4 ms·

My understanding of the height limit (originally 128 and later 256) was that the lighting algorithm was O(height limit), and so it was hard to increase it arbi

My understanding of the height limit (originally 128 and later 256) was that the lighting algorithm was O(height limit), and so it was hard to increase it arbitrarily. And then most of the shape of the terrain is dictated by the height limit—you couldn’t really have big mountains full of false summits, and indeed the terrain generation didn’t really have many low-frequency features that spanned large areas (but maybe they are boring because they are slow to traverse). For comparison, the highest peak in the European part of the Netherlands is around 320m whereas the Minecraft limit wouldn’t let you above 192m above sea level. Denmark has a highest peak of 170m so it would fit but the game wouldn’t generate such a thing as you’d only have 22m above the top to build. I wonder if one way around raising the height limit would be to offset the base height of chunks relative to each other, but that might lead to strange behaviour in other parts of the game. Maybe Microsoft have figured out a better fix to allow increasing the limit.

kibwen 5y ago
The extremely low height limit is also influenced by gameplay: many voxel games let you run up slopes that vary by only a single vertical step, but Minecraft forces you to jump to climb, which is much slower. Nobody wants to jump 16,000 times just to get over a mountain range. On the other hand, while I actually really like the traversal and movement in Minecraft and I wouldn't want to change it, the current height and generation limits really are just too low to create anything truly majestic. The new update has increased the limits by 128 (64 blocks each above and below the prior limit, for new extreme Y coords of 320 and -64), which is a welcome change, but IMO they could have gone a bit higher.
- infogulch 5y ago
  Actually +64 above/+64 below is only the new default. Custom worlds will be able to increase the world height limits to +2032/-2032. That leaves a lot of room for activities. I think custom terrain gen data packs like the one mentioned above still have to be adjusted to actually use the full height. I'm excited for mappers that can now build 1-1 scale recreations of real and fantasy locations like everest (~4000m from the base), minas tirith (300m), barad-dur (1400m), courisant senate building (600m), etc.

kibwen 5y ago

The extremely low height limit is also influenced by gameplay: many voxel games let you run up slopes that vary by only a single vertical step, but Minecraft forces you to jump to climb, which is much slower. Nobody wants to jump 16,000 times just to get over a mountain range. On the other hand, while I actually really like the traversal and movement in Minecraft and I wouldn't want to change it, the current height and generation limits really are just too low to create anything truly majestic. The new update has increased the limits by 128 (64 blocks each above and below the prior limit, for new extreme Y coords of 320 and -64), which is a welcome change, but IMO they could have gone a bit higher.

infogulch 5y ago
Actually +64 above/+64 below is only the new default. Custom worlds will be able to increase the world height limits to +2032/-2032. That leaves a lot of room for activities. I think custom terrain gen data packs like the one mentioned above still have to be adjusted to actually use the full height. I'm excited for mappers that can now build 1-1 scale recreations of real and fantasy locations like everest (~4000m from the base), minas tirith (300m), barad-dur (1400m), courisant senate building (600m), etc.