This time I get a really nice start - both in looks and ease of play. BoP Grassland absolutely lousy with sheep and Harvestcraft gardens, next to a Redwood Forest (unlimited wood). But once again I forget to take an establishing shot; this is from the end of the day.
I head over to a 2x2 redwood and chop it into a spiral staircase, like you would with a Jungle giant. Once I've worn out my starter wood axe I kill 3 sheep, build my starter shelter, put down my bed and - zzzz. No overnight issues! Easy as pie! (Actually much easier; pie in this world (Harvestcraft) requires a fair number of ingredients I don't have and probably won't for some time).
Next day it's mine time. I have enough wood for ladders to go all the way to mining level so I do just that. And immediately:
Uggh, Black Granite. UBC has 16 different "main stones" all with interesting and varied appearance but in 2 of 4 previous journal worlds I've been cursed with it at start. It's very hard, so slow to mine, and it's so dark it's hard to see holes or breakthroughs. In my first journal world I almost immediately stepped into a hole and fell over 10 blocks into total darkness; fortunately I managed to pillar back up and escape. But it turns out I'm luckier this time as I'm right on the edge of an Eclogite region, so I can just tunnel in that direction and I'll be fine.
I have enough wood to mine around at the bottom for quite a while and don't come back up until I'm running out of wood and need more. I continue spiral staircasing up the redwood but after a while I - fall off. Goodness my skills *are* rusty! Down to 3 hearts.
Well, now I'm going to need a lot of food to get those hearts back, so I switch to a Harvestcraft focus. I swat a huge number of gardens (there are WAY too many for game balance here) until my inventory jams with my collection.
I plant about 30 blocks in a mini farm, then try to figure a recipe I can make. Unfortunately most of the Harvestcraft recipe require cooking tools that need bricks, which I don't have, and/or staples like salt, butter, spices, etc. I don't have either, so I end up just making some juices and the roasting potatoes vanilla style. But it's enough, if not gourmet.
That out of the way, I go to collect Redwood. Now my approach is to pillar up on gravel - now Eclogite gravel, one of many nice changes from the great team led by Kreezxil that took the mod over from me. Thanks! The best part of modding is when somebody else does the work and does it right.
To get to the tops I have to chop through the foliage. I clean up the first tree (I hate leaving maimed trees around) and then chop down an even more massive 9x9 tree. I use up nearly 2 axes in the process, and have over 4 stacks of Redwood.
Then I make a bunch of fences and fence in my yard. Safety first!
Just by chance I notice that one of the pools near my base has - clay! I dig it up, roast to brick, and soon I have a harvestcraft Pot and Chopping Board that allow me to make a bunch of basic items like Stock, Garden Soup, Garden Salad, Cucumber Salad, etc. My food issues are solved, for now at least.
Thoroughly set with food and wood, I head down to the mine and spend several game days branch mining, until I have nearly a stack of iron. Unlike some of my previous games, I have little trouble with cave or mineshaft breakouts, and none at all with hostile mobs, just a bit of zombie groaning.
I've only found three diamonds so far, but at least I'm fully armored in iron.
Next episode: time for some exploring!
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Geographicraft (formerly Climate Control) - Control climate, ocean, and land sizes; stop chunk walls; put modded biomes into Default worlds, and more!
RTG plus - All the beautiful terrain of RTG, plus varied and beautiful trees and forests.
Better Forests Varied and beautiful trees and forests, in modern Minecraft.
Most of the increase in resource usage in newer versions has to do with how Mojang decided to start coding the game in 1.8, with absolutely no regard to code complexity or object creation
I was referring specifically to not knowing the performance impacts of the terrain blending in 1.18 (since Zeno410 mentioned that being a hurdle), not in a broad sense. I'm aware of the broader situation with performance and how the game has gone South in that regard a long time ago. There's not much most of us can do about it, however.
*My* pet peeve was that Mojang didn't seem to understand what a hashmap is or why you use it. I originally did Underground Biomes Constructs with tile entities for the stairs; but Mojang just used a list for tile entities so when there were a lot there was tremendous overhead searching, adding, or deleting. I had to rewrite the whole mod to made the stairs separate blocks. And along with no hashmaps, not really any caching.
I assume that they never considered having more than a few dozen/hundred tile entities loaded at any one time, and the ones that you might use more, such as chests, have their own issues (specifically, they are absolutely terrible for framerate; the 500+ chests I have in my main base in my first world have little impact on tick time but drop FPS by 3-fold when they are in view, though it is still far above the capped FPS. I was also able to halve the impact by using a custom model to render closed chests without all the draw calls and OpenGL state changes for each piece; entities are terrible in general because of this).
As far as using tile entities myself, I've only added flower pots (so they can hold more than 15 plants; Mojang did the same thing in 1.7) and barrels (a great way to avoid the FPS issues with chests and easier side-by-side storage), and have considered adding one for doors so I can add new variants of wooden doors without having to modify all the code that explicitly checks for "Block.doorWood", e.g. villages and entity interaction with doors (I generally avoid modifying vanilla code unless necessary).
Also, in my experience the biggest limiting factor on performance is how slow OpenGL is when you upload a vertex array (via the "Tessellator.draw" method); I've measured the time to render a 16x16x16 section of leaves on Fancy at around 20 milliseconds (equivalent to the frame time at 50 FPS), of which 90% is spent by OpenGL itself, and it seems like even 1.8+ is still bottlenecked by this (they only threaded the Java-side rendering code); this also limits the usability of my "full size trees in flowerpots" feature due to the lag spikes on chunk updates (a few here and there are fine, more with smaller trees):
16x16x16 Fancy leaves in vanilla:
Chunk update took 35652 us (render: 16481, upload: 19170)
TMCW:
Chunk update took 20927 us (render: 1971, upload: 18955)
12x Mega Tree flower pots:
Chunk update took 35611 us (render 2071, upload: 33539)
(if you are wondering how I cut the render time by 8-fold it was mostly by optimizing smooth lighting and biome color blending, and chunk data access in general)
Apparently, Optifine tried to force full multithreading with their "multicore" chunk rendering up to 1.7.10 but many graphics drivers disagreed with it:
Also, to reduce the number of blocks needed for stairs I actually pack two variants in a single block; likewise, all new types of wooden fence are a single block (I'm particularly mystified as to why Mojang wasted so many block IDs up to 1.12, despite having added over 300 new blocks, many of them variants of existing vanilla blocks, I've only used 30 new IDs with about 70 left, out of 256):
(particularly shulker boxes; they are already tile entities so they could have just added a color tag, while items can use their damage value. I know, they want to simplify commands so none of that "id / damage" stuff, but you can map command names to an id / damage value, or a "block state", e.g. stone is 1 and andesite is 1281, or 1 + 5 * 256)
I even went further and merged many vanilla blocks that have "on" and "off" states, including furnaces, redstone lamps (torches), and pumpkins, which was made possible by adding the ability for metadata to set the light level, and removed unnecessary items, such as cake and beds, by having the block drop itself (they also now have 3D item models, including a full bed model). Of course, this made the game incompatible with anything else, I block older/vanilla worlds by checking level.dat for a specific NBT tag which is only present in TMCW (the player's diamond ender chest inventory, which I renamed from "DiamondEnderChest" to "DEC5", i.e. TMCWv5. This is not an issue for me since I never update a modded world to a newer version of the mod, and hiding vanilla worlds prevents them from accidentally being loaded, I also use custom names for the stats and options files so they are separate from vanilla).
First, a minor mod change: I got tired of 10 minute days, so I installed Longer Days at the default of 20 minute days and 15 minute nights. This also requires I change the day lengths of Serene Seasons and Astral sorcery; initially I set them to 48000 ticks (doubled) because the mod said "doubled" in the config; but later I found an online mention it should be 42000. Hopefully the shifts won't cause trouble.
My sugar cane has been barely growing even though it's summer, supposedly its season. I think it may be due to it also now growing best in Swamp and Jungle, which I think is from Serene Seasons although I'm not sure. In any case, I haven't the cane for the paper I need for large scale exploration. But for a first go-round, I have a solution:
The Grasslands is absolutely lousy with pools, many of which have cane. There's plenty for now but in the long term I'll have to figure out a way to get lots of paper.
Another thing which is sort of visible here is the shadow in the water. That's from the floating in air Slime Islands Tinker's puts in to spawn its Blue Slimes, which produce blue slimeballs on death, which is a resource in Tinker's. I find this a really strange decision, because blue slime is not a essential resources yet they made this REALLY drastic worldgen change (the floating islands are EVERYWHERE) to put it in. I would expect Blue Slimes to just spawn under conditions similar to Green. There's a config to shut the floating islands off, and I flipped it after this episode, but the islands that are there remain.
Usually Slimes that fall off the islands go splat, but as you can see this one is over water and they survive. While I was gathering 3 Large Blue Slimes came after me, but they weren't particularly difficult to deal with since they're slow.
I head home, crank out my map and head to the northeast. One problem with the new map system is that spawn is usually near 0,0, and that's ALSO the corner of four maxed out maps. So you often need 4 maxed maps to explore the immediate area. Yuck. Explorercraft was much nicer that way, centering expanded maps on the map they came from, and using the Atlas to tile maps. But, I never updated it because it wasn't better *enough* for just me and it never generated much interest.
And, although I forgot to take a pic, I am near the edge of a map, and it really constrains my movement. A short northeast jog already has me at the edge.
The first biome is I *think* BoP Sheild but I didn't actually check because I was quickly attacked by two successive Better Creatures Wolves. They weren't hard to beat but I was shaken because I wasn't expecting danger in broad daylight.
Then I reach Ocean and get in my boat (phew!), passing this likely RTG Ice Mountains (I didn't get off to check) with some Better Creatures Walruses.
Next is BOP Wooded Wasteland. And this is where things went completely off the rails. No pics, because I was too freaked and distracted to take any. As I'm zipping along, I spot *multiple* large and ominous looking sharks. I fully expect those to be hostile and try to move around them. I later found out I was right; they are hostile when hungry, have good stats, and - worst - attack the boat first, which could dump me in the middle of a shark feeding frenzy, with me the meal.
Luckily, they didn't attack, probably because they weren't hungry. As I am sighing relief and wondering how to continue if the oceanic travel I rely on so much is seriously unsafe, I see a funny squiggle in the water right in front of me and BLAM!
I'm blind and poisoned. Oh great. The blindness is only a few seconds, but my hearts remain poisoned. And I had no idea why (later research indicates a Better Creatures jellyfish) Now things are REALLY bad.
I land quickly to get away from all this water danger and consider options. Back the way I came is a long way on foot, with wolves near the end. I can handle 1 or 2 but if they have a pack attack function - uhoh --. And the poisoning is not going away - although I'm not losing hearts. I don't even have milk at home to cure this.
So I decide to swing out and hope for more benign biomes. I don't even remember what biomes I passed through and I didn't think to take pics. I am still poisoned-but-not-taking-damage and I'm starting to suspect a bug.
Near dusk I spot a Cherry Blossom Grove, which makes me feel a little better even though it's not any safer than the scarier biomes I've been in. A bit less, actually, because it's duskspawning, as I found in my TO THE END OF THE WORLD journal (geez, turn that down; I "only" got 1/30 of the way there). And of course I spot ANOTHER disturbing mob, a brown bear, which I remember to screenshot although you only see a blobby brown thing behind the grass. I give it a WIDE berth.
I pillar up and sleep on top of a tree.
Next morning I continue on. Obviously the poison hearts are a bug but it's still distracting. I reach an Ocean and decide to risk it but it doesn't take me home.
I get off on these Highlands. From there I passed into a dark wooded biome where I didn't check anything because I suspected it was dayspawning and wanted to be on high alert. I did spot some chickens, which I'd like. From there I struggle through the mud of a Dead Swamp and then FINALLY
Words cannot express how relieved I was! My hearts still appeared poisoned (and yes, a bug, went away on reload). So now to put the map up in a frame --
Oh wait. No leather. Cows were one of the reasons I was out looking. I could butcher some horses in the grasslands, but ick.
Fortunately it turns out the Better Creatures wolf pelts I got can be processed into leather. So:
So you can see my constraints. North is ocean; usually a great thing to border but problematic in this game. West is the biomes you've been seeing; plenty of hostile creatures and not likely much I want other than those chickens. East and South is off to the next map I don't have paper for. So here I am stuck.
Oh, wait, the chickens! I could get those at least. I'll try to go east of the Dead Swamp and
A moose? Is that dangerous? Hmm. 4 hearts damage, faster than a player and
It's hostile! Great. So much for that. (There were several more not in the pic.)
So I am indeed stuck for a while, and maybe a long while if East and South are as dangerous as North and West. Very much not the kind of game I normally play with wide-ranging exploration and multiple bases.
But - variety IS the spice of life. And I've done quite a few extensive travelogues; not likely to be much substantive to say about the terrain after my last journal, in a world with RTG+BoP only 2 versions earlier. So for now, here I stay.
Next week: Buffing up or Um, how does Tinker's work, again?
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Geographicraft (formerly Climate Control) - Control climate, ocean, and land sizes; stop chunk walls; put modded biomes into Default worlds, and more!
RTG plus - All the beautiful terrain of RTG, plus varied and beautiful trees and forests.
Better Forests Varied and beautiful trees and forests, in modern Minecraft.
Note to self; maybe I should look into Biomes o' Plenty.
I remember that mod being a big thing before 1.7 and then I remember discussions around that time asking if it would lose its relevance a bit due to 1.7 adding so many biomes. Judging by those pictures attracting me even though I am familiar with 1.18+, I'd say no it's not irrelevant.
First, a minor mod change: I got tired of 10 minute days, so I installed Longer Days at the default of 20 minute days and 15 minute nights. This also requires I change the day lengths of Serene Seasons and Astral sorcery; initially I set them to 48000 ticks (doubled) because the mod said "doubled" in the config; but later I found an online mention it should be 42000. Hopefully the shifts won't cause trouble.
My sugar cane has been barely growing even though it's summer, supposedly its season. I think it may be due to it also now growing best in Swamp and Jungle, which I think is from Serene Seasons although I'm not sure. In any case, I haven't the cane for the paper I need for large scale exploration. But for a first go-round, I have a solution:
The Grasslands is absolutely lousy with pools, many of which have cane. There's plenty for now but in the long term I'll have to figure out a way to get lots of paper.
Another thing which is sort of visible here is the shadow in the water. That's from the floating in air Slime Islands Tinker's puts in to spawn its Blue Slimes, which produce blue slimeballs on death, which is a resource in Tinker's. I find this a really strange decision, because blue slime is not a essential resources yet they made this REALLY drastic worldgen change (the floating islands are EVERYWHERE) to put it in. I would expect Blue Slimes to just spawn under conditions similar to Green. There's a config to shut the floating islands off, and I flipped it after this episode, but the islands that are there remain.
Usually Slimes that fall off the islands go splat, but as you can see this one is over water and they survive. While I was gathering 3 Large Blue Slimes came after me, but they weren't particularly difficult to deal with since they're slow.
I head home, crank out my map and head to the northeast. One problem with the new map system is that spawn is usually near 0,0, and that's ALSO the corner of four maxed out maps. So you often need 4 maxed maps to explore the immediate area. Yuck. Explorercraft was much nicer that way, centering expanded maps on the map they came from, and using the Atlas to tile maps. But, I never updated it because it wasn't better *enough* for just me and it never generated much interest.
And, although I forgot to take a pic, I am near the edge of a map, and it really constrains my movement. A short northeast jog already has me at the edge.
The first biome is I *think* BoP Sheild but I didn't actually check because I was quickly attacked by two successive Better Creatures Wolves. They weren't hard to beat but I was shaken because I wasn't expecting danger in broad daylight.
Then I reach Ocean and get in my boat (phew!), passing this likely RTG Ice Mountains (I didn't get off to check) with some Better Creatures Walruses.
