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TonyLiberatto

Actual Biomes

5 posts in this topic

First off I did a quick search for Biome and Biomes, and could not find anything on these lines. So if is there another post about that I ask the moderators to merge it. Thanks

 

We did a lot of progress on the world generation, with the way animals, trees and vegetation naturally spawn in the world.

What this suggestions is about is to actually have Biomes taking into consideration Latitudes and overall Climate so it would make impossible for someone to grow tropical vegetation and trees in cold places. That would create  incentive to commerce and trading between players in big servers.

The way I see we could divide the world in many different zones, but for simplicity lets say 4, A, B, C, D, This way any tree that naturally spawns in Biome A would not grow in any other Biome.

So even if a town would choose a location in between 2 Biomes they would still lack the other 2.

Do you want Pine for your constructions projects? you have to go to a cold climate and chop it there or trade with a town over there, no more planting Pines in the equator line.

The same for foods, we can divide the fruits and vegetables by Climate.

We have enough diversity already in the game that no one can complain and say that this would make survival harder. It would just make the game more believable and increase player interaction with other players, as they trade for the items they want.

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The short answer is no, we already have the climate system for determining where stuff generates, and the biome system is explicitly for the very base of terrain generation, and almost nothing more. For example, here's the official list of biomes that you can find in TFC:

 

  • Ocean - Primarily water
  • River - Water that cuts through other biomes
  • Hell - The biome in the nether
  • Beach - Sand beaches that are located on ocean shores
  • Gravel Beach - Gravel beaches that are located on ocean shores
  • High Hills - Hilly Terrain, standard amount of vegetation
  • Plains - Flat terrain, not so much vegetation
  • Swampland - Flat terrain with wide pools of water. Lots of lily pads and water plants
  • High Hills Edge - Transitional biome
  • Rolling Hills - Hill terrain that is a bit more rounded, standard amount of vegetation
  • Mountains - Very tall, pointy terrain, a little less vegetation
  • Mountains Edge - Transitional biome
  • High Plains - Like plains, but at a higher elevation
  • Deep Ocean - Like ocean, but with a lower ocean floor.
  • Lake - Large areas of water that have lily pads and spawn bass.

Pay extremely close attention to how general these descriptions are. They don't talk about what kind of vegetation grows there, they only talk about the quantities. When it comes to creating the basic, unpopulated terrain, this is exactly what we want when it comes to biomes. In terms of world generation, plains for flat terrain is all that matters when we want a flat area. It doesn't matter if the flat area is on the equator, or near the arctic circle. It's flat and therefore we call it a plains biome. When it comes to placing biomes next to each other, the only thing to take into consideration is altitude, and perhaps the usage of the edge transition biomes.

 

Climate comes into play for everything else actually populating the terrain with plants, trees, animals and even ground cover such as regular or dry grass. If we try to merge the two back together into one all-encompassing biome system it gets really messy really fast. Suddenly that list of biomes is multiplied by like 3, because now we need a hot plains, a mild plains, and a cold plains biome. And world generation gets a lot messier as well, because now you have to take into consideration what kind of plains it is, because you don't want a cold plains generated right next to a hot rolling hills. It looks weird and just doesn't make much sense. Vanilla Minecraft has already tried to implement some sort of system for handling this, but in my opinion it really doesn't do it very well, and also makes things pretty boring because you see the same few biomes over and over until you finally reach a different temperature area.

 

So now that's clarified, I'm going to throw out the majority of your suggestion and say what I believe was the actual intention of your post, without including the incorrect specifications that cannot be implemented:

 

Add something to the game that encourages travel and trade.

 

Now if you step back and look, there's actually already a lot of this implemented. For crops there are already temperature restrictions. You aren't going to be able to grow sugarcane or bell peppers up in an area that has over 4 months of freezing temperatures each year. You also are going to have a very hard time growing crops, berry bushes, and fruit trees near the equator when the temperature is upwards of 34 year-round, because they're going to grow ridiculously slowly, or just not at all.

