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Can't you read? I said I only play PC Minecraft
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I have a question about this mod, which may be blatantly obvious to anyone with any knowledge of Minecraft modding. I play modded Minecraft with an absolute crap-ton of mods, including Metallurgy, Thaumcraft, & Project Red, just to name a few.
This mod looks like one of the best biome mods I've seen that doesn't make me feel like I'm being lazy in not trying to find every single biome that exists in a world (coughBiomes'oPlentycough), since most of these are vanilla themed, and just bring more of an interesting selection of biomes that don't flat out make the vanilla biomes seem like garbage. However, I really need to know if this will effect the modded biomes that are added by other mods like Thaumcraft, the ore spawning system that is added by Metallurgy, the generated structures added by Project Red, and the loot that you find in generated structures (for example, Steadfast bees, Thaumium, and Steel armor).
I have a question about this mod, which may be blatantly obvious to anyone with any knowledge of Minecraft modding. I play modded Minecraft with an absolute crap-ton of mods, including Metallurgy, Thaumcraft, & Project Red, just to name a few.
This mod looks like one of the best biome mods I've seen that doesn't make me feel like I'm being lazy in not trying to find every single biome that exists in a world (coughBiomes'oPlentycough), since most of these are vanilla themed, and just bring more of an interesting selection of biomes that don't flat out make the vanilla biomes seem like garbage. However, I really need to know if this will effect the modded biomes that are added by other mods like Thaumcraft, the ore spawning system that is added by Metallurgy, the generated structures added by Project Red, and the loot that you find in generated structures (for example, Steadfast bees, Thaumium, and Steel armor).
If it's going to be too much of a problem to do, them it's not necessary.
This reminds me of what highlands was originally going to be, just with some extra goodies.
I'm also having trouble installing. Is this a Jar, or mods folder mod?
As indicated by the installation instructions I provided, this is a jar mod and is likely incompatible with any other mods; Forge itself won't even run unless you tell it to ignore a modified jar, and as you can see from this thread where I made a very simple mod for somebody even minor changes can completely break things.
That is to say, this is the only mod that I currently use, and while I previously did use Forge and several mods I used the patched Forge source to make my own mods (Forge adds stuff to enable mods to access the code; if it detects a modified class it refuses to patch it, so by modding the already-patched source I can bypass that; having said that, this only causes issues if you use a mod that depends on a modified class, as seen in the link above; I got around it by editing a different class).
As for possibly making a Forge version, that is out of the question, although I wouldn't mind if somebody wanted to add something I made into a Forge mod (as was done with another mod I made, and made better).
That said, some of the biomes are rather simple to make; for example, here is the code for the Forest mountains biome:
package net.minecraft.src;
import java.util.Random;
public class BiomeGenForestMountains extends BiomeGenBase
{
public BiomeGenForestMountains(int par1)
{
super(par1);
this.spawnableCreatureList.add(new SpawnListEntry(EntityWolf.class, 8, 4, 4));
this.theBiomeDecorator.treesPerChunk = 25;
this.theBiomeDecorator.grassPerChunk = 10;
this.theBiomeDecorator.flowersPerChunk = 6;
}
public WorldGenerator getRandomWorldGenForTrees(Random par1Random)
{
// Tree distribution:
// Birch = 20%
// Big oak = 11.4%
// Oak = 45.7%
// Spruce = 22.9% (7.6% type 1 and 15.3% type 2)
return (WorldGenerator)(par1Random.nextInt(5) == 0 ? this.worldGeneratorForest : (par1Random.nextInt(7) == 0 ? this.worldGeneratorBigTree : (par1Random.nextInt(3) > 0 ? this.worldGeneratorTrees : (par1Random.nextInt(3) == 0 ? new WorldGenTaiga1() : new WorldGenTaiga2(false)))));
}
}
In BiomeDecorator:
// Mountainous version of forest biome, with spruce trees added
public static final BiomeGenBase forestMountains = (new BiomeGenForestMountains(24)).setColor(353825).setBiomeName("Forest Mountains").func_76733_a(5159473).setTemperatureRainfall(0.5F, 0.8F).setMinMaxHeight(0.5F, 1.6F);
It should also be noted that I mostly added new biomes in a different manner than the way they are usually added; instead of adding to a list of biomes (aside from the first few I added as this was after I created my world and this would radically change biome placement) I substitute vanilla biomes with my own, with varying chances up to 1/2, including multiple biomes (in GenLayerBiome):
else if (var9 == 1)
{
// Normal biome generation in continents
var6[var8 + var7 * par3] = getBiomeVariant(this.allowedBiomes[this.nextInt(this.allowedBiomes.length)].biomeID);
}
Notably, this allowed me to add new biomes without changing the overall biome placement, which I took advantage of to avoid chunk borders in my world; i.e. ensure any existing biome at the edge of generated chunks doesn't change; as it is, if you recreated my world you'd find a mesa biome in place of the plains where I built my base, otherwise the same; here is how I substituted plains biomes:
protected int getBiomeVariant(int biome)
{
// Selects a variant to use in place of the regular biome up to 50% of the time
if (this.nextInt(2) == 0)
{
...
else if (biome == BiomeGenBase.plains.biomeID)
{
if (this.nextInt(2) == 1)
{
biome = BiomeGenBase.megaTreePlains.biomeID;
}
else
{
biome = BiomeGenBase.mesa.biomeID;
}
}
As indicated by the installation instructions I provided, this is a jar mod and is likely incompatible with any other mods; Forge itself won't even run unless you tell it to ignore a modified jar, and as you can see from this thread where I made a very simple mod for somebody even minor changes can completely break things.
