Looks like even in windowed mode, there's still a very significant lag whenever I take a screenshot. Do you have any idea what I should do, outside of just dealing with it?
My only suggestion for reducing delay is to increase your memory somewhat (only useful if you've got high consumption already). In windowed mode I get a brief lag the first time it takes a shot and then I don't notice anything for a while. I'll check on the cooldown to see if it's working. That initial lag I doubt I can do anything about. I could try pre-allocating a buffer, but when I looked at it some time ago I couldn't figure out how to make the screenshotter (which is a vanilla routine) work on a pre-allocated buffer.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Geographicraft (formerly Climate Control) - Control climate, ocean, and land sizes; stop chunk walls; put modded biomes into Default worlds, and more!
RTG plus - All the beautiful terrain of RTG, plus varied and beautiful trees and forests.
Nope, Still not working. Oddy enough, I can see a single picture from the previous page. I'm really curious about that house of yours though. I'll check again later.
Picture loading can be slow sometimes. You could try leaving the window open for a few minutes while you do something else.
Edit: Aaaaand - that's it. The pictures are apparently cached on my normal browser, but when I opened the page on one of my alternate browsers it took 3 minutes before I got the pics on the latest post. Pics load top-to-bottom and even when spoilered get loaded, and Empour posts lots of (pretty!) pics.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Geographicraft (formerly Climate Control) - Control climate, ocean, and land sizes; stop chunk walls; put modded biomes into Default worlds, and more!
RTG plus - All the beautiful terrain of RTG, plus varied and beautiful trees and forests.
Well, I've done that already. The window is open since this morning, and it's the middle of the night now. I'll try again tomorrow, maybe it's got something to do with my laptop.
Edit: Tried it with another browser too, pictures aren't loading. Guess I'll have to try again tomorrow.
Not sure if changing hosts will help. Can you see pics on my journal? I'm on a different pic server (imageshack) although IMO the speed's about the same.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Geographicraft (formerly Climate Control) - Control climate, ocean, and land sizes; stop chunk walls; put modded biomes into Default worlds, and more!
RTG plus - All the beautiful terrain of RTG, plus varied and beautiful trees and forests.
Here you are! I don't know why I stopped getting notifications from this thread but I've got lots of cool reading to do. I can tell from the comments already that I'm going to be stunned by your builds
I can see them on your journal, and some of the other journals too, this one is the only one not loading. Well, one of the pics is visible here too but that's it
Edit: Some of the other threads are doing the same thing too, but they do load the pics when I change browsers.
I can see them on your journal, and some of the other journals too, this one is the only one not loading. Well, one of the pics is visible here too but that's it
Edit: Some of the other threads are doing the same thing too, but they do load the pics when I change browsers.
No, now that I checked, almost all the chapters are doing the same thing. As I said, I can see a single pic in chapter 5, thats all.
I have no idea what's going on here... All of the formatting is correct, imgur hasn't decided to delete my images, all of the images still show up in editing. I really want to help here, but I frankly have no idea what's going on.
I have no idea what's going on here... All of the formatting is correct, imgur hasn't decided to delete my images, all of the images still show up in editing. I really want to help here, but I frankly have no idea what's going on.
Well, I suppose I'm just a bit too unlucky for this thread. Anyway, I'll keep reading this, even though I can't see the pics, it's still very interesting.
I just did some timing tests and about 2/3s the time is spent writing to disk. I can't speed that up without writing a multithreaded replacement for the PNG encoding and writing routines, which I suspect would be a huge job. I'm not seeing a big lag source in windowed mode if you've got the cooldowns set. The first screenshot takes about 3 ticks and later ones about 2. (20 ticks to a second). Cooldowns above 20 should make that pretty marginal.
I did find there are some parameters for the buffered image calls and if I changed them to "optimize" it it actually got much worse. So on the off-chance that in 1.7.10 Mojang muffed up their screenwriter, here's a version that will use the 1.7.2 screenwriter.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Geographicraft (formerly Climate Control) - Control climate, ocean, and land sizes; stop chunk walls; put modded biomes into Default worlds, and more!
RTG plus - All the beautiful terrain of RTG, plus varied and beautiful trees and forests.
I figured I’d start off this very enchanting episode with... An enchantment! I’ve reached level 30, and thus it’s time to try my luck at some vanilla magics. I spin the wheel and I get-
Um, a very me-esque sword, with the ability to bat away spiders and mobs-that-shall-not-be-named with extreme and unbreakable force. Good! Spiders should be a non-issue from now on. I don’t actually know if unbreaking does anything with the amazing auto-repairing from manasteel, but I suspect it will decrease how much mana it takes to repair it.
Anyway, the vote on what happens this episode is in, although only one person publically made their vote. We have 3 votes for Botania, 2.5 for Exploration, and 1.5 for thaumcraft. As such, I will now commence the botanifying of everything!
Starting with this nifty little item I only recently learned about, the Flower Pouch. It’ll carry botania flowers around, making it much easier to store all of the mystical colors.
After watching a couple of videos on other people’s botania stuff, I have come to realize that the little garden I’ve made for myself here is far, far too small. I’m going to start this off by expanding it quite a bit, which should hopefully provide enough room for all the magical wonders I could ever want.
The first step to creating the garden I desire is, obviously, landscaping. I’m working to make a nice, flat area that still maintains a natural feel while providing plenty of space. Well, hopefully plenty. It might still be too small.
As I’m slowly building for myself a perfect little garden area, it occurs to me that I’m going to need a lot of hedges, which means a lot of leaves, which means a lot of iron. However, there is such a thing as manasteel shears, which solves the issue I have with shears, their durability(kinda, I suspect I’m going to burn through my mana faster than any other tool).
The recipe is the same as normal shears but, obviously, with manasteel. Good, now that I have that done, I can get the hedge edge in...
Done! Took me a fair bit of time and a lot of dirt, but I expanded my garden area. It’s now nice, clean, and open, ready for my botanical needs. I also made a little stream, which comes from a fountain, and leads to a pond at the end, which happens to be directly above the pool of water in the vault.
The pond feeds in to this one, which I adjusted the bridge for. Not quite happy with the bridge, though.
