Wolrd gen is holding back the game

[Dobromir Bogatev]

Before I start I want to say that I'm no here just to hate on the game.I love Vintage story. It has so much systems that I always wished Minecraft had. I love the direction. What I want this to be is my opinion why the game wont reach the heights of Minecraft.

In my opinion the world gen is what is holding the game back. This becomes apparent simply by going creative and flying around. I tried quite a few mods that improves the world generation, but the variety and uniqueness of biomes is just lacking for proceduraly generated world. Just by flying around you can see how its lack of variety produces a world that is highly repeated and looks kinda bland and boring in my opinion. I think the game needs more variety in places, but more importantly in biomes. I think it also needs much more things, like the trader that can serve as landmarks.
I am saying this because in the end what makes me come back to Minecraft is exactly this. If the worldgen was interesting I wouldnt even come back to MC.
What are your opinions on this? Are you happy with the worldgen?

[LadyWYT]

17 minutes ago, Dobromir Bogatev said:

What are your opinions on this? Are you happy with the worldgen?

Welcome to the forums! I'm happy with what's available so far. Yes, there could be a bit more variety with flora and fauna(which I use mods for), however, the game is also still very much unfinished. So I expect more variety to be added as time goes on. Minecraft went through similar growing pains in its early days, though one could argue that it's still going through growth pains in the present given some of the recent news.

As for biome variety, Vintage Story is quite different from Minecraft when it comes to how things generate. Minecraft has patchwork biome generation, whereas Vintage Story aims for a more realistic approach by default. The more realistic approach means that instead of "biomes" you have climate bands instead, with colder regions at the poles and tropical regions at the equator. On default settings, the distance from the polar regions to the equator is quite large, so you'll be traveling for a few hours minimum real-time either north or south before you see a noticeable change in the climate. The benefit of that setup, aside from the immersion from a realistic layout, is that seasons feel properly immersive as well. The drawback is that you don't really see as much variety in the landscape since the flora and fauna are sourced from that particular climate band.

Regarding Minecraft's patchwork biome generation, the strong point there is that you can easily get a large variety of stuff packed into a smaller region. If you don't like a certain biome, it's easy enough to find something different by running around for a few minutes. Of course, the main drawbacks with this kind of generation is that seasons aren't nearly as immersive, since you can rapidly shift from temperate to tropical to temperate to polar with relative ease, and going north/south doesn't necessarily mean finding more cold or warm biomes.

I will note that Vintage Story does have a patchwork generation option. I've not played with it myself, but it's there for those who'd like that kind of experience(though it does warn you about breaking seasonal immersion).

[Thorfinn]

I'd add that one of the benefits of the current worldgen is that assuming constant game settings, because your starts are all generally similar, but at the same time, very different in particulars, you learn a variety of strategies to make that particular climate region "work". Those strats often do not work in different climates. By the time you  get reasonably good at the "biomes" in the game, the next major version is out. And while there's a lot the same between versions, your old min/max strategies generally need to be tweaked because of the additions and changes.

[LadyWYT]

6 minutes ago, Thorfinn said:

By the time you  get reasonably good at the "biomes" in the game, the next major version is out. And while there's a lot the same between versions, your old min/max strategies generally need to be tweaked because of the additions and changes.

Given that hippos and crocodiles were teased in one of the recent news posts, I'd say that the tropical climates are about to get tougher to survive in. As it stands now, they're easy mode.

[Dilan Rona]

There is also not the jarring sudden change in biomes as done in Minecraft. You can practically see the biome borders as it goes from one extreme to the other in some cases.

It is a lot more natural as implemented in Vintage story. And as stated above, the game is still far from complete.

[Dobromir Bogatev]

Ah yes for sure the game will evolve more with time. No doubt about that. The more natural transition feels quite nice as well. I just hope with time they will develop more and varied biomes.

