Bukkit

I find that if I want to generate a HUGE area (say 7500 wide), that it isn't feasible to do so because it also tries to generate all the pre-existing terrain.  I propose that when generating, unless destroyandregenerate is active, that the mod will skip any attempts to generate where there's already a chunk.  Alternatively, a command-line option for this would be helpful.

For example, say I make a generate a 2000 radius section, then wish to expand it later to a 3000 radius section.  Rather than just generate the additional section(s), the mod currently tries to generate the existing section again, thereby taking a longer time to do so.  This option is also helpful if the server crashes during a generation, or is interrupted for other reasons.  An example of chunky generation caused by the description I just mentioned has been attached.

This will definitely be helpful for people generating a lot of area.

The above example used 3,000 radius. I'm currently running a 250,000 radius generation... 3.64% after 9hrs FTW!

The plugin does pass over already generated regions, loading and unloading them, which is redundant in many cases. However, this is still nowhere near as slow as actually generating these areas. So, in your example of /gencircle 2000 followed by /gencircle 3000, the /gencircle 3000 would still be much faster than if there was no land generated - but slower than it needs to be.

The main issue here is that chunks *near* an ungenerated chunk need to load for decorators to run, and already-generated chunks might need to be reloaded to be decorated if new chunks are being loaded near them. This makes the logic for deciding to skip touching a chunk completely more complicated.