BetterContinents

v0.10.0

• Every existing world and preset keeps its terrain, biomes and locations exactly as in 0.9.4, and a world is saved byte for byte as before. What else changes for them is listed under "For every world". Everything under "For new worlds only" belongs to new worlds, those of settings version 12, which is what 0.10 gives a world it creates, and never reaches a world marked with an older version. A preset keeps the version it was saved with, so it makes the world it always made: the four presets that ship with the mod are version 7 and make version 11 worlds. A new world made from map files of your own is a version 12 world, which reads them the 0.10 way; setting [00 BetterContinents.Debug] Override version to 11 before you make it gives a version 11 world, which gets none of the new-world changes, as 0.9.4 would have made it. While Override version is set it is also the version every world is saved in and sent to joining players, so leave it empty. The README's "Upgrading from 0.9" section sets out which worlds get what.
• A world made from an export folder (the export's own preset, "bc_import", or a Directory with an export.cfg) is version 12 when the export's maps span what its own World Size and Edge Size give, which an export of a version 12 world and a 0.9.x export of a world of vanilla's size do. Otherwise (an export of a resized 0.9.x world, or one made under Expand World Size at another size) it is version 11: its maps span 21,000 m, as a version 11 world's do (an export made under Expand World Size is rebuilt as it was only with Expand World Size installed at that size), and it gets none of the new-world changes.
• Play a version 12 world with 0.10. Better Continents 0.9 still opens it, but as an older world (its maps span 21,000 m whatever its World Size says, for one), and its next save writes the world as version 11, so 0.10 then treats it as made by 0.9. It cannot read a world made with the experimental Compact Maps below: it generates that world's terrain as vanilla and leaves the world's settings file alone. It refuses a .bcworld file of a version 12 world as a bad header. On a world that uses Better Continents the server and every player must run exactly the same version, so update them together.
• The README, ALTBIOMES.md and the three guides in the package (the Better Continents Guide, "Export & Import, the easy guide" and "Map-making: a skill for AI agents") describe 0.10: the guides are rebuilt as the Valheim 1.0 / Better Continents 0.10.x editions.
• For every world
  • Better Continents regenerates the zones itself, after each change made with the "bc" commands or the settings window and on "bc regen". It resets the world's generated zones on the machine that runs the world (single player or the host), in a world that uses Better Continents: in a world without it, which is the game's own, the zones are left alone and the console says so. This comes with the "bc" commands, not with Debug Mode: they need cheats, which Debug Mode turns on at spawn (or type devcommands). The "bc" command is registered for the host only; the Server Devcommands mod lets any player with devcommands type it on their own machine, but on a joined player's machine a change alters only that player's copy of the settings and their own view of the ground, never the world or the other players, and the regeneration refuses there ("it runs on the machine that runs the world"). Make "bc" changes on the host or in single player. The work is spread over frames, with a start line, progress lines and a finish line in the console, and a new change or a new "bc regen" while it runs starts it over, after the zone it was in is finished. Each reset zone generates again with the new settings, locations included, when someone comes near. Players, what players built, tombstones and tamed animals are never removed, and a creature that a creature spawner made goes with its spawner unless it is tamed or stands in a zone that is left alone. If an error stops the work, the zones it had emptied and left waiting for their neighbours are finished, so they generate again when someone comes near, and the zones it had not reached are as they were: "bc regen" resets them.
  • What zone regeneration leaves alone. Every generated zone is reset except zones within one zone (3 x 3) of something a player built, a tombstone, ground a player has worked (fields, paths, roads, levelled or dug ground), or you while you are inside a dungeon; the ground around your own character on the surface is regenerated too. A player connected from another machine keeps the zones their game has loaded around them (their simulation distance: the 5 x 5 block by default, never less than the 3 x 3), checked as the work goes, so a player who moves keeps the zones around where they are now; something you build while it runs keeps its zone from then on. A location that reaches into more than one zone is kept or regenerated whole: if one of its zones stays, the others stay with it, and the parts of a location that stand in a zone nobody has generated yet are cleared with it, so regenerating again does not leave a second copy. Crops are kept with their field. A tree a player grew from a sapling counts as the world's, so it goes unless something nearby keeps its zone, and a zone that was already reset is not brought back when something is built beside it later. A location whose home zone the game generates while the work is running (someone came near it) can end up half placed, or placed twice; "bc regen" again sets it right.
  • The ground under what it leaves alone. The ground of every zone, the zones it keeps included, is built from the world's settings, so after a change it follows the new settings; the edits players made with the hoe, the cultivator or the pickaxe are stored as changes to the ground and ride on the new ground. A change that lowers the ground under a base leaves its pieces standing in the air, and the game breaks a piece that has lost its support a few seconds later (in a test, a workbench and a floor left about 3 m up were gone 8 seconds later); a change that raises the ground buries them, and trees and rocks in kept zones float or sink the same way. Make big height changes before building, or away from what you want to keep. "bc regen" on its own changes no ground.
