![[OLD SEMESTER] 15-104 • Introduction to Computing for Creative Practice](https://courses.ideate.cmu.edu/15-104/f2021/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/stop-banner.png)
As a part of my quarantine boredom, I have picked up the game Minecraft again in a serious way, and a good deal of my time in Minecraft is simply spent wandering around the game’s randomly generated terrain. Minecraft has over 60 different types of terrain, each including their own terms of generation (i.e.: a snowy tundra will look very different from a fringe jungle biome). The only uniform constraint is the height limit, y=256, and bedrock y=0. I admire the sheer variety of terrains in Minecraft, and how much work goes into creating them. They are all instantly recognizable and yet always unique. Before 15-104, I had never considered the effects of randomness on terrain, but now I can see just how deep it goes. The caves underneath are random, as is the surface land, the nether connected to the overworld, the generated structures, the ores, the trees, the mobs… the list goes on. I think that that’s the beauty of Minecraft: it is an entirely different experience every time, due to the randomness deeply embedded in the game.
Minecraft (released Nov.18, 2011)
https://www.minecraft.net/en-us