Next is BOP Wooded Wasteland. And this is where things went completely off the rails. No pics, because I was too freaked and distracted to take any. As I'm zipping along, I spot *multiple* large and ominous looking sharks. I fully expect those to be hostile and try to move around them. I later found out I was right; they are hostile when hungry, have good stats, and - worst - attack the boat first, which could dump me in the middle of a shark feeding frenzy, with me the meal.
Luckily, they didn't attack, probably because they weren't hungry. As I am sighing relief and wondering how to continue if the oceanic travel I rely on so much is seriously unsafe, I see a funny squiggle in the water right in front of me and BLAM!
I'm blind and poisoned. Oh great. The blindness is only a few seconds, but my hearts remain poisoned. And I had no idea why (later research indicates a Better Creatures jellyfish) Now things are REALLY bad.
I land quickly to get away from all this water danger and consider options. Back the way I came is a long way on foot, with wolves near the end. I can handle 1 or 2 but if they have a pack attack function - uhoh --. And the poisoning is not going away - although I'm not losing hearts. I don't even have milk at home to cure this.
So I decide to swing out and hope for more benign biomes. I don't even remember what biomes I passed through and I didn't think to take pics. I am still poisoned-but-not-taking-damage and I'm starting to suspect a bug.
Near dusk I spot a Cherry Blossom Grove, which makes me feel a little better even though it's not any safer than the scarier biomes I've been in. A bit less, actually, because it's duskspawning, as I found in my TO THE END OF THE WORLD journal (geez, turn that down; I "only" got 1/30 of the way there). And of course I spot ANOTHER disturbing mob, a brown bear, which I remember to screenshot although you only see a blobby brown thing behind the grass. I give it a WIDE berth.
I pillar up and sleep on top of a tree.
Next morning I continue on. Obviously the poison hearts are a bug but it's still distracting. I reach an Ocean and decide to risk it but it doesn't take me home.
I get off on these Highlands. From there I passed into a dark wooded biome where I didn't check anything because I suspected it was dayspawning and wanted to be on high alert. I did spot some chickens, which I'd like. From there I struggle through the mud of a Dead Swamp and then FINALLY
Words cannot express how relieved I was! My hearts still appeared poisoned (and yes, a bug, went away on reload). So now to put the map up in a frame --
Oh wait. No leather. Cows were one of the reasons I was out looking. I could butcher some horses in the grasslands, but ick.
Fortunately it turns out the Better Creatures wolf pelts I got can be processed into leather. So:
So you can see my constraints. North is ocean; usually a great thing to border but problematic in this game. West is the biomes you've been seeing; plenty of hostile creatures and not likely much I want other than those chickens. East and South is off to the next map I don't have paper for. So here I am stuck.
Oh, wait, the chickens! I could get those at least. I'll try to go east of the Dead Swamp and
A moose? Is that dangerous? Hmm. 4 hearts damage, faster than a player and
It's hostile! Great. So much for that. (There were several more not in the pic.)
So I am indeed stuck for a while, and maybe a long while if East and South are as dangerous as North and West. Very much not the kind of game I normally play with wide-ranging exploration and multiple bases.
But - variety IS the spice of life. And I've done quite a few extensive travelogues; not likely to be much substantive to say about the terrain after my last journal, in a world with RTG+BoP only 2 versions earlier. So for now, here I stay.
Next week: Buffing up or Um, how does Tinker's work, again?
A hostile mob dealing 4 hearts of damage per strike in addition to being faster than the player, even while sprinting. not a survival experience I would go for, as unfair combat I don't like even though it would be a realistic survival game design, I find that fun gameplay or game design is a better direction to go in than realism, but you mentioned this to be a mod, correct? meaning players wouldn't need to worry about this in vanilla.
1.20 is giving us cherry blossom trees however which are harmless and add more variety to plant life, I do agree that variety improves a game.
I do wish the vanilla game had more variety than what it currently offers, but the more features added to the game I could see the performance impact becoming larger. More items added to the game also leads to complaints about inventory space, extra items not having enough use to justify them existing in the game and so forth.
But artificially limiting the game just to pander to purists isn't helping matters either, the game needs to evolve and more options are generally better.
I head home, crank out my map and head to the northeast. One problem with the new map system is that spawn is usually near 0,0, and that's ALSO the corner of four maxed out maps. So you often need 4 maxed maps to explore the immediate area.
I've always thought that the vanilla 1.8+ map system was a bit odd; only level 0 maps are centered around 0,0 and everything else is centered so the northwest corner is at -64,-64; by contrast, my own modification makes all zoom level be centered around around 0,0 +/- a multiple of the scale width, thus for the level 3 maps I use in modded worlds the first map is centered around 0,0 and the surrounding maps are at +/- 1024; likewise, in my first world they are centered at multiples of 2048 (either system is better than what vanilla had before though; you had to go out to near the center of a map to ensure it was properly centered since they always aligned to a multiple of 128).
I do wish the vanilla game had more variety than what it currently offers, but the more features added to the game I could see the performance impact becoming larger
As I've mentioned and demonstrated many times before the content added in newer versions has very little to do with increases in resource usage due to the very nature of the game (one thing I've always been curious about is what a VisualVM analysis would show for current and/or modded versions, like what exactly is using so much memory or CPU?).
Fun fact, I likely offset any increase in memory usage by simply removing the following line of code, which needlessly allocates 10 MB of memory which is only freed on a client-side out of memory condition which should normally never happen, and removing it had no effect when I triggered one (the game frees up far more memory by exiting the world):
/** A 10MiB preallocation to ensure the heap is reasonably sized. */
public static byte[] memoryReserve = new byte[10485760];
Likewise, a relatively simple change led to the single biggest reduction in allocation rates (vanilla always initializes data structures for block IDs, metadata, and light levels, only to replace them when loading chunks; while it doesn't load sky light data for the Nether/End it still allocates the arrays for them, which as noted):
// Called by AnvilChunkLoader to pass in NBT data instead of initializing empty arrays which are replaced right away.
// Also makes sure arrays are the correct size, attempting to fix them if possible.
public ChunkSection(int y, NBTTagCompound nbt, boolean skyLight)
{
this.blockArray = this.validateData(nbt.getByteArray("Blocks"), 4096);
// Vanilla for comparison
public ExtendedBlockStorage(int par1, boolean par2)
{
this.blockLSBArray = new byte[4096];
ExtendedBlockStorage var13 = new ExtendedBlockStorage(var12 << 4, var9);
var13.setBlockLSBArray(var11.getByteArray("Blocks"));
Note to self; maybe I should look into Biomes o' Plenty.
I remember that mod being a big thing before 1.7 and then I remember discussions around that time asking if it would lose its relevance a bit due to 1.7 adding so many biomes. Judging by those pictures attracting me even though I am familiar with 1.18+, I'd say no it's not irrelevant.
What you're seeing is a combination of BoP and RTG: BoP is doing the flora, but RTG is doing the terrain, although I tried to capture the spirit of the underlying BoP terrains as well as I could with a few exceptions like Marsh, where I had access to some tricks they didn't have. RTG has a different spirit than vanilla; lots of broad sweeping terrain, essentially no craziness and some larger scale structure that at least pre-1.18 couldn't do.
But I do think BoP is fresh and very intersting on its own. It has an interesting philosophy of mixing attractive, unremarkable, and even ugly biomes and the combo makes for a very lively world. Vanilla is now copying that some with Mangrove Swamp, which is in the style of a BoP "ugly" biome even if it's not much like a particular biome. And now Cherry Blossom biome *does* seem to be mimicking BoP's Cherry Blossom Grove.
While BoP survived 1.7, the other big biome mods didn't. EXBL never had another release. Highlands did one more, for 1.8 I think but based on a *totally* different terrain system and then stopped. I modified Highlands to work with RTG for 1.10 (becaue I crazy loved that mod) but never got its own world going.
1.20 is giving us cherry blossom trees however which are harmless and add more variety to plant life, I do agree that variety improves a game.
I do wish the vanilla game had more variety than what it currently offers, but the more features added to the game I could see the performance impact becoming larger. More items added to the game also leads to complaints about inventory space, extra items not having enough use to justify them existing in the game and so forth.
The things you've seen in this journal so far don't have any substantial performance hit. BoP adds a few dozen more biomes but there's basically no effect on performance; Minecraft is still only doing a few at a time. Likewise Better Creatures is just changing which animals you're dealing with. Some mods do bring performance hits, like ones with complicated renderings or lots of tile entities, or big machines, but variety it free. I will be showing Bibliocraft later and that *is* one that brings a performance hit, but not a big one in my experience.
I've always thought that the vanilla 1.8+ map system was a bit odd; only level 0 maps are centered around 0,0 and everything else is centered so the northwest corner is at -64,-64; by contrast, my own modification makes all zoom level be centered around around 0,0 +/- a multiple of the scale width, thus for the level 3 maps I use in modded worlds the first map is centered around 0,0 and the surrounding maps are at +/- 1024; likewise, in my first world they are centered at multiples of 2048 (either system is better than what vanilla had before though; you had to go out to near the center of a map to ensure it was properly centered since they always aligned to a multiple of 128).
Any way to handle map alignments has some tradeoff - I had to think about this a lot while writing Exporercraft. But since vanilla doesn't allow you to transfer info when you expand a map, there's not much disadvantage in having *all* the maps center where most players start.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Geographicraft (formerly Climate Control) - Control climate, ocean, and land sizes; stop chunk walls; put modded biomes into Default worlds, and more!
RTG plus - All the beautiful terrain of RTG, plus varied and beautiful trees and forests.
Better Forests Varied and beautiful trees and forests, in modern Minecraft.
What you're seeing is a combination of BoP and RTG: BoP is doing the flora, but RTG is doing the terrain, although I tried to capture the spirit of the underlying BoP terrains as well as I could with a few exceptions like Marsh, where I had access to some tricks they didn't have. RTG has a different spirit than vanilla; lots of broad sweeping terrain, essentially no craziness and some larger scale structure that at least pre-1.18 couldn't do.
Is RTG another mod, or your own terrain generation efforts?
Because it definitely wasn't just the biomes that attracted me, but the terrain. Specifically, in these pictures...
...I love how there's some gradual and open terrain but judging by all the pictures, it's not like everything is flat. I'm okay with modern vanilla generation, but I wouldn't mind trying something different for some variety.
Uh, this is bad. I have a hardcore world I need to "finish" and then I was wanting to get back to working on one of my other two main worlds. Now I'm wanting to make a new one! Help.
Is RTG another mod, or your own terrain generation efforts?
Because it definitely wasn't just the biomes that attracted me, but the terrain. Specifically, in these pictures...
...I love how there's some gradual and open terrain but judging by all the pictures, it's not like everything is flat. I'm okay with modern vanilla generation, but I wouldn't mind trying something different for some variety.
Uh, this is bad. I have a hardcore world I need to "finish" and then I was wanting to get back to working on one of my other two main worlds. Now I'm wanting to make a new one! Help.
RTG was written by a team on which I was the primary terrain designer. It was a great team and all the major contributors were amazing, with nicely complementary skills. I'm very proud of the terrains, and I put a lot of love into them. I tried to make them varied - some flat, some rolling hills, some mountainous, and some with special effects. One that I think came out particularly well is Extreme Hills and if you're curious run RTG on an otherwise vanilla world and look at them and in them with Creative.
(If you use BoP, I have some suggested changes to the default config).
Lol. I feel for you. I have been there so many times! But if you want to have BoP, hold off a bit, because there is a double decoration bug I'm going to try to fix. It doesn't *have* to be fixed and I played for years without even realizing it was there, but it doesn't do the BoP Biomes justice.] Actually what I thought was a double decoration bug was just BoP placing an absurd number of trees. So never mind, BoP+RTG is good to go!
So, if I want to deal with all these hostiles, I'm going to need more punch. I've done part of Astral Sorcery before, and it's a long road. Psi I've never done but I get the impression from some vids that it needs some advanced materials. But Tinker's I know can significantly buff up tools relatively early so I'll start with that.
For those not familiar with it, Tinker's Tools allows you to make parts of a tool separately and then put them together, granting bonuses compared to vanilla tools depending on what you've used for the components. It requires a very elaborate system to do all this: first you have to make patterns for the tool parts with a Stencil Table; then you have to use the patterns to make the tool parts in a Part Builder; and then you put them together in the Tool Station.
This is enough for non-metallic materials, and even that can be decently useful, but for real punch you need metal parts, and *those* have to be made of molten metal in casts which in turn had to have been made by pouring a molten gold over a mold. Melting requires a Smeltery, a large multiblock device which I thought needed a total of 45 mod-specific blocks made mostly of a mod-specific brick (Seared Brick), requiring quite a lot of resource gathering for early in the game.
I need clay, sand, AND gravel to make all those bricks, and I know I don't have enough, especially sand.
I head out to dig from the numerous pools in my Grasslands, which thoughtfully provide clay, sand, AND gravel, although not nearly enough sand. This is turning out to be a remarkably benign biome in a generally rough world.
But I'm interrupted by a thunderstorm, one of the few things that make this a dangerous biome. Serene Seasons creates season specific weather, which for summer is thunderstorms, and I've been seeing a LOT of these normally rare events - about every other day, I'd say. I run home and sleep it off.
Come morning I head to the beach on the ocean to mine sand. But the beach here isn't sand, it's gravel. I think this is a bug in RTG (and my fault because I did this part); RTG places gravel beaches by rugged biomes because sandy ones look really bad there. Grasslands must be misassigned. I'd done it before and thought I'd fixed them all but apparently not.
So I head north to the next biome, some snowy biome with a snowy beach. I collect a lot of sand, and a lot of snow as well, which can be used for some Harvestcraft recipes.
Then I head downstairs, load the furnace up with a full load of brick materials, and set in to read the in-game Tinker's manual thoroughly because I had forgotten almost everything (I couldn't have written the opening section then).
So I'm reading and then suddenly -
My hearts are almost gone! I drop the book and see my hearts flashing, the chests gone, all the contents floating around as items, and a lot of damage to the room. It takes me a second to realize what must have happened - creeper explosion. I'm normally very scrupulous about lighting up while I branch mine, to the point that I think of my tunnels as completely safe. But evidently I missed a spot. And a curse of the Minecraft system is that it's almost impossible to find that one light level 6 spot somewhere. I'm really lucky I'm not dead.
Well, first I have to save my items. I'm luckily carrying enough to make a double chest, so I do so, plop it down where the chest was, and then start throwing things into it willy-nilly to make space on me to save the items. I'll sort them later.
No in-process pics, I was too busy. This is after I had rescued the items. I get that done, then make two ladders to replace the ones blown off by the explosion, then head upstairs to get two fence gate to block the entrances so it won't happen again.
After that, I got upstairs to catch my breath.
I've found a possible solution for my paper issues; this recipe from Harvestcraft. Ironically I only have one of the vanilla saplings it needs and no easy way to get more because I'm surrounded by modded biomes.
Now that I've caught my breath, I head back down and grind through the process of making all the Tinker's xxx stations, and then the patterns and the parts, for my first Tinker's tool. It's made with a Flint head which is strong but relatively fragile; a wooden handle which gives it an automatic if slow Repair, and a Blue Slime binding which provides a lot of extra durability to make this tool useful - with the possible disadvantage of occasionally creating Blue Slimes while I'm using it. It can't mine advanced resources, but the auto repair is a GREAT convenience because I won't have to keep making picks anymore as long as I don't mine all that much. The tooltip is wrong, though; it's supposed to be iron-level, but it's actually only stone-level so I still need a regular pick for the good stuff.
I use it to chop out a space for the smelter. In the process I hear the burbling of lava so I mine a bit more and
Bingo! This is awesome because the Smeltery will need lava as fuel and I have a large supply just steps away.
I branch mine with my new pick until it's almost worn out, then head upstairs to do food chores while it regenerates. While up there, I head into the Redwood Forest to knock over some Harvestcraft Shaded Gardens and am rewarded with some nice recipe components, notably Spice Leaves and Garlic.
