Minecraft Forums

Glimmar's Even Tastier Biome Colours






Rename to 'grasscolor' and place directly in your 'misc' folder in the 'minecraft.jar' file.


Rename to 'foliagecolor' and place directly in your 'misc' folder in the 'minecraft.jar' file.

It is necessary to place these directly into your 'minecraft.jar' file or the changes will not be recognised! When I have enough new things to include in my texture pack, I will release an updated version. I'm not sure that new biome colours warrants the hassle of re-installing from scratch, but if there is sufficient demand from folks who are not overly familiar with dropping things directly into the 'minecraft.jar', I'll package something up sooner. :smile.gif:

I daren't say I'm happier with the above versions than anything that has gone before or someone will again find something untoward, but I didn't come across anything I wasn't happy with!

This time the grasscolour has had the grey frozen areas reduced even further and areas that could result in harsh transitions have been blurred to an even greater degree. Areas where the grass and foliage was displaying as a creamy ochre colour I hope have gone for ever. I've done my best to keep as much variation as possible still, bearing in mind the limitations of the biome colour system that highlights anything other than very blurred transitions in a horrible way!

I've slightly reduced the proportion of trees in blossom and other seasonal colours one would expect in a decidous forest, whilst trying to mitigate against the randomness inherent in the system, ie. there will still be trees that have green, orange and red all within the one tree, but these combinations should be rarer and exhibit smoother transitions.

The blurred lines along the long sides of the triangles have been dealt with, so no dusty colours should result from these areas in the landscape

Please be aware that existing worlds will still exhibit the bug where evergreen foliage is randomly mixed in with deciduous foliage, this is something Notch still has to fix. Therefore until you cut down those offending trees you will see some garish combinations of dark green cubes of evergreen foliage mixed in with orange or even rusty red trees. The problem can be fixed if you cut these down and plant new trees in their place. The new trees grow properly without mixed types of foliage. New worlds and new areas correctly draw the foliage as it should be. :smile.gif:

In the first pic you should also see evidence of the 'Water Biome' mod by Nandonalt and the 'Ruins' mod by d00dv4d3r, two of the most awesome mods I've dropped into my Minecraft .jar file for quite some time. I highly recommend both mods to you for extreme beautification of Minecraft and they look absolutely splendiforous along with my new biome colours! :smile.gif:

Quote from Croco15 »

Looking good Glimmar. I wish I could master the biomes like you! I'm struggling with them a lot, they don't ever seem to make sense!

Hah! I'm no master, mate. I tell you, it's like editing water. Those biomes are mercurial in the way they translate to the actual landscape. How they are read is probably easily understood by a programmer, but a humble artist like myself finds it difficult to grasp that desert, plains, seasonal forest and most varied of all rainforest, only occupy those little strips on the side. I do not understand how the colour translates to the biomes in MInecraft in any meaningful way other than roughly by biome. Try drawing a straight line on the triangle and you'll find it chopped up randomly on the landscape! The oil spill patterns I used to get with my old biome grasscolor.png didn't really relate to any shapes in the triangle unless vast swathes of Minecraft grass was being painted from just a tiny ring of colour on the triangle.

Only advise I could give is to keep the colours blurred and roughly within the bounds of the biome. Don't try to draw any specific shapes like clumps of trees or lines as they'll just get exaggerated too much in the landscape. There is a certain masochistic fun to be had I suppose and it reminds a little of amateur photography. You do your best to get a good pic, but until you get it up on screen you never know what you're really going to get.

@ Tigii: I'm relieved to hear that then!

Quote from Graveshadow »

Glimmar I have been playing using your texture pack since you came out with it pretty much and I have to say THANK YOU. Its amazing and your always prompt with either an update to the texture or letting us know your working on it. I look forward to whats ahead as Notch continues to add to the game.

Thanks, mate, for taking the trouble to give encouragement and for the support. It is much appreciated. I do my best...can't do it any faster, but I try! :smile.gif:

Quote from Tiger4Ruler »

for inspiration maybe?

http://www.intothepixel.com/artwork/index.asp sorry got to have a look myself

That here would be my home in minecraft maybe:

I see what you mean about the house, kind of like a Steampunk version of Elrond's House from Lord of the Rings. You should use that as the basis of a big build in Minecraft, mate, if you haven't already! Beautiful painting!

Quote from EliteGamer19 »

Beatuiful.
Looks better with Airship Mod. Too bad mods just confuse me.

Forgetting about my troubles, you diserve a diamond sir.

Thank you kindly for the shiny diamond. :smile.gif:

Perhaps Notch's new mod system will make life easier and help you overcome those pesky mod difficulties!

