In terms of making hot zones larger to compensate for some biomes not looking "hot" on the map, IMO the on-ground experience is far more important than map appearance (even obsessed as I am with maps)...
I wasn't making that observation from the standpoint of maps alone, but also how it actually is in-game. Hot regions, or specifically the desert and badland biomes, seem disproportionately uncommon compared to cold regions.
I'm not sure what the answer is since Minecraft seems to use "multiple layers" (like humidity, and so on) to define what goes where, but whatever could be done to make desert and badlands a bit more common would go a long way to improving this.
It's worse because deserts are one of the only sources of some things, like camels or Green die. But even if it weren't for that, I'd say those biomes should be a bit more common for the sake of it alone, because they stand out in particular in that they feel too uncommon, at least to me. Having done enough large scale travel in 1.18+ terrain, those are the "types of terrain" that feel like they need an increase (and not really a very large one, but enough to matter). Everything else feels mostly alright.
(Keep in mind I'm largely talking about 1.18+ here, but I noticed a similar trend seemed to be emerging on your map, which is what got me to ask about it.)
Looking at the numbers on the wiki, cold is probably more common; the distribution is apparently symmetrical around 0, but it turns cold at -0.45 but hot not until 0.55 (and these Perlin distributions favor intermediate numbers, so that could be a fairly significant change in frequency.)
Thanks; that's a bit helpful since I didn't understand the details, but based just on experiencing it, I had a feeling something like that was going that made it lean cold more than hot (if not outright, then at least enough to make desert and badlands specifically be much less common than snowy regions).
And yeah, it's not like hot regions are super rare or anything. If you include all the hot region biomes, like jungles (which can be enormous), savannas, and whatnot. I sort of look at desert and badlands as the hot region biomes though, whereas jungles feel more "humid tropical" and savanna feels more "dry warm". They all might be classified as hot by the game (I think?), but most of my references to "hot regions" are probably going to specifically be referring to the desert and badland biomes. Sorry if that wasn't apparent before.
At least how it currently works is a whole lot better than it was 1.7 when they first introduced climate zones.
Obviously YMMV on seasons. I don't mind snow on birch or oak trees. I'm aware that the real trees don't tolerate it, but there are enough evergreens that it doesn't look odd to have snowed on trees and it's not like Minecraft has particularly accurate biology. My only issue with Seasons is the map issues from seasonal snow. If the map ignored snow that melts in summer I'd be a pretty happy camper.
Yeah, the Brown leaves with snow just doesn't... "feel Winter enough" to me I guess? But it's probably the only "practical enough" way to do it since, as you said, trees probably look too funny without leaves.
in 1.7 era, desert, badlands and savanna were "hot" while jungle was kind of mutated warm temperate (rarely, an enormous are of warm temperate was assigned to be jungle). Now jungle and savanna are both warm temperate (wet and dry respectively, with forest and plains getting medium humidity warm temperate) and only desert and badlands are "hot".
Jungle and savanna aren't supposed to be uncommon at all in modern generation, and I saw quite a lot of them playtesting Better Forests.
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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.
Now jungle and savanna are both warm temperate (wet and dry respectively, with forest and plains getting medium humidity warm temperate) and only desert and badlands are "hot".
Thanks for the further clarification. In that case, I feel relieved because when I typically refer to hot regions in modern versions, I am typically referring to those two biomes specifically, so it seems I was actually correct in my usage of the phrase for those biomes if hot regions don't pertain to other biomes.
Jungle and savanna aren't supposed to be uncommon at all in modern generation, and I saw quite a lot of them playtesting Better Forests.
Yeah, those ones feel alright. They always felt like intermediate steps between temperate regions and hot regions to me (which is why I was always referring only to desert and badlands as hot regions, despite not knowing for sure that they were truly the only hot regions).
And I'm definitely glad jungles aren't rare anymore.
The one(s) that feel rare are, again, deserts and badlands. I guess if there's only two hot region biomes and probably cold region biomes, Mojang made the temperature range smaller to try and prevent them from being too monotonous when they occur (similar to how temperate regions felt in 1.7 to 1.17). Maybe they need to make them a hair larger (0.25 to 0.5?) and add a third hot biome, like some alternate type of desert that is a bit more uncommon than regular desert? I mean, deserts could use an update anyway so it's certainly an idea to mend both issues at once.
