Kyokalith

Mining Experience Fixes: Bounded Veins, Natural Ore Continuations, and TNT Validation

This update includes versions 1.3.2, 1.3.3, and 1.3.4.

Kyokalith's anti-X-ray decoy model remains unchanged. These releases address three mining issues that legitimate players could encounter during normal gameplay.

1.3.2: Bounded Ore Veins

vein_size now represents the actual number of blocks in a generated vein, from 1 to 32.

Previous versions converted vein sizes into sphere radii. Several configured sizes produced the same large sphere, and neighboring candidates could connect into extremely long ore belts.

This created a mining experience where veins were encountered infrequently, but could continue for hundreds of blocks once found.

Veins are now generated as deterministic, six-direction connected shapes with a strict block-count limit.

The same server salt, world, epoch, ore type, and coordinates always produce the same result.

Additional generation fixes include:

• Overlapping ore types are resolved as complete veins, preventing lower-priority veins from being reduced into one-block fragments.
• Touching veins of the same ore type are suppressed deterministically, preventing multiple candidates from merging into long chains.
• Ore height distributions can now use y_weight_points for piecewise-linear curves.
• Existing configurations continue using the previous preferred_y triangular distribution unless the new curve is explicitly configured.

Configuration loading has also been updated to safely distinguish older custom configurations from the new schema. Existing custom height ranges will not be silently mixed with new defaults.

This version also fixes ores disappearing after non-solid blocks such as rails were removed. Exposure detection now uses Minecraft's actual block-occlusion rules instead of a small hardcoded list of transparent materials.

1.3.3: Natural Ores Continue Behind Cave Walls

Version 1.3.2 could still make naturally visible ore appear as an isolated single block.

When a player mined an ore already exposed on a cave wall, buried vanilla ore directly behind it could be treated as an unrelated decoy and replaced with stone.

Visible world-generated ore now acts as a validated entrance.

When the entrance is mined, Kyokalith uses the server's private salt to generate a small, connected continuation within that ore's configured vein-size range.

This preserves the expected experience of following ore into a wall without relying on vanilla's original hidden vein shape, which can be predicted using the world seed.

Continuations are strictly bounded:

• Each continuation has a configured maximum size.
• Previously locked blocks cannot open another continuation.
• A vein cannot repeatedly extend itself as the player mines forward.
• All affected loaded chunks are committed together.
• If the result cannot be safely saved, the block break is cancelled instead of leaving an unresolved ore state.

Synthetic Kyokalith veins are now locked as one complete shape. The previous moving 5×5×5 locking window has been removed.

Generation cells were reduced from 16³ to 8³, and all 11 bundled ores were recalibrated around smaller veins with more frequent encounters.

1.3.4: TNT Drops Are Now Validated

Explosions previously validated the newly exposed crater surface, but could miss buried decoys destroyed directly inside the explosion.

This allowed a player to locate an ore using X-ray and destroy it with TNT before Kyokalith had a chance to determine whether that ore should exist.

Kyokalith now validates the complete explosion before Bukkit creates item drops.

The explosion process now:

1. Registers naturally exposed ore entrances affected by the event.
2. Resolves buried blocks destroyed by the explosion.
3. Resolves the newly exposed crater surface.
4. Converts failed decoys back into their base material before drops are generated.

Valid ores continue dropping normally.

All decisions from the same explosion are committed as one bounded operation. If validation fails, exceeds the safety limit, or cannot be persisted completely, the explosion is cancelled without leaving partial world changes.

Explosions affecting more than 512 blocks are cancelled immediately. Kyokalith no longer truncates an oversized explosion and leaves an unpredictable subset of blocks behind.

Mining Distribution After Recalibration

Average distance before encountering a new vein in a 2×1 tunnel:

• Common overworld ores: approximately 125 to 255 blocks
• Diamond: approximately 434 blocks
• Emerald: approximately 1,260 blocks
• Nether quartz: approximately 69 blocks
• Ancient debris near Y15: approximately 1,057 blocks

Fixed 64³ samples remained within the configured density limits:

• Overworld: 1,060 ore blocks, approximately 0.404%
• Nether: 1,660 ore blocks, approximately 0.633%

The intended result is smaller veins, clearer endpoints, and more consistent distances between discoveries without flooding the world with additional ore.

Upgrade Notes

The algorithm version has been increased.

During upgrade, Kyokalith invalidates only previously stored materialized-position decisions that were generated by the older vein algorithm.

The following data is preserved:

• Server salt
• Chunk epochs
• Dirty positions
• Eligible ore records
• Suspended chunks

Do not delete or reset your Kyokalith database.

Full implementation details, benchmarks, automated test coverage, and runtime verification notes are available in the GitHub repository.