Walkabout to the edge of the world

[Kilarin]

Space is big. You just won't believe how vastly, hugely, mind- bogglingly big it is. I mean, you may think it's a long way down the road to the chemist's, but that's just peanuts to space.

So, I went on a walkabout. I hadn't intended to. I was just wandering around checking out some interesting sites where I might want to put a new rail line, and wanted to see what was over the next ridge. Then what was on the other side of a big lake. Then what was behind a mountain. And pretty soon I realized I had wandered a long way from home. But, instead of turning back, I thought, "I wonder what it would be like to just keep walking until I hit the edge of the world?" and I kept walking.

Looking back through the debug file, I believe my journey began on May 2nd at around position (518,10,976). I walked mostly straight along the +X access, but didn't hesitate to edge left or right in order to find an easier path around a cliff or pit. Although there were also occasions when I just dug my way through. I did a 90 degree turn at around x=6,000 and walked along the Z axis until I was at z=-378, just to be lined up with my castle so my compassgps would point directly backwards as I walked forward. But then I started heading +x again. I used the boat mod to help me get over large bodies of water and compassgps to keep me oriented. And I reset the time a lot so I wouldn't have to stumble around in the dark.

I didn't rush. When I saw something interesting, I would explore for a bit. And even playing just a mostly straight up minetest_game I saw a lot of beautiful things.

Calculated by the time stamps in the debug file, this walk took me about 6 hours and 15 minutes of game time over several real-time days. Of course, I occasionally got up and got something to drink without remembering to exit the game, so the time isn't perfect, but I still think it's a fairly good estimate of how long it takes to do a fairly straight walk from the middle of the map to the edge of the world. It would, of course, have taken longer if I hadn't been adjusting the time to avoid the night cycle.

Given my time going about half way across the MineTest world, going from edge to edge would probably take over 12 hours. This walk was a lot of fun, so I may try that sometime! :)

My experience walking from the middle of the map to the edge convinced me that I am not likely to EVER explore a significant fraction of even just the SURFACE of this particular single player map. If you add in caves, or my new obsession, floating islands, the explorable space becomes unimaginably enormous. The MineTest world is big!

Here are some screenshots of cool stuff I saw along the way.

Floating Ridge:

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Desert Stone Expanse:

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Cliff:

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Floater:

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The Lonely Mountain:

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The Lighthouse:

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The Cliffs Of Insanity:

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Deep Valley:

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Tiny Island Big Ocean:

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Wow Cliffs:

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Sand Pit:

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Desert Stone Lake:

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Desert Stone Plain:

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Cliff Tree:

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Deep Pit:

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Spire To Heaven:

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Desert Stone Grotto:

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Tunnel:

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The Great Wall:

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Deep Cliff Pond:

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End of the World:

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[Inocudom]

You see, Minetest worlds are big enough.

[HeroOfTheWinds]

You see, Minetest worlds are big enough.

I second the motion.

Also, glad to see the Hitchhikers Guide reference, the Lord of the Rings reference, the Princess Bride reference... In other words, nice screenshots and nice titles. And that is indeed a very long journey. Are you going to go there and back again?

I wonder how many neat sights people would see using mapgenv7 and a suitable biome pack... Also, I completely agree that caves (of all sizes) and floating islands definitely increase the explore-able area massively. Not to mention there's just the feeling of a whole other world to them...

[Amaz]

Thanks for sharing these great screenshots! And I third the motion that Minetest worlds are big enough!

[twoelk]

... And even playing just a mostly straight up minetest_game I saw a lot of beautiful things. ...

And now do this with Paramat's Watershed as mapgen for quite a different landscape experience or with the game Eden to populate the world with a full blown diverse flora, add the ambient sound mod in and you will be blown away by the beauty and wonderfull sights such a simple concept as a voxelworld is capable of.

[Sokomine]

Nice report of your journey. There are many intresting locations/formations/landscapes in a Minetest world and plenty of place to build on. With a mob mod, it also feels less lonely because you occasionally meet...someone. With luck, they're not out to kill you and just wander past :-)

[Kilarin]

glad to see the Hitchhikers Guide reference, the Lord of the Rings reference, the Princess Bride reference.

We obviously have the same taste in stories. :)

Are you going to go there and back again?

