History of Tokyo Unified and Mega City Tokyo (Extended)
Introduction
My Tokyo Unified worlds in Eden World Builder have a long history.
Soon after I started playing Eden, Mega City Tokyo (Extended) became my favourite world, I eventually adopted it as my own. I studied it a lot, and began making maps.
I found several old versions of Mega City Tokyo, and have reconstructed almost all of its history.
Flat world 1291248060 (available replica: 1315346124)
Prior to Eden version 1.5.2 (which was released on 13th September 2011), all newly-created worlds had randomly-generated terrain. If you wanted to make a "flat world", you could start by searching for a world someone else had made. I don't know who made this one, but it is the ancestor of all the Tokyo worlds.
1291248060 Flat world
Flat world was made by starting with a non-flat world and blasting away some hills, and making a large floor of grass. It wasn't very big, but the creator of GIANT SHIP (see below) thought it was good enough.
Giant Ship worlds 1293772561 (available replica: 1316099587)
One of the worlds that was created from "flat world" contained a wooden ship.
1315788758 "giant ship"
This world must have been on the "popular" or "featured worlds" list, because it was re-downloaded and copied many times.
When a world is uploaded, then downloaded onto a different device, and then re-uploaded, early versions of Eden would leave some information in the header (the first 192 bytes of the data file) from which it was possible to see the name and ID number of the original download.
If the ID number was known, a desktop computer could be used to download the world with that ID number from the Eden file server. (I figured this out by "snooping" on my own Wifi traffic while I downloaded worlds).
I eventually found a few other variants of the "ship". New downloads require a photo to be taken before re-uploading, so the copies show the ship photographed from different angles.
1316099587 "Bst Ship ever by Niclas"
The one with ID 1316099587, called "Bst Ship ever by Niclas" is (I think) the least-modified of the various copies of the original GIANT SHIP world (which is now lost).
Map of "Bst Ship ever by Niclas"
Here are a couple later re-uploads:
1324226324 "GIANT SHIP"
1328125456 "GIANT SHIP BY ALEX"
In "GIANT SHIP BY ALEX" a big white thing got added but the rest of the ship seems unchanged.
Many people put their own name on their copy of GIANT SHIP, including "Niclas", "JOSEPH", "Bepp", "aydin", "Sebi", "jacob", "TJ", "ADRIAN", "nils", "pj", "chris", and "ALEX".
The Chunk-Scrambling Savefile Glitch
The very first version of Eden had a bug that caused worlds to become corrupted. When adding chunks to the terrain, the table of contents (ToC) would not get updated properly, causing the (x,y) coordinates of chunks and the file offsets to the chunk data to be wrong.
The following pictures are from a world called "houses skyscrapers airport stadium". This world is a "cousin" of the Tokyo worlds, because it is descended from the "giant ship" world, itself an "ancestor" of Tokyo.
It is one of many "Stadium" Tokyo cousins. They all have a football stadium with its centre circle built right over where the ship was, at the initial spawn point.
Central section of "houses skyscrapers airport stadium"
In the map, note that all of the trees are the same as seen above in "Bst Ship ever by Niclas". All of the "glitch chunks" are the same as well.
In this world someone built some roads all around the stadium.
To the north of the stadium is a road leading north, and marked by red sand are two sets of stairs that go down into an underground area. The red sand marker looks like a backwards "S" from above:
Original terrain. Note the positions of the red elements
When they were built, because of a corrupted table of contents (ToC), copies of the red structures (and parts of the staircases going down) magically appeared in two other places on the map. Two chunks containing red got copied.
The first copy is to the northeast:
First set of duplicates
The other copy is south of the stadium, where the two copied chunks are further apart:
Second set of duplicates
(One might also imagine that the red "S" was built before the scrambling, and that it got "duplicated" somehow as a result of a chunk table-of-contents (TOC) corruption. However, we see that this world has the same terrain everywhere as in the "giant ship" worlds, including trees in all the same places. All are derived from a common ancestor, and most did not have something built into the glith-chunk areas.)
All these early worlds also have a few chunks containing a large number of apparently random blocks. This pair of chunks, containing random blocks, is southeast of the stadium:
Two identical glitch-chunks
Glitch-chunks like these sometimes lack bedrock at the bottom, making it possible to dig (or blast) a hole that permits the player to drop through the bottom of the world.
The Great Server Purge
As mentioned earlier, the first versions of Eden had a bug that caused worlds to become corrupted.
On or around the 12th July 2011, Ari set up a new server file index, and made all older worlds inaccessible. A few popular worlds were re-uploaded so they would still be available to players. The first three of these were:
1310456746.eden Videogame Museum 1310457930.eden Eden Logo Painted 1310458418.eden Eden Logo ...Because of the "server purge", any worlds prior to 12th July 2011 cannot be downloaded, even when their ID is known.
