sure! I have one or two testing spots left. I'll be happy to add you to the list.
Alpha Pre-Release for testers is currently set for the evening (EST) of October 21. It will not have all the planned features finished, but it should be playable and have many of them! I will release updates to the testers as I develop more that should be easy to install into your map yourself. After you guys test for a few weeks and I work out any problems (if you find them) and give me suggestions I will release the Alpha version of the map publicly so more people can give feedback as I work on the Beta and Final Versions.
Thanks for you willingness to help on this project!
Space Expedition to EPIC 204:Go on a Space-Age Adventure to visit and explore EPIC 204, a wacky world of dense asteroids and full of alien life! Experience Custom Seasons, Weather, Over 50 new creatures, Beautiful Biomes, Alien Ruins, Dungeons, and new space age tech crafting recipes!
So, just so you guys know what to expect, here is my updated remaining worklist. And I've added a new item as well, the Life Catalog which is a useful way of giving you basic info about the new creatures you encounter and for carrying out your mission to study the ecosystem on the asteroid world:
3% - seasonal spawning for new creatures with new drops
1% - new random weather features: sandstorm, meteor shower
2% - biosuit upgrades: Armor, Jetpack, Elytra (a custom kind)
1% - Biosuit AI: I will add triggered comments based on new mobs encountered, items acquired, areas discovered, events, etc. To simulate a companion.
3% - craftable ship module upgrades: synthesizer, recycler, smeltery, warp module
1% - Survival crafting of some new high-tech items using the new drops: warp crystals, etc.
1% - Life Catalog: As you discover different creatures and plants a catalog will be compiled that you can read back at the ship as per your mission. It may also contain some useful info for figuring out the new mobs which can be quite different then normal! Some shelled creatures for instance, are only vulnerable to certain kinds of damage or are armored so they have a very limited hitbox. It can take some time to get used to them!
3% - construction of the first few ruins and custom dungeons: may contain treasure items, mob dungeon challenges with unique mobs, or puzzles. I'm still working out how I want to do these. If you have an idea or preference give it! This is last because if I run into time issues it's the one I may put off and add in updates instead.
Sorry I was taking an extended weekend vacation. Your list sounds good. Focusing on the environmental features first sounds like a good idea. Everything is so unknown to me, that it's hard to have a preference until I get to experience how it feels firsthand.
Honestly I'm blown away by how ambitious this project is. I don't know how you keep everything organized....especially the interconnected parts.
Sorry, took a 6 month break from the forums, and only came back just today. I'm up for beta testing, if you still have one spot.
I can see you've put a lot of work into this from the snapshots... just curious if this scenario actually did get spawned from my initial communication with you from back in Oct-Nov of 2015. Now that I have seen the snapshots it doesn't look like it, so I am merely curious how much of what I wrote you triggered this one, if anything at all.
I'm really looking forward to testing... and if you ever do want to do the other thing I had mentioned, let me know. I finally (after a year of looking) found the absolute perfect starter seed to tweak and manipulate.
Yeah, this is a pretty ambitious project even for me. I created the work thread precisely because it is helping to keep me on track and organized. It was too much work to easily stay motivated without feedback from people following the project. I think it's really helped! I also think allowing people to play the map in its very early stages will result in a much better final project. Hopefully with less problems, balance issues, or bugs. It'll be nice to have player feedback, especially from experienced survival players like Bethel and You playing early. This map will feel a bit different then my past creations. There are some difficult parts but the point is to create something unique, new, and novel, rather then just a really hard survival challenge. That said, there will certainly be some challenging parts as well, but resources are pretty plentiful. The "challenge" on this map is the discovery. There is so many new things. My vision for the map was to make it feel like playing again for the first time and having to figure everything out anew. Feel free to collaborate as players and share knowledge as you discover the secrets of the map, seasons, and mobs. It's not gonna be anywhere near complete in alpha pre-release but there is already loads of stuff to discover that I built in.
Bethel, this map has evolved a lot over the 8 months or so I've been tinkering with it and has had many sources of inspiration. It actually started out as just a sandbox for testing some new ideas I had to spice up survival. Basically one day I just opened up a world and said: "I want to create seasons in minecraft so that every day isn't the same". After that came the idea to fuse the "seasons" map with the old concept of planetoid, originally the planned part 3 (or part 1 depending on your perspective) of the survival map saga of Exiled and Cave-In and make it a space exploration map with unique mechanics. Since then I've just been adding features as I had the inspiration including new creatures and a lot of work to make the terrain look and feel alien.
If you are curious, the original concept of planetoid actually was similar to your lava planet idea and took inspiration from that, a map a couple years back called "Crash Landed", Valdarok's "Under a sky of lava" challenge, and Endy's superflat world. The idea being very scarce resources. For instance, I planned for the planetoid to have no fossil record so there would be no carbon-derived ore deposits. This meant there would be no coal, emeralds, or diamonds. The landscape would also be waterless, dry, and barren much like a desert wasteland. There would be no trees at all and you would need to gather sticks from dead bushes (so no actual wood blocks). Traveling on the surface at day without water bottles to drink would give you nausea and heatstroke and eventually kill you so you needed to locate water from the waterless landscape. The challenge would be to use smarts and minecraft know-how to advance in this very hardcore scenario from you original crash-site. To facilitate the unique feeling I had planned to add some ship modules (idea has carried over to this map but it no longer NECESSARY to progress like it would have been there). I had developed 3 last year so far: the dehydrator squeezed water out of organic matter. You could get trace amounts of moisture from farming stuff like cactus or rotten flesh and fill a bottle with it every time you acquired a liter. Water bottles would or potions when drunk would rehydrate you and give you an additional 5 minutes on the surface. I also had developed a smeltery unit which would smelt some of the metal back out of all metallic items dropped by mobs. Also the recycler could be used to get the materials out of non-metallic items like leather stuff, diamond stuff (only source of diamonds), and wood out of dungeon chests or other wood items if you found them (only way to get wood blocks). The idea being a very subsistent and efficient technological kind of survival. Eventually you could fix your ship and leave.
Space Expedition to EPIC 204:Go on a Space-Age Adventure to visit and explore EPIC 204, a wacky world of dense asteroids and full of alien life! Experience Custom Seasons, Weather, Over 50 new creatures, Beautiful Biomes, Alien Ruins, Dungeons, and new space age tech crafting recipes!
Hey guys, been busy traveling over the past couple days, but I found time to do a few things on the list!
1. Did a little bit more work and brainstorming on the custom creature spawning. And I got some new ideas I wanted to bounce off you guys (details below)
2. The meteor shower weather effect has mostly been completed!
It's pretty awesome, just a random event that can happen, I have an origin point up at the height limit where the event starts and the shower randomly moves a bit over 30 seconds so the meteors are dispersed randomly over a small area. I'm using weak fireballs for the meteors, haven't decided if I want to vary their power but I fear that if they are too destructive they will be far too annoying. Right now they are too weak to break stone but will break some wood, grass, leaves, and other soft block very close to where the meteors land. Had to a overcome a few issues with them such as the fact that command-summoned fireballs apparently lose speed as they travel? Anyway, fixed that with some maintenance commands and the effect looks pretty awesome now!