That is to say, this is the only mod that I currently use, and while I previously did use Forge and several mods I used the patched Forge source to make my own mods (Forge adds stuff to enable mods to access the code; if it detects a modified class it refuses to patch it, so by modding the already-patched source I can bypass that; having said that, this only causes issues if you use a mod that depends on a modified class, as seen in the link above; I got around it by editing a different class).
As for possibly making a Forge version, that is out of the question, although I wouldn't mind if somebody wanted to add something I made into a Forge mod (as was done with another mod I made, and made better).
That said, some of the biomes are rather simple to make; for example, here is the code for the Forest mountains biome:
package net.minecraft.src;
import java.util.Random;
public class BiomeGenForestMountains extends BiomeGenBase
{
public BiomeGenForestMountains(int par1)
{
super(par1);
this.spawnableCreatureList.add(new SpawnListEntry(EntityWolf.class, 8, 4, 4));
this.theBiomeDecorator.treesPerChunk = 25;
this.theBiomeDecorator.grassPerChunk = 10;
this.theBiomeDecorator.flowersPerChunk = 6;
}
public WorldGenerator getRandomWorldGenForTrees(Random par1Random)
{
// Tree distribution:
// Birch = 20%
// Big oak = 11.4%
// Oak = 45.7%
// Spruce = 22.9% (7.6% type 1 and 15.3% type 2)
return (WorldGenerator)(par1Random.nextInt(5) == 0 ? this.worldGeneratorForest : (par1Random.nextInt(7) == 0 ? this.worldGeneratorBigTree : (par1Random.nextInt(3) > 0 ? this.worldGeneratorTrees : (par1Random.nextInt(3) == 0 ? new WorldGenTaiga1() : new WorldGenTaiga2(false)))));
}
}
In BiomeDecorator:
// Mountainous version of forest biome, with spruce trees added
public static final BiomeGenBase forestMountains = (new BiomeGenForestMountains(24)).setColor(353825).setBiomeName("Forest Mountains").func_76733_a(5159473).setTemperatureRainfall(0.5F, 0.8F).setMinMaxHeight(0.5F, 1.6F);
It should also be noted that I mostly added new biomes in a different manner than the way they are usually added; instead of adding to a list of biomes (aside from the first few I added as this was after I created my world and this would radically change biome placement) I substitute vanilla biomes with my own, with varying chances up to 1/2, including multiple biomes (in GenLayerBiome):
else if (var9 == 1)
{
// Normal biome generation in continents
var6[var8 + var7 * par3] = getBiomeVariant(this.allowedBiomes[this.nextInt(this.allowedBiomes.length)].biomeID);
}
Notably, this allowed me to add new biomes without changing the overall biome placement, which I took advantage of to avoid chunk borders in my world; i.e. ensure any existing biome at the edge of generated chunks doesn't change; as it is, if you recreated my world you'd find a mesa biome in place of the plains where I built my base, otherwise the same; here is how I substituted plains biomes:
protected int getBiomeVariant(int biome)
{
// Selects a variant to use in place of the regular biome up to 50% of the time
if (this.nextInt(2) == 0)
{
...
else if (biome == BiomeGenBase.plains.biomeID)
{
if (this.nextInt(2) == 1)
{
biome = BiomeGenBase.megaTreePlains.biomeID;
}
else
{
biome = BiomeGenBase.mesa.biomeID;
}
}
Man! I thought I had edited that bit out of my post! I worked it out. It's been ages since I've seen a non-forge mod! Good job! There need to be more mods like this.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
I have a new account called "Mushroomsock" now, so please do not send me PMs.
I thought I'd note that I made regular oak trees generate 1 block taller so that you don't get trees with only 1 block of space under them, making it easier to walk through in forests, which have 50% more trees than vanilla to account for hillier terrain (i.e. a 45 degree slope over 10 blocks is 14 blocks diagonally); Forests Mountains contains 2.5 times as many (about 60% denser along one axis).
(note - this only affects naturally generated trees; player-grown trees still have the same height range as vanilla)
I modified the way branches generate in jungle trees to help reduce leaf decay (although some leaves still generate disconnected from the canopy); a cross of wood is placed at the base of the leaves at the top and branches for other leaves were made larger:
Also, you may note that, except for the trunk, logs are placed using the full bark texture (data values 12-15); this was also done for other types of branched trees, which is something that should have been done in vanilla for acacia trees in particular.
Also, I decided to improve the Ice Hills subbiome so it isn't just a big mound of ice; ice now covers the ground to a depth of 10-15 blocks with snow underneath to a depth proportional to the height above sea level (i.e. as the land rises up the snow underneath goes deeper, if at a lower rate), this also leads to some interesting caves in/under them (note that snow blocks don't melt, so placing torches isn't a problem, mobs will spawn in the caves; a modified version of WorldGenMinable was also used to generate ores in snow blocks):
best mod ever, especially the cave generation. Pitty my computer is so crappy it only gets 8fps while running it any chance you could do a simpler mod that just does the caves? and the bug fixes of course
I haven't noticed a difference in performance while playing with this mod (I do use Optifine but it runs well even when testing in MCP without it, I mainly use it to improve chunk loading and lag spikes), and I wouldn't really expect any unless you are generating new chunks since it only affects terrain generation and doesn't add in new items or anything (although while testing the Mega Forest biome causes chunk generation to lag such that chunks stop loading until I stop flying (if your CPU is only single-core this could also cause FPS lag, as the server, which generates chunks, otherwise runs on a separate thread/core from the client), but there were no problems when I found one in-game by just walking; that said, giant trees can cause a lot of lag on Fancy graphics, Advanced OpenGL also makes a big difference for me, although isn't supported by all graphics cards and was even disabled in 1.7 if you don't have one that does).
