Last thing I noticed (after playing shortly on 2-3 worlds, newly generated) is that the overall landscape feels a bit more "flat". It reminded me a tiny bit of vanilla Minecraft, although it could have been just my luck with spawning. Are those the changes regarding biome elevation?
There haven't been any changes to height variation or terrain in general, as shown in these before and after comparisons of the world I played on (some of the differences in e.g. tree placement are due to previous changes, such as the addition of fallen/dead trees):
A screenshot I took after I spawned (seed: -4426978636490490569):
The same screenshot in a recreated world (the exact player spawn location varies so I moved a bit to get the same view, I also took these in windowed mode which has a different aspect ratio; the clouds look different because of a change I made to make the fog on them effectively cylindrical):
This is a screenshot I took from a particularly high point to the northeast of spawn:
The same location in a recreated world:
Another high peak nearby; there are more differences in decorations visible but the terrain itself is the same:
Another area further to the north:
There appears to be more terrain to the right of center but that area wasn't loaded above (fog was tuned off in both cases to get more visibility without increasing the render distance):
One thing that did change was beaches, which are generally larger with smoother edges, and how rivers interact with Volcanic Wastelands; not all the changes I mentioned have been added (improvements to height and terrain transitions between biomes, which involves a lot more code refactoring, this was mention as part of the second / content update):
One thing to note about terrain is that the height variation of most biomes is varied over long distances; a new noise field was added which varies the amplitude of an additional factor which increases variation:
// Sets min/max heights of most biomes; REGIONAL_HEIGHT is regional height variation added to min/max
protected static final float BIOME_MIN_HEIGHT = 0.2F;
protected static final float BIOME_MAX_HEIGHT = 0.7F;
protected static final float BIOME_REGIONAL_HEIGHT = 0.3F;
protected static final float HILLS_MIN_HEIGHT = 0.75F;
protected static final float HILLS_MAX_HEIGHT = 0.9F;
protected static final float HILLS_REGIONAL_HEIGHT = 0.4F;
// Varies biome heights over a large scale (wavelength is approx 1000 blocks and about 28% of the area has the maximum
// height variation with 50% being unaltered from the base values)
float variance = var20.regionalHeightVariation * Math.min(1.0F, (float)this.noiseGen6.getNoiseValue(chunkX + var14, chunkZ + var15, 0.01D) * 7.5F);
// Adds variance to heights in regions with increased height variation (minHeight is scaled less if it is less than twice the
// variance, and added value is always >= 0)
if (variance > 0.0F)
{
minHeight += MathHelper.clamp_float((variance + minHeight) * 0.3333334F, 0.0F, variance);
maxHeight += variance;
}
That is to say, the "minHeight" (really the base height or depth, I still use the names given by MCP) of "hills" varies from 0.75 to 1.13 and the "maxHeight" (height variation) varies from 0.9 to 1.3 (for comparison, vanilla Extreme Hills are set to 0.3 and 1.5). The maximum value is reached about 30% of the time and this combines with height variation from the normal noise field (I have found a normal "hills" biome exceeding y=150 on a few occasions but such terrain is mostly found in specific biomes; several biomes also have "flatter" and "hiller" counterparts, such as Plains and Hilly Plains, villages only generate in Plains to reduce issues with houses generating on hillsides).
I just wanted to wish you a happy anniversary and thank you for sharing your wonderful work with all of us!
I don't have time to play right now due to work and uni, but I still read from time to time your posts.
I'm really looking forward to explore TMCW a lot more once me and wife settle down irl and make a proper video about it.
I'm also planning to make a video where I test TMCW on several devices, including 2 intel macbooks and several 2in1 tablet pcs with Intel-Celeron chips etc... (I've got a lot of second hand devices that were a really good bargain and I've installed TMCW on all of them lol).
Anyways, I wish you lots of health, stay awesome and cheers to another 10 years!
P.S. The cake is AI-generated (obviously lol) and I left the typos on purpose, because I thought it's funny. Have a great day!
As promised, I've released "TMCWv5.10", named after the fact it was released on the mod's 10th anniversary while still being more of a revamp of TMCWv5 than a completely new version (mostly the same world generation and everything), not unlike how TMCWv4.5 included many features originally planned for TMCWv5 but was still otherwise the same (I often get asked when I'll make a new version, if anything, I might have even just updated TMCWv5. I know that software usually uses a versioning scheme like major.minor.patch, incrementing on every update, but I consider it to be too much trouble to have so many individual versions, many with almost no difference, just a single small bugfix. I also tend not to mention such small updates, as I did more often early on, e.g. the first page; "added new biome", a few days later, "added way to grow new trees", a few more days, "fixed bug", "added cave spider jockeys", etc).
Also, one thing that I think is truly remarkable about TMCW is how small it is - even vanilla 1.8 (not even 1.8.9, just plain 1.8) is still bigger but there is no question as to which added more content over what vanilla 1.6.4 had, by a long shot (I've often noted how vanilla and other mods seem so inexplicably larger / using more memory/resources for similar amounts of content):
It is also quite interesting that 1.6.4 itself is smaller than the previous two major releases, as if Mojang actually went through the code to clean it up, conversely, it seems boggling how much larger the game got over the course of 1.20 (in fact, the increase from 1.20.2 to 1.20.5-pre1 is 48% larger than 1.6.4-TMCWv5.10; that, and the fact that the modded jars have hundreds of unused vanilla classes since instead of directly modifying them I made my own classes so they aren't just replaced when added to the jar; I've removed close to 200 such classes from my MCP setup to prevent coding errors, compilation errors, or reobfuscation of unmodified classes because something they reference changed).
I have a small question. I read long ago in one of your posts that mansions appear much more often and me and my wife started a new world to play TMCWv5.10 and I got 4 mansions all within visible range (16 blocks view distance) within each other. Is that considered rare? I mean, I like it quite a lot, just curious. I can provide screenshots if necessary.
