[Mod][Merged] Valleys Mapgen [valleys_mapgen]

[TumeniNodes]

What I am about to say here will probably show just how "programming impaired" I am :P
I am about as far from being a programmer as could be but, I have a question regarding water/liquids flow.
My understanding is very limited so please excuse my ignorance.

Is it not rue that as long as liquids carry a "cube-like" definition, they will remain difficult to control in regards to "flowing"? in the manner which is discussed here?
My question is this, is it even possible to set up liquids as a default_mod (the same as doors, and others are), on their own..., and somehow try to work in some of the liquids aspects from, say, Blender using meshes? In order to give liquids more "liquid-like" properties? Which then may make liquids easier to work with?
So, once you're done laughing :D this is just something I have been wondering about...

[duane]

Is it not rue that as long as liquids carry a "cube-like" definition, they will remain difficult to control in regards to "flowing"? in the manner which is discussed here?
My question is this, is it even possible to set up liquids as a default_mod (the same as doors, and others are), on their own..., and somehow try to work in some of the liquids aspects from, say, Blender using meshes? In order to give liquids more "liquid-like" properties? Which then may make liquids easier to work with?
So, once you're done laughing :D this is just something I have been wondering about...

The mapgens and mapgen mods actually add liquids after the river channels have been created, so the behavior of the liquids is unrelated. The trick is designing river channels that follow gravity. Valleys doesn't do that because it's a devilish problem when you have to be able to generate any given 80m cube of terrain from scratch without necessarily being able to generate all the mountains and valleys around it.

If I tell you to generate any random volume of terrain from Earth, complete with rivers that might be flowing through it, how do you do it? Of course, you don't. You fake it so that it looks more or less right.

I don't know how MillersMan is doing it. I'm hopeful, but skeptical that his mapgen will be able to make more realistic terrain without an overwhelming resource cost or complications in the rest of the game.

[TumeniNodes]

Is it not rue that as long as liquids carry a "cube-like" definition, they will remain difficult to control in regards to "flowing"? in the manner which is discussed here?
My question is this, is it even possible to set up liquids as a default_mod (the same as doors, and others are), on their own..., and somehow try to work in some of the liquids aspects from, say, Blender using meshes? In order to give liquids more "liquid-like" properties? Which then may make liquids easier to work with?
So, once you're done laughing :D this is just something I have been wondering about...

The mapgens and mapgen mods actually add liquids after the river channels have been created, so the behavior of the liquids is unrelated. The trick is designing river channels that follow gravity. Valleys doesn't do that because it's a devilish problem when you have to be able to generate any given 80m cube of terrain from scratch without necessarily being able to generate all the mountains and valleys around it.

If I tell you to generate any random volume of terrain from Earth, complete with rivers that might be flowing through it, how do you do it? Of course, you don't. You fake it so that it looks more or less right.

I don't know how MillersMan is doing it. I'm hopeful, but skeptical that his mapgen will be able to make more realistic terrain without an overwhelming resource cost or complications in the rest of the game.

A very difficult task, overall.
I wonder then, if removing river water source, and only keeping river water flowing might make sense, or help any? This might eliminate riverwater from wanting to revert to river water source, when it meets larger areas?
Having river water source seems to not make much sense to me, personally... if it is "river water", it is always in motion/flowing.
A source would be in mountains, such as a lake or a spring..., feeding into streams, which feed into rivers, which feed into..... And then, at the same time, streams and creeks branch off from rivers, just as they feed into them.
It would be cool if flowing water, had the ability to erode a layer of terrain over a set period of time, to a set max of so many layers... the same as naturally happens, and possibly even erode in width as well. Which would create ever changing water ways. But I'm sure that would be an overly enormous task
I realize what you are saying, that it is mostly a terrain issue but... maybe completely eliminating river water source might help as I mention?
I may try my goofy theory out for myself tomorrow :P
Thank you very much for the answer duane, I appreciate it.