  • Zone regeneration and saves. A zone is never saved half emptied, and a location is never saved half cleared: if the world is saved while the regeneration is going, the zones it has emptied are saved as not generated and generate again when someone comes near. A reset zone also waits to generate again until the zones around it that are being reset have been cleared, so a location that reaches over a zone edge is built once, whole. Where a zone that stays meets a zone that was reset, the height edits along the shared edge are cleared on the side that stays (the paint stays), so that the two grounds meet; this follows the zones actually reset, also when the regeneration is cut short.
  • "bc regen" does what a change does to the zones, on demand, and leaves the terrain that is loaded as it is: nothing changed, so the ground already matches the settings, and the game does not stall when it starts. It does not redraw the minimap or rebuild the alt-biome grid either, which "bc reset" still does before it. In a world without Better Continents it answers "Zone regeneration: this world does not use Better Continents." at once and rebuilds nothing.
  • A change made with the "bc" commands or the settings window (any setting, "bc reset", an alt-biome change, a map reload, Biome precision) rebuilds the loaded terrain once, the distant terrain and the grass too, and then regenerates the zones. That stalls the game for a second or two (1.6 s measured), as the rebuild after a change did in 0.9.4; the regeneration work itself is spread over frames.
  • The whole ground follows a change at once. After a "bc" change or "bc reset", the distant terrain, the grass and a zone that is loading at that moment take the new settings straight away; before, they could keep the old shape until the game redrew them or the zone loaded again.
  • "bc h alpha", "bc reload lm" and "bc reload terrain" read a map by the loaded world's own rule. "bc h alpha" decodes the loaded heightmap again at once, in every world: a version 11 world re-reads it the old way (8-bit grey, the alpha unused) with Heightmap Alpha on, and as 16-bit grey with it off; before, a change did nothing until the world was loaded again. "bc reload lm" reads the location map's pins exactly, and "bc reload terrain" reads the terrain legend's Expand World Data ground names, on a version 12 world; a version 11 world reads both as it always did.
  • [00 BetterContinents.Debug] Debug Reset Command, which held the console command that regenerated the zones (zones_reset start), is empty by default now: Better Continents regenerates the zones itself. A console command written there runs instead, after each change and on "bc regen" (for example zones_reset start), and a BetterContinents.cfg that still holds the old default is set to empty once, with a line in the log that says how to go back. The hidden [07 BetterContinents.Misc] Config Version records it, so a zones_reset start you write afterwards stays.
  • [00 BetterContinents.Debug] Debug Mode's description says what it does. The old one, "Automatically reveals the full map on respawn, enables cheat mode, and debug mode", named a map reveal that Debug Mode does not do, and did not in 0.9.x either. In a world that uses Better Continents, on the machine that runs the world (single player or the host), it turns devcommands on when you spawn, shows "Better Continents Debug Mode Enabled!" at the top left, and adds a Better Continents button to the Esc menu and the large map that opens the settings window (Alt+F8 does the same while the Esc menu or the large map is open, and does nothing elsewhere). What reveals the whole map is a "bc" change: most of them redraw the minimap and explore all of it.
  • Water follows its ground. Each 64 m zone's water works out how deep the sea is under it once, when the zone loads, so ground rebuilt in place afterwards (a "bc" change, "bc reset", or a terrain edit that loads after its zone) left a square of sea with straight edges looking deep among shallow-looking water, or the other way round. Now each zone's water takes the depth of its rebuilt ground. Worlds without Better Continents are untouched.
  • Vegetation is no longer placed twice. The game fills a zone with trees, bushes, rocks and the like from the world seed, the zone and each prefab's name, so a zone filled a second time over its own objects (a command that fills zones again, or a save put back together from mismatched files) draws every spot again and doubles everything in it: "a clone of everything within inches or 1 m", as a player put it. Now a plant is not placed within 1 m of the same kind of object already standing in its zone, or placed there by another vegetation entry in the same pass, in every world made with Better Continents, old ones included. It changes vegetation only, never terrain, and only in zones generated from now on: zones that are already generated keep what they have. One entry never blocks itself, so vanilla's densities and groups stay for every prefab with one entry, except beside an object of that prefab that already stands in its zone (one of a location placed just before, or of an earlier fill); where two entries place the same prefab (for example a vegetation map's, or an alt biome's added vegetation) a second plant within 1 m of the first is dropped, so a zone generated from now on can hold fewer plants than in 0.9.4.
