I haven't played 1.7 for quite a while now, so all my comments are relative to 1.10. Unsurprisingly, I always play with UBC and I never have significant generation speed issues from it. It is a little slower, but I can still fly full speed with it on. The current 1.7.10 UBC speed optimizations were written by Asiekierka and perhaps they're not perfect but they did look pretty good. When that system got ported to 1.8 it had a speed defect (since fixed) but I'm pretty sure it wasn't in Asiekierka's version. One thing that might be making a difference is that vanilla has introduced a ChunkPrimer system since 1.7 and that cuts down on rabbitholing (one chunk's generation causing another chunk to generate causing another chunk to generate...) which was always a big problem for UBC.
Generically, though, my mod set supports full-speed flying on my machine because it *has* to - I do a LOT of that in the process of testing. I don't remember much trouble with 1.7.10 RTG/UBC once I put the delayed decorations system into RTG. Maybe because that was with an older version of UBC that still had in-chunk generation? You could try a version prior to beta49, turn on in-chunk generation, and see if it helps.
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.
(In regard to a mod that gives realistic animal genetics):
Would you really rather have bees that make diamonds and oil with magical genetic blocks?
... did I really ask that?
Chapter 52: In Which I Discover a Number of Locations That Would Be Good Resorts If I Weren't in Such a Hurry.
Exploration Limit: X = -501,000
At the Mesa Coast, the first thing I need is some maps - the main reason I warped back to Innwich in the first place.
I make use of my nifty floating etherial Botanical crafting table.
I'm right next to the large Mesa Plateau I saw in Chapter 49, so I go ahead and take a look. This one is really fairly large, but it's still sort of an arc around what looks like it should be a convex plateau. I'm not even sure how this happens - this is one of the few terrains I didn't do. I'll have to take a look at it.
There are some great views up here, though. Who needs Sedona?
I climb down from the Mesa. There's a Savanna on the coast which I get on the map. Then I head over to the village and -
It's more or less fine. I didn't do a census, but there are plenty here, including a Fletcher so I can unload some String. But, nobody buying coal so I can't dispose of that. I spend the day securing the village a bit and head on in the morning to explore the landmass.
Next I head east through an extra muddy section of the adjoining Wetlands. Squick and Ick.
Here's the map when I reach the area where I first landed. I'm going to continue clockwise along the coast, per my usual system.
The next biome is Birch Forest, and then another first for this world:
BoP Grassland. It's rather like Plains - aesthetically more of a breathing and spacing biome, but in a much lusher color. The trees in the distance are from an Orchard, (not) coincidentally the next biome.
I make another map, and continue south along the coast. I soon find another first:
BoP Boreal Forest. But it's a tinytinytiny one, maybe five chunks, so you don't see the effect
From here I swim south to what looks like - and is - and island; mostly Orchard but with another tinytinytiny Boreal Forest. Some kind of park, maybe?
After exploring the island I swim back to he mainland and head west along the coast, through some Birch Forest and then some Coniferous Forest. I like that little barrier island - who needs Martha's Vineyard?
Then I run into some Roofed Forest, which is impassable on my machine due to lighting lag, and I pull out a vanilla boat and head along the coast.
I pass this amusing village, which is going to be a magnet for the zombies spawning nearby. I actually get close just to see how much of a disaster area it is but the lag spikes up and I decide to just continue.
Next is a Jungle, and a river mouth which I should boat, but don't. I reach the next map and have to make another just after passing the river.
I just love these Jungle trees.
After this I round a corner and start heading north into a bay.
On the other side of the bay is what looks to be BoP Alps. The bay, quite possibly, was formed by Geographicraft to keep the Alps and Jungle apart. It will convert land to ocean when it's next to an inappropriate climate.
At the inside tip of the bay is a Cold Taiga. You'd think Cold Taiga-Jungle would be a disallowed transition, but under vanilla rules it's not because Jungle is Warm climate, not Hot. It is what you could call a "discouraged" transition, and it's rare and rather short when it happens. The most recent version of Geographicraft has a config option to stop these, but I'm not using it.
Between the Alps and the Cold Taiga is a little bt of Roofed Forest, which I pass by walking along the broad beach.
The Alps turn out to be quite large and the last biome before the continent ends. Normally I'd just do the coast and get the interior on later rounds but I don't want to climb up and down the Alps slopes again so I finish mapping all of it right now.
I run across some interesting pools up in the Alps. They look like the warm springs in Sacred Springs that confer a regeneration effect. I take a dip and - they are. Jacuzzi in the Alps! It's the new St. Moritz!
Descending the other side, there's an Ice Spikes, and the Roofed Forest I dodged on the way up. There's a bay on the other side too, leaving the Roofed Forest straddling an isthmus that connect this snowy region with the rest of the island.
After mapping the Ice Spikes region, I cross back to the main part of the island, again on the beach to avoid the Roofed Forest. On the other side is a Chaparral, and then the Mesa biome that first drew my attention here.
That's not the big mesa I climbed at the start but another stage set mesa - I saw the back, and this one is hollow.
I've finished a circuit of the coast but there are still unmapped areas in the interior. I continue to fill them in but I don't see anything particularly new or unexpected.
Although I do note one annoyance of the Ring of Magnetization. It draws items to me, but my inventory was almost full when I got here, and soon it *is* full. But the items keep following me around, which is irritating, and a problem if I need to juggle my inventory.
There's not much left and soon I'm done mapping. One temporary wall map of the island before I go for reference:
And of course as soon as I put it up I realize I'm *not* done mapping, because I missed a spot on the bottom hidden by the Minecraft user interface covering up the bottom left of the map. My completist OCD says "go back and map it!" but I said I was going to reach
THE EDGE OF THE WORLD
and that is driving me on like the "terrible oath" of Feanor and his sons in the Silmarillion. My original estimate was that it was going to take about 2 years but at the current rate it looks more like 5. So I uncharacteristically leave this blotch on my possibly-someday map wall and strike out to sea.
(Hopefully my oath won't leave me dead like all of Feanor and company except Maglor, and I wouldn't want to end up like him either).
Chapter 53: In Which My Adjusted Travel Plans Prove Fully Workable
Exploration limit: X = -503,000
It's afternoon and will soon be dark, but that doesn't matter much when I'm sailing. I encounter many more lands than I have time to explore so I have to bypass most of them anyway.
X = -505,000
Sunset. That rise is a Deep Ocean seamount, not Ocean. The bumpy top is not typically found on real seamounts but it helps distinguish seamount rises from Ocean rises, which is a big help when looking for land.
Shortly after sunset it starts raining.
Generation is glitchy for unclear reasons. I've modified RTG to not produce caves in the ocean but it's not helping visually, although my time trackers show improvement.
X = -510,000
X = -515,000
The rain ends late in the night.
X = -520,000
X = -525,000
X = -530,000
Pretty long trip this time.
Land ho at X = -533,000. Stop, chop, and hop.
Mega Taiga, impressive as always. The open area is a meadow; RTG varies tree density in forest for aesthetic reasons.
Next is a sweeping Shrubland with a Highland outcrop overlooking it.
I pass a bunch of Harvestcraft trees but I've no room in my inventory and I'm not collecting
Then it's a Maple Forest (not dayspawning) and the end of the landmass. This was almost certainly a large island. So I rebuild the Duski and continue ever westward.
I'm already just past X = -535,000 when I rebuild the boat.
Sunset. Still crazily glitchy visually, although play is fine - I'm not getting hangs.
X = -540,000
I get dinged by an Elder Guardian.
X = -545,000
And another ding.
X = -550,000
Sunrise
X = -555,000
The generation changes have really made a difference in forward speed. I'm managing almost 60K blocks per hour on the open ocean, about 30% faster than I was initially.
Ocean coming up - land is near.
X = -560,000
I land on a Highland, with Cold Taiga just inland. Then I head into a Sheild
With a typically messed up vanilla "surface" pool.
The an Ice Plains with a frozen river, which I take the opportunity to ice skate on, since I'm hasted by my Botania Sojourner's Sash and I go extra fast on ice.
Then it's a Snowy Conferous Forest, and then a Cold Taiga. This is almost certainly a small continent based on how much land I've already passed.
And a village! Hopefully it's got a Priest so I can get some of the Pearls I want.
Bingo!
I get the Pearl trade opened up after selling one load of zombie flesh (what do they do with it?) and buying a Redstone. I then buy a stack of Pearls. Since I only need 4 Pearls per Waystone, and it looks like my Waystones have to be at least 250,00 blocks apart to make even half-decent time, I'm set for the next million blocks or so.
That last sentence hits me with the enormity of what I've planned.
There's a farmer, so I can offload the crops I've got, and some Librarians, but they're pretty useless. One is selling Knockback I for 17 Emeralds. Right. Good luck with that!
There's also a Tool Maker, and I discover to my horror - they don't buy charcoal anymore! So I've got 9 stacks of Charcoal with no use but torches, really, since I can smelt with Mana back home. Pretty much a lifetime supply already, and what a waste of backpack space.
Night falls and I snooze in the village. In the morning, since they've been so helpful to me, I secure the village, even though it's very unlikely I'll ever be back. I chop a spruce for doors, and light, door, and de-step all the buidings.
That done, I turn to the West and the Quest. I don't even wait for goodbyes or thanks from the villagers (because I know I'm not going to get them).
Chapter 54: In Which a Lot of Pleasant Experiences with River Boating Encourages Me to Try Something Perhaps a Little Crazy.
Exploration Limit: X = -561,000
I trudge through the Cold Taiga for a while.
Soon I spot a welcome ice skating path, and hop on to speed up.
Before long the Cold Taiga yields to Forest, and I switch to my vanilla boat to follow the river.
After a while the river deadends against what looks like Highland, but turns out to be Moor, with particularly atrocious vanilla pools.
I spot a Cashew tree, but I'm still not collecting.
The Moor is the last biome before the end of the continent. I rebuild my boat and set off.
X = - 565,000
Just before X = -570,000, I spot the rise of an Ocean floor and start looking for land. It's very late in the afternoon and I'm under time pressure. I cross -570,000 before I find it.
The landing biome is Prairie, which is a bit of a problem because those wimpy trees wouldn't be legitimate for staying the night safely without a bed, so bed-plopping on them is an exploit by my house rules.
My solution, as on my spawn island Prairie, is to build my mini-house design, where the 2 high walls will keep out ground mobs and the 1 wide slots on the roof keep out spiders and allow me to kill them from underneath and not get jumped when I head out in the morning.
In the morning I check for creepers from the roof, since it was actually dark by the time I finished my shelter and there could be spawns about. There are none, so I chop down the shelter and continue. After the Prairie is a Woodland, and then a Chaparral.
With, conveniently, a river.
The river soon brings me to the ocean, but it's not the end of the landmass, which continues to the west and south.
There's a port village here (there have been a lot of those lately - just luck or something with the placement algorithm?). Of course the squidwards are floating in the water, which I guess isn't as bad as I thought, because it seems that they now know how to get out of the water. I try trading hoping that I can find a villager that still takes Charcoal, but no dice. So much for that easy trade good.
To continue along the coast I have to cross this very pretty bay, which is big enough to justify taking out my boat.
Past the Coniferous Forest is an Extreme Hills, with this nice mountain, big enough to look impressive even from within the Hills. Avoiding climbs up the big hills, I manage to get through in a series of reasonable passes.
I come to a river and (another? the same?) Coniferous Forest, but the river goes north and I trying to go west.