Anyway, in order to progress further into Botania, I’m going to need some stuff from the nether. A nether fortress in particular, for the sake of blaze rods and powder. So, it’s about time I build my nether portal! I found a really cool design I’m gonna be stealing a while back, link to the place I saw it here: http://imgur.com/a/JNlGn
Now, I don’t especially care about this area of the plateau very much, and the noise won’t bother me this far away from my house, so I choose this spot to build it. It’s getting dark though, and I’m gonna need some supplies for the nether, so I decide to go and get what I need from my vault. As I’m leaving the vault, I find myself looking at a spider!
Time to test out this new sword. As I expected, it one-hit-kills it in the most wonderful fashion. Excellent, no more backing away from jumping spiders, one slash of this holy sword and they’re cut in half.
Unfortunately, I don’t have enough obsidian to finish that part of the design, and I certainly don’t have enough nether bricks for the other. That’ll come later, I guess. Anyway, I have all the stuff I need, after I get a bit more mana in the battery thingy, so let’s go!
AAAAAAHHHHHH
The second I step out of the portal, I am immediately set upon by horrible hell monsters! Ghasts, who just blew up my portal barely after I left it!
Knocked out one of them! I need to be careful though, there’s some seriously nasty Mocreatures monsters I completely forgot about in the nether, and that fiery werewolf in the distance is just one of them.
Dangit. While I was being all cool and dodging the fireballs, of which there were about six of at any given moment, I accidentally stepped in a bit of lava, which set me on fire until I eventually died. Fortunately, my items were stored in a grave. I do not remember ghasts being this horrible, at all.
The remains of my nether portal after the ghasts got done with it. I’ll have to fix this thing up to get home. Also, it just occured to me to turn the brightness up, since it’s pretty hard to see down here. Not pictured, by the way, is the hell-werewolf that ran into the portal in pursuit of me. That’s going to be a real pain when I go back.
Managed to get myself a little portal-protector, whilst under fire from an absolute barrage of ghasts. The amount of them is absolutely absurd, though I’m certain that that number will drop to zero the second I start needing ghast tears. Like, not in the i’m-gonna-kill-em-all way, in the omg where are all the ghasts way. You know what I mean. Anyway, now that I have my portal taken care of, I need to start hunting for a fortress, as I don’t see one in the immediate vicinity.
You can really tell how much of a battlefield this area is, what with all the fire, craters, and smoke. It’s very difficult to navigate.
Yknow, this place is actually rather pretty when you get the chance to catch your breath from all the flaming fireballs being tossed in every direction. I decide to make my way across this large, open cavern, to see if there’s a nether fortress on the other side.
And it looks like there is! Complete with wither skeletons. Perhaps I’ll get lucky and get a head from them~!
My first blaze! I attack him, catching fire in the process thanks to my omg-go-away sword, but he is slain before I am... And doesn’t drop anything but some sort of thaumcraft shard, a Wrath shard.
I slay one of the wither skeletons, and a blaze next to them, and I get myself a blaze rod! Excellent, I’m gonna need a few more, though...
At one point while I’m running away from the big scary fireballfest I hear one of the ghasts shoot and hit another ghast. Somehow, it didn’t kill it, though. Just made it scream. I hope they aren’t too mad at each other.
Auuugh. While trying to make a lavafall safer and less easy to walk into, I accidentally make it go all over the place, catch me on fire, and kill me. I really wish there was a way to put yourself out when you’re on fire in the nether, it’s not at all a good feeling to watch your health tick down knowing that there’s nothing you can do to stop it.
Oh dear. I knew he was going to be a problem, but I didn’t expect to see him again for some reason. I’ll have to sneak down to the vault to get a silver sword.
Unfortunately I can’t find any such weapon in my storage, so I instead elect to sleep and see if he’ll go away. Fortunately, that works, and by the time I wake up he’s nowhere to be found. Presumably he left to go find a village to slaughter or something, I dunno.
I went right back to exploring after I re-obtained my stuff, and didn’t realize you can’t knock back blaze fireballs. I now have severe burns to prove that.
The source of my burning woes. I somewhat want to just kill them, because either I’ve gotten really bad at minecraft or Blazes are waaaaaay harder than I remember. However, two spawners this close to each other *is* a great place for a blaze farm, so I leave them alone.
Nether wart! Excellent, just a few more blaze rods and I’ll have everything I came here for.
Made it out. I eventually just decided that three rods is plenty, at least until I get myself some fire resistance potions, which should be easy. Now, to sort all of this out.
Okay! Sorted. I need to make some fire resistance potions now, because I need more blaze rods. Lots more blaze rods.
Six of them should do the trick. Also, as you might be able to see in NEI there, my glass texture is missing. Weird.
Also, It looks like I’m running out of pickaxe again, and don’t have the experience to enchant another. I guess I’ll make a Manasteel one. Actually, better idea, I’ll make it, go mining with it, and get the experience needed for an enchantment. Perfect!
Some uneventful mining(seeing this slime was the most eventful part) later and I have myself 30 levels. Time to enchant this pickaxe!
No fortune this time, but this is a pretty ideal general use pick. Unbreaking and efficiency. I’ll probably enchant another in hopes of fortune or silk touch later. Botania adds its own way to enchant items, actually, but it requires some stuff I don’t have, like enchanted books. And a massive pile of mana. Anyway, now that I have a pickaxe that isn’t on the verge of breaking, let’s go to the nether, prepared this time.
It’s so much nicer in here when you don’t have to be afraid of the fire all over the place. I wonder if that’s true of everywhere.
I reach the fortress again, and I’m greeted by some wither skeletons. I attack one in hopes of a skull, but my super-powered knockback ends up flinging him off this cliff. I look down to see if he survived the fall, and it looks like he landed in some lava.
Suddenly, I find myself flung off the edge of the cliff! I must have been attacked by his buddy while I wasn’t looking. This is why I made the fire resistance potions! I’d be dead now if not for them.
Here he is. Bobbing his head, laughing at my fall. Who does he think he is?
That’s what you get, backstabbing monster. Literally.
For the record, thaumcraft’s firebats are an absolute breeze with fire resistance. They barely do anything at all!
