About world size

[Laiwan]

Hello guys,

I wonder if I am understanding the concept behind the world size correctly. Am I right to assume that if I set world width and length to 10k and polar distance to 5k, that the poles would be right on the edge of my map to the south and to the north? Like this:

North pole (edge of the map) <-- 5k (getting colder) <-- Equator --> 5k (getting warmer) --> South pole (Edge of the map)

What would happen if I set world size to 25k x 25k and still have polar distance at 5k? Would I be able to travel beyond the poles? What happens to the climate then?

Edge <-- 12,5k (??) <-- North pole <-- 5k (getting colder) <-- Equator --> 5k (getting warmer) --> South pole --> 12,5k (??) --> Edge

 

May I ask what your preferred settings regarding world size are when you are playing a single player game?

 

 

 

 

[Streetwind]

The climate repeats infinitely along the north-south axis as long as there is world left to go:

north pole -> equator -> south pole -> equator -> north pole -> equator -> and so on.

As for how the poles are positioned on a 10k map with 5k pole-equator distance? I actually don't know. I wondered this before, but didn't arrive at a conclusive answer. One one hand, it makes intuitive sense to align the climate to a world edge that way; on the other hand, the 0,0 coordinate is always at a latitude of 45° north, and you'd intuitively expect there to be half a world in each direction. You cannot have both at the same time. And then there's the fact that there's two coordinate systems in VS - one absolute (used in the data files), and one relative to the world spawn (displayed to the player). It gets confusing.

I think the only way to tell for sure would be to actually make such a world, go into creative mode, and fly to the northern and southern world egdes. I've been too lazy to try, so far

[Laiwan]

Hey Streetwind,

thanks a lot for your reply. I actually did it (but in survival mode). When I reached the southern edge it did not look like a pole to me. I am going to do some further testing in creative mode. I just abandoned my 60h+ save file because I realized that I had a 1 million world with 100k equator. I hate this to be the standard setting. I would not see any southern biome in forever. When you first start the game you have no clue what it all means (and I guess I still don't really understand it).

Cheers,

Johannes

[Thalius]

I had it explained to me once in this way, and it made clear sense afterwards.

Picture a wavelength diagram such as the one I've added.

At the crest (top) of the wavelength you would have the polar (frigid) regions, and at the bottom of the wavelength you would have the equator (hottest) regions.

With the pole to equator distance set at 100k blocks apart, the distance between one pole and the next (one crest of the wave to the next one) would be 200k blocks. Squarely between the two would be the equatorial, hot climate zones, 100k blocks away from each arctic pole.  This would give you about 5, 200k zones from the southern edge of the world to the top edge of the world with a pole at each end of a section and an equatorial zone in the middle of them.

If you leave your world at 1mill blocks high and shorten the distance between the poles, you end up with a shorter "wave", giving you more crests and valleys- more polar and equatorial regions closer together.

If you were to travel north in your world, for example, you would eventually come to a huge mass of mountains in the arctic- an arctic shield wall, of sorts.  This would be one of the arctic poles. Cross that and keep going north and it would gradually begin to get warmer until you came to an equatorial climate. Keep going north and it would eventually get cold again and you would come to another arctic zone, and it would be about 200k blocks north of the first arctic zone you encountered. Keep going past THAT one, and it would start getting warmer again, and then you would come across another arctic zone... etc, etc, until you had traveled 1mill blocks to the northern edge of your world.

That is the best way I understand it at this time. Hope that helps.

~TH~

 

 

 

Edited March 20, 2021 by Thalius
Better Illustration Added

[Hal13]

of course you could manipulate the world in having a single southpole and a single northpole, just start in the tropics, that'll set the middle to somewhere around the equator. (in that 10k world length 5k distance to pole scenario)

Edited March 21, 2021 by Hal13

[Laiwan]

Thanks again for all the replies. I think, based on your comments, I figured out what happened in my 10k map with 5k equator distance:

• I was wrongfully assuming that I spawned on the equator but as Streetwind mentioned you spawn at 45 degrees latitude, meaning half way between north pole and equator (at least if you decide to spawn in temperate climate)
• That is why I never could find the south pole on my map. I needed to travel 2,5k to the equator and then another 5k to the south pole. But from where I spawn, my map only offers 5k into each direction, so I passed the equator and ended up in the same climate zone I started in but in the southern hemisphere. South pole was cut off.