Quote from ksheep »

Oi, mods. I've currently got a fair number, but I'm running older versions of half of them, due to the different versions of ModLoader. However, I am still using a fairly up-to-date version of the texture pack, and this is what I found right outside my base on my main SSP world after getting the new foliage colors:



I must say, I really like what's been done with this. Looks great

Thanks, mate! :smile.gif: That's what I was getting on my big world and a couple of new worlds I started just for test purposes, I'm quite sure someone will find an oddity or two! The only areas you should see any dusty grass will be in the arctic, but no dusty trees. It's just a pity white is interpreted this way...unless it's to do with the shade of my grass on the terrain.png file. That's an experiment for another day though.

Anyway, glad to see someone's having a positive experience with these flippin' biomes. I'm really liking the 'Ruins' mod by the way.

I think it was mentioned in my thread, or I read somewhere else, that someone had made a Stone Biome mod, is this just a dream I had? :smile.gif:

The stone biome comment was me. =) It was done by nandonalt (same guy as water biome) though he didn't release it. Only reference that I can find is his post on a random page of his thread. Wouldn't have found it if I wasn't having such a hard time getting the biome water to work at first.

Anyway here is the link to his post with the download in it:

viewtopic.php?f=1032&t=120185&start=1350#p3186199

Happy biome-ing. :happy.gif:

New biomes are awesome!
Love all the colours! Makes minecraft seem so alive! (not that it was dead or anything anyway)
I added a poll to my texture pack to see if people want me to add awesome grass biomes too :biggrin.gif: I personally think they would look great, but making them blend together will be difficult...

@ aTempesT and XSSheep: Thanks, guys. Helps me to be a little more confident with my most recent biome edit.

aTempesT, thanks for the Stone Biome mod link too...nice to know I'm not imagining things! I wonder what else could potentially be 'biomed'? I'm off to have a look at the stone one. I noticed in Nandonalt's thread you liked it, but found the colours a little extreme in some areas. Have you tried editing the triangle yet? Just curious to find out if it made a difference? :smile.gif:

I did mess around with the triangle a bit. I had some luck with the triangle, but before I made too much progress I decided to wait to use it to see if nandonalt might take my suggestion as to the ores, as the diamond and iron i use mostly has a decent amount of white in it, so it was taking on the colors quite noticeably. I bet you could get the triangle to work out pretty well though for the stone, your biomes always look so nice. o-o Whenever I mess with them it always comes out mush. >.>

As for what else could be 'biomed' I was thinking of that myself. From what nandonalt has done I would assume any block could be biomed. The only other one that might look good biomed IMO would be dirt and possibly sand.

My wild mind also went racing out wanting to make some all encompassing mod that would diversify the biomes so that there's actually a difference and different resources in each. I got pretty far on the ideas, but once I started looking through the files I couldn't find anything to help me with figuring out the biomes. :sleep.gif: If anyone can point me to which files change the biomes it would be much appreciated. o-o

PS You made me want to take another crack at the stone biome triangle. I guess I found what I'll waste my morning on. =b

EDIT: Further testing has led me to a couple conclusions. The first being the only color that really is that extreme is the green in the rain forest biome. The second being it works a LOT better the lighter the stone color is. Part of the reason the green looked so extreme is that it got really dark partially because of being a dark green and partially because the stone texture was dark-ish to begin with. I don't know why I thought the other areas were that extreme to begin with. Maybe it's just because it was a change and now after having flown through a couple worlds for a while it's begun to grow on me. =b

Though I have to say I probably still won't use it in normal play until the cobble is changed too, mining the green or yellow stone in forests or deserts and getting plain grey cobble feels quite odd.

I think I have figured out my thoughts on the stone biome colors. Sadly, I don't think it will work out, for me at least. Mainly due to it being a building material as well as a natural resource. The stone looks awesome with the changing colors as you can catch glimpses of it as you fly by or exploring through caves. Once you start building with it though it feels off. There is of course the cobblestone problem, where the color of the cobble is not changed, though that is fixable of course. Then you also have stone slabs which is also fixable. But if you happen to have a biome border where you want to build, it can look quite off. It's one thing to have changing stone colors on a cliff, but quite another to have it across your building! I think biome colors have worked quite well with the grass and trees because it's plants and they vary in color quite often, even if you plant it yourself. Water works too as water does appear different colors in different areas. Even stone were it just natural would look quite good, I just can't see someone building a large stone building and having it change types semi-gradually halfway across their building.

Now that might just be me and you or other people might still love it. That's my take on it now though. =S

(Sorry about the rambling in there, having a hard time getting my thoughts together coherently this morning. I think I need more coffee. :sleep.gif: )

@Tigii If you are referring to me and the mod idea, PM me about it as I wouldn't want to clutter Glimmar's thread more than I already have. =S

Quote from aTempesT »

I did mess around with the triangle a bit. I had some luck with the triangle, but before I made too much progress I decided to wait to use it to see if nandonalt might take my suggestion as to the ores, as the diamond and iron i use mostly has a decent amount of white in it, so it was taking on the colors quite noticeably. I bet you could get the triangle to work out pretty well though for the stone, your biomes always look so nice. o-o Whenever I mess with them it always comes out mush. >.>

As for what else could be 'biomed' I was thinking of that myself. From what nandonalt has done I would assume any block could be biomed. The only other one that might look good biomed IMO would be dirt and possibly sand.

