Floating mountains

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Fred Brighton
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Floating mountains

by Fred Brighton » Post

Yup, a non-techy player, an old man in fact... but I have a lot of time on my hands and I enjoy creating cities. I'd like to make a world without floating mountains or mountains that look like a lava lamp exploded. So far I can't figure out how to do this, could someone help me? I am using ver 0.4.16 game if that is any help. I lost a lot of notes and worlds the other day when I upgraded something which did not go so well.... anyway, please advise.
Will

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duane
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Re: Floating mountains

by duane » Post

Fred Brighton wrote:Yup, a non-techy player, an old man in fact... but I have a lot of time on my hands and I enjoy creating cities. I'd like to make a world without floating mountains or mountains that look like a lava lamp exploded. So far I can't figure out how to do this, could someone help me? I am using ver 0.4.16 game if that is any help. I lost a lot of notes and worlds the other day when I upgraded something which did not go so well.... anyway, please advise.
Will
The Valleys mapgen has pretty natural terrain (most of the time). You'll have to scroll down in the mapgen list to find it.
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sorcerykid
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Re: Floating mountains

by sorcerykid » Post

Fred Brighton wrote:Yup, a non-techy player, an old man in fact... but I have a lot of time on my hands and I enjoy creating cities. I'd like to make a world without floating mountains or mountains that look like a lava lamp exploded. So far I can't figure out how to do this, could someone help me? I am using ver 0.4.16 game if that is any help. I lost a lot of notes and worlds the other day when I upgraded something which did not go so well.... anyway, please advise.
Will
Please check my post in this topic:

viewtopic.php?f=6&t=17778

I shared the mgv7 settings I use for more realistic looking terrain.
Last edited by sorcerykid on Thu Nov 09, 2017 02:07, edited 1 time in total.

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Re: Floating mountains

by firefox » Post

Fred Brighton wrote:I'd like to make a world without floating mountains or mountains that look like a lava lamp exploded.
what mapgen did you use and which settings?
i want an exploding lava lamp world :3
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Fred Brighton
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Re: Floating mountains

by Fred Brighton » Post

and this is what I mean...this isn't even the weirdest of them....isn't there a file somewhere that allows mountains to float? like: Floating mountains = False
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paramat
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Re: Floating mountains

by paramat » Post

No, in mgv7 the only way to reduce floaty stuff is to alter the noise parameters for the 'mountain' noise, but even then the occasional floaty stuff can still happen. You may prefer the 'valleys' mapgen, or in 0.5.0 try the new 'carpathian' mapgen.

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Re: Floating mountains

by Fred Brighton » Post

Back when I used an Amiga I had a program which made landscapes in 3D and you could use b/w pictures as the template by using the grayscale values as altitude. I used a nude shot once and the created landscape was great, covered in trees and snow on the mountains and when you did a flyover you gradually saw the "world" was a naked woman. Cool. But the frothy mountains are just too unnatural and strange. I like to build cities... silly but fun.

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Re: Floating mountains

by twoelk » Post


Fred Brighton
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Re: Floating mountains

by Fred Brighton » Post

woof! Thanks twoelk, amazing.... the program I was thinking of on the Amiga was "Vista Pro" and it eventually migrated into Windoze when they killed off the Amiga.

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voxelproof
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Re: Floating mountains

by voxelproof » Post

Fred Brighton wrote:Floating mountains = False
Yes. But this is good.

Once I was experiencing sort of disgust watching this unrealistic rocks unaffected by gravitation. But then I realized they serve (unwittingly) some purpose: this floating mountains are a stark reminder that you're not in a real environment. And finally I liked them. They prevent from getting lost out of reality ;)
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Re: Floating mountains

by duane » Post

voxelproof wrote:Yes. But this is good.
Well, I'm with Fred on this one. I don't want floaters. In fact, I dislike them so much that I went back to strictly 2D terrain (i.e. terrain that has one Y value for every X-Z value). I tried alternate methods of creating overhangs, but they all resulted in floating rocks eventually. The original terrain generators were all 2D, and I'm satisfied with that.