Also, the cave mods that somebody else linked to (above) only modify the size/frequency of cave systems for 1.7.2+ to get the cave generation in 1.6.4 or double it (someone else also made a Forge mod, in the replies, that allows more customization); you won't get any huge caves or anything like that, although I could make a mod for 1.7.2 that increases the size range of individual caves and ravines and their distribution (note that this mod makes mineshafts rarer than they were in 1.6.4, similar to 1.7, but they are more spread out instead of being randomly placed, often next to each other, so can be easier to find; the distribution of large cave systems is similar).
this is exactly what I am looking for, If you do make such a mod I would be eternally gratefull.
Here it is; caves, ravines, and mineshafts all generate exactly like in the main mod (cross-version compatible; while you'd get chunk borders on the surface the underground would be the same), with the exception of biome-specific caves (i.e. extra caves in Extreme Hills, which are obviously in different locations); I also added in the cut-up strongholds fix (always making walls generate even over empty space) and a no void fog mod (as the caves go 5 layers deeper; note also that if you want to branch-mine for diamonds do it at around layer 6; layer 11 won't get you anything as they only generate up to layer 10):
(note that this isn't as complex as it seems; MCP 1.7.2 put many classes into single files and reobfuscates all of them even if only one inner class was modified)
Also, while testing this I added a "fix" to cave generation which I also included in the main mod; that is, the code has a check for water in the path of a cave or ravine and if any is found it doesn't generate in a chunk containing water (within some vertical distance); I got around this by having them only cut through stone (leaving a dirt layer under water). However, as you can see here it can leave weird square shelves of land sticking out, particularly over large caves (usually not this noticeable, I've never encountered this yet in my world as giant cave openings like this are rare):
(vanilla would simply bail out entirely, leaving a solid vertical wall of stone, as seen in this bug report)
Basically, what I did was remove the vanilla water check, which operates on a per-chunk basis and replaced it with code that checks for water in a 5x5 cube centered around the current block being dug out, done on a block-by-block basis, with this as the result; perhaps still a bit weird to have a shelf of land sticking out like this but at least it is contoured to the river and not an entire chunk; an ideal solution would be to not generate a cave at all if there was water anywhere in its path but that isn't practical because caves can start in nonexistent chunks (before they are generated):
(note that the sand you see in the second image isn't floating, as I'd already modified the sand patch generator to use sandstone instead of sand if the block underneath is air; for 1.7.2 I did something similar to gravel in ocean biomes to prevent it from collapsing into caves).
One thing that would really help others like me with half broken keyboards is being able to change your hotbar keys(like they did in 1.7)If you do that I would be eternally grateful. But other than that the mod is pretty awesome!
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Im in dire need of a new skin. Submit your wizard skin for me at
How do you get rid of the "statistics" on the inventory screen?
You should be able to remove "axv.class" when installing the mod and it should be fully functional other than that part, which just displays them (not tested but I know that class only references code in another class I made, as opposed to the other way around, so can be safely removed).
The second version of this mod greatly extends the number of new biomes added with many sub-biomes and variants added, with all the basic biomes in the original version plus a new "Winter Forest" biome that is a snowy version of the forest biome (the regular snowy taiga was renamed to "Winter Taiga" to fit; the "snowless taiga" biome I added is simply "Taiga"). There are now a total of 36 new biomes, with 16 basic biomes (generating as normal biomes, e.g. Plains, Forest, etc) and 20 sub-biomes (e.g. Forest Hills); for example, Mesa now generates as three separate biomes in one (Mesa, Mesa Plateau, and Mesa Edge), there are two variants of Forest Mountains (same names but different height ranges) plus an "Extreme Forest Mountains" sub-biome. This compares to 15 basic plus 2 sub-biomes/variants in the original version:
Basic biomes (Plains, Forest, Desert, etc):
Hilly Plains
Forest Mountains (two variants, one with increased height variation)
Mountainous Desert
Tropical Swamp
Mixed Forest
Bushlands
Mega Tree Plains
Mesa
Birch Forest
Mega Forest
Taiga (vanilla taiga renamed to Winter Taiga)
Volcanic Wasteland
Lake (also sound as a sub-biome)
Mega Taiga
Big Oak Forest
Winter Forest
Sub-biomes (Forest Hills, Desert Hills, Extreme Hills Edge, etc):
Hilly Plains (hillier variant in main biome)
Extreme Forest Mountains
Mountainous Desert Hills
Mixed Forest Hills
Spruce Tree hills
Mesa Plateau
Mesa Edge
Birch Forest Hills
Mega Forest Hills
Taiga Hills (vanilla Taiga Hills renamed to Winter Taiga Hills)
Ice Hills
Lake (as a sub-biome in many other biomes)
Frozen Lake (same as above but found in snowy biomes)
Mega Taiga Hills
Big Oak Forest Hills
Extreme Mountains (sub-biome in Extreme Hills)
Winter Forest Hills
Winter Forest Mountains
Desert Beach (variant of beach along deserts, identical to normal beaches except sand above y=65 isn't converted to grass/dirt)
In accordance with the addition of many x-hills biomes the maximum height ranges of their corresponding biomes were reduced a bit, although still a lot more variability than seen in vanilla (e.g. refer to this thread) with the x-hills sub-biomes having increased height variation beyond what their main biomes had originally.
Biome distribution was also changed; in "normal" areas (non-Ice Plains in vanilla) most biomes, both vanilla and modded, have the same chance of occurring, except for Volcanic Wasteland, which has 1/4 the frequency, and Mega Taiga, Ice Plains, Lake, and each variant of Forest Mountains (which effectively makes Forest Mountains as a whole as common as the other "common" biomes). Areas formerly occupied by Ice Plains in vanilla are split between 15% Winter Taiga, 10% Mega Taiga, 5% Winter Forest, 30% Ice Plains, and 40% other biomes.