I don't have the *best* sunset view because the trees get in the way, but sunsets are always nice.
in the morning I head over to that hill to harvest from its many fruit trees. It's actually kind of an intermod bug that they're there, because it's Prairie. Evidently Harvestcraft had it coded wrong. Past the Prairie is a mountainous biome with lots of trees and I quickly check it out of curiousity. It's Rainforest, which is a *seriously* dayspawning biome so I am staying well away.
But there's a vanilla oak there so I take the risk to chop it down, getting rewarded with FIVE saplings I can use for paperbark trees.
Then it's back down to continue building the Smeltery. 3x3 on the bottom, 3x3 on three sides, just 4 blocks to go! I'm a little short of materials, though, I'll have to mine a bit more. But let's put another block in.
Wait, it started up? It's 3 blocks including the base, not 3 high walls? Ugh, what a waste. Well, I can now finish what I need. Just a casting table and a casting channel and I'm ready to go.
Put in some lava for fuel. Wait, there's no fuel? (Checks manual) Oh foo, you're supposed to put it in the *tank*, not an input drain. Well, dump in some water and now I've got molten Obsidian, and I can use that for a tool head.
Make a cast for a tool head, melt some gold for the cast, right-click the casting channel.
click. click. click.
Oh great. It's supposed to be a Seared Faucet, not a Casting Channel. Well, I'll just make a Seared Faucet and -
I'm out of Seared Bricks to make it with. About 200 bricks made and I'm *THREE* *BRICKS* *SHORT* And out of sand to make Seared Brick. And no shovel because I was planning to Tinker one. Sigh.
So I make a shovel with the same flint/wood/slime system as my pick. It will be useful even after I get a better one (soon!).
Head upstairs, dig up some sand with my nifty new shovel, harvest some ripe crops, head back down, and roast up some Seared Brick. As soon as the third is done I snatch it from the Furnace, make a Seared Faucet, install it and:
FINALLY! Success! As soon as it cools I switch the liquids in the Smeltery to put the Obsidian at the bottom. Since I accidentally made some in the Smeltery, I may as well use it. Obsidian in Tinker's is strong - it can mine like Diamond - but brittle and short-lived. But, I'm going to make it regenerating like my other pick and they will make a good combo - the Flint one can chew through the rock and then the Obsidian harvest the ores.
And here's the final result. I didn't use a slime binding because I don't have enough slime. But I am getting more Tinkered up, with a high-efficiency Smeltery and 2 regenerative picks.
Next Episode: Some weaponry and more Tinkering up.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Geographicraft (formerly Climate Control) - Control climate, ocean, and land sizes; stop chunk walls; put modded biomes into Default worlds, and more!
RTG plus - All the beautiful terrain of RTG, plus varied and beautiful trees and forests.
Better Forests Varied and beautiful trees and forests, in modern Minecraft.
With Tinker's Constructs, like with a lot of things, once you've gotten started at something it gets a lot easier.
After *all* that work to get the smelter and tool construction going, to make a broadsword, I only need *one* new part. I design it, make the mold and pour the iron. Then I build this sword: iron for damage, wood handle for regeneration, and a flint guard to grant Crude, which gives +20% damage versus unarmored - which would include all those obnoxious animals I saw Episode 2.
I thought Tinker's equipment did more damage than comparable vanilla stuff, but I was wrong. But it doesn't matter because you can improve Tinker's equipment with materials:
Redstone improves item speed. In this case, I get the attack speed up by 46% at the cost of over two stacks of Redstone I had no plans to use soon anyway.
And I immediately get a chance to use it! As I'm putting things away in chests, I get an arrow in the back from a skelly standing at one of the fence gates I put up. I turn around, pop the gate open, and beat it to bonemeal. With such a drastic increase in attack speed, even somebody as combat inexperienced as I can feel that it's faster.
That gate didn't lead to my main branch mine but to a single short run I did very early on. (It hit a lava cave so I did my branch mine in the other direction.) So I head down to figure out *why* things are getting into what should be a safe area.
It wasn't lighting: I had cut through to a cave overhead digging out ores. Sorry no pic, I thought I screenshotted but evidently I didn't. I block it off and head back, but I leave the gate.
Back at the forge, I decide to make some armor from the Tinker's addon Construct's Armory. This requires an Armor Station, which I make. I decide to make Iron Armor, but with Obsidian Plates, which gives it the toughness of Diamond, and a wood trim, which gives it Ecological (the regenerating ability). Plus, it's Magnetic, meaning items are attracted to me so less jumping around to pick up items when mining or logging.
Looks spiffy too.
I head upstairs to plant some autumn crops. I don't know if it's fall yet, but if not it will be soon, and I am getting nervous about my food situation. Normally by this point I'm just drowning in food. But because of Serene Seasons, only about 40% of my planted crops are growing at any particular time (a little more than 1/3 because some crops grow in multiple seasons.) In addition, something has added a biome requirement that makes crops grow slower outside of their native biome types. And I have almost no animals.
I'm growing more than I'm eating, but not an enormous amount. And come winter almost nothing will grow and I don't think I'll have enough to get through 21 game days.
Even though I may not have enough to make it through the winter, my food has outgrown my original double chest. Harvestcraft has a lot of different foods! And I have to use a wide variety due to Spice of Life. I'm trying to devise an organizational scheme to keep up. Right now I have one chest which mostly accumulates foods I'm growing. When I get to 16 I move it to here and eventually try to find recipes to use it. But since I've only got 2 chests, I'm also using it to store out of season crops here until it's time to plant them (including summer, because I expect summer to end any day now).
The other chest is an unholy mess (no pic, I'd be embarrassed) with the accumulators and the tools and the finished recipes. This all demands a much more sophisticated organizational scheme and a lot more chests but there's no room in my starter shelter and I've not yet had the inspiration for a bigger base yet.
I have one possible solution to the winter issue: the Serene Seasons Greenhouse Glass, which makes the block beneath it ignore seasons. But the recipe is crazy expensive: 4 blocks of glass and 4 cyan dye for *one* block of Greenhouse Glass. Cyan dye is kind of hard to get; I could make it from my Lapis if I got some Cactus, or I could get BoP Cornflower from the right swampy biome.
The Harvestcraft Paperbark trees have been very productive (maybe too much so from a game balance perspective) so I've got the paper for another maxed map. So it's back out exploring.
I start with just exploring the areas of my start biome that aren't on my start map because of how Mojang did the map tiling. I notice the grass has lost its super-blue tinge and so I suspect autumn has arrived.
The land here is just on the eastern side; further in is ocean. I spot a snowy biome, then another grasslands, and then pillar up to sleep on a tree in a Bayou.
Come morning I search the Bayou for Cornflower, but don't find any. I do find these chickens, but I'm over 1000 blocks from home at this point and that's a long way to lure and I have other priorities. I've always been fond of Bayou; it's a very atmospheric biome.
Next is a Woodlands, and then:
Desert! Cactus and Sand together. So now I'll have supplies for Greenhouse Glass. Well, a few at least, given how pricey they are.
As I start back, I immediately hit a Swampland with - Cornflower! So things are looking up. And on this trip there's nothing nastier than those desert goats.
Once home I notice some Autumn crops have started growing. So yes, indeed, fall is here. I make some Greenhouse Glass and put it up over two rows: one of important summer crops like lettuce and bell pepper and the other over a row with Spice Leaf, which is needed for a long list of recipes. I have enough for one more row but my farm is an organizational mess and it's not clear where I should put it. I think I'll wait a bit for things I find out I need later.
Now I want to plant some autumn plants, but my hoe is broken. Ooh, let's make a Tinker's hoe!
They provide two options. The less warlike and more farm functional is a Kama. I make it, carry it back up and..
Click. Click. Click. It can't till? Isn't that the main point of a Minecraft farm implement?
I don't have time to futz with this, so I make a vanilla stone hoe and plant my crops.
I didn't take map pics on the trip (out of practice) but here's a shot of the map from the next day when I went out to finish the map of my start biome. The top half is a long isthmus, to where I won't know for a while. We've had some discussions on this thread about climate zones, and you can see how Geographicraft can put snowy and hot zones within a few hundred blocks with essentially no problematic junctions. It's rarely *this* close, but it's never like the old vanilla.
And notice something else on this pic: a chicken! Right next to my home biome, where I hadn't gone yet. Eggsellent!
I head down the mineshaft to make a Tinker's axe, because mine has been broken for a while. But first:
One of the effects of the Ecologically regenerating Tinker's items is that once they're completely regenerated, if you don't use them you're wasting regeneration. And the regen is pretty slow, so you don't want to waste any. My picks are at full, so it's time to branch mine.
I encounter the biggest agglomeration of ores I can remember. A redstone deposit exposed an iron deposit which exposed a coal deposit, which exposed another redstone deposit, another iron deposit, *and* a lapis deposit. It was nuts.
I go back up the mineshaft to lure in the chickens. But as I set out.
It starts raining. No longer a thunderstorm, because it's not summer anymore, but maybe not the best time for a longish slow luring.
I step inside and the cramped starter base with rain still coming through the slat roof really gets to me. I'll take the day to make it a bit bigger. First I need to chop out a tree in the backyard --
I forgot to make the axe.
Well, I'll get some fun out of this. I'll make a really showy axe, the Lumber Axe. It fells entire trees, up to 9x9.
It requires the Tool Station in the center be upgraded to a Tool Forge. Yes, that's four blocks of iron. Not starter equipment.
The Lumber Axe requires these four items requiring a total of 17 resources. Each is made of a a material of your choice. I choose a head and plate of iron and the rest wood - this doesn't need to be that fancy. But I need gold casts for the metal parts, and that ends up a total of 13 each gold and iron. But the Smeltery doubles output, so it's not that big a deal.
These larger parts take a while to cool. This is the iron plate. I will be able to re-use this cast for other high-end tools.
Soon it's done and I head upstairs for a demo. But, trouble! There's a witch lurking outside the fence.
I'm totally fumblefingered today and TWICE I accidentally hit a hotbar key and end up whaling on the witch with a torch. I still kill her, but seriously wounded.
Now time for the demo.
Sorry folks. It looked SO COOL in the game, with the rain of wood blocks coming down. Not so exciting in a still, plus I hit the F2 key kinda slow.
I get over 3 stacks of redwood from one hit.
I'd like to knock over another and try to hit the F2 key faster this time. But that one tree has used more than half the durability of my axe! Another would break it. So we'll have to wait for the axe to recover a bit.
Then over to lure in the chickens. I kill a few blue slime dropping from an island above the area.
Here, chickie chickie!
Soon they're in a pen and the first chick bred. This is very good for winter as I'll still have eggs, which can be used in a number of Harvestcraft recipes. Specically, 28.
I have had a rough idea for a base: something loosely based on grand California hotels like the Awhanee or the Grand Californian. So a big central showy hall and two smaller wings. I like to lay the footprint out on the ground to see how it will work with the terrain.
My idea is to build the wing nearest my current base first so I can use it now that I've outgrown my starter shack, although I'm laying the whole plan out. I run short of gravel for the layout and so I mine some from the surface pools.
The vanilla pools are just so ugly (Mojang used the underground code). I wrote an improved version in RTG but BoP isn't using it. WorldGenPond is public domain, all modders are encouraged to use it!
The deciduous Harvestcraft trees are looking more and more autumnal but the Redwoods aren't noticeably changing. Did Adubbz of Serene Seasons actually program that? If so I'm *so* impressed.
I'm also putting in a rough outline of the building to get an idea how it fits with the site. The idea is to get a building with a view of the Redwoods, the Fruit Prairie, and the Rainforest Mountain at the same time - the kind of view that might attract a nice resort hotel. I think it's working.
But - I haven't decided on a specific materials scheme so I'm not ready to try a mockup of a wall or something like that.
So up to the Prairie Hill to harvest from the fruit trees and
How did YOU get here? I've been up to this tiny little biome a dozen times and I never saw any cows!
It's too late in the day to build a pen and lure her in so ZZZ and...
In the morning, creeper at the gate. I try the whack and jump back technique but. - thump, I hit the side of the house. and BOOM!
Well, no real harm done. It's day and everything is easily replaced. But next time, more space between house and fence!
Then build the pen and lure in the cow. I search the biome for another, but not dice. So no breeding, but at least I have milk - and butter and cheese. And as with eggs; butter, cheese, and all the things I can do with them, will be available through the winter. Things are looking up!
Exploring the Psi Mod, which is entirely new to me. Many mods have you start with, or be able to build, an in-game manual, including Tinker's and Astral Sorcery. For Psi, Vazki chose a code system activated by a hotkey which brings this up. It's a series of tutorials you have to progess through.
The first tutorial is long. The first part is to build these two devices and then use the second to activate the first. Then you drop some redstone and "shoot" it with your CAD to convert it to Psi Dust. But there's a problem. My magnetized Tinker's Chestplate attracts items to me. I have to take it off for the redstone to remain floating to be made into Psi Dust.
And, done!
But it turns out I don't really have a functional CAD. The second part is to build three more items and use the Assembler to attach them to the CAD, and then a Spell Programmer.
And the third part is to use all this to write and cast a very simple spell, that prints your name, game, and location to the chat.
The programming is done in a 2D grid in a kind of functional programming language. Cells can connect to adjacent cells and use them as input. In this case I have the Debug action (=print to chat) connected to me, represented by the gun icon.
I also had to build a Spell Bullet to hold the spell, and right-click the Spell Programmer with the bullet to "store" the spell. Def Technopunk vibe - not a great aesthetic fit with Early Industrial Tinker's and Renaissance-ish Astral Sorcery but too late to change.
And, Done!
Oh my! I've been at this through an entire extended Minecraft night and half the day (in addition to the Psi work, I wanted to make a room for it and *that* intersected with a lava cave, plus I had to run the Smeltery to generate all this iron). And Winter is Coming (with zombies, even!). I've got to run my farm to build up my food supplies. So upstairs to harvest crops, breed chickens, and milk the cow.
As it happens I had a lot of Elderberry to plant for my Autumn crops, and I figured in typical Harvestcraft fashion I could use it for Elderberry juice, jam, and smoothies. But it turns out Elderberry doesn't have any specific products so it's going to be hard to use it efficiently. The best use might be as a "palate cleanser" for Spice of Life. In Spice of Life you get less out of a food if it's one of the 12 most recently eaten (this number can be changed in a config). But you can eat a bunch of a low-value food as a "palate cleanser" to fill up those spots. Next year I'll plant a lot less Elderberry.
The second Psi tutorial is very easy.
Just add a number parameter to the Debug printout.
And, done!
Third tutorial is to make a spell to jump you forward.
The top is me, and beneath that is a function that gets my gaze direction. That gets used by the "Move" function beneath, which also gets me again (to the left) as the entity to move and 3 from below as the amount.
And, done!
The fourth tutorial is an explosion. Boys and their guns, etc.
This is embarassingly inefficient because I was thinking in terms of a functional database programming language I learned 40 years ago in which each function had an output arrow. So you couldn't send outputs to multiple targets, you had to repeat the code (or use subroutines, but Psi doesn't have those). In Psi there's no output arrow; outputs are just available for any adjacent square to use. Top line is me, and then determining where I'm looking; second line is me and where I am, into a function that combines this info to determine what I'm looking at with a max distance of 10 blocks. The last line makes a strength 1 explosion (all my puny equipment can do) at that location. I go upstairs to test it - and it doesn't work. Well, do a round of farm chores, do some online research, eventually realizing
- I'd just pointed it at something too far away. Done!
The fifth tutorial is to make yourself move up a block. Very simple, almost like #2. Program, put it in my gun - click, click, click - nothing happens. Whunh?
Then I realize I hadn't switched my spell gun from the explosions. I had been firing explosions into my Psi research room! Easily fixed:
The explosions were so wimpy even the torch didn't notice.
At this point there are 3 different tutorials you can do. The next tutorial I take is the one to place and destroy blocks. The instructions as I read it were to write a program to destroy a block and the seven above it - a "TreeCapitator", as it were. I write it easily enough, but the spell is to powerful for my wimpy equipment. I try to find a way to improve my equipment, fail, and then cheat and find a list of successful tutorial programs and copy one.
