Realistic Terrain Generation with Climate Control

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Realistic Terrain Generation (RTG) is an alternative world generator by the RTG team, similar in scope to Realistic World Gen Alpha (RWG), the default world gen mod in Gregtech: New Horizons. Some users prefer RTG because they dislike RWG's worlds, they do not like RWG's tendency to generate its own biomes, or they want to use Climate Control (CC), a mod that gives players more control over the biome distribution and temperature map of their worlds. This page will serve as a brief introduction to Realistic Terrain Generation, Climate Control, a world visualization tool called ForgeAmidst, and will teach you how to change from RWG to RTG and CC.

About

About Realistic Terrain Generation

Realistic Terrain Generation is a fork of RWG. Notable differences include flatter terrain, less intrusive biome generation (no RWG_* biomes), and the ability to generate oceans. It is also compatible with Climate Control, which enables fine tuning the world generator for more realistic latitudinal climate bands, among other changes. RTG is available on Curseforge.

Climate Control

Climate Control is a mod by Zeno410 that allows players to modify the biome distribution through its configuration file. GT:NH ships with a default CC configuration file for players looking to use it, but the mod has many options to affect world generation. It is also available on Curseforge.

About ForgeAmidst

ForgeAmidst (Forge Advanced Minecraft Interface and Data Structure Tracking) is a tool that visualizes, at a high level, what the world generator will create when given a seed. It displays information on biome position, size, and climate in addition to Overworld features like villages, strongholds, and world spawn. It can use the vanilla world generator, or RTG + CC, but not RWG. It also does not display modded structures like LootGames games or Roguelike dungeons. The large maps displayed throughout this page were generated using ForgeAMIDST. This tool is useful when configuring Climate Control as it allows players to quickly see the effects of config changes without slowly generating worlds in game.

Installation

Caution:

Loading the same world after changing world generators will cause hard chunk borders where new chunks generate. For this reason it is not recommended to play a save made with RWG after installing RTG and CC without first re-enabling RWG and disabling RTG and CC.

Install Realistic Terrain Generation, Climate Control, and ForgeAMIDST

1. Download and install Realistic Terrain Generation through your launcher. PrismLauncher/MultiMC users need to download RTG from the Curseforge website, as Prism does not find a valid candidate for download. The latest version for Minecraft 1.7.10 is 1.1.17
2. Download and Install Climate Control. There are multiple versions, but the recommended is 0.8.2 See the [[#Notes|Notes]] section below for more information.
3. (Optional, but recommended) Install ForgeAMIDST as you would any forge mod: add it through your launcher, or drop it in the mods folder of your GTNH installation. ForgeAMIDST is difficult to find online, you can download it here on the GTNH Discord.

Disable Realistic World Gen Alpha, Default World Generator, and Custom Main Menu

1. Disable RWG. It is very important to only load either RWG or RTG, else you may encounter strange world generation like huge mushroom island biomes or broken biome placements. Disable it through your launcher, or add .disabled to the end of the filename.
2. Disable Default World Generator, or change:

   S:"World Generator"=RWG
   

   to:

   S:"World Generator"=RTG
   

   in config/defaultworlgenerator.cfg. Another option is to disable "lock world generator" in the config file. If using a server, make sure to also update server.properties as well.

Configuration

It is recommended to create a new world after installing RTG and CC to avoid the borders that tend to generate when changing world generators.

Climate Control has many options in config/climatecontrol.cfg. It is unnecessary to restart Minecraft after changing config settings: Climate Control will pick them up automatically, so a very effective workflow is to generate a world > open AMIDST > change settings > generate a new world and reload AMIDST to view the impact your changes had. There are also settings specific to mods like Biomes O'Plenty (BoP) in config/ClimateControl which allow changes to relative biome generation frequency.

RTG is also configurable in config/RTG, but requires restarts in between config changes.

Some players have shared in the Discord thread config files for Climate Control and RTG that they use. They are linked here to demonstrate the types of worlds that Climate Control and RTG enable:

Using ForgeAmidst

ForgeAmidst can be launched either from the main menu, or in the pause menu after loading into a world. It is important to note, however, that the maps Amidst generates from the main menu are not entirely accurate. You should generate a world and explore it with Amidst from the pause menu. Make sure that "biome profile" is set to "realistic" and "map type" is set to "climate control" in the options tab at the top of the UI to get accurate world maps.

Amidst is a resource intensive application; you should assign extra memory to GTNH while using it than you would when playing normally.

Amidst cannot be launched in an SMP world, all world gen testing should be done in single player.

Amidst does not work with RWG. You must use it with RTG and/or CC, or the vanilla world generator.

Notes

Which Versions of Climate Control and Realistic Terrain Generation should I use? Why shouldn't I use the GTNH forks?

There are GTNH forks of Climate Control and Realistic Terrain Generation. Do not use them because they are broken. For RTG, use the most recent 1.7.10 download on Curseforge: 1.1.1.7. For Climate Control there are options:

• Do not use the GTNH fork of Climate Control on GitHub (0.9.2-GTNH-pre or any other version from that repository). It is known to cause biomes from space to appear in the Overworld as well as abnormally high incidences of Mangrove, Volcano, and Tropics islands
• Version 0.8.2 on Curseforge does not have the issues of the GTNH fork, but also will not generate Biomes O'Plenty sub-biomes. This decision means that some biomes look awkward, such as Land of Lakes, which generates with a stone floor.
  • A quick fix is to disable the offending biomes (Land of Lakes, but there may be others) in the BoP or Climate Control config files.
• The second latest version (0.6.61) of Climate Control does generate sub-biomes properly, but it has the same issue with mangrove / volcano islands as the later versions. Players who want sub biomes and oceans should use this version but disable Mangrove, Volcano, and Tropics sub-biomes in BoP configs. There are non-sub-biome variants of all three which are fine to leave enabled. CC 0.6.61 is missing some features of the later 0.82 version, such as options for mountain chains. Choose the version of Climate Control that suits your world gen preferences.

On the Ability to Experience all of Gregtech: New Horizons with Realistic Terrain Generation and Climate Control

RTG and Climate Control very likely do not impede the ability to experience all of GTNH. Structures and ores generate properly, just as they do with RWG. Some players have even completed a Stargate with Climate Control (though not RTG). Players using oceans should be cognizant of their starting continent size and geography because of the high amounts of Overworld exploration necessary in the early game.

Miscellaneous

Some users have reported that Thaumcraft wisp spawners generate very frequently in some biomes using CC + RTG. It is unclear to what extent this is behavior unique to RTG and CC versus the default behavior of GTNH.

Players may notice climatecontrol.cfg change on disk during startup or gameplay. Climate Control rewrites its config file while loading. This is normal.

ForceStarterContinent=true in climatecontrol.cfg does not work with climate bands.

ForgeAmidst has a "color by climate" option that colors biomes based on their climate. This option is useful when changing climate bands in CC.

ForgeAmidst does not show RTG rivers by default. To view rivers, check "Options > Map > Show High Resolution RTG Map." Be aware that enabling high resolution mapping impacts Amidst performance significantly, and is impractical when viewing large areas.