BetterContinents

v0.9.4

• A world export loads correctly when the Directory setting points at it. Setting only Directory to an export folder and creating the world with "From Config" loaded the maps but not the settings in the folder's export.cfg, so the world kept BetterContinents.cfg's own: at the default Heightmap Amount of 1 the heightmap, stored for Heightmap Amount 2, put the waterline twice as high and a vanilla world came back almost all ocean (reported from the Valheim Worlds discord). The forest came out wrong too, and the game placed its own locations and random alt biomes beside the exported ones.
• Now a new world made with "From Config" takes the export.cfg of the Directory along with its maps, the way a preset import does. Its settings win over BetterContinents.cfg for the keys it lists: edit export.cfg, or delete it, to use your own. Directory stays where BetterContinents.cfg points, so a moved export still loads, and BetterContinents.cfg itself is not changed. The log names every setting the export changed. A folder without export.cfg (hand-made maps) loads exactly as before, and presets and existing worlds are not affected.
• An export's README.txt and export.cfg describe this as a fourth way to make a world from it.

v0.9.3

• Works with Expand World Data's biomes again. A biome map's legend (biomemap.txt) names them the way Expand World Data's expand_biomes yaml does, for example "DeadWastes: 8B4513", in any case. Since 0.8.0 Better Continents accepted only the ten vanilla biome names: such a line was reported as "Invalid biome name", the whole legend fell back to the default colours, and the added biome's area became whichever biome's default colour was nearest (often Mistlands).
• Legend names may be written as the game shows them, with spaces, underscores or hyphens ("Black Forest", "deep_north"). A legend line Better Continents cannot use (a name that is no biome here, a colour that does not parse, or a line that is not "name: colour") is reported and skipped, and the rest of the legend still applies: the pixels of a skipped name's colour are left to the default generation (None) instead of becoming the nearest other biome, and a vanilla biome whose colour does not parse keeps its default colour. Lines starting with # are comments. Before, one such line threw the whole legend away for the default colours.
• bc reload bm and bc b fn keep the world's biome map when the new picture or legend has an error, and say so. Before, a legend error reloaded the picture with the default colours (a wrong path switched the biome map off), and the next save kept the damage.
• Expand World Data's biomes survive world saves and the settings a server sends to its players. A world made with Better Continents 0.7.x and Expand World Data biomes loads with them again, unless a 0.8 or 0.9 version has saved it since: those versions erased them. There, reload the biome map from its picture (bc reload bm) and the next save keeps it.
• The rest of Better Continents handles them too: Biome precision, alt-biome planting, location placement, the minimap (including Expand World Data's per-biome map heights, which Better Continents' own map drawing skipped), the "bc ab" report, and world export, which gives each added biome a colour of its own and names it in biomemap.txt.
• Expand World Data numbers its biomes in the order its expand_biomes yaml lists them, and a Better Continents world stores that number. Install it wherever the world is played, with the same yaml, and add new biomes at the end. Where a world's biome map holds a biome Expand World Data does not define now (not installed, or its yaml changed), the default generation decides and the log says so; the map keeps the biome for when it is defined again. Before, such a biome would have stopped the world from loading.
• Give each added biome a terrain in the expand_biomes yaml (for example "terrain: Plains"): its ground is then that biome's. Without one Expand World Data gives it vanilla's default ground, flat and 30 m under water, with or without Better Continents; only a heightmap with Override All hides that.
• Where a biome map or heat map says what a place is, it now wins over Expand World Data's world yaml in every case: Expand World Data's Ashlands test could override the heat map, so Ashlands there had no lava heat or Ashlands weather.
• locationmap.txt keeps Expand World Data's "Name:Alias" locations, which were dropped without a word; a location listed twice keeps its last colour, and a colour that does not parse skips only its line (before, both threw the whole legend away). Other mods' locations already worked by name.
• On a world that uses Better Continents the server and every player must run the same version, so update them together, and install Expand World Data on all of them when its biomes are in the biome map.

