Add noise selection to rental planets

If this requires a re-work, just ignore this post. Priority goes to T8s, Titans, furniture, fishing, rafts, vfx and midi blocks, etc :grin: (right? :wink: :wink: )

However, if the values for noise/octaves/frequency/etc could be limited on certain planet tiers/biomes, I think a lot of players would be more satisfied with their planets.

  1. Low noise terrain generation (prairies, flatlands, gentle rolling hills)
  2. Regular noise terrain generation (typical random variety)
  3. High noise terrain generation (numerous sharp cliffs, ravines, deep craters, sharp rock/mountain formation)
5 Likes

Not sure there even is adjustable noise

To me it looks like itā€™s just a seed

Biomes are an effect of applying certain noises, so adjusting it means creating a new biome. And itā€™s better for players to deal with biomes rather than some noise - if that was easy enough to understand and adjust, would builder would be a hit by now.

I played with world builder and sometime even slightest change in parameters makes a huge difference in terrain shape.

So, I suppose it would make more sense to ask for more biomes (each of existing ones having a few sub-types based on changed value of their main noise).

Which I would assume is created with Python code or something. Thereā€™s an algorithm somewhere.

I agree, the simpler the better.

I am just seeing a lot of players that are really dissatisfied with the way their terrain generated. And they have no way to identify similar regions on an active world (I didnā€™t see the biome label in debug anywhere)

3 Likes

Yes, indeed.

Another thing is that even when you know what to expect from a biome, there are other factors: number of biomes picked (my advice is, donā€™t add more than a few to the minimum required) or how the generator mixes them (not all biomes will work together, and sometime you might pick 2 biomes you know work well together in a known world, but your private world doesnā€™t get those two close together, so the effect is different).

Itā€™d be cool if you could see your world before itā€™s made permanent, but that would probably be hard to do.

Afaik the way seeds work is using a text list of of generated random numbers made using a true random number generator. I donā€™t even know that random number generators on any computer are truly random yet. Generating truly random numbers is actually quite expensive and complicated unless there have been some fancy advances in science I missed. I think most computers just use a pre generated list of random numbers?

Anyways back to on topic. I think people should be able to have more control for sure.

Also I think the biomes with holes should be off by default. Or there should be a ā€œno holesā€ option. Nobody wants their planet to look like Kada.

@boundmore I think James fixed the ā€œtoo many biomesā€ problem seeing as how @jaidicā€™s world finally got generated lol

2 Likes

Yes, seeds are produced by a map-generating algorithm/codes. I donā€™t know exactly how Boundless generates their maps though.

Maybe some new biomes could be added in the future with an update. It seems like a lot of people are looking for more prairie, meadow, grasslands, etc to build on. I get that it would be odd for a T6 to show up with a bunch of low noise, smooth grasslands :sweat_smile: though - and probably wouldnā€™t follow the rules of survival planet generation.

The extreme maps are fun too sometimesā€¦not fun to map though lol.

1 Like

I didnā€™t mean technical problem with generating worlds with many biomes, only that the visual effect of picking too many is most likely extremely chaotic and hard to predict; in other words, players who want more consistent and predictable outcomes should pick required number of biomes + 1-2 maybe on top of that, as well as try to pick better matching biomes.*

  • from my own experience (after spawning 4 t3 and t4 worlds with few changes in biomes choice and trying different number of biomes), too many different mountain biomes (especially if paired with biomes with caves, pools and all sort of cracks on surface) create a real mess; also, 4 biomes over the minimum seems to be maximum that allows creating nice enough world (more than that and there are too many small patches of each biome creating chaos)

best result I got was when I had more flat and low hills biomes and just a couple of mountain and cave ones

saying that, if someone wants extreme results, then they should go for difficult biomes and a larger number of them; Iā€™m talking about how to get something easier on the eye, ideas for players who donā€™t want a messy planet

Can you pick just one biome? Like a whole planet of gleamball?

no, you canā€™t - there is a required minimum you must pick; you can then add more on top of that (risking more and more ā€œfragmentedā€ world