  • Adds "bc_twins" (any player; "bc twins" in the host's bc tree) to find and remove the doubled vegetation a world already has. "bc_twins [radius]" counts twins by prefab and zone: exact twins (two copies on one spot) and near ones (within the radius, 1 m unless given, 0.1 to 5 m). "bc_twins remove [radius]" shows what a cleanup would delete and "bc_twins remove confirm [radius]" deletes it, 1000 objects a frame: the copy nearest the ground stays, nothing a player built is ever removed, crops players grow go only when they stand on one spot, and without a radius only exact twins go. Removal runs where the world is: single player, the host, or a dedicated server ("bc_twins server ...", admins only). Back the world up first. If another mod has changed the game's vegetation code so that the guard cannot be installed, the log says so (the vegetation map is off then too) and the rest of Better Continents still works.
  • Maps take far less memory. Better Continents now holds the float maps (height, rough, forest, heat, lava and moss), the biome map, the spawn and vegetation maps and the paint and terrain maps in tiles of 128 x 128 pixels, and a tile of one value (open sea, the empty canvas around a painted area) is held as that one value. Every value reads exactly as before, and as fast. Measured on a real set of 10,501 px maps (a heightmap, a forest map and a biome map), a world holds about 99 MB where 0.9.4 held about 1.32 GB. The world file and what is sent to joining players are unchanged.
  • Heightmap Amount is 1 everywhere. [02 BetterContinents.Heightmap] Heightmap Amount and the bc console already used 1; [09 BetterContinents.Export] Default Heightmap Amount, which was 2, is 1 now too. With Sea Level 0.5 an export's heights then span -30 m to 170 m on the game's height scale, where the sea is at 30 m (60 m below the water to 140 m above it), and clip higher ground (the export says how many pixels); "amount=2" (or Default Heightmap Amount 2) keeps the old encoding of -30 m to 370 m (up to 340 m above the water), which keeps every vanilla mountain. A BetterContinents.cfg that still holds the old default of 2 is set to 1 once, and the log says so; the hidden [07 BetterContinents.Misc] Config Version records it, so a 2 you choose afterwards stays.
  • A world export's heightmap.png now records the Heightmap Amount and Sea Level Adjustment its heights are encoded for, in a PNG text chunk that image editors show and often keep. A new world that reads a heightmap with such a record at other settings says so in the log, and "bc info" shows the record. Nothing changes by itself, and a heightmap without a record (every existing one) reads exactly as before.
  • A world export, with Expand World Data installed, treats an added biome whose terrain is the Ashlands or the Mistlands as that ground for the lava and moss maps, so rebuilding the world paints them again. Worlds without such biomes export as before.
  • [05 BetterContinents.StartPosition] Start Position X and Y accept -1,000,000 to 1,000,000 m (the config stopped at +-10,500 and the console's x and y at 0 to 1), for worlds bigger than vanilla's.
  • When a location cannot be placed because its zone already holds one (the game keeps one location per 64 m zone and drops a second with only "Location already exist in zone"), the log now says which: an error when the start position override was refused, a warning for a pin of the location map. Before, it claimed the position was "overriden".
  • The edge of the world keeps to each world's own size within one game session. Before, a world loaded after another one of a different World Size kept the first world's edge (the ship's push back, the kill zone and the water's edge), and with [01 BetterContinents.Global] Map Edge Drop-off off another mod's patching of the same game code could put the edge back at World Size.
  • When Expand World Size's World Stretch is not 1, the log warns once, in any Better Continents world, that it magnifies the maps so that only their centre shows: keep it at 1.
  • Console tools answer where they were asked. "bc_export", "bc_cache", "bc_import", "bc_altbiomes" and "bc_twins" share one set of plumbing: what an admin sends to a dedicated server ("bc_export server ...", "bc_twins server ...") now answers in the admin's own console as well as in the server's log, and a server export tells the admin when it ends. "bc cache" and "bc twins" join "bc export", "bc import" and "bc ab" in the host's bc tree. The group descriptions that said "get more info with 'bc param X help'" now name their own group ("bc h help"), and "help" on a group lists it instead of first printing "argument help is not recognized".
  • The bc console's defaults and ranges now come from the same place as the config's, so they agree: Heightmap Override All, Forest Scale, Forestmap Add and Start Position X and Y had drifted.
  • Fix Water Color and Ocean Channels are no longer in BetterContinents.cfg, and the "bc g fixwatercolor" command is gone. The first was never implemented and the second is read only by the oldest height formulas (settings formats 1 to 6); worlds that saved them still load them.
  • [06 BetterContinents.Maps] Spawnmap File is the creature spawn map, and Better Continents no longer treats it as the old name of the location map. Before, a BetterContinents.cfg with a Spawnmap File and no Locationmap File had the Spawnmap File moved into Locationmap File when the game started, and a missing locationmap.png with a spawnmap.png beside it had the spawn map renamed to locationmap.png.