Beach generation was also improved with Beta 1.7.3-style beaches instead of the sloppy messes often seen in vanilla default worlds afterwards (refer to this thread again); even around mountains beaches are mostly within 1-2 blocks of sea level, instead of splashed up the mountainside, most of the biome is also above sea level with a (usually) sharper drop-off to the ocean depths; essentially, height variation relative to sea level was forced to be much lower and I added a special method that removes sand blocks above sea level within 6-8 blocks of water to a height of 2 blocks (if there aren't any blocks above them within 1 block) and replaces blocks above y=65 with grass/dirt, except in deserts, with a special variant of beach ("Desert Beach", otherwise the same) to have a consistent maximum height of sand along shorelines (i.e. no sand stretching up a hillside):
The new stone types (granite, diorite, andesite) in the 1.8 snapshots were also added, using the same data values (variants of stone) and the same crafting recipes for the polished versions (no recipes for crafting the raw blocks as there really isn't any need for them). In world generation, 8 veins of each generate between y=0-63, which is somewhat less than in the snapshots (10 veins across 0-79, same ratio of veins/layers, making up around 13% of solid blocks (stone and ore) underground) since I thought they should remain below sea level; the exception is the Volcanic Wasteland biome where they generate with twice the number and range (16 and 0-127):
Yep, granite, diorite, and andesite in 1.6.4!
Here is a cutaway of a Superflat world with ores generated to show how common they are:
Perhaps most significant is the addition of items from a mod I previously used; amethyst armor and tools, although nerfed from the original mod (which was actually nerfed already as you can see in the link), which gave you tools with the mining speed of Efficiency V diamond and a sword equivalent to Sharpness III diamond; in this case they are basically just a more durable replacement for diamond, having the exact same stats except for three times the durability. In addition, they can only be enchanted with books (enchantability of zero). The ore is also about six times rarer than diamond, but distributed so it about half as common in the first layer above bedrock (so the common advice to mine above lava will net you little ore, around 1/8 as common as diamond there; factoring in durability this is a smaller difference than it would seem as three times the durability means it is effectively only twice as rare, similar to how diamond is about 6 times rarer than iron within its range but diamond tools are 6 times more durable):
Ore distribution in the lowest 10 and 1 layers above bedrock in a Superflat world; amethyst ore is the "future block" with an ID of 200; note that nearly a third of it is present in the lowest layer (y=1) alone, with the relative abundance being only 1/8 of diamond above y=2 (1/8 chance of generating above y=2, 100% otherwise, not quite as common below since ore veins cross up to 4 layers down from where they generate). Also, you can see the relative abundance of the new 1.8 stones:
The ore and block (made like diamond, etc, blocks) also requires a diamond pickaxe or itself to mine with half the mining time of obsidian for the ore and a third for the block; they are also resistant to normal explosions (although so rare that this is of little use, though you could TNT-mine to find ore). Amethyst gems can also be found in naturally generated chests.
Various other tweaks were made, such as making cave generation more randomized (fewer large cave systems generating at fixed points, with more variation around each point, and more random caves generated; colossal cave systems have a check added that prevents two from generating right next to each other). Mob spawners are also tracked in the statistics so you can see how many you've mined (both the per-session stats in the inventory screen and the saved in-game stats); I also made them available in the Creative inventory (they only spawn pigs though). Emerald ore also generates in Forest Mountain (same abundance as Extreme Hills) and Volcanic Wasteland biomes (where it also generates in veins similar to diamond, one per chunk, plus a few single ore veins) in addition to Extreme Hills, although is still rarer than in vanilla since the biomes together are still less common than Extreme Hills in vanilla. Villages and temples were also made twice as common (average distance is about 70%, resulting in 0.7 x 0.7 = 0.5 normal spacing) to compensate for rarer plains and deserts (still rarer overall) but with an exclusion zone of 32 chunks from the origin, so spawning in a village is impossible (speaking of spawn, it isn't uncommon to find yourself spawning right at 0,0 because the game failed to find a proper "spawn biome", which are plains, forest, taiga, and jungle, the vanilla spawn biomes).
Note that this mod uses a custom language file containing names for the amethyst items, as well as custom textures (these can both be changed with the appropriate resource packs).
December 30, 2014 update:
Palm trees now generate in beach biomes, using an algorithm that results in 1/4 of chunks containing palm trees, similar to how slime chunks are determined, except involving 4x4 chunk areas. There are four variants, including one that generates two trunks that split apart, and they are growable by growing a regular jungle sapling in a beach biome; they are made up of jungle wood and leaves, with the leaves being permanent so they can be placed without decay restrictions. Note that they are mainly decorative, and with only 33-41 leaves (single trees, with double trees being around 1/5 of trees) and a 1/40 chance of a sapling per block it is likely you can't sustainably harvest them. They also generate four cocoa pods ("coconuts") around the base of the leaves and uniquely, generate with curved trunks, similar to acacia trees in 1.7.
