Minecraft 1.13 Update News

[ABParadigm]

I would like to mention that the Fish Basement's caves are for the most part lit up with torches, though the occasional wood planks may be placed so I could block up water. I think torches should be considered a player placed block and not rewritten, simply because of cave lighting. I would hate to go over and re-light those caves after spending so long meticulously mobproofing the fish basement. The drowneds that will be spawning are enough of a problem. Realistically, it isn't like the strip mine will make too much of a difference in overall content if you aren't basing it on render distance away from the chunk the torch was placed in. If you were doing it in a radius from the mineshaft, then I'd be a little worried if we would lose out on some ocean-y stuffs.

I also would like to ask about beaches. I'm not sure what your script consists of, but hearts of the sea may be a little annoying to get your hands on if you don't regenerate the occasional beach. I'm not sure if that is possible, nor probable, given the scripts but I thought I would mention it.

[ABParadigm]

Just had a thought about torches, as well as blocks that may be considered up for regeneration. Mineshafts, Villages (which may generate on a coastline or island), and Strongholds generate with torches, so it may be a bit hairy (since mineshafts are quite common) given my above statement. I'm not sure how you could fix this to make only specific areas lit by torches stay, other than to detect concentration of torches (or light levels, maybe?), which I am not sure is possible.

[Zedwick]

You have a fair point about nearby caves being lit up. The effort put into torching up surrounding chunks near your base should be preserved. So perhaps a few "soft" player-blocks could be defined which would not allow a chunk to be regenerated if it is within x chunks of a chunk containing other non-natural player-placed blocks. If some torches were found in the wilderness with no other player blocks within a 200 block radius, they would be considered for regeneration.

Alongside the blocks in each chunk are some details about the structures which were generated. There's bounding box data for all structure elements in the chunk (coordinates for the two opposite corners of the structure piece), which would allow me to check for blocks that structure specifically generates within the bounding box of where it generated. The script can then discount those blocks as naturally generated, so if torches generate as part of a mineshaft, it would consider those torches as natural blocks rather than place-placed, whilst noting the other torches in the same chunk as non-natural.

[Mellorian]

Would spawners face regeneration too? I have two in nearby oceans on Zz that aren't yet built upon, and I know of a couple other spawners other players have that are only torched up and claimed.

Of course, having no spawners be regened would probably be a bad idea, as people could fly over a regened ocean looking for old chunks that would most likely have a spawner under them.

[Zedwick]

Would spawners face regeneration too? I have two in nearby oceans on Zz that aren't yet built upon, and I know of a couple other spawners other players have that are only torched up and claimed.

Of course, having no spawners be regened would probably be a bad idea, as people could fly over a regened ocean looking for old chunks that would most likely have a spawner under them.

I'd not given a lot of thought to spawners. I had thought other player-placed blocks would be a good indication, but as the mobs are usually moved from the spawner out of the chunk the majority of the player-placed blocks may not be in the same chunk as the spawner. One easy check may be to look for water in the spawn area around the spawner. With that all said, I may choose not to regenerate any chunks with a spawner in them anyway.

We could come up with some rules for preventing them from being regenerated. In the above I talked about water in the spawner room being an indicator of it being built up, but we could also add no regenerating spawners which have been lit up with torches inside if we wanted to prevent non-built up but claimed spawners from regenerating. However, I think spawners will regenerate in the same location (so long as the generator has not changed) so it may not matter if a spawner you know the location of regenerates.

What do you think? Do you just not want spawners to be removed once they've been discovered (and not reset if built around)? Or do you want to avoid them being reset once defeated in all cases?

[Mellorian]

Claims seem to be the overall solution, though perhaps light level or water would be a good indication also, as if it's not made into a spawner grinder it will most likely be lit up - though lava would also influence the light levels.

I'd imagine you're right about spawners being in the same place when regenerated, though it's probably better to be safe than sorry in that regard, plus how some of the spawners might still be in an old updates' chunks.

I'm not much of a coder person, but I know that it's reflex to claim a spawner you come across that you wish to keep, and I doubt there are any around that haven't been claimed that would be missed.

I think, whatever the method behind it, it's best to regen unwanted spawners under oceans, to prevent biome clashes like the biome walls found on the edges of oceans currently.

[Zedwick]

Claims seem to be the overall solution, though perhaps light level or water would be a good indication also, as if it's not made into a spawner grinder it will most likely be lit up - though lava would also influence the light levels.

I'd imagine you're right about spawners being in the same place when regenerated, though it's probably better to be safe than sorry in that regard, plus how some of the spawners might still be in an old updates' chunks.

I'm not much of a coder person, but I know that it's reflex to claim a spawner you come across that you wish to keep, and I doubt there are any around that haven't been claimed that would be missed.

I think, whatever the method behind it, it's best to regen unwanted spawners under oceans, to prevent biome clashes like the biome walls found on the edges of oceans currently.

Yeah, I think Zz' claims will be important to take into consideration for Zz. This script is primarily being created as a universal script to regenerate chunks on both LVS and Zz, so it needs to be designed with the assumption that claims do not exist at all. Should be relatively simple to later tack on "if a claim extends into this chunk, do not regenerate it" once the script is otherwise complete.

For this update, there won't be quite as drastic changes between old and new terrain. The new ocean biomes will exclusively replace locations of ocean biomes in the world generator from 1.7 through to 1.12.2 so there will hopefully mostly just be cliffs below the water. However, the majority of the oceans on Zz are still pre-1.7 land so you may be right in expecting some odd islands or sink-holes formed in terrain by the odd spawner or claim in the middle of the existing ocean terrain.

I would just like to point out that the example crafting table does not fall under "blocks that cannot exist in the world without players" as stated in the previous meeting notes.

Firstly, crafting tables spawn in village librarian houses. Secondly... some people are in the habit of littering worlds with crafting tables they never intend to return to.

Ara posted the above in response to the meeting notes thread.

I aim to add a list of natural blocks generated per structure, and so it will be able to see the structure generated in the chunk and determine if the crafting table were generated within a natural structure where it would naturally generate.

We could include crafting tables as one of the "soft" player-placed blocks mentioned above, alongside torches, which would only regenerate a chunk which includes these soft blocks if it is within x chunks of a chunk with other player-placed blocks; This should allow regenerating wilderness chunks with litter without regenerating chunks in and around a player's base or work area.

Though it may get a bit complicated in trying to remove chunks which include litter, like cobblestone pillars, planks used to cross ravines, crafting tables in the middle of fields, torches dotted throughout caves and land. I would definitely prefer to act with caution, with chunks left as-is when we might have liked them to regenerate rather than regenerating chunks which were important to a player. Far easier to extend the script at a later date to regenerate those chunks left behind, rather than try to build in a way to un-delete those chunks and spend years dealing with support requests from players who have had their builds deleted.

[ABParadigm]

I know of some specific areas that have odd planks in them, and cobblestone pillars, etc. that are mainly around spawn and the warps. Would it be too ridiculous to allow a bit of a trash pick-up crew to go around and pick out some of the oddly placed blocks they see? Given the update's iminent explorative features, maybe if someone sees a block that could be removed they should be allowed to remove it just out of clutter sake. This obviously would not get everything... but it may help the script a little bit. A little community service, if you will.

[Zedwick]

We will not be updating to 1.13.1, as there are still instances where chests are wiped in the world upgrade process.

[ABParadigm]

What will we do? Do we wait until 1.13.2 (or 1.14) or do we try to tweak/rewrite the world upgrade process itself somehow? Or do we not update altogether?