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 (see below).
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 optional snow biomes and ice sheets were 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. 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.
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.
v7
Also called “mgv7”. It was introduced in Minetest 0.4.6 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.
v5 (modernized version 5)
Also called “mgv5”. This is the modernized version of the historic map generator version 5 from Minetest 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.
fractals
Introduced in Minetest 0.4.13 by paramat.
valleys
Introduced in Minetest 0.4.14 by Duane Robertson. It is notable for its “valley”-like shapes and its flowing 3D rivers. It also introduced River Water in Minetest Game for the rivers. River water was introduced because a liquid with a reduced flowing range was needed, as normal Water would flow over way too much.