I skirt that mountain on the left
(also easy on the eyes)
- and end up having to go north to the ocean anyway. I head southwest on the beach, next to some very impressive Extreme Hills vistas. Fortunately the beach is a little wider than it usually is next to Extreme Hills and I don't get the annoyance of walking sideways on a hill.
Past the Extreme Hills is a small Shrubland, and then a Shield. The coast veers a bit to the north so I go inland a bit.
The next biome is Dead Forest, which I haven't yet seen in this world. Nice to still be finding new things after so long exploring. This version isn't quite dead yet, with the live spruces - more of a Dying Forest.
It soon shifts incongruously to a Flower Forest, which, incidentally, has another village. I bed down there for the night. In the morning I hunt around for good trades, mostly out of habit, but find nothing compelling. Onward.
The Flower Forest is HUGE - the size of a full biome, I think. I need to look carefully at my configs to make sure I haven't somehow messed things up and put some full biome as Flower Forest.
Next is a Highlands, and the coast has veered south again to be close. Beyond that is another Extreme Hills.
This has a different personality than the previous one with its soaring mountains. It's lower, with much relatively flats, and rockpiles more on the scale of Highland. I like biomes that can vary from place to place, so I happily move on.
Next is Woodland, then the sea again. I head over to the Savanna to the left to make sure it's the end, and it is. Back to sea at - 573.
One last tiny barrier island on the way out.
And then, almost immediately, another little island which turns out to be from the next landmass.
This has a big smooth-sloped mountain which I initially expect to be Alps, but is actually Ice Mountains initially. After a while, it *does* become Alps, as demonstrated by a little hot pool I come across.
Finally, just at -575,000, it's back to the sea. I dine on some Suadero just before boating off into the sunset, as part of a test to find out how few different Harvestcraft meals I can get by on (I'm aiming for 4).
X=-580,000, and the moon rises to speed me on my way.
X= -585,000
X= -590,000
X= -595,000
In the morning, an Ocean floor guides me to another landmass at almost -599,000. This has a Chaparral and
And another Flower Forest? I'm sure seeing a lot of them. I check my configs and logs to make sure nothing is assigned to Flower Forest, but it got ID 132, and there's nothing there. Just lucky, I guess.
Boating through a Flower Forest is quite pleasant, as you'd expect. After a while I come to a Prairie, and then the river reaches the sea. I decide to continue along the coast in the vanilla boat, passing some Land of Lakes, and then Prairie again,
And then finally a Coniferous Forest at the end of the landmass.
I originally decided to use Archimedes' Ships (now Davinci's Vessels) because squid strikes were an unacceptable risk with vanilla boats and because I wanted to use chests on a Davinci ship. Well, vanilla boats are no longer wrecked by squid strikes and apparently I can't use chests on a Davinci ship without crashes, so the only advantage is greater speed. Did I make the right decision? I decide to test it.
So, rather than beaching and switching to my Duski, I turn to the west, set my view distance to 10, and row off into the deep deep sea in a vanilla boat. Appropriately, this is right after I cross the X = -600,000 milestone (blockstone? kiloblockstone?).
Heeeey, good to see you writing again! Its been ages since i last read or wrote one of these, its been great reading back through all of that. Actually makes me want to make my own, but I dunno how well that would work given how things are for me now.
I do have to say though, what with your incredibly ambitious goal, I feel like you're going to need every bit of stability you can get(especially with how wonky things get at extreme distances from spawn), so you should really consider replacing the waystones thing with something, or figure out and solve the issue it's been causing you. I would be incredibly frustrated if it started doing something really bad, like corrupting chunks, especially with how far you've gotten already.
Also, try the Ring of Chordata + the various movement belts from Botania. It's a blast!
I actually tested RTG + Davinci out at 20 megablocks and I actually didn't see anything odd apart from some jerkiness in entity motion. I agree the instability issues are concerning, although so far I haven't had anything affecting the basic structure of the game. The problems seem to occur only with entities and I guess mod-specific programming like whatever Botania uses to store mana. The worst that's happened to me so far is to be dumped in the deep sea without a ship, but I'm actually prepared for that (lily pads + ship construction supplies). That actually hasn't happened since I switched to the Duski.
My fallback plan, if Waystones become unworkable, is to give up on going home and just keep travelling west, with breaks to construct smaller bases along the way. I'd have to be scrupulous about leaving every bed I ever sleep in intact with adequate supplies to restart, because otherwise I'm effectively playing hardcore (since death would send me all the way back to spawn). Quite possibly before the end I'll be "done" with my home base and effectively playing that way anyway. I had these visions of bopping back and forth between different bases to work on them as I did in my previous world but my schedule and the comparatively crude state of my forward bases seems not to agree with that.
Hmm, if that comes up maybe I should add a sleeping bag mod.
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.
If you're looking for any suggestions, I suggest that you keep Waystones, and use the /home system, like from FTB Utils, as a pretending-to-use-waystones thing. It's nowhere near as cool, and it can be hard to resist abusing it, but you seem like someone with good self control, so it may be a good idea for you. I haven't had any issues with it so far.
Actually, speaking of: Since the issue you seem to be having looks to be related to the chunk unloading when using Waystones, maybe you could solve it by force-loading it? A single chunk being forceloaded is almost never an issue performancewise, in my experience, and there wouldn't be any problem with monsters, since you'd be too far away for them to spawn or remain active. Maybe its worth a test?
If I'm just pretending to use Waystones, I could just cheat teleport. I do have good self control, although even so even when I've actually chosen to LAN cheats, like TP'ing around to see what was going on with the entities, it's always been on a copy of the world. The "real" world so far is uncontaminated by LAN cheats, although I have done a few rollbacks after crashes. Not that there's any proof of this.
The thing about forceloading chunks is that I don't know which ones are the problem. I'd say almost every chunk in the base village has been affected at least once, and probably every chunk has been unaffected at least once. So there would have to be a lot forceloaded. The last time I went a long way so the chunks really should be unloaded, and it looked like when I was Waystoning/LAN cheat TP'ing back to the home base last time that Waystoning in wasn't causing trouble. So hopefully next time I go back there won't be any new trouble and I can start thinking about repopulation. The one thing I didn't so that I should have was to save-reload after going far away. Next time, if I still have trouble.
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.
Chapter 55: A Boatwright Writes About the Right Boat After He Already Left.
Exploration Limit: X = -600,000
As I set off, I realize I've got a tulip in my hand which the Ring of Magnetization must have made me pick up. Odd, but cute, so I leave it.
There are still lots of Elder Guardians out here, and I wonder about whether my slower boat is more vulnerable. I pass this first set without incident so maybe it's not big deal. (Well no incident for me. A lot of squid are getting toasted.)
X = -605,000
I was hoping the slower boat would help with the graphical glitches, but apparently not. It *is* slower though - barely half the speed of the Davinci boat.
Shortly after dusk I come to an Ice Plains coast, but I judge it's too late for snoozing and boat on by. It's relatively short and soon I'm past it.
Wait, darn, it's still present. Soon enough it presents itself with a plains-ish biome, and then I think I'm past, but once again it's still present, with a snowy mountain next to a bog, and then some probable Extreme Hills, and then some Desert Hills. All this time I keep going south as well as west since the coast keeps curving to the south.
Am I finally free?
Nope.
Finally, at X = -608,000, I really get away to the open sea.
Just before X = -610,000, I hit another landmass, Savanna this time. I keep going, but soon find I have sailed into a very large RTG lake and land blocks me in all directions.
Rather than back up, I find a shallow spot and build a little platform for a bed. I'm still way out in the water, far enough that no monster will come after me. I plop my bed and sleep the last bit of the night.
The land in front of me is actually *wet*land, so I can boat into it a ways (I'm not dealing with that Roofed Forest on the right). After a while i have to abandon the boat, and I have a struggle with all the detritus the Ring of Magnetization has picked up (especially a variety of different BoP lily pads the boat broke). I can't get what I want in my inventory because the junk keeps popping in. Eventually I get rid of it all, and then I go to the usual walk some-swim some required by the Wetland.
The Wetland goes only a little further before I'm back to the sea. Reaching
THE EDGE OF THE WORLD
by vanilla boat earns more "credibility points" than in a modded boat, but doubling transit time is a LOT. Even at my original schedule, that would be 4 years instead of 2, and my current rate is more of a 5-year mission (dun-dun-dun - - da dun Dun Da DUNN!) which would be TEN in a vanilla boat which would be - no. Just no. So it's back to the Duski.
But not for long, because right after I set off I see more land to the south, part of the same continent. So I head there and get off to look at that. I pass that Shield, and then in the distance.
A Sacred Springs. Too dangerous to walk through, so I go back to the boat to go around. Bad lag as I pass confirms my decision.
Next is a Chaparral, and it turns out to be the end of the landmass.
This imposing rock stands sentinel at the end. Cool!
Then it's back to the sea.
With the usual annoyances
X = -615,000
Just before sunset the ocean floor guide me to a cold coast. I explore just a little before dusk.
I sleep to this great view atop a high Spruce.
In the morning I head to a Tundra adjacent to a Moor.
Oh, right, this is the first time I've actually *walked* through a Tundra.
I reach the ocean just past X = -620,000 and head back out to sea.
But in only 2000 blocks I'm in sight of land again. By this point, though, I'm feeling behind schedule again. I could look at the RTG landscapes all day, but I have places to go. Writing the chapters just reinforces that. I've written almost three chapters, and only covered 120,000 blocks. Well, maybe that's "only" covered 120,000 blocks. At that coverage, and my current publication rate of 5 episodes/week, it'll take 3 years just to publish the ocean travelogues, never mind the detailed explorations, builds, or base activities. I've got to pick up the pace.
After some cold coast, I see a plains-type biome - possibly Grassland by the color. Then at X = -623,000 it's back out to sea.
X = -625,000
Watch out world, Zeno's in a hurry.
Um - that's not how I wanted to be watched.
I'm still carrying the ding when I spot the next landmass, just before X = -630,000.
It's Roofed Forest - how many different reasons can I get not to stop?
I pass some Forest and Woodland and then
Boreal Forest, and big enough for the hilly terrain to show up. I'd like to stop and look, but I'm still dinged, so - onward.
It's a big place, with a lot of good scenery.
At X = -632,000 I finally head back to open sea - still dinged.
And - sunset. Well, let's see if I can pick up the pace in the
Next Chapter
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'm pretty sure I've gotten mining fatigue boating over an ocean temple, but I can't recall a specific instance it's happened so rarely. I guess it's just a matter of percentages given you're in a world that is primarily ocean, but it sure seems like you've gotten hit a lot with it.
I boat over a LOT of ocean temples. I'll try to count my next time out but I think I see about 20 per Minecraft day on the open ocean. It varies a lot - sometimes I hit one every 30 seconds, literally, and sometimes I'll go most of the night and not see one. Maybe one time in 10 I get hit. It's possible they occur more often on the flatter RTG terrain.
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.
Ocean monuments are quite common when there is not much else other than deep ocean; their spawn algorithm randomly places one within each 32x32 chunk (512x512 blocks) region, generating it if the biome check passes; the same method, with some modifications, is also used by other temples, witch huts, igloos (all of these use the same base code, with the biome determining the type of structure), and villages (same as temples but with a different "seed" so they (hopefully) have different offsets); with End Cities and mansions using a different region size/spacing (the 32x32 chunk spacing happens to coincide with region files; an offset of 0-23 is used within each region so they will only ever be found within areas aligned to a multiple of 32 plus 0-23).
