Valleys Mapgen 2.3 "The Forgotten version"

After a long hiatus, I decided to work on Lua valleys mapgen again. This version doesn't actually include any change from 2018 but many interesting features coded on the end of 2015 and never released. New changes will come soon as a new 3.0 version.

This is the latest VMG before breaking compatibility with Minetest 0.4.16 and focusing on 5.0.

• You can now start Valleys Mapgen in addition with the valleys core mapgen, it will add to the terrain generated by core VMG all the supplementary features of the Lua version (trees, dirts, etc.), thanks to Duane.

• A new tree has been added: Willow

• Apple trees have been made of 5 different colors (slight variations of green), just for eye candy. Some trunks are also slimmer, using nodeboxes.

• Caves, which are so much time-consuming during mapgen, can be made quicker or disabled.

Valleys Mapgen 2.2

The Plants update.
There are now, in total, 20 plants and 7 trees.

@duane-r and @vlapsley have joined me this summer to develop Valleys Mapgen together. Thank you very much :)

duane-r has added optionnal features in caves, that are activated by the cave_stuff setting : giant mushrooms, waterfalls and stalactites/stalagmites.

vlapsley, for its part, created numerous flowers, including 3 flowers along riverbanks.

The sapling growth problem that you may have noticed with recent minetest_game has been fixed.

Some screenshots :

Gorges, with a small waterfall at the center

A rare plant in the jungle

Bananas !!!

Mountain river and plants, and birch tree at the backgound

High peak with waterfall

Average mapgen time : 800 ms on my computer, with enabled cavestuff. If that's too much, you can still use a previous version, with setting version = 2.1.

Valleys Mapgen 2.1

There are now 4 trees : the pseudo-pine tree from 2.0 has became real fir tree with its own textures (from Forest), and I've re-added pine tree with a different shape :

There will be more trees from Forest in the future.

Dry shrub and cactuses have been reworked : they are a little more common.

Rivers have changed : their floor has been made smooth instead of the old square profile. Now I use the River Water Source to generate them (it can be changed in settings).

Some screenshots :

Average mapgen time : 600 ms on my computer.

Valleys Mapgen 2.0

(Why have I named the first version 1.0 and not 0.0 ?)

I think it's the first version that is really playable. There are now trees and plants, same trees and plants than in vanilla v6/minetest_game. Average generation time : 530 ms on my computer (the same computer since the beginning of the project).

Snow ! The snow is more frequent at high elevation. In fact, this is the temperature that defines snow, and the temperature depends on a noise, and on the elevation.
Tree biomes are defined from temperature and humidity, and also from numerous other parameters.

Complete list of the plants :

• Apple tree : in plains, sometimes in the mountains but not very high.
• Jungle tree : in wet and hot places, never at high elevation.
• Fir tree : in the mountains, often on snowy places, not always. They use the nodes of default pine tree.
• Grass : in plains, and mountains.
• Jungle Grass : usually near jungle trees, but not always.
• Papyrus : near sea or river, or in very flat plains.
• Dry Shrub : in desert, or near desert.
• Cactus : idem, but rarer.

Trees are generated differently than in default mapgen. They use PerlinNoiseMaps to create the leaves.

Valleys Mapgen 1.3

Big improvements : different types of dirts. The dirt can be clayey, silty or sandy. There is also pure red clay, pure silt and desert sand.
There are also beaches. Beaches are generated on… maybe 30% of the coastline. They are usually very thin, but, sometimes, in very flat and sandy places, they may have more than 30 blocks width !

Average generation time : 450 ms on my computer.

Valleys Mapgen 1.2

The major change from 1.1 is lava :

Some others minor changes about mapgen :

• Bare stone is rarer
• Valleys are slightly larger.

The most of the changes are in the settings system. You can now set numerous things with minetest.conf.
For example : vmg_average_stone_level = 200 will set average stone level to 200 only for new worlds. See vmg.conf.example.

I really love these landscapes. They only lack trees and biomes. It will follow.

Valleys Mapgen 1.1

The biggest change from 1.0 : caves.
They are set by 4 3D noises, they looks a little like v6's ones.
There are big caves which has around 10-15 blocks size and connects to numerous others, and other smallers ones, the smallest possible is simply 1 block !

Ores have been reduced around 3 times. Now they appear at the same frequency than in default mapgens.

Valleys Mapgen 1.0

First version of this mapgen. Still very basic.
Average generation time : 200 ms.