Whats New in Minecraft 14w17a - Customize World Options, Choose a Biome

Posted in minecraft

Minecraft 14w17 is part of Minecraft 1.8 and for a change it's a big version with a major feature included. Thanks to a guy called Ryan Holtz, an ex-modder now working for Mojang, we have a new feature - Customize World Options.

Included in vanilla Minecraft for the first time, the Customize World Options allows players to fine tune the world they want to create. We're not just talking about bonus chests or allowing cheats, this time you can fine tune the depth of rivers, lake rarity, coordinate scale and many others.

The part most Minecrafters are going to enjoy is the option to specify the biome you want. No searching around for those dam horses, just go for the biome of choice. Unfortunately, you can only pick one biome at the moment rather than a selection of biomes - but its a start.

How to use the Customize World Options screen

The options screen is accessible via a new button just under the world type drop down. If you choose World Type: Customized, you can then click the Customize button underneath to open the options screen:



There are 4 pages of options you can configure. I've included screenshots of each of the pages below.

Page 1: Sea Level, Villages On/Off, Caves, Ravines..


Page 2: Ore distribution


Page 3: Noise, Depth, Height scale, Biome Depth


Page 4: Noise Scale, Depth Noise, Coordinate Scale, Depth Scale


The most appealing of these are the 1st and 2nd pages showing sea level, villages, ore distribution etc.. The other pages modify scale/depth which without guidance from Ryan (or further experimentation from the community) will be frustrating to understand at first. I'm sure there will be more documentation to come, but page 1 and 2 offer the immediately tweakable options.

So, on page 1 there are the following options:

• Sea Level: the block height of sea level
• Strongholds: yes/no
• Mineshafts: yes/no
• Ravines: yes/no
• Dungeon Count: the number of dungeons in the world
• Water Lake Rarity: low (common) to high (rare)
• Lava Lake Rarity: low (common) to high (rare)
• Biome: the biome used for this world
• Caves
• Villages
• Temples
• Dungeons
• Water Lakes
• Lava Lakes
• Lava Oceans

Page 2 is also very interesting, allowing us to choose ore distribution for the first time in Minecraft. For each type of ore you can choose:

• Spawn Size
• Spawn Tries
• Min Height
• Max Height

These ores can be customized:

• Dirt
• Gravel
• Granite
• Diorite
• Andesite
• Coal
• Iron
• Gold
• Redstone
• Diamond
• Lapis

As you can see, simple settings which are quite self explanatory. If you wish to see more of the custom options, see the video below:

More options coming soon

Some options didn't make it into 14w17a but based on the work Ryan has done previously (with Wedge), you can expect the Customize World Options screen to include these soon:

Blob sizes

e.g.

Diamond Blob Size: custom/numeric
Diamond Blobs: numeric
Lapis Blob Size:..
..

World previewer

Preview your world before accepting the options you chose. Shows a cross section of the Minecraft world, 9x9 array of chunks. A familiar tool for anyone whose used a custom world generation tool before.

Sharing your world preset/options

Once you've found the perfect combination, you can share your new preset with friends via the share link. Shown in the screenshot below, it's just a string containing the option values, delimited by commas:

Other features and Secrets

World Borders

World borders can be customized with the new world border command. Rather than straying into an oblivion, you can specify physical borders for the world:

/worldborder set <width in blocks>

The worldborder is a square shape and its always active, the default width is 60 000 000 blocks (-30 000 000 to 30 000 000 for x and z).

If you want to change the center of the square you use this additional worldborder command:

/worldborder center <X> <Z>

The worldborder looks like a "mesh" that surrounds your world. Imagine being inside a giant fishing net with shiny blue lines and you'll get the impression. The screenshot below shows the world border, which is impassable to mobs and players:

Download 14w17a

As usual, make sure your profile is opted into the experimental features and 14w17a will download and install automatically.