This is a lot like how I place some types of caves in my mod:
This is the spawn check code for one type of cave, which divides the world into 64x64 chunk regions, with caves generating within half of regions in a checkerboard pattern with an offset of 0-32 chunks; unlike vanilla a variable seed-dependent offset is added so they are not always aligned to multiples of 64 chunks:
Strongholds are essentially the same except they generate in the regions that colossal cave systems do not (!= instead of == on one line, which compares one bit in the chunkX/Z values):
At 60,000 blocks per hour you'll be passing over 117 regions per hour, which is a lot of potential for passing directly over (or close enough to) an ocean monument, unless you happen to be within the "dead zone" where they can never generate due to the offset being less than the width of the region (done so you don't get two right next to each other. Villages can get large enough to overlap, at least on Superflat (you can increase their size), since they can extend up to 7 chunks from their center, or 14 center-center)
(In regard to a mod that gives realistic animal genetics):
Would you really rather have bees that make diamonds and oil with magical genetic blocks?
... did I really ask that?
I'm trying a new trick to fix the visual glitches. I close all my other programs besides Minecraft. In the past I've found the Mac OS seems to give Java pretty narrow timeslices and so sometimes Java doesn't run as fast when other programs are going.
X = -635,000
X = -640,000
X = -645,000
Dang it.
I hit another landmass at X = -647,000
That's a good-looking mesa but - night - dinged - late - bye.
Back out to sea.
Dawn.
X = -650,000
Well, that was a long night without much to report. Except - running only Minecraft *does* fix the visual glitches. Woohoo!
The ocean floor guides me to land at X = -652,000. It's a snowy zone, and I have the choice of landing on Cold Taiga or Ice Spikes.
Well, duh! Some choice.
The RTG team has talked about making some more realistic ice spikes, but for now we're still using the vanilla AdventureTime version.
The cold zone ends. There's a small isthmus (not in the pic) connecting to the warm zones across the water, but I just sail over in a vanilla boat.
I pass some nice scenery - Forest, Orchard, Land of Lakes - but I've seen it, blogged it, and I'm on a schedule. So I just stay on my boat. Just before X = -654,000 the land ends and I switch to the Duski and head on.
X = -655,000
I get dinged.
X = -660,000
The ocean floor guides me to a landmass around -661,000.
Attractive enough, with a nice Orchard, but since I can't chop the boat it's too much hassle to stop. It's a decent-sized landmass, and continues about 1,500 blocks. Then it's back out to sea.
X = -665,000
Sunset. I settle in for a long night of boating.
I pass the time watching celestials, as usual. Not too much, of course, because I have to watch for land and make sure I don't hit it.
X = -670,000
X = -675,000
Shortly before X = -680,000 I reach an Ice Plains shore. I pass on by, with nothing particularly remarkable until then end.
The inviting lights of a village in a distance. Coastal, again. Of course the inviting lights are decieving and if I went there it would probably be a mess.
Shortly after I pass a cool-looking - um - something - so I guess that wasn't the end.
I reach Deep Ocean but almost immediately see another Ocean shelf.
Now *that* really looks interesting. It's close enough to dawn to stop, so I get off for a closer look. It's just Savanna Plateau, which I've seen many times, but for some reason it produced some really interesting shapes this time.
The Savanna goes on for a while, then I reach a (not quite yet) Dead Forest, which also goes on for a while. Then it's a Land of Lakes, and the stone patches produce so many items floating around that I take off my Ring of Magnetization in frustration so I don't have a chest of junk following me around.
At X = -683,000 I reach the sea and head back out.
X = - 685,000
The ocean floor guides me to land again near X = -688,000
I land on a plains, with a Forest right behind. Further on is a Chaparral with bigger than usual rock formations.
Then it's a Sheild, then Extreme Hills.
From the Extreme hills I have this vista of plains and then a hilly Orchard. I follow the plains for a while, and right as they end there's a river I can follow further between a vanilla Forest and a Coniferous Forest.
The river dodges into a swamp to avoid a big Extreme Hills.
The last biome of the continent is a Snowy Forest. The sun was setting I had expected I'd be racing to get my boat off, but you can see that village in the distance so instead I race over there for the night.
In the morning I check in with my hosts. They seem thinly dressed for the climate, but they're not complaining. Or maybe they are and I can't understand them.
I do a little trading and since they have a dock, I build the Duski on it to head back out.
X = -690,000
Wow.
X = -695,000
Wow. And - dinged on that one. No surprise.
X = -700,000
At X = - 703,000 I am guided to another snowy coast late in the afternoon. I sleep atop a tree for the night.
This Ice Plains is just lousy with Polar Bears. I find three mother-and-cub pairs while crossing. I give them a wide berth (bearth?) because - I don't want to orphan any more cubs (sniff).
Next I head into a Moor.
This has a collection of Harvestcraft trees - incongruously Mango and Grapefruit in what's supposed to be a wet, cold climate.
I manage to fall into one of the stupid vanilla pools crossing the Moor. There's nothing in there so nothing's hurt but my pride.
After the Moor I pass into a Shield. The beach has bent southward and I walk along its edge into another Ice Plains. The beach turns to the south and so I rebuild the Duski and head back out into the sea.
X = -705,000
But within a few hundred blocks there's more land, quite possibly part of the same complex. There's an inviting river as I approach, and I switch to my river boat, only to discover this river's just inviting me back to sea in a hundred blocks.
Whatever
I just boat along the coast, encountering another river that takes me in and then back out again in a hurry. I reach the end of the landmass (or peninsula or whatever) just after -706,000, having encountered nothing but vanilla Forest along the coast (which is very unusual).
Then it's back out to sea.
Next Chapter: I'm approaching my minimum travel distance of 250,000 blocks - will I find a place to stop?
Chapter 58: In Which the Minecraft Gods Throw Various Things at Me to Get Me to Stop, and Demonstrating That Carrots Work Better Than Sticks.
(Metaphorically, that is. They're not too good for tool handles.)
Exploration Limit: X = -833,000
Back out to sea, well past my minimum stop distance at X = -750,000
X = -835,000
X = -840,000
Sunset. Well, it seems like Minecraft is still trying not to tempt me
X = -845,000
Continuing the recent pattern, I'm encountering land mostly at night when I can't stop. Looks interesting but bye.
X = -850,000
Late in the evening it starts to rain and thunder.
X = -855,000
A patch of BoP Coral Reef alerts me to nearby land. It's still thundering, so I crank my view distance up to 14 to reduce the chance of accidental grounding. I still end up needing an emergency stop. It's a small Snowy island and I'm soon past it.
X = -860,000
Time for sunrise, but you can scarcely tell, because it's still thunderstorming.
X = -865,000
I hear a sharp crack of thunder without seeing the lighting stroke and turn around to look. I *think* I see a horse bobbing in the distance - a Skeleton Horse? but I don't get a pic fast enough to catch it. I haven't seen one and it would be odd to see my first at sea - how do they float?
At about X = -869,000, the ocean floor alerts me to a nearby continent. I head to look even though it's still thundering.
It's a temperate Birch Forest. But as I approach, there's another flash of lighting, leaving 3 (I think) horse bobbing almost right in my path. It seems the Minecraft gods are still angry at my hubris and now they're upping the ante to stop me.
I veer to avoid them, but they still feather me as I pass.
It doesn't do much, though - even Damage Screenshots catches only the tilt from getting damage. You'll notice I'm pretty close to the coast, though, and grounding now could be a distinctly bad thing.
I snap a pic once I'm past but it's too far to make them out clearly.
Well, I had been thinking about landing but I've changed my mind. I'll lose almost 400,000 blocks of travelling if I die now (getting killed by a Skelly Horse is a "legitimate" death and rolling back to a backup is not acceptable for that) plus the time to rebuild my gear. Not worth it. So I speed on by.
X = -870,000
At 10 in the morning the thunderstorm FINALLY stops. That was a storm!
X = -875,000
I pick up a ding passing an Ocean Monument.
X = -880,000
X = -885,000
This is really getting to be a pattern. Another day without a place to land, making 5 days in a row with only one daytime landing opportunity. Well, good for the time.
X = -890,000
I am indeed now making almost 60,000 blocks an hour, even with the slowdowns to look at land as I pass. Good. I needed that.
X = -895,000
X = -900,000
So now I don't even get land at night?
Not tonight, at least.
X = -905,000
X = -910,000
FINALLY! It's great for speed to see little land but it gets hard to think of things to say after a while. I actually am not too bored in real life because I'm bopping to a Pandora channel for Postmodern Jukebox as I'm playing and an hour of listening to that is no hardship.
I land on a Moor next to a Extreme Hills.
And then a Bayou - kind of deja vu from the last island. Walking on slope sides gets awkward so I cross a pass to walk through the Extreme Hills.
On the other side of this ridge the Extreme Hills is milder and not too hard to cross I miss the village in the hazy background, although Extreme Hills villages can set my teeth on edge with their crazy building sometimes.
Eventually I have to cross another ridge to continue west and end up overlooking this vanilla Forest. The forest continues into a BoP Woodland without any great picture opportunities.
I realize at this point I'd forgotten to crank my view distance up so even those great pics aren't as good as they should be.
Past the Woodland is an enormous lake, which I boat across, followed by a Savanna which is pretty big too.
After the Savanna I'm presented with my choice of swamp biomes, which I think is vanilla Swampland on the left and BoP Lush Swamp on the right. I head for the Lush Swamp, but it's actually Wetland, which I've seen plenty of lately, so I try to veer left into the Swampland, mostly without success, becasue the Wetland veers left too. After the Wetland I cross a big of Mountain Foothills and then come to a river.
With a view of Cherry Blossom Grove. This is the third one I've seen. I like the biome and want to do something with it, but the previous two weren't as pretty as they could be as they bordered dry or dayspawning biomes (CBG's pinks look better next to a wetter and bluer grass color IMO). I can see some of it boders the Wetland, which is a good aesthetic match, so I decide to see what else is around.
Yeah, that's nice. Mostly it does border wet biomes - Swampland, Wetland, Moor, and Meadow - with grass colors that set off the Cherry Blossom Grove. The Mountain Foothills are the only exception, and that's not too much of a clash. The river is a nice touch too. There's no adjoining mountain biome for pics but I still really like the place. But what makes up my mind is something I can see from the edge -
A Boreal Forest, which is something I've wanted to look at the whole journal. It's an unusual biome, combining small relatively rugged hills with closed forest. I want to take a look and see how it works.
Chapter 59: Considering Reconsideration of a Considerable Number of Construction Considerations
Exploration limit: X = -911,000
Before starting on build selection I decide to place the Waystone. Since I have to be well away from a base to warp out I can't do it at night and I no longer feel compelled to have it in the base.
It ends up looking a bit grave-ish with the pink daffodils (BoP) around it - which is kind of appropriate given how many villagers warping about seems to have killed -
I'd like to make the build with a lot of Cherry wood, but there's a common problem with BoP seedlings - many of them just grow into vanilla-shaped trees with the BoP woods, making the spawned trees effectively irreplaceable. I know cherries used to be this way, so to test I chop an oak-shaped cherry and plant the 2 resulting seedlings by the river.
Then I make a map to get some mapping done while I scout out sites.
Um - that's not right. I save and reload, and the problem corrects itself. Gotta love Minecraft.
Cherry Blossom Grove just begs for a Japanese style build. I want something fairly simple as I don't want to spend an enormous amount of time on a build I'll visit rarely if at all. Some quick googling finds a farmhouse - type build with a two-story building with a stairstep-pitch roof surrounded on all sides with a wide porch with a slab-pitch roof. It looks both Japanese and readily doable, so that's the plan.