v0.9.2

• Works with ZenMap and no-map worlds. Better Continents drew the minimap on background threads and let the game carry on before the drawing was done, and the game hands the map to other mods at that moment. ZenMap copies it there to build the biome-hidden map it shows at cartography tables, so on a Better Continents world the tables showed meadows, plains and low ground as sea and the rest as noise. The map is now finished before the game carries on, so cartography tables and admin maps on no-map worlds show the real land and sea, as crafted parchment maps already did.
• The minimap is still drawn on several threads, now on every CPU core (up to 16) instead of four. The loading screen waits for it, as it does for vanilla's single-threaded drawing, which takes longer.
• Mods that hook the game's map drawing now run once, on the finished map. Before, they ran twice, the first time on an empty map.
• If drawing the map on several threads fails, the error is logged and the game draws the map itself. Before, a failed thread was ignored and part of the map stayed empty.
• No world needs changing: every player's game redraws the map each time it joins. On a world that uses Better Continents the server and every player must run the same version, so update them together.

v0.9.1

• Rebuilt against Valheim 1.0.16 and re-verified: the reference check passes against the 1.0.16 client and dedicated server, the mod boots on a 1.0.16 dedicated server, and the offline alt-biome harness passes every check. Nothing that Better Continents patches changed in 1.0.16, and the game's alt-biome list is the same 32 entries.
• The README, ALTBIOMES.md, the config descriptions, the console output, the generated legend headers and the printable colour chart no longer name a Valheim patch: they say "Valheim 1.0" or "vanilla". The three guides are rebuilt as the Valheim 1.0 / Better Continents 0.9.x editions, so neither a game patch nor a mod patch release needs new guides.

v0.9.0

• Adds world export: it dumps the loaded world, vanilla or Better Continents, into Better Continents maps that rebuild it. That is a 16-bit heightmap sampled the way the game builds its terrain, plus biome, location, forest, heat, alt-biome, lava and moss maps with their legends, and an export.cfg with the settings that load them. Heights are encoded for Heightmap Amount 2 and Sea Level 0.5 by default (-30 m to 370 m, waterline 0.15).

• The export samples on worker threads and writes its PNGs on a background task, so the game keeps running. It writes to BetterContinents/<world>/export-/ beside worlds_local, never into the world's save folder, and a cancelled or failed export deletes its partial files.

• Adds the "bc export run/status/cancel" console commands for the host, and "bc_export" for every player the server allows. "bc_export server" asks a dedicated server to export its own world (admins only).

• Adds an export HUD modelled on Wubarrk's Eye: a status box (F9) with the progress, the last export folder and your map pixel, and a window (F7) with the export options, Start and Cancel. The window frees the mouse while it is open. Turn it on with Hud in the new "BetterContinents.Export" config section.

• The Export section applies at once: Better Continents now reads BetterContinents.cfg again when the file changes on disk, and Configuration Manager changes apply straight away. Other settings are still read only when a world is created.

• A server sends its Hud and Allow Export values to every Better Continents client, and a change reaches players who are already connected. A client connected to an older server, or to one without the mod, uses its own values.

• Fixes the server forgetting a joining client's Better Continents version at the game's own handshake, which made a world using Better Continents turn every client away (since 0.7.31).

• Adds a "Settings Transfer Rate" setting ("07 BetterContinents.Misc": Vanilla, KB256, KB384, KB512 (the default), KB768, MB1, MB1_5, MB3 or Unlimited, 100 MB/s). Valheim pins every Steam connection to about 150 KB/s, so a detailed Better Continents world could take over a minute to reach a joining player; this sets that one connection to the chosen rate for the transfer, then restores it. Steam sends at exactly the rate set (it has no congestion control), and the transfer itself moves about 4 MB/s at most: with an 11.8 MB world a join took 78 s at Vanilla, 23 s at KB512 and 3 s at Unlimited on a local dedicated server. Only the value on the machine that sends the settings (the host, or the dedicated server) matters, a client's own value has no effect, and the rate cannot be raised at all on PlayFab (crossplay) connections. The log shows the rate used and the transfer's size, time and speed.

