How to generate a completely flat world?

[Joe Balogna]

I want to play on a world that is 100% flat, for a base-defense style survival. However, I don't know how to do that, and I'm not experienced with coding. Is there a way to make it flat by modifying XMLs; if so, how?

[Kunovega]

I have no idea how to do it planet wide by default at the scale you are implying

I can think of one way you could do it that would be a pain in the neck: make a really large POI in the editor that is already flat and than import the gigantic flat area into a map

Typically if I want a flat area in game I just make it manually. Digging down any hills/mountains, filling in any holes or pits

If the area is voxel flat but visually lumpy you can drop wood frames on it and pick them up, it will make the top of the blocks default flat instead lumpy and natural looking

I make big flat areas in game by hand, but by big I mean 50x50 or 100x100. I've never attempted doing it map wide

[Auryon]

I really hope they fix the RMG hills/mountains in A16, it's really out of control, if you want to build something big like a town you need to dig a lot which can burn you out, honestly I think it's faster if you just make an island on water yourself then flat out the ground manually (if you use the creative menu of course)

[Joe Balogna]

Thanks for the replies! What I am trying to do is make a new survival world, completely flat, but still with randomly generated towns. I want to do this as a sort of Heaven-Vs-Hell game, meaning I have access to flat land and vast resources (wood and iron), but I'll be going against an increased number of enemies.

Anyone know of a way to modify XMLs so terrain generates really flat?

[Kunovega]

Originally posted by Auryon:

I really hope they fix the RMG hills/mountains in A16, it's really out of control, if you want to build something big like a town you need to dig a lot which can burn you out, honestly I think it's faster if you just make an island on water yourself then flat out the ground manually (if you use the creative menu of course)

If you were doing it with the creative menu, turn on admin tools. You can flatten an existing town using supah diggah, just knock down all the buildings, it will take seconds

Then you have a big flat surface with roads already on the ground

Originally posted by T.w² Officer Joe Balogna:

Thanks for the replies! What I am trying to do is make a new survival world, completely flat, but still with randomly generated towns. I want to do this as a sort of Heaven-Vs-Hell game, meaning I have access to flat land and vast resources (wood and iron), but I'll be going against an increased number of enemies.

Anyone know of a way to modify XMLs so terrain generates really flat?

Do you really need the whole world flat or just your center?

Cuz you can take over the central hub of a random gen map, flatten all the buildings and you have a big canvas in the middle of flat land to make what you want

[Auryon]

Originally posted by Kunovega:

Originally posted by Auryon:

I really hope they fix the RMG hills/mountains in A16, it's really out of control, if you want to build something big like a town you need to dig a lot which can burn you out, honestly I think it's faster if you just make an island on water yourself then flat out the ground manually (if you use the creative menu of course)

If you were doing it with the creative menu, turn on admin tools. You can flatten an existing town using supah diggah, just knock down all the buildings, it will take seconds

Then you have a big flat surface with roads already on the ground

I thought that is a valmod tool, in vanilla I think you need to modify the XML file which I can't on the server I play

[Kunovega]

Originally posted by Auryon:

Originally posted by Kunovega:

If you were doing it with the creative menu, turn on admin tools. You can flatten an existing town using supah diggah, just knock down all the buildings, it will take seconds

Then you have a big flat surface with roads already on the ground

I thought that is a valmod tool, in vanilla I think you need to modify the XML file which I can't on the server I play

No, the game itself has admin tools. And if you aren't the admin you don't have access, and if you are the admin/owner you could edit the XML files for a server

I'm not talking any mods

[Joe Balogna]

I gave the admin tools a try, and unfortunately, it's much too slow and imprecise. It would take days to clear out land this way

[Kunovega]

Originally posted by T.w² Officer Joe Balogna:

I gave the admin tools a try, and unfortunately, it's much too slow and imprecise. It would take days to clear out land this way

I'm not sure how it's "imprecise" it shoots in a laser straight line with no recoil. And it's faster than any other tool in the game by an extremely wide margin

The key to remember is that if you are standing your straight line is 2 blocks high. If you want to shoot a perfect straight line at parallel to ground level, crouch and aim forward. You'll take out the bottom block of every building. Strafe your way sideways accross a city and every building will fall. Strafe back the other way and you clean up the debris that fell down