I'm considering two basic ideas. One is a build in the middle of the grove for an "in the garden" kind of effect. The other is one on the edge of the grove, to see and be seen. For the in-grove build I quickly find a relatively open spot on a hill overlooking the river and the Moor, although I doubt it will be tall enough to see over the trees.
Not this spot, actually, but that's kind of what it looks like.
For the other I scout around the outside twice. Not an efficient use of time, but I'm enjoying this.
Eventually I pick this spot, where the Meadow sticks into the grove a bit. It's like a realtor's dream site. It's got onsite fruit trees (three different kinds right nearby - for some reason there's a lot of Harvestcraft trees in the grove), appealing views of both the grove and the meadow, no traffic, and very quiet neighbors - well, during the day, at least.
I revisit the other site to compare, and then decide to go with this one.
I lay out a couple of wood blocks on the corners of my site plan to make sure it fits, and it fits perfectly, with all of the build actually on the Meadow so I don't have to worry about color changes on interior vegetation. I snooze atop the trees, planning and dreaming of the house to come.
Then in the morning I spot something that changes my mind.
There's a Black Granite boulder on the side. I'd seen it before, but I hadn't thought about it. Black Granite boulders mean Black Granite underneath, and I've had quite enough of Black Granite mining.
So -
I make a shallow shaft on the other site to see what stone it has. Migmatite - relatively light-colored in this texture, and easier to mine. So, I'll use the interior site after all.
I check my test cherry plantings and they've both grown into vanilla oak-shaped trees. Darnit, that means I can't just chop the existing trees and replant. I'll have to set up a Cheap Cherry farm.
I soon discover the Cherry Blossom Grove has an undesirable characteristic. It's not exactly dayspawning, but a new category I'll call "duskspawning". As the light dims at dusk, it becomes dark enough to start spawning before I can sleep. I don't have to worry about an out-of-the-blue (or in this case pink) attack in broad daylight, but I do have to do some cleanup in the morning sometimes.
I start planting Cherry seedlings in the Moor for my Cherrywood farm. I plant some Spruce seedlings too to expand my palette a bit.
I haven't much to do while the saplings sprout, so I busy myself cleaning up some of the many gruesomely wrong vanilla pools that litter the Moor. Ick.
MUCH better after repair. It's pretty time-consuming and I can't even begin to fix them all but at least I won't be assailed with ugliness when I step out my door.
Some of my seedlings have grown up so I can start on the build.
I start with the slab roof for the porch. I've planned the horizontal dimensions but I'll just build up to the top rather than precalculate. Using the common oriental style of low roofs, I'm going to use the slab roof for security, with the outermost layer only 2 high and over fences to be impassable. I'll put in a gate or two to get in and out.
I get a dayspawn in a most peculiar place. It can't even get down. I kill it and leave a torch there. The ground is a bit dark too.
Although the area is mostly open, I have to chop some trees, as well as one that intrudes a bit too much onto the porch roof.
Before finishing the entire porch I start on the house to see how it works and looks. I put a torii-style frame around the door for looks, which isn't really authentic but it comes out pretty well. Originally I tried putting the faux gate flush with the wall but it turned out to need the relief here.
Since I'm using a lot of logs I have to keep operating the tree farm, cleaning up the occasional pool when I get irritated by one.
I start the second story to check the visibility and overall appearance. You can't see it from a distance and have to come up close. After I do this I realize I'd made a mistake because I wanted a gable on this end, not a pitched roof on all sides.
Each night I'm sleeping on the second floor, since the porch isn't done yet. The area enclosed by the pillar will all eventually be part of the build. It's very pretty to look at.
Now I decide it's time to see how the porch, which I've planned to build from UBC Migmatite, will look. I put in a mining dropshaft, go down about 40 blocks, and then quarry some. I bring it up and police the area while I roast the stone. Then I lay it down; smoothstone for most of it except a row of walls around the edge for security.
And that's the look of the facade, minus a decorative gate and a couple of flourishes. I had to chop another tree to get this view. Even though it's close to the edge of the grove, near the Moor area where I'm farming trees, you still can't see it from outside the grove except for a little glimpse. Those Cherry trees block viewlines more than you'd think.
I initially tried making the gate out of cherry planks but it didn't stand out against the roof, so I switched to slate, one of the UBC sedimentary stones in this area, which worked much better, putting me up to a 6-item palette - all locally sourced, courtesy of your ever-ecological Zeno.
Since it's all working in the front, it's time to extend it and build the rest. This needs several stacks of materials so I spend some time down in the mines quarrying a lot of stone, and then some time at the tree farm while the cobble roasts back to smoothstone.
I build and light the porch/house floor area and the outer level of the porch roof, making the area secure so I can sleep on the ground floor.
I'd initially planned to use spruce planks for the second floor but it was too bland and disorienting having the floor and walls the same material. Next I tried shale, but then I had this idea of have a shale/migmatite pattern, partly for visual interest and partly to conserve on shale (the shale is in the squares). I still didn't quite have enough shale so I had to quarry a bit more.
Then it's time to finish the roof. This is mostly just tedious as, once again, I'm crawling around on a stair roof placing stairs under the persnickety placement rules. The Botania handheld crafting table, the Assembly Halo, does help when I need to make more stairs and slabs though.
It's just not a proper Zeno house without a sunset viewing window.
And here's the final West facade. I built the gate lower than on the East facade because if it were higher it would block my sunset view. The Spruce logs framing the window look a little purplish to me even though they aren't.
Next Chapter: Some internal decor - and a new mod!
(In regard to a mod that gives realistic animal genetics):
Would you really rather have bees that make diamonds and oil with magical genetic blocks?
... did I really ask that?
Chapter 61: In Which I Relieve Stress From a Partial Decorating Success By a Prompt Perambulation.
Exploration Limit: X = -911,000
I'd like to do some decorating, but Minecraft is somewhat limited in internal decor, unless you have a lot of space. Fortunately, one of my favorite mods - Bibliocraft - recently finally updated to 1.10 after about 2 years of being behind due to changes in rendering with 1.8, which were extremely hard on mods with fancy graphics.
So I install it and - well, nothing obvious happens, which is to Forge's credit - really quite an achievement even if we've all gotten used to it.
I'm planning to use some of the BoP woods for some Bibliocraft furniture. Bibliocraft used to have add-on mods that added recipes for woods from the various mods, but that's been dropped in favor of a new "framing" system which can put almost any block's texture, as a veneer, onto most Bibliocraft items. This needs the above Framing Saw, which is used both for a framing block and for making the materials used to construct framable furniture.
Initially I forget this and try to frame a regular Spruce bibliocraft table, which doesn't work. Then I remember to make the framable table to put the veneers on. The Framing Table consumes the veneering block in the process, which seems a nice touch to me - you actually do have to supply raw materials.
I make three of these Dolomite (a UBC sedimentary stone I hit digging the mineshaft here) tables. When placed next to each other, Bibliocraft adjusts the graphics to produce this nice end table. I next want to put a flower in a flowerpot on the table. I need some clay for that but I'm right next to a swamp. Actually I don't even have to go that far, as I find some crossing the river to get to the swamp.
But now there's a problem. Bibliocraft allows me to put items on the table, but it renders them in 2D, and facing the wrong direction for this table to boot. You can rotate it with a Measuring Tape, but that needs more String than I've got on me. Also, I can't place a Flowerpot as a block on top of the table, so I can't put a flower in it.
I *can* place them on the floor. But, it seems, I can't place any of the fancy flowers in the pots. They won't take the BoP flowers like the pink daffodils, or the BoP saplings, or the Botania Mystical flowers, or even the 2-block vanilla flowers. Argh. And this room is too small for planters. So they end up with some ordinary vanilla flowers.
Those flowerpots look a little low since the flowers are small, so I try a variety of tricks to try to get them onto a Bibliocraft table, using the Spruce table now. On the table, shift-click on the table, on the wall, on a block I destroy to put in the table - faugh, nothing works.
So in the end I just use vanilla slabs. I also put in porthole windows to the sides of the bed - you can see the tiniest bit of Sprice Log framing around them on either side.
Now I had general plans for a workshop area downstairs and a hangout upstairs but nothing specific and with my flower plans all failing my mood turns grumpy and my inspiration deserts me. The only thing I can think of is a map wall (which will have to be torn down whenever I leave until I understand the loading/unloading bug.) But I don't have maps of the area yet, so -
I go out for a walk. A long, mapping walk. Maybe that will improve my mood.
I start by boating west along the river. It doesn't go all that far before ending. "That's odd," I think. "I though Mountain Foothills allowed rivers."
Well, actually, it does. The river is being stopped by a Moor on top of the hill. Moor disallows rivers in RTG because they make the vanilla surface pools even more gruesomely awful than they already are.
While in the Moor I spot a pair of Ice Spikes in the distance, and head over to take a look.
It's two standouts in a field of ordinary size ones. An interesting effect. On the right of the pic you can see a bit of Frozen River, which I set up my boat on to make use of the extremely high speed of ice boating.
But on a Frozen River the controls are much worse than on a regular one, and I have the worst time, spinning out over and over and even skidding onto land even though it's very wide (I think it's actually a frozen lake, not a river.) Eventually I come to an outlet heading south and manage to struggle along it, but not any faster than in a vanilla river because I have to just barely tap the controls and at anything like full speed I can't control the steering.
The Frozen River leads to a BoP Marsh, wetter than the last one and which looks like a scene from the African Queen. I spot a village and head over to trade.
In the village I find a weaponsmith and sell him some Coal since I have so much Charcoal and don't need it for now. There's also a Blacksmith's and I obsidianize the lava for a Waystone - I have the pearls, but it also need some Obsidian.
The weaponsmith is apparently very upset I've taken his lava because he immediately gets in my face and starts "hrmming". He even shoves me around a bit. Not exaggerating for effect, that's exactly what happened. I actually feel a little bad, oddly - and weirdly - but he can't really use it and besides, what's done is done.
After this I head back to the river but it goes just a short distance before ending on a hillside. Following the river seems not to be working so I decide to try a new mapping technique - rather than spiraling in from the coast, I'll spiral out from what I've already mapped.
This is what I've already got. The grove is the dark green area south of the river on the right. The farmhouse is visible as a single brown dot on the rightmost spur of the grove. You can also see the Moor I walked through, then the snowy area, then the Marsh.
I head west, through a bit of Bog, then back into the Marsh, and then
Oh yeah, the Boreal Forest I wanted to look at!. It's got a lakeside village too.
The Boreal Forest is just insanely thick - almost impassable. By the time I reach the village it's dusk and I snooze atop the village church for the view - discovering Boreal Forest is also duskspawning, as well.
It's pretty, the Stephen King horror ambience notwithstanding, and I snooze happily atop the spire.
I haven't played 1.7 for quite a while now, so all my comments are relative to 1.10. Unsurprisingly, I always play with UBC and I never have significant generation speed issues from it. It is a little slower, but I can still fly full speed with it on. The current 1.7.10 UBC speed optimizations were written by Asiekierka and perhaps they're not perfect but they did look pretty good. When that system got ported to 1.8 it had a speed defect (since fixed) but I'm pretty sure it wasn't in Asiekierka's version. One thing that might be making a difference is that vanilla has introduced a ChunkPrimer system since 1.7 and that cuts down on rabbitholing (one chunk's generation causing another chunk to generate causing another chunk to generate...) which was always a big problem for UBC.