(from the PSItorial at Imgur)
I won't explain this unless people ask, but as I understood it the spell should destroy 3 blocks (not eight) moving away from me (not up). So how does that meet the requirements? Well, maybe I don't understand it. Upstairs to test:
It destroys ONE block only. But I get the pass message anyway!
Well, maybe because there were no blocks further away. So I fire into a hill - still only one block.
So I don't understand how this spell works OR why it passed the test.
I want to point out even this dinky little spell could be really useful. It allows you to destroy I guess basically any block at 32 blocks away. Very useful for, say, the Ender Dragon. I hope Psi doesn't turn out too strong.
Time for a break. I go up to Prairie Hill for some fruit.
faintly; "mooo!"
Another cow! OMGOMGOMG! But - there's a creeper there as well, which snuck off behind a tree before I could snapshot. Creepers.
Maybe my little popgun can hurt it. I pillar up, put a wheat in offhand hoping to attract the cow, and wait for the creeper to allow a shot.
But the cow comes over first, and I pillar down and lure it over to the cow pen, keeping a watchful eye out. Soon:
Happy Dance! Happy Dance! Now I'll have plenty of milk, butter, and cheese for cooking, and eventually leather for its many uses.
I think I have figured out why that Psi tutorial solution only destroys one block; it's the vector length and not the max that determines how many blocks to knock. Evidently the text for the requirements to advance and the *actual* requirements don't always overlap. To test, I make up my own spell:
To explain: me on the right; on the top my position above and my look direction are combined to get the block I'm looking at. On the bottom my position and look direction are combined to determine which *face* of the block I'm looking at, giving a vector towards me along an axis; in the lower right the double arrows reverses that so it's pointing away from me, then above it it's multiplied by 5 so *five* blocks pointing away from me, and then the place and destruction length/direction get fed into the block destroying action.
It's night but I'm dying to test it so I snooze in my mine level bed. Putting the research room at mine level seems a mistake but I need a base upstairs to move it.
Come morning:
Ha! It works!
I'm getting very few eggs, even though I have about a dozen chickens, because Hunger Update seriously nerfs egg rate . I think I am going to have to build an auto chicken farm at some point.
My food chests are so overstuffed I'm forced to build another chest. Right now I'm going to use it to store my seed supply for future seasons. It looks ridiculous sticking up like this. I need to get a move on for building a real surface base.
Now that I have a supply of milk for butter, cream, and cheese, I have a big increase in my potential recipes. I scoop up water for dough and for salt (that part's weird). This allows a bunch of new recipes, including cucumber soup, biscuits, toast, and biscuits and gravy
Trying to keep this semi-organized; ingredients ready for use on the top; utensil and basic ingredients on the left; finished recipes on the right. I am feeling VERY much better about my food supply. The reason is actually a bit of a balance issue; two cows are producing more food than all my farms combined because each bucket of milk becomes *eight* servings of fresh milk. Well, that and being able to combine veggies, flour, and milk is allowing a lot more recipes, including higher value ones like Biscuits and Gravy (yum in real life, too).
Now to another Psi Tutorial
This one says to use "Add Motion" to an entity besides me. OK, here' my "Shove" spell:
Top left is me; to the right is the entity I'm looking at; below is the direction I'm looking; these get combined to move the entity in the direction I'm looking (away from me), and the 5 makes it a 5 block distance.
Back at the surface, it works, but I don't get the tutorial completion. I check the sample completions: and it's a spell to print out the coordinates of the nearest entity within 1 block of me. (no spell pic because who cares about that). This is TOTALLY not my instructions. But I make the spell, use it on my chickens, and :
What-ever.
Is that snow on top of the redwoods? I'm definitely still in autumn, based on crops. The temp gets colder and colder as autumn goes on? Oh, this is so cool.
Oh, let's try the Lumber Axe again;
See, cool! Maybe even cooler than autumn is getting here (brrr).
Ok, another Psi Tutorial. Numbers 101. This is so easy I won't do any pics. The tutorial explains that you can do math operations on number constants with the usual symbols - add can add two or three numbers next to it. The instruction is just to do an operation and debug-print the result. Done.
The next tutorial is about alternative "bullets" for activating spells. The standard one is cast from when you are when you are. These alternatives are: a projectile that casts the spell where it lands; a grenade which drops when you fire and goes off 3 seconds later, a mine that fires like the projectile and then goes off the next time a mob walks over it; and a circle that activates a circle where you are looking and casts the spell repeatedly.
It also describes "rulers" you can make and then place next to your CAD in your hotbar to provide a vector parameter to a spell.
I make a projectile bullet with a popgun explosion and fire it in a mine tunnel where it's not strong enough to damage anything.
Done.
Next is Psimetal Infusion.
Yay! The recipes told me that more advanced CADs require Psi infused materials, so I've been waiting for this. (The top tier requires materials infused in the End.) You can infuse Gold to Psimetal, by firing an infusion spell at it.
Done!
Oh, it's daytime and farm chore time. In addition, I *really* need that surface base for both Harvestcraft and Psi. So, back to the surface.
The snow line is even lower, and in the Sheild (which should be a fairly cold biome) it's reached the ground. Still autumn, though: my autumn crops are still growing. SO COOL!
I make a mockup for a window design. More rustic and bland than I wanted, but it's a start. I try to modify it, but The Lumber axe chops all wood blocks in a large tree-shaped AOE and that would be a disaster next to a wood wall!
So I decide to Tinker up a more ordinary axe. I make a cast for a more ordinary axe head, pour a metal head, and make wood parts. But as I'm doing so I notice a special Tinker's item, the Mattock, which is a hoe+axe. So I shift gears and make that instead - one less tool to carry.
Note those pretty credible damage stats. If sped up to the max with the Tinker's Redstone enhancement(about 1.45), it would do more damage that a vanilla sword, although not as much as my Hasted Tinker's sword. Hmm...
I'm downstairs, so ...
Next Psi tutorial is Block Movement. You can use this to move a targeted block in the desired direction. Goal is to move a block.
Again, takes me, figures the block I'm looking at, and moves that block by the vector constructed at the bottom, which is up one.
Done! But you'll note it pulled up the block beneath it too, although not any more beneath. I don't understand that yet.
Next is Elemental Arts. This provides 4 new tricks:
Smite (Air): Hits the target with a Lightning Bolt.
Blaze (Fire): Starts a fire.
Flood (Water): Places a water block.
Overgrowth (Earth): Bonemeals the target.
Goal isn't stated, but I assume it is to perform one of them? I pick Overgrowth, the most obviously useful to me:
To the surface to test it. I decide to test on my Onion, which I've only planted one of and which is needed for a lot of recipes.
ZAP! Green particles, but nothing visible, and I don't get a Psi Completion. ZAPZAPZAPZAPZAP (it's pretty cheap on Psi power) and Boing! an Onion pops off. So it works! So I have to do a different effect for completion. Probably Smite. Boys and their toys.
I make 16 onions with about 80 zaps. With this onion I make a recipe I've been planning for AGES:
Lamb Kebob. Both Harvestcraft AND Hunger Overhaul nerf vanilla food. multiplicatively, and cooked mutton only provides about 1/2 shank of food (an overnerf, but I haven't adjusted the configs). With this recipe I get the full effect of cooked meat. Now I can Overgrowth any ingredient I need that I have the seeds for, plus with my animals I can make any of the delicious foods I need. Winter? Bring it on!
Zeno's food issues are solved. Kebabs, anyone?
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Geographicraft (formerly Climate Control) - Control climate, ocean, and land sizes; stop chunk walls; put modded biomes into Default worlds, and more!
RTG plus - All the beautiful terrain of RTG, plus varied and beautiful trees and forests.
Better Forests Varied and beautiful trees and forests, in modern Minecraft.
When I make the Lamb Kebobs, a problem comes up with Hunger Overhaul:
Hunger Overhaul limits the stack size of food to 32 hunger (16 shanks). I assume the intent is to make it difficult to carry large amounts of food. With smaller items it's been an advantage; most crops are limited to 16, which is a good accumulator size. But now that I'm making bigger recipe sizes, it's really starting to chew up ridiculous amounts of storage space. And I don't want to play a game where I have to cook every game day. So, I change the config modifyFoodStackSize to false in the Hunger Overhaul config.
I start work on my hotel base. As I've said, the plan is to build one wing now and move in, and finish the rest later. I have a design for the walls even if I'm not too thrilled with it, so now I need to decide what to do with the floors. I have a design principle that the ceiling and floor of a room shouldn't be the same material - looks funny - and my usual approach is to alternate floor materials. I have gobs of Eclogite, which I'll use as brick because cobble looks cheap. Smoothstone is an alternative, but I don't try it.
I need another material. Usually by now I'd have another UBC stone type in quantity but I only have small amounts of any other type this time. I decide to try Spruce Wood. It's available in quantity in the BoP Shield Biome (visible through the window here), but the BoP trees are interesting shapes which saplings never generate, even in the biome. I don't want to damage the looks of one of the supposed draws for my resort hotel, so I just chop a few and take saplings for tree farming. I decide to make the bottom floor Spruce as I'm planning to put my Psi research room upstairs and I want that floor resistant to explosions in case of accident (remember when I accidentally fired explosions in the research room in Episode 06?)
Flat buildings in historical styles often look off, so I have protruding support pillars in Eclogite brick. The facade is not nearly as interesting as I imagined.
I try some added structure to the windows and it helps a bit but still not up to my standards. But I need a base so it will have to do.
This will be the sunset view from the eventual (not soon) lobby, so that's going to be nice.
The next day I do chores and start on some other walls. I seem to have miscounted the length? Grrr. I push it out one.
Then the next day I awake to a greyish tinge to the grass. Winter?
Apparently. I still have a few crops but maybe they grew before the season shifted? But there's a catastrophe ongoing:
All the sugarcanes (and Harvestcraft reeds), wild or farmed, are popping off as their blocks freeze. And here we have my first beef with Serene Seasons: How can these exist if winter kills them all? Serene Seasons should change the game rules so that ice doesn't kill them - maybe knocks them back to one at most.
So I run all over the (large) Grasslands saving as much cane as I can. I don't get much, so somehow much must have disappeared before I got to it, although maybe I'd taken more than I thought when I chopped the paper for my maps.
I'm breeding a few sheep for colors. No immediate plans, but it takes a while to get this going and accumulate colored wool so starting now.
"In the bleak mid-win-ter"
Jacob Collier has nothing to fear from me.
I found a use for all those Elderberres - chickens will eat Elderberry seeds. Lotsa chickens now but still only 1 or 2 eggs per trip. Overnerfed.
The hotel wing is coming along. Not as impressive as I'd hope - too little contrast in materials, I think - but it will have to do. I need something NOW. I'll replace the torches with Biblicraft Fancy Lanterns someday, but not today.
Definitely winter now. Autumn crops have stopped growing. The feel of the seasons changing is really interesting.
As I lay out my interior, I realize I did NOT miscount - I confused myself with the brick column sticking out. So the far wall (between the wing and the eventual lobby) has to come down and be moved one back.
And *then* I realize I've put the second floor in a block low (you're supposed to be able to see out those windows). What a day. Thank goodness for regenerating Tinker's tools.
I start putting in storage for Harvestcraft. I'm not moving everything just yet but I start putting what I collect here. Not much, it's winter so only animal and Greenhouse products.
Add in some more fences and - hey, I never tested my Smite theory!
Very simple: Going around clockwise: Start with me, get what I'm looking at, get it's location, hit it with a lighting bolt.
Aim at one of the many wild sheep in the Grasslands and:
Zap! Level advance and cooked mutton too. Boys and their toys.
You might have noticed my Psi CAD-that-looks-remarkably-like-a-gun looked different in the last shot of the last episode. That's because I'd made an upgrade:
The new CAD will be able to do much more Potent spells (stronger effects), more complex spells (more operations), and Project more (3 simultaneous effects). It should be able to do some fairly significant stuff.
Embarassingly, when I was moving the Psi research room to my new base, I accidentally lost my old CAD. I had left it in the Assembler when I knocked it down to move. Usually, in that situation, Mojang, and modders, have contained items pop out (like with chests, furnaces, etc.). But in this case, poof. I figured it wasn't *that* big a deal; I'd just make a new gun, I mean CAD. It was time to upgrade anyway. But I didn't have enough Psi-enhanced materials. And I couldn't enhance more Psimetal without a gun, I mean CAD. And once it's assembled, it can't be un-assembled so I couldn't temporarily use what I already had to do it. So in the end I had to make another starter gun, I mean CAD, which I now have no further use for. Bah. It wasn't *that* much material, but annoying.
I placed the Psi Research Room against the far wall upstairs. I don't have a roof yet, but, oddly, in MC it doesn't make a difference since all the entrances have jump-up doors and the interior is lit. Even in winter!
I'll make it look good later.
Even though I don't need it gamewise I start putting in a roof. I want yet another contrasting material and the only nice thing I have in any quantity - besides Black Granite, which is NOT the look I want - is Soapstone. So a Soapstone roof it is, also in brick. I'm doing a halfslab roof because few buildings in California need snow-shedding roofs, plus it's easier than stairstep roofs, which are just a nightmare, although it's still some work.
The building certainly looks better with a roof, but the contrast of roof and column could be better. Maybe I should have used smoothstone for the roof (brick is good for structural-looking columns). I don't have enough to swap, so I'll have to wait until I expand to try it.
New CAD, conveniently placed research room; it's time to try a spell to really hurt something.
So this is my "Fling" spell. It strikes the target with lightning AND flings it up at a rate of 6. Explaination:
Top row: Me, entity I'm looking at, entity's location.
Second row: Vector contructed to be up, moving the entity (that I'm looking at) that direction at a speed of 6, and a lightning bolt at the entity's location.
I notice my limitation with my new CAD is primarily me. The third iten on the left is the Psi (power) the spell uses. Use more than you have and you take damage. I can now cast spells that need considerably more power than I've got, which I suspect will be very painful if not fatal. Not testing that yet.
Time to test my little weapon spell here. And right near where I am it something I wish weren't there - the moose next to the Dead Swamp.
I head over to where I saw the moose, and pillar up (in case it attacks or the spell is ineffectual). Click. Out of range.
Pillar down, move closer, pillar up.
Here moosie!
ZAP!
Lightning bolt, on fire, flies a decent distance in the air. No in-flight pic; wasn't fast enough.
Not dead. It doesn't try to attack, whether because it doesn't recognize the source or because I'm elevated, I don't know.
Zot again. *Still* not dead. Moose have 26 (!) hearts. There was a reason I didn't want to fight one.
Zot again. Finally dies.
On to Moose #2, the albino I saw in Ep. 2
This time I catch the in-flight pic. It dies after the second go-round.
So, very useful attack spell, probably enough for land exploration, although not very good for close range because I'll get zotted too.
It starts snowing so I head home.
Really coming down. My current base isn't symmetrical; there's a gable on this side and it's hipped on the other; that's because it's eventually supposed to be part of a larger structure.
Another use for Psi: using Break Block to take out scaffolding blocks I'd had to use while building the roof. Well out of reach and requiring pillaring otherwise.
Next Psi Tutorial: Movement Advances. This provides Blink, which teleport entities along their line of sight, and a couple of variants. Forgot to screenshot the spell (it was very simple). Here sheepie, sheepie.
Done. And the sheep is unharmed this time!
The animals are getting crowded, so I build a new larger pen for the cows and join both old pens for the sheep. I didn't want to do this before because the cow pen would be in the way for going to Prairie Hill; but now I'm in the future hotel and it's not in the way anymore.
Next Tutorial; Loopcasting. This is using a "loopcasting" spell bullet that casts the spell every tick. It stops when you unequip your CAD, or I suppose if it drains so far past your Psi limit it kills you. Goal not stated, again.
I make a levitation spell, mostly to see how it works. Maybe it can have uses for falls, immobilizing mobs, etc.
Explaination: Top row: Me, entity I'm looking at.
