[Tool] for accurate tuning of biomes

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DrFrankenstone
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[Tool] for accurate tuning of biomes

by DrFrankenstone » Post

A tool has been added to Amidst to show biomes as Vonoroi diagram and overlay the distribution curve of Minetest's temperature and humidity noise on top...

Image

By combining the distribution of temperature and humidity with the area of the graph occupied by each biome, it can provide the percentage of the world your biomes will cover:

Image

The different coloured rings in the distribution diagram show the following:
  • Square grey outline — the technical limit of temperature and humidity. The world does not contain temperature or humidity values in this range.
  • Red dotted ring — the practical limit of temperature and humidity. The temperature and humidity in the world falls within this ring 99.99% of the time.
  • Red solid rings — these indicate the four quartiles. 25% of the world has a temperature and humidity falling outside the outermost quartile ring. The next ring has 50% of the world inside it, and 50% outside. The innermost red ring contains 25% of the world inside it, with 25% between it and the middle ring, etc.
  • Blue solid rings — these are spaced at 10 percentile intervals. Note that the 50th percentile ring is drawn red, but can also be considered one of the blue rings.
  • Red dot — the center of the distribution. This is the most common temperature and humidity value.
The "Altitude offset" control means it can be used for designing floatland biomes as well.

Downloads, forum thread. The Voronoi diagram is access via the Settings→Biome Voronoi menu


For anyone not familiar, Amidst will already let you scroll around worlds to see how your biomes behave:

Image

Image
Attachments
30-biomes diagram
30-biomes diagram
30-biomes_voronoi2.png (75.29 KiB) Viewed 814 times
Distribution of biomes combined with distribution of temperature and humidity to give percentage of world covered
Distribution of biomes combined with distribution of temperature and humidity to give percentage of world covered
Ethereal_voronoi2.png (54.55 KiB) Viewed 814 times
Distribution of temperature and humidity overlaid on Vonoroi diagram
Distribution of temperature and humidity overlaid on Vonoroi diagram
Ethereal_voronoi1.png (132.22 KiB) Viewed 814 times

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texmex
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Re: [Tool] for accurate tuning of biomes

by texmex » Post

This is excellent and is going to aid big time in aiding biome balancing.

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paramat
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Re: [Tool] for accurate tuning of biomes

by paramat » Post

Wow very impressive.

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Fixer
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Re: [Tool] for accurate tuning of biomes

by Fixer » Post

Very nice, this is very useful for mapgen modders.

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Wuzzy
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Re: [Tool] for accurate tuning of biomes

by Wuzzy » Post

I noticed this Vonoroi diagram feature, too. This is just very, very cool.

It needs fine-tuning, however. For MCL2 biomes, a lot of the biome names overlap and it is sometimes hard to read the text. The “node” (center point) also always overlays with the text. You should try to make the text more readable.

Currently, this is read-only, so honestly it's not really useful to biome editing. You still need to fall back to other tools to actually edit biomes. If you manage to make this editable in your program, this would be a major leap forwards for Minetest.
Red solid rings — these indicate the four quartiles. 25% of the world has a temperature and humidity falling outside the outermost quartile ring. The next ring has 50% of the world inside it, and 50% outside. The innermost red ring contains 25% of the world inside it, with 25% between it and the middle ring, etc.
Blue solid rings — these are spaced at 10 percentile intervals. Note that the 50th percentile ring is drawn red, but can also be considered one of the blue rings.
Why not making the 50th percentile (aka median) purple? It would make more sense to me.

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DrFrankenstone
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Re: [Tool] for accurate tuning of biomes

by DrFrankenstone » Post

Wuzzy wrote:This is just very, very cool.

It needs fine-tuning, however. For MCL2 biomes, a lot of the biome names overlap and it is sometimes hard to read the text. The “node” (center point) also always overlays with the text. You should try to make the text more readable.
There's a text icon in the bottom left of the window which provides the distribution data - for when it's unreadable on the diagram, but yes, overlapping labels when small biomes have big names is a problem. I attempted a few ways to mitigate that, but it would probably need some quite fancy label placement instead, so in the meantime I just provided a way to turn off the labels or nodes etc :)

Ideally it would be editable with dragable nodes etc (I was hoping there'd be a library to do all that but didn't find a suitable one), but I don't have the time to implement that at the moment. I may try to streamline a poor way of editing by having it more easily refreshed - that way a biome could be adjusted in a text editor and the diagram refresh button hit.

Valleys mapgen plays with the humidity, so I also want to see what that does to the distribution diagram.

I'll try some purples.

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paramat
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Re: [Tool] for accurate tuning of biomes

by paramat » Post

Please could someone generate and post the voronoi diagram for MTGame's biome system (above beach level, perhaps y = 16), with the percentage of world covered per biome shown? I would like to see that to check the percentages. The MTGame biome system is detailed in the first post here viewtopic.php?f=18&t=15939

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Re: [Tool] for accurate tuning of biomes

by DrFrankenstone » Post

In MTGame v0.4 (no Tundra highland etc), at altitude 16:

Icesheet, 3.3%
Tundra, 3.4%
Taiga, 10.2%
Snowy grassland, 10.6%
Grassland, 17.9%
Coniferous forest, 11.5%
Deciduous forest, 13.0%
Desert, 4.4%
Sandstone desert, 4.1%
Cold desert, 4.7%
Savanna, 7.8%
Rainforest, 9.0%
Spoiler
Image
The humidity is adjusted by mgValleys maps, so at altitude 16 on mgValleys (if my valley math is right):

Icesheet, 3.0%
Tundra, 3.0%
Taiga, 9.4%
Snowy grassland, 10.2%
Grassland, 17.9%
Coniferous forest, 11.2%
Deciduous forest, 12.7%
Desert, 5.1%
Sandstone desert, 4.7%
Cold desert, 5.2%
Savanna, 8.3%
Rainforest, 9.2%
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amidst mtgame.png
amidst mtgame.png (44.63 KiB) Viewed 814 times

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paramat
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Re: [Tool] for accurate tuning of biomes

by paramat » Post

Thanks it's good to see the diagram like that.

Not so bad once you consider that Tundra and Cold desert can count as 1 biome, and the 2 warmer deserts can count as 1.
Grassland, being central in the heat and humidity values, exists mostly as a 'web' between other biomes so it tends to be narrow, so having more area than other biomes to avoid being too narrow is reasonable.
Last edited by paramat on Thu Nov 22, 2018 02:10, edited 1 time in total.

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Re: [Tool] for accurate tuning of biomes

by paramat » Post

Accidental post.

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