Generically, though, my mod set supports full-speed flying on my machine because it *has* to - I do a LOT of that in the process of testing. I don't remember much trouble with 1.7.10 RTG/UBC once I put the delayed decorations system into RTG. Maybe because that was with an older version of UBC that still had in-chunk generation? You could try a version prior to beta49, turn on in-chunk generation, and see if it helps.
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.
When was inchunk removed? It still says that it's there in 49. It's turned on in my config file
Of all the underground rock type mods (UBC, GeoStrata, Geologica, BetterGeo), only UBC has RTG support. So I really want it to work.
* Promoting this week: Captive Minecraft 4, Winter Realm. Aka: Vertical Vanilla Viewing. Clicky!
* My channel with Mystcraft, and general Minecraft Let's Plays: http://www.youtube.com/user/Keybounce.
* See all my video series: http://www.minecraftforum.net/forums/minecraft-editions/minecraft-editions-show-your/2865421-keybounces-list-of-creation-threads
(In regard to a mod that gives realistic animal genetics):
Would you really rather have bees that make diamonds and oil with magical genetic blocks?
... did I really ask that?
Chapter 52: In Which I Discover a Number of Locations That Would Be Good Resorts If I Weren't in Such a Hurry.
Exploration Limit: X = -501,000
I make use of my nifty floating etherial Botanical crafting table.
I'm right next to the large Mesa Plateau I saw in Chapter 49, so I go ahead and take a look. This one is really fairly large, but it's still sort of an arc around what looks like it should be a convex plateau. I'm not even sure how this happens - this is one of the few terrains I didn't do. I'll have to take a look at it.
There are some great views up here, though. Who needs Sedona?
I climb down from the Mesa. There's a Savanna on the coast which I get on the map. Then I head over to the village and -
It's more or less fine. I didn't do a census, but there are plenty here, including a Fletcher so I can unload some String. But, nobody buying coal so I can't dispose of that. I spend the day securing the village a bit and head on in the morning to explore the landmass.
Next I head east through an extra muddy section of the adjoining Wetlands. Squick and Ick.
Here's the map when I reach the area where I first landed. I'm going to continue clockwise along the coast, per my usual system.
The next biome is Birch Forest, and then another first for this world:
BoP Grassland. It's rather like Plains - aesthetically more of a breathing and spacing biome, but in a much lusher color. The trees in the distance are from an Orchard, (not) coincidentally the next biome.
I make another map, and continue south along the coast. I soon find another first:
BoP Boreal Forest. But it's a tinytinytiny one, maybe five chunks, so you don't see the effect
From here I swim south to what looks like - and is - and island; mostly Orchard but with another tinytinytiny Boreal Forest. Some kind of park, maybe?
After exploring the island I swim back to he mainland and head west along the coast, through some Birch Forest and then some Coniferous Forest. I like that little barrier island - who needs Martha's Vineyard?
Then I run into some Roofed Forest, which is impassable on my machine due to lighting lag, and I pull out a vanilla boat and head along the coast.
I pass this amusing village, which is going to be a magnet for the zombies spawning nearby. I actually get close just to see how much of a disaster area it is but the lag spikes up and I decide to just continue.
Next is a Jungle, and a river mouth which I should boat, but don't. I reach the next map and have to make another just after passing the river.
I just love these Jungle trees.
After this I round a corner and start heading north into a bay.
On the other side of the bay is what looks to be BoP Alps. The bay, quite possibly, was formed by Geographicraft to keep the Alps and Jungle apart. It will convert land to ocean when it's next to an inappropriate climate.
At the inside tip of the bay is a Cold Taiga. You'd think Cold Taiga-Jungle would be a disallowed transition, but under vanilla rules it's not because Jungle is Warm climate, not Hot. It is what you could call a "discouraged" transition, and it's rare and rather short when it happens. The most recent version of Geographicraft has a config option to stop these, but I'm not using it.
Between the Alps and the Cold Taiga is a little bt of Roofed Forest, which I pass by walking along the broad beach.
The Alps turn out to be quite large and the last biome before the continent ends. Normally I'd just do the coast and get the interior on later rounds but I don't want to climb up and down the Alps slopes again so I finish mapping all of it right now.
I run across some interesting pools up in the Alps. They look like the warm springs in Sacred Springs that confer a regeneration effect. I take a dip and - they are. Jacuzzi in the Alps! It's the new St. Moritz!
Descending the other side, there's an Ice Spikes, and the Roofed Forest I dodged on the way up. There's a bay on the other side too, leaving the Roofed Forest straddling an isthmus that connect this snowy region with the rest of the island.
After mapping the Ice Spikes region, I cross back to the main part of the island, again on the beach to avoid the Roofed Forest. On the other side is a Chaparral, and then the Mesa biome that first drew my attention here.
That's not the big mesa I climbed at the start but another stage set mesa - I saw the back, and this one is hollow.
I've finished a circuit of the coast but there are still unmapped areas in the interior. I continue to fill them in but I don't see anything particularly new or unexpected.
Although I do note one annoyance of the Ring of Magnetization. It draws items to me, but my inventory was almost full when I got here, and soon it *is* full. But the items keep following me around, which is irritating, and a problem if I need to juggle my inventory.
There's not much left and soon I'm done mapping. One temporary wall map of the island before I go for reference:
And of course as soon as I put it up I realize I'm *not* done mapping, because I missed a spot on the bottom hidden by the Minecraft user interface covering up the bottom left of the map. My completist OCD says "go back and map it!" but I said I was going to reach
THE EDGE OF THE WORLD
and that is driving me on like the "terrible oath" of Feanor and his sons in the Silmarillion. My original estimate was that it was going to take about 2 years but at the current rate it looks more like 5. So I uncharacteristically leave this blotch on my possibly-someday map wall and strike out to sea.
(Hopefully my oath won't leave me dead like all of Feanor and company except Maglor, and I wouldn't want to end up like him either).
Next chapter: starting an even-longer sea trip.
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 53: In Which My Adjusted Travel Plans Prove Fully Workable
Exploration limit: X = -503,000
X = -505,000
Sunset. That rise is a Deep Ocean seamount, not Ocean. The bumpy top is not typically found on real seamounts but it helps distinguish seamount rises from Ocean rises, which is a big help when looking for land.
Shortly after sunset it starts raining.
Generation is glitchy for unclear reasons. I've modified RTG to not produce caves in the ocean but it's not helping visually, although my time trackers show improvement.
X = -510,000
X = -515,000
The rain ends late in the night.
X = -520,000
X = -525,000
X = -530,000
Pretty long trip this time.
Land ho at X = -533,000. Stop, chop, and hop.
Mega Taiga, impressive as always. The open area is a meadow; RTG varies tree density in forest for aesthetic reasons.
Next is a sweeping Shrubland with a Highland outcrop overlooking it.
I pass a bunch of Harvestcraft trees but I've no room in my inventory and I'm not collecting
Then it's a Maple Forest (not dayspawning) and the end of the landmass. This was almost certainly a large island. So I rebuild the Duski and continue ever westward.
I'm already just past X = -535,000 when I rebuild the boat.
Sunset. Still crazily glitchy visually, although play is fine - I'm not getting hangs.
X = -540,000
I get dinged by an Elder Guardian.
X = -545,000
And another ding.
X = -550,000
Sunrise
X = -555,000
The generation changes have really made a difference in forward speed. I'm managing almost 60K blocks per hour on the open ocean, about 30% faster than I was initially.
Ocean coming up - land is near.
X = -560,000
I land on a Highland, with Cold Taiga just inland. Then I head into a Sheild
With a typically messed up vanilla "surface" pool.
The an Ice Plains with a frozen river, which I take the opportunity to ice skate on, since I'm hasted by my Botania Sojourner's Sash and I go extra fast on ice.
Then it's a Snowy Conferous Forest, and then a Cold Taiga. This is almost certainly a small continent based on how much land I've already passed.
And a village! Hopefully it's got a Priest so I can get some of the Pearls I want.
Bingo!
I get the Pearl trade opened up after selling one load of zombie flesh (what do they do with it?) and buying a Redstone. I then buy a stack of Pearls. Since I only need 4 Pearls per Waystone, and it looks like my Waystones have to be at least 250,00 blocks apart to make even half-decent time, I'm set for the next million blocks or so.
That last sentence hits me with the enormity of what I've planned.
There's a farmer, so I can offload the crops I've got, and some Librarians, but they're pretty useless. One is selling Knockback I for 17 Emeralds. Right. Good luck with that!
There's also a Tool Maker, and I discover to my horror - they don't buy charcoal anymore! So I've got 9 stacks of Charcoal with no use but torches, really, since I can smelt with Mana back home. Pretty much a lifetime supply already, and what a waste of backpack space.
Night falls and I snooze in the village. In the morning, since they've been so helpful to me, I secure the village, even though it's very unlikely I'll ever be back. I chop a spruce for doors, and light, door, and de-step all the buidings.
That done, I turn to the West and the Quest. I don't even wait for goodbyes or thanks from the villagers (because I know I'm not going to get them).
Next chapter: Ever Westward
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 54: In Which a Lot of Pleasant Experiences with River Boating Encourages Me to Try Something Perhaps a Little Crazy.
Exploration Limit: X = -561,000
I trudge through the Cold Taiga for a while.
Soon I spot a welcome ice skating path, and hop on to speed up.
Before long the Cold Taiga yields to Forest, and I switch to my vanilla boat to follow the river.
After a while the river deadends against what looks like Highland, but turns out to be Moor, with particularly atrocious vanilla pools.
I spot a Cashew tree, but I'm still not collecting.
The Moor is the last biome before the end of the continent. I rebuild my boat and set off.
X = - 565,000
Just before X = -570,000, I spot the rise of an Ocean floor and start looking for land. It's very late in the afternoon and I'm under time pressure. I cross -570,000 before I find it.
The landing biome is Prairie, which is a bit of a problem because those wimpy trees wouldn't be legitimate for staying the night safely without a bed, so bed-plopping on them is an exploit by my house rules.
My solution, as on my spawn island Prairie, is to build my mini-house design, where the 2 high walls will keep out ground mobs and the 1 wide slots on the roof keep out spiders and allow me to kill them from underneath and not get jumped when I head out in the morning.
In the morning I check for creepers from the roof, since it was actually dark by the time I finished my shelter and there could be spawns about. There are none, so I chop down the shelter and continue. After the Prairie is a Woodland, and then a Chaparral.
With, conveniently, a river.
The river soon brings me to the ocean, but it's not the end of the landmass, which continues to the west and south.
There's a port village here (there have been a lot of those lately - just luck or something with the placement algorithm?). Of course the squidwards are floating in the water, which I guess isn't as bad as I thought, because it seems that they now know how to get out of the water. I try trading hoping that I can find a villager that still takes Charcoal, but no dice. So much for that easy trade good.
To continue along the coast I have to cross this very pretty bay, which is big enough to justify taking out my boat.
Past the Coniferous Forest is an Extreme Hills, with this nice mountain, big enough to look impressive even from within the Hills. Avoiding climbs up the big hills, I manage to get through in a series of reasonable passes.
I come to a river and (another? the same?) Coniferous Forest, but the river goes north and I trying to go west.
I skirt that mountain on the left
(also easy on the eyes)
- and end up having to go north to the ocean anyway. I head southwest on the beach, next to some very impressive Extreme Hills vistas. Fortunately the beach is a little wider than it usually is next to Extreme Hills and I don't get the annoyance of walking sideways on a hill.