Palm tree variants; the double tree variant will always use a smaller canopy or the smallest for the lower trunk:
Palm trees on beaches (default and large biomes); note that naturally generated trees only generate on sand:
Also, various tweaks were made to the generation of rivers, with rivers mostly having very wide and well developed channels and even cut through mountains without drying up (haven't come across any yet, they only narrow down). Swamps, deserts, and mesa biomes also use their own river variants; in the case of deserts and mesas, using "desert" and "mesa" as the underlying biome, instead of the "river" biome. The pond-like rivers in swamp and jungle biomes use normal river generation, exclusive of the modifications to regular rivers; jungle rivers are also based on the "jungle" biome so will have lush green grass and vegetation when above sea level, instead of bare patches of off-color grass. All snow biomes also use frozen rivers, not just ice plains:
Here is a 2000x2000 world rendered with and without vegetation, snow and ice, the latter of which shows rivers and height variation better:
August 30, 2014 update (updated September 1):
Instead of making Ender chests double chest size by default I added a new block - the Diamond Ender Chest; intended for transporting items long distances or for safekeeping; unlike standard Ender chests they cannot be mined with Silk Touch and take much longer to mine (4x longer than obsidian, about 10 seconds with an Efficiency V diamond pickaxe), to discourage using them as "backpacks" (when mined they will drop eight diamonds and eight obsidian). Also, they are independent from regular Ender chests, saving their contents in a separate place in the player data file so you can use them along with normal Ender chests and your inventory to transport up to 117 stacks of items at once:
Crafting recipe (note that the inventory icon is bugged and shows up as a normal chest, not sure how to fix it but they render and work correctly when placed); note that you need 16 diamonds to make a pair of chests:
Mining a diamond Ender chest; you get back the diamonds and obsidian but not the Eye of Ender, but those are renewable so nothing is lost:
Inventory comparison between regular and diamond; note that they both have different items:
Note: If you upgrade by overwriting the existing mod you'll still have double chest-sized regular Ender chests because I no longer include the respective class for it, using a new class for the diamond Ender chest. Also, note that items in the last three rows will be lost if you upgrade with a clean jar, so be sure to empty your Ender chest first, at least the lower three rows (the first three rows were untouched when testing).
Also, Mesa biomes were tweaked so that instead using of a single color of stained clay across the whole world for each layer up to four different colors are used in a wave pattern with each layer shifted 1/4 the peak-peak distance so they change over at different points:
(this used to be in the OP but it got too large(!) so the descriptions for all previous updates have been moved to separate comments which originally described features added by that update)
I decided to improve beaches further by modifying how the noise field is generated for them with this as the result; beaches are much flatter and mostly above water; even with mountains the slope is much shallower than the land they connect to (basically, I forced height variation to be much lower in beach biomes):
No, this isn't large biomes:
Some in-game screenshots:
For comparison, an example of a very badly generated vanilla beach:
Of course, in my mod you can find beaches like this:
Note: The changes I made have no effect on existing terrain, except along coastlines, so you can update without big chunk borders.
I updated with a significant new addition; I added granite, diorite and andesite in the same manner as the 1.8 snapshots, along with the same crafting recipes to make polished versions (2x2 granite = 4x polished granite), except for the ones to make the unrefined blocks (i.e. make granite with diorite and quartz) as I decided there was no need for that*, although you can use them in place of stone to make slabs and such (metadata independent). Also, I lowered the maximum altitude to sea level (8 veins of each per chunk over y=0-63 with the same density as in 1.8; 10 veins over 0-79) since I thought it would be better not to have it exposed all over the place. The exception is in the Volcanic Wasteland biome where it generates across the full range of terrain with 16 veins of each over 0-127 (they are all igneous rocks, associated with volcanic activity).
*For my current world I did some trickery to populate existing chunks with them, but not affect anything else by copying the region files with all chunks marked for repopulation to a Superflat world with preset 2;0;0 (generating only empty chunks) and decoration, with the only decoration being the new stones (disabled all other features), flew around to load chunks, then deleted empty chunks and marked the border chunks for repopulation as normal and copied them back after ensuring it worked properly. Normally if you do this by using MCEdit to repopulate chunks you'll get double ores, trees, grass, animals, etc (the chunks at the eastern and southern edges of the world have to be marked for population or you'll get a strip of no features).
This mod looks like one of the best biome mods I've seen that doesn't make me feel like I'm being lazy in not trying to find every single biome that exists in a world (coughBiomes'oPlentycough), since most of these are vanilla themed, and just bring more of an interesting selection of biomes that don't flat out make the vanilla biomes seem like garbage. However, I really need to know if this will effect the modded biomes that are added by other mods like Thaumcraft, the ore spawning system that is added by Metallurgy, the generated structures added by Project Red, and the loot that you find in generated structures (for example, Steadfast bees, Thaumium, and Steel armor).
This reminds me of what highlands was originally going to be, just with some extra goodies.
I'm also having trouble installing. Is this a Jar, or mods folder mod?
I have a new account called "Mushroomsock" now, so please do not send me PMs.
As indicated by the installation instructions I provided, this is a jar mod and is likely incompatible with any other mods; Forge itself won't even run unless you tell it to ignore a modified jar, and as you can see from this thread where I made a very simple mod for somebody even minor changes can completely break things.
That is to say, this is the only mod that I currently use, and while I previously did use Forge and several mods I used the patched Forge source to make my own mods (Forge adds stuff to enable mods to access the code; if it detects a modified class it refuses to patch it, so by modding the already-patched source I can bypass that; having said that, this only causes issues if you use a mod that depends on a modified class, as seen in the link above; I got around it by editing a different class).
As for possibly making a Forge version, that is out of the question, although I wouldn't mind if somebody wanted to add something I made into a Forge mod (as was done with another mod I made, and made better).
