On Minecraft, how is it possible that during a map creation, you can just scramble letters, numbers and symbols as a seed and still have a random map as a result?

Question

My real question is, how is it possible on programming context?

Like, typing “dioasdjklasdknlvioj3e40435905$%” randomly on the seed input, start the map and have a still totally randomly generated world.

And by that, i actually mean how can that be possible if Minecraft wasn’t complex to program, as far as i know.

EDIT: Forgot to add, there is also a more than a sixtillion (Or even far, far more) of character combinations (Incluiding quantity of characters). All of them, if you change a single character in any place, generates you a random map. The slightlest change, and your map is completely different.

Where i am going is… how is it possible that such a small game like Minecraft could have an infinite number of randomly generated maps if it just weights a few Gigabytes (Or even Megabytes) on your PC?

In: Technology

Answer 1

Like others have said its just a seed. That starts the process.

If you start with the same number and follow the same process mathimatically you get the same result.

For example if the seed is divisible by 2 then cells a1-a4 are grass if its divisible by 7 then b1-b4 are trees.

The result is that its always the same for any given input but also it means a rule is followed for different seeds.

Its a bit more complex than that, but the whole gist.