Also, when I was playing TMCWv5.10 on my macbook air 11 inch, I noticed that the cherry blossom trees look very beautiful, however, when you play on a bigger screen / monitor, the green color of the cherry blossom texture really stands out. Just wanted to let you know. Hope you're doing well!
I have a small question. I read long ago in one of your posts that mansions appear much more often and me and my wife started a new world to play TMCWv5.10 and I got 4 mansions all within visible range (16 blocks view distance) within each other. Is that considered rare? I mean, I like it quite a lot, just curious. I can provide screenshots if necessary.
If the terrain is relatively flat, as I presume, you are using a larger biome size this could happen (I do increase the spacing but not as much as a squared increase in biome size would suggest, they become 4 times more spaced apart on Large Biomes, which has 16 times the area per biome); they actually attempt to generate once per 12x12 chunk region, an area roughly the size of a biome on Default, with around 2/3 of attempts failing, which would lead to about 2.35 times more structures than vanilla would generate (one per 32x32 chunk region with no failure rate); they are overall much less common than vanilla structures due to the relative abundance of Roofed Forest:
// spacingAdjustment increases spacing on Medium and Large Biomes by 8 and 12 respectively. Oceanic and Superflat are handled
// separately.
WorldType worldType = par1World.getWorldInfo().getTerrainType();
int biomeSize = worldType.getBiomeSize();
this.spacingAdjustment = (worldType == WorldType.OCEANIC ? -1 : (biomeSize == WorldType.BIOME_SIZE_MEDIUM ? 8 : (biomeSize == WorldType.BIOME_SIZE_LARGE ? 12 : 0)));
// Desert temples use a grid size of 24 chunks for about one every 9723 chunks and 1.78 times more likely per spawn biome.
// Vanilla: 10365 chunks. All of the following biome checks are ignored when the world type is Superflat.
if (TYPE == DESERT_TEMPLE && this.isLocationValid(chunkX, chunkZ, 24, 8))
{
return this.isSuperflat || DesertTemple.biomeCheck(this.worldObj, centerX, centerZ);
}
// Jungle temples use a grid size of 18 chunks for about one every 13405 chunks and 3.16 times more likely per spawn biome
// (frequency is slightly less due to only generating in Jungle River if a jungle is within 4 blocks). Vanilla: 11472 chunks.
if (TYPE == JUNGLE_TEMPLE && this.isLocationValid(chunkX, chunkZ, 18, 8))
{
return this.isSuperflat || JungleTemple.biomeCheck(this.worldObj, biome, centerX, centerZ);
}
// Witch huts use a grid size of 20 chunks for about one every 10058 chunks and 2.56 times more likely per spawn biome
// (frequency is slightly less due to only generating in Swamp River if a swamp is within 4 blocks). Vanilla: 11137 chunks.
if (TYPE == WITCH_HUT && this.isLocationValid(chunkX, chunkZ, 20, 8))
{
if (biome == Biomes.tropicalSwamp) TYPE |= 64; // sets variant as being tropical
return this.isSuperflat || WitchHut.biomeCheck(this.worldObj, biome, centerX, centerZ);
}
// Igloos use a grid size of 16 chunks for about one every 9314 chunks and 2.4 times more likely per spawn biome when accounting
// for the frequency of spawn biomes and a pass rate of 60%.
if (TYPE == IGLOO && this.isLocationValid(chunkX, chunkZ, 16, 4))
{
return this.isSuperflat || Igloo.biomeCheck(this.worldObj, biome, centerX, centerZ);
}
// Quartz desert pyramids use a grid size of 14 chunks for about one every 30100 chunks and 2.35 times more likely per spawn
// biome when accounting for the frequency of spawn biomes and a pass rate of 45%.
if (TYPE == QUARTZ_PYRAMID && this.isLocationValid(chunkX, chunkZ, 14, 6))
{
return this.isSuperflat || QuartzDesertPyramids.biomeCheck(this.worldObj, centerX, centerZ);
}
// Woodland mansions use a grid size of 12 chunks for about one every 22261 chunks and 2.35 times more likely per spawn biome
// when accounting for the frequency of spawn biomes and a pass rate of 33%.
if (TYPE == WOODLAND_MANSION && this.isLocationValid(chunkX, chunkZ, 12, 6))
{
return this.isSuperflat || WoodlandMansion.biomeCheck(this.worldObj, biome, centerX, centerZ);
}
// Pumpkin houses use a grid size of 14 chunks for about one every 23659 chunks and 2.35 times more likely per spawn biome
// when accounting for the frequency of spawn biomes and a pass rate of 45%.
if (TYPE == PUMPKIN_HOUSE && this.isLocationValid(chunkX, chunkZ, 14, 6))
{
return this.isSuperflat || PumpkinHouse.biomeCheck(this.worldObj, centerX, centerZ);
}
This does illustrate a limitation of making structures more common to offset biomes being rarer, as well as additional failure rates so they don't generate in weird ways on steep terrain (vanilla structures still do, hence why jungle temples are indicated to be 3.16 times more common per biome despite having a grid size of 18, or 2.25 times less common), you are more likely to find more than one per biome (the previous world I played on had two quartz desert pyramids in the same Quart Desert, though it was rather large, I also found plenty of Roofed Forests but no mansions, nor did I find any igloos, with only one at the very edge of generated chunks; for comparison, I found 4 within a smaller area in TMCWv4):
Structures/caves found (by number):
855 normal dungeons (2 intersecting x3, normal+double x1)
207 mineshafts (2 mesa)
64 double dungeons (a special type of dungeon with 2 spawners and 2-3 chests)
5 villages (1 Desert, 2 Meadow, 1 Plains, 1 Savanna)
4 desert temples
4 shipwrecks (1 large, 2 medium, 1 small)
4 strongholds (3 found by caving)
4 witch huts
2 pumpkin houses
2 quartz desert pyramids
1 jungle temple
425 out of 449 sessions spent caving; 1642.08 out of 1744.56 hours
41834 chunks explored (within 1 chunk of a torch, 49997 total), 98.43 per caving session
(mind that I have a playstyle like mine in mind when considering structure frequency, I know that many say that modern versions have way too many, especially villages, but if you ignore underground structures you can see I averaged 85 days and 328 hours of gameplay between villages; by contrast, many have said that dungeons are rare but the total number I found is about the same as you'd find in vanilla and mineshafts were only half as common. Of course, vanilla makes mineshafts become less common within 1280 blocks of the origin, falling below the average for TMCW within about 730 blocks)
Also, I could add them to more biomes, maybe Mega Taiga?, as I obviously don't need to adhere to how they generate in vanilla (Mega (Spruce) Taiga is about as common as Roofed Forest so the underlying frequency could be halved so they would be as common overall). This can also be seen with desert temples, which can generate in multiple variants of desert. I'll also note that changing structure locations is safe in terms of not getting cut-up structures in existing worlds since they are placed all at once instead of chunk-by-chunk (structure saving can prevent this but only for structures previously started).
