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Minecraft adds Ordnance Survey Great Britain terrain data

38 points by refrigerator 13y ago

citricsquid 13y ago
Poor article from the BBC. Minecraft has not added the data to the game, a third party created the world. Here is a link to the third party blog post that talks more about the world and contains a download: http://blog.ordnancesurvey.co.uk/2013/09/minecraft-creating-a-map-of-great-britain/ http://blog.ordnancesurvey.co.uk/2013/09/minecraft-creating-... http://www.ordnancesurvey.co.uk/innovate/developers/minecraft-map-britain.html http://www.ordnancesurvey.co.uk/innovate/developers/minecraf...
- refrigerator 13y ago
  Ah right, thanks for pointing that out :)
- teh_klev 13y ago
  Fairly typical of BBC News articles these days unfortunately - regardless of whether it's TV or online reporting.
PhasmaFelis 13y ago
Hmm, have the height limitations been removed? I know at one point Minecraft worlds were technically infinite horizontally but limited to...256? 512? meters vertically, from bedrock to skybox, which is obviously not enough for most real-world terrain. I haven't played in ages, though. I saw a video from one modder who managed to, not remove, but rotate the height limitation, producing a cavern world that was 256 meters wide and infinitely long and deep. He tweaked the terrain generator to accomodate it, too; there was no surface, just uncountable miles of vast tunnels. It was creepy.
- russellsprouts 13y ago
  The height limit is still 256, I believe. There is a mod that uses cubic chunk loading to avoid this.
  - Bpat 13y ago
    I'm 99% sure it is no longer limited. Notch and Co. added some code so that it can dynamically increase the height in an area allowing for taller builds.
    - javert 13y ago
      "the top face of the highest block that can be placed is at Y-coordinate 256." -http://minecraft.gamepedia.com/Altitude http://minecraft.gamepedia.com/Altitude I'm pretty sure what you're thinking about did happen: the height limit used to be 128 and when Notch added some code, it made for a (relatively) big improvement to 256.
    - asdfs 13y ago
      I believe they changed it so that the height limit now depends on a single variable in the code, making it easy to build a copy of Minecraft with a different limit. Minecraft as distributed by Mojang still has a 256-block height limit, however.
- alsothings 13y ago
  “The raw height data is stored in metres and must be scaled down to fit within the 256 block height limit in Minecraft. A maximum height of 2 500 metres was chosen, which means Ben Nevis, appears just over 128 blocks high. “Although this exaggerates the real-world height, it preserves low-lying coastal features such as Bournemouth's cliffs, adding interest to the landscape.” - http://www.pcgamesn.com/minecraft/ordnance-survey-recreate-great-britain-largest-minecraft-world-ever-built-based-real-world-data http://www.pcgamesn.com/minecraft/ordnance-survey-recreate-g... So they are keeping to the 256 block height, but being slightly creative with the vertical scale...

38 points by refrigerator 13y ago

Poor article from the BBC. Minecraft has not added the data to the game, a third party created the world. Here is a link to the third party blog post that talks more about the world and contains a download: http://blog.ordnancesurvey.co.uk/2013/09/minecraft-creating-a-map-of-great-britain/ http://blog.ordnancesurvey.co.uk/2013/09/minecraft-creating-... http://www.ordnancesurvey.co.uk/innovate/developers/minecraft-map-britain.html http://www.ordnancesurvey.co.uk/innovate/developers/minecraf...

refrigerator 13y ago
Ah right, thanks for pointing that out :)
teh_klev 13y ago
Fairly typical of BBC News articles these days unfortunately - regardless of whether it's TV or online reporting.

PhasmaFelis 13y ago

Hmm, have the height limitations been removed? I know at one point Minecraft worlds were technically infinite horizontally but limited to...256? 512? meters vertically, from bedrock to skybox, which is obviously not enough for most real-world terrain. I haven't played in ages, though. I saw a video from one modder who managed to, not remove, but rotate the height limitation, producing a cavern world that was 256 meters wide and infinitely long and deep. He tweaked the terrain generator to accomodate it, too; there was no surface, just uncountable miles of vast tunnels. It was creepy.

russellsprouts 13y ago
The height limit is still 256, I believe. There is a mod that uses cubic chunk loading to avoid this.
- Bpat 13y ago
  I'm 99% sure it is no longer limited. Notch and Co. added some code so that it can dynamically increase the height in an area allowing for taller builds.
  - javert 13y ago
    "the top face of the highest block that can be placed is at Y-coordinate 256." -http://minecraft.gamepedia.com/Altitude http://minecraft.gamepedia.com/Altitude I'm pretty sure what you're thinking about did happen: the height limit used to be 128 and when Notch added some code, it made for a (relatively) big improvement to 256.
  - asdfs 13y ago
    I believe they changed it so that the height limit now depends on a single variable in the code, making it easy to build a copy of Minecraft with a different limit. Minecraft as distributed by Mojang still has a 256-block height limit, however.
alsothings 13y ago
“The raw height data is stored in metres and must be scaled down to fit within the 256 block height limit in Minecraft. A maximum height of 2 500 metres was chosen, which means Ben Nevis, appears just over 128 blocks high. “Although this exaggerates the real-world height, it preserves low-lying coastal features such as Bournemouth's cliffs, adding interest to the landscape.” - http://www.pcgamesn.com/minecraft/ordnance-survey-recreate-great-britain-largest-minecraft-world-ever-built-based-real-world-data http://www.pcgamesn.com/minecraft/ordnance-survey-recreate-g... So they are keeping to the 256 block height, but being slightly creative with the vertical scale...