I think the error was more making the hot zone essentially monotonous (all barren biomes) than the size. When they do occur, they can still be pretty big, which is a problem for play since all the biomes other than wooded badlands are pretty challenging starts. So making them bigger creates more problem starts - and because they're on an extreme of a distribution, not *that* much easier to find: there won't be many more; it's just that the existing ones will be bigger. Cold zones can include both cold and warm taiga, plus Ice Plains is a much less challenging start since it has trees. IMO hot zones should have been much larger, including dry to wet with Badlands/Wooded Badland, Desert, Savanna, and Jungle in that order. That would have broken up the barren hot zones more, so they would be easier to find while reducing the chance of a rough start, since you'd more often be able to escape to an adjacent survivable biome by *either* a temp change or a humidity change. And putting Wooded Badlands into the dryest category (based on weirdness) adds an escape to weirdness for the driest areas, where there's probably not a humidity escape..
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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.
As I come down the stairs from the attic, I remember I'd wanted to work out some interior design ideas to implement this winter. But my mind has been elsewhere recently - mostly working on my Better Forests mod, which is now officially released for 1.20.1, as well as some real life issues - and I don't have any ideas. This is a problem I have frequently - I build nice buildings but don't get around to putting matching decor inside. I'll try to think of something but time is getting short.
I bustle around putting away (most) of what I have in my inventory and backpack (what's in the airship chest will have to wait until it stops snowing). I quickly realize I made a mistake - I left my traveling food in the Pantheon. I really should have left some here rather than taking it all with me - I haven't needed nearly as much as I thought. I have food here, but it's food providing fewer shanks, so I have to eat more often. Not a problem in the chateau, but I was planning to do at least some exploration to the north in the spring and it could be a problem then.
I could make some more, but I'm disinclined to, because I don't anticipate playing all that much longer in this world. I want to try playing with the Better Forests mod in modern Minecraft, and so I expect I'll probably be finished this world once I'm done with this continent. I have plenty of food already for that; it's just at the Pantheon.
For now I head down to mine the Iron I'll need for more maps.
I'd forgotten these stairs are LONG! Building on a mountain gets nice views, but there's a price to pay in the commute to mining level.
I'd been thinking about hiking off to the north part of the mines to activate the Norman village there but - as I mentioned, this world is on a timer, and I probably won't do anything with the stained glass I might have gotten there. So, instead, I just branch mine next to the smeltery area.
Initially I'm in the Blue Schist of the area, with the usual minor annoyances like this Silverfish. One even manages to hit me once. Embarassing, given the state of my gear.
I hit one cave, and my new more daring self chooses to explore, but it's a tiny little thing.
Then another, and this one's a bit odd - just these two conjoined large chambers. My valor is meaningless; there's no mobs here. Not a lot of exposed ore either.
I realize it's midnight and sleep to speed the end of winter. Should have done that earlier.
Then into a marble zone, also with the standard annoyances. I have a little PTSD from this particular situation, having lost a journal world to accidentally falling in a hole like this and being unable to get out.
Then a Soapstone zone and then:
Ooh, Rhyolite! This is an interesting stone - but I guess it doesn't matter, as I'm unlikely to use it.
As my inventory approaches being full, even with combining coal, redstone, etc. into blocks, I hit this mineshaft. Which new, braver Zeno might take, but I don't have the inventory space. So I head back.
I figure I'm under the jungle and glace at my Atlas, curious how far I've gone.
MUCH farther than I'd thought. I've actually gone past the entire hot zone and, darn it, got snow on the map. I'll have to clean that up sometime next year.
Back in the smeltery area, I put away my haul, including about 90 Iron Ore blocks. That is more than plenty for a couple more maps; I should be done with mining at this point as I don't expect to make any more gear.
I grab another snooze. Almost done with the first month of winter by my estimate.
Now for the hard part - thinking of something to do with the chateau interior decor. I'd been thinking about it for a while, and I'd tossed around ideas like trying to fit in a living room or putting a dining table near the kitchen. But I finally picked another - Bibliocraft custom paintings. Bibliocraft has the ability to make Minecraft paintings out of *any* PNG file, provided it's properly placed in a texture pack.
So, when I found a pac of Van Gogh paintings in Bibliocraft - is that not perfect for the chateau? - I was horrified to discover the paintings loaded as the "missing" texture. So I tried several other downloadable packs - with the same result. The problem is that Minecraft changed the texture pack format between when Bibliocraft introduced the feature and 1.12. So it can't read these old 1.7 version packs. Great.
After some research, I found Biblocraft includes a folder with the correct new format, zipped up within the Bibliocraft mod file (an odd distribution choice, if you ask me). So I unzipped a copy of the mod, pulled it out, put in the pics I wanted, put the folder into the Minecraft Resource folder - and now it didn't see ANYTHING.
Well, maybe it needs to be a zip file? So I zipped up the folder - and still nothing. This, folks, is why people burn out on modding, because so much of it is like this these days - you try one thing after another, and nothing works, and you don't know why, because so much of Minecraft modding these days is getting resource paths exactly right or fiddling with arcane grammar in JSON files. You don't even get an error to fix, just - nothing.
Finally, I found a comment that the problem is that the zip has to contain the *contents* of the resource pack folder - but not the folder itself. And with that, finally, it worked!
So back to the game to use it.
As it turns out, the Painting Press needs a lot of iron, so I will have a use for the 11 doubled to 22 blocks of Iron I got from this mining trip, after all.
I grab some things that don't belong in the smeltery (I'd put them here before I built the chateau, or left them by accident) and haul them upstairs to the chateau.
One of the thing is some eggs, but when I try to put them away I find my cooking ingredients chest is full, and in particular has a lot of eggs.
I fry one stack to Fried Eggs with a Harvestcraft recipe. Guess I'll be doing some cooking this winter after all, just to use up my food ingredients.
Another one of the things was a few vanilla eggs - I should just toss those in the bird pen and hope. I should have done that on the way back up, but I take the opportunity to grab some leftovers in the kitchen and haul them back to the farm. I have developed an organizational system where I leave partial stacks in the farm storage, and only haul them up to the kitchen in groups of 16, because the kitchen storage is pretty full, and I have enough that I only cook recipes in large batches.
Hope is betrayed. No chickens.
I chop down some spruce trees I was farming - I'll need the wood for picture frames. While I'm putting the leftover ingredient bits into the farm storage I notice a peppercorn. Oh, right, pepper! I'd forgotten about that. So I check the trees.
One is fully ripe but this other one - right next to it - has barely started. Weird. All I can think of is that maybe the distance is *just* right so that one was loaded but this one wasn't while I was mining that branch.
Then back up to the roof of the chateau to get what's in the airship chest. I raise it off the ground, dissassemble, pull out the chest contents (mostly sugarcane and paper) attempt to reassemble for parking (so it won't get snow on it) and - f i z z l e -
I guess it was trying to assemble the whole chateau because of a torch underneath (already removed in this pic). But I should have gotten an error message? But that was apparently the problem, because once it's gone, I can indeed reassemble the airship. Done.
Ah, Minecraft sunsets.
I head to the other side of the roof to watch the moonrise. I built this chateau for the views, and by gum I'm going to enjoy them!
Next morning it's time to get started, by making a Bibliocraft Painting Press. Three and a half blocks of Iron! Expensive - but not for me, at this point. I put it against the wall but - hey, I should try to make a nice workstation out of this. I always like functional areas.
Hmm but that doesn't look so good. Well, I'll use it for now until I think of improvements.
Paintings need painting canvases which in the Biblio recipe need white Wool which - of which I don't seem to have any?
I run down to the sheep pen, hurting myself in my haste, thinking I'll need to start emergency white wool collection - but I needn't have worried. I have almost 2 whole stacks in the ranch storage. I just hadn't bothered to bring them up.
So now it's time to start picking pics. An embarrassment of riches, right, with all these multimillion dollar Van Goghs? WAY better than the vanilla pic options (which are, TBF, 15 years old, for computers with notably inferior graphics). But there's also some pictures that don't look like Van Gogh, such as the ones in the upper left and right corners. They almost look like some kind of Minecraft landscape -
Because they are. I loaded the texture pack, along with the Van Goghs, and a few other downloaded pac pics, with the best 50 landscape pics from the first few months of playing this world (I'd pulled them out to choose gallery pics for the RTG mod pages). And although I really want to use some of those Van Goghs, it's those pictures I'm going to start with.
So I make a bunch of painting canvases, and a painting frame, pick one of the sunset pics and
Slap it on the wall.
And that is pretty darn satisfying. It's fancy enough for the chateau, but more to the point, it's really satisfying to have a landscape picture FROM MY OWN MINECRAFT WORLD on the walls of my fancy base.
But - I can do better. This was a test to make sure it worked. Now to get going on framing and sizing.
Next episode - some frustrations, but *even better* wall pictures!
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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 think the error was more making the hot zone essentially monotonous (all barren biomes) than the size.
I actually like this approach. It prevents the desert/savanna alternating repeat we had from 1.7 to 1.17. Savannas should be an outlying transition on the edge of these barren hot cores, and jungles should be humid warm regions.
I think they were made smaller specifically to avoid that monotony. Maybe there needs to be a new sub-type or two for deserts to be mixed in to break it down further, but I think the size needs to be increased a little while maintaining the current approach.
I don't think the focus should be on the size of individual biomes anyway, at least not anymore. The focus should be on the size of the climate regions, while using the biomes to provide variety within those regions. At least, that's how I look at it now. And with what 1.18+ has going on, it's hot regions being too small and thus uncommon in particular that sticks out. If the concern is making them too monotonous for their newly larger size, then do the opposite and slightly scale everything else down to reach the equilibrium. I've stated a slight scale reduction isn't something I'd be opposed to either.