That said, some of the biomes are rather simple to make; for example, here is the code for the Forest mountains biome:
In BiomeDecorator:
It should also be noted that I mostly added new biomes in a different manner than the way they are usually added; instead of adding to a list of biomes (aside from the first few I added as this was after I created my world and this would radically change biome placement) I substitute vanilla biomes with my own, with varying chances up to 1/2, including multiple biomes (in GenLayerBiome):
Notably, this allowed me to add new biomes without changing the overall biome placement, which I took advantage of to avoid chunk borders in my world; i.e. ensure any existing biome at the edge of generated chunks doesn't change; as it is, if you recreated my world you'd find a mesa biome in place of the plains where I built my base, otherwise the same; here is how I substituted plains biomes:
TheMasterCaver's First World - possibly the most caved-out world in Minecraft history - includes world download.
TheMasterCaver's World - my own version of Minecraft largely based on my views of how the game should have evolved since 1.6.4.
Why do I still play in 1.6.4?
Man! I thought I had edited that bit out of my post! I worked it out. It's been ages since I've seen a non-forge mod! Good job! There need to be more mods like this.
I have a new account called "Mushroomsock" now, so please do not send me PMs.
(note - this only affects naturally generated trees; player-grown trees still have the same height range as vanilla)
TheMasterCaver's First World - possibly the most caved-out world in Minecraft history - includes world download.
TheMasterCaver's World - my own version of Minecraft largely based on my views of how the game should have evolved since 1.6.4.
Why do I still play in 1.6.4?
Also, you may note that, except for the trunk, logs are placed using the full bark texture (data values 12-15); this was also done for other types of branched trees, which is something that should have been done in vanilla for acacia trees in particular.
Also, I decided to improve the Ice Hills subbiome so it isn't just a big mound of ice; ice now covers the ground to a depth of 10-15 blocks with snow underneath to a depth proportional to the height above sea level (i.e. as the land rises up the snow underneath goes deeper, if at a lower rate), this also leads to some interesting caves in/under them (note that snow blocks don't melt, so placing torches isn't a problem, mobs will spawn in the caves; a modified version of WorldGenMinable was also used to generate ores in snow blocks):
TheMasterCaver's First World - possibly the most caved-out world in Minecraft history - includes world download.
TheMasterCaver's World - my own version of Minecraft largely based on my views of how the game should have evolved since 1.6.4.
Why do I still play in 1.6.4?
I haven't noticed a difference in performance while playing with this mod (I do use Optifine but it runs well even when testing in MCP without it, I mainly use it to improve chunk loading and lag spikes), and I wouldn't really expect any unless you are generating new chunks since it only affects terrain generation and doesn't add in new items or anything (although while testing the Mega Forest biome causes chunk generation to lag such that chunks stop loading until I stop flying (if your CPU is only single-core this could also cause FPS lag, as the server, which generates chunks, otherwise runs on a separate thread/core from the client), but there were no problems when I found one in-game by just walking; that said, giant trees can cause a lot of lag on Fancy graphics, Advanced OpenGL also makes a big difference for me, although isn't supported by all graphics cards and was even disabled in 1.7 if you don't have one that does).
Also, the cave mods that somebody else linked to (above) only modify the size/frequency of cave systems for 1.7.2+ to get the cave generation in 1.6.4 or double it (someone else also made a Forge mod, in the replies, that allows more customization); you won't get any huge caves or anything like that, although I could make a mod for 1.7.2 that increases the size range of individual caves and ravines and their distribution (note that this mod makes mineshafts rarer than they were in 1.6.4, similar to 1.7, but they are more spread out instead of being randomly placed, often next to each other, so can be easier to find; the distribution of large cave systems is similar).
TheMasterCaver's First World - possibly the most caved-out world in Minecraft history - includes world download.
TheMasterCaver's World - my own version of Minecraft largely based on my views of how the game should have evolved since 1.6.4.
Why do I still play in 1.6.4?
Here it is; caves, ravines, and mineshafts all generate exactly like in the main mod (cross-version compatible; while you'd get chunk borders on the surface the underground would be the same), with the exception of biome-specific caves (i.e. extra caves in Extreme Hills, which are obviously in different locations); I also added in the cut-up strongholds fix (always making walls generate even over empty space) and a no void fog mod (as the caves go 5 layers deeper; note also that if you want to branch-mine for diamonds do it at around layer 6; layer 11 won't get you anything as they only generate up to layer 10):
https://www.dropbox....Caves_1.7.2.zip
(note that this isn't as complex as it seems; MCP 1.7.2 put many classes into single files and reobfuscates all of them even if only one inner class was modified)
Also, while testing this I added a "fix" to cave generation which I also included in the main mod; that is, the code has a check for water in the path of a cave or ravine and if any is found it doesn't generate in a chunk containing water (within some vertical distance); I got around this by having them only cut through stone (leaving a dirt layer under water). However, as you can see here it can leave weird square shelves of land sticking out, particularly over large caves (usually not this noticeable, I've never encountered this yet in my world as giant cave openings like this are rare):
(vanilla would simply bail out entirely, leaving a solid vertical wall of stone, as seen in this bug report)
Basically, what I did was remove the vanilla water check, which operates on a per-chunk basis and replaced it with code that checks for water in a 5x5 cube centered around the current block being dug out, done on a block-by-block basis, with this as the result; perhaps still a bit weird to have a shelf of land sticking out like this but at least it is contoured to the river and not an entire chunk; an ideal solution would be to not generate a cave at all if there was water anywhere in its path but that isn't practical because caves can start in nonexistent chunks (before they are generated):
(note that the sand you see in the second image isn't floating, as I'd already modified the sand patch generator to use sandstone instead of sand if the block underneath is air; for 1.7.2 I did something similar to gravel in ocean biomes to prevent it from collapsing into caves).
Incidentally, here is the same cave in 1.7.2:
TheMasterCaver's First World - possibly the most caved-out world in Minecraft history - includes world download.
TheMasterCaver's World - my own version of Minecraft largely based on my views of how the game should have evolved since 1.6.4.