I was able to level out diersville in about an hour as a test:
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=908344244

The blue smudge of water is where the hospital used to be

If you accidently shoot the ground, simply fill in the blocks with asphalt and replace it

I've done massive building projects, and I've done them using a shovel or an auger on servers where I wasn't the admin. I'd much rather use the supah diggah when available

Once you have the height you want, go back over it, fill in holes with the right ground type and drop wood frames (and pick them up) to smooth out any ground level bumps from imprecise natural terrain

Edit: Since I've been asked a few times how to turn on the admin tools, here's a quick guide:
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=908616258

[Kunovega]

Originally posted by T.w² Officer Joe Balogna:

Thanks for the replies! What I am trying to do is make a new survival world, completely flat, but still with randomly generated towns. I want to do this as a sort of Heaven-Vs-Hell game, meaning I have access to flat land and vast resources (wood and iron), but I'll be going against an increased number of enemies.

Anyone know of a way to modify XMLs so terrain generates really flat?

I recently found out how to do this and remembered this thread, so if you haven't figured it out already, here you go:

The file you are looking for is Random World Generator Mixer, spelled like this:

rwgmixer.xml

In:
C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\7 Days To Die\Data\Config

You can either navigate to it, or when starting the game select launcher, tools tab, open game folder, data, config

I recommend making a backup copy of the rwgmixer file so you can restore it later if you want to

All of the settings in the rwgmixer are what is used to generate a new world, changing things here will not change games that are already created. So you can change the file, make a new world, and change the file to something else (or back to default) and each game will keep it's generated settings

The line you are searching for is: called "ClampOutput" it will set the upper and lower limit of a generated world. Ctrl + F and Search for "ClampOutput"

It will be in a module set like this:

<module name="clampOutput" type="ClampOutput">
				<property name="sourceModule" value="scaleBiasOutput"/>
				<property name="bounds" value="-28,190"/>
			</module>

What you are changing are the two numbers in "bounds" value. The default is -28, 190

For reference: bedrock is at -57 so if you want a nice flat world with a decent amount of dirt before hitting bedrock, set the numbers to 0,0 like this:

<module name="clampOutput" type="ClampOutput">
				<property name="sourceModule" value="scaleBiasOutput"/>
				<property name="bounds" value="0,0"/>
			</module>

Experiment with other heights or sleight variations of up/down until you find what you want. The world still generates biomes, cities, points of interest, traders, etc as normal. The only wierdness I encountered were with lakes which were all 1 block deep. You may need to include a larger negative value if you want lakes deeper than this. (points of interest with precut water like pools or sinkholes were unaffected and poi with basements and underground chambers still generate them under the surface correctly, at least from what I saw)

But basically just pick your chosen height above bedrock and the world is generated within the boundary of up/down by ClampOutbut and if the boundary are the same 10,10 or 100,100 or whatever, then it will have no height variation other than what is built into a prefab poi

[YamaKami]

1st start a game, 2nd enable cheat mode, 3rd spawn in a 600 quality auger (then spawn more), save some mat sapce for gas, spawn gas. Now get to work, and it will be a gawddamn miracle if you finish before you are dead

[Kunovega]

Originally posted by Ricky Reinfield:

This sounds pretty cool, Id like to see a totally flat RandomGen.. That would be interesting to do a playthrough on.

I just spent a couple hours experimenting with one before posting this to make sure everything worked. It's surreal

But then a lot of things that matter simply aren't affected. Cities and towns were already flat, 4 corner travel areas are already flat, traders (at least inside) are already flat

So really the big changes are the wilderness being just wide open flatness and all the roads were... functional. Then there's the water which is basicaly all puddles. I think I personally might prefer a little variation and may do a play through at -10, 10

That would eliminate the giant bizaro terrain while keeping subtle fluctuations, at least thats the hope

[YamaKami]

Originally posted by Ricky Reinfield:

Originally posted by Kunovega:

I just spent a couple hours experimenting with one before posting this to make sure everything worked. It's surreal

But then a lot of things that matter simply aren't affected. Cities and towns were already flat, 4 corner travel areas are already flat, traders (at least inside) are already flat

So really the big changes are the wilderness being just wide open flatness and all the roads were... functional. Then there's the water which is basicaly all puddles. I think I personally might prefer a little variation and may do a play through at -10, 10

That would eliminate the giant bizaro terrain while keeping subtle fluctuations, at least thats the hope

Just being able to see far wherever you go would be cool (not have to climb the highest point near you to see over the terrain) i mean

Still going to have to climb in height to see over all the tree's or any nearby POI's. I mean if perfectly flat a resource rock can obscure a ton of your view depending on how close or far you are from it.