[Don]

The river water source could have an animated texture. If you could get the direction or the river and rotate the source so the animation goes the right way then rivers would look better imho. Might be a task and a half to do though.

[paramat]

> as long as liquids carry a "cube-like" definition, they will remain difficult to control in regards to "flowing"? in the manner which is discussed here?

What do you mean by difficult to control? Liquids work fine as they are and river water is tamed using 'renewable = false' and 'range = 2'.

To change liquid behaviour you need to work on 'transfomLiquids()' in the engine.

> This might eliminate riverwater from wanting to revert to river water source, when it meets larger areas

This doesn't happen. Source generates flowing.

It would be possible to have a single source node high up and have it gradually flow down, but that takes a huge amount of time and processing. Mapgen requires rivers to be complete from the moment of generation so only cubic sources are placed, a small number of sloping flowing nodes appear during the 2s after mapgen, minimising calculations.

[amadin]

How decrease amount of rivers? Minetest 0.4.14

[Gael de Sailly]

in minetest.conf, add this:

Code: Select all

vmg_noise_2 = 0, 1, (512, 512, 512), -6050, 5, 0.6, 2
vmg_river_size = 3

for 2 times rarer rivers.

[amadin]

Did you mean:

Code: Select all

mgvalleys_np_rivers = 0, 1, (512, 512, 512), -6050, 5, 0.6, 2.0
mgvalleys_river_size = 3

?

I changed parameters of mgvalleys_np_rivers in minetest.conf and then created new world (2222), but in worlds/2222/map_meta.txt still default values (nothing changed). I see changing (512, 512, 512) values just adjust of landscape smoothing.

[Gael de Sailly]

Did you mean:

Code: Select all

mgvalleys_np_rivers = 0, 1, (512, 512, 512), -6050, 5, 0.6, 2.0
mgvalleys_river_size = 3

?

So you're using the core version. This should work. It will modify the landscape smoothness too (because less valleys).

[amadin]

How change value of min\max lava height (in mapgen_valleys.cpp)? What default maximum lava height is? Now i don't see lava underground. I mean compiled version.

[duane]

How change value of min\max lava height (in mapgen_valleys.cpp)? What default maximum lava height is? Now i don't see lava underground. I mean compiled version.

Large caves will (frequently) have lava in them, and should be fairly common by default:

mgvalleys_large_cave_depth = -33

You can add more lava by setting this higher, but it puts lava all over the place, so it will slow map generation:

mgvalleys_lava_features = 0

[paramat]

Gael-de-Sailly, next release is around 21st Dec, feature freeze 2 weeks or so before. If you are inspired to improve mgvalleys noise params that would be great.
My only request is that the pattern of the rivers tends to be a little too small-scaled because the 'spread' is small.
It's possible to increase the spread but keep the same amount of 'twistyness' by adding an octave each time you double spread.

[Gael de Sailly]

Gael-de-Sailly, next release is around 21st Dec, feature freeze 2 weeks or so before. If you are inspired to improve mgvalleys noise params that would be great.
My only request is that the pattern of the rivers tends to be a little too small-scaled because the 'spread' is small.
It's possible to increase the spread but keep the same amount of 'twistyness' by adding an octave each time you double spread.

I may try it the coming weeks, if I have the time.

[amadin]

Recommend this settings for realistic rivers without slope of the river width. Tested on Valleys merged in Minetest core:

Code: Select all

mgvalleys_river_size = 6
mgvalleys_river_depth = 4
mg_valleys_np_rivers = 0, 1, (512, 512, 512), -6050, 5, 0.6, 2.0
mg_valleys_np_inter_valley_fill = 0, 1, (512, 1024, 512), 1993, 6, 0.8, 2.0
mgvalleys_np_valley_depth = 5, 4, (1012, 1012, 1012), -1914, 1, 1.0, 2.0

[Gael de Sailly]

New, experimental version of Valleys Mapgen today, using 3D noise instead of 2D for rivers, which results in a totally different shape (more irregular and "epic") for the deepest valleys.

