world gen confusion

[Kolyenka]

Ive been playing for several years but have started having problems generating worlds with seeds and ruins. My last long-ish term world had almost no seeds with few tweaks (little bit arid and more upheaval but that was it), and since then ive tried generating lots of worlds looking for one i like, and I keep having this problem of no seeds and no surface ruins. Even on flat terrain I can't find anything. I have realized that unfortunately turning up forestation seems to remove almost all possibility of surface ruins and seeds, but even when I turned it back to normal, im having problems. The only world i got both in was a hot world where I spawned in a savanna. Tons of seeds there and a respectable amount of ruins...but that's like 1 out of 20.

I guess my main question is: what do each of the world settings affect ? Not what do they DO, but what do they affect--does upheaval make it hard to find surface ruins if turned up but easy if turned down ? That sort of thing. Just looking for some insight into the current worldgen system which I can't understand. This has been a source of confusion for me for the last 2 updates, and the current one as well.

[LadyWYT]

1 minute ago, Kolyenka said:

My last long-ish term world had almost no seeds with few tweaks (little bit arid and more upheaval but that was it), and since then ive tried generating lots of worlds looking for one i like, and I keep having this problem of no seeds and no surface ruins. Even on flat terrain I can't find anything. I have realized that unfortunately turning up forestation seems to remove almost all possibility of surface ruins and seeds, but even when I turned it back to normal, im having problems.

Regarding seeds, they tend to be a lot more common in areas with more rainfall, and less common in arid regions, so making the world more arid overall will reduce your chances of finding seeds. Not all seeds can be found in forested areas either, so increasing forest coverage will probably also reduce your chances of finding seeds.

Otherwise, it's just luck of the draw. Some areas have a lot of ruins or seeds, or both, and some don't. I will also note that ruins can spawn in forests, but are harder to find there given all the foliage. 

4 minutes ago, Kolyenka said:

does upheaval make it hard to find surface ruins if turned up but easy if turned down ?

To my knowledge, upheaval will affect how smooth or rough the world's terrain is overall--a higher setting should make it rougher and a lower setting should make it smoother. As a general rule, increasing that value will probably make things harder to find due to the terrain being more difficult to navigate.

[Kolyenka]

I have been doing most of my recent exploring in creative so i can zoom around, with color accurate map to help find things...not much around unless i keep the worldgen totally standard. I do accept that changing things can make ruins and seeds harder to visually find, but it feels like they are literally not there. 

I did just run 10 new worlds with the worldgen totally standard and was able to find seeds and ruins immediately, although it was always pretty sparse ruins compared to what i expected. and then tweaked the settings just a tiny bit and was back to finding nothing. it's kind of frustrating.

[Thorfinn]

12 hours ago, LadyWYT said:

increasing [upheaval] will probably make things harder to find due to the terrain being more difficult to navigate.

I think it also reduces the number of places ruins can spawn. Cathedrals need a pretty large, relatively flat location, villages, even moreso. Increasing the upheaval or reducing the landform size will decrease the number of potential places they can spawn.

Re: seeds, yes, rainfall, but there is something else, too, and I want to figure out what it is before I go code-diving to confirm it. There are places that look almost the same as the places you find seeds, with similar rain, but no seeds. I think there's a different mix of plants, too, but nothing I've been able to put my finger on apart from, "Huh, this looks like another of those places I'm not going to find seeds." It might be that some types of landforms do not spawn seeds. Dunno. It's just that if my spidey-sense is tingling, I'll rarely find seeds there.

[LadyWYT]

21 minutes ago, Thorfinn said:

It might be that some types of landforms do not spawn seeds. Dunno. It's just that if my spidey-sense is tingling, I'll rarely find seeds there.

Could on to something there. I'm not sure how many landforms there are in the game, but I generally find more seeds in grassland areas, as opposed to swamps, forests, or hills. Of course, that could just be because seeds are easier to spot in flat grassy areas.

[Thorfinn]

4 hours ago, LadyWYT said:

but I generally find more seeds in grassland areas, as opposed to swamps, forests, or hills. Of course, that could just be because seeds are easier to spot in flat grassy areas.

Either or both might be true. Pretty sure swamps and forests are essentially barren, other than maybe at the borders. I'm talking lightly rolling hills, nothing higher than a 1y step anywhere. Some of those have nothing, yet a set of very similar hills 100 blocks away do. Nothing in "C" distinguishes between them. Makes me wonder if all the landforms in the landform.json have been properly accounted for in the decoration algorithm (I forget what it's called), or if there are some of the newer ones that slipped through the cracks.