Random gen biome layout exactly the same.

[Ceó Hjort]

So i've been generating some maps for the game to see which i liked when i noticed the layout of the biomes are EXACTLY the same with the only 'difference' being rotation. Is there any way to get an actual random map? It is worth noting this is with both 8k and 4k maps.
https://imgur.com/a/e5XZ0wt

[Shurenai]

Currently biome layout is pretty well hard coded. It used to be random and it lead to 'biomes' that were like, 50x50 blocks patching the land while sometimes making larger contiguous areas.

You can try the third party world generator Nitrogen; But bven Nitrogen currently doesn't have great options for getting truly Random biome layouts iirrc as it tends to be snow in the north, desert in the south, greenspace in the middle with patches of burnt or wasteland throughout.

[Sinbad]

Also recommend Nitrogen. It is true that biomes aren't fully customizeable, you can remove the options of snow north or desert south but I think that means no snow or desert at all but to be fair in reality you would find snow in the north.

The wasteland splats are a love hate thing.

[Donmegawatt]

Highly suggest the "CompoPack" + "NitrogenMap" combo. Adds ton of content and a much improved Random map experience.

[SylenThunder]

Originally posted by Donmegawatt:

Highly suggest the "CompoPack" + "NitrogenMap" combo. Adds ton of content and a much improved Random map experience.

Just be aware that if you are hosting a dedi or playing multiplayer with Compo-Pack, all clients will need to have the mod installed.

[Serath]

Originally posted by Shurenai:

Currently biome layout is pretty well hard coded. It used to be random and it lead to 'biomes' that were like, 50x50 blocks patching the land while sometimes making larger contiguous areas.

You can try the third party world generator Nitrogen; But bven Nitrogen currently doesn't have great options for getting truly Random biome layouts iirrc as it tends to be snow in the north, desert in the south, greenspace in the middle with patches of burnt or wasteland throughout.

That doesn't explain why the maps are always the same though, when they used to be.

I thought the OP was rolling a streak of bad dice, but the pics looked familiar...I'm getting that too!

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2063948477

(Excuse the name I used, it's a Garfield meme...yes I'm weird.)

18.0 seemed to of had random maps, but these last two patches, it didn't dawn on me until now that they were the same. It can't be a coincidence.

[Shurenai]

Originally posted by Serath:

Originally posted by Shurenai:

Currently biome layout is pretty well hard coded. It used to be random and it lead to 'biomes' that were like, 50x50 blocks patching the land while sometimes making larger contiguous areas.

You can try the third party world generator Nitrogen; But bven Nitrogen currently doesn't have great options for getting truly Random biome layouts iirrc as it tends to be snow in the north, desert in the south, greenspace in the middle with patches of burnt or wasteland throughout.

That doesn't explain why the maps are always the same though, when they used to be.

I thought the OP was rolling a streak of bad dice, but the pics looked familiar...I'm getting that too!

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2063948477

(Excuse the name I used, it's a Garfield meme...yes I'm weird.)

18.0 seemed to of had random maps, but these last two patches, it didn't dawn on me until now that they were the same. It can't be a coincidence.

Hmm, That's odd.. It shouldn't be -exactly- the same, It's supposed to have some variance in the size and shape of each biome. The only thing that should remain static is that snow is on one end, wasteland on the other, desert and forest in the middle with forest closer to the snow, and burnt forest off to one side in the middle fo the two..

[dszombiex]

Originally posted by Shurenai:

You can try the third party world generator Nitrogen; But bven Nitrogen currently doesn't have great options for getting truly Random biome layouts iirrc as it tends to be snow in the north, desert in the south, greenspace in the middle with patches of burnt or wasteland throughout.

Originally posted by Sinbad:

Also recommend Nitrogen. It is true that biomes aren't fully customizeable, you can remove the options of snow north or desert south but I think that means no snow or desert at all but to be fair in reality you would find snow in the north.

The wasteland splats are a love hate thing.

Both these statements are false.

[Shurenai]

Originally posted by dszombiex:

Originally posted by Shurenai:

You can try the third party world generator Nitrogen; But bven Nitrogen currently doesn't have great options for getting truly Random biome layouts iirrc as it tends to be snow in the north, desert in the south, greenspace in the middle with patches of burnt or wasteland throughout.

Originally posted by Sinbad:

Also recommend Nitrogen. It is true that biomes aren't fully customizeable, you can remove the options of snow north or desert south but I think that means no snow or desert at all but to be fair in reality you would find snow in the north.

The wasteland splats are a love hate thing.

Both these statements are false.

