Imagine stepping through a portal into a twilight realm, filled with trees as far as they eye can see. Breathtaking vistas and amazing discoveries await you around every corner. But beware! Not all denizens of the forest respond to your intrusion lightly.
Updated May 1st to version 1.9.0. The version adds several maps that will help you navigate, both in the vastness of the forest, and in the darkness of the mazes. Also, tiny animals have invaded the forest! Squirrels, bunnies, tiny birds, and ravens can be found scurrying around at your feet. Additionally, there are new sounds*, new achievements, and several other tweaks and bugfixes.
The Twilight Forest realm is an endless world like regular Minecraft. Nearly all of it is densely forested. It has more of an enchanted or faerie tale feel than the main Minecraft world. The skies are perpetually dim, giving a darker, somewhat gloomy cast to the world below. An overstory of larger trees further shades most of the world below, creating a canopy covering most of the world (so thick that you can actually walk on it most places.) The canopy is pierced only occasionally by massive trees that rise to the ceiling of the world. The terrain is flatter, or at least less mountainous than regular Minecraft, but you will occasionally encounter hills, sometimes rising far above the canopy level. These hills are hollow too, containing caves filled with valuable ores, treasure and dangerous monsters.
The main features right now are:
1) A flatter, lower, grassier world:
To make room for the giant trees, the base level of the terrain is pushed way down, to the point where you're normally walking at half the ground level in regular Minecraft (around altitude 31 or so). It also irons out many of the mountains and cliffs (though don't worry, I've got my own hills). Since there's not as much rock, the cave generator is disabled, though I've got different caves in the hollow hills, and I may add ice caves into the glaciers and more standard rock caves under the highlands.
2)New biomes:
I added abound 7 new biomes, although some of them are fairly rare. The biomes have the power to change the terrain levels so some of them are much more obvious. Highlands are atop high cliffs, swamps are slightly sunken, and]glaciers create massive ice walls. There's also a few transition biomes to smooth your way into the swamps or glaciers, and a mushroom biome almost entirely covered in fungus.
3) Trees, trees, trees:
There's lots of standard minecraft trees that you might encounter in the deep forests of regular minecraft, but I've added new ones too. As I mentioned in the intro, there's a new type of tree that creates a canopy over most of the world. And I'm sure you've seen the trees so big that I had to lower the ground to make room. There's a few other new ones too, including mangrove-type trees in the swamps. In a future update there will be new saplings that you can bring back to your existing minecraft world.
4) Ancient ruins and other structures:
The Twilight Forest has existed for millennia and has seen the rise and fall of countless civilizations. At present there's about a half-dozen types of ruins and other structures you can find in the world, but I have plans for more. These are intended to give the place more of a mystical feel, to give the player an impression that more is going on in the world than they can comprehend at first glace.
5) The Hollow Hills!:
You may see these rising in the distance if you poke your head above the canopy layer, but that can't prepare you for what you'll find when you mine into one of these (or find them naturally cracked open by geological forces.) Ores glitter on unreachable stalactites above, lit occasionally by glowstone. You'll want to bring plenty of torches though, as the hills are defended by monsters. If you persist you may even find a treasure chest or two. There are several sizes of hill, and the larger hills have rarer ores, more valuable treasures, and of course, more and more dangerous monsters.
6) New Dangers!:
The surface of the twilight world is peaceful, but new dangers lurk within dark and magical places. Cowardly goblins and fearsome wraiths dwell within the hollow hills. New species of spiders have been reported crawling across the walls of hedge mazes. Finally, the skeletal remains of an ancient order of druids have been reported guarding the ancient ruins across the landscape.
7) Mysterious Mazes:
Hedge mazes grow out of the misty forest soils. Brave adventurers have been known to return from these twisted brambles burdened by sacks filled with rare treasures. More often though, bloodcurdling screams indicate that victory belongs to the maze, and not the adventurer.
Quite rarely, and always in hushed tones, some speak of the existence of another type of maze. Legends tell of vast mazes, deep beneath the earth. The legends are vague but it is certain vast riches will belong to those who successfully delve these mazes.
8) Massive, Monstrous Bosses:
One massive, and one spooky. You may encounter either the Naga or the Lich in your travels. The serpentine Naga lurks in a walled courtyard deep in the woods. This is where I, the author, could use a little help making this fight the best it can be. Find this guy, try him out, and let me know how it goes in the comments.
The naga is intended to stay in his temple courtyard and will vanish if he leaves it, so keep that in mind. Powerful magics bind him to that place and cannot be tampered with.
Since the naga is intended to be the first boss, he's intended to be a challenging, but not totally overwhelming fight. Partly, the difficulty depends on what you, the player, bring to the battle. He's intended to be basically impossible without armor, very tough but still beatable in iron armor, and still dangerous in diamond armor.
The Lich resides at the top of the Wizards' Towers. He is one of the last remnants of the once-powerful Twilight Wizards, and has an arsenal of nasty surprises.
Author's note: I am always welcoming feedback on the bosses, particularly if you discover an easy way to beat them that seems cheap or exploitative. Just add a post and let me know!
9) Fantastic Treasures:
There is an ever-growing number of items and blocks you may claim as your own in this world. Items placed in spoiler tags for those who may wish to be surprised (although some of them are not that secret.)
Spoiler
Cicadas and Fireflies:
These little cuties are fun to collect and decorate with. Just be sure to treat them nicely!
Firefly Jar:
Crafted with a firefly and an empty bottle. For some mysterious reason, this jar is slightly dimmer than an actual firefly. Good for decoration.
Naga Scale:
The Naga drops a few handfuls of these. What can you use them for? Well you can't eat them. But you can craft some armor (chest and legs only) with them. The armor is automagically enchanted (semi-randomly) when you craft it, too!
The Twilight Scepter:
This scepter fires orbs of energy from another dimension! How does all that energy even get there? Great question! When it runs out, craft it together with an ender pearl to recharge it.
The Life Draining Scepter:
Feeling hungry? Low on health? Just point this thing at a nearby monster or other victim and drain away. Feel the dark magic flowing into your body. It's fine! All scepters are ecologically friendly and Lich-approved. When empty (oh, you want more, do you?) recharge the scepter by crafting it with a fermented spider eye. Who wanted that gross thing in their inventory anyways?
The Zombie Summoning Scepter:
Don't let the Lich hog all the zombies! Summon your own with this scepter. Zombies summoned are extra-strong, extra-fast, and instantly ready to attack your enemies. Summoned zombies will follow you, attack things you attack, things that are attacking you, or even things that are thinking about attacking you. All that running, thinking and mind-reading wears the zombies out pretty quickly, so summoned zombies will self-immolate after about a minute.
The Zombie Scepter doesn't hold that many zombies, but it can be recharged. Craft an empty scepter with a chunk of rotten flesh and a potion of strength to recharge it.
A Magic Map:
The magic map reveals a expansive view of the area around you. It shows an area four times as large as a normal map, and in the Twilight Forest, it will reveal what features lie in the nearby regions.
How does one get one of these maps? The map is made by surrounding a special item, called the Magic Map Focus, with 8 sheets of paper.
But where does one obtain one of these magical focuses? For that, you must engage in a little hunting. The focus is made by combining Blaze Powder, Glowstone Dust and a Raven's Feather. (The recipe is shapeless.)
If you want to refresh the map, to center it on a new area, or use it in another dimension, you can craft the map with a sheet of paper to get a fresh new map. This will entirely erase the old map, so take caution.
The Maze Map and the Maze/Ore Map
The Maze Map is useful mostly for finding your way around the various mazes in the Twilight Forest. Like the normal map, it can see through walls, but unlike the normal map, the Maze Map will show you a slice of the world at your current depth or altitude. It is also zoomed in enough to show even the thinnest walls.
The Maze Map can be crafted with a token known as a Maze Map Focus, surrounded by 8 blank papers. You'll have to find the focus yourself, though if you spend enough time in mazes or hollow hills, you'll run across one eventually.
But if the Maze Map can see through walls, can it see through stone to reveal all the treasures within? Well, if you perform a little upgrade, it can. It's expensive, but will almost certainly pay for itself quickly.
Crafting the Maze Map with a block of diamond, a block of iron and a block of gold (shapeless recipe) will enable its ore-finding powers. It will search for ores within 3 blocks higher or lower than your current position and display them in a colorful manner.
One thing to note is that while you can refresh the normal Maze Map with a sheet of paper to re-center it or move it to a new area, the Maze/Ore map requires a small cut of your mining profits. It requires paper, coal, and redstone to erase the current map and start a new one in a new area.
10) SMP support:
Explore the world with a friend at your side. Just try to be the first one to the treasure chests!
One note about SMP. The Twilight Forest is set up so that if you die, you will respawn in the Twilight Forest, and not in the normal world. At the moment, you will reappear at the location corresponding to where your spawn point in the normal world is. That place may be unfamiliar to you, and you may respawn on top of a tall tree, or worse! OOne way to avoid getting lost is to build your initial portal to the Twilight Forest somewhere near your spawn point in the normal world. Or, you can use a bed to set an alternate spawn point as normal.
Change Log:
Spoiler
Version 1.9.0 (May 1)
Cut twilight forest woods now have the cut log look to them.
New maps! Magic map, maze map (and upgraded maze/ore map)
Set "rarity" colors for TF items
Re-drew some items, including naga armors
New fancy config file, which actually works on the server
New sounds. You will need Forge 3.1.3 for the sounds, which as of this writing, is not yet the recommended version.
Added many attacks, abilities, and animations to the Lich boss. Still working on him, but he's playable now.
Added "natural" darkness-based monster spawning to hollow hills and mage towers
Many tower revisions: made them dark, made stairs rickety, added stair crossings, changed around some room layouts, added more and better treasure, tweaked generation to make the towers larger and more elaborate.
Added variant larger canopy tree.
Version 1.7 (March 8)
No multiplayer in this release, sorry. On the plus side, you don't have to install ModLoaderMp. I'll update in a week or two with multiplayer.
One more bug fix to portal placement detection. It's really working well now.
Hydra (preliminary) and Lich (nearly final) models are in the game and you can spawn then in creative mode, but most of their AI isn't hooked up yet.
New region code changes the landscape generation into a series of biomes with rivers seperating them. Each region has one major feature, like a hollow hill, hedge maze, or boss fight. Some regions are rare.
Fireflies are now more aggressive about being lit. No more dark fireflies. If you catch any, look at them and they'll light up.
Ravines are now rarer and don't have lava bottoms in the Twilight Forest.
A ton of tweaks to biome settings. Ferns are back, bushes grow in some biomes, the swamp should have vines, and more.
Penguins for the glaciers!
Removed the top and bottom "cut wood" texture from all the Twilight Forest woods. Let me know if you think this makes it look stupid or "un-minecraft" because I think it looks great!
Version 1.6r2 (Jan 20th)
Added ModloaderMP to the dependencies. You need it even for single player.
Multiplayer is now working! Probably still a few bugs, but I think I got most of them.
Throwing a diamond in the water now makes the diamond fizzle if your pool is built wrong.
Fixed a dumb math bug that made the portal not work for some negative x and z values.
Added an option shouldOtherModsGenerateInTwlightForest defaulting to false.
Version 1.6 (Jan 20th)
Updated to Minecraft version 1.1
Added mob eggs in creative mode for all new mobs. I even included not-really-new mobs like the hostile wolves from the hedge mazes. Beware, nagas will grief your world hard.
Fixed the situation where the player would respawn in midair and fall
The world should have bedrock again
Other mods should no longer spawn features (like Millenaire villages) in the Twilight Forest that are supposed to only happen in the normal world
Updated a lot of features to support variable world height. You'll need another mod to change the height, but this mod should be compatible
Redid a lot of the generation code to support multiplayer better soon
Had to remove the mazes from under the hollow hills, as some of the code was too old to redo easily
Redid some of the monster code to better work with multiplayer
Version 1.5 (Nov 29th)
Updated a bunch of code to Minecraft version 1.0
Fixed all the animal models (deer, bighorn, boar) so that they support baby animals.
Changed the code that lets axes effect the new blocks so that it no longer crashes if mods have modified the axe class files (also this code seems unnecessary now that axes automatically effect all wood blocks).
Similarly changed the code that left fire effect the new blocks for better compatibility.
Reverted the spawn point changing code (so that it never changes the spawn point). Back to the drawing board.
Slightly changed the code that supports holding the new wood blocks as items.
Added bigger giant mushrooms that mesh into the canopy layer in mushroom biomes
Added swamp coloring. It's less intense than regular minecraft. There's still no good transition.
Version 1.4 (Nov 2nd)
Wizards towers, the stronghold-equivalent of the Twilight Forest
Normal strongholds still generate, but steps have been taken to shove them back underground where they belong
Oceans have been mostly banished from the map, replaced with large, deep lakes.
Revised the generation table for "features" like the hollow hills, hedge mazes, naga courtyards, etc. There should be more forest space between features, and some features are rarer.
Naga adjustments! The naga now only takes lava, fire, or explosion damage from direct head hits. He can attack at a greater vertical range, so don't try to hide in holes. Finally, his health has been decreased, depending on the difficulty setting. Hard = 125 hearts, normal = 100 hearts, Easy = 60 hearts.
Naga scales can be used to make diamond armor (chestplate and leggings only). This is a placeholder. My intention is with the release of 1.9 to have naga scales make a custom armor type, which comes automatically enchanted with something appropriate.
Skeletal druid spells finally have effects. The druids still need a little more work, which could be the subject of a future update.
The players spawn in the twilight forest is set to the portal where they first enter.
The mod generates a config file in which the block IDs can be changed.
Axes and fire effect the new blocks, and they should properly have names.
Fireflies and cicadas fall off properly when the block they are on is destroyed.
Version 1.3 (Oct. 4th)
The first boss: The Naga, and his ruined temple courtyard.
Glaciers should appear rarely in the world, surrounded by snow biomes (currently without snow).
A new and unique portal-pool.
Fixed a bug where the player would be stuck underground in the normal world when loading or respawning in a Twilight Forest save game.
Fixed oceans to be slightly more forest-y. Still deciding about them.
Bighorn sheep no longer appear in white. Instead they have many colors (mostly brown).
Smoothed the transition between temple/maze platforms and the surrounding terrain.
Known Issues:
Spoiler
Performance - The Twilight Forest has higher system requirements than regular Minecraft. Part of that is due to the size of the added features. The biggest of the huge trees can use over 15,000 individual blocks. Additionally, there's a lot of leaves. You may want to switch to "Fast" graphics mode, even if you use "Fancy" in regular Minecraft.
More sounds.
Ores from other mods do not generate in the forest.
Future Plans:
Spoiler
Well obviously I need to fix the bug list, but I do still have a bunch of plans for the future
Get the Hydra AI programmed.
Revise the portal fail animations so that it's clearer why the portal is failing to open.
World gen changes with quests and new features
Okay, okay, let's go!
Here's the download link. Please do not distribute these files without my permission.
Download the server version of this mod, located above
Open your minecraft_server.jar and add all the forge server files.
Start the server at least once to let it generate all the files and directories it needs.
Add this mod's server zip file to the server mods folder.
Start the server. Make sure the Twilight Forest mod is reporting that it loaded when you start the server.
Old versions:
Spoiler
Download v1.8.1 - client files for Minecraft 1.2.5. Requires Minecraft Forge. Uploaded 4/19/12 Updated 4/22 - fixed a few stray pixels on the items and armors.
Download v1.8.1 - server - server files for Minecraft 1.2.5. Requires Minecraft Forge. It is highly recommended that you update your forge to 3.1.2.90 or newer. Uploaded 4/19/12
Download v1.8.0 - server - server files for Minecraft 1.2.5. Requires Minecraft Forge. Uploaded 4/8/12
Download v1.7.2 - client files for Minecraft 1.2.4. Requires Minecraft Forge (& ModLoader & ModloaderMp). Uploaded 4/1/12 (Re-uploaded on 4/3 to fix a bug causing more-than-usual lag in SMP. Download the file again if you're having that problem.)
Download v1.7.2 - server - server files for Minecraft 1.2.4. Requires Minecraft Forge (& ModloaderMp). Uploaded 4/1/12 Download v1.7.1 - client files for Minecraft 1.2.3. Requires Minecraft Forge. Uploaded 3/13/12
Download v1.7.1 - server - server files for Minecraft 1.2.3. Requires Minecraft Forge. Uploaded 3/13/12
Download v1.7.0 - client files for Minecraft 1.2.3. Uploaded 3/8/12
Download v1.6r2 - client files for Minecraft 1.1. Uploaded 1/26/12
Download Server v1.6r2 - server files for Minecraft 1.1. Only needed for a multiplayer server, of course. Uploaded 1/26/12
Download v1.5 - for Minecraft 1.0. Uploaded 11/29/11
Download v1.4 - for Minecraft 1.8.1. Uploaded 11/02/11
Download v1.3 - for Minecraft 1.8.1. Uploaded 10/04/11
Download v1.2 - for Minecraft 1.8.1. Uploaded 9/27/11
Download v0.1p4 -updated 08/22 - for Minecraft 1.7.3. Note that saves from previous updates are not fully compatible so you will have to start a new game.
Download server mod 0.1p4 - for Minecraft 1.7.3. Only needed if you are running an SMP server. To install, drop files into the minecraft_server.jar. Note that it replaces the normal world, so you will need to generate a new world to use this.
To make a portal to the Twilight Forest, make a 2 x 2 shallow pool (4 squares) of water in a grassy area, and surround it entirely with natural stuff. Flowers, mushrooms or tall grass. Then throw a diamond in (with the "Q" key, by default) and stand back!
It should look a little like this:
If the portal is not working, the mod may not be loading properly. Check the modloader.txt in your minecraft data folder for any errors. If there are no errors, and the portal is still not working, please post a screenshot. I can't seem to reproduce this bug reliably, so if you find out a way to, let me know.
Video Guides
Quote
Direwolf20's wonderful mod spotlight video should whet your appetite for some exploration:
Loooks has a great video spotlighting some of the new features here. Very tranquil.
Minecraftmoe shows you some views of the Twilight Forest with some epic music.
Lots more videos in this spoiler tag here! Some installation guides and some more mod showcases.
Spoiler
GameChap and Bertie are always entertaining. Here is their video showcasing the latest version:
Installation guide by SCMowns:
RoosterInASuit does a nice install guide/spotlight:
Runemaster96 does a very nice job with a mod showcase here:
Sounds like an EXCELLENT Mod off for a good start, will keep following you on this. Good, creative ideas, a good atmosphere, etc. Just imagining what could be done with this Congratulations and thanks!
That's definitely interesting. I'll have to take a look; even if it is quite unfinished the generator is decent right now. What are your plans for ores or other valuable materials?
Looks cool so far! With all the torches on the trees, getting lost is going to be an issue for those of us that look for our lighted paths on the way back to shelter. Giant fireflies are going to be such an awesome mob!
Location: in SPAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA......
Minecraft: srgnoodles
Posted 19 August 2011 - 06:32 AM
hang on lemme get my jaw off the floor, you should look at vech's super hostile Canopy Carnage map for inspiration, but be sure to ask for permission if you plan on using any of it heres a link for you
will we be able to turn into dog's? and go around talking to lakes?
(get it)
anyway very nice looking and I'm sure will be a big mod one day, just keep working and ignore the guys who say:
why do we need this we all ready got aether blah blah blah.
When I try to run this mod, my Minecraft crashes and I get this error report.
java.lang.UnsupportedClassVersionError: mod_TwilightForest : Unsupported major.minor version 51.0
(I only posted the first line because most of the time, it is the only useful part of the log.)
pretty nice but i dont like by the ancient that ores like diamond and redstone for me u must deleted that
than i will defintly take this mod ^^ anyway good job