Eden 1.5 (6th September 2011)
Eden version 1.5 was a big change over the versions 1.0.x and 1.1.x that came before. Of particular interest for us was the addition of many block types, including the various "ramp" and "wedge" blocks, and clouds in generated terrain.
Unfortunately caves were made into an opt-in feature, and even if you chose to turn caves on, it only affected newly-generated chunks — any areas that had already been generated stayed unchanged. Even worse, the caves generated by Eden 1.5.x were much less interesting than before.
houses skyscrapers airport stadium 1315394812
On the 7th September 2011 someone uploaded "houses skyscrapers airport stadium", a cousin of Tokyo (it has the same seed 115115 but is not a direct predecessor of superCITY). It is discussed above under the heading "The Chunk-Scrambling Savefile Glitch".
Seed 115115
All Eden worlds had randomly-generated terrain using Perlin noise in three dimensions. Terrain generation is implemented as a subroutine taking as inputs the X, Y, and Z coordinates, plus a unique "seed" number. By using the same number throughout a given world, terrain is generated that is random, but reproducible: the subroutine produces the same terrain each time it runs with a particular set of (X, Y, Z) coordinates — even if running on different devices with different copies of the world.
In the case of "flat world", the seed was 115115.
superCITY 1315405254
This is the oldest surviving predecessor of the Tokyo worlds that is a "city" type world (defined as having skyscrapers and/or being named after a city or having "city" in the name). "superCITY" was uploaded on 7th September 2011.
SUPER city
"SUPER city" was uploaded on October 17, 2011.
Eden-20130416.155317
"SUPER city", viewed from the spawn point
Original Spawn Point
When you make a brand-new world, Eden always puts you in the "northwest" corner of chunk (4096,4096). Because of this, it is possible to locate the original spawn point of any world. It's under a building now, seen in this photo:
Eden-20130417.024021
The original spawn point is under the stone/dark stone building. In most versions of Mega City Tokyo, if you go under that building you'll find most of the original grass and dirt is still there:
Original spawnpoint
The original spot at which the the player spawned when creating the first world with seed 115115, remains largely unchanged in "SUPER city", just below street level.
There is a sand-colored building nearly (top-right of the photo above). Inside it is the word "Unko" made from dirt, and to the right of this, a bunch of dirt shaped vaguely like the poo emoji.
Eden-20130416.155900.jpg
Unko (うんこ) means "shit" in Japanese. This building may foreshadow the Tokyo poop museum (Unko Museum Tokyo), but only by coincidence as it did not exist in 2011. This may be some odd signature of the creator; or possibly a reference to the 2011 film "Tokyo Unko". I chose a few similar Katakana letters as my nickname for the unknown creator of the Super City worlds: "リハスロ" (rihasuro).
SUPER BIG CITY 1315838187
SUPER BIG CITY2 1315896778
ALEX MACKAY CITY 1316293264
Squashed Caves
When caves were made "optional" in Eden 1.5, they were also made a lot less interesting. The world "ALEX MACKAY CITY" is a Tokyo cousin that illustrates this.
"MEGA CITY" versions
I found good (not griefed or vandalized) versions of MEGA CITY TOKYO with the following dates and names (all shown below as maps):
- MEGA CITY TOKYO V13 (dated 03/14/2012)
- MEGA CITY TOKYO V14 (dated 03/27/2012)
- MEGA CITY TOKYO V15 (dated 07/06/2012)
- MEGA CITY TOKYO V16 (dated 09/21/2012)
The V14 version is notable because it is the version Djasiantech used as the basis of the world described on the wikia page MegaCityTokyo_(Extended).
Djasiantech Versions
The oldest published Djasiantech version is called "Small Dance Floor", with the date 11/06/2012. Here is its loading screen:
Loading screen for "Small Dance Floor"
In this version, the famous Tokyo Tower has been built, but its district has not reached its present form. The Rainbow Bridge does not exist, nor anything beyond it.
The outermost buildings in "Small Dance Floor"
Floating island (lower-right corner) was removed when making the bay.
Djasiantech shared "Mega City Tokyo EXTENDED V1" on 11/27/2012, and the curiously-named "wooden hut1" on 12/12/2012.
Eden-20130416.124121
Loading screen for "wooden hut1"
This world has many interesting things including an empty blue pyramid, Totoro but no Stumpzilla, and empty spaces where Korean plaza will be. One can see that much of Djasiantech's Tokyo was built to fit the existing terrain.
