The development team at Mojang announces that the company is working on a number of big updates for the world generator part of Minecraft, which includes the addition of new biomes for players to use and explore. The developers have also released two overview maps, which should prove the better distribution of biomes.

A biome is a climate zone used in Minecraft to set what kind of surface the ground has–much like real-world ecological zones such as deserts, forests, oceans, taiga, and prarie. It helps the game decide whether it should rain or snow, what trees grow there, and sometimes also what kind of animals that are allowed to spawn there.

Jens Bergensten, lead of development process on the game, explained that one reason why Minecraft rarely has changes to the world generator is because every little change off-sets the world seed and causes noticeable borders between new and old terrain.

“One reason why we rarely do changes to the world generator is because every little change off-sets the world seed and causes noticeable borders between new and old terrain. A lot of people don’t mind about these borders, but we still want to avoid creating them. So, in order to avoid needing to change the world generator again in the nearest future, we try to do as many changes now as possible, said Bergensten in an official blog post.

Biomes have now been divided into four main categories – snow-covered, cold, medium, and dry or warm. Bergensten said that the update will make sure that no two biomes that are very different to each other are placed next to each other.

The last time major changes have been made was actually in March 2012, when the Jungle biome was introduced. Now Mojang is working on a larger and more technical update for regulating the climates such as tundra, forests or deserts. Mojang also released images comparing the difference in Minecraft’s 1.6 and 1.7 update. Though the oceans look a lot smaller, some of them are still more than 3000 blocks wide. Minecraft v1.6.1 added numerous creatures of the equine variety: horses, donkeys, and mules.

Mojang trips three problems: avoiding too great oceans, random placement of climates and a lack of variety in landscapes. To remedy these annoyances the team does a number of things. They generate more islands to break and checks to avoid huge oceans. When a new environment is to be added, it should resemble the adjacent pieces. To make that comparison, the team added a whole bunch of new biomes and a bunch of new terrain features, such as new flowers and trees.

Last week, the company announced that Minecraft will not only land to Xbox One, but also to PlayStation 3, PlayStation Vita and PlayStation 4. The world generator update is currently only confirmed for the PC version of the game.