Advanced Settings

You can set a few advanced settings by editing the worldpainter.vmoptions or vmoptions.txt file. This page describes what they are.

Please note: whenever WorldPainter is updated or reinstalled, this file may be overwritten and you may have to reapply your settings. It may be beneficial to keep a backup copy of it with your changes in it.

Note that these are completely unsupported! If you use them and they cause problems, don't ask about it here or on the official forum thread!

Check the MoreMemory page for details on how to edit the worldpainter.vmoptions or vmoptions.txt file. It contains one setting per line. Check whether the setting is already there before adding a new line and if so, edit the existing line.

Option: -Dorg.pepsoft.worldpainter.threads=threads

Where threads is an integer number describing the number of parallel threads to use when exporting or merging a world. This will override the default, which is based on the number of CPU cores and the amount of memory available. Note that if you set this too high WorldPainter may run out of memory when trying to export or merge a world. You could experiment with setting this lower than the default if you have many CPU cores, which may actually improve performance in some circumstances.

Note that you can see how many threads WorldPainter is using to export or merge the world (along with the number of cores and available memory) in the log file (logfile0.txt in the WorldPainter configuration directory, see below).

Option: -Dorg.pepsoft.worldpainter.debugLogging=true

This will enable logging debug information to the log file (logfile0.txt in the WorldPainter configuration directory, which is %APPDATA%\WorldPainter on Windows, ~/Library/Application Support/WorldPainter on Mac OS X or ~/.worldpainter on Linux/UNIX). Note that the amount of logging is so great that it may actually affect the performance of the application! Only use this to debug problems or at request of the author, and don't forget to disable it again when no longer necessary.

If you replace true with extra, trace logging will be enabled, which will dump exponentially more debug information in the log file. This will cause even more performance degradation and disk usage, so use it sporadically and don't forget to turn it off again!

Option: -Dorg.pepsoft.worldpainter.disableTabletSupport=true

This will disable tablet support and enable legacy mouse support. Use this if the default tablet support is not working or causing problems, for instance when running WorldPainter inside an emulator.

Option: -Dorg.pepsoft.worldpainter.noSnowOn=blockId[,blockId ...]

The value should be a comma-delimited list of numeric block IDs (no data values can be specified), which will be added to the list of blocks on which the Frost layer will not deposit snow.

Option: -Dorg.pepsoft.worldpainter.enforceBlockRules=false

This will cause WorldPainter not to post process the exported map to enforce Minecraft rules about where blocks may be placed. Warning: it is very easy to cause Minecraft to hang by having large amounts of blocks in the map which are illegally placed and which Minecraft will try to remove, causing a chain reaction of block updates! If you use this setting it is your own responsibility to make sure no blocks are placed where Minecraft would not allow them!

Option: -Dorg.pepsoft.worldpainter.supportSand=false

This will cause WorldPainter not to turn unsupported or floating sand blocks into sandstone. Only applies when block rules are enforced (see above).

Option: -Dorg.pepsoft.worldpainter.minecraftDir=minecraftDir

This specifies the location of the Minecraft working directory (also known as the installation directory), where WorldPainter looks for Minecraft jars it can use to provide Minecraft biomes display outside the borders of the world, nbt file support, plant images for Custom Plant layers, etc.. If you run Minecraft with a non standard working directory and you want to use those features, use this setting to indicate the location, in the form of the fully qualified path name.

Option: -Dorg.pepsoft.worldpainter.safeMode=true

This will start WorldPainter in safe mode, which has the following effects:

• Plugins will not be loaded
• Custom brushes will not be loaded
• The visual theme will not be installed
• Background images will not be loaded
• The initial world will be created with default settings
• The Minecraft runtime will not be spooled up to provide features such as biomes painting outside the world borders

This may allow WorldPainter to start successfully if a problem with one of these features is causing normal startup to fail. Functionality may be limited; this mode is not intended for doing work, but for diagnosing problems and changing settings.

Note that WorldPainter can also be started in safe mode by passing the --safe parameter on the command line.

Option: -Dorg.pepsoft.worldpainter.smoothGroundCover=true

This will add a Smooth option to Custom Ground Cover layers, allowing you to export mod blocks that support it as smoothly as smooth snow is exported by the Frost layer. By checking the Smooth option on the Edit Layer Settings screen for Custom Ground Cover layers, WorldPainter will vary the data value of the block from 0 to 7 for one-eights full to completely full respectively. Just like with smooth snow, this will only work for worlds with have the high internal precision of being created from scratch in WorldPainter, or imported from a 16-bit (high resolution) height map. And of course it only works with mod blocks which support the same data values as the snow block (ID 78).

Option: -Dorg.pepsoft.worldpainter.insubstantialBlocks=blockId[,blockId ...]

The value should be a comma-delimited list of numeric block IDs (no data values can be specified), which will be considered as "insubstantial" by WorldPainter. This affects the behaviour of WorldPainter in various ways. Mainly it means that such blocks will not block the placement of custom objects with the default "collide with solid blocks" setting. One use of this would be to mark leaf blocks from mods as insubstantial, so that trees using them can be placed closer together with intersecting canopies, just like trees consisting of vanilla blocks.