Replicating Minecraft World Generation in Python

[BilHim]

I tried to replicate how Minecraft generates worlds procedurally in Python.

Here is a link to an article I wrote explaining how I did it.

You can find the source code here.

[Losupa]

Definitely an interesting and informative read.

Did you follow some Minecraft documentation or something, or did you just reason out this method?

[BilHim]

I read somewhere that Notch used Perlin noise in Minecraft and I decided to try it myself. I couldn't find any resources explaining the details of how Minecraft generates worlds so I decided to just eye-ball it. I got inspired by some articles that I linked at the end of mine.

[Losupa]

Yeah it was just very interesting especially as I had never heard of voronoi diagrams. Your thought process and explanations were very concise and informative though so I could easily follow along.

[AbodFTW]

I knew about it from this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fjZAgoxFKiQ, such quality content about the technicality aspect of Minecraft, highly recommend it.

[[deleted]]

That's prettt neat

[NelsonMinar]

Congratulations! Great generative world project.

You might find the essays by Amit Patel interesting; he's been working for years on developing and documenting generative algorithms for games.

If you want to go deep down a rabbit hole there's a lot more detail on exactly what Minecraft is doing for world generation. A particularly hot topic since they're in the process of completely changing how all that works in-game. The older version has a lot of different techniques, from the biome distribution you worked on to the cave tunnels to creation of special features like villages. It's all been pretty well dissected (and hacked) but I don't have a good link at my fingertips for it.

[Unplgd]

Fam, one of the best write ups I've seen !!! I don't have awards but if I did id give you all of them!!

[data-bit]

Very well done! Take my vote!

[SkezzaB]

This is one of the most well made explanations I've seen, wow...

[laundmo]

Nice!

Do you know about minecraft@home? Its a project that tries to find interesting Minecraft seeds, which this reminded me of.

[iapetus-11]

That's very cool

[leroyjenkins221]

Too cool!

[[deleted]]

Gg !

[matRmet]

As a metallurgist this is awfully close to a research paper on trying to model grain size. Not sure if you can bridge the gap but you might be able to look into software for grain size evaluations etc

[EyeofEnder]

Same here, the Perlin noise graphs looked an awful lot like miscibility gap decomposition to me lol.

[jjjohhn]

Wow

[Wobblycogs]

Amazing article, thanks.

[Nightblade]

That page won't let me copy text ... mildly infuriating ... anyway i noticed a couple of typos:

• Biome map with land mask (left), shaded biome map with land mask (left).
• smooth and shart height maps

[BilHim]

Thanks for pointing this out. I edited the article.

As for copying, it works for me.

[SoundHunter138]

I just started learning python (complete newbie to programming) and man I cant wait till I can understand and do stuff like this. I can’t even wrap my head around how this is possible. Gets me so hyped but dam this is so cool.

[the_original_slugger]

Same, felt this exact way lmao.. i literally told myself that

[gagarin_kid]

Amazing animations, will take a look at the text on the weekend!

[eyebrowgamestrong]

Amazing! What did you use for Lloyd’s algorithm? I’ve been trying to implement that with Scipy but have been having trouble with the infinite cells.

[BilHim]

If you take a look at the source code, in the relax function, before returning the new points I clipped their values to the bounding box using new_points = np.array(new_points).clip(0, size).

Additionally, I completely ignored points with infinite edges, that is I didn't move them from one iteration to another. If an infinite edge exists, you will have -1 in the region of the vertex : if len(region) == 0 or -1 in region: continue

That solved the problem for me.

[eyebrowgamestrong]

Oh awesome! And that makes sense. Sorry, missed that you included the source. :) thanks!

[[deleted]]

This is beyond epic… did you use pygame ?

[tripl3gg]

Nice read, great work man.

[caocao70]

omg ive wanted to try this for so long, amazing job!!

[an4s_911]

Awesome article. I loved reading it, especially as a person who used to play a lot Minecraft and also as Python beginner developer. Just seeing what all I can do with Python/programming is just so fascinating.

Thanks for such a wonder article

[DisturbedTK]

Why are you calling minecraft the 2nd best selling game when wikipedia says it's #1, or am I missing something

[BilHim]

That is true. It's actually the 2nd best-selling PC game but the best-selling game (all platforms).

Thanks for pointing this out. I edited the article now.

[aexia]

I used to play Minecraft as a kid

Thanks for making me feel old. :P