Extending Map Boundaries?

[Grigor]

Greetings fellow Minetesters.
I've got this small map, 2000 x 2000 / mapgen v6, which I've made into an island with a combination of sfan5's nuke mod (modified) and worldedit, working in creative mode. The question: Is there a way to extend the edges of this map with default:water_source blocks? It'd be nice to move the horizon beyond the haze without blowing up too much more of the landscape!

[Linuxdirk]

Since you already have WorldEdit maybe use this to set regions to air/water and thus replacing whatever landscape there is.

[Sokomine]

Worldedit might not be very practical for such large areas. If I understand the request correctly, then the goal is to let the rest of the map be ocean, with only the already existing islands sticking out? If so, switching to a new mapgen that creates nothing but ocean might help. The unternull game has such a mapgen; in particular, the water mod of that modpack creates the ocean. Said ocean has no ground. It is endless apart from mapgen limits.

I wonder if it might be more efficient to use a normal flat mapgen without trees or any other decorations and just add some layers of water sources via voxelmanip in on_generated (probably faster) - or if there are other mapgen parameters which can be set and create the underwater landscape automaticly. But if you just want some ocean around, the above mod will do.

[paramat]

Best would be to alter the Mapgen V6 mapgen parameters in the world folder's 'map_meta.txt' file to make the rest of the world ocean. I might post again later with more details.
Always back up your world folder first before trying my advice.

[paramat]

How deep is the seabed around the edge of your islands? Or is it standard Mapgen V6 depth?

[Grigor]

Thanks for the replies. Ideally, I'd like to add 200 to the boundaries, so it looks like this:

map (after).jpg (308 KiB) Viewed 753 times

This will make the ocean horizons fade into the haze rather than showing a hard edge.

The ocean depth doesn't matter at this point (it's a mess of huge craters from the nuke mod!). Yes, it's a bog standard V6 minus snow biomes, and I lowered the cave noise so there aren't so many surface caves. I'll try to learn what the map_meta.txt does. Yes I'll definitely do backups before messing about.

I seem to recall seeing a mod that copies blocks of a map that can be copied elsewhere... maybe I'll make a singlenode ocean map that's bigger and copy the entire 2000 squares that I've got into it. EDIT: the mod was worldedit... will check that out some more also! viewtopic.php?t=8682

The idea is a smaller place that I can get to know without creating too big a file.

[twoelk]

you could try some old mods such as
flatgen or superflat ...

or maybe some of the sollutions for endless grasslands like this old script from the "I need a completely flat green map" thread from Paramat can be adjusted . There is also the grassland mod that might be tweaked to your needs.

Creating a not so deep rather featureless ocean might be the best for performance as the engine has to render everything that could be seen through the water as well.

Having a setting that surrounds a chosen mapgen or even existing map by a biome of my choice and design might be a nice to have feature for the future. Something like add a border of desert 500 nodes wide arround allready generated parts or as in your request an ocean maybe 200 nodes wide and five deep. This needn't be a new mapgen but rather a generall setting that could be used for any map existing or to be generated. There have been mods that offer sollutions but a setting that can override mapgens used for the rest of the map would be ever so cool. At the moment I'm just too lazy and havn't the time to list all the times something similar has been requested but hopefully someone will come up with an easy to use sollution that can be added to the engine someday
(wink wink here,
wink wink there,
wink wink everywhere)

[paramat]

Grigor, i will post some edited noise parameters here very soon that make mapgen V6 generate ocean only, ths is why i asked for the desired ocean depth.
The method i suggest is certainly the easiest and safest way to do what you want. Changing to other mapgens, using mods or importing areas of map from elsewhere are all more risky and complex.
So, i recommend waiting for my next post.

[Grigor]

Might be worth pointing out I keep the water opaque, so for me it doesn't matter what lies beneath. Looked at this mod also viewtopic.php?f=9&t=23423&hilit=island and tweaked some numbers to make the islands smaller, but found I missed the old V6 landscapes! Maybe I could work on that some more, or just build a slightly bigger V6 map and eliminate a little more of the coastline. It's a lot of work, but kinda fun; at least it was first time around.

Ultimately it would be nice to have all maps, whether v6, v7 valleys or whatever, have an outer ~300 block edge of "boundless" ocean rather than the landscape coming to an abrupt finish. A more natural boundary.

There was also this mod, which looked like it would do something like what I'm after, only I couldn't seem to get working: viewtopic.php?f=11&t=20066&hilit=tectonic And again, it wouldn't be the fun and familiar v6 landscape...

[paramat]

Ok, i tested this approach and it seems to work:

In the world's map_meta.txt file:

For 'mgv6_np_terrain_higher' edit the following parameters to the values shown:
offset = -1000
scale = 0

For 'mgv6_np_terrain_base' edit the following parameters to the values shown:
offset = -24
scale = 5

Then re-enter the world and generate the surrounding ocean.
This creates ocean with the seabed averaging at y = -24 and varying by roughly 8 nodes above and below that. The variation tends to have a maximum of roughly 1.5 to 2 times the 'scale' parameter.

[Sokomine]

It seems the request wasn't for already generated island + infinite ocean around as I originally thought but more about already generated island + limisted amount of ocean around + rest empty - kind of a skyblock game, but with large islands.

That might require mapgen changes based on where the mapchunk is (plus some transitions from one mapgen to the other). register_on_generated would be too late for switching any mapgen (even if it could be done?), but a voxelmanip could easily be used to create the ocean shell and the empty rest of the world (just not as fast as an inbuilt mapgen).

[paramat]

> Ideally, I'd like to add 200 to the boundaries

In which case also edit the 'mapgen_limit' parameter to limit how much extra world is generated.

[Grigor]

Paramat's solution did the trick! To reiterate: In the world's map_meta.txt file:

For 'mgv6_np_terrain_higher' edit the following parameters to the values shown:
offset = -1000
scale = 0

For 'mgv6_np_terrain_base' edit the following parameters to the values shown:
offset = -24
scale = 5

Then changed 'mapgen_limit' from 1000 to 1200: enough to get the map's edge beyond the haze (set at 180)

Well done Paramat, and thank you. As far as I'm concerned, we can declare this case as solved. And thanks to the rest of you for your time and contributions. Will post some pics of my Small_World map sometime soon!

The only thing remaining would be to generate any map with a fringe of coastline and ocean at the outer edges, as discussed earlier...

[paramat]

Good to know.