This is a tool for stitching together Minecraft maps that have different areas generated by different algorithms causing ugly transitions, for example when using an existing map from Minecraft b1.7 in Minecraft b1.8.
The tool is inspired by the bestofboth script and follows the same basic idea, check it out at: https://github.com/gmcnew/bestofboth
It also relies on the very excellent pymclevel to do its map editing, you can find it at: https://github.com/codewarrior0/pymclevel
As with all these sorts of things, use this tool at your own risk. Everything will probably be fine, but if it all goes horribly wrong I can't be held responsible.
A river is placed at the boundaries between the old and new map areas, and the surrounding valley is smoothed seamlessly together with adjacent chunks. The smoothing is done with a low pass filter that means every chunk will have its own unique appearance.
Two phases are used to perform the work. First the original map is traced with mcmerge to find the contour of the edge of the existing world. Then continue playing on the map (with your new version of Minecraft) to generate additional areas. Finally mcmerge is used to smooth chunks at the boundary between the old and new areas.
I have included some test files in the appropriately named testfiles directory that you can use to run this script on.
To use this tool you will first need to install it. There are two available options.
If you're on Windows you can just grab the mcmerge-win32 zip file available on the project download page. Unzip it and you're ready to run.
If you are missing the requisite Microsoft distributable DLL files, mcmerge will fail. Try installing the Microsoft Visual C++ 2008 Redistributable Package (x86) first and you should be good to go. You can get it here: http://www.microsoft.com/download/en/details.aspx?displaylang=en&id=29
On other platforms or if you want to set up the environment your self you will first need to install Python and some libraries. This tool has not been tested with Python 3.0 so Python 2.7 is recommended. You can get the latest version from here: http://www.python.org/download/
If you're downloading Python for Windows, it is recommended you install the plain version rather than the X86-64 version as some of the libraries required only come precompiled in 32-bit versions.
Once you have Python installed you will need to install the NumPy and SciPy library. You can find the download links at: http://new.scipy.org/download.html
You will also need to install PyYAML which can be found here: http://pyyaml.org/wiki/PyYAML
Both NumPy and SciPy have pre-built installable packages for Windows and OS X on the SourceForge pages linked from the above page. Grab the latest version and you're ready to go. PyYAML also provides a Windows installer but should be quite easy to install from the command line on other operating systems.
Finally, if you're on Windows, you should install the python win32 extension. The utility seems to work OK without it but warning messages are displayed and there's no guarantee things will keep working in the future. You can find the download on the project page here: http://sourceforge.net/projects/pywin32/
Once you have the required bits installed, you can download this tool then fire up the command line and cd over to the location of the script. Then follow these steps:
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Backup your world directory. If you or the tool breaks something you'll be able to recover. You can find your singleplayer maps in the following locations:
- Windows: %AppData%\.minecraft\saves
- Linux: $HOME/.minecraft/saves
- OS X: ~/Library/Application\ Support/minecraft/saves/
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Adjust sea height. This step is optional but highly recommended if merging a map from a version of Minecraft before 1.8. The sea has been moved down by 1 block in Minecraft 1.8 and it is recommended you adjust the map accordingly. To do this run (make sure you have the correct world name):
python mcmerge.py shift "%AppData%\.minecraft\saves\World"NOTE: If you experience any problems with this method you can still do this with MCEdit; nudge the whole world down by one block but make sure you leave the lower most block level intact so you still have a solid bedrock.
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Run the contour trace phase on the map, for example (use the correct world name for you):
python mcmerge.py trace "%AppData%\.minecraft\saves\World"This places the file contour.dat in the world directory which will be read when merging.
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Play some Minecraft to generate the new areas bordering with your old map.
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Run the merging phase. You can tweak various parameters for the best look. Using the default configuration this will look something like the following (again, make sure you specify the correct world directory):
python mcmerge.py merge "%AppData%\.minecraft\saves\World" -
Get back into the game and watch the floating debris disappear.
You can repeat steps 4 - 6 as many times as you need as the tool will keep track of which border areas haven't yet been merged because they haven't had new areas generated next to them.
NOTE: For Windows users using the packaged binary, replace 'python mcmerge.py' with 'mcmerge.exe' in the above commands.
To see what options are available for you to fiddle with type: python mcmerge.py --help
A few things worth mentioning. Firstly there are two filters, there is 'smooth' and 'gauss'. The 'smooth' filter is the default (it's a perfect frequency filter). The gaussian filter gives more regular results and can perform much stronger smoothing, how it also tends to look more boring. Note that the --smooth factor means different things for both these filters (for the 'smooth' filter, bigger means less smohting, where as for 'gauss' it's the reverse), however both will give similar results for a value of 1.7.
You can also fiddle with how wide the river and the valley the river flows through are, the height of the river and the height of the river bank (specified with --valley-height), and the sea level at which water will be placed. There are options to control how the river weaves. Finally there's an option for how much the river and valley should be narrowed when a river flows on both sides of a chunk.
Some additional settings worth mentioning are --shift-down which specifies how much to shift the world in the shift phase (and can be negated to shift up). The --cover-depth option specifies the depth of blocks that are taken from the surface of the unmerged areas and used as the new surface for the carved out valley. It is also possible to skip the relighting step by using --no-relight for quicker results.
Happy merging!
- Initial version
- Places a river at old/new chunk interface and smooths with low pass filter
- Fixed --help switch so works without supplying world
- Modified sea level to be 1.8 compatible and added extra step to fix sea level disconnect
- Ice is no longer treated as terrain to place river in
- Updated to latest version of pymclevel; better support for 1.8 blocks
- River corners now look rounder
- Fixed exception with very wide valley/river values
- Instead of exposed stone being transformed to dirt, the whole top layer is now shifted down; new switch controlling depth of this layer added
- Added win32 executable
- Random river weaving so rivers along straight segments don't look so artificial
- The SciPy library is no longer optional (for anyone using the script version)
- Updated pymclevel and added support for merging with 1.9pre blocks
- Removed floating trees are now replanted with an appropriate sapling
- Added a relighting step so there are no more dark areas under overhangs (no longer need postprocessing with MCMerge)
- Added a new phase for shifting the sea-height (no longer require MCMerge for this)
- Updated pymclevel and added support for merging with version 1.0 blocks
- Fixed crash when generating rivers in shallows
- Fixed shift mode so that player and spawn location are also shifted
- Modes are no longer specified by options but by a new mandatory parameter
- Added new mode 'relight' that does not alter the world but simply relights all chunks
- Made trace mode considerably more efficient
- Fixed packaging to include data and submodule files in new pymclevel
- Made trace mode considerably more efficient (for real this time)
- Fixed rare crash when placing river water
- Added support for Anvil map format