Oh? Interesting, Let's have a look see...

https://prnt.sc/s1hshu
https://prnt.sc/s1hsm8
https://prnt.sc/s1hstq

Here are the three biome selection boxes, Note that 'Random' is not an option. You can omit certain biomes, Add more of them, Make it only a single biome, Pick a different border biome than normal, have snow in the north and desert in the south, or just snow in the north, or just desert in the south...

But all of that is manual player choice, And it is not random. It is methodical, planned out, and set up in such a way as to have fairly realistic biome options.

You can do natural; And get something like reality, And that's about the closest you can get to random- But even that results in an orderly biome distribution. Only greenland/snow/desert/burned/wasteland is a single biome- Not a bit of randomness to speak of. Add burned&wasteland or more burned & wasteland only adds, or adds more of, those patches i mentioned in the first post.

I did mention that it tends to have snow in the north and desert in the south..And that's because the north/south selection box has that as the default; The alternatives are to have snow in the north and no desert in the map at all; Or to have desert in the south and have basically no snow in the map at all or to have neither snow or desert. There is an exception here in that any area with mountainous terrain height will be snowy, and any with low height will be desert; But that is not purposeful biome randomization- It's that the generator has values for "If above X it's snow, if below Y it's desert".. And the randomness is not within the biome layout itself, but in the terrain generation.

Nitrogen is a great third party world generator and I love it- It does a lot of awesome things and I've enjoyed every world I've made with it..But biome randomization is not one of the things it really does. It has a great deal of control and choice and options, though.

So I'd personally say neither of our statements are 'false';


With all that said; My opening post was made without realizing that the OP was getting literally the exact same biome distribution down to the exact shape and size of each biome to the pixel; That's my fault for only glancing at the images in the opening post. What I percieved in the post was that the OP had an issue with how snow is always in one direction, desert in the other, green in the middle, burnt off to one side, and wasteland to the far south; and it sometimes rotates around but always maintaining that layout; And i compared that to Nitrogen which does very much the same thing so I concluded nitrogen wouldn't really serve what the OP wanted.

It shouldn't be like that; The vanilla biomes Should be varied, with for example sometimes very little greenspace as the desert generated far larger than normal and stuff. But the layout of those biomes with snow in one direction, desert in the other, wasteland past the desert, green in the middle, and burnt off to one side is going to be the result pretty much no matter how many worlds you generate, even without this identical-to-the-block bug. The only thing that changes is how large or small each biome is, and some somewhat subtle differences in the exact shape of each that results from the changes in size.

So with the new information that OP is getting literally identical-down-to-the-block biomes, I'd like to push Nitrogen forward a bit more confidently this time. It IS a great map gen utility for 7DTD, and even if I don't consider it's biome generation to be truly random, It does have a lot of great options for making a map suited to you, and in light of the identical-down-to-the-block biome layout you're getting from the vanilla generator at the moment, Is comparatively much more random.

https://forums.7daystodie.com/forum/-7-days-to-die-pc/game-modification/tools/116609-tool-nitrogen-a-random-world-generator-for-7dtd

[dszombiex]

Originally posted by Shurenai:

Blah blah blah ...

https://imgur.com/a/hXsJ1F9

[dszombiex]

Originally posted by Shurenai:

Originally posted by dszombiex:

Both these statements are false.

Oh? Interesting, Let's have a look see...

https://prnt.sc/s1hshu
https://prnt.sc/s1hsm8
https://prnt.sc/s1hstq

Here are the three biome selection boxes, Note that 'Random' is not an option...

...There is an exception here in that any area with mountainous terrain height will be snowy, and any with low height will be desert...

https://imgur.com/a/YXHA3Jm

The biomes are not determined by altitude necessarily. There are mountains without snow, deserts with mountainous features. Not sure what you're talking about.

https://imgur.com/a/9UeL5b6

If you're trying to make the super reductionist case that nothing that is software only is truly random, yes you're right. But that's getting kinda extreme.

[Shurenai]

Originally posted by dszombiex:

https://imgur.com/a/hXsJ1F9

Originally posted by dszombiex:

https://imgur.com/a/YXHA3Jm

The biomes are not determined by altitude necessarily. There are mountains without snow, deserts with mountainous features. Not sure what you're talking about.

Both of the things you have provided images to are for Landscape randomness; This topic is about Biomes; More specifically about Biome Layout. At no point did I say nitrogen has no randomness whatsoever; I stated that nitrogen does not have truly random biome generation. And that there is no 'Random' option for biome generation.