Past the Extreme Hills is a small Shrubland, and then a Shield. The coast veers a bit to the north so I go inland a bit.
The next biome is Dead Forest, which I haven't yet seen in this world. Nice to still be finding new things after so long exploring. This version isn't quite dead yet, with the live spruces - more of a Dying Forest.
It soon shifts incongruously to a Flower Forest, which, incidentally, has another village. I bed down there for the night. In the morning I hunt around for good trades, mostly out of habit, but find nothing compelling. Onward.
The Flower Forest is HUGE - the size of a full biome, I think. I need to look carefully at my configs to make sure I haven't somehow messed things up and put some full biome as Flower Forest.
Next is a Highlands, and the coast has veered south again to be close. Beyond that is another Extreme Hills.
This has a different personality than the previous one with its soaring mountains. It's lower, with much relatively flats, and rockpiles more on the scale of Highland. I like biomes that can vary from place to place, so I happily move on.
Next is Woodland, then the sea again. I head over to the Savanna to the left to make sure it's the end, and it is. Back to sea at - 573.
One last tiny barrier island on the way out.
And then, almost immediately, another little island which turns out to be from the next landmass.
This has a big smooth-sloped mountain which I initially expect to be Alps, but is actually Ice Mountains initially. After a while, it *does* become Alps, as demonstrated by a little hot pool I come across.
Finally, just at -575,000, it's back to the sea. I dine on some Suadero just before boating off into the sunset, as part of a test to find out how few different Harvestcraft meals I can get by on (I'm aiming for 4).
X=-580,000, and the moon rises to speed me on my way.
X= -585,000
X= -590,000
X= -595,000
In the morning, an Ocean floor guides me to another landmass at almost -599,000. This has a Chaparral and
And another Flower Forest? I'm sure seeing a lot of them. I check my configs and logs to make sure nothing is assigned to Flower Forest, but it got ID 132, and there's nothing there. Just lucky, I guess.
Boating through a Flower Forest is quite pleasant, as you'd expect. After a while I come to a Prairie, and then the river reaches the sea. I decide to continue along the coast in the vanilla boat, passing some Land of Lakes, and then Prairie again,
And then finally a Coniferous Forest at the end of the landmass.
I originally decided to use Archimedes' Ships (now Davinci's Vessels) because squid strikes were an unacceptable risk with vanilla boats and because I wanted to use chests on a Davinci ship. Well, vanilla boats are no longer wrecked by squid strikes and apparently I can't use chests on a Davinci ship without crashes, so the only advantage is greater speed. Did I make the right decision? I decide to test it.
So, rather than beaching and switching to my Duski, I turn to the west, set my view distance to 10, and row off into the deep deep sea in a vanilla boat. Appropriately, this is right after I cross the X = -600,000 milestone (blockstone? kiloblockstone?).
Next Chapter: *Did* I make the right decision?
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.
Heeeey, good to see you writing again! Its been ages since i last read or wrote one of these, its been great reading back through all of that. Actually makes me want to make my own, but I dunno how well that would work given how things are for me now.
I do have to say though, what with your incredibly ambitious goal, I feel like you're going to need every bit of stability you can get(especially with how wonky things get at extreme distances from spawn), so you should really consider replacing the waystones thing with something, or figure out and solve the issue it's been causing you. I would be incredibly frustrated if it started doing something really bad, like corrupting chunks, especially with how far you've gotten already.
Also, try the Ring of Chordata + the various movement belts from Botania. It's a blast!
Hey, good to hear from you!
I actually tested RTG + Davinci out at 20 megablocks and I actually didn't see anything odd apart from some jerkiness in entity motion. I agree the instability issues are concerning, although so far I haven't had anything affecting the basic structure of the game. The problems seem to occur only with entities and I guess mod-specific programming like whatever Botania uses to store mana. The worst that's happened to me so far is to be dumped in the deep sea without a ship, but I'm actually prepared for that (lily pads + ship construction supplies). That actually hasn't happened since I switched to the Duski.
My fallback plan, if Waystones become unworkable, is to give up on going home and just keep travelling west, with breaks to construct smaller bases along the way. I'd have to be scrupulous about leaving every bed I ever sleep in intact with adequate supplies to restart, because otherwise I'm effectively playing hardcore (since death would send me all the way back to spawn). Quite possibly before the end I'll be "done" with my home base and effectively playing that way anyway. I had these visions of bopping back and forth between different bases to work on them as I did in my previous world but my schedule and the comparatively crude state of my forward bases seems not to agree with that.
Hmm, if that comes up maybe I should add a sleeping bag mod.
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.
If you're looking for any suggestions, I suggest that you keep Waystones, and use the /home system, like from FTB Utils, as a pretending-to-use-waystones thing. It's nowhere near as cool, and it can be hard to resist abusing it, but you seem like someone with good self control, so it may be a good idea for you. I haven't had any issues with it so far.
Actually, speaking of: Since the issue you seem to be having looks to be related to the chunk unloading when using Waystones, maybe you could solve it by force-loading it? A single chunk being forceloaded is almost never an issue performancewise, in my experience, and there wouldn't be any problem with monsters, since you'd be too far away for them to spawn or remain active. Maybe its worth a test?
If I'm just pretending to use Waystones, I could just cheat teleport. I do have good self control, although even so even when I've actually chosen to LAN cheats, like TP'ing around to see what was going on with the entities, it's always been on a copy of the world. The "real" world so far is uncontaminated by LAN cheats, although I have done a few rollbacks after crashes. Not that there's any proof of this.
The thing about forceloading chunks is that I don't know which ones are the problem. I'd say almost every chunk in the base village has been affected at least once, and probably every chunk has been unaffected at least once. So there would have to be a lot forceloaded. The last time I went a long way so the chunks really should be unloaded, and it looked like when I was Waystoning/LAN cheat TP'ing back to the home base last time that Waystoning in wasn't causing trouble. So hopefully next time I go back there won't be any new trouble and I can start thinking about repopulation. The one thing I didn't so that I should have was to save-reload after going far away. Next time, if I still have trouble.
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 55: A Boatwright Writes About the Right Boat After He Already Left.
Exploration Limit: X = -600,000
As I set off, I realize I've got a tulip in my hand which the Ring of Magnetization must have made me pick up. Odd, but cute, so I leave it.
There are still lots of Elder Guardians out here, and I wonder about whether my slower boat is more vulnerable. I pass this first set without incident so maybe it's not big deal. (Well no incident for me. A lot of squid are getting toasted.)
X = -605,000
I was hoping the slower boat would help with the graphical glitches, but apparently not. It *is* slower though - barely half the speed of the Davinci boat.
Shortly after dusk I come to an Ice Plains coast, but I judge it's too late for snoozing and boat on by. It's relatively short and soon I'm past it.
Wait, darn, it's still present. Soon enough it presents itself with a plains-ish biome, and then I think I'm past, but once again it's still present, with a snowy mountain next to a bog, and then some probable Extreme Hills, and then some Desert Hills. All this time I keep going south as well as west since the coast keeps curving to the south.
Am I finally free?
Nope.
Finally, at X = -608,000, I really get away to the open sea.
Just before X = -610,000, I hit another landmass, Savanna this time. I keep going, but soon find I have sailed into a very large RTG lake and land blocks me in all directions.
Rather than back up, I find a shallow spot and build a little platform for a bed. I'm still way out in the water, far enough that no monster will come after me. I plop my bed and sleep the last bit of the night.
The land in front of me is actually *wet*land, so I can boat into it a ways (I'm not dealing with that Roofed Forest on the right). After a while i have to abandon the boat, and I have a struggle with all the detritus the Ring of Magnetization has picked up (especially a variety of different BoP lily pads the boat broke). I can't get what I want in my inventory because the junk keeps popping in. Eventually I get rid of it all, and then I go to the usual walk some-swim some required by the Wetland.
The Wetland goes only a little further before I'm back to the sea. Reaching
THE EDGE OF THE WORLD
by vanilla boat earns more "credibility points" than in a modded boat, but doubling transit time is a LOT. Even at my original schedule, that would be 4 years instead of 2, and my current rate is more of a 5-year mission (dun-dun-dun - - da dun Dun Da DUNN!) which would be TEN in a vanilla boat which would be - no. Just no. So it's back to the Duski.
But not for long, because right after I set off I see more land to the south, part of the same continent. So I head there and get off to look at that. I pass that Shield, and then in the distance.
A Sacred Springs. Too dangerous to walk through, so I go back to the boat to go around. Bad lag as I pass confirms my decision.
Next is a Chaparral, and it turns out to be the end of the landmass.
This imposing rock stands sentinel at the end. Cool!
Then it's back to the sea.
With the usual annoyances
X = -615,000
Just before sunset the ocean floor guide me to a cold coast. I explore just a little before dusk.
I sleep to this great view atop a high Spruce.
In the morning I head to a Tundra adjacent to a Moor.
Oh, right, this is the first time I've actually *walked* through a Tundra.
I reach the ocean just past X = -620,000 and head back out to sea.
But in only 2000 blocks I'm in sight of land again. By this point, though, I'm feeling behind schedule again. I could look at the RTG landscapes all day, but I have places to go. Writing the chapters just reinforces that. I've written almost three chapters, and only covered 120,000 blocks. Well, maybe that's "only" covered 120,000 blocks. At that coverage, and my current publication rate of 5 episodes/week, it'll take 3 years just to publish the ocean travelogues, never mind the detailed explorations, builds, or base activities. I've got to pick up the pace.
After some cold coast, I see a plains-type biome - possibly Grassland by the color. Then at X = -623,000 it's back out to sea.
X = -625,000
Watch out world, Zeno's in a hurry.
Um - that's not how I wanted to be watched.
I'm still carrying the ding when I spot the next landmass, just before X = -630,000.
It's Roofed Forest - how many different reasons can I get not to stop?
I pass some Forest and Woodland and then
Boreal Forest, and big enough for the hilly terrain to show up. I'd like to stop and look, but I'm still dinged, so - onward.
It's a big place, with a lot of good scenery.
At X = -632,000 I finally head back to open sea - still dinged.
And - sunset. Well, let's see if I can pick up the pace in the
Next Chapter
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'm pretty sure I've gotten mining fatigue boating over an ocean temple, but I can't recall a specific instance it's happened so rarely. I guess it's just a matter of percentages given you're in a world that is primarily ocean, but it sure seems like you've gotten hit a lot with it.
by c0yote
I tried it with terrible results. I gave my wife my glasses for a second, a creeper showed up and now my wife is pregnant.
Stupid 3D..
I boat over a LOT of ocean temples. I'll try to count my next time out but I think I see about 20 per Minecraft day on the open ocean. It varies a lot - sometimes I hit one every 30 seconds, literally, and sometimes I'll go most of the night and not see one. Maybe one time in 10 I get hit. It's possible they occur more often on the flatter RTG terrain.
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.
Ocean monuments are quite common when there is not much else other than deep ocean; their spawn algorithm randomly places one within each 32x32 chunk (512x512 blocks) region, generating it if the biome check passes; the same method, with some modifications, is also used by other temples, witch huts, igloos (all of these use the same base code, with the biome determining the type of structure), and villages (same as temples but with a different "seed" so they (hopefully) have different offsets); with End Cities and mansions using a different region size/spacing (the 32x32 chunk spacing happens to coincide with region files; an offset of 0-23 is used within each region so they will only ever be found within areas aligned to a multiple of 32 plus 0-23).