Why do I still play in 1.6.4?
Edit:Nevermind.
http://www.minecraftforum.net/forums/mapping-and-modding/skins/2183704-in-dire-need-of-a-new-skin
You should be able to remove "axv.class" when installing the mod and it should be fully functional other than that part, which just displays them (not tested but I know that class only references code in another class I made, as opposed to the other way around, so can be safely removed).
TheMasterCaver's First World - possibly the most caved-out world in Minecraft history - includes world download.
TheMasterCaver's World - my own version of Minecraft largely based on my views of how the game should have evolved since 1.6.4.
Why do I still play in 1.6.4?
Version 2 update:
Hilly Plains
Forest Mountains (two variants, one with increased height variation)
Mountainous Desert
Tropical Swamp
Mixed Forest
Bushlands
Mega Tree Plains
Mesa
Birch Forest
Mega Forest
Taiga (vanilla taiga renamed to Winter Taiga)
Volcanic Wasteland
Lake (also sound as a sub-biome)
Mega Taiga
Big Oak Forest
Winter Forest
Sub-biomes (Forest Hills, Desert Hills, Extreme Hills Edge, etc):
Hilly Plains (hillier variant in main biome)
Extreme Forest Mountains
Mountainous Desert Hills
Mixed Forest Hills
Spruce Tree hills
Mesa Plateau
Mesa Edge
Birch Forest Hills
Mega Forest Hills
Taiga Hills (vanilla Taiga Hills renamed to Winter Taiga Hills)
Ice Hills
Lake (as a sub-biome in many other biomes)
Frozen Lake (same as above but found in snowy biomes)
Mega Taiga Hills
Big Oak Forest Hills
Extreme Mountains (sub-biome in Extreme Hills)
Winter Forest Hills
Winter Forest Mountains
Desert Beach (variant of beach along deserts, identical to normal beaches except sand above y=65 isn't converted to grass/dirt)
In accordance with the addition of many x-hills biomes the maximum height ranges of their corresponding biomes were reduced a bit, although still a lot more variability than seen in vanilla (e.g. refer to this thread) with the x-hills sub-biomes having increased height variation beyond what their main biomes had originally.
Biome distribution was also changed; in "normal" areas (non-Ice Plains in vanilla) most biomes, both vanilla and modded, have the same chance of occurring, except for Volcanic Wasteland, which has 1/4 the frequency, and Mega Taiga, Ice Plains, Lake, and each variant of Forest Mountains (which effectively makes Forest Mountains as a whole as common as the other "common" biomes). Areas formerly occupied by Ice Plains in vanilla are split between 15% Winter Taiga, 10% Mega Taiga, 5% Winter Forest, 30% Ice Plains, and 40% other biomes.
Beach generation was also improved with Beta 1.7.3-style beaches instead of the sloppy messes often seen in vanilla default worlds afterwards (refer to this thread again); even around mountains beaches are mostly within 1-2 blocks of sea level, instead of splashed up the mountainside, most of the biome is also above sea level with a (usually) sharper drop-off to the ocean depths; essentially, height variation relative to sea level was forced to be much lower and I added a special method that removes sand blocks above sea level within 6-8 blocks of water to a height of 2 blocks (if there aren't any blocks above them within 1 block) and replaces blocks above y=65 with grass/dirt, except in deserts, with a special variant of beach ("Desert Beach", otherwise the same) to have a consistent maximum height of sand along shorelines (i.e. no sand stretching up a hillside):
The new stone types (granite, diorite, andesite) in the 1.8 snapshots were also added, using the same data values (variants of stone) and the same crafting recipes for the polished versions (no recipes for crafting the raw blocks as there really isn't any need for them). In world generation, 8 veins of each generate between y=0-63, which is somewhat less than in the snapshots (10 veins across 0-79, same ratio of veins/layers, making up around 13% of solid blocks (stone and ore) underground) since I thought they should remain below sea level; the exception is the Volcanic Wasteland biome where they generate with twice the number and range (16 and 0-127):
Here is a cutaway of a Superflat world with ores generated to show how common they are:
Perhaps most significant is the addition of items from a mod I previously used; amethyst armor and tools, although nerfed from the original mod (which was actually nerfed already as you can see in the link), which gave you tools with the mining speed of Efficiency V diamond and a sword equivalent to Sharpness III diamond; in this case they are basically just a more durable replacement for diamond, having the exact same stats except for three times the durability. In addition, they can only be enchanted with books (enchantability of zero). The ore is also about six times rarer than diamond, but distributed so it about half as common in the first layer above bedrock (so the common advice to mine above lava will net you little ore, around 1/8 as common as diamond there; factoring in durability this is a smaller difference than it would seem as three times the durability means it is effectively only twice as rare, similar to how diamond is about 6 times rarer than iron within its range but diamond tools are 6 times more durable):
Ore distribution in the lowest 10 and 1 layers above bedrock in a Superflat world; amethyst ore is the "future block" with an ID of 200; note that nearly a third of it is present in the lowest layer (y=1) alone, with the relative abundance being only 1/8 of diamond above y=2 (1/8 chance of generating above y=2, 100% otherwise, not quite as common below since ore veins cross up to 4 layers down from where they generate). Also, you can see the relative abundance of the new 1.8 stones:
The ore and block (made like diamond, etc, blocks) also requires a diamond pickaxe or itself to mine with half the mining time of obsidian for the ore and a third for the block; they are also resistant to normal explosions (although so rare that this is of little use, though you could TNT-mine to find ore). Amethyst gems can also be found in naturally generated chests.
