Generator article now has all biome genertors and most their imgs.

docs/Generator.html

@@ -13,6 +13,7 @@ with specific implementation notes regarding MCServer.</p>
 microscopic to planet-wide scale, that have shaped the terrain into what we see today. The tectonic plates
 collide, push mountain ranges up and ocean trenches down. Erosion dulls the sharp shapes. Plantlife takes
 over to further change the overall look of the world.</p>
+
 <p>Generally speaking, the processes take what's there and change it. Unlike computer generating, which
 usually creates a finished terrain from scratch, or maybe with only a few iterations. It would be unfeasible
 for software to emulate all the natural processes in enough detail to provide world generation for a game,
@@ -35,11 +36,14 @@ distinction will be discussed later.</li>
 </ul>
 </p>
 
+
+
 <h2>Reversing the flow</h2>
 <p>As already mentioned, the nature works basically by generating raw terrain composition, then "applying"
 erosion, vegetation and finally this leads to biomes being formed. Let's now try a somewhat inverse
 approach: First generate biomes, then fit them with appropriate terrain, and finally cover in vegetation
 and all the other stuff.</p>
+
 <p>Splitting the parts like this suddenly makes it possible to create a generator with the required
 properties. We can generate a reasonable biome map chunk-wise, independently of all the other data. Once we
 have the biomes, we can compose the terrain for the chunk by using the biome data for the chunk, and
@@ -49,6 +53,8 @@ neighboring chunk to be present. Similarly, once we have the terrain composition
 generate all the vegetation and structures in it, and those can again use the terrain composition in
 neighboring chunks.</p>
 
+
+
 <h2>The ComposableGenerator pipeline</h2>
 <p>This leads us directly to the main pipeline that is used for generating terrain in MCServer. For
 technical reasons, the terrain composition step is further subdivided into Height generation and Composition
@@ -61,6 +67,7 @@ sequence:
 <li>Finishers</li>
 </ul>
 </p>
+
 <img src="img/biomes.jpg" />
 <img src="img/terrainheight.jpg" />
 <img src="img/terraincomposition.jpg" />
@@ -69,6 +76,8 @@ sequence:
 have 5 biome generators and 3 height generators and you can let the users mix'n'match.
 </p>
 
+
+
 <h2>Using coherent noise for the generation</h2>
 <p>For a great tutorial on coherent noise, see the <a href="http://libnoise.sourceforge.net/">LibNoise
 documentation</a>.</p>
@@ -79,41 +88,180 @@ documentation</a>.</p>
 parameters are given to the noise functions.</li>
 <li>The noise can be seamlessly extended in any direction</li>
 </ul></p>
+
 <p>We'll be mostly using Perlin noise in this article. It is the easiest one to visualise and use and is one
 of the most useful kinds of coherent noises. Here's an example of a Perlin noise generated in 2 dimensions:</p>
-<img src="img/perlin.png" />
+<img src="img/perlin.jpg" />
+
 <p>It comes only naturally that such a 2D noise can be used as a terrain height map directly:</p>
-<img src="img/perlinheightmap.png" />
+<img src="img/perlinheightmap.jpg" />
+
 <p>However, this is not the only use for this noise, and 2 dimensions is not the limit - this noise can be
 generated for any number of dimensions.</p>
 