The following picture should illustrate what happened. Do you guys agree or is there a problem with my logic?

 

[Streetwind]

7 hours ago, Laiwan said:

Do you guys agree or is there a problem with my logic?

Only that you accidentally labeled the equator as "north pole"

But yeah, if the world is centered on the player spawn, then that is precisely what I would expect to see. You can further research this using the command /wgen pos latitude at your northern and southern world borders to print your current latitude into chat.

[Laiwan]

Upsi. It was late!

[TristamIzumi]

20 hours ago, Streetwind said:

the 0,0 coordinate is always at a latitude of 45° north

Can there be some pretty big temperature differences at "45° north"?

My main reason for asking is in the two worlds I've played the most in, they have had very different temperature patterns. On one, even in the peak of summer it never gets above 20-25 C, and in the winter gets down to -20, with snow falling as early as October and persisting until well into April. On another, it was getting well into the 30's by early summer, and didn't get snowfall until January, and didn't stay freezing for long. Both have bases built at spawn, and have default temperature settings in worldgen.

[Streetwind]

1 hour ago, TristamIzumi said:

Can there be some pretty big temperature differences at "45° north"?

Yep. For some reason, the world temperature seems to get randomized and tied to the seed. But only if you don't click the advanced customize menu, because when you do it seems to get randomized regardless of the seed.

...Yeah, it's extremely weird. I did a whole systematic test series a few weeks ago and passed the results on to Tyron; it's probably not intended to be this way. I mean, for the 1st of May at 8:00 in the morning at 45° north, I got anywhere between -15°C and +37°C in my testing.

[Jessica O.]

I read somewhere once (Can't remember where, or how old it was) that Spawn was at a random latitude between an Equator and a Pole to the North, I just assumed when I started with colder Spawns that I was closer to the pole than the equator, or visa versa for a warmer spawn area.... But is that not true? That some worlds are just colder on average all over?!

[l33tmaan]

ICE AGE!

Edited May 16, 2021 by l33tmaan

[Streetwind]

@Jessica O. Yeah, some worlds are just colder than others, and the spawn latitude is always fairly close to 45°N. In fact, if you create a superflat world, it is always perfectly 45°N. The temperature can still vary wildly.

You can check that this is true by using the command /wgen pos latitude to have the game print out your current latitude.

[Asreal]

so my question would be: how do you get the poles to line up with the edge of the world if the map is centered on the player at 45 latitude?
I wanted to make something close to the scale of earth with the poles in the right spot

Edited November 28, 2024 by Asreal

[Streetwind]

1 hour ago, Asreal said:

how do you get the poles to line up with the edge of the world if the map is centered on the player at 45 latitude?

You don't. It's not possible in the base game.

Perhaps you could write a mod that adds another choice to the starting climate dropdown menu in the world customization settings, one that spawns you exactly on the equator. Then you would set the pole-equator distance to half the value of the vertical world size, and that would give you a pole at each world border. After the world has been generated, you could then use admin commands to teleport to the latitude you actually want to spawn in, and move the default spawn point to that location.

[Krougal]

0,0 is only at 45 if you choose a normal start. The player spawn is always 0,0 so if you choose a different temperature, then 0,0 is going to be at a different lattitude.

I have set custom world settings and teleported around trying to figure it out and gave up. I do not understand the reasoning behind repeating the bands, nor do I understand why it doesn't seem to be questioned by anyone else around here. I can't come up with a technical reason for it, and any other reason would just be plain stupid.