I also had some complex new ideas for the map that I wanted opinions on, tell me if these sound like something you'd enjoy:
- I've been giving some thought to how i will do the life catalog. I had the idea to design a virtual computer interface where you can enter and read the files. Think of the holodeck from star trek. You would be transported to the "holodeck" room. There you could select creatures or plants you'd seen and they would display as holograms (creatures would spin and float so you could see them again) and known information about them would display. You could also view current objectives, crafting recipe ideas for materials you've discovered, etc. It seems like a nice way to give players information about the creatures and hints toward the possible new crafting recipes (as I add them)
- Also what do you guys think of the idea of a native language you find in the ruins if you locate them? It could be found in some books, written on paper, or on signs. I was thinking a side quest could be to locate 10 writing examples for the biosuit AI to scan and decode the language and then you would be able to read what the ancient builders had left behind and you could "auto-translate" books or pages you'd collected and signs you saw. It could be a cool way to tell a bit of backstory and add to the hidden ruins idea. I have a pretty good idea how this could work into my planned backstory and quest system as the map develops.
- I disliked the way that the insects spawned alone and wanted something that would be sort of like a random swarm event. An idea I had was adding some new creature-related random structures that can appear seasonally. Examples: the fire ant, endermite, beetle, and silverfish hives. These are small block structures that look like insect hive mounds. They would maybe appear in different biomes or seasons. If you get near them they will act similar to spawners and insects will come out, but there won't actually be spawners and the hives will disappear at the end of each season. You can choose to either defeat the hive and gather what's inside of farm it for the few days it is around if you are looking for insect drops. I kind of liked the way these random small structures added to the variety and ambience. I have already done something similar for water creatures where certain lakes or areas are especially fruitful and will spawn lots of fish, sea urchins, etc. If you identify these areas they can be a great source of the new drops from these mobs!
- Lastly, since meteors and blazes are now spawning, do you think I should turn off fire spreading? Otherwise there may be some nasty forest fire problems.
Space Expedition to EPIC 204:Go on a Space-Age Adventure to visit and explore EPIC 204, a wacky world of dense asteroids and full of alien life! Experience Custom Seasons, Weather, Over 50 new creatures, Beautiful Biomes, Alien Ruins, Dungeons, and new space age tech crafting recipes!
The life catalog idea sounds very interesting. So basically we'll be teleported to a holodeck room that is sort of a gallery then of animal and plant life? What about making it so that we have to collect one sample of some unknown life forms before they populate in the life catalog? Also perhaps collecting 2 or 3 specific samples related to a recipe might unlock further information(clues to crafting the recipe).
Really like the language idea. Several ways you could go with that, but yours sounds like the best method that would appeal to a broader range of players. I'm reminded of Ultima Underworld where they had runes and as you found more runes you could cast more spells and translate/solve riddles to unlock previously inaccessible areas.
Seasonal nests/spawners really sounds fun. A year is nearly 6 hours of real play time correct? That seems just about right...long enough that it seems like you have to wait for particular season you need drops from, but not long enough that you won't reach it after 3 or 4 game sessions.
Regarding fire, that's up to you, however if it would destroy the landscape, for example your large forest, it would make it seem like we've landed during a holocaust event because how would the forest have thrived if it's continually catching fire and burning up from meteors. If there was a way to mitigate that to make if feel more plausible then I'm okay with fire spread. The other factor is it would make the player prioritize building with stronger, fireproof materials. Can you make two classes of meteor? A common one that doesn't start any fires but does minor impact damage and a rare one that does?
As an American living in a nation that uses TRADITIONAL CHINESE as it's communication language... I can tell you first hand, decoding is not always an easy process.
I'm not sure about the fire spread. It would be a real pity to see your handmade forest burn because of a stray meteor! And, like robadon said, having everything burn to ashes within a few days because of random events can easily destroy the immersion. If these events are a regular event in the system and nothing your arrival specifically triggered somehow, those asteroids would've been dead long before the player arrived on the map, and not right after they land and have a chance to see how pretty everything is. That works for bad movie plots that you only enjoy because of how stupid they are, but not for what you're trying to do here So unless you find a way to stop blazes and meteor showers from killing all plant life, I vote to turn fire spread off.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
I wrote about my adventures on the Alpha version of the OathBros/Caplex Build Team's map Space Expedition in my blog! (Discontinued)
For my experiences of the Beta versions of that same map, I started a YouTube series, which (due to prior knowledge from the Alpha) ended up being very fast paced and highly focused on showing off as much of the custom stuff as I can.
alright, thanks to everyone who has given me feedback so far! I have had an incredibly busy work week and was kept up working till 5 AM last night! But I am planning on tackling some of these more fun ideas over the weekend when I catch up on my sleep!
Bethel, no worries, it will be a cipher and you are free to apply some cryptology and break it early if you like. But the AI will translate everything for you after you decode the language. It will not be up to the player to do it by hand! That would be annoying!
Rodabon, yeah I had a similar idea for the holodeck and catalog. Either you need to complete a "scan" of each new creature or defeat them once and get a drop sample to collect their info. Your idea for recipes was the exact same I had. Rather then posting them up for you guys explicitly, the game will guide toward them as you collect the drops required. As far as the ancient runes I could do a lot with it. In addition to telling some backstory from another race/visitor's perspecitve on this place, knowing the language could also be a requisite for accessing some sealed ruins or something. I'll think on it. I think it's kind of exciting and has a lot of potential though! Glad you are excited about the hives. I was when I thought of the idea! Kind of changes spawning a bit in a way a like!
As far as fire spread: I did run a few tests before things got busy. If I turn OFF fireTick then flames also won't go out. So the blazes set trees eternally burning and annoying stuff like that. The only real place forest-fire is a danger is the big, dense, custom forest. Apparently fires die out a bit quicker as of soem update I've forgotten and have a limited life (not infinite anymore). So meteors/blazes only really seem to burn a couple trees before it peters out. The worry is one will strike the giant oak custom forest and it'll go up like a torch. I haven't tested yet. Rodabon, your idea with meteors is good and actually I can pretty easily make them damage terrain, scatter fires, but then quickly put out the fires for the best of both worlds. I was gonna add a sweet fire trail for cosmetic effect and fiery swirl around the crater after impact. I can add a splash water effect to the cloud and it'll put out fires caused by the meteors naturally just a bit after impact before the fire aura fades. Not sure if I want to have a "mega-meteor" where this is not the case but it could be fun. I'm guessing if I do it should at least have the power to punch through stone eh? Anyway, even if I fix meteors blazes are just as bad. If I do go with the fire tick off I may have to make up some reason why trees burn forever lol. Maybe they are fireproof trees resistant to burning having been on a meteor riddled asteroid for so long? It might be feasible if rain still puts the fires out after the hot season. Maybe the simplest way to solve the problem is to just ban blazes from getting near the custom forest and apply my meteor fix where the fires it creates don't last long and die out. Then just let the rest of the terrain do it's thing.
Space Expedition to EPIC 204:Go on a Space-Age Adventure to visit and explore EPIC 204, a wacky world of dense asteroids and full of alien life! Experience Custom Seasons, Weather, Over 50 new creatures, Beautiful Biomes, Alien Ruins, Dungeons, and new space age tech crafting recipes!
Big Update! I've finished a LOT of stuff this weekend so far! Forgot to take any pictures other then the new meteor showers, I'll try to remember next time...