+
+
 <h2>Generating biomes</h2>
-<p>The easiest way to generate biomes is to not generate at all - simply assign a single constant biome to
-everywhere. And indeed there are times when this kind of "generator" is useful - for the MineCraft's Flat
+<p>The easiest way to generate biomes is to not generate them at all - simply assign a single constant biome
+to everywhere. And indeed there are times when this kind of "generator" is useful - for the MineCraft's Flat
 world type, or for testing purposes, or for tematic maps. In MCServer, this is exactly what the Constant
 biome generator does.</p>
+
 <p>Of course, there are more interesting test scenarios for which multiple biomes must be generated as easy
 as possible. For these special needs, there's a CheckerBoard biome generator. As the name suggests, it
 generates a grid of biomes.</p>
+
 <h3>Voronoi diagram</h3>
-<p>These two generators are more of a technicality, we need to make something more interesting if we're
+<p>Those two generators were more of a technicality, we need to make something more interesting if we're
 going for a natural look. The Voronoi generator is the first step towards such a change. Recall that a
 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voronoi_diagram">Voronoi diagram</a> is a construct that creates a
 set of areas where each point in an area is closer to the appropriate seed of the area than the seeds of any
 other area:</p>
 <img src="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/80/Euclidean_Voronoi_Diagram.png" />
+
+<p>To generate biomes using this approach, you select random "seeds", assign a biome to each one, and then
+for each "column" of the world you find the seed that is the nearest to that column, and use that seed's
+biome.</p>
+
 <p>The overall shape of a Voronoi diagram is governed by the placement of the seeds. In extreme cases, a
 seed could affect the entire diagram, which is what we don't want - we need our locality, so that we can
 generate a chunk's worth of biome data. We also don't want the too much irregular diagrams that are produced
 when the seeds are in small clusters. We need our seeds to come in random, yet somewhat uniform fashion.</p>
+
 <p>Luckily, we have just the tool: Grid with jitter. Originally used in antialiasing techniques, they can be
 successfully applied as a source of the seeds for a Voronoi diagram. Simply take a regular 2D grid of seeds
 with the grid distance being N, and move each seed along the X and Y axis by a random distance, usually in
 the range [-N / 2, +N / 2]:</p>
-<img src="img/jittergrid.png" />
+<img src="img/jittergrid.jpg" />
+
 <p>Such a grid is the ideal seed source for a Voronoi biome generator, because not
 only are the Voronoi cells "reasonable", but the seed placement's effect on the diagram is localized - each
-pixel in the diagram depends on at most 5 x 5 seeds around it:</p>
-<img src="img/jittergriddependency.jpg" />
+pixel in the diagram depends on at most 4 x 4 seeds around it. In the following picture, the seed for the
+requested point (blue) must be within the indicated circle. Even the second-nearest seed, which we will need
+later, is inside that circle.</p>
+<img src="img/jittergridlocality.jpg" />
+
+<p>Calculating the jitter for each cell can be done easily by using a 2D Perlin noise for each coord. We
+calculate the noise's value at [X, Z], which gives us a number in the range [-1; 1]. We then multiply the
+number by N / 2, this gives us the required range of [-N / 2, +N / 2]. Adding this number to the X coord
+gives us the seed's X position. We use another Perlin noise and the same calculation for the Z coord of the
+seed.</p>
+
+<p>Here's an example of a biome map generated using the Voronoi + jitter grid, as implemented by the Voronoi
+biome generator in MCServer:</p>
+<img src="img/voronoijitterbiomes.png" />
+
+<h3>Distorted Voronoi</h3>
+<p>The biomes are starting to look interesting, but now they have straight-line borders, which looks rather
+weird and the players will most likely notice very soon. We need to somehow distort the borders to make them
+look more natural. By far the easiest way to achieve that is to use a little trick: When the generator is
+asked for the biome at column [X, Z], instead of calculating the Voronoi biome for column [X, Z], we first
+calculate a random offset for each coord, and add it to the coordinates. So the generator actually responds
+with the biome for [X + rndX, Z + rndZ].</p>
+
+<p>In order to keep the property that generating for the second time gives us the same result, we need the
+"random offset" to be replicatable - same output for the same input. This is where we use yet another Perlin
+noise - just like with the jitter for the Voronoi grid, we add a value from a separate noise to each
+coordinate before sending the coordinates down to the Voronoi generator:</p>
+<code>
+DistortedVoronoiBiome(X, Z) := VoronoiBiome(X + PerlinX(X, Z), Z + PerlinZ(X, Z))
+</code>
+
+<p>The following image shows the effects of the change, as generated by MCServer's DistortedVoronoi biome
+generator. It is actually using the very same Voronoi map as the previous image, the only change has been
+the addition of the distortion:</p>
+<img src="img/distortedvoronoibiomes.png" />
+
+<p>As you can see, this already looks reasonable enough, it could be considered natural biomes, if it
+weren't for several drawbacks:
+<ul>
+<li>There's no way to limit the neighbors. A desert biome can neighbor a tundra biome. </li>
+<li>All the biomes are considered equal. There's no way to make oceans larger. A mushroom biome is