Just as I expected, blazes are powerless against me. Three rods already and I haven’t even reached the spawner yet. I’m invincible! Muahahahaa!
Perhaps not to these guys, though. I got lucky and fought him on soul sand, where my knockback made it almost impossible for him to hit me. Our little duel ended with my home-running him straight into a lake of fire, resulting in a painful, fiery demise for him. Serves him right.
Found something a little weird. Three tiny lava sources, bugged so that they won’t flow, all right next to each other. What could this mean?
I reach the spawner, and start building a wall around it to keep my knockback sword from hitting the blazes so far away that I can’t reach them.
For the record, trying to build a wall and ceiling around this spawner when surrounded by 10+ ghasts blasting you with fireballs constantly is not the easiest thing in the world.
Done, finally. Took me forever what with the fireballs going everywhere. Speaking of, there’s this one fireball kinda sitting in the air, not moving. It’s a little weird and I’m not sure what to think of it.
A few minutes later, long enough for my fire resistance to run out, I have a slightly bigger spawn room. I noticed that some of the blazes were spawning outside, so I expanded a bit. The ghasts didn’t make it easy. They never do. I have plenty of blaze rods now, though, so I’m gonna head back. I also grabbed some nether brick, so I can finish that part of the portal.
On my way back, I run into this guy. I thought he was a normal blaze at first, but I quickly come to realize he’s one of the thaumcraft enchanted ones! Fortunately for me, the only damage he can deal is the thorns damage I take when I chop at him.
I’m getting pretty good at accurately hitting ghasts back with their own fireballs now. I am proud of that.
I have four ghast tears to show for it! Pretty great, right? Five, actually, once I killed one hovering over my portal. Anyway! Now that I have those blaze rods, I *think* I’m all set to start what I want to do.
Endoflames are good, cheap, and reliable, but they just aren’t... Good enough. They definitely make mana and I can definitely afford the fuel for them, but they’re slow. Given enough time I could probably make a proper fuel source with them, but frankly, I don’t want to. I’ve played around with burning stuff to get other stuff for long enough. I want to have a source of mana that’s a bit more exciting, you know? Looking through the book revealed just the thing.
The Entropinnyum. A flower that will harvest the power of TNT explosions near it, and turn it into mana, but only if there’s no mana in it already. Sounds dangerous, yes? It definitely is, and I’m a little afraid I’ll cause serious damage if I mess it up, but I think I can make it work. To make it, I’m gonna need some more advanced botania... Stuff.
One such item is the Runic Altar, which will allow for me to create runes, the circular things you saw in the recipe. These runes are very useful in flower creation, I just haven’t had the need to make it yet. It costs a mana diamond and five livingrock to make, so I wanted to wait until I actually needed it. Now that I have it, though, a lot more stuff opens up to us. Not everything, but a lot.
To make the first and cheaper of the runes, I need three manasteel, netherwart, gunpowder, and a nether brick. This rune of fire is pretty essential to a lot of flowers, so it essentially means that you have to visit the nether and loot a nether fortress before you get started.
Fortunately for me, I’ve already been to the nether and witnessed the giant, flying, fat, fireball-lobbing horrors that call it their home, so I’ve got everything I need to make this rune.
I’ve moved the spreader on top of the mana pool, because the rune-making process requires that mana be pumped into it. It’s not that much required, but it’s definitely not something you can just do with dayblooms. Also, the process takes a good bit of time to complete.
When lightning appears on the altar, it’s done and ready for me to put a bit of livingrock on it and tap it with my wand of the forest. The information, or magic, or however these runes work, is inscribed on the stone and turned into a rune of fire. Good! That’s the easy part done. Now, for the harder bit.
The rune of Wrath requires, rather than the rune of fire I expected, a rune of earth and a rune of winter, as well as two mana diamonds. Talk about pricey! I guess it’s justified, because Wrath is IMO the coolest of the whole seven deadly sins thing. Hopefully this turns out to be worth it. The rune of earth is a block of coal, a mushroom, a block of smooth stone, and three manasteel ingots. Very easy for me to do, I practically have the materials in my inventory already. Well, not quite, but a trip to the vault is nothing to worry about.
If I’m feeling particularly hot, I can even use this little waterfall as a shortcut down. I swear, I didn’t think of this when I was building it. It’s certainly convenient though!
After I get the materials back from the vault and onto the altar, it occurs to me that one mana spreader just isn’t going to cut it. It’s expensive, requiring a gold bar, which I don’t have much of, but I might as well make one. I can’t be constantly moving them around, not only is that inconvenient, it’s also wasteful and inefficient.
One gold and a red flower later, we’re starting to look a little bit more interesting here, with a manual system for creating mana and a manual system for using mana. I’ll probably automate this eventually. Probably.
While that rune slowly inscribes itself, I’ll have a look at the recipe for the rune of winter. It actually requires a rune of earth itself, as well as a rune of water. Fortunately, the most basic runes, the elemental ones, give multiple per crafting, so I don’t need to make more of the earth one. The water one, however, I’m not so lucky with.
The rune of water is really easy to make, actually, though that’s still even more manasteel. I’ll go get the stuff for it while the Earth rune does, uh, runey things?
For the record, it’s a thunderstorm right now in case you couldn’t tell, and the dancing lightning from the altar makes for some very cool thematics. I feel like I’m doing MAGIC here, with this big noisy powerful coincidental effects!
These guys just love watching me do my magic. It’s a little creepy.
The crowd grows as daybreak approaches. This is what I get for doing stuff outside at night, all sorts of shady characters around. Hopefully they’ll leave by morning.
Morning arrives and the crowd ‘disperses’. Good riddance, I prefer solitude. Now, back to what I was doing.
The Rune of Winter requires two runes, but it also requires two blocks of snow, a block of wool, and some cake. I can probably manage all of that, though the snow will take a bit to get to. Onwards, to, uh, Mt Quarry! There’s snow there I think. I only need 8 balls of it.
By the way, I came up with a name for this “lake”. As the only actual source of it is my fountain made from Komatiite, I dub this river, and the estuary I mistook for a lake, the Koma River. The actual intended source of it is cut off from the estuary by our lord and master worldgen, and I might try to fix that later.
I’m not sure what to think of how the landscaping wall for the garden. I’m not... entirely happy with it, and would love a suggestion or two.
I really do need to build a base up here, the view is incredible. I managed to get some coal and the snow I needed, and I’m almost to level 30 again. Time for another enchantment when I get back!
Home! It was chaotic on the way back, with stupid skeletons flinging arrows all over the place. I don’t like skeletons very much. With my next level 30 enchantment, I think I’m going to take a slight detour from making my bomb flower and make myself a livingwood bow.
The livingwood bow is made from three livingwood twigs and three mana infused string. Mana infused string is, predictably, made by tossing string into a mana pool. This bow should work like manasteel tools, and repair itself with mana from a tablet. I’m going to enchant it straight off the bat as well, and hope for Infinity, as I don’t have very many arrows, or an effective way to make them.
Flame 1, Power 4. Not what I was looking for, but I’ll take it. It should at least help against mobs I don’t want to fight with my spider-smacker.
Anyway, back to crafting the rune of winter. We have the runes and the snow now, we just need the wool, which I have in my chest down below, and a cake, which is a bit more difficult to obtain. Fortunately for me, I’ve already got some domesticated cows, and have an ancient egg sitting around. I mean, I’m not going to be eating it, right? It should be fine...
Cake done! That should be everything needed for the rune of winter.
Rune of winter, done! Finally. This is a really expensive flower! You only get one of these runes of winter, too. Now, here comes the really painful bit. The rune of Wrath requires two mana diamonds, which is a bunch of mana and two diamonds. I suppose it’ll be worth it, you get two of these runes. I can frame one and hang it on my wall.
Rune of wrath, done. Now, for the next step in this flower, the petals. Done in seconds. The final step, the petal apothecary. Geez, this better work. This is a really expensive flower!
It works! The Entropinnyum is complete. Now, to place it down and test it out. I’m pretty nervous about this, as we’re dealing with, well, TNT here. If the flower doesn’t work then it’s gone, kepblooey. I don’t want that to happen. Also, I forgot that TNT needs sand to be crafted, so I head back down to the vault to get some.
How the heck did you get in there? I have walls for a reason, dangit! You’re not supposed to be able to get in there and trample all my crops. Ugh, whatever. I’ve been walking in there to see random crops trampled and I don’t know what’s doing it, so I guess he spawned on one of those. Back to gardening.
A total of eight TNT from all of my gunpowder. Measly, but hopefully worth a lot of mana. Now, for the real test. Time to light this thing!
Wow! It actually worked! The sparkley thingies appeared when the TNT exploded, but it didn’t damage any of the terrain or anything, and mana started spitting out of the spreader. Awesome! I’m not sure if it’s really a significant amount of mana from this, because Mana pools hold massive amounts of mana and it’s pretty hard to tell when you’re getting a lot of it, especially because you have to keep right-clicking the pool with the wand to read it. I really wish it could just be a hover-over thing.
After a few minutes of blowing up TNT for magical causes, I have come to realize that the Entropynnium is pretty much the opposite of the Endoflame. Where the Endoflame is slow, reliable, and cheaply fueled, the Entropynnium is fast, unreliable, and with expensive fuel. I don’t know where I’m going to get anywhere near enough gunpowder to keep this thing fueled, but I know that it’s pretty much never going to be enough for a reliable power source using this particular flower. Perhaps if there were such a thing as a creeper spawner it would be possible, but even then, the timing would be... difficult to figure out, and punishing if I got it wrong. Honestly, I feel like the amount of mana you actually get from each blast of TNT is nowhere near enough to justify the cost of using it, let alone the cost of making it or the dangers of misusing it. I dunno. Maybe my opinion will change later. It is just one flower, after all. A very cool flower that I don’t think I’ve seen anyone use before, but just one nonetheless. Time to move on.
The next item I’d like to make is called the Tectonic Girdle. It’ll help out a lot with my problems with Skeletons, because what this thing does is negate any knockback done to you. Seems pretty handy, eh? I still have the runes it needs left over from the bomb flower, so it’s relatively easy to craft.
It even looks cool! It looks like I have a belt with a mana tablet on it, which I like a lot. Finally, skeletons will no longer be the dominators of the sea! Let’s go test this thing out.
Attacked by a skeleton, I don’t move an inch! I absolutely destroy the mobs, and it feels good. I can take a hit from a spider and not get knocked backwards. I can smash my face into monsters, and they’re the ones who get knocked back, not me. I’m loving this girdle! It fills me with such an overwhelming sense of STRENGTH! I LOVE IT!
That’s it for now. I didn’t get as much done with Botania as I liked, a lot of that was from the disappointing amount of mana I got from the bomb flower. Perhaps if I can find a cheap supply of Gunpowder that doesn’t involve me going out and killing creepers and ghasts or whatever from mocreatures drops it, I’ll be able to do more. I don’t like killing mobs in excess amounts just to fuel my stuff, I don’t find that fun, and I don’t want to go out and light up all the stuff I’d need to light up for a vanilla spawner. The other flower I have my eyes on is one that eats leaves to make mana, which could work fairly well. It would, however, require another rune of winter, and making another one of those can wait until next time. See you guys in the next chapter!
That was a rough Nether arrival! I think something may have ramped up your ghast count - I don't think I've ever seen more than 4. Is something suppressing Nether Piggies?
Blaze problems - numbers count. One blaze is pretty manageable; but if there's a squadron firing fireballs it's a problem even if well equipped. Two spawners near each other is an obvious problem source.
You might try putting some towers on your garden wall. I think it looks nice though.
Don't you have Thaumcraft installed? You can alchemize gunpowder from snow or ice. Weird, but there it is.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Geographicraft (formerly Climate Control) - Control climate, ocean, and land sizes; stop chunk walls; put modded biomes into Default worlds, and more!
RTG plus - All the beautiful terrain of RTG, plus varied and beautiful trees and forests.
Hi,
I really loved that farm you made. I'm planning something similar for my world now :D.
I can't see any of the screenshots since I last read your journal though and thats really annoying.
Looks like even in windowed mode, there's still a very significant lag whenever I take a screenshot. Do you have any idea what I should do, outside of just dealing with it?
That would be Underground Biomes Constructs, made by Zeno here. Yes, you can.
It could be that imgur was down temporarily, it seems to be having a lot of overload issues lately. Is it working now?
My only suggestion for reducing delay is to increase your memory somewhat (only useful if you've got high consumption already). In windowed mode I get a brief lag the first time it takes a shot and then I don't notice anything for a while. I'll check on the cooldown to see if it's working. That initial lag I doubt I can do anything about. I could try pre-allocating a buffer, but when I looked at it some time ago I couldn't figure out how to make the screenshotter (which is a vanilla routine) work on a pre-allocated buffer.
Geographicraft (formerly Climate Control) - Control climate, ocean, and land sizes; stop chunk walls; put modded biomes into Default worlds, and more!
RTG plus - All the beautiful terrain of RTG, plus varied and beautiful trees and forests.
Nope, Still not working. Oddy enough, I can see a single picture from the previous page. I'm really curious about that house of yours though. I'll check again later.
Picture loading can be slow sometimes. You could try leaving the window open for a few minutes while you do something else.
Edit: Aaaaand - that's it. The pictures are apparently cached on my normal browser, but when I opened the page on one of my alternate browsers it took 3 minutes before I got the pics on the latest post. Pics load top-to-bottom and even when spoilered get loaded, and Empour posts lots of (pretty!) pics.
Geographicraft (formerly Climate Control) - Control climate, ocean, and land sizes; stop chunk walls; put modded biomes into Default worlds, and more!
RTG plus - All the beautiful terrain of RTG, plus varied and beautiful trees and forests.
Well, I've done that already. The window is open since this morning, and it's the middle of the night now. I'll try again tomorrow, maybe it's got something to do with my laptop.
Edit: Tried it with another browser too, pictures aren't loading. Guess I'll have to try again tomorrow.
I'll see if I can edit it to use a different host.
Not sure if changing hosts will help. Can you see pics on my journal? I'm on a different pic server (imageshack) although IMO the speed's about the same.
Geographicraft (formerly Climate Control) - Control climate, ocean, and land sizes; stop chunk walls; put modded biomes into Default worlds, and more!
RTG plus - All the beautiful terrain of RTG, plus varied and beautiful trees and forests.
I can see... Some of them. Not sure what's going on here, but some of the images aren't loading at all.
Gah! Why is everyone such a better builder than me! XD
Began playing during Alpha 1.2.6.
Here you are! I don't know why I stopped getting notifications from this thread but I've got lots of cool reading to do. I can tell from the comments already that I'm going to be stunned by your builds
I can see them on your journal, and some of the other journals too, this one is the only one not loading. Well, one of the pics is visible here too but that's it
Edit: Some of the other threads are doing the same thing too, but they do load the pics when I change browsers.
Is it just chapter 6?
No, now that I checked, almost all the chapters are doing the same thing. As I said, I can see a single pic in chapter 5, thats all.
I have no idea what's going on here... All of the formatting is correct, imgur hasn't decided to delete my images, all of the images still show up in editing. I really want to help here, but I frankly have no idea what's going on.
Are you using Internet Explorer? I had the same problem in the past, but I switched to Chrome and it was fixed.
Began playing during Alpha 1.2.6.
I'm using chrome but I tried it with firefox too.
Well, I suppose I'm just a bit too unlucky for this thread. Anyway, I'll keep reading this, even though I can't see the pics, it's still very interesting.
OK, about lag in DamageScreenshots:
I just did some timing tests and about 2/3s the time is spent writing to disk. I can't speed that up without writing a multithreaded replacement for the PNG encoding and writing routines, which I suspect would be a huge job. I'm not seeing a big lag source in windowed mode if you've got the cooldowns set. The first screenshot takes about 3 ticks and later ones about 2. (20 ticks to a second). Cooldowns above 20 should make that pretty marginal.
I did find there are some parameters for the buffered image calls and if I changed them to "optimize" it it actually got much worse. So on the off-chance that in 1.7.10 Mojang muffed up their screenwriter, here's a version that will use the 1.7.2 screenwriter.
Geographicraft (formerly Climate Control) - Control climate, ocean, and land sizes; stop chunk walls; put modded biomes into Default worlds, and more!
RTG plus - All the beautiful terrain of RTG, plus varied and beautiful trees and forests.
Chapter 7: Building a Bomb
I figured I’d start off this very enchanting episode with... An enchantment! I’ve reached level 30, and thus it’s time to try my luck at some vanilla magics. I spin the wheel and I get-
Um, a very me-esque sword, with the ability to bat away spiders and mobs-that-shall-not-be-named with extreme and unbreakable force. Good! Spiders should be a non-issue from now on. I don’t actually know if unbreaking does anything with the amazing auto-repairing from manasteel, but I suspect it will decrease how much mana it takes to repair it.
Anyway, the vote on what happens this episode is in, although only one person publically made their vote. We have 3 votes for Botania, 2.5 for Exploration, and 1.5 for thaumcraft. As such, I will now commence the botanifying of everything!
Starting with this nifty little item I only recently learned about, the Flower Pouch. It’ll carry botania flowers around, making it much easier to store all of the mystical colors.
After watching a couple of videos on other people’s botania stuff, I have come to realize that the little garden I’ve made for myself here is far, far too small. I’m going to start this off by expanding it quite a bit, which should hopefully provide enough room for all the magical wonders I could ever want.
The first step to creating the garden I desire is, obviously, landscaping. I’m working to make a nice, flat area that still maintains a natural feel while providing plenty of space. Well, hopefully plenty. It might still be too small.
As I’m slowly building for myself a perfect little garden area, it occurs to me that I’m going to need a lot of hedges, which means a lot of leaves, which means a lot of iron. However, there is such a thing as manasteel shears, which solves the issue I have with shears, their durability(kinda, I suspect I’m going to burn through my mana faster than any other tool).
The recipe is the same as normal shears but, obviously, with manasteel. Good, now that I have that done, I can get the hedge edge in...
Done! Took me a fair bit of time and a lot of dirt, but I expanded my garden area. It’s now nice, clean, and open, ready for my botanical needs. I also made a little stream, which comes from a fountain, and leads to a pond at the end, which happens to be directly above the pool of water in the vault.
The pond feeds in to this one, which I adjusted the bridge for. Not quite happy with the bridge, though.
Anyway, in order to progress further into Botania, I’m going to need some stuff from the nether. A nether fortress in particular, for the sake of blaze rods and powder. So, it’s about time I build my nether portal! I found a really cool design I’m gonna be stealing a while back, link to the place I saw it here: http://imgur.com/a/JNlGn
Now, I don’t especially care about this area of the plateau very much, and the noise won’t bother me this far away from my house, so I choose this spot to build it. It’s getting dark though, and I’m gonna need some supplies for the nether, so I decide to go and get what I need from my vault. As I’m leaving the vault, I find myself looking at a spider!
Time to test out this new sword. As I expected, it one-hit-kills it in the most wonderful fashion. Excellent, no more backing away from jumping spiders, one slash of this holy sword and they’re cut in half.
Unfortunately, I don’t have enough obsidian to finish that part of the design, and I certainly don’t have enough nether bricks for the other. That’ll come later, I guess. Anyway, I have all the stuff I need, after I get a bit more mana in the battery thingy, so let’s go!
AAAAAAHHHHHH
The second I step out of the portal, I am immediately set upon by horrible hell monsters! Ghasts, who just blew up my portal barely after I left it!
Knocked out one of them! I need to be careful though, there’s some seriously nasty Mocreatures monsters I completely forgot about in the nether, and that fiery werewolf in the distance is just one of them.
Dangit. While I was being all cool and dodging the fireballs, of which there were about six of at any given moment, I accidentally stepped in a bit of lava, which set me on fire until I eventually died. Fortunately, my items were stored in a grave. I do not remember ghasts being this horrible, at all.
The remains of my nether portal after the ghasts got done with it. I’ll have to fix this thing up to get home. Also, it just occured to me to turn the brightness up, since it’s pretty hard to see down here. Not pictured, by the way, is the hell-werewolf that ran into the portal in pursuit of me. That’s going to be a real pain when I go back.
Managed to get myself a little portal-protector, whilst under fire from an absolute barrage of ghasts. The amount of them is absolutely absurd, though I’m certain that that number will drop to zero the second I start needing ghast tears. Like, not in the i’m-gonna-kill-em-all way, in the omg where are all the ghasts way. You know what I mean. Anyway, now that I have my portal taken care of, I need to start hunting for a fortress, as I don’t see one in the immediate vicinity.
You can really tell how much of a battlefield this area is, what with all the fire, craters, and smoke. It’s very difficult to navigate.
Yknow, this place is actually rather pretty when you get the chance to catch your breath from all the flaming fireballs being tossed in every direction. I decide to make my way across this large, open cavern, to see if there’s a nether fortress on the other side.
And it looks like there is! Complete with wither skeletons. Perhaps I’ll get lucky and get a head from them~!
My first blaze! I attack him, catching fire in the process thanks to my omg-go-away sword, but he is slain before I am... And doesn’t drop anything but some sort of thaumcraft shard, a Wrath shard.
I slay one of the wither skeletons, and a blaze next to them, and I get myself a blaze rod! Excellent, I’m gonna need a few more, though...
At one point while I’m running away from the big scary fireballfest I hear one of the ghasts shoot and hit another ghast. Somehow, it didn’t kill it, though. Just made it scream. I hope they aren’t too mad at each other.
Auuugh. While trying to make a lavafall safer and less easy to walk into, I accidentally make it go all over the place, catch me on fire, and kill me. I really wish there was a way to put yourself out when you’re on fire in the nether, it’s not at all a good feeling to watch your health tick down knowing that there’s nothing you can do to stop it.
Oh dear. I knew he was going to be a problem, but I didn’t expect to see him again for some reason. I’ll have to sneak down to the vault to get a silver sword.
Unfortunately I can’t find any such weapon in my storage, so I instead elect to sleep and see if he’ll go away. Fortunately, that works, and by the time I wake up he’s nowhere to be found. Presumably he left to go find a village to slaughter or something, I dunno.
I went right back to exploring after I re-obtained my stuff, and didn’t realize you can’t knock back blaze fireballs. I now have severe burns to prove that.
The source of my burning woes. I somewhat want to just kill them, because either I’ve gotten really bad at minecraft or Blazes are waaaaaay harder than I remember. However, two spawners this close to each other *is* a great place for a blaze farm, so I leave them alone.
Nether wart! Excellent, just a few more blaze rods and I’ll have everything I came here for.
Made it out. I eventually just decided that three rods is plenty, at least until I get myself some fire resistance potions, which should be easy. Now, to sort all of this out.
Okay! Sorted. I need to make some fire resistance potions now, because I need more blaze rods. Lots more blaze rods.
Six of them should do the trick. Also, as you might be able to see in NEI there, my glass texture is missing. Weird.
Also, It looks like I’m running out of pickaxe again, and don’t have the experience to enchant another. I guess I’ll make a Manasteel one. Actually, better idea, I’ll make it, go mining with it, and get the experience needed for an enchantment. Perfect!
Some uneventful mining(seeing this slime was the most eventful part) later and I have myself 30 levels. Time to enchant this pickaxe!
No fortune this time, but this is a pretty ideal general use pick. Unbreaking and efficiency. I’ll probably enchant another in hopes of fortune or silk touch later. Botania adds its own way to enchant items, actually, but it requires some stuff I don’t have, like enchanted books. And a massive pile of mana. Anyway, now that I have a pickaxe that isn’t on the verge of breaking, let’s go to the nether, prepared this time.
It’s so much nicer in here when you don’t have to be afraid of the fire all over the place. I wonder if that’s true of everywhere.
I reach the fortress again, and I’m greeted by some wither skeletons. I attack one in hopes of a skull, but my super-powered knockback ends up flinging him off this cliff. I look down to see if he survived the fall, and it looks like he landed in some lava.
Suddenly, I find myself flung off the edge of the cliff! I must have been attacked by his buddy while I wasn’t looking. This is why I made the fire resistance potions! I’d be dead now if not for them.
Here he is. Bobbing his head, laughing at my fall. Who does he think he is?
That’s what you get, backstabbing monster. Literally.
For the record, thaumcraft’s firebats are an absolute breeze with fire resistance. They barely do anything at all!
Just as I expected, blazes are powerless against me. Three rods already and I haven’t even reached the spawner yet. I’m invincible! Muahahahaa!
Perhaps not to these guys, though. I got lucky and fought him on soul sand, where my knockback made it almost impossible for him to hit me. Our little duel ended with my home-running him straight into a lake of fire, resulting in a painful, fiery demise for him. Serves him right.
Found something a little weird. Three tiny lava sources, bugged so that they won’t flow, all right next to each other. What could this mean?
I reach the spawner, and start building a wall around it to keep my knockback sword from hitting the blazes so far away that I can’t reach them.
For the record, trying to build a wall and ceiling around this spawner when surrounded by 10+ ghasts blasting you with fireballs constantly is not the easiest thing in the world.
Done, finally. Took me forever what with the fireballs going everywhere. Speaking of, there’s this one fireball kinda sitting in the air, not moving. It’s a little weird and I’m not sure what to think of it.
A few minutes later, long enough for my fire resistance to run out, I have a slightly bigger spawn room. I noticed that some of the blazes were spawning outside, so I expanded a bit. The ghasts didn’t make it easy. They never do. I have plenty of blaze rods now, though, so I’m gonna head back. I also grabbed some nether brick, so I can finish that part of the portal.
On my way back, I run into this guy. I thought he was a normal blaze at first, but I quickly come to realize he’s one of the thaumcraft enchanted ones! Fortunately for me, the only damage he can deal is the thorns damage I take when I chop at him.
I’m getting pretty good at accurately hitting ghasts back with their own fireballs now. I am proud of that.
I have four ghast tears to show for it! Pretty great, right? Five, actually, once I killed one hovering over my portal. Anyway! Now that I have those blaze rods, I *think* I’m all set to start what I want to do.
Endoflames are good, cheap, and reliable, but they just aren’t... Good enough. They definitely make mana and I can definitely afford the fuel for them, but they’re slow. Given enough time I could probably make a proper fuel source with them, but frankly, I don’t want to. I’ve played around with burning stuff to get other stuff for long enough. I want to have a source of mana that’s a bit more exciting, you know? Looking through the book revealed just the thing.
The Entropinnyum. A flower that will harvest the power of TNT explosions near it, and turn it into mana, but only if there’s no mana in it already. Sounds dangerous, yes? It definitely is, and I’m a little afraid I’ll cause serious damage if I mess it up, but I think I can make it work. To make it, I’m gonna need some more advanced botania... Stuff.
One such item is the Runic Altar, which will allow for me to create runes, the circular things you saw in the recipe. These runes are very useful in flower creation, I just haven’t had the need to make it yet. It costs a mana diamond and five livingrock to make, so I wanted to wait until I actually needed it. Now that I have it, though, a lot more stuff opens up to us. Not everything, but a lot.
To make the first and cheaper of the runes, I need three manasteel, netherwart, gunpowder, and a nether brick. This rune of fire is pretty essential to a lot of flowers, so it essentially means that you have to visit the nether and loot a nether fortress before you get started.
Fortunately for me, I’ve already been to the nether and witnessed the giant, flying, fat, fireball-lobbing horrors that call it their home, so I’ve got everything I need to make this rune.
I’ve moved the spreader on top of the mana pool, because the rune-making process requires that mana be pumped into it. It’s not that much required, but it’s definitely not something you can just do with dayblooms. Also, the process takes a good bit of time to complete.
When lightning appears on the altar, it’s done and ready for me to put a bit of livingrock on it and tap it with my wand of the forest. The information, or magic, or however these runes work, is inscribed on the stone and turned into a rune of fire. Good! That’s the easy part done. Now, for the harder bit.
The rune of Wrath requires, rather than the rune of fire I expected, a rune of earth and a rune of winter, as well as two mana diamonds. Talk about pricey! I guess it’s justified, because Wrath is IMO the coolest of the whole seven deadly sins thing. Hopefully this turns out to be worth it. The rune of earth is a block of coal, a mushroom, a block of smooth stone, and three manasteel ingots. Very easy for me to do, I practically have the materials in my inventory already. Well, not quite, but a trip to the vault is nothing to worry about.
If I’m feeling particularly hot, I can even use this little waterfall as a shortcut down. I swear, I didn’t think of this when I was building it. It’s certainly convenient though!
After I get the materials back from the vault and onto the altar, it occurs to me that one mana spreader just isn’t going to cut it. It’s expensive, requiring a gold bar, which I don’t have much of, but I might as well make one. I can’t be constantly moving them around, not only is that inconvenient, it’s also wasteful and inefficient.
One gold and a red flower later, we’re starting to look a little bit more interesting here, with a manual system for creating mana and a manual system for using mana. I’ll probably automate this eventually. Probably.
While that rune slowly inscribes itself, I’ll have a look at the recipe for the rune of winter. It actually requires a rune of earth itself, as well as a rune of water. Fortunately, the most basic runes, the elemental ones, give multiple per crafting, so I don’t need to make more of the earth one. The water one, however, I’m not so lucky with.
The rune of water is really easy to make, actually, though that’s still even more manasteel. I’ll go get the stuff for it while the Earth rune does, uh, runey things?
For the record, it’s a thunderstorm right now in case you couldn’t tell, and the dancing lightning from the altar makes for some very cool thematics. I feel like I’m doing MAGIC here, with this big noisy powerful coincidental effects!
These guys just love watching me do my magic. It’s a little creepy.
The crowd grows as daybreak approaches. This is what I get for doing stuff outside at night, all sorts of shady characters around. Hopefully they’ll leave by morning.
Morning arrives and the crowd ‘disperses’. Good riddance, I prefer solitude. Now, back to what I was doing.
The Rune of Winter requires two runes, but it also requires two blocks of snow, a block of wool, and some cake. I can probably manage all of that, though the snow will take a bit to get to. Onwards, to, uh, Mt Quarry! There’s snow there I think. I only need 8 balls of it.
By the way, I came up with a name for this “lake”. As the only actual source of it is my fountain made from Komatiite, I dub this river, and the estuary I mistook for a lake, the Koma River. The actual intended source of it is cut off from the estuary by our lord and master worldgen, and I might try to fix that later.
I’m not sure what to think of how the landscaping wall for the garden. I’m not... entirely happy with it, and would love a suggestion or two.
I really do need to build a base up here, the view is incredible. I managed to get some coal and the snow I needed, and I’m almost to level 30 again. Time for another enchantment when I get back!
Home! It was chaotic on the way back, with stupid skeletons flinging arrows all over the place. I don’t like skeletons very much. With my next level 30 enchantment, I think I’m going to take a slight detour from making my bomb flower and make myself a livingwood bow.
The livingwood bow is made from three livingwood twigs and three mana infused string. Mana infused string is, predictably, made by tossing string into a mana pool. This bow should work like manasteel tools, and repair itself with mana from a tablet. I’m going to enchant it straight off the bat as well, and hope for Infinity, as I don’t have very many arrows, or an effective way to make them.
Flame 1, Power 4. Not what I was looking for, but I’ll take it. It should at least help against mobs I don’t want to fight with my spider-smacker.
Anyway, back to crafting the rune of winter. We have the runes and the snow now, we just need the wool, which I have in my chest down below, and a cake, which is a bit more difficult to obtain. Fortunately for me, I’ve already got some domesticated cows, and have an ancient egg sitting around. I mean, I’m not going to be eating it, right? It should be fine...
Cake done! That should be everything needed for the rune of winter.
Rune of winter, done! Finally. This is a really expensive flower! You only get one of these runes of winter, too. Now, here comes the really painful bit. The rune of Wrath requires two mana diamonds, which is a bunch of mana and two diamonds. I suppose it’ll be worth it, you get two of these runes. I can frame one and hang it on my wall.
Rune of wrath, done. Now, for the next step in this flower, the petals. Done in seconds. The final step, the petal apothecary. Geez, this better work. This is a really expensive flower!
It works! The Entropinnyum is complete. Now, to place it down and test it out. I’m pretty nervous about this, as we’re dealing with, well, TNT here. If the flower doesn’t work then it’s gone, kepblooey. I don’t want that to happen. Also, I forgot that TNT needs sand to be crafted, so I head back down to the vault to get some.
How the heck did you get in there? I have walls for a reason, dangit! You’re not supposed to be able to get in there and trample all my crops. Ugh, whatever. I’ve been walking in there to see random crops trampled and I don’t know what’s doing it, so I guess he spawned on one of those. Back to gardening.
A total of eight TNT from all of my gunpowder. Measly, but hopefully worth a lot of mana. Now, for the real test. Time to light this thing!
Wow! It actually worked! The sparkley thingies appeared when the TNT exploded, but it didn’t damage any of the terrain or anything, and mana started spitting out of the spreader. Awesome! I’m not sure if it’s really a significant amount of mana from this, because Mana pools hold massive amounts of mana and it’s pretty hard to tell when you’re getting a lot of it, especially because you have to keep right-clicking the pool with the wand to read it. I really wish it could just be a hover-over thing.
After a few minutes of blowing up TNT for magical causes, I have come to realize that the Entropynnium is pretty much the opposite of the Endoflame. Where the Endoflame is slow, reliable, and cheaply fueled, the Entropynnium is fast, unreliable, and with expensive fuel. I don’t know where I’m going to get anywhere near enough gunpowder to keep this thing fueled, but I know that it’s pretty much never going to be enough for a reliable power source using this particular flower. Perhaps if there were such a thing as a creeper spawner it would be possible, but even then, the timing would be... difficult to figure out, and punishing if I got it wrong. Honestly, I feel like the amount of mana you actually get from each blast of TNT is nowhere near enough to justify the cost of using it, let alone the cost of making it or the dangers of misusing it. I dunno. Maybe my opinion will change later. It is just one flower, after all. A very cool flower that I don’t think I’ve seen anyone use before, but just one nonetheless. Time to move on.
The next item I’d like to make is called the Tectonic Girdle. It’ll help out a lot with my problems with Skeletons, because what this thing does is negate any knockback done to you. Seems pretty handy, eh? I still have the runes it needs left over from the bomb flower, so it’s relatively easy to craft.
It even looks cool! It looks like I have a belt with a mana tablet on it, which I like a lot. Finally, skeletons will no longer be the dominators of the sea! Let’s go test this thing out.
Attacked by a skeleton, I don’t move an inch! I absolutely destroy the mobs, and it feels good. I can take a hit from a spider and not get knocked backwards. I can smash my face into monsters, and they’re the ones who get knocked back, not me. I’m loving this girdle! It fills me with such an overwhelming sense of STRENGTH! I LOVE IT!
That’s it for now. I didn’t get as much done with Botania as I liked, a lot of that was from the disappointing amount of mana I got from the bomb flower. Perhaps if I can find a cheap supply of Gunpowder that doesn’t involve me going out and killing creepers and ghasts or whatever from mocreatures drops it, I’ll be able to do more. I don’t like killing mobs in excess amounts just to fuel my stuff, I don’t find that fun, and I don’t want to go out and light up all the stuff I’d need to light up for a vanilla spawner. The other flower I have my eyes on is one that eats leaves to make mana, which could work fairly well. It would, however, require another rune of winter, and making another one of those can wait until next time. See you guys in the next chapter!
That was a rough Nether arrival! I think something may have ramped up your ghast count - I don't think I've ever seen more than 4. Is something suppressing Nether Piggies?
Blaze problems - numbers count. One blaze is pretty manageable; but if there's a squadron firing fireballs it's a problem even if well equipped. Two spawners near each other is an obvious problem source.
You might try putting some towers on your garden wall. I think it looks nice though.
Don't you have Thaumcraft installed? You can alchemize gunpowder from snow or ice. Weird, but there it is.
Geographicraft (formerly Climate Control) - Control climate, ocean, and land sizes; stop chunk walls; put modded biomes into Default worlds, and more!
RTG plus - All the beautiful terrain of RTG, plus varied and beautiful trees and forests.