This is a lot like how I place some types of caves in my mod:
This is the spawn check code for one type of cave, which divides the world into 64x64 chunk regions, with caves generating within half of regions in a checkerboard pattern with an offset of 0-32 chunks; unlike vanilla a variable seed-dependent offset is added so they are not always aligned to multiples of 64 chunks:
Strongholds are essentially the same except they generate in the regions that colossal cave systems do not (!= instead of == on one line, which compares one bit in the chunkX/Z values):
At 60,000 blocks per hour you'll be passing over 117 regions per hour, which is a lot of potential for passing directly over (or close enough to) an ocean monument, unless you happen to be within the "dead zone" where they can never generate due to the offset being less than the width of the region (done so you don't get two right next to each other. Villages can get large enough to overlap, at least on Superflat (you can increase their size), since they can extend up to 7 chunks from their center, or 14 center-center)
TheMasterCaver's First World - possibly the most caved-out world in Minecraft history - includes world download.
TheMasterCaver's World - my own version of Minecraft largely based on my views of how the game should have evolved since 1.6.4.
Why do I still play in 1.6.4?
You could try a challenge -- cross one on the top of the canopy, without falling down.
(set your bed first :-)
* Promoting this week: Captive Minecraft 4, Winter Realm. Aka: Vertical Vanilla Viewing. Clicky!
* My channel with Mystcraft, and general Minecraft Let's Plays: http://www.youtube.com/user/Keybounce.
* See all my video series: http://www.minecraftforum.net/forums/minecraft-editions/minecraft-editions-show-your/2865421-keybounces-list-of-creation-threads
(In regard to a mod that gives realistic animal genetics):
Would you really rather have bees that make diamonds and oil with magical genetic blocks?
... did I really ask that?
Chapter 56:
Exploration Limit: X = -632,000
X = -635,000
X = -640,000
X = -645,000
Dang it.
I hit another landmass at X = -647,000
That's a good-looking mesa but - night - dinged - late - bye.
Back out to sea.
Dawn.
X = -650,000
Well, that was a long night without much to report. Except - running only Minecraft *does* fix the visual glitches. Woohoo!
The ocean floor guides me to land at X = -652,000. It's a snowy zone, and I have the choice of landing on Cold Taiga or Ice Spikes.
Well, duh! Some choice.
The RTG team has talked about making some more realistic ice spikes, but for now we're still using the vanilla AdventureTime version.
The cold zone ends. There's a small isthmus (not in the pic) connecting to the warm zones across the water, but I just sail over in a vanilla boat.
I pass some nice scenery - Forest, Orchard, Land of Lakes - but I've seen it, blogged it, and I'm on a schedule. So I just stay on my boat. Just before X = -654,000 the land ends and I switch to the Duski and head on.
X = -655,000
I get dinged.
X = -660,000
The ocean floor guides me to a landmass around -661,000.
Attractive enough, with a nice Orchard, but since I can't chop the boat it's too much hassle to stop. It's a decent-sized landmass, and continues about 1,500 blocks. Then it's back out to sea.
X = -665,000
Sunset. I settle in for a long night of boating.
I pass the time watching celestials, as usual. Not too much, of course, because I have to watch for land and make sure I don't hit it.
X = -670,000
X = -675,000
Shortly before X = -680,000 I reach an Ice Plains shore. I pass on by, with nothing particularly remarkable until then end.
The inviting lights of a village in a distance. Coastal, again. Of course the inviting lights are decieving and if I went there it would probably be a mess.
Shortly after I pass a cool-looking - um - something - so I guess that wasn't the end.
I reach Deep Ocean but almost immediately see another Ocean shelf.
Now *that* really looks interesting. It's close enough to dawn to stop, so I get off for a closer look. It's just Savanna Plateau, which I've seen many times, but for some reason it produced some really interesting shapes this time.
The Savanna goes on for a while, then I reach a (not quite yet) Dead Forest, which also goes on for a while. Then it's a Land of Lakes, and the stone patches produce so many items floating around that I take off my Ring of Magnetization in frustration so I don't have a chest of junk following me around.
At X = -683,000 I reach the sea and head back out.
X = - 685,000
The ocean floor guides me to land again near X = -688,000
I land on a plains, with a Forest right behind. Further on is a Chaparral with bigger than usual rock formations.
Then it's a Sheild, then Extreme Hills.
From the Extreme hills I have this vista of plains and then a hilly Orchard. I follow the plains for a while, and right as they end there's a river I can follow further between a vanilla Forest and a Coniferous Forest.
The river dodges into a swamp to avoid a big Extreme Hills.
The last biome of the continent is a Snowy Forest. The sun was setting I had expected I'd be racing to get my boat off, but you can see that village in the distance so instead I race over there for the night.
In the morning I check in with my hosts. They seem thinly dressed for the climate, but they're not complaining. Or maybe they are and I can't understand them.
I do a little trading and since they have a dock, I build the Duski on it to head back out.
X = -690,000
Wow.
X = -695,000
Wow. And - dinged on that one. No surprise.
X = -700,000
At X = - 703,000 I am guided to another snowy coast late in the afternoon. I sleep atop a tree for the night.
This Ice Plains is just lousy with Polar Bears. I find three mother-and-cub pairs while crossing. I give them a wide berth (bearth?) because - I don't want to orphan any more cubs (sniff).
Next I head into a Moor.
This has a collection of Harvestcraft trees - incongruously Mango and Grapefruit in what's supposed to be a wet, cold climate.
I manage to fall into one of the stupid vanilla pools crossing the Moor. There's nothing in there so nothing's hurt but my pride.
After the Moor I pass into a Shield. The beach has bent southward and I walk along its edge into another Ice Plains. The beach turns to the south and so I rebuild the Duski and head back out into the sea.
X = -705,000
But within a few hundred blocks there's more land, quite possibly part of the same complex. There's an inviting river as I approach, and I switch to my river boat, only to discover this river's just inviting me back to sea in a hundred blocks.
Whatever
I just boat along the coast, encountering another river that takes me in and then back out again in a hurry. I reach the end of the landmass (or peninsula or whatever) just after -706,000, having encountered nothing but vanilla Forest along the coast (which is very unusual).
Then it's back out to sea.
Next Chapter: I'm approaching my minimum travel distance of 250,000 blocks - will I find a place to stop?
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 58: In Which the Minecraft Gods Throw Various Things at Me to Get Me to Stop, and Demonstrating That Carrots Work Better Than Sticks.
(Metaphorically, that is. They're not too good for tool handles.)
Exploration Limit: X = -833,000
X = -835,000
X = -840,000
Sunset. Well, it seems like Minecraft is still trying not to tempt me
X = -845,000
Continuing the recent pattern, I'm encountering land mostly at night when I can't stop. Looks interesting but bye.
X = -850,000
Late in the evening it starts to rain and thunder.
X = -855,000
A patch of BoP Coral Reef alerts me to nearby land. It's still thundering, so I crank my view distance up to 14 to reduce the chance of accidental grounding. I still end up needing an emergency stop. It's a small Snowy island and I'm soon past it.
X = -860,000
Time for sunrise, but you can scarcely tell, because it's still thunderstorming.
X = -865,000
I hear a sharp crack of thunder without seeing the lighting stroke and turn around to look. I *think* I see a horse bobbing in the distance - a Skeleton Horse? but I don't get a pic fast enough to catch it. I haven't seen one and it would be odd to see my first at sea - how do they float?
At about X = -869,000, the ocean floor alerts me to a nearby continent. I head to look even though it's still thundering.
It's a temperate Birch Forest. But as I approach, there's another flash of lighting, leaving 3 (I think) horse bobbing almost right in my path. It seems the Minecraft gods are still angry at my hubris and now they're upping the ante to stop me.
I veer to avoid them, but they still feather me as I pass.
It doesn't do much, though - even Damage Screenshots catches only the tilt from getting damage. You'll notice I'm pretty close to the coast, though, and grounding now could be a distinctly bad thing.
I snap a pic once I'm past but it's too far to make them out clearly.
Well, I had been thinking about landing but I've changed my mind. I'll lose almost 400,000 blocks of travelling if I die now (getting killed by a Skelly Horse is a "legitimate" death and rolling back to a backup is not acceptable for that) plus the time to rebuild my gear. Not worth it. So I speed on by.
X = -870,000
At 10 in the morning the thunderstorm FINALLY stops. That was a storm!
X = -875,000
I pick up a ding passing an Ocean Monument.
X = -880,000
X = -885,000
This is really getting to be a pattern. Another day without a place to land, making 5 days in a row with only one daytime landing opportunity. Well, good for the time.
X = -890,000
I am indeed now making almost 60,000 blocks an hour, even with the slowdowns to look at land as I pass. Good. I needed that.
X = -895,000
X = -900,000
So now I don't even get land at night?
Not tonight, at least.
X = -905,000
X = -910,000
FINALLY! It's great for speed to see little land but it gets hard to think of things to say after a while. I actually am not too bored in real life because I'm bopping to a Pandora channel for Postmodern Jukebox as I'm playing and an hour of listening to that is no hardship.
I land on a Moor next to a Extreme Hills.
And then a Bayou - kind of deja vu from the last island. Walking on slope sides gets awkward so I cross a pass to walk through the Extreme Hills.
On the other side of this ridge the Extreme Hills is milder and not too hard to cross I miss the village in the hazy background, although Extreme Hills villages can set my teeth on edge with their crazy building sometimes.
Eventually I have to cross another ridge to continue west and end up overlooking this vanilla Forest. The forest continues into a BoP Woodland without any great picture opportunities.
I realize at this point I'd forgotten to crank my view distance up so even those great pics aren't as good as they should be.
Past the Woodland is an enormous lake, which I boat across, followed by a Savanna which is pretty big too.
After the Savanna I'm presented with my choice of swamp biomes, which I think is vanilla Swampland on the left and BoP Lush Swamp on the right. I head for the Lush Swamp, but it's actually Wetland, which I've seen plenty of lately, so I try to veer left into the Swampland, mostly without success, becasue the Wetland veers left too. After the Wetland I cross a big of Mountain Foothills and then come to a river.
With a view of Cherry Blossom Grove. This is the third one I've seen. I like the biome and want to do something with it, but the previous two weren't as pretty as they could be as they bordered dry or dayspawning biomes (CBG's pinks look better next to a wetter and bluer grass color IMO). I can see some of it boders the Wetland, which is a good aesthetic match, so I decide to see what else is around.
Yeah, that's nice. Mostly it does border wet biomes - Swampland, Wetland, Moor, and Meadow - with grass colors that set off the Cherry Blossom Grove. The Mountain Foothills are the only exception, and that's not too much of a clash. The river is a nice touch too. There's no adjoining mountain biome for pics but I still really like the place. But what makes up my mind is something I can see from the edge -
A Boreal Forest, which is something I've wanted to look at the whole journal. It's an unusual biome, combining small relatively rugged hills with closed forest. I want to take a look and see how it works.
So, I've found a place for my next base.
Next Chapter: Siting and build planning.
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 59: Considering Reconsideration of a Considerable Number of Construction Considerations
Exploration limit: X = -911,000
It ends up looking a bit grave-ish with the pink daffodils (BoP) around it - which is kind of appropriate given how many villagers warping about seems to have killed -
I'd like to make the build with a lot of Cherry wood, but there's a common problem with BoP seedlings - many of them just grow into vanilla-shaped trees with the BoP woods, making the spawned trees effectively irreplaceable. I know cherries used to be this way, so to test I chop an oak-shaped cherry and plant the 2 resulting seedlings by the river.
