minecraft-bedrock-editionminecraft-java-editionminecraft-legacy-consoleversion differences
Within some version of Minecraft for PC I've found through web searches that the world generation differs, but my questions is rather if the main engine for world generator are the same or similar for the different platforms.
That is, does world generation differ between the PC version, the pocket edition version and/or the XBox/PS4 version? Or does all world generators use the same base algorithm?
It will create mis-matched boundaries, I've tried to create a map with 1.8, played on it a little and then re-installed 1.7.3 ... The biomes was a mess, no snow but water was turning to ice in normal biome, mountains were cut off abruptly to create new terrain from the 1.7.3 version.
So yeah it will work, but if you create the terrain on 1.7.3 or 1.8, it will stay as it is but new terrain will be generated compared on which version you are using.
See pictures:
Short answer: Yes. Quote from the Minecraft wiki's "Seed (level generation)" article:
Whenever the world generation algorithm is updated, the same seed will no longer generate the same terrain. This is why in some different versions of the game, the same seed will not give the same world.
Jeb also mentions in a blog post that "changes to the world generator [...] off-sets the world seed." He continues on mentioning they don't change the world generation algorithm often. When they do, they make significant changes.
Not every version changes the world generation. So seeds are similar within minor version updates. And it doesn't affect other assets "such as spawn location, how many items mobs drop etc". ("A Short Demystification of the 'Map Seed'").
Best Answer
Between Platforms
Between platforms there currently isn't any parity unless you consider Minecraft PE and Minecraft Windows 10 Edition to be different versions. Under Microsoft's watch, the new trend is definitely toward parity between all versions. This is the impetous for moving away from Java and moving to a single language that they are implementing across platforms. Hopefully there will be true interplay between platforms.
Version to Version
We've been PE tracking seeds for a long time . For most of Minecraft PE's history the world render algorithm was pretty fluid - changing a lot. But, as with the maturity of the PC platform, Pocket Edition world render has incorporated backward compatibility better in each version they have come out with. Essentially, if there is a feature in 0.13 or even 0.12, it should render and be present in 0.14, 0.15 and now even 0.16. Where the changes seem to lie today is when new biomes or generated structures are introduced. Seeds work the same, but with or without that specific feature or biome. Sometimes an generated structure can render in both, but have a different visual appearance due to updates. Here's an example. We had found a seed in 0.14 that had a village right by spawn that was partially embedded or upon a mountain.
When 0.15 came out, the seed was the same, but now the village was slightly different, taking on the new Savanna Village appearance (a new addition in 0.15). Here's the comparison:
The seed is 'some energy' (or '988605236' numerically)
I hope that helps. The other thing that has stabilized over time is when the render engine changes. In earlier versions it would sometimes change in a point release (0.12.1 to 0.12.2) but now it seems that render engine is tuned a bit, and any changes happen at the major version level (0.12 vs 0.13).