As for cherry trees, the leaf texture is almost the same as vanilla but I did make the green parts greener (it was more like a hot/dry biome color even though they generate in mountainous areas in vanilla, so they would be more blue-green, of course, Mojang may have completely changed biome colors by 1.20, I myself separated biome colors from the internal temperature values, e.g. Autumnal Forest looks like a hot/dry biome but is cool, as is the water color).
I decided to add mansions to Great Forest, reverting a previous change to their spacing, which gives about the same frequency but with a larger average spacing between structures (from 8-14 to 6-12, then to 8-15; this makes attempts 36% less common per unit area, offset by Great Forest increasing the spawnable area by about 50%, and a further change as noted below), I'll note that larger biome world types will still probably have multiple structures per biome and this is true for any structure (I do increase the spacing by 8 on Medium and 12 on Large/Single Biome; the latter makes them 3.24 times rarer per unit area while biomes have 16 times the area; when considering their pass rate due to terrain this comes out to one structure every 2200 chunks and as often as one every 729 (27x27); the spacing used by vanilla structures, 32 with a 100% pass rate, gives one every 1024 chunks):
I also slightly modified "full size" Great Forest Hills and Roofed Forest Hills biomes by adding the normal variant as a sub-biome (I checked several and two had a mansion in the "normal" area which otherwise may have not generated, the overall increase in the normal variant was about 10%, otherwise, this increases biome variety by offering some less hilly regions, pretty much the opposite of normal biomes with hills).
Hello Mr Caver!
I am very impressed by how great TMCW is and i wanted to do an elaborate thank you message and suggest a few features that would make it my "dreamed" Minecraft version (even without them, it's an amazing mod and my favorite way to play Minecraft, alongside the Xbox 360 edition).
Im getting the feature requests out of the way first.
1) Spectator Mode:
It will make navigating worlds easier and it can be specially useful to see the improved cave generation directly.
2) doSpawnerLimit: (defaults to true)
Adds a gamerule that disables the drops and xp limit for spawners. Some people (like me) enjoy making spawner xp traps, but having the spawning penalty discourages building them. It would keep both types of players happy.
3) /locate command
Backporting the Locate feature would be very useful, both for you making the mod, and players who want to play around with the generation.
4) stackable potions & arrows with potion effects
Making potions stackable up to 16 or whatever number, would make them a more valuable aid. For example, making a bunch of speed potions for adventuring or making instant damage arrows for either helping the undead or destroying creepers. (instant damage heals undead mobs)
5) horse improvements backport
I don't know why horses in 1.6, "the horse update", are so buggy, maybe backport the horse quality form 1.12 so it can finally deserve being "the horse update"?
6) recipe book
Not only does the recipe book improve the experience for minecraft beginners, it makes bulk crafting easier (specially for things like torches) and avoids R.S.I. problems.
Now, for the things i want to comment about this mod:
Performance:
Since i started playing Minecraft 1.4.7 when i was 7, performance was always a problem.
The game would run at most at 30fps on the laptop i had at the time, and not even the very bad Compaq PC prebuilt my parents gave me was capable of good performance.
I had to play with Optifine, everything set to optimized and my render distance at 4-6 just to hit 30-45fps. My laptop's i3 from 2013 just couldn't handle it.
When i got my new laptop in 2021, shipping with the moderately fast Ryzen 5 3500U, i got really excited to finally being able to play Minecraft with good performance.
I got shocked when the laptop was hitting 90C and it was struggling to give 80fps on Minecraft 1.16.5.
Then things went horribly wrong with 1.18, as they doubled the size of chunks without doubling or just even improving the chunk engine's performance.
Minecraft went from the acceptable 80fps, to barely being able to hit 30fps.
I then went down the rabbit hole of performance mods, i did get some great results after a lot of troubleshooting and fighting the mods, but they are just MacGyverisms for a broken engine. I will later talk more about the disappointing performance of Modern Minecraft in the "Why do i still play 1.6.4?" post.
In the end, performance was erratic and made enjoying the game impossible. Now even less, that i'm underclocking my laptop so it avoids blasting the fans.
TMCWv5.10 is a completely different story.
I maxed out the graphical settings (with fast render on, everything else on fancy/highest) and i got a maximum of 185fps in a freshly generated world.
I then lowered to my usual settings (12chunks, fast render on, everything on fast) and i got a maximum of 251fps on that same world!!!
If we take that my Minecraft 1.20 fps were 15, it would mean that TMCWv5.10 in my hardware is multiplying the performance 15 times compared to 1.20.
It's so good that on my old laptop i can get 60fps without much trouble, while having an enjoyable experience at 8 chunks of render and no worries about performance problems getting in my way.
Features:
A problem, if you dislike things getting stale, is that playing in an old version of Minecraft will make you slowly drive you bored.
This is not a problem with TMCW, as the new features are quite good and they feel more balanced than in regular Minecraft.
