Worlds created in 1.6 have taiga biomes that it used to snow in. These biomes were converted from snowy taiga to regular taiga in the 1.7 update and it no longer snows there. When blending these chunks in 1.18, the blending does not check if these chunks are snowy and so the snow does not get blended. You end up with the biome blending perfectly fine but you get harsh edges to the snow where it ends.
What I expected to happen was...:
The blending should check for surface snow and add snow into the new chunk to smooth out the edge of these old taiga biomes.
What actually happened was...:
I ended up with ugly harsh edges to my snowy taiga from 1.6 that was updated to 1.18.
Steps to Reproduce:
1. Generate a snowy taiga biome in 1.6.4 or bellow.
2. Upgrade to 1.7-1.17. The biome will now be called just "taiga". (alternatively skip to 1.18, the results are the same, but in 1.7, the snowy taiga became its own biome, so these snowy taigas stopped being snowy and it started to rain there instead.)
3. Upgrade to 1.18 and try to generate a new chunk next to this old snowy biome. The blending will not work with the snow. You will get more taiga biome, but not the snowy variant. There will be ugly harsh lines, exactly what the blending feature is aiming to remedy.
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It is re-producible on any 1.6.4 taiga biome but sure, here's an example. if you open this world in 1.18, it will blend the biome but not the snow layer.
Note: The zip file here is not my exact world, only an example/test world, however the behavior/conditions are exactly the same: A 1.6 generated taiga biome that new terrain is generated on the border of the 1.6 generated chunks.
Attached is a screenshot of the zipped world, upgraded to 1.18 pre 5. The actual land formation does blend pretty well, but you can clearly see this issue with the snow/temperature not blending. I believe this issue is due to the temperature of the 1.7+ taiga biome being too high for it to be icy (you can see where the frozen river and frozen ocean edges cut off sharply) but it also clearly happens with the snow layer placed on top of the taiga biome when it generates.
If a snowy taiga from 1.6.4 no longer snows in 1.7 and above, shouldn't the issue be that the biome ID for taigas from 1.6.4 isn't being upgraded to its snowy variant in 1.18 instead of their regular variants? That would be why the snow doesn't continue in newly generated chunks.
That would fix the issue, yes. However, in 1.7, the biome kept its "taiga" id, and since it wasn't converted to "cold taiga" (like it should have been), there's no way for the game to check if it's the snowy variant, besides checking if it has a snow/ice layer. The game sees these 1.6.4 snow taigas as the exact same thing as the 1.7+ plain taiga. It rains there, ice does not freeze, etc. This is why I'm suggesting that when blending, the world generator checks if there's a snow/ice layer on the ground/trees, and if so, it generates 1.7+ snowy taiga that will visually match the 1.6.4 and lower "taiga". This won't solve the rain in old taigas, but that's something that's been happening since 2013, so probably not going to be changed, and it probably can't easily be changed now anyway.
Ah, that explains that. Then the solution would need to find some way to distinguish 1.6 and 1.7 worlds when upgrading.
If there's nothing in the world data making the version difference obvious (ex. the existence of 1.7-only biomes), here's a very janky idea: check for whether player stat files exist for the world, as those were only added to world files in 1.7.2. It might not cover the snapshots though.
I thought of that too, but this also happens when you've updated your 1.6 world to 1.17. My single player world is one of these instances. The chunks have already been upgraded to 1.7+ 'taiga'. It would be a very small amount of people going from 1.6 straight to 1.18, and any world that has these old biomes that's been played in since 2013 would be affected using that solution. Unfortunately checking region files for creation date will not work either, since if you move your world from its original file location whatsoever, that data is lost and replaced with the move date. So for example since I have gotten a new PC since 2013 when I created those chunks, the creation date wouldn't be accurate.
There really needs to be a 'snow_layer' flag or something that the world generator can check for. It already sort of exists, since grass with snow on top is already identifiable. Maybe just check if the grass has a snow layer, and if it does, continue the snow into a smooth transition like any other snow biome from 1.7+.
I also tested upgrading a 1.6.4 world directly to 1.18 pre 5 and this was the result. The left/top is 1.6.4 terrain, the bottom/right is 1.18 pre 5 terrain.
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