The always up-to-date definitive guide to terrain generation: part two - Making a flat landscape

The first part of this series: part one - prerequisites and setup


At the end of the last tutorial, we left off with the basic framework for a terrain generator. Now is the fun part: Actually making some terrain! Open up BasicChunkGenerator.java. Just for extra redundancy, I will post the entire class file so far here. Note that I added the method getDefaultPopulators, which allows us to tell bukkit what block populators we are going to use. More on this in the next section.

The generateBlockSections method is where we are going to focusing on today. Inside it, we need to:
Create an array to represent the blocks in the chunk. We will call this array, for simplicity, chunk.

Code:java

byte[][] chunk = new byte[world.getMaxHeight() / 16][];

Remember that the array that generateBlockSections returns is actually an array of block sections, and each of them are 16 blocks tall, so the max height / 16 is the number of block sections in each chunk.
Next, we need to loop through all of the blocks in the chunk that need to be set to stone:

Code:java

 
for (int x=0; x<16; x++) { //loop through all of the blocks in the chunk that are lower than maxHeight
for (int z=0; z<16; z++) {
int maxHeight = 64; //how thick we want out flat terrain to be
for (int y=0;y<maxHeight;y++) {
 
                }
        }
}

And inside the deepest loop, set them to stone using the setBlock method earlier.

Code:java

setBlock(x,y,z,chunk,Material.STONE); //set the current block to stone

setBlock takes care of all the nitty-gritty math involved in figuring out the offsets.
Lastly, we need to return "chunk":

Code:java

return chunk;

And we are done! Now let's test it out. You can test it out with a multi-world plugin like multiverse, but I personaly like to create a test server on my desktop, drop my plugin into the plugins folder, and add the following to my bukkit.yml:

Code:

worlds:
    world:
          generator: BasicTerrain

note that the default name for the default world is world, unless you have changed it.
Then, I delete the default world, start the server, and pray it works! Whatever method you use, go ahead and build, then run the plugin.


It Works! Here is the working eclipse project. (note that you will need to re-link bukkit.jar to it)
https://dl.dropbox.com/u/12637402/gentut/setup/BasicTerrain.zip

Stay tuned for the next part which covers Block populators!

Sorry, I forgot to mention the getDefaultPopulators method in this tutorial. It goes in your chunk generator and is needed for when we do block populators:

Code:java

 
/**
* Returns a list of all of the block populators (that do "little" features)
* to be called after the chunk generator
*/
@Override
public List<BlockPopulator> getDefaultPopulators(World world) {
ArrayList<BlockPopulator> pops = new ArrayList<BlockPopulator>();
//Add Block populators here
return pops;
}
 

Sorry 'bout that!
(Placeholder for error correction and links to future parts)
Part 3:http://forums.bukkit.org/threads/th...eneration-part-three-populators-galore.94083/
Part 4: http://forums.bukkit.org/threads/th...-to-terrain-generation-part-four-hills.94164/
Part 5: http://forums.bukkit.org/threads/th...-to-terrain-generation-part-5-3d-noise.94312/

EDIT by Moderator: merged posts, please use the edit button instead of double posting.

 

Did you post the source code (as a piece) anywhere. Good Tutorials. Keep up the good work!!!!

EDIT: Never mind!!!

 

all I have to say to you good sir is THANK YOU SO VERY MUCH!!!!!!!!!!!

 

Following exactly and I get:

Code:

12:51:20 AM [SEVERE] Could not set generator for default world 'world': Plugin 'BasicTerrain v1.0' lacks a default world generator

Code:

worlds:
  world:
    generator: BasicTerrain

Code:java

package me.ultimate.BasicTerrain;
 
import java.util.ArrayList;
import java.util.List;
import java.util.Random;
 
import org.bukkit.Material;
import org.bukkit.World;
import org.bukkit.generator.BlockPopulator;
import org.bukkit.generator.ChunkGenerator;
import org.bukkit.plugin.java.JavaPlugin;
 
public class BasicTerrain extends JavaPlugin {
 
   public ChunkGenerator getDefaultChunkGenerator(String worldName, String GenId) {
      return new me.ultimate.BasicTerrain.BasicTerrain.BasicChunkGenerator();
   }
 
   public class BasicChunkGenerator extends ChunkGenerator {
 
      void setBlock(int x, int y, int z, byte[][] chunk, Material material) {
         if (chunk[y >> 4] == null)
            chunk[y >> 4] = new byte[16 * 16 * 16];
         if (!(y <= 256 && y >= 0 && x <= 16 && x >= 0 && z <= 16 && z >= 0))
            return;
         try {
            chunk[y >> 4][((y & 0xF) << 8) | (z << 4) | x] = (byte) material.getId();
         } catch (Exception e) {
            // do nothing
         }
      }
 
      @Override
      public byte[][] generateBlockSections(World world, Random rand, int ChunkX, int ChunkZ, BiomeGrid biome) {
         return null;
      }
 
      @Override
      public List<BlockPopulator> getDefaultPopulators(World world) {
         ArrayList<BlockPopulator> pops = new ArrayList<BlockPopulator>();
         return pops;
      }
   }
 
}
 

Code:

name: BasicTerrain
version: 1.0
main: me.ultimate.BasicTerrain.BasicTerrain
load: startup

 

Ultimate_n00b
Sorry man, I had made a mistake in the last tutorial.

Change getDefaultChunkGenerator to getDefaultWorldGenerator in your plugin.

 

I know that this post is around a year old now, but I'd really like jtjj222 to go over how the setBlock method packs the data into the array. I personally know how it's done, but I feel that because this is supposed to be a tutorial on world generation, you should explain this to the many people who don't know how that works.