Info on the world generation

[Jackal Black]

 

Hi everyone, I wanted to ask all the players who have a good knowledge of the game, how do the biomes work in world generation? I know we have the polar zones in the extreme north and south of the map.
But do we also have an Equatorial zone? Where maybe gazelles spawn? And the desert areas with cacti that I know are there but I never know exactly where?
I have a basic survival world, with all the basic parameters set by the game, I just touched the tree growth rate, the amount of copper and removed the time gear usage counter.
Having said that, I would like to understand where I am in the world, am I further north of the map? Am I in a southern area? Do these biomes really exist or are they rare to find?
Here are these things so I would like to understand.

[Streetwind]

Biomes in VS are not predefined and placed, but rather emergent from world creation and climate bands.

Each game world is made up of several maps that all overlay each other. There's the terrain map that the player sees and interacts with, but there's also a temperature map, a humidity map, a forestation map, and others. Thus, any given block in the game doesn't only have its terrain coordinates, but also an average temperature, a humidity value, a forestation value, a latitude, etc.

Every plant in the game is defined with a range of spawn conditions: a minimum and maximum temperature, a minimum and maximum humidity, and so on. For each area, the world generator looks at what content it has available for the given conditions, and then populates the area with that content. For example, areas with extremely low humidity will become deserts. But other factors influence the type of desert. You won't find any cacti around the default spawn latitude of around 47.5°N; instead you'll get rolling hills of gravel, sometimes with sparse shrubbery or the occasional tree, and sometimes not. But near the equator, deserts absolutely do turn up with sand dunes and cacti. Animals also follow the same rules; down south you may get hyenas instead of wolves.

Since the game always spawns you in the northern hemisphere, walk south to find hotter biomes like jungles and savannahs, or north to find colder ones like glacier fields. Your setting for starting climate determines the rough latitude you start at. The setting for pole-equator distance determines how far apart the extremes in the climate distribution are. Poles and equators repeat endlessly on the north-south axis up to the world border; on the east-west axis, climate doesn't change, so you will only encounter variations of biomes allowed at the current latitude.

[iuno]

Yeah, you always start in the northern hemisphere. If you didn't touch any of the world size settings then the pole-equator distance is 100,000 blocks meaning you've got a good bit of walking to do to get to some of the hotter biomes. Hopefully you'll get lucky and find a few translocators or something to help you travel. You don't need to go all the way down to the equator to find deserts and the like, but you will need to go a significant distance, probably at least 25,000 blocks or so. 

[Jackal Black]

On 11/16/2023 at 6:30 PM, Streetwind said:

Biomes in VS are not predefined and placed, but rather emergent from world creation and climate bands.

Each game world is made up of several maps that all overlay each other. There's the terrain map that the player sees and interacts with, but there's also a temperature map, a humidity map, a forestation map, and others. Thus, any given block in the game doesn't only have its terrain coordinates, but also an average temperature, a humidity value, a forestation value, a latitude, etc.

Every plant in the game is defined with a range of spawn conditions: a minimum and maximum temperature, a minimum and maximum humidity, and so on. For each area, the world generator looks at what content it has available for the given conditions, and then populates the area with that content. For example, areas with extremely low humidity will become deserts. But other factors influence the type of desert. You won't find any cacti around the default spawn latitude of around 47.5°N; instead you'll get rolling hills of gravel, sometimes with sparse shrubbery or the occasional tree, and sometimes not. But near the equator, deserts absolutely do turn up with sand dunes and cacti. Animals also follow the same rules; down south you may get hyenas instead of wolves.

Since the game always spawns you in the northern hemisphere, walk south to find hotter biomes like jungles and savannahs, or north to find colder ones like glacier fields. Your setting for starting climate determines the rough latitude you start at. The setting for pole-equator distance determines how far apart the extremes in the climate distribution are. Poles and equators repeat endlessly on the north-south axis up to the world border; on the east-west axis, climate doesn't change, so you will only encounter variations of biomes allowed at the current latitude.

Thank you very much, you were very helpful in understanding how the game creates the world map