Currently, with v5.10, you get more meaningful features than with the total Minecraft 1.13 without any of the performance penalties. Among my favorites are the inclusion of the Mesa biomes and the new life Deserts have with the new cacti and Oasis and the inclusion of more building blocks.
Adventure & Difficulty:
TMCWv5.10 makes fantastic usage of "The Golden Age Combat". The mechanics of 1.6 and the additions of Caver (like the click spam penalty) blend perfectly to balance the dynamism of combat.
Due to the more punishing hunger (not the stronger than regeneration II boost of porkchops), weaker offense and lack of shields, you really have to plan out your attacks and cave/dungeon exploration to avoid getting overwhelmed by monsters. This makes combat (at least to me) more challenging and enjoying than the mindless shield spam of Modern Minecraft.
And when you combine this with the great biome/structure variety and darkness being blinding, you get an excellent experience. It also does it while avoiding some big problems from 1.18, like not having coal in the negative layers of the caves.
Conclusion:
Im just happy that i can finally play PC Minecraft, without world size or mob limitations and without having to tune it more delicately than a racing car, just to get a barely playable experience that's not even well thought out!
Thank you for all the hard work Mr Caver!
1) Spectator Mode:
It will make navigating worlds easier and it can be specially useful to see the improved cave generation directly.
These sort of mechanics would require more extensive changes to a lot of code, although it is possible I could add a special toggle that enables Creative players to clip through blocks (I already hide the suffocation overlay, and some others like fire, in Creative).
3) /locate command
Backporting the Locate feature would be very useful, both for you making the mod, and players who want to play around with the generation.
I've mainly tested structures in custom world types and/or by changing the internal spacing values to make them more common and adding debug code that prints out their locations (including dungeons, etc) so I haven't had issues finding examples; in the case of caves and other underground features I have a separate utility that locates and maps them.
Also, a lot of the structures I add only generate in suitable terrain so it isn't as simple as checking if a coordinate has a structure; you'd also have to generate the terrain at each location.
*example of some of my debug code:
18:42:34 - Added amethyst wolf armor to chest at -7062 4 -6240
18:42:45 - Mansion failed height range check at -7136, -6304
18:42:45 - Removed structure at [-447,-395]
18:42:48 - Generated mansion at -7136 79 -6352
18:42:48 - Generated mansion at -7088 72 -6352
18:42:49 - Added Long Fall I to chest at -7175 15 -6279
18:42:49 - Added enchanted golden apple to chest at -7175 35 -6231
18:42:51 - Mansion failed height range check at -7184, -6352
18:42:51 - Removed structure at [-450,-398]
18:42:51 - Generated mansion at -7184 80 -6304
18:42:51 - Generated mansion at -7184 72 -6256
18:42:51 - Added Swift Sneak II to chest at -7181 83 -6261
18:42:54 - Mansion failed height range check at -7184, -6400
18:42:54 - Removed structure at [-450,-401]
18:42:54 - Mansion failed height range check at -7136, -6400
18:42:54 - Removed structure at [-447,-401]
18:42:54 -
18:42:54 - Mansion pass rate is 32.94893%; biomeCheck: 60.29654%; terrainCheck: 54.64481%
21:29:44 - Generated village at 632 -280 (hasHouse: true; components: 13)
21:31:10 - Generated dungeon at 674 53 -663; mob: Skeleton
21:31:10 - Generated dungeon at 668 56 -663; mob: Zombie
21:31:10 - Added Vein Miner I to chest at 736 15 -661
21:31:10 - Generated double dungeon at 739 16 -663; mobs: Zombie, Skeleton
21:31:12 - Generated dungeon at 875 32 -668; mob: Spider
21:31:12 -
21:31:12 - Generated 93 dungeons and 7 double dungeons (7.0%) in 3985 chunks
21:31:12 - Total attempts: 34143 (31873 dungeons and 2270 double dungeons)
21:31:12 - Attempts per chunk: 8.56788 (7.9982433 dungeons and 0.5696361 double dungeons)
21:31:12 - Dungeon pass rate is 0.291783%; double dungeon pass rate is 0.30837005%
21:31:12 - Chunks per dungeon: 42.84946; chunks per double dungeon: 569.2857
18:00:23 - Generated witch hut at -208 65 -624
18:00:23 - Added amethyst wolf armor to chest at -214 55 -631
18:00:44 - Added 1 spawners to mineshaft at -200 -856 (type: 0, size: 1435, spawnerLimit: 2, spawnerCount: 1; chestChance: 120)
18:01:58 - Added Long Fall III to chest at 15 35 -272
18:02:04 - Generated jungle cave at 88 41 -248; roomCount = 15, vertCaves = 2
18:02:08 - Spawned pink sheep at 119 65 -268
18:02:47 - Added 1 spawners to mineshaft at -72 -88 (type: 0, size: 440, spawnerLimit: 1, spawnerCount: 0; chestChance: 64)
18:03:25 - Added amethyst wolf armor to chest at 119 61 -165
18:03:46 - Added 2 spawners to mineshaft at 264 40 (type: 0, size: 2100, spawnerLimit: 3, spawnerCount: 1; chestChance: 120)
5) horse improvements backport
I don't know why horses in 1.6, "the horse update", are so buggy, maybe backport the horse quality form 1.12 so it can finally deserve being "the horse update"?
I've only used horses a bit but didn't notice any significant issues, though I've seen somebody else make a similar statement about mob movement being smoother in a newer version, mainly when jumping/falling, but didn't see any obvious changes to the code that interpolates movement client-side (I increased the smoothening for flying/swimming mobs as it is much more noticeable with them/seems to only work well for mobs that walk on the ground, but simply increasing it in general causes a lot of glitches, e.g. mobs glitch into blocks when jumping up on them).
6) recipe book
Not only does the recipe book improve the experience for minecraft beginners, it makes bulk crafting easier (specially for things like torches) and avoids R.S.I. problems.