So making them bigger creates more problem starts...
Not all biomes are going to be equally accommodating, especially for a start. I don't think that's a problem, because you're not locked into a given, random world just because you got it. If you start a world, and you don't like what you see, you can just start a new world.
Also, it's nice to see the house again. You were at the second place so long I almost forgot about it. it reminds me of when I made my second location and then went back to my main village after so long.
Making buildings but not internally decorating them is something I know all too well. The vast majority of my locations in my oldest world are like that. In my recent worlds or locations, I've definitely decorated as I went, or simply built only if I had a purpose to it, so I've avoided that problem more as time went on. I also tend to like spacious areas anyway, so not having it cluttered with decoration is just fine by me as a fallback.
I could make some more, but I'm disinclined to, because I don't anticipate playing all that much longer in this world. I want to try playing with the Better Forests mod in modern Minecraft, and so I expect I'll probably be finished this world once I'm done with this continent. I have plenty of food already for that; it's just at the Pantheon.
Finally, I found a comment that the problem is that the zip has to contain the *contents* of the resource pack folder - but not the folder itself. And with that, finally, it worked!
Been there, done that. I was trying to make a single change to one of the texture packs I was using way back when, and accidentally zipped it back up in a separate folder and it took a moment to figure out why the game wasn't recognizing it.
With my proposed system you wouldn't see Desert/Savanna repeats. The shift from badlands-desert-savanna-jungle would work like the old snowy-cool-warm-hot shifting back and forth over relatively large distances, with sometimes shifts into the suitable temperate climates instead. Desert/Savanna showed up because Jungle wasn't hot, Badlands rare, and you wouldn't realize Plains was Hot, so pretty much you only saw those two biomes, and they didn't have an internal structure.
Yes, biomes differ in difficulty, but desert/badland starts are especially brutal - no wood and no food, as a rule. For a game with a big elementary schoolkid audience, that's too much. Pre-1.18, you could generally just walk out, but that's often not so possible anymore.
*I* kinda forget my chateau base during these long absences.
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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.
Typically, Bibliocraft provides a variety of frames to make pictures look even better. There are options for all the basic woods, and up to four "tiers" of framing around a picture. I pick two as a standard; I figured that would look formal without obscuring the nice looking pictures I plan to put up.
I have to knock the existing frame off the wall to put up a fancier one. So I go ahead and try a different picture as well.
Ooh. Well that's different.
I knew it Bibliocraft *could* do pictures in aspect ratios other than 1:1, although I figured after the first pic came out 1:1 the others would too. I actually prefer it this way, and Bibliocraft has a way to make a 1x2 frame - although that's going to take some work.
I take the 1x1 picture and a 1x1 frame to make a simple bedroom set for my bed upstairs. Then I head back down to start assembling the equipment for a 1x2 frame.
Grahrr.
Oh *^&*, I've got another zombie spawn. I thought I fixed this back in Episode 57.
ee hee hee hee hee
A witch too! Arghh!!
I head down to check the gaps under the floor where I last had the noisy zombie problem. But this time nothing is there.
Hmm, maybe spawning in the attic? I thought I'd fixed that, but maybe???
I check the attic cautiously, crossbow at the ready. But, no, that's clear too.
Then I check the tunnels I dug underneath the chateau the last time I went hunting zombie noises.
Ope, there's the zombie! Goodbye, zombie! How did it spawn, though? Everything seems properly lit.
But there's no witch.
ee hee hee hee hee
Make that no *visible* witch.
I check around in the tunnels, but I can't locate the witch.
ee hee hee hee hee
I start digging new rooms to hunt. The earlier tunnels ended up a maze, so I'm trying to be a bit more systematic. I dig a room roughly where the noise is, then staircase down four blocks, then dig another room, etc. But I'm not finding her and I keep hearing that cursed cackling.
ee hee hee hee hee
I'm so anxious I break my pick from overuse.
Fortunately, for once, the repair kits I ALWAYS carry with me come in useful.
ee hee hee hee hee
But, as I dig down, the noise is actually getting fainter. I'm pretty sure I'm in the right x-z coordinates, because I'm using subtitles, and they show directions. Could she be above me?
I decide to try digging in under the front again. There's a creeper waiting outside, but it's easily crossbowed.
But there was a *second* creeper. And you can see by my misplaced target, I missed it, even at this close range (how embarassing). I back up, but I bump into the wall behind me.
BOOM.
I am actually *completely* unharmed, although there's an impressive dent in the hill. I don't have enough dirt on me to fill it in, so I get more from inside. Sorry, forgot to take pics.
ee hee hee hee hee
Then finally, I start digging right under the chateau, using the directional subtitles to guide me.
I found her! KILL THE WITCH!!!