  • A new BetterContinents.cfg selects the preset "Disabled". Its old default, "Vanilla", named no preset: a new world was made without Better Continents and logged an error saying so. An existing BetterContinents.cfg that holds "Vanilla" keeps it and still logs that error. The map-file settings' descriptions say what each file is and that Directory wins, and none refers to Nexusmods any more.
• For new worlds only
  • World Size lays out the whole world. Until now a world's maps always spanned vanilla's 21,000 m and World Size only moved the game's edge (the kill zone, the ship's push back and the water's edge), so a World Size 20000 world had its land end at 10,500 m, ringed by ocean out to its edge. On a new world the maps span World Size + Edge Size in each direction, the land drops away over the edge, and the rest of the world is laid out to the size too: the alt-biome grid (12 m points out to the edge, so the locations reach the whole world too) and the minimap's pixels (its texture keeps its size) follow World Size + Edge Size; where locations are searched for and how far from the centre each may be, the game's own biome bands, its Ashlands and Deep North rings with their gaps and the Deep North's calm sea, and the area lakes and stream sources are searched for in follow World Size. Terrain detail (hills, rocks, noise) keeps its size. [08 BetterContinents.AltBiomes] Grid has no effect on such a world, and "bc info" says when a world is laid out to its size.
  • A bigger world builds a bigger alt-biome grid each time it loads, on the server and on every client as it joins: slower, and about 0.2 GB at a radius of 16,350 m. Valheim builds the grid for every world, so [08 BetterContinents.AltBiomes] Mode = Off means no alt biomes, not no grid. The practical maximum is a World Size + Edge Size of 16,350 m: the game files every object beyond about 16.35 km from the centre under one shared sector.
  • With Expand World Size installed, it lays out the world as before (its size, grid, minimap and locations) and Better Continents leaves the layout to it. Install it on every machine that plays the world or on none, and do not add it to a world Better Continents laid out. Its World Stretch magnifies Better Continents' maps, so that only their centre shows, and it should be 1.
  • [02 BetterContinents.Heightmap] Heightmap Alpha now blends. Before, a heightmap with it on was read as 8-bit grey (heights in 256 steps) and its 8-bit alpha was never used. A new world reads 16-bit grey with a 16-bit alpha, and the alpha blends the heightmap with the game's own terrain: where a pixel is opaque the heightmap alone decides, where it is transparent the game's terrain shows. A version 11 world keeps the old reading with it on: 8 bits, the alpha unused (with it off every world reads 16-bit grey).
  • Expand World Data's rules reach the maps. Its altitude rules (a biome's or territory's altitude multiplier and delta, water depth, height limits and lava dip) apply over the heightmap's heights as they do over the game's own; before, Better Continents' heights replaced them everywhere but where the rough map is white. On a world with a biome map and no heat map (or Heatmap Scale 0), its lava biomes ("lava: true" in its yaml) are hot where the biome map puts them, so lava burns there; before, only the Ashlands were hot on a biome map. With a heat map the heat decides. The terrain map's legend (terrainmap.txt) may name one of its biomes for a ground colour ("DeadWastes: 8B4513"), and Biome precision keeps its territories' ground colours instead of replacing them. A new world also saves the names of the biomes its biome map adds and follows them when Expand World Data numbers its biomes differently (it numbers them in its yaml's order, and a world stored the number): a biome it no longer has reads as None, where before it read as whichever biome held its number.
  • [03 BetterContinents.Biomemap] Biome precision goes up to 31: cells of 2 m in each 64 m terrain zone. A version 11 world stops at 5.
  • The location map's pins land exactly on their pixel, where the height and biome maps put it (before, at the pixel's corner, up to a pixel to the south-west). A pin of several pixels is placed on the one nearest its middle, and locations that share a colour are dealt out the same way every time, so one set of maps gives one world. Maps from a world export are still read where the export wrote them. The start position override is placed before the pins, so a pin in its zone can no longer take it.
  • [07 BetterContinents.Misc] Compact Maps (EXPERIMENTAL, off by default). On, a world made while it is on keeps its maps compressed in memory, decodes each tile when it is first read, and saves and sends its maps compressed. On the same 10,501 px maps as above the world file shrinks from 126 MB to 10.5 MB and a loaded world holds about 21 MB. It is read only when a world is made (From Config, "bc_import" or a Directory's export.cfg), and a world keeps it for good: Better Continents 0.9 cannot read such a world. [07 BetterContinents.Misc] Map Memory (default 512 MB, 64 to 65536) is how much memory this machine lets the decoded tiles of those worlds take. Past it the tiles read least recently are dropped and decoded again when read again. It applies at once and does nothing for any other world.

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.