My wild mind also went racing out wanting to make some all encompassing mod that would diversify the biomes so that there's actually a difference and different resources in each. I got pretty far on the ideas, but once I started looking through the files I couldn't find anything to help me with figuring out the biomes. :sleep.gif: If anyone can point me to which files change the biomes it would be much appreciated. o-o

PS You made me want to take another crack at the stone biome triangle. I guess I found what I'll waste my morning on. =b

EDIT: Further testing has led me to a couple conclusions. The first being the only color that really is that extreme is the green in the rain forest biome. The second being it works a LOT better the lighter the stone color is. Part of the reason the green looked so extreme is that it got really dark partially because of being a dark green and partially because the stone texture was dark-ish to begin with. I don't know why I thought the other areas were that extreme to begin with. Maybe it's just because it was a change and now after having flown through a couple worlds for a while it's begun to grow on me. =b

I'm using it now and it's certainly interesting! I would agree with you that the colours are a bit too dark with the triangle as it stands. The darker the colour gets, the less texture you see in the distance, is what i'm finding. I shall be very interested to see what you come up with and will probably have a go myself sometime, but knowing how frustrating and time consuming these flippin' little 3 sided evil things are, I'm not doing it any time soon. I want to try and get more alternate textures and items finished off first before Notch sets us all off like headless chickens!

It doesn't trouble me to see the cobble look different in colour or shade, as I like the stone to contrast with cobble in my builds, but agree with you stone changing colour halfway through a build would look strange. So if Nandonalt was to develop this further I hope he makes it sortof optional. Totally agree with you on the sand and dirt being good candidates for 'biomifying'!

What we really need is a different type of stone for building that is distinctive from natural stone. So when we quarry natural 'coloured' stone, that has a heavier texture, it becomes a 'block' of stone with a fixed colour, like it's been chiselled and polished to be clean (so all chiselled stone would be the same colour for simplicity), with a side product of broken stones. Cobble would then be made using the smaller stones bound by a 'cement' or mortar.

For a long time I've thought it pretty strange that we place cobblestone in a furnace to get a large block of stone back! I think it would be better to use the furnace to produce a kind of cement powder which we combine with broken down rock to form a cobble block, but that could prove to be fairly tedious. I'm sure Notch thought about it long and hard before settling on the present arrangement. :smile.gif:

As you say there is so much potential for biome specific stuff, like resources, etc. If Notch doesn't do it over time (which I think he will) I'm sure others will. The question is, how integrated will everything be?

Quote from chuiu »

I stole some sounds from all over the place and modified some of minecrafts sounds to create a basic steampunk sound pack.

Download the sound pack here

Download this and follow instructions on how to change minecrafts sounds
And use this to enable sounds on older versions

Enjoy!

I've not tried it out myself in-game yet, 'cos I've already spent too much time on other mods this past few weeks and really need to get some long-standing things finished off first. However, I've just been listening to the individual sound files you made for the mobs and they are very, VERY good. Love the robotic chicken noise.
How stolen are the sounds? I'd love to put a link to this perhaps in the OP with due credit to yourself, but wouldn't want to court any trouble down the line for using the work of others without permission. Any chance you could do something similar, but with 'Open Source' sounds. I'd love to put it in the 'extra's' folder in the next release of the texture pack, but it may make that download a little on the heavy side. :sad.gif:

Great job, mate!

Quote from dangirdas »

Excellent pack! One of my 4 favorite texture packs out there!
I would like to see this coming in higher resolutions :biggrin.gif:

Many thanks, dangirdas. :smile.gif:

I get asked about higher resolution versions of this, but as I struggle to even finish this size, and keep up with Notch's updates, etc. The idea of doing something with even more pixels makes me break out in a cold sweat! Now if this was a full time job, my answer would probably be different, but with real life and work having to take precedence. My answer would be 99.9% certain I won't be doing a higher res version.

To be honest I've not even tried converting just one texture to 64x64 to see what's involved or how it would look, perhaps one day i might have a tinker, but honestly don't hold out hope...my wife would kill me if she thought I was contemplating trying something else! :smile.gif:

Quote from Tigii »

What do you consider a Biome? :tongue.gif: Then I might be able to ponder with you.

Those supposedly distinctive areas in Minecraft that mimic similar 'biome' areas in the real world, like tundra, jungle, desert, etc. they are based upon this triangle that Notch devised, that the game references for biome specific colours and materials (as in the case of deserts and arctic, etc):

Quote from Casand »

It's a great mod and a great texture pack in one!

I appreciate that, Casand! :smile.gif: