Megarandom world generation

Generate larger, random and more varied maps than the original game.

[h1]FEATURES:[/h1] [list] [*] A new world generation algorithm better suited for large worlds with many modded biomes. See description. [*] Map size slider. [*] Optimizations in the game code to decrease loading times and better place regions of interest ("setpieces"). [*] Circular world shapes: more biomes, less water, less empty space. Note 26/11/2025 : this feature is a little outdated now, probably just stick to Continental. [*] Extended biome patches for external mods (configurable). [*] Other cool stuff: caves and ruins on surface, various options to increase world generation randomness, settings to spawn special items from other mods and reward exploration. [/list]

RECOMMENDED SETTINGS:

- "Continental" shape. - "Optimized World Gen" ON. Note: this can rarely lead to things spawning in unusual spaces (eg. Pig King in Bee biomes), see description for details.

DESCRIPTION:

This mod brings cave biomes on the surface and adds several algorithms to make world generation much more random and varied.

I have designed an other world generation system to make the world shape more compact (supports 50-60 biomes vs 20 for the original game). Without it the original algorithm tries to connect all biomes to the center, which is very poor for 40+ biomes: it results in a lot of water separations overall and thin paths that serve no gameplay purpose in the center of the map. Examples: 60 biomes map with the original algorithm.

Note that since many new biomes are marsh/cave/dangerous areas the game tends to become a bit harder. Also, since the map generation is very random, some maps can be especially unfair.

If you want to quickly see what the new shapes look, there is a setting to reveal map at start (only works in hosted worlds). If you just want to try the new algorithm without changing anything else, you can disable Cave/MultiWorld biomes in the mod options and the world generation will be close to vanilla (minor differences in the size/content of certain biomes). In general, the world gen code should be compatible with other mods and treat modded biomes just fine.

Last but not least, I changed the game code to spawn objects more "leniently". In the original worldgen, the game has a list of things to spawn per biome (eg. Pig King), aka "set pieces". Unfortunately, when the biome does not have enough room to contain all set pieces, the original game would discard the unplaced set pieces, and if one of these happens to be important (eg. pig king), the world gen would restart, hoping the next attempt will be luckier. This process has several negative consequences: the first is that your world may not contain all the intended objects, the second is that the default world gen algorithm can sometimes take a large amount of time, this becomes prohibitive when using many mods with new biomes and set pieces (eg. Teleportado).

When that happens, my new code will try to spawn the set piece somewhere else using several different fallbacks, in the worst case, the object could spawn in a totally different biome.

This "optimization" can be toggled on/off (default: ON)

Summary:

• More items will spawn than in your regular DST.
• Much faster worldgen.
• Things may (rarely) spawn in weird locations. eg. Pig King in Marsh.

Imo, the new result looks far better in practice, but it's a trade-off. Be aware!

RECOMMENDED MODS:

I advise to also play with the following mods:

• Tropical Experience: complete port of Don't Starve: Shipwrecked biomes.
• Cherry Forest: add new biomes to the game.
• Moar Metals (New types of resources will spawn, not tested recently)
• [url=https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=522117250]Birds and Berries and Trees and Flowers for Friends
• [/url] More plant variations that works quite well on large maps.

KNOWN ISSUES:

- Map generation time increased significantly (1-2 minutes with default options). This only affects the loading screen at the first creation of a world, not after a world is generated. If the loading screen takes more than 5 minutes, you should probably give up, as errors in world generation lead to infinite loading.

- Incompatible with the following mods:

• More Adventures and a lot of items.
• Island Adventures (never tried, unlikely to work)

- Compatible with issues:

• Any mod that spawns major set pieces, such as Teleportato may cause longer map generation and the new set pieces might spawn at weird locations or not spawn at all. I recommend using the "Optimized World gen" setting which should help with this.

- Other mods that add cave/ruin biomes on surface, such as [*] Cave On Grounds will work fine, however each mod will spawn a set of ruins by default, and so they will be there twice. To prevent this, just set "Ruins" to "Disabled" in Megarandom options. (Settings Ruins to "Disabled" will only disable the generation of Megarandom ruins and won't interfere with the other mods)

- Atrium is disabled by default. You can enable it by setting the "Ruins" option to "Too Many". Be aware that this will cause about 2x longer map generation time. In addition, some ground textures near the Atrium are invisible, but it is just a visual bug, you won't get any problem for navigating on them.

CREDITS:

Special thanks to: