Anyone have any experience with this?

 

I would like to add to world generation additional structures that are on the same level as pyramids and temples.  Other than having to build the code for the structure itself, what do I need to do to get this to happen in the cleanest way possible?

Avoding the bunch of .setBlock's and instead use schematics for the structures is probably the best tip I could give you.

Tehbeards has a good API for loading schematics called LibSchematic [Link: https://github.com/tehbeard/LibSchematic], also check out his example of use in the LibSchematic.Sh which is also on github.

 

I believe you can do the generation just like you would for any other world gen, like trees and ores.

Check if it's the biome types you want, then do a simple check to see that it's ground and not air under the location of it's corner locations and place it.

ScatteredFeatures has code to insuring that they don't generate in neighboring chunks (cursory glance indicates minimum distance of 8 chunks, maximum 32 chunks).  Which implies that that code has some method of determining where other instances of it are.

 

That isn't going to be something I can replicate with an IWorldProvider.

 

Avoding the bunch of .setBlock's and instead use schematics for the structures is probably the best tip I could give you.

 

I was going to be designing via schematic anyway.  Then use a schematic -> Java converter I'd found (it was last updated for 1.3.2, but that is still sufficient to use replacement blocks, ie. "iron ore is my blockA, coal ore is my blockB...." so I could go in and replace blockID references)

I was unaware that there was a direct schematic loading API.  Neat.

The code from the java converters becomes rather messy, also they may hit the line limit for massive structures lol ^^

 

Aha I have no idea on how to easily implement ScatteredFeatures, my initial thoughts with saving the chunk coords in a list and checking against that is probably not the cleanest way to do that.

The code from the java converters becomes rather messy, also they may hit the line limit for massive structures lol ^^

 

I'm not making a massive structure.  The one converter I was looking at has a limit of...1500 blocks in a single segment.  Waaay more than I need.

You could have a look at how the eye of ender finds the stronghold to find the nearby structures

You could have a look at how the eye of ender finds the stronghold to find the nearby structures

 

The stronghold generator holds references to the three it creates and there's a special magical function in the IChunkProvider that allows retrieving that info.  Not really valid for a structure that isn't limited, nor does it work for arbitrary structures:

 

public ChunkPosition findClosestStructure(World par1World, String par2Str, int par3, int par4, int par5)
    {
        return "Stronghold".equals(par2Str) && this.strongholdGenerator != null ? this.strongholdGenerator.getNearestInstance(par1World, par3, par4, par5) : null;
    }

For structures such as villages and such, whenever one generates the chunk coordinates are stored in a map in MapGenStructure:

if (this.canSpawnStructureAtCoords(par2, par3))
{
     StructureStart structurestart = this.getStructureStart(par2, par3);
     this.structureMap.put(Long.valueOf(ChunkCoordIntPair.chunkXZ2Int(par2, par3)), structurestart);
     this.func_143026_a(par2, par3, structurestart);
}

This way the generator can check 'structureMap' to see if the coordinates currently generating already have a structure and, if so, skip it.

 

I'm sure you could do something similar for your scattered feature.