+generated right next to other land biomes.</li>
+</ul></p>
+
+<h3>Adding relativity</h3>
+<p>Our next goal is to remove the first defect of the distorted voronoi generator: unrelated biomes
+generating next to each other. It is highly unlikely to find a jungle biome next to a desert biome, so we
+want to have as few of those boundaries as possible. We could further improve on the selection of
+biome-to-seed in the Voronoi generator. Or we can try a completely different idea altogether.</p>
+
+<p>Recall how we talked about the nature, where the biomes are formed by the specific conditions of a place.
+What if we could make a similar dependency, but without the terrain? It turns out this is possible rather
+easily - instead of depending on the terrain, we choose two completely artificial measures. Let's call them
+Temperature and Humidity. If we knew the temperature of the place, we know what set of biomes are possible
+for such temperatures - we won't place deserts in the cold and tundra in the hot anymore. Similarly, the
+humidity will help us sort out the desert vs jungle issue. But how do we get a temperature and humidity?
+Once again, the Perlin noise comes to the rescue. We can use a simple 2D Perlin noise as the temperature
+map, and another one as the humidity map.</p>
+
+<p>What we need next is a decision of what biome to generate in certain temperature and humidity
+combinations. The fastest way for a computer is to have a 2D array, where the temperature is one dimension
+and humidity the other, and the values in the array specify the biome to generate:</p>
+<img src="img/temperaturehumiditydecisionsimple.jpg" />
+
+<p>We can even "misuse" the above diagram to include the hill variants of the biomes and have those hills
+neighbor each other properly, simply by declaring some of the decision diagram's parts as hills:</p>
+<img src="img/temperaturehumiditydecisionhills.jpg" />
+
+<p>The problem with this approach is that there are biomes that should not depend on temperature or
+humidity, they generate across all of their values. Biomes like Oceans, Rivers and Mushroom. We could
+either add them somewhere into the decision diagram, or we can make the generator use a multi-step decision:
+<ul>
+<li>Decide whether the point is in the ocean, land or mushroom</li>
+<li>If it's land, decide if it's real land or river.</li>
+<li>If it's real land, use a TemperatureHumidity approach to generate land-biomes</li>
+</ul>
+</p>
+
+<p>This is the approach implemented in MCServer's MultiStepMap biome generator. It generates biome maps like
+this:</p>
+<img src="img/multistepmapbiomes.png" />
+
+<p>To decide whether the point is in the ocean, land or mushroom, the generator uses a DistortedVoronoi
+approach where the seeds get the "ocean", "land" and "mushroom" values; special handling is added so that a
+mushroom value is always surrounded by ocean values on all 8 sides:</p>
+<img src="multistepmap1.jpg" />
+
+<p>For the Voronoi cells that are calculated as mushroom, the distance to the nearest-seed is used to
+further shrink the mushroom biome and then to distinguish between mushroom and mushroom-shore:</p>
+<img src="multistepmap2.jpg" />
+
+<p>The rivers are added only to the areas that have been previously marked as land. A simple 2D Perlin noise
+is used as the base, where its value is between 0 and a configured threshold value, a river is created. This
+creates the rivers in a closed-loop-like shapes, occasionally splitting two branches off:</p>
+<img src="multistepmap3.jpg" />
+
+<p>For the leftover land biomes, the two Perlin noises, representing temperature and humidity, are used to
+generate the biomes, as described earlier. Additionally, the temperature map is used to turn the Ocean biome
+into FrozenOcean, and the River biome into FrozenRiver, wherever the temperature drops below a threshold.</p>
+
+<h3>Two-level Voronoi</h3>
+<p>The 1.7 MineCraft update brought a completely new terrain generation, which has sparked renewed interest
+in the biome generation. A new, potentially simpler way of generating biomes was found, the two-level
+Voronoi generator.</p>
+
+<p>The main idea behind it all is that we create large areas of similar biomes. There are several groups of
+related biomes that can be generated near each other: Desert biomes, Ice biomes, Forest biomes, Mesa biomes.
+Technically, the Ocean biomes were added as yet another group, so that the oceans will generate in
+approximately the size of the larger areas, too.</p>
+
+<p>For each column a DistortedVoronoi is used to select, which large area to use. This in turn results in
+the list of biomes from which to choose. Another DistortedVoronoi, this time with a smaller grid size, is
+used to select one biome out of that list. Additionally, the smaller DistortedVoronoi calculates not only
+the nearest seed's distance, but also the distance to the second-nearest seed; the ratio between these two
+is used as an indicator whether the column is in the "inside" or on the "outskirt" of the smaller Voronoi
+cell. This allows us to give certain biomes an "edge" biome - the Mushroom biome has a MushroomShore edge,
+the ExtremeHills biome have an ExtremeHillsEdge biome on the edge, etc.</p>
+<img src="img/twolevel1.jpg" /><br />
+<img src="img/twolevel2.jpg" /><br />
+<img src="img/twolevel3.jpg" /><br />
+
+<p>The following image shows an example output of a TwoLevel biome generator in MCServer:</p>
+<img src="img/twolevelbiomes.png" />
+
+
+
+<h2>Terrain height</h2>
 </body>
 </html>