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voxelproof
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Re: Floating mountains

by voxelproof » Post

duane wrote:
voxelproof wrote:Yes. But this is good.
Well, I'm with Fred on this one. I don't want floaters.
I also do prefer terrain of this sort (the terrain on your screenshot btw is superb). But I will hopefully someday release here some pics of floating overhangs which are really astonishingly delighting in their eerie mist-veiled charm.

When you get immersed in a virtual world longer and suddenly spot something that is truly both appalling and providing overwhelming sense of aesthetic surprise in the most positive meaning, it may cause to revalue some previously contempted features. For example some weird non-floating mountains in v7 are ugly, but some make appearance of a work of a crazy master sculptor. If this is not art, it's only due to the fact that even creators of procedural code don't know exactly how the code itself will work - so good part of the credit goes to the machine. (btw this arises some philosophic questions about definition of art.)

For me different terrain monstrosities that occur from time to time are an acceptable cost of the surprising beauty of other sites. What's more, such diversification of the terrain provides extra incentive for exploration.

And when I find that some "exploding lava lamp" disturbs the horizon around my otherwise beauuuutiful camping site, well, I have turbo-boosted land engineering tnt tool for such occasions :D
Last edited by voxelproof on Tue Nov 14, 2017 12:50, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Floating mountains

by voxelproof » Post

duane wrote:
voxelproof wrote:Yes. But this is good.
Well, I'm with Fred on this one. I don't want floaters. In fact, I dislike them so much that I went back to strictly 2D terrain (i.e. terrain that has one Y value for every X-Z value). I tried alternate methods of creating overhangs, but they all resulted in floating rocks eventually. The original terrain generators were all 2D, and I'm satisfied with that.
Do I get it right - it means that the steepness of slopes is never greater then 45 degrees?

To obtain more rugged terrain you could implement sorta 'carving" of such landscape of rolling hills. It will never cause any floating disconnected rocks when it is restricted to vertical cuts; and achievieng some small overhangs also should be easily attainable. But this should be done imo after primary generation, not as a part of it.
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duane
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Re: Floating mountains

by duane » Post

voxelproof wrote:Do I get it right - it means that the steepness of slopes is never greater then 45 degrees?
No, the Y value could be -100 at one point, then 100 at the next. It just means that surfaces will never cover other surfaces.
To obtain more rugged terrain you could implement sorta 'carving" of such landscape of rolling hills. It will never cause any floating disconnected rocks when it is restricted to vertical cuts; and achievieng some small overhangs also should be easily attainable. But this should be done imo after primary generation, not as a part of it.
I've tried something like that. You generally run into problems at chunk boundaries. Ideally all the terrain should be generated independently, since you can't rely on what will happen in the next chunk. Any process that depends on measuring a slope can cause issues. Carving away the outside of a hill looks natural. Carving everything except the outside looks terrible. So how do you know where the outside is, especially if the hill occurs on a chunk boundary?
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Re: Floating mountains

by voxelproof » Post

duane wrote:
voxelproof wrote:Do I get it right - it means that the steepness of slopes is never greater then 45 degrees?
No, the Y value could be -100 at one point, then 100 at the next. It just means that surfaces will never cover other surfaces.
Now I see. In other words, it is a function. Y=f(X,Z).

I suppose that any procedurally generated terrain must depend on (X,Z) coordinates only (so no iteration or recurrent procedures because it would mean that first time a character spawns and chunks are generated must be in (0,0,0) ).
I've tried something like that. You generally run into problems at chunk boundaries. Ideally all the terrain should be generated independently, since you can't rely on what will happen in the next chunk. Any process that depends on measuring a slope can cause issues. Carving away the outside of a hill looks natural. Carving everything except the outside looks terrible. So how do you know where the outside is, especially if the hill occurs on a chunk boundary?
Is there somewhere a specification of generated terrain representation file format? I am interested in 'outsourcing' this process so I could generate such terrain outside Minetest and then open it as a new world.
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