Second row: Vector constructed to point up, trick to move the entity above in the specified direction (up) at a speed of 1 (below).
For amusment value I test it on a chicken that escaped the coop.
It works! Chickens can now fly! Not very powerful; took about 5 seconds to to this. It doesn't work quite as I expected; I expected once it hit a target the spell would keep affecting that target; but actually, every time it re-casts, it picks a new target based on where my gun's, I mean CAD's, pointing. It's surprisingly hard to exactly track even a slowish chicken, hence all the error messages, from when the spell auto-recast when I wasn't looking *exactly* at the chicken.
No tutorial completion message, so, back to the Imgur tutorial solutions page. Their solution just prints out the loop index (how many times it's been cast this instantiation).
Done.
Next is Greater Infusion, to make Psigems. Much like the Psimetal infusion, but I drop a diamond instead of a gold, and use a Greater Infusion effect instead of just Infusion.
Done.
Next is Positive Effects. These are spells that provide beneficial potion effects for short periods.
This is Speed 2 for 5 seconds.
Done. Further testing reveals I could do this effect at this level forever. By the time the effect has worn off my Psi has recovered so I can just cast it again. So very easy to speed up travel.
As a programmer, I've been looking for ways to abuse the Psi system and so far I haven't been able to. (The moose-zapping is obviously intentional). All the effects use number *constants* for their strength; even just number constants added together are unacceptable. This is good! But now I want to try something at least borderline abusive: can I place a block in midair?
Explaination: Top left, position of me below. Top right, vector constructed to be up 5. Middle top, those two added together (so 5 blocks above me). Middle bottom, place block trick at that location.
WHOA.... this has IMPLICATIONS!
Next episode: implications.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Geographicraft (formerly Climate Control) - Control climate, ocean, and land sizes; stop chunk walls; put modded biomes into Default worlds, and more!
RTG plus - All the beautiful terrain of RTG, plus varied and beautiful trees and forests.
Better Forests Varied and beautiful trees and forests, in modern Minecraft.
Hehe.. What game are you playing? So many mod bits up there and more added each post, so I'm unable to keep track ;D
I saw you used a map up there.. Don't suppose you know of a mod that would make maps share the explored data, so if I wanted a 4:4 map and had already explored the world creating 3:4 maps, the 4:4 map would already be filled with the parts I had mapped out in other maps?
Hehe.. What game are you playing? So many mod bits up there and more added each post, so I'm unable to keep track ;D
I saw you used a map up there.. Don't suppose you know of a mod that would make maps share the explored data, so if I wanted a 4:4 map and had already explored the world creating 3:4 maps, the 4:4 map would already be filled with the parts I had mapped out in other maps?
Oh, goodness, this is rather mild by modded Minecraft standards. I've got 32 mods right now, and 6 of those are just collections of shared subroutines for other mods. I downloaded a "light" modpack once and it had over 100!
I am emphasizing the new stuff, and that's for 2 reasons. First, it's kind of fun; remember when you were first learning Minecraft and figuring out how everything worked? Fresh mods let you experience that again. Second, I noticed that "how to" episodes drew a lot of views in my earlier journals. That seems to be continuing as that last moose-flinging episode drew a lot of views compared to other recent episodes. (OK, there may be some entertainment value, too.)
Yes, I know of a mod that can copy map bits: Explorercraft. I know because I wrote it. Link in my sig, actually. But it's only through 1.8.9; I stopped updating it after Mojang made their maps auto-tile, which was the main reason I wrote it (it has an item called the Atlas that produces and automatically views tiled maps). I'm actually thinking about updating it, but I'm having trouble getting a mod setup going again - my old computer crashed and took all my setups with it. If I can get my modding working it should be fairly easy to update to 1.12; I'm not sure about current Minecraft because I don't know what changed.
Edit: confusingly, there is another completely different mod called Explorercraft from 1.14 on. I'm not sure what it's about, but it seems to have camping equipment and maybe adventures? So if I rerelease ExplorerCraft I'll have to change the name.
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Curse PremiumEpisode 01: A nice start.
Once again, New World!
This time I get a really nice start - both in looks and ease of play. BoP Grassland absolutely lousy with sheep and Harvestcraft gardens, next to a Redwood Forest (unlimited wood). But once again I forget to take an establishing shot; this is from the end of the day.
I head over to a 2x2 redwood and chop it into a spiral staircase, like you would with a Jungle giant. Once I've worn out my starter wood axe I kill 3 sheep, build my starter shelter, put down my bed and - zzzz. No overnight issues! Easy as pie! (Actually much easier; pie in this world (Harvestcraft) requires a fair number of ingredients I don't have and probably won't for some time).
Next day it's mine time. I have enough wood for ladders to go all the way to mining level so I do just that. And immediately:
Uggh, Black Granite. UBC has 16 different "main stones" all with interesting and varied appearance but in 2 of 4 previous journal worlds I've been cursed with it at start. It's very hard, so slow to mine, and it's so dark it's hard to see holes or breakthroughs. In my first journal world I almost immediately stepped into a hole and fell over 10 blocks into total darkness; fortunately I managed to pillar back up and escape. But it turns out I'm luckier this time as I'm right on the edge of an Eclogite region, so I can just tunnel in that direction and I'll be fine.
I have enough wood to mine around at the bottom for quite a while and don't come back up until I'm running out of wood and need more. I continue spiral staircasing up the redwood but after a while I - fall off. Goodness my skills *are* rusty! Down to 3 hearts.
Well, now I'm going to need a lot of food to get those hearts back, so I switch to a Harvestcraft focus. I swat a huge number of gardens (there are WAY too many for game balance here) until my inventory jams with my collection.
I plant about 30 blocks in a mini farm, then try to figure a recipe I can make. Unfortunately most of the Harvestcraft recipe require cooking tools that need bricks, which I don't have, and/or staples like salt, butter, spices, etc. I don't have either, so I end up just making some juices and the roasting potatoes vanilla style. But it's enough, if not gourmet.
That out of the way, I go to collect Redwood. Now my approach is to pillar up on gravel - now Eclogite gravel, one of many nice changes from the great team led by Kreezxil that took the mod over from me. Thanks! The best part of modding is when somebody else does the work and does it right.
To get to the tops I have to chop through the foliage. I clean up the first tree (I hate leaving maimed trees around) and then chop down an even more massive 9x9 tree. I use up nearly 2 axes in the process, and have over 4 stacks of Redwood.
Then I make a bunch of fences and fence in my yard. Safety first!
Just by chance I notice that one of the pools near my base has - clay! I dig it up, roast to brick, and soon I have a harvestcraft Pot and Chopping Board that allow me to make a bunch of basic items like Stock, Garden Soup, Garden Salad, Cucumber Salad, etc. My food issues are solved, for now at least.
Thoroughly set with food and wood, I head down to the mine and spend several game days branch mining, until I have nearly a stack of iron. Unlike some of my previous games, I have little trouble with cave or mineshaft breakouts, and none at all with hostile mobs, just a bit of zombie groaning.
I've only found three diamonds so far, but at least I'm fully armored in iron.
Next episode: time for some exploring!
Geographicraft (formerly Climate Control) - Control climate, ocean, and land sizes; stop chunk walls; put modded biomes into Default worlds, and more!
RTG plus - All the beautiful terrain of RTG, plus varied and beautiful trees and forests.
Better Forests Varied and beautiful trees and forests, in modern Minecraft.
I was referring specifically to not knowing the performance impacts of the terrain blending in 1.18 (since Zeno410 mentioned that being a hurdle), not in a broad sense. I'm aware of the broader situation with performance and how the game has gone South in that regard a long time ago. There's not much most of us can do about it, however.
I assume that they never considered having more than a few dozen/hundred tile entities loaded at any one time, and the ones that you might use more, such as chests, have their own issues (specifically, they are absolutely terrible for framerate; the 500+ chests I have in my main base in my first world have little impact on tick time but drop FPS by 3-fold when they are in view, though it is still far above the capped FPS. I was also able to halve the impact by using a custom model to render closed chests without all the draw calls and OpenGL state changes for each piece; entities are terrible in general because of this).
As far as using tile entities myself, I've only added flower pots (so they can hold more than 15 plants; Mojang did the same thing in 1.7) and barrels (a great way to avoid the FPS issues with chests and easier side-by-side storage), and have considered adding one for doors so I can add new variants of wooden doors without having to modify all the code that explicitly checks for "Block.doorWood", e.g. villages and entity interaction with doors (I generally avoid modifying vanilla code unless necessary).
Also, in my experience the biggest limiting factor on performance is how slow OpenGL is when you upload a vertex array (via the "Tessellator.draw" method); I've measured the time to render a 16x16x16 section of leaves on Fancy at around 20 milliseconds (equivalent to the frame time at 50 FPS), of which 90% is spent by OpenGL itself, and it seems like even 1.8+ is still bottlenecked by this (they only threaded the Java-side rendering code); this also limits the usability of my "full size trees in flowerpots" feature due to the lag spikes on chunk updates (a few here and there are fine, more with smaller trees):
(if you are wondering how I cut the render time by 8-fold it was mostly by optimizing smooth lighting and biome color blending, and chunk data access in general)
MC-123584 Updating blocks creates lag spikes proportional to geometry in chunk section
Apparently, Optifine tried to force full multithreading with their "multicore" chunk rendering up to 1.7.10 but many graphics drivers disagreed with it:
https://www.reddit.com/user/sliced_lime/comments/e00ohm/a_word_or_two_about_performance_in_minecraft/f8bai01/
Also, to reduce the number of blocks needed for stairs I actually pack two variants in a single block; likewise, all new types of wooden fence are a single block (I'm particularly mystified as to why Mojang wasted so many block IDs up to 1.12, despite having added over 300 new blocks, many of them variants of existing vanilla blocks, I've only used 30 new IDs with about 70 left, out of 256):
https://www.minecraftforum.net/forums/minecraft-java-edition/discussion/2880312-why-did-mojang-waste-so-many-block-ids-when-they
(particularly shulker boxes; they are already tile entities so they could have just added a color tag, while items can use their damage value. I know, they want to simplify commands so none of that "id / damage" stuff, but you can map command names to an id / damage value, or a "block state", e.g. stone is 1 and andesite is 1281, or 1 + 5 * 256)
I even went further and merged many vanilla blocks that have "on" and "off" states, including furnaces, redstone lamps (torches), and pumpkins, which was made possible by adding the ability for metadata to set the light level, and removed unnecessary items, such as cake and beds, by having the block drop itself (they also now have 3D item models, including a full bed model). Of course, this made the game incompatible with anything else, I block older/vanilla worlds by checking level.dat for a specific NBT tag which is only present in TMCW (the player's diamond ender chest inventory, which I renamed from "DiamondEnderChest" to "DEC5", i.e. TMCWv5. This is not an issue for me since I never update a modded world to a newer version of the mod, and hiding vanilla worlds prevents them from accidentally being loaded, I also use custom names for the stats and options files so they are separate from 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?
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Curse PremiumEpisode 2: Not as Easy as Expected.
Season: Summer
First, a minor mod change: I got tired of 10 minute days, so I installed Longer Days at the default of 20 minute days and 15 minute nights. This also requires I change the day lengths of Serene Seasons and Astral sorcery; initially I set them to 48000 ticks (doubled) because the mod said "doubled" in the config; but later I found an online mention it should be 42000. Hopefully the shifts won't cause trouble.
My sugar cane has been barely growing even though it's summer, supposedly its season. I think it may be due to it also now growing best in Swamp and Jungle, which I think is from Serene Seasons although I'm not sure. In any case, I haven't the cane for the paper I need for large scale exploration. But for a first go-round, I have a solution:
The Grasslands is absolutely lousy with pools, many of which have cane. There's plenty for now but in the long term I'll have to figure out a way to get lots of paper.
Another thing which is sort of visible here is the shadow in the water. That's from the floating in air Slime Islands Tinker's puts in to spawn its Blue Slimes, which produce blue slimeballs on death, which is a resource in Tinker's. I find this a really strange decision, because blue slime is not a essential resources yet they made this REALLY drastic worldgen change (the floating islands are EVERYWHERE) to put it in. I would expect Blue Slimes to just spawn under conditions similar to Green. There's a config to shut the floating islands off, and I flipped it after this episode, but the islands that are there remain.
Usually Slimes that fall off the islands go splat, but as you can see this one is over water and they survive. While I was gathering 3 Large Blue Slimes came after me, but they weren't particularly difficult to deal with since they're slow.
I head home, crank out my map and head to the northeast. One problem with the new map system is that spawn is usually near 0,0, and that's ALSO the corner of four maxed out maps. So you often need 4 maxed maps to explore the immediate area. Yuck. Explorercraft was much nicer that way, centering expanded maps on the map they came from, and using the Atlas to tile maps. But, I never updated it because it wasn't better *enough* for just me and it never generated much interest.
And, although I forgot to take a pic, I am near the edge of a map, and it really constrains my movement. A short northeast jog already has me at the edge.
The first biome is I *think* BoP Sheild but I didn't actually check because I was quickly attacked by two successive Better Creatures Wolves. They weren't hard to beat but I was shaken because I wasn't expecting danger in broad daylight.
Then I reach Ocean and get in my boat (phew!), passing this likely RTG Ice Mountains (I didn't get off to check) with some Better Creatures Walruses.
Next is BOP Wooded Wasteland. And this is where things went completely off the rails. No pics, because I was too freaked and distracted to take any. As I'm zipping along, I spot *multiple* large and ominous looking sharks. I fully expect those to be hostile and try to move around them. I later found out I was right; they are hostile when hungry, have good stats, and - worst - attack the boat first, which could dump me in the middle of a shark feeding frenzy, with me the meal.
Luckily, they didn't attack, probably because they weren't hungry. As I am sighing relief and wondering how to continue if the oceanic travel I rely on so much is seriously unsafe, I see a funny squiggle in the water right in front of me and BLAM!
I'm blind and poisoned. Oh great. The blindness is only a few seconds, but my hearts remain poisoned. And I had no idea why (later research indicates a Better Creatures jellyfish) Now things are REALLY bad.
I land quickly to get away from all this water danger and consider options. Back the way I came is a long way on foot, with wolves near the end. I can handle 1 or 2 but if they have a pack attack function - uhoh --. And the poisoning is not going away - although I'm not losing hearts. I don't even have milk at home to cure this.
So I decide to swing out and hope for more benign biomes. I don't even remember what biomes I passed through and I didn't think to take pics. I am still poisoned-but-not-taking-damage and I'm starting to suspect a bug.
Near dusk I spot a Cherry Blossom Grove, which makes me feel a little better even though it's not any safer than the scarier biomes I've been in. A bit less, actually, because it's duskspawning, as I found in my TO THE END OF THE WORLD journal (geez, turn that down; I "only" got 1/30 of the way there). And of course I spot ANOTHER disturbing mob, a brown bear, which I remember to screenshot although you only see a blobby brown thing behind the grass. I give it a WIDE berth.
I pillar up and sleep on top of a tree.
Next morning I continue on. Obviously the poison hearts are a bug but it's still distracting. I reach an Ocean and decide to risk it but it doesn't take me home.
I get off on these Highlands. From there I passed into a dark wooded biome where I didn't check anything because I suspected it was dayspawning and wanted to be on high alert. I did spot some chickens, which I'd like. From there I struggle through the mud of a Dead Swamp and then FINALLY
Words cannot express how relieved I was! My hearts still appeared poisoned (and yes, a bug, went away on reload). So now to put the map up in a frame --
Oh wait. No leather. Cows were one of the reasons I was out looking. I could butcher some horses in the grasslands, but ick.
Fortunately it turns out the Better Creatures wolf pelts I got can be processed into leather. So:
So you can see my constraints. North is ocean; usually a great thing to border but problematic in this game. West is the biomes you've been seeing; plenty of hostile creatures and not likely much I want other than those chickens. East and South is off to the next map I don't have paper for. So here I am stuck.
