# 📢 Update 0.5.1-alpha — Natural Diversity

**Release Date:** 11/4/2026
**Version:** 0.5.1-alpha
**Development Stage:** Alpha

## 📋 Overview

Update 0.5.1-alpha brings a major refresh to world generation, making biomes more distinct and introducing new wildlife, vegetation, and environmental features.

This update also adds extensive world-generation customization, allowing players to adjust biome sizes individually or disable specific biomes entirely.

Alongside these changes, the main menu, world creation, and world management interfaces have received a major visual redesign.

## 🌿 Biome Diversity

**🌼 Plains**
- Increased the variety and frequency of grassland vegetation.
- Plains now feature abundant Tall Grass, Dandelions, and Poppies.
- Added **White Daisies**.
- Trees remain relatively sparse, preserving the open landscape.

**🌲 Forests**
- Forests now feature more distinctive woodland vegetation.
- Tall Grass remains common.
- Flowers are significantly rarer.
- Added **Red Mushrooms**.

**🏔️ Mountains**
- Added **White Rabbits** as a new atmospheric animal.
- Rabbits naturally appear in mountain environments.
- During Winter, White Rabbits can also appear in every biome except Deserts.

**🌳 Rolling Hills**
- Added naturally generated **Raspberry Bushes**.
- Players can interact with bushes to harvest Raspberries.
- Raspberries restore ½ Heart when eaten.
- Raspberry Bushes produce new berries every other in-game day.
- Bushes remain after harvesting and do not require watering.
- Raspberry Bushes cannot be planted by players.

## 🌵 Deserts

**New Vegetation**
- Added **Dead Bushes** as a new desert decoration.

**Improved Cactus Generation**
- Cacti now generate between 2–5 blocks tall.
- Each cactus may have up to one branch on either side.
- Branches can appear at varying heights, creating more natural shapes.
- Reduced excessively large and irregular cactus formations.
- The Excavation Pendant now allows Axes to break naturally generated cacti more efficiently.

**🏝️ Oasis Improvements**
- Redesigned oases to blend more naturally into surrounding desert terrain.
- Oases now feature smaller grassy areas around their ponds rather than resembling a separate biome.
- Reduced oasis generation frequency to make them rarer discoveries.

## 🌿 Swamps

- Added unique biome-dependent tinting for swamp trees and leaves.
- Swamp vegetation now has a more distinctive appearance compared with other biomes.

## 🌍 World Generation Improvements

**Biome Distribution**
- Slightly reduced the default sizes of most biomes.
- Improved blending and transitions between neighboring biomes.
- Adjusted vegetation distribution so different biomes have more recognizable identities.

These improvements make exploration more visually diverse while maintaining the existing six-biome world structure.

## ⚙️ World Generation Customization

Players now have much greater control over the worlds they create!

### 📏 Biome Size Slider

- Added a new Biome Size slider to the Create World menu.
- Players can customize the overall horizontal lengths of biomes.
- The slider ranges from **0.35× to 3.00×** normal biome sizes.
- Labeled reference points include:
  - Tiny
  - Normal
  - Huge
- Players can choose intermediate values rather than being restricted to presets.
- The selected multiplier adjusts both minimum and maximum biome lengths.
- All biomes follow the global setting unless individually customized.
- New worlds default to Normal biome sizes.

### 🗺️ Advanced Biome Settings

Added a dedicated Advanced Biome Sizes menu.

- Independently adjust the size of each biome:
  - Plains
  - Forest
  - Mountains
  - Rolling Hills
  - Desert
  - Swamp
- Enable or disable individual biomes.
- Create worlds containing only selected biome types.
- Individual biome settings inherit the global multiplier until customized.
- Added an option to reset advanced settings.
- At least one biome must remain enabled.

These controls support everything from compact, rapidly changing landscapes to enormous regions or single-biome worlds.

## 🎨 Main Menu & World Management Redesign

The game's title-screen experience has received a significant visual overhaul.

**Main Menu**
- Redesigned the main title-screen layout.
- Improved button placement, sizing, and visual hierarchy.
- Refined menu styling for greater consistency with the rest of the game.

**World Selection**
- Redesigned the World Selection interface.
- Improved world-list organization and layout.
- Refined world management controls.

**Create World**
- Redesigned the Create World interface.
- Organized basic world settings into a cleaner, more compact layout.
- Moved optional World Generation settings into a collapsible side panel.
- Added a sliding animation when expanding or collapsing the Options panel.
- Players can create worlds without needing to interact with advanced settings.

**Edit World**
- Redesigned world-editing screens.
- Improved world information presentation.
- Reorganized save-folder access, world deletion, and world-renaming controls.

**Advanced Settings**
- Redesigned the Advanced Biome Sizes interface.
- Improved slider alignment, labels, and controls.
- Matched its appearance to the game's existing navy-and-gold visual style.

## ⚡ Improved

- Greater environmental variety across all six biomes.
- More natural terrain and biome transitions.
- Better control over world generation.
- Improved desert vegetation and oasis placement.
- More consistent title-screen and world-management interfaces.

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## 🌍 Explore a More Diverse World!

Update 0.5.1-alpha makes every biome more recognizable while giving players new ways to customize their worlds.

From flower-filled plains and mushroom-covered forests to rare desert oases and rabbit-filled mountains, exploration should feel more varied than ever!