This would again require a lot of work, with not much in the way of working examples (that are open-source, the most popular similar mod for 1.6.4, TooManyItems, is not, even if the creator hasn't been around in years). I've also seem videos of people using the recipe book and I always thought it was way too complicated for crafting simple things like torches (click through to planks recipe, do the same for sticks, then torches), otherwise, I added the ability to shift-click stacks of items into the crafting table, evenly distributing them over the slots (mainly to make crafting mineral blocks faster. If only some slots have an item those will be filled first).
I thought to note that I implemented an interesting change to game mechanics - Blazes no longer despawn on Peaceful, and can spawn from spawners; this was inspired by the following suggestion (like many of my other additions), making it possible/feasible to get to the End on Peaceful (as similarly to modern versions I replaced the trade for Eyes of Ender trade with Ender Pearls. It is possible to find them in Enderman dungeons but this is a very uncommon source, requiring an average of real-time days spent caving per eye found):
They are not entirely passive though; they will still attack if provoked but only their fireballs deal damage (not contact; any damage that is scaled by difficulty is set to 0 on Peaceful) and it is easy to kill them before they start shooting since you can walk up to them (this is similar to how the Ender Dragon still poses some threat while not directly dealing damage):
Also, I added a new gamerule, "limitMobDrops", which enables toggling the restrictions I placed on mob drops, such as mobs spawned from spawners no longer dropping anything after more than about 50 spawn in succession unless allowed to rest, and other mobs either requiring player kills or having reduced drop rates (e.g. iron golems requiring a direct player kill, endermen from spawners and in the End having a reduced drop rate, and minerals/resource drops, such as redstone and glowstone from witches, requiring a player kill).
This is why I don't like dropbox, the second you are inactive it deletes files. That's how many old mods became lost because of dropbox. A service like mega or google drive is better
This is why I don't like dropbox, the second you are inactive it deletes files. That's how many old mods became lost because of dropbox. A service like mega or google drive is better
I didn't delete it, it seems that Dropbox changed the links (I'd noticed this in the past but the originals still worked, with no mention that they would stop working), or made the original ones invalid (I'll now need to make sure all the other downloads work):
But this is why I hate drobox's service. Its the most susceptible to link rot. Mediafire, even tho its filled with ads, it rarely takes down files and makes the link unstable. They can stay up for like 10 years. Somehow its better than google when it comes to keeping files, which is insane.
There haven't been any changes to height variation or terrain in general, as shown in these before and after comparisons of the world I played on (some of the differences in e.g. tree placement are due to previous changes, such as the addition of fallen/dead trees):
The same screenshot in a recreated world (the exact player spawn location varies so I moved a bit to get the same view, I also took these in windowed mode which has a different aspect ratio; the clouds look different because of a change I made to make the fog on them effectively cylindrical):
This is a screenshot I took from a particularly high point to the northeast of spawn:
The same location in a recreated world:
Another high peak nearby; there are more differences in decorations visible but the terrain itself is the same:
Another area further to the north:
There appears to be more terrain to the right of center but that area wasn't loaded above (fog was tuned off in both cases to get more visibility without increasing the render distance):
One thing that did change was beaches, which are generally larger with smoother edges, and how rivers interact with Volcanic Wastelands; not all the changes I mentioned have been added (improvements to height and terrain transitions between biomes, which involves a lot more code refactoring, this was mention as part of the second / content update):
One thing to note about terrain is that the height variation of most biomes is varied over long distances; a new noise field was added which varies the amplitude of an additional factor which increases variation:
That is to say, the "minHeight" (really the base height or depth, I still use the names given by MCP) of "hills" varies from 0.75 to 1.13 and the "maxHeight" (height variation) varies from 0.9 to 1.3 (for comparison, vanilla Extreme Hills are set to 0.3 and 1.5). The maximum value is reached about 30% of the time and this combines with height variation from the normal noise field (I have found a normal "hills" biome exceeding y=150 on a few occasions but such terrain is mostly found in specific biomes; several biomes also have "flatter" and "hiller" counterparts, such as Plains and Hilly Plains, villages only generate in Plains to reduce issues with houses generating on hillsides).
TheMasterCaver's First World - possibly the most caved-out world in Minecraft history - includes world download.
TheMasterCaver's World - my own version of Minecraft largely based on my views of how the game should have evolved since 1.6.4.
Why do I still play in 1.6.4?
I had some time and tested again and ended up spawning very close to these beautiful mountains...
Dear MasterCaver,
I just wanted to wish you a happy anniversary and thank you for sharing your wonderful work with all of us!
I don't have time to play right now due to work and uni, but I still read from time to time your posts.
I'm really looking forward to explore TMCW a lot more once me and wife settle down irl and make a proper video about it.
I'm also planning to make a video where I test TMCW on several devices, including 2 intel macbooks and several 2in1 tablet pcs with Intel-Celeron chips etc... (I've got a lot of second hand devices that were a really good bargain and I've installed TMCW on all of them lol).
Anyways, I wish you lots of health, stay awesome and cheers to another 10 years!
P.S. The cake is AI-generated (obviously lol) and I left the typos on purpose, because I thought it's funny. Have a great day!
As promised, I've released "TMCWv5.10", named after the fact it was released on the mod's 10th anniversary while still being more of a revamp of TMCWv5 than a completely new version (mostly the same world generation and everything), not unlike how TMCWv4.5 included many features originally planned for TMCWv5 but was still otherwise the same (I often get asked when I'll make a new version, if anything, I might have even just updated TMCWv5. I know that software usually uses a versioning scheme like major.minor.patch, incrementing on every update, but I consider it to be too much trouble to have so many individual versions, many with almost no difference, just a single small bugfix. I also tend not to mention such small updates, as I did more often early on, e.g. the first page; "added new biome", a few days later, "added way to grow new trees", a few more days, "fixed bug", "added cave spider jockeys", etc).
