way. Beautiful)

[SterlingRed]

Getting an error with CE 1.3.5 and deco. The error indicates its initializing ce 1.3.4 but that's wrong, it is 1.3.5 jar.

Spoiler

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...Add-On Handler Initializing...
Better Than Wolves Community Edition Version 1.3.4 Initializing...
Better Than Wolves Initialization Complete.
Lightning Tweaker Version 1.1.1 Initializing...
Lightning Tweaker Initialized
Deco Addon Initializing...
[Warning] Sound loading failed for: dig/lantern1, falling back to vanilla sounds
CONFLICT @ -255
CONFLICT @ -232
CONFLICT @ -207
CONFLICT @ -239
CONFLICT @ -44
CONFLICT @ -251
CONFLICT @ -60
CONFLICT @ -59
CONFLICT @ -58
CONFLICT @ -57
CONFLICT @ -56
CONFLICT @ -209
CONFLICT @ -130
CONFLICT @ -131
CONFLICT @ -41
CONFLICT @ 750
CONFLICT @ 2296
CONFLICT @ -145
CONFLICT @ -168
CONFLICT @ -47
CONFLICT @ -35
CONFLICT @ 22225
Deco Addon Initialization Complete.
Better Terrain Version 2.0.5 Initializing...
Exception in thread "main" java.lang.NoSuchMethodError: afn.addDesertBiome(Laav;)V
at aav.<clinit>(BiomeGenBase.java:141)
at BTABiomeConfiguration.<clinit>(BTABiomeConfiguration.java:125)
at BTAMod.initWorldGen(BTAMod.java:42)
at BTAMod.Initialize(BTAMod.java:30)
at FCAddOnHandler.InitializeMods(FCAddOnHandler.java:69)
at net.minecraft.client.Minecraft.<init>(Minecraft.java:308)
at avv.<init>(SourceFile:38)
at net.minecraft.client.MinecraftApplet.init(SourceFile:38)
at net.minecraft.Launcher.init(Launcher.java:109)
at org.multimc.LegacyFrame.start(LegacyFrame.java:130)
at org.multimc.onesix.OneSixLauncher.legacyLaunch(OneSixLauncher.java:131)
at org.multimc.onesix.OneSixLauncher.launch(OneSixLauncher.java:240)
at org.multimc.EntryPoint.listen(EntryPoint.java:143)
at org.multimc.EntryPoint.main(EntryPoint.java:34)