1. First off, I've fixed meteors based on the feedback from everyone here. They are powerful enough to destroy soft blocks (for now I've decided against normal meteors punching through stone, but wood houses and gardens will still be at risk). They also DO start fires and now have ember trails! But the fires are special and extinguish themselves in about a second or so so they don't spread. The duration of the "showers" is about 15-20 seconds and the showers move kind of randomly across the landscape from their origin point which is near the player. The intensity (rate of falling meteors) is random to each event. It can vary from "light" which might have 2 meteors hitting the ground every second to "heavy" which would have about 4 meteors hitting the ground every second.
2. I made the command center updateable by region file updates and friendly the multiplayer and servers. This was necessary if you guys are going to install all my updates in the future. Also, for the sake of servers, time does not progress when no players are online so if you forget and leave the map running now it's no big deal, the game will restart at the exact same time and place you logged out. The game also locks in your spawn to the medical bay of the ship so you never get the obstructed spawn bug. I also added a new compact way of running commands through a controller armor stand that stores the timing data and this made things a bit more efficient. Was able to convert a lot of 2-3 block systems to a single command by executing through him and thus improve background processing!
3. I also built a custom sleeping system. You can use beds anywhere to sleep till morning and on multiplayer only one player needs to use a bed, however, they will not set your spawn or change the weather in this world. This was necessary for several seasons like twilit winters and the spring showers otherwise you could just skip most of the seasons lol.
4. I also created a custom death animation sequence. Basically if you are about to die the emergency warp will activate and you are transported to the medical bay and wake up with blurry vision (nausea and light blindness) and move slowly for 30 seconds (to simulate being groggy from the emergency warp rescue system). This is my explanation for respawning so it fits the map but you will still lose your items of course. However, if players do decide the turn on keepInventory (which is not enabled by default), the animation will still play and all their levels will be removed. I was thinking of adding it as a "softcore" option. The slowness and loss of levels will make people reluctant to just die for fast transport as is common in maps that enable it.
5. I've improved textures and drops on several custom creatures and added a few more! I also improved my spawning algorithms with some new checks so I can make certain ones only spawn in particular biomes or only on the surface of the ground vs. underground, and various changes to make it more seamless and less noticeable by the player. For instance, many custom spawns will now not happen if they are within 32 blocks of the player so it doesn't look weird if something spawns.
- There is now a new "boss" mob. A variant of the white-walker which is much more powerful and has an aura and some new abilities.
- The wood sprite appearance has been changed to a 3D texture and has a new drop and has 1 hp
- Fireflies now have 1 hp and a new rare drop as well, as do fish.
(All the flying insects are a bit hard to catch so I gave them 1 hp)
- I've added some new spawning methods for the water mobs to allow them to have a chance to spawn in any body of water rarely.
- Hermit Crabs now spawn naturally on the shore of water ponds, lakes, and rivers during the fall
- select passive animal spawning at the beginning of each season is now improved. This means wolves, ocelots, rabbits, and polar bears will appear at the beginning of their designated seasons as do some riding mobs. They all have new drops.
- all animal rider mobs now only spawn on the surface of the ground
- silverfish, endermites, and beetles now spawn seasonally and have new drops
- Added 3 new fruit items you can obtain. Two come from new plants in certain biomes, and one is a drop. Not sure of the uses yet but maybe they could get distilled into a food item or a potion/drink?
This concludes all weather and seasonal mob work that I had planned! We are now 90% complete! I'll keep testing creatures and maybe add a few more but most of the work left is all technical: biosuit AI, custom crafting uses for the new items and resources, biosuit upgrades, and life catalog holodeck. The work I did improving the command center and preparing it for these future additions should make things go a bit quicker this coming week.
New Ideas/Questions:
1. Should I allow monsters with custom heads to drop them? (aka would you like them as a trophy or decoration item) current mobs with custom skulls are most of the riders and I currently have them drop at a rare 1%. However, if I disable them it might make for cleaner inventory management as they have no use.
2. How common should meteor showers be? They have a chance to occur right now anytime during 3 months with a 1/60 chance every 2 seconds. This may seem pretty common but you can go a couple days without seeing them at that chance.
Space Expedition to EPIC 204:Go on a Space-Age Adventure to visit and explore EPIC 204, a wacky world of dense asteroids and full of alien life! Experience Custom Seasons, Weather, Over 50 new creatures, Beautiful Biomes, Alien Ruins, Dungeons, and new space age tech crafting recipes!
1. Should I allow monsters with custom heads to drop them? (aka would you like them as a trophy or decoration item) current mobs with custom skulls are most of the riders and I currently have them drop at a rare 1%. However, if I disable them it might make for cleaner inventory management as they have no use.
2. How common should meteor showers be? They have a chance to occur right now anytime during 3 months with a 1/60 chance every 2 seconds. This may seem pretty common but you can go a couple days without seeing them at that chance.
1) Not sure what you mean about inventory management, unless we have a hard limit on storage space. But either way is fine with me.
2) Depends on the duration, but what you have now sounds okay. Leave it like it is and lets test it.
1. Should I allow monsters with custom heads to drop them? (aka would you like them as a trophy or decoration item) current mobs with custom skulls are most of the riders and I currently have them drop at a rare 1%. However, if I disable them it might make for cleaner inventory management as they have no use.
2. How common should meteor showers be? They have a chance to occur right now anytime during 3 months with a 1/60 chance every 2 seconds. This may seem pretty common but you can go a couple days without seeing them at that chance.
Is there a way to MAKE them useful in some fashion? Scarecrows to certain bugs? (Just a thought) A certain head on a pike would surely deter SOMETHING out there....
#2 --- depends on an awful lot of variables. Atmosphere being one of them. As you've stated, the atmosphere here is toxic... that might ALLOW for more meteors than we presently experience on Earth. Likewise, where are they coming from?
Ever read Anne McCaffrey's incredible PERN series? The asteroids there..... had.... DIRE consequences if left unchecked..... Something to chew on.
#2 --- depends on an awful lot of variables. Atmosphere being one of them. As you've stated, the atmosphere here is toxic... that might ALLOW for more meteors than we presently experience on Earth. Likewise, where are they coming from?
Ever read Anne McCaffrey's incredible PERN series? The asteroids there..... had.... DIRE consequences if left unchecked..... Something to chew on.
His current concept has way more meteors that actually impact the surface than we ever experience here on earth.
Regarding the possibility of the meteors causing a growing threat, I think dana's vision is more toward creating an atmospheric effect that reinforces the feeling of an otherworldly space environment.
Thanks guys for the feedback, for the skulls, right now the only USE would be as decor blocks. Basically trophies like normal heads work in minecraft right now but they look a lot cooler then normal skulls, I picked some nice animal/monster ones. I could probably add a use but I'm not sure what use skulls would have personally ;). One thing I could do if you really want a use bethel is if you place the skull on an armorstand, since an armorstand is an entity I can detect what kind of monster skull it is wearing. And then make it scare away certain kinds of mobs maybe? Or even add some odd new buffs when players are near them, like a new kind of beacon maybe with effects you can't get from beacons...just ideas, not sold on any of this. I was just curious if any of you guys wanted them to drop for "trophy" reasons. 1% is pretty low so it'd be like bragging rights!
