How do you think new tiers will be handled?

There is now the "End" (referred to as sky in code) as well as the "Nether" (which is hell in code). I do believe you can also add new dimensions due to how minecraft sorts them out. If i recall right servers and mods like mystcraft use this to create new "worlds" for the player. The main issue with adding things to minecraft is minecraft generates land in about a 3by3 plane of chunks and all that is save, so if the area was rendered before rubies then there will be no rubies, you can have them added by finding unrendered chunks since they will load with the new algorithm with the ore in it, but this will cause "seams" like sharp drops and bisected structures like mines and lava pools since the new algorithm diverges from the older one.

However according to what we know starbound might have a better way to handle this if they can find a way to have planets you visit remain the same (starbound only saves your changes not the entire planet) since starbound generates planets only when you visit them and it is a lot easier to just go to a new planet then travel 96 blocks (if you basically just stayed in one chunck and never traveled into another chunk) to find a place that can generate new content.

Also a wormhole mod sounds neat.

PS: Sorry, I am a minecraft geek.

 

In minecraft you could load new chunks, not start over lol

 

Though you did have to start over if you didn't want your world to look smooth. But if you didn't mind mountains that were cut in half or the like i thing you can still play a world from at least alpha (maybe maybe all the way back to classic) just fine.

 

Not really, if you went a thousand or so blocks passed the "ugly" chunks (some can be cool!) you wont ever see them, just, dont go back to your old home lol

 

Yeah. I like when it bisects one of the generated features so you have a huge wall with a mineshaft sticking out.

 

Alright so I am seeing Bartwe stream right now, and it appears that they don't save each block but they do save something. It appears to control the worldgen by color coding the minibiomes and it keeps track of water maybe.

At first I thought it was similar to Terraria which would be saving every block, but then I noticed there was no detail just simple colors. And the file on his computer is called mapgen.png.

 

Sounds similar to dungeon gen.

Also that sounds correct, the game is supposed to only save your changes and just rebuild whatever was not changed on the fly if I recall correctly.

 

If the world is rebuilt from the mapgen.png, as opposed to generator code, I suppose that means new versions will be able to support old planets?

I don't think I see any ore deposits (unless they're just too small for the resolution) so we may also still get updated content on old worlds.