Then I make a map to get some mapping done while I scout out sites.
Um - that's not right. I save and reload, and the problem corrects itself. Gotta love Minecraft.
Cherry Blossom Grove just begs for a Japanese style build. I want something fairly simple as I don't want to spend an enormous amount of time on a build I'll visit rarely if at all. Some quick googling finds a farmhouse - type build with a two-story building with a stairstep-pitch roof surrounded on all sides with a wide porch with a slab-pitch roof. It looks both Japanese and readily doable, so that's the plan.
I'm considering two basic ideas. One is a build in the middle of the grove for an "in the garden" kind of effect. The other is one on the edge of the grove, to see and be seen. For the in-grove build I quickly find a relatively open spot on a hill overlooking the river and the Moor, although I doubt it will be tall enough to see over the trees.
Not this spot, actually, but that's kind of what it looks like.
For the other I scout around the outside twice. Not an efficient use of time, but I'm enjoying this.
Eventually I pick this spot, where the Meadow sticks into the grove a bit. It's like a realtor's dream site. It's got onsite fruit trees (three different kinds right nearby - for some reason there's a lot of Harvestcraft trees in the grove), appealing views of both the grove and the meadow, no traffic, and very quiet neighbors - well, during the day, at least.
I revisit the other site to compare, and then decide to go with this one.
I lay out a couple of wood blocks on the corners of my site plan to make sure it fits, and it fits perfectly, with all of the build actually on the Meadow so I don't have to worry about color changes on interior vegetation. I snooze atop the trees, planning and dreaming of the house to come.
Then in the morning I spot something that changes my mind.
There's a Black Granite boulder on the side. I'd seen it before, but I hadn't thought about it. Black Granite boulders mean Black Granite underneath, and I've had quite enough of Black Granite mining.
So -
I make a shallow shaft on the other site to see what stone it has. Migmatite - relatively light-colored in this texture, and easier to mine. So, I'll use the interior site after all.
I check my test cherry plantings and they've both grown into vanilla oak-shaped trees. Darnit, that means I can't just chop the existing trees and replant. I'll have to set up a Cheap Cherry farm.
I soon discover the Cherry Blossom Grove has an undesirable characteristic. It's not exactly dayspawning, but a new category I'll call "duskspawning". As the light dims at dusk, it becomes dark enough to start spawning before I can sleep. I don't have to worry about an out-of-the-blue (or in this case pink) attack in broad daylight, but I do have to do some cleanup in the morning sometimes.
I start planting Cherry seedlings in the Moor for my Cherrywood farm. I plant some Spruce seedlings too to expand my palette a bit.
I haven't much to do while the saplings sprout, so I busy myself cleaning up some of the many gruesomely wrong vanilla pools that litter the Moor. Ick.
MUCH better after repair. It's pretty time-consuming and I can't even begin to fix them all but at least I won't be assailed with ugliness when I step out my door.
Some of my seedlings have grown up so I can start on the build.
Next chapter: a Farmhouse rises.
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 60: Fertile Fashionings for a Farmhouse
Exploration limit: X = - 911,000
I start with the slab roof for the porch. I've planned the horizontal dimensions but I'll just build up to the top rather than precalculate. Using the common oriental style of low roofs, I'm going to use the slab roof for security, with the outermost layer only 2 high and over fences to be impassable. I'll put in a gate or two to get in and out.
I get a dayspawn in a most peculiar place. It can't even get down. I kill it and leave a torch there. The ground is a bit dark too.
Although the area is mostly open, I have to chop some trees, as well as one that intrudes a bit too much onto the porch roof.
Before finishing the entire porch I start on the house to see how it works and looks. I put a torii-style frame around the door for looks, which isn't really authentic but it comes out pretty well. Originally I tried putting the faux gate flush with the wall but it turned out to need the relief here.
Since I'm using a lot of logs I have to keep operating the tree farm, cleaning up the occasional pool when I get irritated by one.
I start the second story to check the visibility and overall appearance. You can't see it from a distance and have to come up close. After I do this I realize I'd made a mistake because I wanted a gable on this end, not a pitched roof on all sides.
Each night I'm sleeping on the second floor, since the porch isn't done yet. The area enclosed by the pillar will all eventually be part of the build. It's very pretty to look at.
Now I decide it's time to see how the porch, which I've planned to build from UBC Migmatite, will look. I put in a mining dropshaft, go down about 40 blocks, and then quarry some. I bring it up and police the area while I roast the stone. Then I lay it down; smoothstone for most of it except a row of walls around the edge for security.
And that's the look of the facade, minus a decorative gate and a couple of flourishes. I had to chop another tree to get this view. Even though it's close to the edge of the grove, near the Moor area where I'm farming trees, you still can't see it from outside the grove except for a little glimpse. Those Cherry trees block viewlines more than you'd think.
I initially tried making the gate out of cherry planks but it didn't stand out against the roof, so I switched to slate, one of the UBC sedimentary stones in this area, which worked much better, putting me up to a 6-item palette - all locally sourced, courtesy of your ever-ecological Zeno.
Since it's all working in the front, it's time to extend it and build the rest. This needs several stacks of materials so I spend some time down in the mines quarrying a lot of stone, and then some time at the tree farm while the cobble roasts back to smoothstone.
I build and light the porch/house floor area and the outer level of the porch roof, making the area secure so I can sleep on the ground floor.
I'd initially planned to use spruce planks for the second floor but it was too bland and disorienting having the floor and walls the same material. Next I tried shale, but then I had this idea of have a shale/migmatite pattern, partly for visual interest and partly to conserve on shale (the shale is in the squares). I still didn't quite have enough shale so I had to quarry a bit more.
Then it's time to finish the roof. This is mostly just tedious as, once again, I'm crawling around on a stair roof placing stairs under the persnickety placement rules. The Botania handheld crafting table, the Assembly Halo, does help when I need to make more stairs and slabs though.
It's just not a proper Zeno house without a sunset viewing window.
And here's the final West facade. I built the gate lower than on the East facade because if it were higher it would block my sunset view. The Spruce logs framing the window look a little purplish to me even though they aren't.
Next Chapter: Some internal decor - and a new mod!
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.
Looks lovely
* Promoting this week: Captive Minecraft 4, Winter Realm. Aka: Vertical Vanilla Viewing. Clicky!
* My channel with Mystcraft, and general Minecraft Let's Plays: http://www.youtube.com/user/Keybounce.
* See all my video series: http://www.minecraftforum.net/forums/minecraft-editions/minecraft-editions-show-your/2865421-keybounces-list-of-creation-threads
(In regard to a mod that gives realistic animal genetics):
Would you really rather have bees that make diamonds and oil with magical genetic blocks?
... did I really ask that?
Chapter 61: In Which I Relieve Stress From a Partial Decorating Success By a Prompt Perambulation.
Exploration Limit: X = -911,000
So I install it and - well, nothing obvious happens, which is to Forge's credit - really quite an achievement even if we've all gotten used to it.
I'm planning to use some of the BoP woods for some Bibliocraft furniture. Bibliocraft used to have add-on mods that added recipes for woods from the various mods, but that's been dropped in favor of a new "framing" system which can put almost any block's texture, as a veneer, onto most Bibliocraft items. This needs the above Framing Saw, which is used both for a framing block and for making the materials used to construct framable furniture.
Initially I forget this and try to frame a regular Spruce bibliocraft table, which doesn't work. Then I remember to make the framable table to put the veneers on. The Framing Table consumes the veneering block in the process, which seems a nice touch to me - you actually do have to supply raw materials.
I make three of these Dolomite (a UBC sedimentary stone I hit digging the mineshaft here) tables. When placed next to each other, Bibliocraft adjusts the graphics to produce this nice end table. I next want to put a flower in a flowerpot on the table. I need some clay for that but I'm right next to a swamp. Actually I don't even have to go that far, as I find some crossing the river to get to the swamp.
But now there's a problem. Bibliocraft allows me to put items on the table, but it renders them in 2D, and facing the wrong direction for this table to boot. You can rotate it with a Measuring Tape, but that needs more String than I've got on me. Also, I can't place a Flowerpot as a block on top of the table, so I can't put a flower in it.
I *can* place them on the floor. But, it seems, I can't place any of the fancy flowers in the pots. They won't take the BoP flowers like the pink daffodils, or the BoP saplings, or the Botania Mystical flowers, or even the 2-block vanilla flowers. Argh. And this room is too small for planters. So they end up with some ordinary vanilla flowers.
Those flowerpots look a little low since the flowers are small, so I try a variety of tricks to try to get them onto a Bibliocraft table, using the Spruce table now. On the table, shift-click on the table, on the wall, on a block I destroy to put in the table - faugh, nothing works.
So in the end I just use vanilla slabs. I also put in porthole windows to the sides of the bed - you can see the tiniest bit of Sprice Log framing around them on either side.
Now I had general plans for a workshop area downstairs and a hangout upstairs but nothing specific and with my flower plans all failing my mood turns grumpy and my inspiration deserts me. The only thing I can think of is a map wall (which will have to be torn down whenever I leave until I understand the loading/unloading bug.) But I don't have maps of the area yet, so -
I go out for a walk. A long, mapping walk. Maybe that will improve my mood.
I start by boating west along the river. It doesn't go all that far before ending. "That's odd," I think. "I though Mountain Foothills allowed rivers."
Well, actually, it does. The river is being stopped by a Moor on top of the hill. Moor disallows rivers in RTG because they make the vanilla surface pools even more gruesomely awful than they already are.
While in the Moor I spot a pair of Ice Spikes in the distance, and head over to take a look.
It's two standouts in a field of ordinary size ones. An interesting effect. On the right of the pic you can see a bit of Frozen River, which I set up my boat on to make use of the extremely high speed of ice boating.
But on a Frozen River the controls are much worse than on a regular one, and I have the worst time, spinning out over and over and even skidding onto land even though it's very wide (I think it's actually a frozen lake, not a river.) Eventually I come to an outlet heading south and manage to struggle along it, but not any faster than in a vanilla river because I have to just barely tap the controls and at anything like full speed I can't control the steering.
The Frozen River leads to a BoP Marsh, wetter than the last one and which looks like a scene from the African Queen. I spot a village and head over to trade.
In the village I find a weaponsmith and sell him some Coal since I have so much Charcoal and don't need it for now. There's also a Blacksmith's and I obsidianize the lava for a Waystone - I have the pearls, but it also need some Obsidian.
The weaponsmith is apparently very upset I've taken his lava because he immediately gets in my face and starts "hrmming". He even shoves me around a bit. Not exaggerating for effect, that's exactly what happened. I actually feel a little bad, oddly - and weirdly - but he can't really use it and besides, what's done is done.
After this I head back to the river but it goes just a short distance before ending on a hillside. Following the river seems not to be working so I decide to try a new mapping technique - rather than spiraling in from the coast, I'll spiral out from what I've already mapped.
This is what I've already got. The grove is the dark green area south of the river on the right. The farmhouse is visible as a single brown dot on the rightmost spur of the grove. You can also see the Moor I walked through, then the snowy area, then the Marsh.
I head west, through a bit of Bog, then back into the Marsh, and then
Oh yeah, the Boreal Forest I wanted to look at!. It's got a lakeside village too.
The Boreal Forest is just insanely thick - almost impassable. By the time I reach the village it's dusk and I snooze atop the village church for the view - discovering Boreal Forest is also duskspawning, as well.
It's pretty, the Stephen King horror ambience notwithstanding, and I snooze happily atop the spire.
Next chapter: More exploring.
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.