By the end of that walk, I was ready to be home, I just teleported back. But sometime I may try a walk all the way across. However, right now I am having WAY to much fun in skytest and have been neglecting my minetest_game map entirely.

With a mob mod, it also feels less lonely because you occasionally meet...someone.

My son is playing carbone with mobs. I was suggesting he should try adding skylands to carbone and he said, "NO WAY! The sheep in carbone fall off the edge of every cliff and fall into every lake. constantly. I'd have sheep plummeting out of the sky all of the time."

So perhaps there have to be smarter mobs before they go into a world with floating islands. :)

I wonder how many neat sights people would see using mapgenv7 and a suitable biome pack..

do this with Paramat's Watershed as mapgen for quite a different landscape experience or with the game Eden

I'm exploring skytest right now. With NO FLYING. Just climbing my way from island to island. I started with the old version, but upgraded to the newest version when it came out. And wow, the indev map, the biomes, the caves, it's just amazing. And the floating islands are so big that I've gotten lost. I've been numbering the islands and was shocked when exploring island 010 to discover that I had wandered so far on it that there were actually compassgps bookmarks on island 009 that were closer to me than some of my bookmarks on island 010. And island 010 was completely out of sight from island 009.

I think the basic minetest_game can be quite beautiful and interesting, as demonstrated above. But minetest can obviously go way, way, WAY beyond that.

[Sokomine]

So perhaps there have to be smarter mobs before they go into a world with floating islands. :)

Those sheep that come with mobf are smarter :-) They get born with *two* brain cells instead of just one! When there's heavy load on the server, there might still be...accidents. It's common for fish to shoot up into the sky, isn't it? :) (Ok, that's slightly unfair, but it did happen in the past at mapgen time under heavy load).

[srifqi]

+10.

Can you give the seed please? It's on map_meta.txt

[Kilarin]

Can you give the seed please?

Certainly!
seed = 2472490197394025217
map gen v6 of course.

By the way, can anyone tell me what the real differences are between indev and v7? I used indev for my skytest game because I thought that was what was recommended for it. Just curious what differentiates them and which one is more likely to the be the direction minetest is moving in the future.

[HeroOfTheWinds]

Indev is a more experimental mapgen as far as terrain concepts go. It features terrain that varies more depending on location, as well as built in floatlands and large caves underground that end up being quite boxy due to chunk borders. mgv7 is pretty similar to mgv6, except the terrain uses 3D noise instead of 2D noise, allowing for more eye-catching formations. No biomes are precoded for it, and it features a modding api to register your own. I know I'm missing some stuff...

Also, I recommend singlenode for SkyTest, just saying. In stable Minetest, it automatically set the gen to singlenode, but for some reason it no longer does so in the dev builds...

[srifqi]

Found a river cave.

[Kilarin]

Found a river cave.

While you are exploring check out

inset lakes: 819,12,-643
ginormous caverns: 1035.1,14.5,-828.8
Very twisty underground river: 765,4.5,-201
window with a view: 1328,20..5,-436

And I can give you the coords for a whole BUNCH of lava caves if you want to go digging. :)
I've built cart tracks that explore for thousands of nodes out around my castle. There are lots of really cool places to see on this simple v6 map.

[lightonflux]

BTW: Can you jump of the map? I have to proof a theory about a giant turtle.

[Jordach]

BTW: Can you jump of the map? I have to proof a theory about a giant turtle.

You can't jump off the edge of the map, as the invisi-node after that is solid air. Literally.

(Or some sort of Force-Field and Minetest is actually an ant-farm for humans!

EDIT: Gave this a bit more thought, this can also explain *why* Sam appears to have clothes, despite being in an empty earth-like world.)

[Kilarin]

BTW: Can you jump of the map? I have to proof a theory about a giant turtle.

I wonder if it would be possible to mod the minetest sky box so that if you looked DOWN over the edge of the world, you saw the back of a giant turtle... :)

[Nore]

I guess it should be possible... however, you would see it too when looking down from high in the sky.

[srifqi]

Can we use noclip and fly enabled to go farther?

[Evergreen]

Can we use noclip and fly enabled to go farther?

Yes, but you would just be flying into empty space. :P

[Calinou]

Entities can go outside the world (most often by falling).

Things like mobs will likely glitch out when they fall out of the world (like, spawn in excessive amounts or even duplicate).