Swamp start too often has scuffed worldgen

[durbal]

I find it pretty annoying that every time I start on the swamp biome I have to see if I want to continue based on how scuffed the worldgen is.  Sometimes it comes out fine -- abyssalite properly separating biomes, etc. -- and other times it's a total mess with teleporters, geysers, etc. just appearing halfway in one biome and halfway in the next: abyssalite is broken all over, gases are leaking between biomes, etc.

Is there any plans to clean up the worldgen in this start?  It's a fun start but it really sucks to have to scope it out every time to see if your start is scuffed or not.  I don't mind hard starts and such, but I do mind when there's minimal sense of continuity or organization and biomes are ill-defined and leaking all over.

 

Are there any plans to address the worldgen for this start?

[Sasza22]

There were quite a few patches addressing worldgen. They said they are trying to fix the border issues. If you got severe border breaks in recently started worlds you should post them in the bug tracker so that they can be fixed faster.

[durbal]

I can do that, but seriously I'd wager over 50% of the starts are messed up in either major ways or multiple minor ways.

Like look at this start (SWMP-C-2130542534-0) for example:

What is the caustic biome doing there?  I mean, it's not an absolutely critical problem, but it's out of place and very annoying.

 

This stuff may seem nitpicky, but it happens so frequently that it can't be ignored.  It's very rare to have a sensible start compared to the terra start where it's much more of anomaly to have something weird like this.  I guess heat-leaking issues and such are more rare than before the worldgen patches, but this kind of stuff can't be considered normal -- and if it is, I suggest that the definition of 'normal' be changed so that the swamp start's normal is much closer to the terra start's definition of 'normal'.

 

After deciding to scrap that start because I know it's all scuffed (I can usually tell pretty quickly at this point), I use the sandbox reveal tool just around the starting area and see more stuff:

Why is there a break in the abyssalite near the vent?  And yet another where the lab meets the caustic biome?

And looking around a bit more, there are broken borders near the geysers but I can't upload more images because forum stuff.

Again, this isn't absolutely game-breaking stuff and this is a relatively minor example compared to some stuff.  But the fact that this is so extremely common is irritating.  I absolutely adore when I get a start with cleanish borders, but they are so incredibly rare compared to the terra start that I signed up to this forum just to point that fact out.

[Yobbo]

Didn't POIs and special features like that steam vent always break borders, even in the base game?

I'm not sure i agree that perfect segregation of every zone by a thick abyssalite border is a thing to strive for.

That said i think the miniscule size of biome bubbles in Spaced Out probably exacerbates the issue. There are a lot of worldgen settings for whether or not features are allowed to break borders, so it's definitely possible to "fix" these cases. It probably comes down to whether or not they are officially considered problems.

I'm not sure what the problem is with that caustic biome in your first image. Why should it not be there?

TBH i've run so many Spaced Out worldgens now i don't even remember how the original game worked any more...

[durbal]

17 hours ago, Yobbo said:

Didn't POIs and special features like that steam vent always break borders, even in the base game?

I'm not sure i agree that perfect segregation of every zone by a thick abyssalite border is a thing to strive for.

That said i think the miniscule size of biome bubbles in Spaced Out probably exacerbates the issue. There are a lot of worldgen settings for whether or not features are allowed to break borders, so it's definitely possible to "fix" these cases. It probably comes down to whether or not they are officially considered problems.

I'm not sure what the problem is with that caustic biome in your first image. Why should it not be there?

TBH i've run so many Spaced Out worldgens now i don't even remember how the original game worked any more...

Yeah, they did I'm pretty sure.  But the problem with this start is that it's a total mess.  It's not a discontinuity here or there -- it's just a sloppy mess with stuff all over and often minimal sense of where one biome end and another begins.

The caustic biome a) shouldn't be directly next to the starting biome and b) it should have at least some abyssalite border, otherwise its ~40C temp leaks all over and its plants won't grow.

[NeoDeusMachina]

Isn't the swamp start literally the coldest starting asteroid?

I personally don't see an issue with having caustic biomes adjacent to the starting biome. It happens on the other starts as well. Dealing with heat is part of the challenge.

Biomes do seem closer than vanilla since spaced out maps are smaller, but there are so many sources of cold that heat really isn't an issue. I am not exagerrating, I don't build base cooling systems anymore on the DLC even on games that last 500-1000 cycles. Only needed for specific applications.

It might feel unsettling for some, it certainly did for me at first. I got used to it and stopped restarting to get that optimal start with all the planetoids aligned that only happens once every 5000 cycles (or so they say).

[durbal]

On 9/5/2021 at 1:22 PM, NeoDeusMachina said:

Isn't the swamp start literally the coldest starting asteroid?

I personally don't see an issue with having caustic biomes adjacent to the starting biome. It happens on the other starts as well. Dealing with heat is part of the challenge.