Eden-20130416.130832.jpg|Demolition for what will become Korean plaza
Eden-20130416.131029.jpg|Totoro plaza in "wooden hut1"
Eden-20130416.131435.jpg|The blue pyramid Shimizu 2.0 exists but is nearly empty
Eden-20130416.132056.jpg|Another view from "wooden hut1"
In all, I have found six major revisions by Djasiantech:
- "Small Dance Floor" (dated 11/06/2012)
- Mega City Tokyo EXTENDED V1 (dated 11/27/2012)
- "wooden hut1" (dated 12/12/2012)
- MEGA CITY TOKYO EXTENDED V2 (dated 01/08/2013)
- MEGA CITY TOKYO EXTENDED V3 (dated 01/31/2013)
- MEGA CITY TOKYO EXTENDED V4 (dated 03/27/2013)
(start this topic after the first DJAT version that actually has an embassy in it)
Embassies
Maps
Here are maps of all the major versions, arranged in chronological order:
MCT-20111017-SUPER_city.jpg|SUPER city (dated 10/17/2011)
MCT-20120314-V13.jpg|MEGA CITY TOKYO V13 (dated 03/14/2012)
MCT-20120327-V14.jpg|MEGA CITY TOKYO V14 (dated 03/27/2012)
MCT-20120706-V15.jpg|MEGA CITY TOKYO V15 (dated 07/06/2012)
MCT-20120921-V16.jpg|MEGA CITY TOKYO V16 (dated 09/21/2012)
MCTE-20121106-SDF.jpg|"Small Dance Floor" (dated 11/06/2012)
MCTE-20121127-V1.jpg|Mega City Tokyo EXTENDED V1 (dated 11/27/2012)
MCTE-20121212-wh1.jpg|"wooden hut1" (dated 12/12/2012)
MCTE-20130108-V2.jpg|MEGA CITY TOKYO EXTENDED V2 (dated 01/08/2013)
MCTE-20130131-V3.jpg|MEGA CITY TOKYO EXTENDED V3 (dated 01/31/2013)
MCTE-20130327-V4-rev.jpg|MEGA CITY TOKYO EXTENDED V4 (dated 03/27/2013)
Change Maps
In these special maps, the buildings, grass and trees are drawn in black and white, with color added to show where blocks are added, removed, and/or changed, using the following color codes:
Mrob-diffmode-legend
Color codes in my maps that show changes between two worlds
In the gallery, each version of Mega City Tokyo is compared to the version it was derived from.
MCT-diff-V0-V13.jpg|changes from SUPER city (10/17/2011) to MEGA CITY TOKYO V13 (03/14/2012)
MCT-diff-V13-V14.jpg|changes from MEGA CITY TOKYO V13 (03/14/2012) to V14 (03/27/2012)
MCT-diff-V14-V15.jpg|changes from MEGA CITY TOKYO V14 (03/27/2012) to V15 (07/06/2012)
MCT-diff-V15-V16.jpg|changes from MEGA CITY TOKYO V15 (07/06/2012) to V16 (09/21/2012)
MCTE-diff-a-V14-SDF.jpg|changes from MEGA CITY TOKYO V14 (03/27/2012) to "Small Dance Floor" (11/06/2012)
MCTE-diff-b-SDF-V1.jpg|changes from "Small Dance Floor" (11/06/2012) to Mega City Tokyo EXTENDED V1 (11/27/2012)
MCTE-diff-c-V1-wh1.jpg|changes from Mega City Tokyo EXTENDED V1 (11/27/2012) to "wooden hut1" (12/12/2012)
MCTE-diff-d-wh1-V2.jpg|changes from "wooden hut1" (12/12/2012) to MEGA CITY TOKYO EXTENDED V2 (01/08/2013)
MCTE-diff-e-V2-V3.jpg|changes from MEGA CITY TOKYO EXTENDED V2 (01/08/2013) to V3 (01/31/2013)
MCTE-diff-f-V3-V4.jpg|changes from MEGA CITY TOKYO EXTENDED V3 (01/31/2013) to V4 (dated 03/27/2013)
My Versions
After starting my own version of Tokyo (based on Djasiantech's "MEGA CITY TOKYO EXTENDED V3") I began making many changes to the existing buildings, expanding areas that I liked, adding "infrastructure" (like transportation via ice-slides and teleporters at bedrock-level), and adding many completely new buildings. I rebuilt many things that Djasiantech later added to their Tokyo "V4", and a lot of features from the "hidden underground" series and a few other old worlds derived from earlier versions of Tokyo.
Here you can see the central areas of Tokyo Extended being destroyed by meteors: Tokyo Meteor Apocalypse
This page was written in the "embarrassingly readable" markup language RHTF, and was last updated on 2020 May 13.
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