• Adds a shareable form of the world cache: "bc_cache export" writes a world's settings as a ".bcworld" file (the same data a joining client would otherwise download: 11.8 MB for a 2048 px world, more for larger ones) with a ".txt" description beside it; "bc_cache import <file or folder>" puts one into a player's local cache before they ever connect, so joining skips that download entirely; "bc_cache list" shows what is cached. Better Continents also imports any ".bcworld" it finds under BepInEx's plugins folder or in BepInEx/config/BetterContinents/seed/ automatically at startup, so a mod pack containing nothing but a ".bcworld" file pre-seeds every player who installs it. An import never overwrites an entry, and a file's id is computed from its content, never taken from its name.

• Adds world import: "bc_import" (any player, in the main menu or in a world) makes a New World preset from an export folder, or from any folder of Better Continents maps with or without an export.cfg, and selects it, so Start, New World and Create make the world. With no argument it takes your newest export; "bc_import list" numbers them, and a number, a world's name or a folder picks one. "bc_import ... config" instead copies export.cfg into BetterContinents.cfg, keeping the old file beside it, and selects "From Config", for when you keep editing the PNGs. "bc import run/list/status" does the same in the host's debug tree.

• Every export now makes a New World preset "<world> <date> " when it finishes, so it is a choice in the New World screen straight away (not selected: pick it). The preset carries every map and a 256 px picture of the map, so it keeps working if the folder is moved or deleted. "bc_export ... nopreset" (or the HUD) switches it off.

• An import builds the settings exactly as "From Config" would, but from a copy of the config with export.cfg laid over it and on a worker thread, so your config is left alone (except the selected preset) and a loaded world is not touched. Making the same export's preset again replaces it; a preset of that name made some other way is moved aside, not overwritten.

• The export HUD window has an Import tab (your exports, newest first, with Make preset, Use as config, Open the folder and Copy the folder path) next to the Export tab, which now explains every map in a line (and more when you point at it), estimates the size, memory and time, and shows what the last export came to: heights and clipped pixels, missing locations, the preset. The window scrolls when it is taller than the screen.

• The paint map is now exported by default, like every other map ("bc_export ... nopaint" leaves it out). A Better Continents world's own terrain, vegetation and spawn maps, which no sampled map holds, are now copied into the export folder too, so the new world keeps them.

• README.txt in every export is rewritten for first-timers: the three ways to make a world from the export, step by step, what every file is, and how to edit and cut and paste between exports. export.cfg starts with a short explanation. The old advice to quit the game before pasting export.cfg is gone: the config is read again while the game runs.

• Fixes preset pictures never showing in the New World screen on Linux (and where the user name has a dot), and preset names with a dot being cut short there.

• The Directory setting's description now lists all 13 map file names it loads.

• Biome precision works again, now on Valheim 1.0 (it was switched off in 0.7.20). "Biome precision" 1 to 5 makes the ground follow the biome borders inside each 64 m terrain zone, on (N + 1) x (N + 1) cells down to 11 m, instead of only at the zone's 4 corners: ground textures, grass, vegetation and spawn points. 0 stays vanilla. Heights do not change, and "bc b p" changes it in a loaded world. An export's export.cfg carries the world's value.

• Adds BetterContinents-Export-Guide.pdf to the package: "Export & Import, the easy guide", an illustrated, step-by-step guide for first-timers to exporting a world, editing the pictures, cutting and pasting between worlds, Biome precision and making new worlds from an export, with a table of what can go wrong and how to fix it (GPL-3.0, its source attached inside the PDF).

