User blog:Scooter8pie/New Terrain Generation Bug

This blog is directly related to the blog Terrain regen bug please see Fastolph Cottar's blog for the first detailed description of this bug.

I was playing the game in Explore mode, trying to collect all the resources in a chunk, when I came across a very distinctive transparency boundary like the one Mrob27 pointed out in a comment on the Transparency Bug Blog. This boundary was unique because it occurred at a "superblock" corner with an abrupt change in elevation. The south-east corner was 13 blocks above ice level on south and east sides. The terrain was very flat to the south and east. The south-west corner was almost as striking. Because of Mrob27's observation, I was almost positive that this would be the corner of a transparency boundry. Photos TRB 1 No Terrain and TRB 1 New Terrain show a before and after view of the east face of the boundry. (I'll explain what happened when the new terrain was created near the end of this post.)

So, I started digging with the hope of exposing the entire corner to a depth of 20 blocks below ice level. I had a good start on it. I had removed 10 blocks deep and 16x10 to the SE and 6x10 south of that. Photos TRB2 Before and After show an elevated view facing north and Photos TRB 3 Before and After show a high view facing NW. Photos TRB 4 Before and After show a ground level view of the same area.

Then the game crashed on me, but this wasn't the crash that caused the new terrain to generate. I was just a little bit pissed because I knew that the exposed transparent parts of the boundry wouldn't be transparent after I reloaded the game. I reloaded and a few of the blocks in the area I was mining had regenerated. But nothing serious.

I decided I would move to the south side and see if I could salvage this crazy little project. I had mined out quite a bit when Mooncraft crashed again. I was about ready to throw my phone, so I decided to stop playing for a while. I didn't take any photos of this south excavation, but it was bigger than the SE one.

If I'm anything, I'm stubborn. So, the next day I was ready to try again. I noted that quite a few of the blocks I had mined had regenerated, but compared to the size of the hole I had dug myself into, it wasn't very many. My previous excavations were done from the bottom up, because I find it easier to keep track of the transparency boundaries that way. When I started mining again, I decided to go from the top down, and I got about 5 layers down when the game crashed again.

By this time I was used to the crashes, so I was saving the mining that would expose the transparency boundaries until the end. I wasn't too concerned about losing any of the transparent faces. I figured I'd start the game again and maybe there would be a few blocks that I would have to mine for a second time, but nothing I couldn't deal wiith.

Well, when I started the game again, I found myself inside a block. I started drilling upwards and it was taking longer than I thought it should. When I finally reached the surface everything around me was different. At first I thought maybe I was back at my original spawn location, but as I explored a little I realized I was in the same location, but the terrain was completely new. Photo TRB 5 is another shot looking down from a high elevation, the column of Dirt with the Light block on top is location where I came out of the ground.

I'm not sure if this was helpful to anyone. I just wanted to let Fastolph Cottar know he wasn't the only one experiencing this really weird Terrain regen bug.

New Info
Since I posted this blog, I did some more investigation and I can say with near certainty that the plan dimensions of the terrain that was replaced is 128 blocks x 128 blocks. I can only assume that all the blocks underground were replaced as well. I also discovered some more interesting things about the Transparency Bug and will update that blog as well.


 * Sometimes when the game crashes, it happens to be in the middle of re-writing one of the Superblocks. When this happens, the superblock data file is incomplete, and the next time the game loads, it will find that it cannot load that part of the map, so it re-generates new terrain.
 * Mrob27 (talk) 07:19, November 3, 2012 (UTC)