Various other tweaks were made, such as making cave generation more randomized (fewer large cave systems generating at fixed points, with more variation around each point, and more random caves generated; colossal cave systems have a check added that prevents two from generating right next to each other). Mob spawners are also tracked in the statistics so you can see how many you've mined (both the per-session stats in the inventory screen and the saved in-game stats); I also made them available in the Creative inventory (they only spawn pigs though). Emerald ore also generates in Forest Mountain (same abundance as Extreme Hills) and Volcanic Wasteland biomes (where it also generates in veins similar to diamond, one per chunk, plus a few single ore veins) in addition to Extreme Hills, although is still rarer than in vanilla since the biomes together are still less common than Extreme Hills in vanilla. Villages and temples were also made twice as common (average distance is about 70%, resulting in 0.7 x 0.7 = 0.5 normal spacing) to compensate for rarer plains and deserts (still rarer overall) but with an exclusion zone of 32 chunks from the origin, so spawning in a village is impossible (speaking of spawn, it isn't uncommon to find yourself spawning right at 0,0 because the game failed to find a proper "spawn biome", which are plains, forest, taiga, and jungle, the vanilla spawn biomes).
Note that this mod uses a custom language file containing names for the amethyst items, as well as custom textures (these can both be changed with the appropriate resource packs).
December 30, 2014 update:
Palm trees now generate in beach biomes, using an algorithm that results in 1/4 of chunks containing palm trees, similar to how slime chunks are determined, except involving 4x4 chunk areas. There are four variants, including one that generates two trunks that split apart, and they are growable by growing a regular jungle sapling in a beach biome; they are made up of jungle wood and leaves, with the leaves being permanent so they can be placed without decay restrictions. Note that they are mainly decorative, and with only 33-41 leaves (single trees, with double trees being around 1/5 of trees) and a 1/40 chance of a sapling per block it is likely you can't sustainably harvest them. They also generate four cocoa pods ("coconuts") around the base of the leaves and uniquely, generate with curved trunks, similar to acacia trees in 1.7.
Palm trees on beaches (default and large biomes); note that naturally generated trees only generate on sand:
Also, various tweaks were made to the generation of rivers, with rivers mostly having very wide and well developed channels and even cut through mountains without drying up (haven't come across any yet, they only narrow down). Swamps, deserts, and mesa biomes also use their own river variants; in the case of deserts and mesas, using "desert" and "mesa" as the underlying biome, instead of the "river" biome. The pond-like rivers in swamp and jungle biomes use normal river generation, exclusive of the modifications to regular rivers; jungle rivers are also based on the "jungle" biome so will have lush green grass and vegetation when above sea level, instead of bare patches of off-color grass. All snow biomes also use frozen rivers, not just ice plains:
Here is a 2000x2000 world rendered with and without vegetation, snow and ice, the latter of which shows rivers and height variation better:
August 30, 2014 update (updated September 1):
Instead of making Ender chests double chest size by default I added a new block - the Diamond Ender Chest; intended for transporting items long distances or for safekeeping; unlike standard Ender chests they cannot be mined with Silk Touch and take much longer to mine (4x longer than obsidian, about 10 seconds with an Efficiency V diamond pickaxe), to discourage using them as "backpacks" (when mined they will drop eight diamonds and eight obsidian). Also, they are independent from regular Ender chests, saving their contents in a separate place in the player data file so you can use them along with normal Ender chests and your inventory to transport up to 117 stacks of items at once:
Mining a diamond Ender chest; you get back the diamonds and obsidian but not the Eye of Ender, but those are renewable so nothing is lost:
Inventory comparison between regular and diamond; note that they both have different items:
Note: If you upgrade by overwriting the existing mod you'll still have double chest-sized regular Ender chests because I no longer include the respective class for it, using a new class for the diamond Ender chest. Also, note that items in the last three rows will be lost if you upgrade with a clean jar, so be sure to empty your Ender chest first, at least the lower three rows (the first three rows were untouched when testing).
Also, Mesa biomes were tweaked so that instead using of a single color of stained clay across the whole world for each layer up to four different colors are used in a wave pattern with each layer shifted 1/4 the peak-peak distance so they change over at different points:
(this used to be in the OP but it got too large(!) so the descriptions for all previous updates have been moved to separate comments which originally described features added by that update)
TheMasterCaver's First World - possibly the most caved-out world in Minecraft history - includes world download.
TheMasterCaver's World - my own version of Minecraft largely based on my views of how the game should have evolved since 1.6.4.
Why do I still play in 1.6.4?
Some in-game screenshots:
For comparison, an example of a very badly generated vanilla beach:
Of course, in my mod you can find beaches like this:
Note: The changes I made have no effect on existing terrain, except along coastlines, so you can update without big chunk borders.
TheMasterCaver's First World - possibly the most caved-out world in Minecraft history - includes world download.
TheMasterCaver's World - my own version of Minecraft largely based on my views of how the game should have evolved since 1.6.4.
Why do I still play in 1.6.4?
*For my current world I did some trickery to populate existing chunks with them, but not affect anything else by copying the region files with all chunks marked for repopulation to a Superflat world with preset 2;0;0 (generating only empty chunks) and decoration, with the only decoration being the new stones (disabled all other features), flew around to load chunks, then deleted empty chunks and marked the border chunks for repopulation as normal and copied them back after ensuring it worked properly. Normally if you do this by using MCEdit to repopulate chunks you'll get double ores, trees, grass, animals, etc (the chunks at the eastern and southern edges of the world have to be marked for population or you'll get a strip of no features).
TheMasterCaver's First World - possibly the most caved-out world in Minecraft history - includes world download.
TheMasterCaver's World - my own version of Minecraft largely based on my views of how the game should have evolved since 1.6.4.
Why do I still play in 1.6.4?
...