Biomes do seem closer than vanilla since spaced out maps are smaller, but there are so many sources of cold that heat really isn't an issue. I am not exagerrating, I don't build base cooling systems anymore on the DLC even on games that last 500-1000 cycles. Only needed for specific applications.

It might feel unsettling for some, it certainly did for me at first. I got used to it and stopped restarting to get that optimal start with all the planetoids aligned that only happens once every 5000 cycles (or so they say).

The issue isn't dealing with heat which, as you said, is not a huge problem in Spaced Out and certainly not in the swamp start.  The issue however is that there are often very ill-defined biomes.

After about 5 or 6 restarts due to various amounts of 'scuffedness' (some with swathes of abyssalite missing adjacent to the space biome, gases leaking all over to the next biome, etc.) I finally got what I consider a 'normal' start (SWMP-C-385747037-0).  Compare that seed to what usually spawns and note the generally clean biome boundaries, sound placement of POIs, etc.  It's great to get a seed like this and be able to work through the biomes in some semblance of ordered progression rather than just saying 'nevermind, it's all scuffed anyway I'll just strip mine it'.  One is fun and feels like ONI and the other is just...a tedious mess.

[UnderwearApp]

Tedious is subjective. I've been playing swamp the entire DLC EA and frankly, quite enjoy the mess.

[durbal]

19 hours ago, UnderwearApp said:

Tedious is subjective. I've been playing swamp the entire DLC EA and frankly, quite enjoy the mess.

It's not that the swamp itself is tedious, but rather the process of fixing worldgen issues that shouldn't exist.

Here's one on a current run (SWMP-C-689321704-0):

Why is there a massive swathe of abyssalite missing next to the space biome here?  Of course I can fix the heat leakage issue in due time (I figured I'd do that since it's a somewhat simple fix), but this kind of stuff is just very irritating.  There's no reason for a massive chunk of abyssalite to simply not exist here.  When a seed has a couple of these kinds of things I just restart at that point since I consider the start to be too scuffed.

As a general rule, if you begin a Spaced Out start on the swamp asteroid and do not see any abyssalite immediately, there is a very high chance that your start will be scuffed and abyssalite will be missing and biomes will leak into each other all over.

[Yobbo]

2 hours ago, durbal said:

Why is there a massive swathe of abyssalite missing next to the space biome here?

The starting biome is always separated from the surrounding biomes by granite, not abyssalite.

There are at least two reasons for this:

1. The player can expand to nearby biomes without having to wait for level 2 digging.
2. The player is forced to deal with heat management challenges.

It has, as far as i remember, always been so.

[Primalflower]

On 9/5/2021 at 11:00 AM, durbal said:

The caustic biome a) shouldn't be directly next to the starting biome

huh?

[durbal]

7 hours ago, Yobbo said:

The starting biome is always separated from the surrounding biomes by granite, not abyssalite.

There are at least two reasons for this:

1. The player can expand to nearby biomes without having to wait for level 2 digging.
2. The player is forced to deal with heat management challenges.

It has, as far as i remember, always been so.

The starting biome should never be adjacent to the space biome.  I can understand why the game doesn't spawn abyssalite there, but the fact of the matter is that shouldn't happen: the worldgen problems are precisely these types of problems.

6 hours ago, Lbphero said:

huh?

It generally should have the sulfur/sweetle biome as a buffer between it and the starting biome which allows for it to spawn with a decent amount of abyssalite around its circumference.

[Yobbo]

2 hours ago, durbal said:

The starting biome should never be adjacent to the space biome.

I really don't see why not.

Maybe you could mod in a world that plays more like you want? If i understand correctly it is definitely possible to define a world that behaves as you suggest. It's just not what ONI does.

You can manually edit the existing game files to play around with it. This might also help to better explain the current behaviour.

[Slavon Blue]

From what I've seen in this thread your starts are not 'scuffes' rather you're being quite persnickety about what you want from a start.

[durbal]

5 hours ago, Slavon Blue said:

From what I've seen in this thread your starts are not 'scuffes' rather you're being quite persnickety about what you want from a start.

Massive swathes of abyssalite missing, biomes leaking heat into each other, etc. were all issues that were dealt with in previous worldgen patches.  And the fact that these issues specifically seem to occur much more prominently in the swamp start compared to terra I'd say that the worldgen of the swamp start is an issue which was touched up but not fully addressed.

[misotoma]

If I can just say, not a big deal to me but I did get a map with 1 tile of abyssalite in the oil biome at over 1000 c it didn’t exchange with the oil until I built something near it and bam sour gas lol. Klei mentioned they fixed that but it seems one tile escaped lol. Maybe they should look at it again for all maps and biomes. Not a big deal but I think they should know since their goal was to fix it.