[-Glue-]

Honestly, I didn't really appreciate VS's world gen until I went out on a huge expedition for the story content. In small areas, the game is very similar, but as you explore further, you realize the world generates in a lot of unique ways, all depending on different variables. The lack of distinct biomes/flora is definitely there, but the actual geology and landforms are really quite unique across the whole world. The issue is that you need to go waaaaaay out to really experience it, and you can't just shrink the landform size without sacrificing that experience.

Speaking of. I play with these settings. It makes the world a LOT prettier imo. I had one other person thank me profusely for it, so it must be doing something right lol.
Landcover: 80%
Landcover Scale: 125%
Landform Scale: 120%

Though, I do agree, I would love some more features for different biomes/regions, outside of geology. Such as more variety in the flora/fauna. (Would kill to see some mangrove or weeping willow trees.) There is some variety as you go way out, but we could really do with more of it. I'd love to see swamps or marsh areas get actual muddy marsh blocks that slow you down. Or really any unique game mechanics to make different regions really stand out.
The game is still super early in development, so I am sure we will get a whole lot more biome content in the future, and I am really excited to see what we get! Personally, I think I would like to see caves get upgrades first though. They are a bit bland.

Edited April 21, 2025 by -Glue-

[LadyWYT]

15 hours ago, -Glue- said:

Though, I do agree, I would love some more features for different biomes/regions, outside of geology. Such as more variety in the flora/fauna.

I think one way to achieve some of that diversity is to have more specific spawn conditions for flora and fauna. A lot of what we have now has a pretty broad spectrum of suitable spawn conditions, which means you'll see those animals and plants a lot more commonly than those with more narrow spawn conditions. Of course, the drawback to having something with a narrow range of spawn conditions means that becomes much harder to find, on average.

[Morndenkainen]

I wouldn't call this game super early development as it's been around a couple years... I just bought a 4 pack recently and my friends and I are really loving the game so far. Worldgen is pretty nice. and doesn't have huge sudden jarring changes like minecraft did. TBH, we've all found it to be way better/more realistic than MC. Honestly, I love the fact that it's an actual journey to go somewhere... Like it takes you a good few gamedays to get to a different biome and temperature region. That gives you an excuse to setup outposts and make actual routes to get places.

While I would love to see some sort of electricity/redstone/pistons/gates type system implemented, I'm also very appreciatve that the devs have tried to keep this game as true to life as it is. Then again, I've barely made it through my first winter, so I'm sure I've got a ways to go.

[Thorfinn]

17 hours ago, -Glue- said:

There is some variety as you go way out, but we could really do with more of it. I'd love to see swamps or marsh areas get actual muddy marsh blocks that slow you down

Fair. Looking forward to the howls of protest when swamp creatures have a better movement speed through swamps than seraphs...  

I strongly suspect that's in the works, though. Just as there will likely be creatures like wolves that can easily run you to ground, I suspect there are carnivorous muskrats or pirhana in the offing that will make jumping through the shallows not as great an idea as it currently is. 

But you need to approach it carefully or it might chase away any of the player-base who are not willing to adapt.

Edited April 21, 2025 by Thorfinn

[LadyWYT]

51 minutes ago, Thorfinn said:

Looking forward to the howls of protest when swamp creatures have a better movement speed through swamps than seraphs...  

You don't even have to wait for that kind of update; it can happen now. A bear chased me into a puddle yesterday and I died.

[Thorfinn]

19 minutes ago, LadyWYT said:

You don't even have to wait for that kind of update; it can happen now. A bear chased me into a puddle yesterday and I died.

Yeah, I died to a wolf the other day, jumping into a pond. It was like, "That would not have happened before!" and I was happy that now, it did happen.

Edited April 21, 2025 by Thorfinn

[Arasine]

I agree the worldgen is VS's weakest part currently. Sinkholes to the center of the Earth every few tens of meters in open meadows is one thing that highlights this to me. That and the broken ground that is near impossible to travel through with block instability on. 