[Thorfinn]

Not that it's unquestioned, just largely we're indifferent. So what if this "world" continues beyond what a sphere would? This world is self-evidently not a sphere, so why would one expect it to have the characteristics of one?

Most games play out within 10k or 20k of spawn. Extra-polar regions may as well not exist, and from a mapgen POV, they don't. 

"But this world is not earth!" Yes, and?

[EDIT]

"Most games..." that do not involve teleporting or creative mode, anyway.

Edited November 29, 2024 by Thorfinn

[Krougal]

4 hours ago, Thorfinn said:

Not that it's unquestioned, just largely we're indifferent. So what if this "world" continues beyond what a sphere would? This world is self-evidently not a sphere, so why would one expect it to have the characteristics of one?

Most games play out within 10k or 20k of spawn. Extra-polar regions may as well not exist, and from a mapgen POV, they don't. 

"But this world is not earth!" Yes, and?

[EDIT]

"Most games..." that do not involve teleporting or creative mode, anyway.

As you've pointed out It's rather pointless for it to exist.

It may not be Earth, but unless it has 5 suns how is it going to have 5 sets of climate bands? Magic?

Like I said, any way you slice it, it doesn't make sense.

It isn't a sphere for technical reasons, and I get all that about the bending and distortion at the edges and all that, but it isn't like having it wrap again fixes any of that.

[Maelstrom]

There are points where a game fails to be realistic so that the game remains fun.  In this case, Tyron has made the world the way it is for reasons that make it easier for him to provide us this game, despite the unreality involved with those design/coding decisions.

[Thorfinn]

It's kind of a sop for those who insist on having coordinates.. Relative coordinates do not give away the game like absolute coordinates would. And before you say, "Yes, but there's no reason one pole couldn't be -30k, the other +20k on a 25k pole to equator," no, all you need do is travel to the pole to figure out your absolute latitude. Making you traverse at least 2 full worlds means it's unlikely that anyone who is not "cheating" is ever going to know his absolute latitude.

Personally, I don't see the big deal. Is it that hard to just roleplay it, if it's that important to you? "Any place north of here is the north pole"?

Edited November 29, 2024 by Thorfinn

[Asreal]

 

16 minutes ago, Maelstrom said:

There are points where a game fails to be realistic so that the game remains fun.  In this case, Tyron has made the world the way it is for reasons that make it easier for him to provide us this game, despite the unreality involved with those design/coding decisions.

well, yes but also a setting that makes the polar regions not repeat and line up with the edge of the world doesn't seem to be a particularly hard challenge to solve, and it wouldn't change the funness of the game. I think the reasoning behind having multiple climate bands was to emulate walking 'around' the world, so when you enter the next band it is like you are continuing down the other side of the sphere, except all the terrain is now different.

I also was not requesting this as an official change to the game as it is a pretty niche mechanic, most people will never travel so far to enter the other climate bands, I was just asking the question of if it was possible for my own worlds, to try and make an accurate model of what would be considered an earthlike planet to play in

edit:
as for the coordinate system, I personally don't know how relative vs absolute coordinates gives away anything, I personally like to play without maps or coordinates since I find that funner

Edited November 29, 2024 by Asreal

[Thorfinn]

30 minutes ago, Asreal said:

as for the coordinate system, I personally don't know how relative vs absolute coordinates gives away anything, I personally like to play without maps or coordinates since I find that funner

Me, too. 

The difference is most notable when using translocators. Without coordinates, you have to more or less make every translocator its own origin, as you are probably not going to even be able to recognize massive landmarks like oceans or mountain ranges. The only way of kind of putting them in order relative to each other would be with, for example, the map to the RA. With coordinates it's trivial. With absolute coordinates, you have your exact location pegged.

38 minutes ago, Asreal said:

I was just asking the question of if it was possible for my own worlds, to try and make an accurate model of what would be considered an earthlike planet to play in

You can still play as it if were, right? Once you get to permanent ice, just call that the pole. Or that the pole is a day or two further. Whatever you like. The world won't generate that next "band" unless you decide to explore there.