Terrarium

 Terrarium adds a new world type: 'Earth'. As the name implies, this is a world type that generates an unfolded replica of planet Earth! The world is highly customizable, allowing for extensive tweaking to match your own needs.

To fit within the constraints of Minecraft such as height limit and view distance, the world is not at a 1:1 scale. Instead, the default is 1:40m (1 block per 40 meters). However, this can be controlled with a scale slider in the customization GUI.

This mod supports Cubic Chunks! This is optional support, so you do not need the mod installed. If you do have it, however, you have access to infinite height range. Without Cubic Chunks, terrain bellow y=0 or above y=256 will be cut off.

 You can view an album of images here (note: these are currently outdated).

Additionally, if you'd like to communicate you can find my discord here.

Warning

As the Earth is quite big, all relevant data cannot be stored within the mod. Data will be instead downloaded as needed and later cached for later use. This does unfortunately mean that the mod will need an internet connection when visiting new places.

Creating a World

An Earth world can be simply created by cycling the 'World Type' option. From here, the world can either be created right away with default settings or customized through the 'Customize' button.

This will open a new customization GUI, displaying all available properties on the left and a preview of the world on the right.

 Whenever a setting is changed, the preview will be rebuilt around the selected spawnpoint. This allows you to judge how your world will look.

 Note that the default preset is not survival ready -- no ores or resources will be spawned. These can be enabled through the 'Survival Properties' section.

Navigation

No matter the scale, the world will be quite big. To allow easy navigation, the command '/geotp' has been introduced. This can be used in two ways:

• /geotp <latitude> <longitude>
• /geotp <place name>

The first does as would be expected -- you give a latitude and longitude and it takes you there. However, the latter will instead perform a Google Maps geocode to find a location based on the given name.

 Along with /geotp, this mod provides another command: /geotool. This command takes no arguments, and when executed, opens up a UI containing a few options:

• "Where am I?" -- Clicking this will display a map with your current location marked
• "Go to place" -- Clicking this will display a map with a movable marker, allowing teleportation
• "Display Panorama" -- Clicking this will find the closets Google Street View panorama and immerse the player within.

Servers

 While Terrarium has clientside features, it functions completely as a serverside-only mod. This means a player connecting to a server with the mod does not need to have it installed to join (this includes Vanilla clients!)

 However, if a client does have the mod, they will have access to more features such as Street View and the /geotool map, which would not be possible without the mod installed.

To create an Earth world on a dedicated server, you will need to set level-type=terrarium.earth in your server.properties file. To configure the world, you will first need to install the mod on your client. Once you have the mod installed on your client, start the world creation process as if you were creating a new singleplayer world. Go to the "Customize" screen, and change the settings to your liking. Once here, though, don't create the world. Instead, press the '...' button that appears next to the world preview. In this screen, you will see a copybox which you can select to copy the world settings to your clipboard. Once you've copied this to your clipboard, paste the copied text after the "generator-settings=" property in your server.properties. Now, when you start the server, it should generate a Terrarium world with your selected configuration.

Version Ports & Maintenance

It truly warms my heart to see people excited about this mod, and excited at the possibility of it being updated to newer versions of Minecraft. This is something I would very much like to see, too! I have so many ideas of things I would love to improve in the mod - however, as much I love this mod, I am not currently actively working on maintaining or updating it. I try to make sure the most critical issues that prevent the mod entirely from working don't stick around, but even that I've not been able to keep up too well. The mod likely will not be ported to newer versions of the game, at least not any time soon.

Data Attribution

• NASADEM: Courtesy NASA/JPL-Caltech
• GEBCO Compilation Group (2019): GEBCO 2019 Grid
• Land Cover: ESA Climate Change Initiative
• SoilGrids: ISRIC World Soil Info
• OpenStreetMap Contributors
• WorldClim
• iNaturalist

Terrarium adds a new customizable world type that generates a replica of the Earth within Minecraft.

Creating a World

An Earth world can be simply created by cycling the 'World Type' option. From here, the world can either be created right away with default settings or customized through the 'Customize' button.

This will open a new customization GUI, displaying all available properties on the left and a preview of the world on the right.

Whenever a setting is changed, the preview will be rebuilt around the selected spawnpoint. This allows you to judge how your world will look.

Note that the default preset is not survival ready -- no ores or resources will be spawned. These can be enabled through the 'Survival Properties' section.

Navigation

To navigate to any real-world location, you can make use of the geotp command:

It can be used with latitude & longitude coordinates:

• /geotp 27.987746 86.924812

Or it can be used with a place name:

• /geotp Mount Everest

Additionally, you can make use of the /geotool command, which provides various utilities for navigating the world. It provides a UI to display where you currently are, and a UI to teleport to a new location with a map.

World Height

The vanilla world is limited to a 256 block height range, which usually can not fit the entire height range of the Earth! Depending on your world scale settings, you might end up with the top of the world being chopped off at the height limit. Luckily, Terrarium supports Cubic Chunks which is an amazing mod that enables infinite height ranges. As long as you create a world while Cubic Chunks is installed, terrain should no longer get cut off!

Mod Support

Terrarium generally tries to support other mod's world generators, but in some cases this support is limited. Custom modded biomes have to be explicitly supported by Terrarium, and currently only Biomes O' Plenty is supported.

Most modded generators should work, as long as you have the "Compatibility Mode" enabled in your world customization settings. It is important to note however that due to most mods expecting a normal height range between 0-255 with the terrain centering around Y=63, Terrarium shifts modded generators to generate correctly around the surface level. The result of this is that Y-ranges for features such as ores will not be absolute, but rather relative to the surface, and will be stop generating over 64 blocks below the surface. Vanilla features will still generate correctly throughout the height range.

Server Setup

While Terrarium has a few clientside features, it functions completely as a serverside-only mod. This means a player connecting to a server with the mod does not need to have it installed to join (this includes Vanilla clients!)

However, if a client does have the mod, they will have access to more features such as the /geotool map, which would not be possible without the mod installed.

To create an Earth world on a dedicated server, you will need to set level-type=terrarium.earth in your server.properties file. This will set up a Terrarium world with default properties. The generator configuration is a bit tricky, so the easiest way to set up customs settings is to use the customization screen with the client mod. Once you have the mod installed on your client, start the world creation process as if you were creating a new singleplayer world. Head into the "Customize" screen, and tweak the settings to your liking. Once here, don't create the world. Instead, press the '...' button that appears next to the world preview. In this screen, you will see a text box which you can select to copy the world settings to your clipboard. Once you've copied this to your clipboard, paste the copied text after the generator-settings= property in your server.properties. Now, when you start the server, it should generate a Terrarium world with your selected configuration!

Warning

As the Earth is quite big, all relevant data cannot be stored within the mod files (this would take up 100s of gigabytes!). Data is instead downloaded as needed and later cached for later use. This does unfortunately mean that the mod will need an internet connection when visiting new places. Depending on internet speed, you may unfortunately experience lag while this data downloads. The mod does its best to counteract this lag, however. Once a part of the dataset is downloaded, it is cached locally so that it can be loaded again quickly in the future. You can also preload world data through the /geotool command.

Data Attribution

Terrarium makes use of a large range of data sources which have been reprocessed for the purpose of this mod:

• NASADEM: Courtesy NASA/JPL-Caltech
• GEBCO Compilation Group (2019): GEBCO 2019 Grid
• Land Cover: ESA Climate Change Initiative
• SoilGrids: ISRIC World Soil Info
• OpenStreetMap Contributors
• WorldClim
• iNaturalist