Also, one thing that I think is truly remarkable about TMCW is how small it is - even vanilla 1.8 (not even 1.8.9, just plain 1.8) is still bigger but there is no question as to which added more content over what vanilla 1.6.4 had, by a long shot (I've often noted how vanilla and other mods seem so inexplicably larger / using more memory/resources for similar amounts of content):
It is also quite interesting that 1.6.4 itself is smaller than the previous two major releases, as if Mojang actually went through the code to clean it up, conversely, it seems boggling how much larger the game got over the course of 1.20 (in fact, the increase from 1.20.2 to 1.20.5-pre1 is 48% larger than 1.6.4-TMCWv5.10; that, and the fact that the modded jars have hundreds of unused vanilla classes since instead of directly modifying them I made my own classes so they aren't just replaced when added to the jar; I've removed close to 200 such classes from my MCP setup to prevent coding errors, compilation errors, or reobfuscation of unmodified classes because something they reference changed).
TheMasterCaver's First World - possibly the most caved-out world in Minecraft history - includes world download.
TheMasterCaver's World - my own version of Minecraft largely based on my views of how the game should have evolved since 1.6.4.
Why do I still play in 1.6.4?
I have a small question. I read long ago in one of your posts that mansions appear much more often and me and my wife started a new world to play TMCWv5.10 and I got 4 mansions all within visible range (16 blocks view distance) within each other. Is that considered rare? I mean, I like it quite a lot, just curious. I can provide screenshots if necessary.
Also, when I was playing TMCWv5.10 on my macbook air 11 inch, I noticed that the cherry blossom trees look very beautiful, however, when you play on a bigger screen / monitor, the green color of the cherry blossom texture really stands out. Just wanted to let you know. Hope you're doing well!
If the terrain is relatively flat, as I presume, you are using a larger biome size this could happen (I do increase the spacing but not as much as a squared increase in biome size would suggest, they become 4 times more spaced apart on Large Biomes, which has 16 times the area per biome); they actually attempt to generate once per 12x12 chunk region, an area roughly the size of a biome on Default, with around 2/3 of attempts failing, which would lead to about 2.35 times more structures than vanilla would generate (one per 32x32 chunk region with no failure rate); they are overall much less common than vanilla structures due to the relative abundance of Roofed Forest:
This does illustrate a limitation of making structures more common to offset biomes being rarer, as well as additional failure rates so they don't generate in weird ways on steep terrain (vanilla structures still do, hence why jungle temples are indicated to be 3.16 times more common per biome despite having a grid size of 18, or 2.25 times less common), you are more likely to find more than one per biome (the previous world I played on had two quartz desert pyramids in the same Quart Desert, though it was rather large, I also found plenty of Roofed Forests but no mansions, nor did I find any igloos, with only one at the very edge of generated chunks; for comparison, I found 4 within a smaller area in TMCWv4):
(mind that I have a playstyle like mine in mind when considering structure frequency, I know that many say that modern versions have way too many, especially villages, but if you ignore underground structures you can see I averaged 85 days and 328 hours of gameplay between villages; by contrast, many have said that dungeons are rare but the total number I found is about the same as you'd find in vanilla and mineshafts were only half as common. Of course, vanilla makes mineshafts become less common within 1280 blocks of the origin, falling below the average for TMCW within about 730 blocks)
Also, I could add them to more biomes, maybe Mega Taiga?, as I obviously don't need to adhere to how they generate in vanilla (Mega (Spruce) Taiga is about as common as Roofed Forest so the underlying frequency could be halved so they would be as common overall). This can also be seen with desert temples, which can generate in multiple variants of desert. I'll also note that changing structure locations is safe in terms of not getting cut-up structures in existing worlds since they are placed all at once instead of chunk-by-chunk (structure saving can prevent this but only for structures previously started).
As for cherry trees, the leaf texture is almost the same as vanilla but I did make the green parts greener (it was more like a hot/dry biome color even though they generate in mountainous areas in vanilla, so they would be more blue-green, of course, Mojang may have completely changed biome colors by 1.20, I myself separated biome colors from the internal temperature values, e.g. Autumnal Forest looks like a hot/dry biome but is cool, as is the water color).
TheMasterCaver's First World - possibly the most caved-out world in Minecraft history - includes world download.
TheMasterCaver's World - my own version of Minecraft largely based on my views of how the game should have evolved since 1.6.4.
Why do I still play in 1.6.4?
I decided to add mansions to Great Forest, reverting a previous change to their spacing, which gives about the same frequency but with a larger average spacing between structures (from 8-14 to 6-12, then to 8-15; this makes attempts 36% less common per unit area, offset by Great Forest increasing the spawnable area by about 50%, and a further change as noted below), I'll note that larger biome world types will still probably have multiple structures per biome and this is true for any structure (I do increase the spacing by 8 on Medium and 12 on Large/Single Biome; the latter makes them 3.24 times rarer per unit area while biomes have 16 times the area; when considering their pass rate due to terrain this comes out to one structure every 2200 chunks and as often as one every 729 (27x27); the spacing used by vanilla structures, 32 with a 100% pass rate, gives one every 1024 chunks):
I also slightly modified "full size" Great Forest Hills and Roofed Forest Hills biomes by adding the normal variant as a sub-biome (I checked several and two had a mansion in the "normal" area which otherwise may have not generated, the overall increase in the normal variant was about 10%, otherwise, this increases biome variety by offering some less hilly regions, pretty much the opposite of normal biomes with hills).
TheMasterCaver's First World - possibly the most caved-out world in Minecraft history - includes world download.
TheMasterCaver's World - my own version of Minecraft largely based on my views of how the game should have evolved since 1.6.4.
Why do I still play in 1.6.4?
Hello Mr Caver!
I am very impressed by how great TMCW is and i wanted to do an elaborate thank you message and suggest a few features that would make it my "dreamed" Minecraft version (even without them, it's an amazing mod and my favorite way to play Minecraft, alongside the Xbox 360 edition).
Im getting the feature requests out of the way first.
1) Spectator Mode:
It will make navigating worlds easier and it can be specially useful to see the improved cave generation directly.
2) doSpawnerLimit: (defaults to true)
Adds a gamerule that disables the drops and xp limit for spawners. Some people (like me) enjoy making spawner xp traps, but having the spawning penalty discourages building them. It would keep both types of players happy.
3) /locate command
Backporting the Locate feature would be very useful, both for you making the mod, and players who want to play around with the generation.
4) stackable potions & arrows with potion effects
Making potions stackable up to 16 or whatever number, would make them a more valuable aid. For example, making a bunch of speed potions for adventuring or making instant damage arrows for either helping the undead or destroying creepers. (instant damage heals undead mobs)
5) horse improvements backport
I don't know why horses in 1.6, "the horse update", are so buggy, maybe backport the horse quality form 1.12 so it can finally deserve being "the horse update"?
6) recipe book
Not only does the recipe book improve the experience for minecraft beginners, it makes bulk crafting easier (specially for things like torches) and avoids R.S.I. problems.
Now, for the things i want to comment about this mod:
Performance:
Since i started playing Minecraft 1.4.7 when i was 7, performance was always a problem.
The game would run at most at 30fps on the laptop i had at the time, and not even the very bad Compaq PC prebuilt my parents gave me was capable of good performance.
I had to play with Optifine, everything set to optimized and my render distance at 4-6 just to hit 30-45fps. My laptop's i3 from 2013 just couldn't handle it.
When i got my new laptop in 2021, shipping with the moderately fast Ryzen 5 3500U, i got really excited to finally being able to play Minecraft with good performance.
I got shocked when the laptop was hitting 90C and it was struggling to give 80fps on Minecraft 1.16.5.
Then things went horribly wrong with 1.18, as they doubled the size of chunks without doubling or just even improving the chunk engine's performance.
Minecraft went from the acceptable 80fps, to barely being able to hit 30fps.
I then went down the rabbit hole of performance mods, i did get some great results after a lot of troubleshooting and fighting the mods, but they are just MacGyverisms for a broken engine. I will later talk more about the disappointing performance of Modern Minecraft in the "Why do i still play 1.6.4?" post.
In the end, performance was erratic and made enjoying the game impossible. Now even less, that i'm underclocking my laptop so it avoids blasting the fans.
TMCWv5.10 is a completely different story.
I maxed out the graphical settings (with fast render on, everything else on fancy/highest) and i got a maximum of 185fps in a freshly generated world.
I then lowered to my usual settings (12chunks, fast render on, everything on fast) and i got a maximum of 251fps on that same world!!!
If we take that my Minecraft 1.20 fps were 15, it would mean that TMCWv5.10 in my hardware is multiplying the performance 15 times compared to 1.20.
It's so good that on my old laptop i can get 60fps without much trouble, while having an enjoyable experience at 8 chunks of render and no worries about performance problems getting in my way.
Features:
A problem, if you dislike things getting stale, is that playing in an old version of Minecraft will make you slowly drive you bored.
This is not a problem with TMCW, as the new features are quite good and they feel more balanced than in regular Minecraft.
Currently, with v5.10, you get more meaningful features than with the total Minecraft 1.13 without any of the performance penalties. Among my favorites are the inclusion of the Mesa biomes and the new life Deserts have with the new cacti and Oasis and the inclusion of more building blocks.
Adventure & Difficulty:
TMCWv5.10 makes fantastic usage of "The Golden Age Combat". The mechanics of 1.6 and the additions of Caver (like the click spam penalty) blend perfectly to balance the dynamism of combat.
Due to the more punishing hunger (not the stronger than regeneration II boost of porkchops), weaker offense and lack of shields, you really have to plan out your attacks and cave/dungeon exploration to avoid getting overwhelmed by monsters. This makes combat (at least to me) more challenging and enjoying than the mindless shield spam of Modern Minecraft.
And when you combine this with the great biome/structure variety and darkness being blinding, you get an excellent experience. It also does it while avoiding some big problems from 1.18, like not having coal in the negative layers of the caves.
Conclusion:
Im just happy that i can finally play PC Minecraft, without world size or mob limitations and without having to tune it more delicately than a racing car, just to get a barely playable experience that's not even well thought out!
Thank you for all the hard work Mr Caver!
I like to discuss why Minecraft is Minecraft.
Been playing since 1.4.7, being 7 years old at the time.
These sort of mechanics would require more extensive changes to a lot of code, although it is possible I could add a special toggle that enables Creative players to clip through blocks (I already hide the suffocation overlay, and some others like fire, in Creative).
I've mainly tested structures in custom world types and/or by changing the internal spacing values to make them more common and adding debug code that prints out their locations (including dungeons, etc) so I haven't had issues finding examples; in the case of caves and other underground features I have a separate utility that locates and maps them.
Also, a lot of the structures I add only generate in suitable terrain so it isn't as simple as checking if a coordinate has a structure; you'd also have to generate the terrain at each location.