Oh, wait, the chickens! I could get those at least. I'll try to go east of the Dead Swamp and
A moose? Is that dangerous? Hmm. 4 hearts damage, faster than a player and
It's hostile! Great. So much for that. (There were several more not in the pic.)
So I am indeed stuck for a while, and maybe a long while if East and South are as dangerous as North and West. Very much not the kind of game I normally play with wide-ranging exploration and multiple bases.
But - variety IS the spice of life. And I've done quite a few extensive travelogues; not likely to be much substantive to say about the terrain after my last journal, in a world with RTG+BoP only 2 versions earlier. So for now, here I stay.
Next week: Buffing up or Um, how does Tinker's work, again?
Geographicraft (formerly Climate Control) - Control climate, ocean, and land sizes; stop chunk walls; put modded biomes into Default worlds, and more!
RTG plus - All the beautiful terrain of RTG, plus varied and beautiful trees and forests.
Better Forests Varied and beautiful trees and forests, in modern Minecraft.
Note to self; maybe I should look into Biomes o' Plenty.
I remember that mod being a big thing before 1.7 and then I remember discussions around that time asking if it would lose its relevance a bit due to 1.7 adding so many biomes. Judging by those pictures attracting me even though I am familiar with 1.18+, I'd say no it's not irrelevant.
A hostile mob dealing 4 hearts of damage per strike in addition to being faster than the player, even while sprinting. not a survival experience I would go for, as unfair combat I don't like even though it would be a realistic survival game design, I find that fun gameplay or game design is a better direction to go in than realism, but you mentioned this to be a mod, correct? meaning players wouldn't need to worry about this in vanilla.
1.20 is giving us cherry blossom trees however which are harmless and add more variety to plant life, I do agree that variety improves a game.
I do wish the vanilla game had more variety than what it currently offers, but the more features added to the game I could see the performance impact becoming larger. More items added to the game also leads to complaints about inventory space, extra items not having enough use to justify them existing in the game and so forth.
But artificially limiting the game just to pander to purists isn't helping matters either, the game needs to evolve and more options are generally better.
I've always thought that the vanilla 1.8+ map system was a bit odd; only level 0 maps are centered around 0,0 and everything else is centered so the northwest corner is at -64,-64; by contrast, my own modification makes all zoom level be centered around around 0,0 +/- a multiple of the scale width, thus for the level 3 maps I use in modded worlds the first map is centered around 0,0 and the surrounding maps are at +/- 1024; likewise, in my first world they are centered at multiples of 2048 (either system is better than what vanilla had before though; you had to go out to near the center of a map to ensure it was properly centered since they always aligned to a multiple of 128).
As I've mentioned and demonstrated many times before the content added in newer versions has very little to do with increases in resource usage due to the very nature of the game (one thing I've always been curious about is what a VisualVM analysis would show for current and/or modded versions, like what exactly is using so much memory or CPU?).
Fun fact, I likely offset any increase in memory usage by simply removing the following line of code, which needlessly allocates 10 MB of memory which is only freed on a client-side out of memory condition which should normally never happen, and removing it had no effect when I triggered one (the game frees up far more memory by exiting the world):
Likewise, a relatively simple change led to the single biggest reduction in allocation rates (vanilla always initializes data structures for block IDs, metadata, and light levels, only to replace them when loading chunks; while it doesn't load sky light data for the Nether/End it still allocates the arrays for them, which as noted):
// Called by AnvilChunkLoader to pass in NBT data instead of initializing empty arrays which are replaced right away. // Also makes sure arrays are the correct size, attempting to fix them if possible. public ChunkSection(int y, NBTTagCompound nbt, boolean skyLight) { this.blockArray = this.validateData(nbt.getByteArray("Blocks"), 4096); // Vanilla for comparison public ExtendedBlockStorage(int par1, boolean par2) { this.blockLSBArray = new byte[4096]; ExtendedBlockStorage var13 = new ExtendedBlockStorage(var12 << 4, var9); var13.setBlockLSBArray(var11.getByteArray("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?
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Curse PremiumWhat you're seeing is a combination of BoP and RTG: BoP is doing the flora, but RTG is doing the terrain, although I tried to capture the spirit of the underlying BoP terrains as well as I could with a few exceptions like Marsh, where I had access to some tricks they didn't have. RTG has a different spirit than vanilla; lots of broad sweeping terrain, essentially no craziness and some larger scale structure that at least pre-1.18 couldn't do.
But I do think BoP is fresh and very intersting on its own. It has an interesting philosophy of mixing attractive, unremarkable, and even ugly biomes and the combo makes for a very lively world. Vanilla is now copying that some with Mangrove Swamp, which is in the style of a BoP "ugly" biome even if it's not much like a particular biome. And now Cherry Blossom biome *does* seem to be mimicking BoP's Cherry Blossom Grove.
While BoP survived 1.7, the other big biome mods didn't. EXBL never had another release. Highlands did one more, for 1.8 I think but based on a *totally* different terrain system and then stopped. I modified Highlands to work with RTG for 1.10 (becaue I crazy loved that mod) but never got its own world going.
The things you've seen in this journal so far don't have any substantial performance hit. BoP adds a few dozen more biomes but there's basically no effect on performance; Minecraft is still only doing a few at a time. Likewise Better Creatures is just changing which animals you're dealing with. Some mods do bring performance hits, like ones with complicated renderings or lots of tile entities, or big machines, but variety it free. I will be showing Bibliocraft later and that *is* one that brings a performance hit, but not a big one in my experience.
Any way to handle map alignments has some tradeoff - I had to think about this a lot while writing Exporercraft. But since vanilla doesn't allow you to transfer info when you expand a map, there's not much disadvantage in having *all* the maps center where most players start.
Geographicraft (formerly Climate Control) - Control climate, ocean, and land sizes; stop chunk walls; put modded biomes into Default worlds, and more!
RTG plus - All the beautiful terrain of RTG, plus varied and beautiful trees and forests.
Better Forests Varied and beautiful trees and forests, in modern Minecraft.
Is RTG another mod, or your own terrain generation efforts?
Because it definitely wasn't just the biomes that attracted me, but the terrain. Specifically, in these pictures...
...I love how there's some gradual and open terrain but judging by all the pictures, it's not like everything is flat. I'm okay with modern vanilla generation, but I wouldn't mind trying something different for some variety.
Uh, this is bad. I have a hardcore world I need to "finish" and then I was wanting to get back to working on one of my other two main worlds. Now I'm wanting to make a new one! Help.
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Curse PremiumRTG was written by a team on which I was the primary terrain designer. It was a great team and all the major contributors were amazing, with nicely complementary skills. I'm very proud of the terrains, and I put a lot of love into them. I tried to make them varied - some flat, some rolling hills, some mountainous, and some with special effects. One that I think came out particularly well is Extreme Hills and if you're curious run RTG on an otherwise vanilla world and look at them and in them with Creative.
(If you use BoP, I have some suggested changes to the default config).
Lol. I feel for you. I have been there so many times! But if you want to have BoP, hold off a bit, because
there is a double decoration bug I'm going to try to fix. It doesn't *have* to be fixed and I played for years without even realizing it was there, but it doesn't do the BoP Biomes justice.]Actually what I thought was a double decoration bug was just BoP placing an absurd number of trees. So never mind, BoP+RTG is good to go!PS. Holy ****, this post editor is messed up.
Geographicraft (formerly Climate Control) - Control climate, ocean, and land sizes; stop chunk walls; put modded biomes into Default worlds, and more!
RTG plus - All the beautiful terrain of RTG, plus varied and beautiful trees and forests.
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Curse PremiumEpisode 03: Trying Tinker's Tools and Tanks.
Season: Summer
So, if I want to deal with all these hostiles, I'm going to need more punch. I've done part of Astral Sorcery before, and it's a long road. Psi I've never done but I get the impression from some vids that it needs some advanced materials. But Tinker's I know can significantly buff up tools relatively early so I'll start with that.
For those not familiar with it, Tinker's Tools allows you to make parts of a tool separately and then put them together, granting bonuses compared to vanilla tools depending on what you've used for the components. It requires a very elaborate system to do all this: first you have to make patterns for the tool parts with a Stencil Table; then you have to use the patterns to make the tool parts in a Part Builder; and then you put them together in the Tool Station.
This is enough for non-metallic materials, and even that can be decently useful, but for real punch you need metal parts, and *those* have to be made of molten metal in casts which in turn had to have been made by pouring a molten gold over a mold. Melting requires a Smeltery, a large multiblock device which I thought needed a total of 45 mod-specific blocks made mostly of a mod-specific brick (Seared Brick), requiring quite a lot of resource gathering for early in the game.
I need clay, sand, AND gravel to make all those bricks, and I know I don't have enough, especially sand.
I head out to dig from the numerous pools in my Grasslands, which thoughtfully provide clay, sand, AND gravel, although not nearly enough sand. This is turning out to be a remarkably benign biome in a generally rough world.
But I'm interrupted by a thunderstorm, one of the few things that make this a dangerous biome. Serene Seasons creates season specific weather, which for summer is thunderstorms, and I've been seeing a LOT of these normally rare events - about every other day, I'd say. I run home and sleep it off.
Come morning I head to the beach on the ocean to mine sand. But the beach here isn't sand, it's gravel. I think this is a bug in RTG (and my fault because I did this part); RTG places gravel beaches by rugged biomes because sandy ones look really bad there. Grasslands must be misassigned. I'd done it before and thought I'd fixed them all but apparently not.
So I head north to the next biome, some snowy biome with a snowy beach. I collect a lot of sand, and a lot of snow as well, which can be used for some Harvestcraft recipes.
Then I head downstairs, load the furnace up with a full load of brick materials, and set in to read the in-game Tinker's manual thoroughly because I had forgotten almost everything (I couldn't have written the opening section then).
So I'm reading and then suddenly -
My hearts are almost gone! I drop the book and see my hearts flashing, the chests gone, all the contents floating around as items, and a lot of damage to the room. It takes me a second to realize what must have happened - creeper explosion. I'm normally very scrupulous about lighting up while I branch mine, to the point that I think of my tunnels as completely safe. But evidently I missed a spot. And a curse of the Minecraft system is that it's almost impossible to find that one light level 6 spot somewhere. I'm really lucky I'm not dead.
Well, first I have to save my items. I'm luckily carrying enough to make a double chest, so I do so, plop it down where the chest was, and then start throwing things into it willy-nilly to make space on me to save the items. I'll sort them later.
No in-process pics, I was too busy. This is after I had rescued the items. I get that done, then make two ladders to replace the ones blown off by the explosion, then head upstairs to get two fence gate to block the entrances so it won't happen again.
After that, I got upstairs to catch my breath.
I've found a possible solution for my paper issues; this recipe from Harvestcraft. Ironically I only have one of the vanilla saplings it needs and no easy way to get more because I'm surrounded by modded biomes.
Now that I've caught my breath, I head back down and grind through the process of making all the Tinker's xxx stations, and then the patterns and the parts, for my first Tinker's tool. It's made with a Flint head which is strong but relatively fragile; a wooden handle which gives it an automatic if slow Repair, and a Blue Slime binding which provides a lot of extra durability to make this tool useful - with the possible disadvantage of occasionally creating Blue Slimes while I'm using it. It can't mine advanced resources, but the auto repair is a GREAT convenience because I won't have to keep making picks anymore as long as I don't mine all that much. The tooltip is wrong, though; it's supposed to be iron-level, but it's actually only stone-level so I still need a regular pick for the good stuff.
I use it to chop out a space for the smelter. In the process I hear the burbling of lava so I mine a bit more and
Bingo! This is awesome because the Smeltery will need lava as fuel and I have a large supply just steps away.
I branch mine with my new pick until it's almost worn out, then head upstairs to do food chores while it regenerates. While up there, I head into the Redwood Forest to knock over some Harvestcraft Shaded Gardens and am rewarded with some nice recipe components, notably Spice Leaves and Garlic.
I don't have the *best* sunset view because the trees get in the way, but sunsets are always nice.
in the morning I head over to that hill to harvest from its many fruit trees. It's actually kind of an intermod bug that they're there, because it's Prairie. Evidently Harvestcraft had it coded wrong. Past the Prairie is a mountainous biome with lots of trees and I quickly check it out of curiousity. It's Rainforest, which is a *seriously* dayspawning biome so I am staying well away.
But there's a vanilla oak there so I take the risk to chop it down, getting rewarded with FIVE saplings I can use for paperbark trees.
Then it's back down to continue building the Smeltery. 3x3 on the bottom, 3x3 on three sides, just 4 blocks to go! I'm a little short of materials, though, I'll have to mine a bit more. But let's put another block in.
Wait, it started up? It's 3 blocks including the base, not 3 high walls? Ugh, what a waste. Well, I can now finish what I need. Just a casting table and a casting channel and I'm ready to go.
Put in some lava for fuel. Wait, there's no fuel? (Checks manual) Oh foo, you're supposed to put it in the *tank*, not an input drain. Well, dump in some water and now I've got molten Obsidian, and I can use that for a tool head.
Make a cast for a tool head, melt some gold for the cast, right-click the casting channel.
click. click. click.
Oh great. It's supposed to be a Seared Faucet, not a Casting Channel. Well, I'll just make a Seared Faucet and -
I'm out of Seared Bricks to make it with. About 200 bricks made and I'm *THREE* *BRICKS* *SHORT* And out of sand to make Seared Brick. And no shovel because I was planning to Tinker one. Sigh.
So I make a shovel with the same flint/wood/slime system as my pick. It will be useful even after I get a better one (soon!).
Head upstairs, dig up some sand with my nifty new shovel, harvest some ripe crops, head back down, and roast up some Seared Brick. As soon as the third is done I snatch it from the Furnace, make a Seared Faucet, install it and:
FINALLY! Success! As soon as it cools I switch the liquids in the Smeltery to put the Obsidian at the bottom. Since I accidentally made some in the Smeltery, I may as well use it. Obsidian in Tinker's is strong - it can mine like Diamond - but brittle and short-lived. But, I'm going to make it regenerating like my other pick and they will make a good combo - the Flint one can chew through the rock and then the Obsidian harvest the ores.
And here's the final result. I didn't use a slime binding because I don't have enough slime. But I am getting more Tinkered up, with a high-efficiency Smeltery and 2 regenerative picks.
Next Episode: Some weaponry and more Tinkering up.
Geographicraft (formerly Climate Control) - Control climate, ocean, and land sizes; stop chunk walls; put modded biomes into Default worlds, and more!
RTG plus - All the beautiful terrain of RTG, plus varied and beautiful trees and forests.
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Curse PremiumEpisode 4: Finding Flora in Fall
Season: C'mon, guess.
After *all* that work to get the smelter and tool construction going, to make a broadsword, I only need *one* new part. I design it, make the mold and pour the iron. Then I build this sword: iron for damage, wood handle for regeneration, and a flint guard to grant Crude, which gives +20% damage versus unarmored - which would include all those obnoxious animals I saw Episode 2.
I thought Tinker's equipment did more damage than comparable vanilla stuff, but I was wrong. But it doesn't matter because you can improve Tinker's equipment with materials:
Redstone improves item speed. In this case, I get the attack speed up by 46% at the cost of over two stacks of Redstone I had no plans to use soon anyway.
And I immediately get a chance to use it! As I'm putting things away in chests, I get an arrow in the back from a skelly standing at one of the fence gates I put up. I turn around, pop the gate open, and beat it to bonemeal. With such a drastic increase in attack speed, even somebody as combat inexperienced as I can feel that it's faster.
That gate didn't lead to my main branch mine but to a single short run I did very early on. (It hit a lava cave so I did my branch mine in the other direction.) So I head down to figure out *why* things are getting into what should be a safe area.
It wasn't lighting: I had cut through to a cave overhead digging out ores. Sorry no pic, I thought I screenshotted but evidently I didn't. I block it off and head back, but I leave the gate.
Back at the forge, I decide to make some armor from the Tinker's addon Construct's Armory. This requires an Armor Station, which I make. I decide to make Iron Armor, but with Obsidian Plates, which gives it the toughness of Diamond, and a wood trim, which gives it Ecological (the regenerating ability). Plus, it's Magnetic, meaning items are attracted to me so less jumping around to pick up items when mining or logging.
