Climate zones

[Hovdavic]

At world creation, one of the options you can choose is what sort of climate to spawn in. I love this option. I always accepted the default (temperate) and it made for a long, harsh winter.(harsh winter enabled, of course) For my latest world I selected starting the climate as warm. It was like a different game! Food spoiled quicker, the growing season was effectively all year long, etc. So my question is basically this: If I were to start in a temperate climate, approximately how many blocks do I have to travel south to get to the same sort of climate I would spawn in for a warm climate, and how many blocks again to get to where I would spawn in a hot climate setting? (I assume the cold and icy variants would be comparably far in a northerly direction) Also, if I go far enough south will I eventually exit the hot climate back to warm, back to temperate, etc? And are the sizes of the zones dependent on the size of the world, or are they proportional based on the size of the world? 

If there are other things associated with climate zones that you can add that I didn't ask, please add those to this thread as well. 

Thanks!

[Streetwind]

This depends on the "pole-equator distance" setting, which is also configurable at world start. A smaller value means that climate changes more rapidly as you move north/south.

[Hovdavic]

Cool! This is helpful. I am still not clear on how this practically plays out though.

The default distance from pole to equator, which I use, is 100K blocks. At spawn if I choose a hot climate, does that mean I am placed closer to the "bottom" of the world map instead of in the center, so If I go south I would hit the equator (and the edge of the map??) soon, but have to travel ~90K blocks to get to the pole? Also, operating with the 100K setting, are the zones evenly distributed more or less, meaning each climate zone is approximately 100K / 6 blocks ~17K blocks "tall" so to go from warm to hot would require at 10K-15K trip south. or 10K-15K trip north to hit temperate?

This isn't critical to my gameplay, but I like understanding these kinds of things as it helps me plan how to play the game. 

[Streetwind]

5 hours ago, Hovdavic said:

At spawn if I choose a hot climate, does that mean I am placed closer to the "bottom" of the world map instead of in the center, so If I go south I would hit the equator (and the edge of the map??)

You would be placed further south, towards the equator, yes. However, the map doesn't necessarily have to end there. The edge of the map is configured separately via the world size setting. Ingame, if you walk across the equator, you will simply enter the southern hemisphere. Seasons will be correctly flipped down there (it's hot and bright in December etc).

Additionally, you're not limited to one equator and two poles. Depending on the world size and your pole-equator distance, you'll get many ones. The climate distribution simply repeats infinitely along the north-south axis as long as there is world left to go on. For example, moving south from the starting position: equator -> south pole -> equator -> north pole -> equator -> south pole and so on and so forth.

(And since the map is square, the poles are not singular points. Just like equators, they are imaginary lines extending infinitely east/west.)

 

5 hours ago, Hovdavic said:

Also, operating with the 100K setting, are the zones evenly distributed more or less, meaning each climate zone is approximately 100K / 6 blocks ~17K blocks "tall" so to go from warm to hot would require at 10K-15K trip south. or 10K-15K trip north to hit temperate?

Hard to answer for sure, since that requires making assumptions. There are no hardcoded separate climate zones; rather, you have a continuous spectrum from pole to equator. Somewhere in this spectrum, the game is placing its starting positions. Did Tyron evenly space them, and did he make use of the full latitude spread available? Or did he hand-pick some locations that offer reasonably different gameplay and biomes? We don't know. We'd have to look into the code to be sure.

There is, however, one thing you can do to get additional data if you're playing on 1.14.3 or newer: type '/wgen pos latitude' into chat. This should print out your current latitude. You can compare this value across different starting positions.

 

Edited February 1, 2021 by Streetwind

[Hovdavic]

This is helpful. I wondered if there would be the possibility of multiple "equators". Thanks for such a good explanation. 

[DrEngine]

On 2/1/2021 at 8:26 AM, Streetwind said:

Additionally, you're not limited to one equator and two poles. Depending on the world size and your pole-equator distance, you'll get many ones. The climate distribution simply repeats infinitely along the north-south axis as long as there is world left to go on. For example, moving south from the starting position: equator -> south pole -> equator -> north pole -> equator -> south pole and so on and so forth.

(And since the map is square, the poles are not singular points. Just like equators, they are imaginary lines extending infinitely east/west.)

 

 

Ok, so no places with 24 hours day / night ?  Because at poles there are difference winter/summer only 6 hours (summer day = 16 hours; winter day = 10 hours).