*example of some of my debug code:
18:42:45 - Mansion failed height range check at -7136, -6304
18:42:45 - Removed structure at [-447,-395]
18:42:48 - Generated mansion at -7136 79 -6352
18:42:48 - Generated mansion at -7088 72 -6352
18:42:49 - Added Long Fall I to chest at -7175 15 -6279
18:42:49 - Added enchanted golden apple to chest at -7175 35 -6231
18:42:51 - Mansion failed height range check at -7184, -6352
18:42:51 - Removed structure at [-450,-398]
18:42:51 - Generated mansion at -7184 80 -6304
18:42:51 - Generated mansion at -7184 72 -6256
18:42:51 - Added Swift Sneak II to chest at -7181 83 -6261
18:42:54 - Mansion failed height range check at -7184, -6400
18:42:54 - Removed structure at [-450,-401]
18:42:54 - Mansion failed height range check at -7136, -6400
18:42:54 - Removed structure at [-447,-401]
18:42:54 -
18:42:54 - Mansion pass rate is 32.94893%; biomeCheck: 60.29654%; terrainCheck: 54.64481%
21:29:44 - Generated village at 632 -280 (hasHouse: true; components: 13)
21:31:10 - Generated dungeon at 674 53 -663; mob: Skeleton
21:31:10 - Generated dungeon at 668 56 -663; mob: Zombie
21:31:10 - Added Vein Miner I to chest at 736 15 -661
21:31:10 - Generated double dungeon at 739 16 -663; mobs: Zombie, Skeleton
21:31:12 - Generated dungeon at 875 32 -668; mob: Spider
21:31:12 -
21:31:12 - Generated 93 dungeons and 7 double dungeons (7.0%) in 3985 chunks
21:31:12 - Total attempts: 34143 (31873 dungeons and 2270 double dungeons)
21:31:12 - Attempts per chunk: 8.56788 (7.9982433 dungeons and 0.5696361 double dungeons)
21:31:12 - Dungeon pass rate is 0.291783%; double dungeon pass rate is 0.30837005%
21:31:12 - Chunks per dungeon: 42.84946; chunks per double dungeon: 569.2857
18:00:23 - Generated witch hut at -208 65 -624
18:00:23 - Added amethyst wolf armor to chest at -214 55 -631
18:00:44 - Added 1 spawners to mineshaft at -200 -856 (type: 0, size: 1435, spawnerLimit: 2, spawnerCount: 1; chestChance: 120)
18:01:58 - Added Long Fall III to chest at 15 35 -272
18:02:04 - Generated jungle cave at 88 41 -248; roomCount = 15, vertCaves = 2
18:02:08 - Spawned pink sheep at 119 65 -268
18:02:47 - Added 1 spawners to mineshaft at -72 -88 (type: 0, size: 440, spawnerLimit: 1, spawnerCount: 0; chestChance: 64)
18:03:25 - Added amethyst wolf armor to chest at 119 61 -165
18:03:46 - Added 2 spawners to mineshaft at 264 40 (type: 0, size: 2100, spawnerLimit: 3, spawnerCount: 1; chestChance: 120)
I've only used horses a bit but didn't notice any significant issues, though I've seen somebody else make a similar statement about mob movement being smoother in a newer version, mainly when jumping/falling, but didn't see any obvious changes to the code that interpolates movement client-side (I increased the smoothening for flying/swimming mobs as it is much more noticeable with them/seems to only work well for mobs that walk on the ground, but simply increasing it in general causes a lot of glitches, e.g. mobs glitch into blocks when jumping up on them).
This would again require a lot of work, with not much in the way of working examples (that are open-source, the most popular similar mod for 1.6.4, TooManyItems, is not, even if the creator hasn't been around in years). I've also seem videos of people using the recipe book and I always thought it was way too complicated for crafting simple things like torches (click through to planks recipe, do the same for sticks, then torches), otherwise, I added the ability to shift-click stacks of items into the crafting table, evenly distributing them over the slots (mainly to make crafting mineral blocks faster. If only some slots have an item those will be filled first).
TheMasterCaver's First World - possibly the most caved-out world in Minecraft history - includes world download.
TheMasterCaver's World - my own version of Minecraft largely based on my views of how the game should have evolved since 1.6.4.
Why do I still play in 1.6.4?
I thought to note that I implemented an interesting change to game mechanics - Blazes no longer despawn on Peaceful, and can spawn from spawners; this was inspired by the following suggestion (like many of my other additions), making it possible/feasible to get to the End on Peaceful (as similarly to modern versions I replaced the trade for Eyes of Ender trade with Ender Pearls. It is possible to find them in Enderman dungeons but this is a very uncommon source, requiring an average of real-time days spent caving per eye found):
https://www.minecraftforum.net/forums/minecraft-java-edition/suggestions/3200907-make-peaceful-mode-beatable-once-more-make-blazes
They are not entirely passive though; they will still attack if provoked but only their fireballs deal damage (not contact; any damage that is scaled by difficulty is set to 0 on Peaceful) and it is easy to kill them before they start shooting since you can walk up to them (this is similar to how the Ender Dragon still poses some threat while not directly dealing damage):
Also, I added a new gamerule, "limitMobDrops", which enables toggling the restrictions I placed on mob drops, such as mobs spawned from spawners no longer dropping anything after more than about 50 spawn in succession unless allowed to rest, and other mobs either requiring player kills or having reduced drop rates (e.g. iron golems requiring a direct player kill, endermen from spawners and in the End having a reduced drop rate, and minerals/resource drops, such as redstone and glowstone from witches, requiring a player kill).
TheMasterCaver's First World - possibly the most caved-out world in Minecraft history - includes world download.
TheMasterCaver's World - my own version of Minecraft largely based on my views of how the game should have evolved since 1.6.4.
Why do I still play in 1.6.4?
Adding mutton might be a good plan?
https://www.dropbox.com/s/azsqpp5trzwlbj2/mcmap-TMCWv5.zip
links to a 404 file not found can you update it?
This is why I don't like dropbox, the second you are inactive it deletes files. That's how many old mods became lost because of dropbox. A service like mega or google drive is better
I didn't delete it, it seems that Dropbox changed the links (I'd noticed this in the past but the originals still worked, with no mention that they would stop working), or made the original ones invalid (I'll now need to make sure all the other downloads work):
https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/n9yy04hb1bw6l7xqdtzn3/mcmap-TMCWv5.zip?rlkey=scsa83q2pk1a8angstn4nt0tj&dl=0
TheMasterCaver's First World - possibly the most caved-out world in Minecraft history - includes world download.
TheMasterCaver's World - my own version of Minecraft largely based on my views of how the game should have evolved since 1.6.4.
Why do I still play in 1.6.4?
Thanks for the updated link.
But this is why I hate drobox's service. Its the most susceptible to link rot. Mediafire, even tho its filled with ads, it rarely takes down files and makes the link unstable. They can stay up for like 10 years. Somehow its better than google when it comes to keeping files, which is insane.
This is by far the greatest Minecraft version of all time...😌!