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TonyLiberatto

Forests on the equator

30 posts in this topic

I would like to suggest having trees back on the equator.

The argument that it is too hot for trees is false. Deserts are not too hot for trees, they are hot because they have no trees.

Is the difference between cause and consequence. Is the wind patterns that bring rain what creates luxury forests or dry deserts.

If you fallow the equator line going around the whole world you will notice that it is  the mostly green forest.

Ammonia in South America( The biggest forest on the world is on the equator) 

The Congo forest is the biggest in Africa

Malaysia and Indonesia in Oceania.

On the other hand the biggest desert the Sahara is on the tropic of Cancer and not on the equator. 

The red Line is the equator the doted line to the noryh is the tropic of cancer and on the south The tropic of Capricorn

Posted Image

 

 

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I was thinking about the same thing when I found out about the worldgen mechanic.

 

Give us deserts mostly on the tropics, and huge forests mostly at the equator. That would make a lot more sense.

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Horse latitudes.

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Horse latitudes.

 

Am I too dumb to understand what this means?

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Am I too dumb to understand what this means?

ah, sorry. The horse latitudes are the dry climate zones around +- 30 degrees from the equator. It has to do with the convection currents that move moisture around. On the earth, they're responsible for the deserts in the north and south of africa and throughout asia and australia.

 

Posted Image

you can see how the cooler air converges on the horse latitudes, which is why they're so dry.

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Thanks for commenting on the tread Dunk.

Now what about the main question? Are we going to have the world generation fixed on the next build?

Is kind of annoying to have  no trees under 5000 z coordinates.

Between north and south hemispheres it adds up to 10000 blocks.

TFC uses a lot of wood. So to have an area this big  without trees is a waste of resources on a server.

Most people will choose to settle close to a forest so they have lots of wood.

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It's not world gen per se that's messed up, its that the temperature calculations are a little incomplete. Trees check the local temperature when spawning and on earth, that temperature is modified heavily by the relative amount of rain that falls. Wetter areas have a more controlled range of temperatures between day and night and don't get as hot or cold during either. In TFC, moisture isn't taken into account (because it's rather difficult and because moisture levels change wildly by biome, which would cause massive temperature fluctuations) so the equator in TFC is as hot as a desert even when it's really wet.

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Would it be possible them to tie tree generation to biome instead of temperature?

We could have a check for temperatures too low so no trees on the frozen lands.

If we have an actual desert biome we could have it generate mostly in the Horse latitudes.

So the Trees would check first for biome and then for negative temperatures but not for positive temperatures.

Gotta remember that deserts  in Real life are hot because of the sand and rocks reflecting the heat. They also get really cold in the night time, because sand and rocks cool very fast.

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Would it be possible them to tie tree generation to biome instead of temperature?

We could have a check for temperatures too low so no trees on the frozen lands.

If we have an actual desert biome we could have it generate mostly in the Horse latitudes.

So the Trees would check first for biome and then for negative temperatures but not for positive temperatures.

Gotta remember that deserts  in Real life are hot because of the sand and rocks reflecting the heat. They also get really cold in the night time, because sand and rocks cool very fast.

Getting away from biomes was the entire point of the climate system that TFC uses- in TFC, biomes really only specify the shape of the terrain and the moisture. The same moisture value in two plains biomes could result in a tundra-like prairie in the north or a savanna in the south. Ideally, I'd want to work on a better moisture calculator

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Since we don't have a moisture calculator and rain is global. Could we then have trees generating by Latitude?

Like certain tree species would only spawn on a latitude range.

One way or another even if is by a config option.

I just feel that from +5000 to -5000 is too much land to be wasted on a server without any trees.

Also it has no base on the real world. Hence the biggest forest in the world are at the equator.

Id we had trees spawning by latitude range we could have a zone maybe corresponding to the horse latitudes that would have no trees, but no more than 1000 meters per hemisphere.  

I am no coder so there is no way for me to code this myself. The only option I have is to ask the developers.

If you all think this is a feature that should not be added to the mod. Could we at least have it as a config option?

I think most server owners would opt to have trees everywhere in their worlds.

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Since we don't have a moisture calculator and rain is global. Could we then have trees generating by Latitude?Like certain tree species would only spawn on a latitude range.One way or another even if is by a config option.I just feel that from +5000 to -5000 is too much land to be wasted on a server without any trees.Also it has no base on the real world. Hence the biggest forest in the world are at the equator.Id we had trees spawning by latitude range we could have a zone maybe corresponding to the horse latitudes that would have no trees, but no more than 1000 meters per hemisphere. I am no coder so there is no way for me to code this myself. The only option I have is to ask the developers.If you all think this is a feature that should not be added to the mod. Could we at least have it as a config option?I think most server owners would opt to have trees everywhere in their worlds.

Rain being global is a problem in itself, one we'd rather fix than simply ignore. One of the advantages to having tree spawning independant from latitude is that it means that trees can grow in much warmer climates at higher altitudes. Similarly, you can get animals like sheep, bears and wolves spawning much closer to the equator on high mountains- almost like small climate islands, completely isolated from their surroundings. My point is that trees should spawn on the equator, but I'd rather do this by fixing the underlying issues with the system than to bring back vanilla mechanics. When we start using explicit values, they become visible. You'd be able to walk to -5000 z for example and see the boundary.
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Rain being global is a problem in itself, one we'd rather fix than simply ignore. One of the advantages to having tree spawning independant from latitude is that it means that trees can grow in much warmer climates at higher altitudes. Similarly, you can get animals like sheep, bears and wolves spawning much closer to the equator on high mountains- almost like small climate islands, completely isolated from their surroundings. My point is that trees should spawn on the equator, but I'd rather do this by fixing the underlying issues with the system than to bring back vanilla mechanics. When we start using explicit values, they become visible. You'd be able to walk to -5000 z for example and see the boundary.

