Walk To Generate

Walk To Generate empties the world and gives it back to you one step at a time.

When the mod is on, every chunk the server loads is saved to disk and then cleared to air. Nothing is deleted and nothing is lost: the terrain is put away, not destroyed. As you walk, the columns under your feet are restored from that store, block for block, exactly as the world generator made them.

This happens on the server, not in your eyes. The world really is empty. That means no mobs spawn ahead of you, no water flows toward you, no lava pools wait in the dark, because none of it exists yet. It arrives when you do.

FEATURES

The world is genuinely emptied and genuinely restored. Server side, not a rendering trick, so it works the same in single player and in multiplayer.
What you have uncovered stays uncovered, forever. The record is saved with the world.
Choose how much appears: from a single column to a 50×50 square.
Ground is revealed slightly ahead of you along the way you are walking, so a hillside is there before you reach it.
A one block step up is hopped for you automatically. You cannot see a rise coming in a world this dark, so the mod does what you would have done if you could.
You are placed on top of the ground when you join or respawn, never inside it.

SETTINGS

On 1.21.1 and 26.2 there is a Walk To Generate button on the ordinary Options screen. Changing the numbers there asks the server, so the setting means the same thing for everyone on the world.

On every version, operators can use commands:

/explored set size 1-50
/explored set lookahead 0-16

VERSIONS

Minecraft 26.2, 1.21.1 and 1.20.1, each for Fabric, NeoForge and Forge. On 1.20.1 a single file covers Forge and NeoForge, because NeoForge 47 still identifies itself as Forge.

Every build was started on a real server before release.