• The package now carries three PDFs: the Better Continents Guide, "Export & Import, the easy guide", and "Map-making: a skill for AI agents" (BetterContinents-AI-Skill.pdf), a stand-alone document that teaches an AI agent how to author, check, export and import Better Continents maps; its toolkit is attached inside. - Known issue: the location map's grid is corner-based, unlike every other map's, so rotating or flipping an export's PNGs in an editor shifts every location by one pixel (10 m at 2048 px). Two locations can then land in the same 64 m zone, and the game keeps only the first: 487 of 11,817 were lost in a test world rotated by 180 degrees. Cut-and-paste and hand edits are not affected. To be fixed in a later version.

v0.8.1

• Adds alt-biome planting: an alt-biome map (altbiomemap.png) plants Valheim's alt biomes with colours, the way the biome map plants biomes. Its legend (altbiomemap.txt, written with a default colour per alt biome when missing) says which colour plants what, and "at x, z" lines plant the region under a point. Every planted area becomes a region of its own.
• Planted alt biomes count toward the game's per-alt-biome maximums when it places the rest at random.
• Adds per-world alt-biome options in the new "BetterContinents.AltBiomes" config section: mode (Random, PlantedOnly, Off), grid, placement seed, chance, amount, region size and distance scales, region filters and per-alt-biome overrides. They are baked into each new world.
• New worlds stop the alt-biome grid at the edge of the world when it is inside 10500 m.
• Adds the "bc ab" and "bc reload ab" console commands, and "bc_altbiomes" for every player, to inspect, export and change alt-biome placement.
• Clients use the server's alt-biome placement, and both sides log whether they agree.
• Fixes an index out of range error on Expand World Size worlds smaller than 10500 m, and wrong alt-biome regions on larger ones.
• Fixes Deep North weather on worlds with a biome map following the camera height instead of the map.
• Fixes land beyond 10500 m on worlds with the map edge drop-off disabled taking the ocean's biome for terrain, vegetation and spawns.
• Fixes locations that accept several biomes searching the wrong biome, or one the map lacks.
• Fixes debug-mode map edits not reaching alt-biome regions and chunk biomes.
• Guards the game's biome data cache with a fingerprint, so a cache built for other settings is never reused. Valheim 1.0.15 itself no longer reads that cache.
• Worlds that use none of the new alt-biome features are saved exactly as 0.8.0 saves them. Worlds that do need 0.8.1 or later: 0.8.0 loads them without Better Continents.

v0.8.0

• Updates the mod for Valheim 1.0.15.
• Saves world settings in the new 1.0 chunked save format, inside the world's own folder.
• Adds an upgrade path: a pre-1.0 world's settings are imported and moved into the world folder on its first save, and the old file is kept as "<world>.BetterContinents.pre10".
• Carries the settings through Valheim's save operations (rename, copy, move), which filter by file extension and would otherwise drop or delete them.
• Fixes the minimap drawing Swamp, Mountain, Plains and Mistlands as Black Forest, and restores the Ashlands and Mistlands map shading.
• Fixes world generation hanging forever when the biome map omits a biome.

v0.7.31

• Fixes wrong default name for moss map image file (was mossmmap.png, should be mossmap.png).
• Fixes manually reloading heat map using forest map file path.
• Fixes flat map being disabled when rough map blend was zero (should be only disabled when flat map blend is zero).
• Fixes None biome on biome maps not using the default biome generation.
• Fixes location pin removing possibly removing a random pin from the map.
• Minor optimizations.

v0.7.30

• Adds spawn map.
• Adds vegetation map.
• Changes the "Skip default location placement" config setting to be saved on the map settings.
• Improves config settings layout.
• Minor optimizations.
• Fixes index out of range error when going out of map bounds.
• Fixes "Disable map drop off" not working.

v0.7.29

• Fixes some worlds not working.

v0.7.28

• Adds fallback handling for lava when heat map is missing.

v0.7.27

• Fixed for the new game version.