Rodabon pretty much hit the nail on the head. The meteor showers are like weather there. I would make them even more frequent if I can find a way to do it without it being annoying. Actually, that's an idea, maybe some meteor showers are "near" misses, and you see them streaking by up in the atmosphere but they don't impact? Unfortunately at those distances particle effects like my fire trails probably won't render but you can see the fireball entity pretty far away. Then they'd just be like a weather effect. Also I found out that meteor power levels of "0" actually don't destroy ANY terrain, they only deal damage to entities so it's like safe falling explosions. Lastly there is a different entity for blaze/fire charges that also do no explosion block damage but DO splash fire. The only problem is it doesn't feel right having meteors that do no terrain damage, though using them would allow me to let them fall more often. Maybe I can create a secondary system that has random single falling "safe" meteors that are pretty common but no terrain damage, and then occasionally the rarer "meteor storms" I designed that can be pretty destructive to plants and softer materials. thoughts?
Anyway, my idea was that during certain "seasons" your asteroid cluster passes through clouds of dust/rock so you get these heavy meteor showers randomly during those seasons. The atmosphere is very thin compared to earth. The combined gravity of all the rock holds some around (maybe sort of like mars's density) but not enough for a human to feel comfortable. Your biosuit pressurizes the oxygen in the air for you. Technically a human could adapt (the oxygen content is enough) and this is why there are metabolic creatures on the asteroids that use oxygen, but it would take a while and they'd need to develop a bigger lung capacity and up their red blood cell count.
Space Expedition to EPIC 204:Go on a Space-Age Adventure to visit and explore EPIC 204, a wacky world of dense asteroids and full of alien life! Experience Custom Seasons, Weather, Over 50 new creatures, Beautiful Biomes, Alien Ruins, Dungeons, and new space age tech crafting recipes!
Guys, I've finally found a REAL star system whose astronomical observations fit the description of this theoretical minecraft world!
The name is a bit long so I may omit the last part in descriptions but the star system designation is: EPIC 204278916
It's not an exact match but it's close enough. So the map is now named after it, and now I can add in more specific sci-fi references and a better history for the future humans! The system is in the upper scorpius subgroup 400 light year from earth. That's a bit far for early earth pioneers, but pretty close as far as systems go. The fact that I found something that actually fits the setting makes it worth it. I'll work it into the story somehow But I guess I'll have to give humans some sort of travel better then sub-light. Was hoping to not...I'm not sure if light speed will ever be beatable from my study of physics and I didn't want to have to come up with some other cheesy workaround like every science fiction novel ever.
So about EPIC 204278916: The star is REALLY young, about 5 million years estimated. It is a rare class of stars designated as YSO Dippers for their very unusual and irregular cycles of dimming and brightening. This is based on observations with the Kepler space telescope. EPIC is special because it has a ridiculous range of brightness. One observation saw it dim by almost 65% for a full 25 days, which is a weird coincidence since that's what I picked as the yearly cycle for the map haha! Dimming of stars is how we've been detecting exoplanets if you've been following the news. We see a regular small dip in brightness we know it's an object and by the character of the light, size, and gravity we can make guesses about it's composition. But even a gas giant like jupiter will only dip a star by around 1% because usually big planets can't orbit close enough to their star without getting consumed.
The only two currently feasible hypotheses for this behavior is:
A. a HUGE, dense belt of asteroids, comets, or dust orbiting close around the star
B. Alien superstructures such as the theoretical Dyson Sphere where a civilization builds a giant partial sphere to collect their star's energy and expand into space.
The most famous one before this one was KIC 8462852. But that one is over 1000 light years away and a much older star (which makes it even more unusual). Usually these stars are young so the hypothesis (if you don't credit aliens) is that the dimming is caused by remnants of the newly formed star orbiting close around it. An older system usually build more order over time.
Anyway, there is another reason why I wanted this star to have odd behavior and it has to do with the story and science I'm planning to reveal as you play the map! I looked at KIC but it's just too far away to be an early colonization target. Then news about EPIC came out this past month so it's an exciting system to observe in astronomy right now. They plan to keep watching it over all of 2017. Hopefully they don't find something that disproves my map haha, but I like tying it to something real.
Space Expedition to EPIC 204:Go on a Space-Age Adventure to visit and explore EPIC 204, a wacky world of dense asteroids and full of alien life! Experience Custom Seasons, Weather, Over 50 new creatures, Beautiful Biomes, Alien Ruins, Dungeons, and new space age tech crafting recipes!
haha, sorry for spamming the thread early today with random backstory. I got excited.
Anyway, back to business: Another update!
- added new drops and ability to White Walker King
- created new metals: copper, silver, tungsten, titanium, and uranium along with 2 new gemstones: these will have custom crafting uses
- custom crafting recipes to convert metallic bits to 4 new ingots. (I have nbt data tooltip on for debugging purposes, forgot to turn it on, but ingame you won't see the grey bits of text in item info)
- meteors now have a random chance to drop some of the rarer metals either as a dust or shards. Several meteor metals you can't get any other way.
- silverfish and endermite each have several new drops
- designed the random-spawning hive structures for the endermite, fire ant, silverfish, and scarab beetle.
after I finish the spawning algorithm for the hives and test them it’ll be on to custom crafting, biosuit upgrades, and ship modules! We are still on track for October 21st
Space Expedition to EPIC 204:Go on a Space-Age Adventure to visit and explore EPIC 204, a wacky world of dense asteroids and full of alien life! Experience Custom Seasons, Weather, Over 50 new creatures, Beautiful Biomes, Alien Ruins, Dungeons, and new space age tech crafting recipes!
Thanks! At first I was just thinking of some way to work more metals into the game, then I already realized I had the perfect way to distribute rare ones. Everyone knows that the best metal comes from meteors. It's a fantasy trope! There's one other source of some of the rarer metals I've added as well.
Also quick question: would it be cool to have a random chance to also mine up a couple new rare metals or gems while underground? I probably won't try to design custom ores, but an easy way to make it work is to sometimes have another resource pop out of normal ore rarely. Maybe a new gem out of diamond ore. I could associate some kinds of resources. Would it be worth making mining a little more exciting? Just an idea I had, there are already sources of everything already through drops or meteors.
Rodabon, you think the nests are too big? Originally I was thinking to make it smaller and not use a spawner but then I realized it's less lag to just plop a spawner in there and let it do it's thing. Plus then players can choose whether or not they want to farm it for a few days or destroy it to end the threat. It is pretty fun getting assaulted by a bunch of bugs that hop out of holes in the ground. Different insects will have different nest materials and themes. Some I could probably make almost invisible on the surface but have a bigger network of tunnels underground. And more exits for the surprise ambush! Might be a good design for the ants.
I'm also trying to decide if insects should go dormant and then return to old nests once the season comes around again if you didn't destroy the hive structure too much. I like the idea that new hives are appearing rarely, however, having an area you knew they'd come back too could be good for players building seasonal farms and justify putting some work into an area. I could define the structure based on a few blocks like villagers and their villages and as long as those critical blocks remain intact the spawner reappears next season?
Also I'd like a quick confirmation from the alpha testers. Is everyone still available and willing to test Oct. 21? Not everyone has commented since I set a date so curious. My current list of 10 is:
Lezandria, zann10thousand, yubachu, Brizol, Rodabon, Endy123, BethelAbba, Alpiyidir for singleplayer
Yankeesrcool and his friend goblintom9 for recorded multiplayer
Space Expedition to EPIC 204:Go on a Space-Age Adventure to visit and explore EPIC 204, a wacky world of dense asteroids and full of alien life! Experience Custom Seasons, Weather, Over 50 new creatures, Beautiful Biomes, Alien Ruins, Dungeons, and new space age tech crafting recipes!
Go with the larger nests..... there are certain anthills in Africa that can tower to 20 feet!!!!!!
I'm cool with Oct 21st. (EDIT: I Must remember that MY Oct 21st is NOT YOUR Oct 21st. My area of Asia is generally 12-14 hours ahead of you in terms of time. Thus You are actually talking about Oct 22nd... for me.... ) (It's so weird living in everyone's future. I can tell you this, tomorrow is rainy, cloudy and dreary. Push the snooze button a few times. )
Lastly.... what purpose would the newer / rarer minerals serve? What use would they have? Better armor? You know me... I'm not into decorating my home with pretty stuff... I'd rather, if there is going to be an addition... that it serve some purpose. maybe even make that part of the mystery of the game, that would be OK / cool. In any case, while titanium dust is a nice touch... without a purpose, I'll mostly just leave it sit where it lies so it doesn't take up cargo space.
sure! I have one or two testing spots left. I'll be happy to add you to the list.
Alpha Pre-Release for testers is currently set for the evening (EST) of October 21. It will not have all the planned features finished, but it should be playable and have many of them! I will release updates to the testers as I develop more that should be easy to install into your map yourself. After you guys test for a few weeks and I work out any problems (if you find them) and give me suggestions I will release the Alpha version of the map publicly so more people can give feedback as I work on the Beta and Final Versions.
Thanks for you willingness to help on this project!
Download and play my new Survival Map!
Space Expedition to EPIC 204: Go on a Space-Age Adventure to visit and explore EPIC 204, a wacky world of dense asteroids and full of alien life! Experience Custom Seasons, Weather, Over 50 new creatures, Beautiful Biomes, Alien Ruins, Dungeons, and new space age tech crafting recipes!
Sorry I was taking an extended weekend vacation. Your list sounds good. Focusing on the environmental features first sounds like a good idea. Everything is so unknown to me, that it's hard to have a preference until I get to experience how it feels firsthand.
Honestly I'm blown away by how ambitious this project is. I don't know how you keep everything organized....especially the interconnected parts.
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..
Sorry, took a 6 month break from the forums, and only came back just today. I'm up for beta testing, if you still have one spot.
I can see you've put a lot of work into this from the snapshots... just curious if this scenario actually did get spawned from my initial communication with you from back in Oct-Nov of 2015. Now that I have seen the snapshots it doesn't look like it, so I am merely curious how much of what I wrote you triggered this one, if anything at all.
I'm really looking forward to testing... and if you ever do want to do the other thing I had mentioned, let me know. I finally (after a year of looking) found the absolute perfect starter seed to tweak and manipulate.
Catch you later.
BethelAbba.
Thanks Rodabon!
Yeah, this is a pretty ambitious project even for me. I created the work thread precisely because it is helping to keep me on track and organized. It was too much work to easily stay motivated without feedback from people following the project. I think it's really helped! I also think allowing people to play the map in its very early stages will result in a much better final project. Hopefully with less problems, balance issues, or bugs. It'll be nice to have player feedback, especially from experienced survival players like Bethel and You playing early. This map will feel a bit different then my past creations. There are some difficult parts but the point is to create something unique, new, and novel, rather then just a really hard survival challenge. That said, there will certainly be some challenging parts as well, but resources are pretty plentiful. The "challenge" on this map is the discovery. There is so many new things. My vision for the map was to make it feel like playing again for the first time and having to figure everything out anew. Feel free to collaborate as players and share knowledge as you discover the secrets of the map, seasons, and mobs. It's not gonna be anywhere near complete in alpha pre-release but there is already loads of stuff to discover that I built in.
Bethel, this map has evolved a lot over the 8 months or so I've been tinkering with it and has had many sources of inspiration. It actually started out as just a sandbox for testing some new ideas I had to spice up survival. Basically one day I just opened up a world and said: "I want to create seasons in minecraft so that every day isn't the same". After that came the idea to fuse the "seasons" map with the old concept of planetoid, originally the planned part 3 (or part 1 depending on your perspective) of the survival map saga of Exiled and Cave-In and make it a space exploration map with unique mechanics. Since then I've just been adding features as I had the inspiration including new creatures and a lot of work to make the terrain look and feel alien.
If you are curious, the original concept of planetoid actually was similar to your lava planet idea and took inspiration from that, a map a couple years back called "Crash Landed", Valdarok's "Under a sky of lava" challenge, and Endy's superflat world. The idea being very scarce resources. For instance, I planned for the planetoid to have no fossil record so there would be no carbon-derived ore deposits. This meant there would be no coal, emeralds, or diamonds. The landscape would also be waterless, dry, and barren much like a desert wasteland. There would be no trees at all and you would need to gather sticks from dead bushes (so no actual wood blocks). Traveling on the surface at day without water bottles to drink would give you nausea and heatstroke and eventually kill you so you needed to locate water from the waterless landscape. The challenge would be to use smarts and minecraft know-how to advance in this very hardcore scenario from you original crash-site. To facilitate the unique feeling I had planned to add some ship modules (idea has carried over to this map but it no longer NECESSARY to progress like it would have been there). I had developed 3 last year so far: the dehydrator squeezed water out of organic matter. You could get trace amounts of moisture from farming stuff like cactus or rotten flesh and fill a bottle with it every time you acquired a liter. Water bottles would or potions when drunk would rehydrate you and give you an additional 5 minutes on the surface. I also had developed a smeltery unit which would smelt some of the metal back out of all metallic items dropped by mobs. Also the recycler could be used to get the materials out of non-metallic items like leather stuff, diamond stuff (only source of diamonds), and wood out of dungeon chests or other wood items if you found them (only way to get wood blocks). The idea being a very subsistent and efficient technological kind of survival. Eventually you could fix your ship and leave.
Download and play my new Survival Map!
Space Expedition to EPIC 204: Go on a Space-Age Adventure to visit and explore EPIC 204, a wacky world of dense asteroids and full of alien life! Experience Custom Seasons, Weather, Over 50 new creatures, Beautiful Biomes, Alien Ruins, Dungeons, and new space age tech crafting recipes!
Hey guys, been busy traveling over the past couple days, but I found time to do a few things on the list!
1. Did a little bit more work and brainstorming on the custom creature spawning. And I got some new ideas I wanted to bounce off you guys (details below)
2. The meteor shower weather effect has mostly been completed!
It's pretty awesome, just a random event that can happen, I have an origin point up at the height limit where the event starts and the shower randomly moves a bit over 30 seconds so the meteors are dispersed randomly over a small area. I'm using weak fireballs for the meteors, haven't decided if I want to vary their power but I fear that if they are too destructive they will be far too annoying. Right now they are too weak to break stone but will break some wood, grass, leaves, and other soft block very close to where the meteors land. Had to a overcome a few issues with them such as the fact that command-summoned fireballs apparently lose speed as they travel? Anyway, fixed that with some maintenance commands and the effect looks pretty awesome now!
I also had some complex new ideas for the map that I wanted opinions on, tell me if these sound like something you'd enjoy:
- I've been giving some thought to how i will do the life catalog. I had the idea to design a virtual computer interface where you can enter and read the files. Think of the holodeck from star trek. You would be transported to the "holodeck" room. There you could select creatures or plants you'd seen and they would display as holograms (creatures would spin and float so you could see them again) and known information about them would display. You could also view current objectives, crafting recipe ideas for materials you've discovered, etc. It seems like a nice way to give players information about the creatures and hints toward the possible new crafting recipes (as I add them)
- Also what do you guys think of the idea of a native language you find in the ruins if you locate them? It could be found in some books, written on paper, or on signs. I was thinking a side quest could be to locate 10 writing examples for the biosuit AI to scan and decode the language and then you would be able to read what the ancient builders had left behind and you could "auto-translate" books or pages you'd collected and signs you saw. It could be a cool way to tell a bit of backstory and add to the hidden ruins idea. I have a pretty good idea how this could work into my planned backstory and quest system as the map develops.
- I disliked the way that the insects spawned alone and wanted something that would be sort of like a random swarm event. An idea I had was adding some new creature-related random structures that can appear seasonally. Examples: the fire ant, endermite, beetle, and silverfish hives. These are small block structures that look like insect hive mounds. They would maybe appear in different biomes or seasons. If you get near them they will act similar to spawners and insects will come out, but there won't actually be spawners and the hives will disappear at the end of each season. You can choose to either defeat the hive and gather what's inside of farm it for the few days it is around if you are looking for insect drops. I kind of liked the way these random small structures added to the variety and ambience. I have already done something similar for water creatures where certain lakes or areas are especially fruitful and will spawn lots of fish, sea urchins, etc. If you identify these areas they can be a great source of the new drops from these mobs!
- Lastly, since meteors and blazes are now spawning, do you think I should turn off fire spreading? Otherwise there may be some nasty forest fire problems.
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Space Expedition to EPIC 204: Go on a Space-Age Adventure to visit and explore EPIC 204, a wacky world of dense asteroids and full of alien life! Experience Custom Seasons, Weather, Over 50 new creatures, Beautiful Biomes, Alien Ruins, Dungeons, and new space age tech crafting recipes!
The life catalog idea sounds very interesting. So basically we'll be teleported to a holodeck room that is sort of a gallery then of animal and plant life? What about making it so that we have to collect one sample of some unknown life forms before they populate in the life catalog? Also perhaps collecting 2 or 3 specific samples related to a recipe might unlock further information(clues to crafting the recipe).
Really like the language idea. Several ways you could go with that, but yours sounds like the best method that would appeal to a broader range of players. I'm reminded of Ultima Underworld where they had runes and as you found more runes you could cast more spells and translate/solve riddles to unlock previously inaccessible areas.
Seasonal nests/spawners really sounds fun. A year is nearly 6 hours of real play time correct? That seems just about right...long enough that it seems like you have to wait for particular season you need drops from, but not long enough that you won't reach it after 3 or 4 game sessions.
Regarding fire, that's up to you, however if it would destroy the landscape, for example your large forest, it would make it seem like we've landed during a holocaust event because how would the forest have thrived if it's continually catching fire and burning up from meteors. If there was a way to mitigate that to make if feel more plausible then I'm okay with fire spread. The other factor is it would make the player prioritize building with stronger, fireproof materials. Can you make two classes of meteor? A common one that doesn't start any fires but does minor impact damage and a rare one that does?
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..
As an American living in a nation that uses TRADITIONAL CHINESE as it's communication language... I can tell you first hand, decoding is not always an easy process.
Chinese sucks.
I like those ideas!
I'm not sure about the fire spread. It would be a real pity to see your handmade forest burn because of a stray meteor! And, like robadon said, having everything burn to ashes within a few days because of random events can easily destroy the immersion. If these events are a regular event in the system and nothing your arrival specifically triggered somehow, those asteroids would've been dead long before the player arrived on the map, and not right after they land and have a chance to see how pretty everything is. That works for bad movie plots that you only enjoy because of how stupid they are, but not for what you're trying to do here So unless you find a way to stop blazes and meteor showers from killing all plant life, I vote to turn fire spread off.
I wrote about my adventures on the Alpha version of the OathBros/Caplex Build Team's map Space Expedition in my blog! (Discontinued)
For my experiences of the Beta versions of that same map, I started a YouTube series, which (due to prior knowledge from the Alpha) ended up being very fast paced and highly focused on showing off as much of the custom stuff as I can.
alright, thanks to everyone who has given me feedback so far! I have had an incredibly busy work week and was kept up working till 5 AM last night! But I am planning on tackling some of these more fun ideas over the weekend when I catch up on my sleep!
Bethel, no worries, it will be a cipher and you are free to apply some cryptology and break it early if you like. But the AI will translate everything for you after you decode the language. It will not be up to the player to do it by hand! That would be annoying!
Rodabon, yeah I had a similar idea for the holodeck and catalog. Either you need to complete a "scan" of each new creature or defeat them once and get a drop sample to collect their info. Your idea for recipes was the exact same I had. Rather then posting them up for you guys explicitly, the game will guide toward them as you collect the drops required. As far as the ancient runes I could do a lot with it. In addition to telling some backstory from another race/visitor's perspecitve on this place, knowing the language could also be a requisite for accessing some sealed ruins or something. I'll think on it. I think it's kind of exciting and has a lot of potential though! Glad you are excited about the hives. I was when I thought of the idea! Kind of changes spawning a bit in a way a like!
As far as fire spread: I did run a few tests before things got busy. If I turn OFF fireTick then flames also won't go out. So the blazes set trees eternally burning and annoying stuff like that. The only real place forest-fire is a danger is the big, dense, custom forest. Apparently fires die out a bit quicker as of soem update I've forgotten and have a limited life (not infinite anymore). So meteors/blazes only really seem to burn a couple trees before it peters out. The worry is one will strike the giant oak custom forest and it'll go up like a torch. I haven't tested yet. Rodabon, your idea with meteors is good and actually I can pretty easily make them damage terrain, scatter fires, but then quickly put out the fires for the best of both worlds. I was gonna add a sweet fire trail for cosmetic effect and fiery swirl around the crater after impact. I can add a splash water effect to the cloud and it'll put out fires caused by the meteors naturally just a bit after impact before the fire aura fades. Not sure if I want to have a "mega-meteor" where this is not the case but it could be fun. I'm guessing if I do it should at least have the power to punch through stone eh? Anyway, even if I fix meteors blazes are just as bad. If I do go with the fire tick off I may have to make up some reason why trees burn forever lol. Maybe they are fireproof trees resistant to burning having been on a meteor riddled asteroid for so long? It might be feasible if rain still puts the fires out after the hot season. Maybe the simplest way to solve the problem is to just ban blazes from getting near the custom forest and apply my meteor fix where the fires it creates don't last long and die out. Then just let the rest of the terrain do it's thing.
Download and play my new Survival Map!
Space Expedition to EPIC 204: Go on a Space-Age Adventure to visit and explore EPIC 204, a wacky world of dense asteroids and full of alien life! Experience Custom Seasons, Weather, Over 50 new creatures, Beautiful Biomes, Alien Ruins, Dungeons, and new space age tech crafting recipes!
Sounds really intersting. I liek the idea of mega asteroids that can punch through rocks.
Big Update! I've finished a LOT of stuff this weekend so far! Forgot to take any pictures other then the new meteor showers, I'll try to remember next time...
1. First off, I've fixed meteors based on the feedback from everyone here. They are powerful enough to destroy soft blocks (for now I've decided against normal meteors punching through stone, but wood houses and gardens will still be at risk). They also DO start fires and now have ember trails! But the fires are special and extinguish themselves in about a second or so so they don't spread. The duration of the "showers" is about 15-20 seconds and the showers move kind of randomly across the landscape from their origin point which is near the player. The intensity (rate of falling meteors) is random to each event. It can vary from "light" which might have 2 meteors hitting the ground every second to "heavy" which would have about 4 meteors hitting the ground every second.
2. I made the command center updateable by region file updates and friendly the multiplayer and servers. This was necessary if you guys are going to install all my updates in the future. Also, for the sake of servers, time does not progress when no players are online so if you forget and leave the map running now it's no big deal, the game will restart at the exact same time and place you logged out. The game also locks in your spawn to the medical bay of the ship so you never get the obstructed spawn bug. I also added a new compact way of running commands through a controller armor stand that stores the timing data and this made things a bit more efficient. Was able to convert a lot of 2-3 block systems to a single command by executing through him and thus improve background processing!
3. I also built a custom sleeping system. You can use beds anywhere to sleep till morning and on multiplayer only one player needs to use a bed, however, they will not set your spawn or change the weather in this world. This was necessary for several seasons like twilit winters and the spring showers otherwise you could just skip most of the seasons lol.
4. I also created a custom death animation sequence. Basically if you are about to die the emergency warp will activate and you are transported to the medical bay and wake up with blurry vision (nausea and light blindness) and move slowly for 30 seconds (to simulate being groggy from the emergency warp rescue system). This is my explanation for respawning so it fits the map but you will still lose your items of course. However, if players do decide the turn on keepInventory (which is not enabled by default), the animation will still play and all their levels will be removed. I was thinking of adding it as a "softcore" option. The slowness and loss of levels will make people reluctant to just die for fast transport as is common in maps that enable it.
5. I've improved textures and drops on several custom creatures and added a few more! I also improved my spawning algorithms with some new checks so I can make certain ones only spawn in particular biomes or only on the surface of the ground vs. underground, and various changes to make it more seamless and less noticeable by the player. For instance, many custom spawns will now not happen if they are within 32 blocks of the player so it doesn't look weird if something spawns.
- There is now a new "boss" mob. A variant of the white-walker which is much more powerful and has an aura and some new abilities.
- The wood sprite appearance has been changed to a 3D texture and has a new drop and has 1 hp
- Fireflies now have 1 hp and a new rare drop as well, as do fish.
(All the flying insects are a bit hard to catch so I gave them 1 hp)
- I've added some new spawning methods for the water mobs to allow them to have a chance to spawn in any body of water rarely.
- Hermit Crabs now spawn naturally on the shore of water ponds, lakes, and rivers during the fall
- select passive animal spawning at the beginning of each season is now improved. This means wolves, ocelots, rabbits, and polar bears will appear at the beginning of their designated seasons as do some riding mobs. They all have new drops.
- all animal rider mobs now only spawn on the surface of the ground
- silverfish, endermites, and beetles now spawn seasonally and have new drops
- Added 3 new fruit items you can obtain. Two come from new plants in certain biomes, and one is a drop. Not sure of the uses yet but maybe they could get distilled into a food item or a potion/drink?
This concludes all weather and seasonal mob work that I had planned! We are now 90% complete! I'll keep testing creatures and maybe add a few more but most of the work left is all technical: biosuit AI, custom crafting uses for the new items and resources, biosuit upgrades, and life catalog holodeck. The work I did improving the command center and preparing it for these future additions should make things go a bit quicker this coming week.
New Ideas/Questions:
1. Should I allow monsters with custom heads to drop them? (aka would you like them as a trophy or decoration item) current mobs with custom skulls are most of the riders and I currently have them drop at a rare 1%. However, if I disable them it might make for cleaner inventory management as they have no use.
2. How common should meteor showers be? They have a chance to occur right now anytime during 3 months with a 1/60 chance every 2 seconds. This may seem pretty common but you can go a couple days without seeing them at that chance.
Download and play my new Survival Map!
Space Expedition to EPIC 204: Go on a Space-Age Adventure to visit and explore EPIC 204, a wacky world of dense asteroids and full of alien life! Experience Custom Seasons, Weather, Over 50 new creatures, Beautiful Biomes, Alien Ruins, Dungeons, and new space age tech crafting recipes!
1) Not sure what you mean about inventory management, unless we have a hard limit on storage space. But either way is fine with me.
2) Depends on the duration, but what you have now sounds okay. Leave it like it is and lets test 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..
Is there a way to MAKE them useful in some fashion? Scarecrows to certain bugs? (Just a thought) A certain head on a pike would surely deter SOMETHING out there....
#2 --- depends on an awful lot of variables. Atmosphere being one of them. As you've stated, the atmosphere here is toxic... that might ALLOW for more meteors than we presently experience on Earth. Likewise, where are they coming from?
Ever read Anne McCaffrey's incredible PERN series? The asteroids there..... had.... DIRE consequences if left unchecked..... Something to chew on.
His current concept has way more meteors that actually impact the surface than we ever experience here on earth.
Regarding the possibility of the meteors causing a growing threat, I think dana's vision is more toward creating an atmospheric effect that reinforces the feeling of an otherworldly space environment.
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..
Thanks guys for the feedback, for the skulls, right now the only USE would be as decor blocks. Basically trophies like normal heads work in minecraft right now but they look a lot cooler then normal skulls, I picked some nice animal/monster ones. I could probably add a use but I'm not sure what use skulls would have personally ;). One thing I could do if you really want a use bethel is if you place the skull on an armorstand, since an armorstand is an entity I can detect what kind of monster skull it is wearing. And then make it scare away certain kinds of mobs maybe? Or even add some odd new buffs when players are near them, like a new kind of beacon maybe with effects you can't get from beacons...just ideas, not sold on any of this. I was just curious if any of you guys wanted them to drop for "trophy" reasons. 1% is pretty low so it'd be like bragging rights!
Rodabon pretty much hit the nail on the head. The meteor showers are like weather there. I would make them even more frequent if I can find a way to do it without it being annoying. Actually, that's an idea, maybe some meteor showers are "near" misses, and you see them streaking by up in the atmosphere but they don't impact? Unfortunately at those distances particle effects like my fire trails probably won't render but you can see the fireball entity pretty far away. Then they'd just be like a weather effect. Also I found out that meteor power levels of "0" actually don't destroy ANY terrain, they only deal damage to entities so it's like safe falling explosions. Lastly there is a different entity for blaze/fire charges that also do no explosion block damage but DO splash fire. The only problem is it doesn't feel right having meteors that do no terrain damage, though using them would allow me to let them fall more often. Maybe I can create a secondary system that has random single falling "safe" meteors that are pretty common but no terrain damage, and then occasionally the rarer "meteor storms" I designed that can be pretty destructive to plants and softer materials. thoughts?
Anyway, my idea was that during certain "seasons" your asteroid cluster passes through clouds of dust/rock so you get these heavy meteor showers randomly during those seasons. The atmosphere is very thin compared to earth. The combined gravity of all the rock holds some around (maybe sort of like mars's density) but not enough for a human to feel comfortable. Your biosuit pressurizes the oxygen in the air for you. Technically a human could adapt (the oxygen content is enough) and this is why there are metabolic creatures on the asteroids that use oxygen, but it would take a while and they'd need to develop a bigger lung capacity and up their red blood cell count.
Download and play my new Survival Map!
Space Expedition to EPIC 204: Go on a Space-Age Adventure to visit and explore EPIC 204, a wacky world of dense asteroids and full of alien life! Experience Custom Seasons, Weather, Over 50 new creatures, Beautiful Biomes, Alien Ruins, Dungeons, and new space age tech crafting recipes!
Guys, I've finally found a REAL star system whose astronomical observations fit the description of this theoretical minecraft world!
The name is a bit long so I may omit the last part in descriptions but the star system designation is: EPIC 204278916
It's not an exact match but it's close enough. So the map is now named after it, and now I can add in more specific sci-fi references and a better history for the future humans! The system is in the upper scorpius subgroup 400 light year from earth. That's a bit far for early earth pioneers, but pretty close as far as systems go. The fact that I found something that actually fits the setting makes it worth it. I'll work it into the story somehow But I guess I'll have to give humans some sort of travel better then sub-light. Was hoping to not...I'm not sure if light speed will ever be beatable from my study of physics and I didn't want to have to come up with some other cheesy workaround like every science fiction novel ever.
So about EPIC 204278916: The star is REALLY young, about 5 million years estimated. It is a rare class of stars designated as YSO Dippers for their very unusual and irregular cycles of dimming and brightening. This is based on observations with the Kepler space telescope. EPIC is special because it has a ridiculous range of brightness. One observation saw it dim by almost 65% for a full 25 days, which is a weird coincidence since that's what I picked as the yearly cycle for the map haha! Dimming of stars is how we've been detecting exoplanets if you've been following the news. We see a regular small dip in brightness we know it's an object and by the character of the light, size, and gravity we can make guesses about it's composition. But even a gas giant like jupiter will only dip a star by around 1% because usually big planets can't orbit close enough to their star without getting consumed.
The only two currently feasible hypotheses for this behavior is:
A. a HUGE, dense belt of asteroids, comets, or dust orbiting close around the star
B. Alien superstructures such as the theoretical Dyson Sphere where a civilization builds a giant partial sphere to collect their star's energy and expand into space.
The most famous one before this one was KIC 8462852. But that one is over 1000 light years away and a much older star (which makes it even more unusual). Usually these stars are young so the hypothesis (if you don't credit aliens) is that the dimming is caused by remnants of the newly formed star orbiting close around it. An older system usually build more order over time.
Anyway, there is another reason why I wanted this star to have odd behavior and it has to do with the story and science I'm planning to reveal as you play the map! I looked at KIC but it's just too far away to be an early colonization target. Then news about EPIC came out this past month so it's an exciting system to observe in astronomy right now. They plan to keep watching it over all of 2017. Hopefully they don't find something that disproves my map haha, but I like tying it to something real.
Anyway just had to share.
Download and play my new Survival Map!
Space Expedition to EPIC 204: Go on a Space-Age Adventure to visit and explore EPIC 204, a wacky world of dense asteroids and full of alien life! Experience Custom Seasons, Weather, Over 50 new creatures, Beautiful Biomes, Alien Ruins, Dungeons, and new space age tech crafting recipes!
haha, sorry for spamming the thread early today with random backstory. I got excited.
Anyway, back to business: Another update!
- added new drops and ability to White Walker King
- created new metals: copper, silver, tungsten, titanium, and uranium along with 2 new gemstones: these will have custom crafting uses
- custom crafting recipes to convert metallic bits to 4 new ingots. (I have nbt data tooltip on for debugging purposes, forgot to turn it on, but ingame you won't see the grey bits of text in item info)
- meteors now have a random chance to drop some of the rarer metals either as a dust or shards. Several meteor metals you can't get any other way.
- silverfish and endermite each have several new drops
- designed the random-spawning hive structures for the endermite, fire ant, silverfish, and scarab beetle.
after I finish the spawning algorithm for the hives and test them it’ll be on to custom crafting, biosuit upgrades, and ship modules! We are still on track for October 21st
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Those hives are larger than I imagined. I assume there is a spawner cage in the center of the bottom and they jump up and crawl out?
Really nice idea on metal drops coming from the meteors. It changes them from a nuisance to something to look forward to.
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..
Thanks! At first I was just thinking of some way to work more metals into the game, then I already realized I had the perfect way to distribute rare ones. Everyone knows that the best metal comes from meteors. It's a fantasy trope! There's one other source of some of the rarer metals I've added as well.
Also quick question: would it be cool to have a random chance to also mine up a couple new rare metals or gems while underground? I probably won't try to design custom ores, but an easy way to make it work is to sometimes have another resource pop out of normal ore rarely. Maybe a new gem out of diamond ore. I could associate some kinds of resources. Would it be worth making mining a little more exciting? Just an idea I had, there are already sources of everything already through drops or meteors.
Rodabon, you think the nests are too big? Originally I was thinking to make it smaller and not use a spawner but then I realized it's less lag to just plop a spawner in there and let it do it's thing. Plus then players can choose whether or not they want to farm it for a few days or destroy it to end the threat. It is pretty fun getting assaulted by a bunch of bugs that hop out of holes in the ground. Different insects will have different nest materials and themes. Some I could probably make almost invisible on the surface but have a bigger network of tunnels underground. And more exits for the surprise ambush! Might be a good design for the ants.
I'm also trying to decide if insects should go dormant and then return to old nests once the season comes around again if you didn't destroy the hive structure too much. I like the idea that new hives are appearing rarely, however, having an area you knew they'd come back too could be good for players building seasonal farms and justify putting some work into an area. I could define the structure based on a few blocks like villagers and their villages and as long as those critical blocks remain intact the spawner reappears next season?
Also I'd like a quick confirmation from the alpha testers. Is everyone still available and willing to test Oct. 21? Not everyone has commented since I set a date so curious. My current list of 10 is:
Lezandria, zann10thousand, yubachu, Brizol, Rodabon, Endy123, BethelAbba, Alpiyidir for singleplayer
Yankeesrcool and his friend goblintom9 for recorded multiplayer
Download and play my new Survival Map!
Space Expedition to EPIC 204: Go on a Space-Age Adventure to visit and explore EPIC 204, a wacky world of dense asteroids and full of alien life! Experience Custom Seasons, Weather, Over 50 new creatures, Beautiful Biomes, Alien Ruins, Dungeons, and new space age tech crafting recipes!
Go with the larger nests..... there are certain anthills in Africa that can tower to 20 feet!!!!!!
I'm cool with Oct 21st. (EDIT: I Must remember that MY Oct 21st is NOT YOUR Oct 21st. My area of Asia is generally 12-14 hours ahead of you in terms of time. Thus You are actually talking about Oct 22nd... for me.... ) (It's so weird living in everyone's future. I can tell you this, tomorrow is rainy, cloudy and dreary. Push the snooze button a few times. )
Lastly.... what purpose would the newer / rarer minerals serve? What use would they have? Better armor? You know me... I'm not into decorating my home with pretty stuff... I'd rather, if there is going to be an addition... that it serve some purpose. maybe even make that part of the mystery of the game, that would be OK / cool. In any case, while titanium dust is a nice touch... without a purpose, I'll mostly just leave it sit where it lies so it doesn't take up cargo space.