Hello, I'm N8thanH, and welcome back to Across the Map.

So, a little while ago, I heard that they were calling the Minecraft 1.7 update the Ocean/Biome update, and today I wanted to do something different and talk about some of my concerns. So, let's begin.

If you have been playing since when the infamous Beta 1.8 Adventure Update, you most likely have learned that major game/terrain changes can really mess up a world. I do believe that a lot of let's players started new Minecraft worlds at that time.

The Minecraft 1.7 update doesn't sound quite as game-breaking for older worlds as Beta 1.8, but it does sound like an issue. If new biomes are introduced, that means the algorithm that decides what biomes generate where will be different. I find that the shape of the terrain itself to be very different from biome to biome, so basically, that means that pre-update maps would get abrupt edges where the new terrain would start generating, just like what Beta 1.8 did to maps prior to its time.

On my YouTube channel, I have been running a let's play of Minecraft. The world has been coming along great! I have spent a lot of time on the map, and I don't know how I'd feel about my map suddenly generating differently, and I don't want to start a new map. If I did, I'd almost consider the world short-lived. In all honesty, I don't have many complaints about how worlds generate nowadays. I guess it's just... Familiar.

Why not some screenshots of my world to make this post more colorful?


This screenshot is a good visual aid!


This is a view of my farming peninsula, as seen from the way up the central hill.


Home, sweet home, and my staircase cave; an alternate way down to the farming peninsula.



Now, here is where this post about my concerns with the coming update kinda turns into a post about my curiosities about how Mojang will implement the new world generator. I have some theories on how they may do it.

My first theory is that Mojang will add the new world generator as a new world type, like superflat and large biomes. However, if the new biomes bring new resources, then maps utilizing the old generator won't get these features.

Theory #2: Mojang could just go ahead and add the biomes the old-fashioned way, but this isn't the most favorable method to me.

Theory #3: Maybe the new biomes will be made to generate over parts of the new biomes, and the old ones generate in similar areas to where they would before? This would be the most favorable method of implementation for me, and it'd be kind to older maps. To help explain, here is a visual aid I whipped up in Paint.NET.(Great program, by the way. :) ) Pretty rough examples, but you get the picture. Even if it makes biomes a bit smaller, I hope Mojang does something like this.


The savannah wouldn't actually be that small...


Well, that's all I have to say for today! As always, feedback/comments are appreciated, and thanks for stopping by my blog!

I'll see you all next post. Until then!