How DO you fix the rain though? There's no real weather hooks I can see, you yourself will have to implement weather system from scratch, pretty much. Not that you weren't able to, but still.

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How DO you fix the rain though? There's no real weather hooks I can see, you yourself will have to implement weather system from scratch, pretty much. Not that you weren't able to, but still.

Thats the plan :) Rainfall on earth is determined by air currents, ocean currents and terrain. Air currents and ocean currents generally follow an equation based on latitude to determine direction, with ocean currents being redirected by continents. For TFC, this means that chunks will have to trace back along the wind current that would pass over them to see where it came from. When that trace finds the ocean, we can determine how much moisture the air current takes on and how the temperature will be affected. This tells us how much it might rain in the original chunk. The advantage of this method is that we only need to check the biome ane coordinates of other chunks, making it fast and accurate :)
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http://stormriders.wikispaces.com/file/view/wind_currents_january.png/293952238/wind_currents_january.png

http://www.physicalgeography.net/fundamentals/images/oceancurrents.gif

these two images demonstrate how currents work. when air currents pass over ocean currents, they can transport the temperature to the land. The cold and warm currents arround south america are why the two sides are different temperatures. the mexican gulf stream is why europe is so warm and the returning cold current is why morroco isnt like the rest of the sahara. The warm, wet current going down eastern australia is why the northeast coast of australia is forested

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Why is TFC terrain generation compared to Earth? What if the "planet" is tilted differently with respect to the sun? What if the continents and mountain ranges are differently distributed. All of these factors would create weather patterns in many different ways. Tweaking tree generation (along with everything else) based on rainfall and temperature is fine but does not necessarily have to mimic Earth, is all i'm saying.

 

EDIT: what would be really interesting is a proper weather mechanism, based on rainfall and temperature. Higher frequency of rain in wetter, hotter areas than drier, colder areas for instance. Storms that occur more frequently in the evening. Light to heavy rainfall/snowfall. Etc.

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I love the idea of having actual weather in TFC. It's really amazing that Dunk is even considering picking up such major task.

I can envision all the possibilities, like actual wind direction and crops wielding according to how much rain they got.

The sail boat would need to be steer when the wind changes direction.

My only problem with this is that I think is such a big project that it will not be ready for B79 and maybe it will be a few builds in the future.

So we will have to live with the tree problem for a couple of years.

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Why is TFC terrain generation compared to Earth? What if the "planet" is tilted differently with respect to the sun? What if the continents and mountain ranges are differently distributed. All of these factors would create weather patterns in many different ways. Tweaking tree generation (along with everything else) based on rainfall and temperature is fine but does not necessarily have to mimic Earth, is all i'm saying.

 

EDIT: what would be really interesting is a proper weather mechanism, based on rainfall and temperature. Higher frequency of rain in wetter, hotter areas than drier, colder areas for instance. Storms that occur more frequently in the evening. Light to heavy rainfall/snowfall. Etc.

TFC IS tilted differently relative to the sun (only slightly though, at 25 degrees). The continents ARE different, but the ocean and wind currents exist because of the way earth turns, not because of the continents, which only modify it. In TFC, ocean currents will be shaped by whatever land masses happen to generate. The rules which I have taken from Earth are only the ones which are applicable to all habitable planets.

 

 

The images I linked showing ocean and wind currents are supposed to demonstrate how the patterns roughly mimic the basic pattern shown here:

Posted Image

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Thanks, i'm quite impressed this is possible in minecraft. Living on the east coast of a continent seems generally more preferable then, using this model shown above. I assume that the location of oceans is determined from the seed number used to generate a world. How do you work out the moisture levels in the interior of very large continents? I assume in such case the latitude and height alone determine temperature. Will seasons and mountains affect your currents?

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TFC IS tilted differently relative to the sun (only slightly though, at 25 degrees).

 

I didn't realize you had things set up to model a tilt. Well done. Does the relative tilt change during the year so that the north pole is 25 degrees toward the sun in June and 25 degrees away in January?  

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I didn't realize you had things set up to model a tilt. Well done. Does the relative tilt change during the year so that the north pole is 25 degrees toward the sun in June and 25 degrees away in January?  

thats how temperatures in different seasons are calculated

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Would be interesting though, if the tilt towards the sun also influenced the lenghts of day and night in the different seasons :D

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Would be interesting though, if the tilt towards the sun also influenced the lenghts of day and night in the different seasons :D

 

Changing night/day length isn't actually possible in TFC without pretty much rewriting everything that's time based completely from scratch. This is a limitation of the Minecraft engine.

 

Now before you say, "But what about mystcraft?"

 

Mystcraft does a lot of of funny tricks and hacks to make it look like the days and nights are longer, but the fact of the matter is that down to the base engine and the timer in the game, it's still the same old thing.

 

Edit: Those "funny tricks and hacks" cannot be used in TFC because everything that is time based is using the timer in the base engine, and has nothing to do with the position of the sun or the moon in the sky.

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Completely reasonable, thanks for the explanation, Kitty :)

Was just an idea that came to my mind while thinking about the earths tilt ...

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It might be possible to adjust the relative lengths of each day by season- we'd only have to change the angle of the sun and the light level calculated from it, but changing the actual length of 24 hours in-game would be a bad idea.

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It might be possible to adjust the relative lengths of each day by season- we'd only have to change the angle of the sun and the light level calculated from it, but changing the actual length of 24 hours in-game would be a bad idea.

Well, if you take our Earth as model here - every day has 24 hours, in summer as well as in winter, regardless where you are. What changes is just the distribution of these hours into light and shadow :)
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