 

Contrary to what you may think, if enough hydration is provided in real life, it's pretty hard to kill a crop with just heat. Even crops that are naturally found in more mild climates. Freezing temperatures actually breaks down the cells of the plant because of the ice crystals that form. There really isn't any of that physical change when it comes to warmer temperatures, unless you're trying to grow them at 100 C and the water starts boiling. Just as an example, those "cold climate" pine trees that you suggested can actually grow without any issues in temperatures up to 38 C.

 

So now you've got people complaining about the mindset of just "Why not just always live in the warmer climate so I can grow everything?" In real life that mindset doesn't happen because there's no reason for one farm to try and grow every single crop, they can make their living off of just one or two that grows just fine in the area they are. People farming in the tropics aren't trying to also grow temperate crops because they can make a living off of what they are already growing, and the supply is high enough up in the temperate climates that there is no need to also grow it elsewhere.

 

The biggest problem right now is that the penalty for living in warmer climates isn't enough to discourage players from living there year-round. The food spoils faster, and they might die of heat stroke if they run out of thirst, but that's about it. And at this point in time, without any developer that's put any effort into a body temperature system in over a year, there's really no expectation that a good enough penalty is going to show up anytime soon.

 

Forcing the game to be balanced in such a way that trade is almost required only destroys the little reasons left for anyone to play single player. There are other ways that you can currently set up your server that encourages trade that doesn't make core changes to the game that affect everyone else who may play in a different style. Set up towns in your world that are far apart across the map, but have roads or railways connecting them for easier travel. Use your imagination and add themes to each town. Perhaps the town that has the perfect growing temperature year-round just focuses on farming. Maybe another town to the north focuses primarily on ores and smithing. Maybe another town focuses on the lumber industry, and has a bunch of different tree farms in addition to deforesting acacia and kapok forests. Talk to your players, encourage them to specialize. Make these towns accessible and appealing so players from other towns are more likely to use them and exchange goods, instead of trying to go out and collect everything and create it themselves. Limit plot sizes in the non-farming towns so they can't do the massive farms with every crop.

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Thanks Kitty. I was not expecting such a detailed answer. I had not considered some of your points.

You are right, my consideration was in creating trading. Is just that now the way the mod works is possible for a player or town to have all kinds of trees growing inside their Town and if they are close to a Acacia and kapok forest they will have access to all the wood in the game.

Same goes for food.

As they say necessity is the mother of all inventions, the same apply to trading and commerce, if I am able to produce everything I would ever want, there is no need to trade with anyone.

Well it was worth the try.

Once again thanks. 

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In a somewhat related idea. Maybe we could have the existing biomes with an extra characteristic, that would be temperature and humidity. That would add compatibility with other mods and for future development.

So lets suppose someone decides to finally add Palm trees to Terrafirmacraft, we would like to see those growing in Beaches, but only on the ones with a tropical climate.

Someone else would add Blue wales, but they would spawn in the ocean in cold temperature.

Certain trees would spawn only on hot swampland and not anywhere else. alongside for example alligators.

It gives me the impression that the only thing missing for the existing Biomes to be fully functional in that way is to add this temperature tag to the Biome. So we would have Hot plains, temperate plains, and cold plains.

I know easy to say, no idea how hard too code. Anyways I am just throwing out ideas here.

Once again Thanks for the prompt response and for all the wonderful work on the mod and on this forum.

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There's absolutely no reason to tie those values to biome. They already exist, and an addon creator can access them separately from the biome just like how "vanilla" TFC accesses them separately for special cases like sheep spawning, or swamp biomes.

 

Edit: To clarify, biome and climate are two completely separate data layers, and are not directly tied to each other in any way. However, it is still possible for you to create something that has requirements for both of them. For example, Sheep both require biome data and climate data to spawn. If the biome is mountain or high hills, the temperature still has to be between -10 and 25 for them to spawn. The temperature alone, or the biome alone are not enough for the sheep to spawn. It requires the combination.

 

For a bit of simplification try to think of it as InfoA and InfoB. These two sets of information are completely independent from each other, there are no tags on one that contains info about the other. An object is welcome to just use something from InfoA as a requirement, or just use something from InfoB as a requirement, or it can use both. If you tie the two together, then it would limit flexibility as it would always only have the option of using both.

Edited by Kittychanley
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