[YamaKami]

Originally posted by Ricky Reinfield:

oh and the pathing when fighting zombies on hills, i cant stand when they walk at an angle towards you and path weirdly.

It's more bothersome that my speed is reduced on a slope going up while the zombies are uneffected by it. Because being undead negates the laws of physics and biology I guess....

[YamaKami]

Originally posted by Ricky Reinfield:

Originally posted by YamaKami:

It's more bothersome that my speed is reduced on a slope going up while the zombies are uneffected by it. Because being undead negates the laws of physics and biology I guess....

Spam jump while climbing, u wont lose all that speed, just a little

Unless you break a leg lol, I just take the angle usualy. I'm great at having glass femurs in the game. I have one friend that always has splints on him, that he carries around just for all my random leg breaks or failed shotcuts out of the base lol. Still hills and water should effect zombie speed IMO. Water used to slow them some which is just logical really....

[KellyR]

Originally posted by Kunovega:

Originally posted by T.w² Officer Joe Balogna:

Thanks for the replies! What I am trying to do is make a new survival world, completely flat, but still with randomly generated towns. I want to do this as a sort of Heaven-Vs-Hell game, meaning I have access to flat land and vast resources (wood and iron), but I'll be going against an increased number of enemies.

Anyone know of a way to modify XMLs so terrain generates really flat?

I recently found out how to do this and remembered this thread, so if you haven't figured it out already, here you go:

The file you are looking for is Random World Generator Mixer, spelled like this:

rwgmixer.xml

In:
C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\7 Days To Die\Data\Config

You can either navigate to it, or when starting the game select launcher, tools tab, open game folder, data, config

I recommend making a backup copy of the rwgmixer file so you can restore it later if you want to

All of the settings in the rwgmixer are what is used to generate a new world, changing things here will not change games that are already created. So you can change the file, make a new world, and change the file to something else (or back to default) and each game will keep it's generated settings

The line you are searching for is: called "ClampOutput" it will set the upper and lower limit of a generated world. Ctrl + F and Search for "ClampOutput"

It will be in a module set like this:

<module name="clampOutput" type="ClampOutput">
				<property name="sourceModule" value="scaleBiasOutput"/>
				<property name="bounds" value="-28,190"/>
			</module>

What you are changing are the two numbers in "bounds" value. The default is -28, 190

For reference: bedrock is at -57 so if you want a nice flat world with a decent amount of dirt before hitting bedrock, set the numbers to 0,0 like this:

<module name="clampOutput" type="ClampOutput">
				<property name="sourceModule" value="scaleBiasOutput"/>
				<property name="bounds" value="0,0"/>
			</module>

Experiment with other heights or sleight variations of up/down until you find what you want. The world still generates biomes, cities, points of interest, traders, etc as normal. The only wierdness I encountered were with lakes which were all 1 block deep. You may need to include a larger negative value if you want lakes deeper than this. (points of interest with precut water like pools or sinkholes were unaffected and poi with basements and underground chambers still generate them under the surface correctly, at least from what I saw)

But basically just pick your chosen height above bedrock and the world is generated within the boundary of up/down by ClampOutbut and if the boundary are the same 10,10 or 100,100 or whatever, then it will have no height variation other than what is built into a prefab poi

The file seems to have changed for alpha16, the clampoutput module looks like this:

			<module name="clampOutput" type="ClampOutput">
				<property name="sourceModule" value="biomeJiggle"/>
				<property name="bounds" value="0,1"/>
			</module>

Any ideas on how to get a flat world with the new format? I'm assuming the "0,1" they're using is some sort of scale value for the range, 0,1 being full range, 0,0.5 being like half the range, but where the range itself is defined, I have no idea.

Edit: Actually, it looks like this has gotten a lot more complex, with certain biomes only spawning at certain altitude ranges... Flattening the world might result in single biome worlds.