Download or see the code

+ Screenshots

[paramat]

Very nice, and interesting.

[duane]

New, experimental version of Valleys Mapgen today, using 3D noise instead of 2D for rivers, which results in a totally different shape (more irregular and "epic") for the deepest valleys.

Ok, I'm using the 3d_rivers branch and the same seed as in your screenshots, and I get completely ordinary valleys. Are you using default settings?

[Gael de Sailly]

New, experimental version of Valleys Mapgen today, using 3D noise instead of 2D for rivers, which results in a totally different shape (more irregular and "epic") for the deepest valleys.

Ok, I'm using the 3d_rivers branch and the same seed as in your screenshots, and I get completely ordinary valleys. Are you using default settings?

Are you sure you are using the branch, and the singlenode mapgen?
I use all default settings, and this 3D river feature is not a setting, it is enabled anyway (because I had to change the structure of the algorithm a bit, it seems difficult to me to keep this as a setting without duplicating the code).

[duane]

Are you sure you are using the branch, and the singlenode mapgen?
I use all default settings, and this 3D river feature is not a setting, it is enabled anyway (because I had to change the structure of the algorithm a bit, it seems difficult to me to keep this as a setting without duplicating the code).

Ok, I didn't have singlenode selected.

It's definitely extreme. : )

+ Spoiler

[Gael de Sailly]

Today I released my old changes as version 2.3, decided to break the compatibility with older version of Valleys Mapgen, and began to align the code with Minetest 5.0's API.

You may find strange that I am still developing this if VMG is merged on core. It's mainly because I will use the Lua version to test and experiment new features before possibly porting them in C++.

I managed to make 3D-noise-based valleys as a setting and restored the 2D version by default. This is not as difficult that I first thought in my Lua version, but it would be way harder to code in C++, given the way it's implemented (2D and 3D stuff in separate functions).

[Gael de Sailly]

3D noise rivers are now available in my fork of the core --> vmg_canyon
If you want to try it out, don't forget to enable the canyons flag.
Player spawner is not working for now. EDIT: fixed.

+ Screenshots

[voxelproof]

3D noise rivers are now available in my fork of the core --> vmg_canyon

This looks great, simply really good (at last :) ). I suppose the rivers generation now isn't bundled with the basic terrain generation (except the canyons)? When I was tweaking Valleys I was surprised how much rivers parameters affected general appearance of terrain.

[Gael de Sailly]

I suppose the rivers generation now isn't bundled with the basic terrain generation (except the canyons)?

Not sure that it's what you mean, but the 3D river and basic mapgen features are working well, my branch is almost ready for a PR.
Canyons is the name I've chosen for this 3D river noise feature, because of the appearance of the deepest valleys, that look like realistic canyons, with cliffs and overhangs, instead of the same boring smooth 60-70° slopes.

When I was tweaking Valleys I was surprised how much rivers parameters affected general appearance of terrain.

True, because it sets both the rivers and the valleys (because of course, they have to work together). Rivers are set where the noise value is very close to zero, elevation (relative to rivers) is determined by a Gaussian function of the noise value.

[voxelproof]

I suppose the rivers generation now isn't bundled with the basic terrain generation (except the canyons)?

Not sure that it's what you mean, but the 3D river and basic mapgen features are working well, my branch is almost ready for a PR.
Canyons is the name I've chosen for this 3D river noise feature, because of the appearance of the deepest valleys, that look like realistic canyons, with cliffs and overhangs, instead of the same boring smooth 60-70° slopes.

Now I see. I thought for a while that "canyons" are something like in v7 (a distinct terrain feature) and that the river water fills them 'later', now as I understand they are closely bonded with water features (in v7 you probably can have dry canyons if the sea level parameter is decreased). Good job, it follows the pattern of processes occuring in real nature.

[Gael de Sailly]

Made the PR just now: minetest#8081.

We are in a context of feature freeze so I don't expect this to be merged before 5.0.