I will take the fall here in that my wording was not clear enough on the mention of mountains = snowy; There are some mountainous areas that are not snowy- typically residing in a valley, since everything above a certain altitude from 'sea level' gets snow capped; A shorter mountain is still a mountain; A mountain in a valley is still a mountain; And a mountain in a desert is still a mountain. I should have elaborated slightly that not all mountainous areas are snowy.. I did mention it was height related in passing, but was not clear enough.

And no; I'm not trying to make a reductionist case. I'm trying to say that the biome layout is NOT random. I was actually trying to upload my own preview map but imgur's being slow and you beat me to it. So I'll use yours as an example. (Mine still hasn't finished uploading even after all the below was written.)

https://imgur.com/a/9UeL5b6
It is really hard to tell terrain height from an extreme overhead view like this; But I'll try to cover it anyway. What you point to as 'Plains snow', If you look carefully it is ringed with a decline in terrain that slopes into grassy land. Where the snow starts, it's high enough to trigger the altitude biome change that Nitrogen uses; And it only gets higher from there.

With the Butte Desert, look at the fringes of the area, where it meets the grassland- Notice the slopes? Yeah. Downward slopes from grassland into desert. Pretty much everywhere there is desert in this map you linked is downward slope into desert; Sometimes sharply, sometimes gradually as with the flat desert.

Likewise, Mountains with no snow area low down near the water level; Using the one you poiinted to, you can see very little sloping between the mountains and the water around it; But then as the slopes get steeper just down right of where you point to, It becomes snowy.

Nitrogen does do some biome painting of the terrain around the edges of areas that reach the right height limit to trigger the altitude biome swap. To make it look a bit more natural; This can be seen in a number of places across the map where the biomes meet the water.

But the biome placement itself is not random in this case; It's following the general lay of the land/altitude. If you keep track of your altitude and go to the flat area in the snow, and then to the flat area in the desert, there should be a noticable gap in altitude; Desert areas are close to around maybe 3-10 blocks from sea level, While the snowy areas are as much as 50 or more. You'll note, looking at this, that the desert at no point meets the snow, because of this altitude based generation; They cannot meet without a sheer cliff being formed; and so there is green space separating the two always.

The biome randomness perceived in this image are based entirely on the landscape itself; That's all I'm trying to say. It is not the biome placement itself that is random, but the landscape that is then painted over.

My opening post, again, Was regarding to the biome layout specifically- Nitrogen does not allow for randomized biomes. It follows a fairly strict set of rules for them.

http://prntscr.com/s1o8ki I just took a printscreen since it was faster- With the default nitrogen biome settings, this is the kind of map you will always see. Snow to the north; Desert to the south; Altitude appropriate splotches through some of the green land; no burnt forest. You can generate a thousand thousand times with the default settings , and you will Always get snow to the north, Desert to the south, green in the middle.

Or if you set it to 'Only greenland' with north/south biomes set to 'None', it will always be grassland from one end to the other; And the result is a comparatively flat looking landscape with very little in the way of extreme highs or lows. https://prnt.sc/s1ocxv Even the highs here look kind of subdued, and I don't expect that it reached much over 50ish blocks at the highest points; Or whatever the breakpoint is in nitrogen for the altitude based biome swapping.

The Layout of the main biomes is always the same, just like how vanilla is always snow to one side, wasteland to the far side, green between desert and snow, and desert between green and wasteland- with burnt forest connected to green and off to one side, In Nitrogen the biome layout (which is what i was talking about to begin with) is static; And the small amount of randomness that comes in the altitude based mini biomes is based entirely on the Landscape randomness; It's not random itself. You won't see a 150 block tall grassland or desert mountain- And you won't see a flat snowy plain at 1 block above sea level.

I am really bad with words when I'm tired. Hope this englishes well enough. And sorry if it's a little babble-y. Prolly repeated myself once or twice.

[dszombiex]

Originally posted by Shurenai:

With the Butte Desert, look at the fringes of the area, where it meets the grassland- Notice the slopes? Yeah. Downward slopes from grassland into desert. Pretty much everywhere there is desert in this map you linked is downward slope into desert;

https://imgur.com/a/Jn1K05m

Bro, come on.

Edit:
Here's another one -

https://imgur.com/a/0kdNdDM

[dszombiex]

Originally posted by Shurenai:

...Likewise, Mountains with no snow area low down near the water level; Using the one you poiinted to, you can see very little sloping between the mountains and the water around it; But then as the slopes get steeper just down right of where you point to, It becomes snowy...

https://imgur.com/a/Z3Zr9Z1

Yes, it follows some rules for biomes. Not quite as strict as you make it out to be. And yes, it uses some pixel maps then adds noise to them to get biome splats.