Map Generator Evolution
Version 0
Had horrible terrain generation. But at least terrain could be generated.
Version 0.0
Trees were added in, but they were very basic.
Version 1
As one can see, water was added in.
Version 2 dev3
Mountains were made more pronounced and ore generation was better. Although this was a development version.
Version 2 dev4
Things were tuned a little better.
Version 2
Beaches were included and sand finally spawned.
Version 3 "3d noise"
3D noise is used to generate this terrain.
Version 4
More tweaking.
Version 5 (historic)
Official map generation for version 0.3.1. It is iconic for its extreme and often “blobby” terrain shapes. In the 0.3 versions, this map generator hat predefined biomes like the current v6 map generator. In Minetest 0.4, it was removed, but has been revived later (→#v5 (modernized version 5)).
This version of the map generator is also used in Voxelands, a fork of Minetest-c55.
Version 6
Also called “v6” or “mgv6”. As of 0.4.0, map generation is much faster. This map generator has some simple default biomes, such as grasslands, forests, oceans, jungles and deserts. In Minetest 0.4.13, support for snow biomes and ice sheets has been introduced as well. This map generator can still be selected in Minetest and support for it will not be removed anytime soon and improvements and bugfixes are still applied.
Support for multiple map generators
Since the early versions of Minetest 0.4, players are able to choose one of multiple map generators, with v6 being the default selection initially. Since then, more and more map generators have been added and old map generators have been improved over time. From this point on, there is no longer a single “version” of the map generator and the concept of a map generator “version” no longer applies. The map generator names “v5”, “v6” and “v7” were kept for historic reasons, but each of these are distinct map generators which are considered equally “valid” and are improved independently. In Minetest 0.4.15, v7 became the new default selection.
flat
The flat map generation was introduced in Minetest 0.4.5 by kwolekr. It can be used with or without trees, decorations, dungones, etc.
singlenode
This mapgen was introduced in Minetest 0.4.6 by celeron55. It creates a world with only Air (can be changed with configuration) and is intended to be used by mods and subgames for making custom map generators, so they can start completely from scratch. The name “singlenode” means that it generates a single type of node everywhere, Air by default.
It can no longer be selected in the world creation dialog, but the mapgen is still present in Minetest and it can be enabled by editing configuration files or with function calls in a mod.
indev
This mapgen was introduced in Minetest 0.4.6 by proller. It is based on v6 and very similar to it. Major new features included featured floating islands at Y=500 and above, rare huge caves, and a more extreme terrain near the end of the world in form of larger biomes, higher mountains and deeper oceans. It has been removed in version 0.4.10 because it was considered to be of low quality.
v7
Also called “mgv7”. It was introduced in Minetest 0.4.7 by kwolekr, in which the map generator was still unusable and only had support for terrain shapes and created worlds mostly made out of stone. It has been improved ever since and became the default selection in Minetest 0.4.15. This is the first map generator which supports biomes defined by mods.
math
The mapgen “math” was introduced in Minetest 0.4.8 by proller. This was really a collection of multiple different map generators based on simple maths. It was capable of creating Menger sponges, mandelboxes and spheres. This map generator has been removed in Minetest 0.4.10 when proller left the project because it was considered to be of low quality ([1]).
v5 (modernized version 5)
Also called “mgv5”. This is the modernized version of the historic map generator version 5 from Minetest-c55 0.3. In Minetest 0.4.11, this historic map generator has been revived by paramat because of its iconic terrain shape. But it is not identical to the historic version 5. The terrain shape is identical, but the modernized v5 map generator has mod-defined biome support (like v7), rather than predefined biomes. Ironically, this makes v5 more “modern” than v6 in Minetest 0.4.15.
fractal
Introduced in Minetest 0.4.13 by paramat. It creates worlds based on fractals, specifically those based on 3D and 4D Mandelbrot and Julia sets, including a mandelbulb. As of version 0.4.15, there are 18 variants which this mapgen supports. This mapgen has a similar intention like the old math mapgen, but it has a very different feature set compared to math.
valleys
Introduced in Minetest 0.4.14 by Duane Robertson. It is notable for its “valley”-like shapes and its flowing 3D rivers. In the same version, River Water was introduced in Minetest Game for the rivers. This liquid was introduced because a liquid with a reduced flowing range was needed, as normal Water would flow over way too much.