So how did she spawn?
In a failed stairway to the smeltery, which I gave up on because it came out of the hillside. But I didn't completely fill it in. The problem is a lot like the last one, where I'd left a few blocks unfilled.
Lesson learned: Fill in ALL the blocks underheath a base. Don't be lazy!
And FINALLY I can get back to hanging pictures.
To join picture frames, I need the Bibliocraft screw gun. Which needs Orange Terracotta. Which needs Hardened Clay.
I start the furnace.
It also needs a block of Redstone. Which - I seem not to have in the chateau?
Plenty down in the smeltery - after that long hike, unfortunately. Then I make the Screw Gun. Put two frames on the wall next to each other, screw gun right click the first frame, screw gun right click the second frame, put the landscape back up.
Nice.
The landscapes are working, but now let's start on those Van Goghs! I try one in an undecorated space between two upstairs windows.
1x1 is too small. But Biblio lets you scale pictures. 2x2 would be asymmetric so
3x3 is probably too big. But I'll leave it for now - it *is* a nice pic.
grark grark
Now I hear grunting noises. Sigh.
A zombie pigman in the attic, of course. Spawned by the Nether Portal. Is peace within my own base too much to ask? Evidently, yes.
I put a different Van Gogh on the other side. They are a bit large, but the place does look better.
All these frames are really chewing up my wood supply, so I plant some more Spruce trees. Annoyingly, there's no Spruce forest nearby and I've got to farm for this. I could probably mix in some other woods, but I like the look of the spruce frames.
2x2 frames fit nicely on the west wall.
The east wall has some stuff in some spaces, so I use some 2x1 landscapes there, with the justly famous Starry Night as a centerpiece.
Alright, That's some meaningful progress on upstairs decor. Let's try something different now for variety.
Next episode: maybe I *will* do a dining table.
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.
I like the picture frames. I really like them because they have subtle depth by being 3D models instead of just a flat texture. There 's a number of things in the vanilla game (ladders, rail, etc.) that I think really should have models by default at this point, or at least an option to by default without having to resort to resource packs. Like having "fancy" be the 3D models and "fast" being the old flat ones.
I also like the idea to use screenshots for pictures. I always considered manually doing this with the resource pack function, but never did.
I generally find 1 x 1 pictures are too small. The smallest i tend to use are 1 x 2 or 2 x 1, and even then I tend to prefer 2 x 2. It's a shame as a substantial portion of the pictures seem to be 1 x 1.
I generally find 1 x 1 pictures are too small. The smallest i tend to use are 1 x 2 or 2 x 1, and even then I tend to prefer 2 x 2. It's a shame as a substantial portion of the pictures seem to be 1 x 1.
Biblio is ahead of you. It allows rescaling pics, and I use that a lot next episode, because you are totally right that 1x1 is too small, especially in a large place like this.
Also, agreed on the nice 3D textures on the frames. Nuchaz (the author of Bibliocraft) had good taste. He is missed (he quit after the 1.13 changes.)
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.
That's precisely why I want to see some of these things be adopted in the vanilla game. Mods are a great strength of Minecraft, but it's a tale as old as time that eventually most stop updating.
The resized pics have the usual issues with scaling bit maps. In this case, the resolution of the pics is so high you don't notice any problems.
Edit: I guess across the room those two 3x3 Van Goghs look messy, but that's a screen issue. They're tree paintings and at this distance each branch is much smaller than a pixel, so the tree turns into a cloud of quasi-random pixels. Up close they're great.
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.
Appropriately, as I head over to start on the dining area, I am hungry. Fortunately this is right next to the kitchen and I fix the problem with a few snacks.
Initially I try a 3x2 table, but it's far too small for this space, so I upsize to a 6x2.
I decide on a relatively tame color palette for the upholstery. The colors have to be the Minecraft wool colors (they're actually carpets), so I go with grey and green to match the floor.
There are three different things Biblio can do with a carpet and a table - underneath, on top, and as a display item. This is controlled by various combinations of use-clicking and shift-use-clicking on various parts of the table, and I keep getting them wrong.
Even after finally getting it correct I couldn't tell you which is which.
I'm planning a lot of pictures on the walls so I need a lot of Spruce wood.
I'm going to put Bibliocraft Dinner Plates on top of the table, both for looks and for usage - you can eat off them - but they need a fair amount of Nether Quartz to make. For the third time this winter, I have to stomp down to the smeltery because I don't have enough of something upstairs at the chateau.
There certainly is plenty.
I check my seasonal clock - about 60% through winter, although probably about half through my time at the chateau since the first few days were spent coming back from the far southeast corner of the continent.
I use Cactus Green for the chair seats.