Looks spiffy too.
I head upstairs to plant some autumn crops. I don't know if it's fall yet, but if not it will be soon, and I am getting nervous about my food situation. Normally by this point I'm just drowning in food. But because of Serene Seasons, only about 40% of my planted crops are growing at any particular time (a little more than 1/3 because some crops grow in multiple seasons.) In addition, something has added a biome requirement that makes crops grow slower outside of their native biome types. And I have almost no animals.
I'm growing more than I'm eating, but not an enormous amount. And come winter almost nothing will grow and I don't think I'll have enough to get through 21 game days.
Even though I may not have enough to make it through the winter, my food has outgrown my original double chest. Harvestcraft has a lot of different foods! And I have to use a wide variety due to Spice of Life. I'm trying to devise an organizational scheme to keep up. Right now I have one chest which mostly accumulates foods I'm growing. When I get to 16 I move it to here and eventually try to find recipes to use it. But since I've only got 2 chests, I'm also using it to store out of season crops here until it's time to plant them (including summer, because I expect summer to end any day now).
The other chest is an unholy mess (no pic, I'd be embarrassed) with the accumulators and the tools and the finished recipes. This all demands a much more sophisticated organizational scheme and a lot more chests but there's no room in my starter shelter and I've not yet had the inspiration for a bigger base yet.
I have one possible solution to the winter issue: the Serene Seasons Greenhouse Glass, which makes the block beneath it ignore seasons. But the recipe is crazy expensive: 4 blocks of glass and 4 cyan dye for *one* block of Greenhouse Glass. Cyan dye is kind of hard to get; I could make it from my Lapis if I got some Cactus, or I could get BoP Cornflower from the right swampy biome.
The Harvestcraft Paperbark trees have been very productive (maybe too much so from a game balance perspective) so I've got the paper for another maxed map. So it's back out exploring.
I start with just exploring the areas of my start biome that aren't on my start map because of how Mojang did the map tiling. I notice the grass has lost its super-blue tinge and so I suspect autumn has arrived.
The land here is just on the eastern side; further in is ocean. I spot a snowy biome, then another grasslands, and then pillar up to sleep on a tree in a Bayou.
Come morning I search the Bayou for Cornflower, but don't find any. I do find these chickens, but I'm over 1000 blocks from home at this point and that's a long way to lure and I have other priorities. I've always been fond of Bayou; it's a very atmospheric biome.
Next is a Woodlands, and then:
Desert! Cactus and Sand together. So now I'll have supplies for Greenhouse Glass. Well, a few at least, given how pricey they are.
As I start back, I immediately hit a Swampland with - Cornflower! So things are looking up. And on this trip there's nothing nastier than those desert goats.
Once home I notice some Autumn crops have started growing. So yes, indeed, fall is here. I make some Greenhouse Glass and put it up over two rows: one of important summer crops like lettuce and bell pepper and the other over a row with Spice Leaf, which is needed for a long list of recipes. I have enough for one more row but my farm is an organizational mess and it's not clear where I should put it. I think I'll wait a bit for things I find out I need later.
Now I want to plant some autumn plants, but my hoe is broken. Ooh, let's make a Tinker's hoe!
They provide two options. The less warlike and more farm functional is a Kama. I make it, carry it back up and..
Click. Click. Click. It can't till? Isn't that the main point of a Minecraft farm implement?
I don't have time to futz with this, so I make a vanilla stone hoe and plant my crops.
I didn't take map pics on the trip (out of practice) but here's a shot of the map from the next day when I went out to finish the map of my start biome. The top half is a long isthmus, to where I won't know for a while. We've had some discussions on this thread about climate zones, and you can see how Geographicraft can put snowy and hot zones within a few hundred blocks with essentially no problematic junctions. It's rarely *this* close, but it's never like the old vanilla.
And notice something else on this pic: a chicken! Right next to my home biome, where I hadn't gone yet. Eggsellent!
Next episode: Counting Chickens.
Geographicraft (formerly Climate Control) - Control climate, ocean, and land sizes; stop chunk walls; put modded biomes into Default worlds, and more!
RTG plus - All the beautiful terrain of RTG, plus varied and beautiful trees and forests.
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Curse PremiumEpisode 05: Home Improvement I
Season: Fall
One of the effects of the Ecologically regenerating Tinker's items is that once they're completely regenerated, if you don't use them you're wasting regeneration. And the regen is pretty slow, so you don't want to waste any. My picks are at full, so it's time to branch mine.
I encounter the biggest agglomeration of ores I can remember. A redstone deposit exposed an iron deposit which exposed a coal deposit, which exposed another redstone deposit, another iron deposit, *and* a lapis deposit. It was nuts.
I go back up the mineshaft to lure in the chickens. But as I set out.
It starts raining. No longer a thunderstorm, because it's not summer anymore, but maybe not the best time for a longish slow luring.
I step inside and the cramped starter base with rain still coming through the slat roof really gets to me. I'll take the day to make it a bit bigger. First I need to chop out a tree in the backyard --
I forgot to make the axe.
Well, I'll get some fun out of this. I'll make a really showy axe, the Lumber Axe. It fells entire trees, up to 9x9.
It requires the Tool Station in the center be upgraded to a Tool Forge. Yes, that's four blocks of iron. Not starter equipment.
The Lumber Axe requires these four items requiring a total of 17 resources. Each is made of a a material of your choice. I choose a head and plate of iron and the rest wood - this doesn't need to be that fancy. But I need gold casts for the metal parts, and that ends up a total of 13 each gold and iron. But the Smeltery doubles output, so it's not that big a deal.
These larger parts take a while to cool. This is the iron plate. I will be able to re-use this cast for other high-end tools.
Soon it's done and I head upstairs for a demo. But, trouble! There's a witch lurking outside the fence.
I'm totally fumblefingered today and TWICE I accidentally hit a hotbar key and end up whaling on the witch with a torch. I still kill her, but seriously wounded.
Now time for the demo.
Sorry folks. It looked SO COOL in the game, with the rain of wood blocks coming down. Not so exciting in a still, plus I hit the F2 key kinda slow.
I get over 3 stacks of redwood from one hit.
I'd like to knock over another and try to hit the F2 key faster this time. But that one tree has used more than half the durability of my axe! Another would break it. So we'll have to wait for the axe to recover a bit.
Then over to lure in the chickens. I kill a few blue slime dropping from an island above the area.
Here, chickie chickie!
Soon they're in a pen and the first chick bred. This is very good for winter as I'll still have eggs, which can be used in a number of Harvestcraft recipes. Specically, 28.
I have had a rough idea for a base: something loosely based on grand California hotels like the Awhanee or the Grand Californian. So a big central showy hall and two smaller wings. I like to lay the footprint out on the ground to see how it will work with the terrain.
My idea is to build the wing nearest my current base first so I can use it now that I've outgrown my starter shack, although I'm laying the whole plan out. I run short of gravel for the layout and so I mine some from the surface pools.
The vanilla pools are just so ugly (Mojang used the underground code). I wrote an improved version in RTG but BoP isn't using it. WorldGenPond is public domain, all modders are encouraged to use it!
The deciduous Harvestcraft trees are looking more and more autumnal but the Redwoods aren't noticeably changing. Did Adubbz of Serene Seasons actually program that? If so I'm *so* impressed.
I'm also putting in a rough outline of the building to get an idea how it fits with the site. The idea is to get a building with a view of the Redwoods, the Fruit Prairie, and the Rainforest Mountain at the same time - the kind of view that might attract a nice resort hotel. I think it's working.
But - I haven't decided on a specific materials scheme so I'm not ready to try a mockup of a wall or something like that.
So up to the Prairie Hill to harvest from the fruit trees and
How did YOU get here? I've been up to this tiny little biome a dozen times and I never saw any cows!
It's too late in the day to build a pen and lure her in so ZZZ and...
In the morning, creeper at the gate. I try the whack and jump back technique but. - thump, I hit the side of the house. and BOOM!
Well, no real harm done. It's day and everything is easily replaced. But next time, more space between house and fence!
Then build the pen and lure in the cow. I search the biome for another, but not dice. So no breeding, but at least I have milk - and butter and cheese. And as with eggs; butter, cheese, and all the things I can do with them, will be available through the winter. Things are looking up!
Next episode: Psi!
Geographicraft (formerly Climate Control) - Control climate, ocean, and land sizes; stop chunk walls; put modded biomes into Default worlds, and more!
RTG plus - All the beautiful terrain of RTG, plus varied and beautiful trees and forests.
Better Forests Varied and beautiful trees and forests, in modern Minecraft.
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Curse PremiumEpisode 06: Seasons and Psi
Season: Fall
Exploring the Psi Mod, which is entirely new to me. Many mods have you start with, or be able to build, an in-game manual, including Tinker's and Astral Sorcery. For Psi, Vazki chose a code system activated by a hotkey which brings this up. It's a series of tutorials you have to progess through.
The first tutorial is long. The first part is to build these two devices and then use the second to activate the first. Then you drop some redstone and "shoot" it with your CAD to convert it to Psi Dust. But there's a problem. My magnetized Tinker's Chestplate attracts items to me. I have to take it off for the redstone to remain floating to be made into Psi Dust.
And, done!
But it turns out I don't really have a functional CAD. The second part is to build three more items and use the Assembler to attach them to the CAD, and then a Spell Programmer.
And the third part is to use all this to write and cast a very simple spell, that prints your name, game, and location to the chat.
The programming is done in a 2D grid in a kind of functional programming language. Cells can connect to adjacent cells and use them as input. In this case I have the Debug action (=print to chat) connected to me, represented by the gun icon.
I also had to build a Spell Bullet to hold the spell, and right-click the Spell Programmer with the bullet to "store" the spell. Def Technopunk vibe - not a great aesthetic fit with Early Industrial Tinker's and Renaissance-ish Astral Sorcery but too late to change.
And, Done!
Oh my! I've been at this through an entire extended Minecraft night and half the day (in addition to the Psi work, I wanted to make a room for it and *that* intersected with a lava cave, plus I had to run the Smeltery to generate all this iron). And Winter is Coming (with zombies, even!). I've got to run my farm to build up my food supplies. So upstairs to harvest crops, breed chickens, and milk the cow.
As it happens I had a lot of Elderberry to plant for my Autumn crops, and I figured in typical Harvestcraft fashion I could use it for Elderberry juice, jam, and smoothies. But it turns out Elderberry doesn't have any specific products so it's going to be hard to use it efficiently. The best use might be as a "palate cleanser" for Spice of Life. In Spice of Life you get less out of a food if it's one of the 12 most recently eaten (this number can be changed in a config). But you can eat a bunch of a low-value food as a "palate cleanser" to fill up those spots. Next year I'll plant a lot less Elderberry.
The second Psi tutorial is very easy.
Just add a number parameter to the Debug printout.
And, done!
Third tutorial is to make a spell to jump you forward.
The top is me, and beneath that is a function that gets my gaze direction. That gets used by the "Move" function beneath, which also gets me again (to the left) as the entity to move and 3 from below as the amount.
And, done!
The fourth tutorial is an explosion. Boys and their guns, etc.
This is embarassingly inefficient because I was thinking in terms of a functional database programming language I learned 40 years ago in which each function had an output arrow. So you couldn't send outputs to multiple targets, you had to repeat the code (or use subroutines, but Psi doesn't have those). In Psi there's no output arrow; outputs are just available for any adjacent square to use. Top line is me, and then determining where I'm looking; second line is me and where I am, into a function that combines this info to determine what I'm looking at with a max distance of 10 blocks. The last line makes a strength 1 explosion (all my puny equipment can do) at that location. I go upstairs to test it - and it doesn't work. Well, do a round of farm chores, do some online research, eventually realizing
- I'd just pointed it at something too far away. Done!
The fifth tutorial is to make yourself move up a block. Very simple, almost like #2. Program, put it in my gun - click, click, click - nothing happens. Whunh?
Then I realize I hadn't switched my spell gun from the explosions. I had been firing explosions into my Psi research room! Easily fixed:
The explosions were so wimpy even the torch didn't notice.
At this point there are 3 different tutorials you can do. The next tutorial I take is the one to place and destroy blocks. The instructions as I read it were to write a program to destroy a block and the seven above it - a "TreeCapitator", as it were. I write it easily enough, but the spell is to powerful for my wimpy equipment. I try to find a way to improve my equipment, fail, and then cheat and find a list of successful tutorial programs and copy one.
(from the PSItorial at Imgur)
I won't explain this unless people ask, but as I understood it the spell should destroy 3 blocks (not eight) moving away from me (not up). So how does that meet the requirements? Well, maybe I don't understand it. Upstairs to test:
It destroys ONE block only. But I get the pass message anyway!
Well, maybe because there were no blocks further away. So I fire into a hill - still only one block.
So I don't understand how this spell works OR why it passed the test.
I want to point out even this dinky little spell could be really useful. It allows you to destroy I guess basically any block at 32 blocks away. Very useful for, say, the Ender Dragon. I hope Psi doesn't turn out too strong.
Time for a break. I go up to Prairie Hill for some fruit.
faintly; "mooo!"
Another cow! OMGOMGOMG! But - there's a creeper there as well, which snuck off behind a tree before I could snapshot. Creepers.
Maybe my little popgun can hurt it. I pillar up, put a wheat in offhand hoping to attract the cow, and wait for the creeper to allow a shot.
But the cow comes over first, and I pillar down and lure it over to the cow pen, keeping a watchful eye out. Soon:
Happy Dance! Happy Dance! Now I'll have plenty of milk, butter, and cheese for cooking, and eventually leather for its many uses.
Next episode: more Psi.
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Curse PremiumI'm going to start spoilering my episodes because even I can't find things in this huge scroll!
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Curse PremiumEpisode 07: Psychic Food
Season: Fall
To explain: me on the right; on the top my position above and my look direction are combined to get the block I'm looking at. On the bottom my position and look direction are combined to determine which *face* of the block I'm looking at, giving a vector towards me along an axis; in the lower right the double arrows reverses that so it's pointing away from me, then above it it's multiplied by 5 so *five* blocks pointing away from me, and then the place and destruction length/direction get fed into the block destroying action.
It's night but I'm dying to test it so I snooze in my mine level bed. Putting the research room at mine level seems a mistake but I need a base upstairs to move it.
Come morning:
Ha! It works!
I'm getting very few eggs, even though I have about a dozen chickens, because Hunger Update seriously nerfs egg rate . I think I am going to have to build an auto chicken farm at some point.
My food chests are so overstuffed I'm forced to build another chest. Right now I'm going to use it to store my seed supply for future seasons. It looks ridiculous sticking up like this. I need to get a move on for building a real surface base.
Now that I have a supply of milk for butter, cream, and cheese, I have a big increase in my potential recipes. I scoop up water for dough and for salt (that part's weird). This allows a bunch of new recipes, including cucumber soup, biscuits, toast, and biscuits and gravy
Trying to keep this semi-organized; ingredients ready for use on the top; utensil and basic ingredients on the left; finished recipes on the right. I am feeling VERY much better about my food supply. The reason is actually a bit of a balance issue; two cows are producing more food than all my farms combined because each bucket of milk becomes *eight* servings of fresh milk. Well, that and being able to combine veggies, flour, and milk is allowing a lot more recipes, including higher value ones like Biscuits and Gravy (yum in real life, too).
Now to another Psi Tutorial
This one says to use "Add Motion" to an entity besides me. OK, here' my "Shove" spell:
Top left is me; to the right is the entity I'm looking at; below is the direction I'm looking; these get combined to move the entity in the direction I'm looking (away from me), and the 5 makes it a 5 block distance.
Back at the surface, it works, but I don't get the tutorial completion. I check the sample completions: and it's a spell to print out the coordinates of the nearest entity within 1 block of me. (no spell pic because who cares about that). This is TOTALLY not my instructions. But I make the spell, use it on my chickens, and :
What-ever.
Is that snow on top of the redwoods? I'm definitely still in autumn, based on crops. The temp gets colder and colder as autumn goes on? Oh, this is so cool.
Oh, let's try the Lumber Axe again;
See, cool! Maybe even cooler than autumn is getting here (brrr).
Ok, another Psi Tutorial. Numbers 101. This is so easy I won't do any pics. The tutorial explains that you can do math operations on number constants with the usual symbols - add can add two or three numbers next to it. The instruction is just to do an operation and debug-print the result. Done.
The next tutorial is about alternative "bullets" for activating spells. The standard one is cast from when you are when you are. These alternatives are: a projectile that casts the spell where it lands; a grenade which drops when you fire and goes off 3 seconds later, a mine that fires like the projectile and then goes off the next time a mob walks over it; and a circle that activates a circle where you are looking and casts the spell repeatedly.
It also describes "rulers" you can make and then place next to your CAD in your hotbar to provide a vector parameter to a spell.
I make a projectile bullet with a popgun explosion and fire it in a mine tunnel where it's not strong enough to damage anything.
Done.
Next is Psimetal Infusion.
Yay! The recipes told me that more advanced CADs require Psi infused materials, so I've been waiting for this. (The top tier requires materials infused in the End.) You can infuse Gold to Psimetal, by firing an infusion spell at it.
Done!
Oh, it's daytime and farm chore time. In addition, I *really* need that surface base for both Harvestcraft and Psi. So, back to the surface.
The snow line is even lower, and in the Sheild (which should be a fairly cold biome) it's reached the ground. Still autumn, though: my autumn crops are still growing. SO COOL!
I make a mockup for a window design. More rustic and bland than I wanted, but it's a start. I try to modify it, but The Lumber axe chops all wood blocks in a large tree-shaped AOE and that would be a disaster next to a wood wall!
So I decide to Tinker up a more ordinary axe. I make a cast for a more ordinary axe head, pour a metal head, and make wood parts. But as I'm doing so I notice a special Tinker's item, the Mattock, which is a hoe+axe. So I shift gears and make that instead - one less tool to carry.
Note those pretty credible damage stats. If sped up to the max with the Tinker's Redstone enhancement(about 1.45), it would do more damage that a vanilla sword, although not as much as my Hasted Tinker's sword. Hmm...
I'm downstairs, so ...
Next Psi tutorial is Block Movement. You can use this to move a targeted block in the desired direction. Goal is to move a block.
Again, takes me, figures the block I'm looking at, and moves that block by the vector constructed at the bottom, which is up one.
Done! But you'll note it pulled up the block beneath it too, although not any more beneath. I don't understand that yet.
Next is Elemental Arts. This provides 4 new tricks:
Smite (Air): Hits the target with a Lightning Bolt.
Blaze (Fire): Starts a fire.
Flood (Water): Places a water block.
Overgrowth (Earth): Bonemeals the target.
Goal isn't stated, but I assume it is to perform one of them? I pick Overgrowth, the most obviously useful to me:
To the surface to test it. I decide to test on my Onion, which I've only planted one of and which is needed for a lot of recipes.
ZAP! Green particles, but nothing visible, and I don't get a Psi Completion. ZAPZAPZAPZAPZAP (it's pretty cheap on Psi power) and Boing! an Onion pops off. So it works! So I have to do a different effect for completion. Probably Smite. Boys and their toys.
I make 16 onions with about 80 zaps. With this onion I make a recipe I've been planning for AGES:
Lamb Kebob. Both Harvestcraft AND Hunger Overhaul nerf vanilla food. multiplicatively, and cooked mutton only provides about 1/2 shank of food (an overnerf, but I haven't adjusted the configs). With this recipe I get the full effect of cooked meat. Now I can Overgrowth any ingredient I need that I have the seeds for, plus with my animals I can make any of the delicious foods I need. Winter? Bring it on!
Zeno's food issues are solved. Kebabs, anyone?
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Curse PremiumEpisode 08: Resorts to build a resort.
Season: Winter.
Hunger Overhaul limits the stack size of food to 32 hunger (16 shanks). I assume the intent is to make it difficult to carry large amounts of food. With smaller items it's been an advantage; most crops are limited to 16, which is a good accumulator size. But now that I'm making bigger recipe sizes, it's really starting to chew up ridiculous amounts of storage space. And I don't want to play a game where I have to cook every game day. So, I change the config modifyFoodStackSize to false in the Hunger Overhaul config.
I start work on my hotel base. As I've said, the plan is to build one wing now and move in, and finish the rest later. I have a design for the walls even if I'm not too thrilled with it, so now I need to decide what to do with the floors. I have a design principle that the ceiling and floor of a room shouldn't be the same material - looks funny - and my usual approach is to alternate floor materials. I have gobs of Eclogite, which I'll use as brick because cobble looks cheap. Smoothstone is an alternative, but I don't try it.
I need another material. Usually by now I'd have another UBC stone type in quantity but I only have small amounts of any other type this time. I decide to try Spruce Wood. It's available in quantity in the BoP Shield Biome (visible through the window here), but the BoP trees are interesting shapes which saplings never generate, even in the biome. I don't want to damage the looks of one of the supposed draws for my resort hotel, so I just chop a few and take saplings for tree farming. I decide to make the bottom floor Spruce as I'm planning to put my Psi research room upstairs and I want that floor resistant to explosions in case of accident (remember when I accidentally fired explosions in the research room in Episode 06?)
Flat buildings in historical styles often look off, so I have protruding support pillars in Eclogite brick. The facade is not nearly as interesting as I imagined.
I try some added structure to the windows and it helps a bit but still not up to my standards. But I need a base so it will have to do.
This will be the sunset view from the eventual (not soon) lobby, so that's going to be nice.
The next day I do chores and start on some other walls. I seem to have miscounted the length? Grrr. I push it out one.
Then the next day I awake to a greyish tinge to the grass. Winter?
Apparently. I still have a few crops but maybe they grew before the season shifted? But there's a catastrophe ongoing:
All the sugarcanes (and Harvestcraft reeds), wild or farmed, are popping off as their blocks freeze. And here we have my first beef with Serene Seasons: How can these exist if winter kills them all? Serene Seasons should change the game rules so that ice doesn't kill them - maybe knocks them back to one at most.
So I run all over the (large) Grasslands saving as much cane as I can. I don't get much, so somehow much must have disappeared before I got to it, although maybe I'd taken more than I thought when I chopped the paper for my maps.
I'm breeding a few sheep for colors. No immediate plans, but it takes a while to get this going and accumulate colored wool so starting now.
"In the bleak mid-win-ter"
Jacob Collier has nothing to fear from me.
I found a use for all those Elderberres - chickens will eat Elderberry seeds. Lotsa chickens now but still only 1 or 2 eggs per trip. Overnerfed.
The hotel wing is coming along. Not as impressive as I'd hope - too little contrast in materials, I think - but it will have to do. I need something NOW. I'll replace the torches with Biblicraft Fancy Lanterns someday, but not today.
Definitely winter now. Autumn crops have stopped growing. The feel of the seasons changing is really interesting.
As I lay out my interior, I realize I did NOT miscount - I confused myself with the brick column sticking out. So the far wall (between the wing and the eventual lobby) has to come down and be moved one back.
And *then* I realize I've put the second floor in a block low (you're supposed to be able to see out those windows). What a day. Thank goodness for regenerating Tinker's tools.
I start putting in storage for Harvestcraft. I'm not moving everything just yet but I start putting what I collect here. Not much, it's winter so only animal and Greenhouse products.
Add in some more fences and - hey, I never tested my Smite theory!
Very simple: Going around clockwise: Start with me, get what I'm looking at, get it's location, hit it with a lighting bolt.
Aim at one of the many wild sheep in the Grasslands and:
Zap! Level advance and cooked mutton too. Boys and their toys.
Next episode: Progress in Psi.
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Curse PremiumEpisode 09: Psi Shocks
Season: Winter
The new CAD will be able to do much more Potent spells (stronger effects), more complex spells (more operations), and Project more (3 simultaneous effects). It should be able to do some fairly significant stuff.
Embarassingly, when I was moving the Psi research room to my new base, I accidentally lost my old CAD. I had left it in the Assembler when I knocked it down to move. Usually, in that situation, Mojang, and modders, have contained items pop out (like with chests, furnaces, etc.). But in this case, poof. I figured it wasn't *that* big a deal; I'd just make a new gun, I mean CAD. It was time to upgrade anyway. But I didn't have enough Psi-enhanced materials. And I couldn't enhance more Psimetal without a gun, I mean CAD. And once it's assembled, it can't be un-assembled so I couldn't temporarily use what I already had to do it. So in the end I had to make another starter gun, I mean CAD, which I now have no further use for. Bah. It wasn't *that* much material, but annoying.
I placed the Psi Research Room against the far wall upstairs. I don't have a roof yet, but, oddly, in MC it doesn't make a difference since all the entrances have jump-up doors and the interior is lit. Even in winter!
I'll make it look good later.
Even though I don't need it gamewise I start putting in a roof. I want yet another contrasting material and the only nice thing I have in any quantity - besides Black Granite, which is NOT the look I want - is Soapstone. So a Soapstone roof it is, also in brick. I'm doing a halfslab roof because few buildings in California need snow-shedding roofs, plus it's easier than stairstep roofs, which are just a nightmare, although it's still some work.
The building certainly looks better with a roof, but the contrast of roof and column could be better. Maybe I should have used smoothstone for the roof (brick is good for structural-looking columns). I don't have enough to swap, so I'll have to wait until I expand to try it.
New CAD, conveniently placed research room; it's time to try a spell to really hurt something.
So this is my "Fling" spell. It strikes the target with lightning AND flings it up at a rate of 6. Explaination:
Top row: Me, entity I'm looking at, entity's location.
Second row: Vector contructed to be up, moving the entity (that I'm looking at) that direction at a speed of 6, and a lightning bolt at the entity's location.
I notice my limitation with my new CAD is primarily me. The third iten on the left is the Psi (power) the spell uses. Use more than you have and you take damage. I can now cast spells that need considerably more power than I've got, which I suspect will be very painful if not fatal. Not testing that yet.
Time to test my little weapon spell here. And right near where I am it something I wish weren't there - the moose next to the Dead Swamp.
I head over to where I saw the moose, and pillar up (in case it attacks or the spell is ineffectual). Click. Out of range.
Pillar down, move closer, pillar up.
Here moosie!
ZAP!
Lightning bolt, on fire, flies a decent distance in the air. No in-flight pic; wasn't fast enough.
Not dead. It doesn't try to attack, whether because it doesn't recognize the source or because I'm elevated, I don't know.
Zot again. *Still* not dead. Moose have 26 (!) hearts. There was a reason I didn't want to fight one.
Zot again. Finally dies.
On to Moose #2, the albino I saw in Ep. 2
This time I catch the in-flight pic. It dies after the second go-round.
So, very useful attack spell, probably enough for land exploration, although not very good for close range because I'll get zotted too.
It starts snowing so I head home.
Really coming down. My current base isn't symmetrical; there's a gable on this side and it's hipped on the other; that's because it's eventually supposed to be part of a larger structure.
Another use for Psi: using Break Block to take out scaffolding blocks I'd had to use while building the roof. Well out of reach and requiring pillaring otherwise.
Next Psi Tutorial: Movement Advances. This provides Blink, which teleport entities along their line of sight, and a couple of variants. Forgot to screenshot the spell (it was very simple). Here sheepie, sheepie.
Done. And the sheep is unharmed this time!
The animals are getting crowded, so I build a new larger pen for the cows and join both old pens for the sheep. I didn't want to do this before because the cow pen would be in the way for going to Prairie Hill; but now I'm in the future hotel and it's not in the way anymore.
Next Tutorial; Loopcasting. This is using a "loopcasting" spell bullet that casts the spell every tick. It stops when you unequip your CAD, or I suppose if it drains so far past your Psi limit it kills you. Goal not stated, again.
I make a levitation spell, mostly to see how it works. Maybe it can have uses for falls, immobilizing mobs, etc.
Explaination: Top row: Me, entity I'm looking at.
Second row: Vector constructed to point up, trick to move the entity above in the specified direction (up) at a speed of 1 (below).
For amusment value I test it on a chicken that escaped the coop.
It works! Chickens can now fly! Not very powerful; took about 5 seconds to to this. It doesn't work quite as I expected; I expected once it hit a target the spell would keep affecting that target; but actually, every time it re-casts, it picks a new target based on where my gun's, I mean CAD's, pointing. It's surprisingly hard to exactly track even a slowish chicken, hence all the error messages, from when the spell auto-recast when I wasn't looking *exactly* at the chicken.
No tutorial completion message, so, back to the Imgur tutorial solutions page. Their solution just prints out the loop index (how many times it's been cast this instantiation).
Done.
Next is Greater Infusion, to make Psigems. Much like the Psimetal infusion, but I drop a diamond instead of a gold, and use a Greater Infusion effect instead of just Infusion.
Done.
Next is Positive Effects. These are spells that provide beneficial potion effects for short periods.
This is Speed 2 for 5 seconds.
Done. Further testing reveals I could do this effect at this level forever. By the time the effect has worn off my Psi has recovered so I can just cast it again. So very easy to speed up travel.
As a programmer, I've been looking for ways to abuse the Psi system and so far I haven't been able to. (The moose-zapping is obviously intentional). All the effects use number *constants* for their strength; even just number constants added together are unacceptable. This is good! But now I want to try something at least borderline abusive: can I place a block in midair?
Explaination: Top left, position of me below. Top right, vector constructed to be up 5. Middle top, those two added together (so 5 blocks above me). Middle bottom, place block trick at that location.
WHOA.... this has IMPLICATIONS!
Next episode: implications.
Geographicraft (formerly Climate Control) - Control climate, ocean, and land sizes; stop chunk walls; put modded biomes into Default worlds, and more!
RTG plus - All the beautiful terrain of RTG, plus varied and beautiful trees and forests.
Better Forests Varied and beautiful trees and forests, in modern Minecraft.
Hehe.. What game are you playing? So many mod bits up there and more added each post, so I'm unable to keep track ;D
I saw you used a map up there.. Don't suppose you know of a mod that would make maps share the explored data, so if I wanted a 4:4 map and had already explored the world creating 3:4 maps, the 4:4 map would already be filled with the parts I had mapped out in other maps?
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Curse PremiumOh, goodness, this is rather mild by modded Minecraft standards. I've got 32 mods right now, and 6 of those are just collections of shared subroutines for other mods. I downloaded a "light" modpack once and it had over 100!
I am emphasizing the new stuff, and that's for 2 reasons. First, it's kind of fun; remember when you were first learning Minecraft and figuring out how everything worked? Fresh mods let you experience that again. Second, I noticed that "how to" episodes drew a lot of views in my earlier journals. That seems to be continuing as that last moose-flinging episode drew a lot of views compared to other recent episodes. (OK, there may be some entertainment value, too.)
Yes, I know of a mod that can copy map bits: Explorercraft. I know because I wrote it. Link in my sig, actually. But it's only through 1.8.9; I stopped updating it after Mojang made their maps auto-tile, which was the main reason I wrote it (it has an item called the Atlas that produces and automatically views tiled maps). I'm actually thinking about updating it, but I'm having trouble getting a mod setup going again - my old computer crashed and took all my setups with it. If I can get my modding working it should be fairly easy to update to 1.12; I'm not sure about current Minecraft because I don't know what changed.
Edit: confusingly, there is another completely different mod called Explorercraft from 1.14 on. I'm not sure what it's about, but it seems to have camping equipment and maybe adventures? So if I rerelease ExplorerCraft I'll have to change the name.
Geographicraft (formerly Climate Control) - Control climate, ocean, and land sizes; stop chunk walls; put modded biomes into Default worlds, and more!
RTG plus - All the beautiful terrain of RTG, plus varied and beautiful trees and forests.
Better Forests Varied and beautiful trees and forests, in modern Minecraft.