+1 for more Dev time on world gen before more story and other features

[StCatharines]

17 hours ago, LadyWYT said:

You don't even have to wait for that kind of update; it can happen now. A bear chased me into a puddle yesterday and I died.

Thoughts and prayers. 

[Tom Cantine]

The main thing I would like to see in a worldgen update is something I don't think can be done with the basic random noise model: rivers. That is, proper rivers that start somewhere in the mountains with snowmelt, and follow the terrain downhill eventually to the sea. 

The software seems to be able to handle ponds, pooling of water in depressions at various elevations, but that's on a very local scale, and easily computable within a few loaded chunks just as their generated, but a proper river could go for thousands of chunks.

I have no idea how it would be done, but it's something I'd really like to see, complete with actual currents that would both affect sailboat/raft/item movement and provide a navigational guide to or away from the sea. 

And if something like this were established in worldgen, you'd finally have a place for those salmon to spawn!

[Thorfinn]

Something like that is relatively easy in a mostly sea map, but the larger the land masses get, the harder it is to get a path that continuously drops to sea level. A small rise here and there can be worked around usually, but there is a whole lot of the world that's roughly sea level, but with sheild-wall mountains between the source and the delta. In that kind of terrain, you end up filling all the lowlands with runoff lakes.

I worked on something like that in another voxel game (no, not that one) and the only thing I ever got that worked kind of ok was to require passes in all mountain ranges. Workable, but looks goofy as heck, especially if you use relatively small regions. Still had the issue that if there were a lowland in the middle of the continent, it would flood all the lowlands into a massive inland sea.

Edited April 22, 2025 by Thorfinn

[Dobromir Bogatev]

A lot of you say that when you explore its not that samey, but what made me start this conversation is actually exploring in creative with cheats. I tried various mods as well.

Namely I tried: Terra prety, Vanilla plus World gen, Rivers, Fields and plateaus, Plains and valleys. Also I tried tinkering with the settings, combination of these mods. There are recommended settings in the mods themselves and I also tried to change it to something I would like more. Landcover, Landcover scale, Upheaval rate, Landform Scale, World height.
I tinkered everything. I think I created around 50 worlds and I just flew around to see how it looked.
I did not start this post because I didnt like how it looks in like one survival world. I started it because after so much tests and tinkering it all looked kinda samey. Maybe more or less ocean, bigger fields, or maybe higher hills, but still kinda the same in all directions.

[Scorpixel]

I do think the biomes are already quite serviceable for being this early in the process (although there is the issue of heat not being an issue), as most are likely expecting variety in fauna and flora to slowly expand along the main content.

What i'd like to see is simply larger terrain, as landform scale seem to only affect how vertical slopes toward high ground are. Wider plains, more treacherous mountains, etc.

Also a way to reliably see the result of worldgen settings (such as a simulated minimap to reload and see), as it was pretty hard to generate continents with connected waterways that aren't too wide (my best shot being 40% landcover 200% landcover scale) so that boats and mounts aren't mutually exclusive in utility.

[Thorfinn]

I wasn't doubting you, @Dobromir Bogatev. IIRC, there are only 48 basic landforms, so you are bound to notice patterns. Easy to solve. Just add more landforms. Heck, you could pick up a text editor and start adding some.

Biomes is a little more tricky. VS is deliberately keeping things closer to normal earth biomes. No neon pink grass or trees with hair instead of leaves. There's also the obvious choice of mostly familiar earth-type animals. What makes a "biome" is the distinct flora and fauna, and there's not a lot of base game variety yet. Depending on your classification system, there are not much more than a couple dozen terrestrial biomes, and under most systems, quite a lot fewer. That's not to say you can't have biomes with walking trees and flying carnivorous cows. That's just mod territory, not base game.

Edited April 24, 2025 by Thorfinn

[Glaciers]

The worst thing of worldgen is SuperHole Everywhere. Randomly a bad surprise, Especially some holes were covered by leaves.

[Thorfinn]

Pretty sure that was also a design choice, @Glaciers. When I started a few years ago, most caves (and thus most translocators) had no path to the surface. Ones close to the surface would snake their way through and have lots of more or less horizontal access points, and those still exist, but the deeper caves you had to find by sinking shafts at random. Though I suppose there's no reason that they, too, could not go horizontal just below the surface, so they resemble the old style caves.

[Lollard]

Default worldgen could be better. Could use more impressive terrain formations like mountains and ravines, smaller distance between different rock stratas so you don't have to run for hours looking for lime-producing rocks, and way smaller distance to the equator so you don't have to run in one direction for a crazy amount of hours to find the rest of the game's content. You can fix this by customizing the world, but I think the default should be different to give uninformed players a better taste of the game.

[Thorfinn]

Limestone is a little thin on the ground, both from gameplay and realism viewpoints Pebble beaches should be a lot more common, and those tend to be heavy on limestone. Maybe coral is coming in the sea update which would solve that whole problem. As would the addition of mussels. And lime speleothems should also be reasonably common, at least a little in any caves/crevices more than a half-dozen decades old. Rain scrubs CO2 out of the atmosphere, and as it drips through the rocks and evaporates, the lime has to end up somewhere. If there's a config setting on the mod Limestone Speleothems (or something like that) that's a great adjunct to the game. As is, it is way too much lime.

Smaller rock layers, not a huge fan. They are already pitifully small.to be realistic. Gameplay-wise, I don't see anything wrong with taking a day or three to get to a new rock layer. Not like I have to be back in time to work by tomorrow morning or anything.

Same with pole to equator. If you travel only during daytime, it's only a couple days to redwoods, another couple days to at least subtropics. I think there's a reason that the story locations are spread out east-west -- you would be bouncing over the equator otherwise. The way its done, you get the impression of a world larger than your back yard, which is a good thing.

[LoveWyrm]

I'm torn on this issue. I'm an avid Arma franchise player, and terrain is basically a secondary protagonist... (deuto..de...secondary protagonist!) and engagements can be vastly different depending where it's fought.

 

I'm also very much a fan of treacherous terrains of all sorts, I find braving them 'questing' ..aka... kind of cozy fun, can't really explain it. If I were to make a game, it would be heavy on logistics just to deal with terrain.

 

Buuuut....I also don't want vintage story to be a theme park ride...technically, it should be, cause the realworld is very very diverse but it's rarely 'epic epic' in many places.

There's a reason why that crystal cave in Mexico is such a big deal, for example.

 

So while I agree that terrain could have more spice (although I have come across some really impressive overland caves and chasms) I'd probably like it the most if the world map was taken as a whole, divvied up into sections, where a 'world wonder' generator does some magic.

Have the grand canyon over there, the crystal caves there...  mount everest over yonder, etc.

 

I can totally see 'epic mapping' get out of hand so I'm persnally erring on convervative world gen, but I can't lie...imposing/impressive terrain IS a bit rare.

One or two guaranteed mega wonders per map would be sweet. Otherwise, I do think there's already plenty enough to work with.

The issue with the blandness is probably also due to terrain having no real effect. If I were to make a bog? Your boots would get stuck in there, I like terrain as area denial unless terraformed with great effort. I like it so much that I would even accept terrain that is barely traversable and so resistant against intervention that during normal playthrough lengths, they remain virtually indomitable.

..Not completely, but virtually (would suck to spawn in an inescapable landscape, after all)

[Dobromir Bogatev]

I get your point. However my original point was never to make the terrain like an amusement park or epic. However the terrain of vintage story is kind of repeatable and non distinctive. This is my point. If we compare it to IRL for example, there is uniqueness to the places. Wherever you live if you just get out and take a few photos you will find landmarks and interesting terrain. My point is that no matter what direction you take in Vintage story its always uninteresting and kind of the same.