Hytale's devs hope to "redefine the block-game genre" with their world generation, and they've now explained how it works

No pressure, then

Hytale blocks up in early access this month, having swiftly gone from thing in need of ressurection to thing that's coming out. As such, the team of devs led by original Hypixel co-founder Simon Collins-Laflamme are firmly in promo mode, with the world generation mechanics they've just posted a deep dive into clearly being an aspect of the game they think'll be key to its appeal.

"As I mentioned publicly a few days ago, this new approach to world generation will redefine the block-game genre," reads the first line of Collins-Laflamme's outro to this world gen explainer, which is otherwise penned by an engineer and designer duo called Dan and Amber. That's pretty eye-catching verbiage from a lead who's otherwise generally been keen to couch any hype-talk in more realistic chat about the game currently having plenty of warts which'll need ironing out in the long run.

So, what makes Hytale's biome creation tech worth shouting about? "For the first time, artists and game designers can take full ownership of world generation, with complete control over the final result," Collins-Laflamme summarises. "This is a fundamental shift away from a world shaped almost solely by programmers."

The rest of the post delves a lot deeper into gritty details. The artist and designer-first focus is so important, so say Hytale's devs, because it'll allow the game to feel "curated and procedural". Basically, the aim's to have their cake and eat it, with the game boasting both the sort of expansiveness often only achievable without endless work by employing some procedural generation and the handcrafted feel that's long been the biggest strength of smaller environments totally pieced together by developers.

It's a very tough line to tread if you've got a foot in both camps - just ask Bethesda how Starfield went. What's clear is that creative offerings of the second of the two versions of Hytale world generator that the team are working with will be key to pulling this off. That newer version's viewed as the game's future and will be what it gradually shifts to over time, after initially launching on the first iteration of the world generator. That older version, developed between 2016 to 2020, "already has many biomes and content ready to go".

The second version's still currently a work-in-progress, but is planned to take over down the line with the old one gradually being phased out - though worlds built with it will endure. During the transition between those two states, it sounds like you'll be able to peek through special "gateways" which allow you to try out bits being built in the second world generator. And breathe. That seems a lot of moving parts to me, but the devs certainly project being confident it's a landing they can stick.

In other fresh Hytale news, the Minecrafty sandbox's early access launch on January 13th will come with native Linux support, but it isn't guarunteed to work seamlessly on the Steam Deck right out of the gate.