DIY: Minecraft Adding World Generator Customization

At what price progress? We level mountains and fill chasms to make journeys easier, drag down islands floating in the sky because they look weird, and fence off the boundaries of the world because we feel uncomfortable in places where geometry, geography, and physics break down. Life becomes easier but less interesting, and we all suffer for it. Keep Mineland weird.

Having ironed out some of the oddities of Minecraft's world generator over the years, Mojang is bringing them back in a way. Version 1.8 will expose a few of the generator's inner workings, with sliders and buttons that'll let players fiddle with such cryptic settings as "coordinate scale" and "biome scale offset." Sure, you could simply use it to toss in a few more caverns, or you could go all out and re-enact Waterworld.

While sliders with baffling names are always exciting to tweak, inspiring feelings that I'm a super wizard class hacker surfing deep inside a code barrel, Mojang are also offering a simpler way to play somewhere fun. It's whipped together presets with exciting names like Drought, Caves of Chaos, Mountain Madness, and, oh my, Water World. Update 1.8's still in the works, with no firm launch date yet.

Tales of strange worlds are what I always found most interesting in Minecraft, so I'm quite keen to hear what comes of this. Why, I may even give in and finally buy it myself. Yes, I know.