When I put the chair backs on they come out a mess of orientations, and I can't figure out how to control it. I know the screw gun can rotate them, but it can also remove the seat color or the chair back. So again, the controls are overloaded, and it takes a while to figure out exactly *how* shift-use-clicking can rotate them (it's clicking on the chair *legs*.)
I head outside near dusk to collect some more spruce for all the painting frames I plan to place in the dining room, and decide I want to use the pepper I spent so much effort looking for, so past sunset I'm harvesting peppercorns and pulling it out of the farm storage. But, I manage to get it done and get back to the chateau before I see any mobs spawn.
The reason: it wasn't actually past sunset, it just *looked* like it was because the sun was behind the giant jungle trees. I'm struck, though at how much nicer this area looks just from adding those two pictures. Probably you folks, who haven't run up here to sleep a hundred times, won't even notice, but for me the impact is visceral - it suddenly feels much more "homey".
I make a row of chairs on the other side of the table, adjust the backs again, and then decide to cook recipes to fill all the plates. I'll want some milk for cooking (it also makes cream, butter, and cheese) but - I've somehow misplaced my spare buckets. Rather than hunt through all the chests to see where I've accidentally put them, I just make 4 more - I have plenty of iron.
Then I start cranking out recipes - starting with Pancakes, which use some of the large supply of eggs I've built up.
Ironically, the pork I was collecting this past game year goes unused - because I left it at the Pantheon. The Pepper - which I'd been planning for a pork dish - ends up in some Coleslaw.
Ironically, after making an effort to use up all those eggs, including egg salad, which uses two eggs per serving, what stops me is a shortage of - eggs. And I end up scrounging in the bird pen and the farm storage to get enough for the Mayo the Cole Slaw needs.
It does look appetizing! It also fits my desire to combine looks and usability, since I can eat off the plates, or use them to refill my lunchbox.
Winter is almost done - I'm in to the last month, with only a few days left. Yes, I'm clockwatching.
Then I put framed Van Goghs in the dining room - resized to 2x2 - between the doors, and 1x2 landscapes above - although one landscape comes out in a 1x1 ratio and ends up in a 2x2 frame.
And some chandeliers - but the map intrudes into the view, and doesn't look right. I can't move it - there's no room.
Maybe I can put in a wall?
Turns out I can just squeeze in a wall without hitting the map. So I start.
But I step into the kitchen and get distracted by a renovation I'm planning *there* - to put all the storage as "cabinets" above the work area.
I also realize I'll want a few more painting canvases, and I've used up all my string (part of the Biblio recipe). So I head down to the farm area, because some of the (many) crops I'm growing are Harvestcraft fiber crops.
I go ahead and harvest everything apart from the wheat, of which I have too much already. I probably don't really need any more food, but what the heck, I've got some time to burn before Winter ends.
I'll also need a little more White Wool, and I do a sheep shearing round as well, since I'm using a lot of cactus green wool, and I'm running low. Doubt I'll need any of the other colors but, again, it's something to do.
Now I go back to finish and decorate the new wall for the dining room. MUCH better, although I could maybe use another painting or two, even though strict symmetry with the other wall is impossible since the interior door (just out of sight on the right) isn't symmetric to the next exterior door.
One sheep has gotten lost and, somehow, stuck at the chateau gate. I free it and lure it back to the pen. Would make more sense just to butcher it and dye another, but I'm feeling softhearted (as usual).
Then I finish the kitchen reno. Not perfect, since chests are too big to pass as cabinets, but I need a lot of storage for all my food supplies and nothing else will do. Still, better than before.
And - still not *quite* spring. What else to tackle? Oh yeah!
Next episode: some landscaping! (finally)
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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'm going to expand the landscaping around the stairway to the front entrance. I want symmetry, so I need to expand the area of evenly sloping land, by adding a little on the left and digging a lot on the right.
Oh look, the llama construction inspector is here. Better be careful! They look grumpy.
I should have taken a "before" pic. This after most of the leveling, although there's some still left on the right.
Gonna need a lot of spruce leaves for bushes, so I go after the disorganized Spruce tree farm with my Silk Touch pick.
Then I put up some lilacs in bordered beds.
Hmm, could use a little more something.
I put in some bushes, so on each side there is a subordinate symmetry around the lilacs. I also have to knock the hill on the right a bit further back. This is another of those 3D situations - it looks like it wouldn't be *that* much work to clear off the rest of that hill - but it would.
Is it Spring yet? Is it Spring yet?
Evidently not. Pretty sure those distant grasses would turn blazing green if it were. How close, anyway?
Oh Come OOONNNN!
I bustle around readying for the next exploration - making torches, getting map supplies, and filling my lunchboxes. I'm going to take the in-chateau lunchbox as well as the traveling lunchbox - my foods are generally not as filling as the ones I made for travelling, but a double supply should be enough.
I made a couple cheesecakes during the winter and I bring those to enjoy vicariously, as my real-world waistline dictates heavy desserts like that are a *very* exceptional treat.
It's *still* not Spring (I head down to a Plains area next to the river source to check). Looking for something to do, I carve away at the hill to the right of my landscaping. As predicted it's a lot of work since the hill is getting higher in that direction. I spend the rest of the day digging and get about 2 more blocks out.
Next morning I modify some of the first floor door/windows to allow ingress and egress. Initially this was important security, to keep mobs out, but now that the hilltop is secure it's not necessary, and occasionally inconvenient.
And then, finally, the snow starts melting down in the Plains grass down by the river. It's Spring!
So here's the plan for the start of the expedition. I'm going to go west, just north of my current mapping to add a bit, to the coast I reached back in Episode 58 (yowza, 50 Episodes ago!) From there I'll follow the coast north - I'm not sketching that as obviously I have no idea what it will do.
I wait until I'm away from the snow around the chateau to pull out my maps. I notice a few unmapped dots in the upper left corner of the map so I head there first to get them.
A lot of the scenery I pass brings back memories, like this hillside Roofed Forest I struggled with in episode 25.
I map those missing dots in the corner,then cross to the map to the NW to start mapping the outbound leg.
It's mountain here, unsuprising since mountains are the most common reason I stop exploring.
I wiggle back and forth between that map and the one to the south, as I have stuff to map on both sides. I've finally mastered this technique in the poorly maneuverable airship.
It's mountains almost the whole way, and at sunset I'm still over them when I stop the airship to sleep the night.
The next day I finally finish with the mountain and even head out over forest, and then this little Ice Spikes hill I spotted, also in Episode 58.
And then, finally the ocean, and I start to descend for boating.
And that's when the game crashes.
Crashes are a problem with any Minecraft, but it's worse with mods. But it is PARTICULARLY awful when you are an author of one of the mods, and you have to worry about whether you've inflicted the crashes on other people. And even WORSE when you're a worldgen modder and have to worry about your crashes inflicting possibly irreparable damage on somebody else's world.
And I, sadly, fit all these categories.
The crash was from Geographicraft trying to determine the beach for a biome number that doesn't exist in this world. There are a lot of possibilities here. I do a lot of testing and debugging, so I've used many versions of Geo, along with a variety of other mods, and configs for them. It could be the current version that has a bug, or it could be an earlier version, or it could be that I accidentally opened this world with the wrong configs at some point.
So - to the debugmobile!
After several hours, I determine the current version of Geo with the current configs will not generate that bogus biome number. So the bug was in an earlier version and is apparently already fixed. I'm running into it because Geo saves the generated biomes as part of the chunk wall prevention system. To continue, I have to make a mild change so that Geo will use a patch biome rather than crashing on a bogus biome for this operation. Then (after making a backup) I go back to the world.
And promptly plummet into the ocean, leaving the airship far above. This is a problem with Da Vinci ships: sometimes when you load a game in which you're riding a ship, the game doesn't load you as "riding" the vessel properly, and down you go. Sometimes in a boat you end up so low there's no light by the time loading is done. As a matter of protocol, I always stop and disassemble a Da Vinci ship (or airship) if I have to close the world - but I couldn't do that with a crash, obviously.
Fortunately, Da Vinci has a config option where abandoned airships slowly sink to the ground, and I've set it. This is particularly important for airships since you can't see them if they are not close so with a high altitude airship you couldn't even see it to determine where to pillar up.
So I tread water and wait.
And wait. It's a S L O W process.
And wait. It takes two minutes of treading water for the airship to come low enough I can climb back in.
And after that painful misadventure, I'm finally ready to start exploring this coast.
Next episode: The Last Coast
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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 like the front entrance better, but I always felt like that staircase isn't wide enough and feels a bit cramped. initially, I didn't comment on it, but with all the detailing on the side, it stands out to me.
Maybe I feel that way because I like wider and open paths as a rule though.
A lot of the scenery I pass brings back memories, like this hillside Roofed Forest I struggled with in episode 25.
Exploring on the ground is definitely more intimate, but exploring in the air (or just being on high terrain and overlooking lower terrain) sometimes gives great views, and this is one such example.
The look at the trees on the slope here is also a particular good example of why I was always excited at the thought of taller-than-vanilla trees in modern terrain generation. Modern has the underlying terrain height variation, but not the trees (outside jungle and old growth taiga biomes, which do look fantastic), whereas RTG is working with terrain that, as a rule, tends to be more flat with smaller hills here and there, but it has the impressive trees. The largest oak tree forests look the best, but usually they are flatter terrain. Seeing these tall trees here on a slop is a peak at exactly why I want to see Minecraft ditch the bush type trees for ones like RTG.
I think of a 2 wide path as "wide" so this seems fine to me. I've done 3s, but I never really thought of a four wide path. It could work here, but I'm not going to redo the entire yard for it.
If you want RTG trees in modern Minecraft, you know where to get them! (Better Forests) I'm having people ask me to make Better Forests versions of modded trees, and I'm thinking about it, although it would be a MASSIVE amount of work.
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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'm dropping my usual alliterative joke title for this because this is the start of a very big deal for me. When I first started playing Java Minecraft, 11 years ago, I wanted to explore an entire continent, starting with mapping its coast. But I soon found out about the enormity of pre-1.7 continents, sometimes 10s of thousands of blocks long. Worse, the coasts tended to be very complicated, so boating it was much further than even that. And, finally, maps didn't naturally tile at the time.
So I wrote my map mod Explorercraft, which allows easy map tiling, along with some other cute tricks like autogenerating maps, copying map info to maps of different orientation and sizes, and an Atlas. But before I used it on a 1.6 era continent, Minecraft updated to 1.7 - and there weren't continents anymore! Eventually I wrote Climate Control (later Geographicraft) which could put them back, and I circumnavigated some relatively small continents in several different worlds. But never anything on the scale of a 1.6 era continent. I've never fulfulled *that* dream.
But now - this continent is roughly the size of a 1.6 era continent (they were extrememly variable, TBF), and I've already mapped most of it, and most of its coast. I am absolutely loaded with map supplies, and even if there's a lot left (I doubt it) I should be able to finish the coast on this expedition. An 11-year dream is on the edge of fulfillments - and that feels - EXCITING!
So let's get started!
All the way to the edge of the map I pass nothing but mountain (I started in the bay between the snowy zone and these mountains).
I was vaguely expecting to have to make a new map, but of course I have the next map east. I was just there, even.
The little dark forest there looks like the start of other biomes. But it's not. It's just one tiny little peninsula of dark forest, and then it's back to mountains. The relatively low area to the right is a mountain valley region.
Stupid jellyfish.
After I recover from the strike, I've finally reached some non-mountain biomes - Birch Forest, Birdh Forest M, Flower Forest, and Plains. Then on to the next map to start a new map -
But I've already got this one too! Not a lot of info on it, but I do have the map.
Arghhh, these jellyfish!
As I start to recover from the strike, I see I'm about to hit a little peninsula. A vanilla boat could just go through, but this boat has too deep a draft. Fortunately, it can fly, so I take to the air briefly to get over it.
There's a little bay with a taiga.
And then a desert with a Millenaire town.
Desert to Taiga is a semi-illegitimate transition: it can happen, but it's supposed to be rare and small. I think, though, this is about the right distance to be a result of changing the Geographicraft climate rules earlier this year. When it transitions from old rules to new rules the boundary can have illegitimate transistions. I got a little overconfident with my chunk wall prevention system: I'll leave those rules alone in the future.
Again?!? Is this world affected by global warming? (which is increasing the proportion of jellyfish in the sea by changing ocean chemistry.)
Once again as my vision comes back I'm about to hit a sandbar (gravel bar?) I jump into the air to avoid it.
Coming back over the gravelbar I spot a river through dark forest which may be useful for exploration in the future.
I've been ignoring my hunger bar, but I've now reached "starvation". So I stop the boat to eat. But when I eat from my lunchbox, nothing happens!
The reason is that those cheesecakes I made work by Cake rules, and apparently I can't eat them out of the lunchbox. I place it on the deck and then I can eat it. Since you can't retrive a partially eaten placed cake block, I just finish the whole thing. (This is depressingly close to what I tend to do if there is a *real* cake in my real house, which is another reason I almost never buy them.)
Night falls just as a I reach the next map.
Come next morning I finally do have to make a new map.
The coast heads east into what is a very deep inlet.
And then a long way back west, only turning north around this sentinal mountain.
Then north past this mesa and this odd-looking forest. I get out to check, and it's Mesa Plateau F - but with dirt rather than sand in the low areas. The trees then spawned here; normally they are restricted to the plateaus because that's the only place that has dirt.
I know I should try to figure out what happened here - I've see Mesa Plateau F come out as expected many times - but I've had my fill of debugging for the day. It's rare enough to be "interesting" even if it's a bug.
Then a fair amount of desert, then this big-tree Savanna, and then Birch Forest. I've wrapped around another peninsula and am approaching the next map.
And I've got this one too! This is the northernmost map, which I mapped in episode 55. It had this long stretch of mountain with sea on both sides which I figured was a inland sea on this side. But, evidently it's not; it was just a long, oddly straight, peninsula. Which means I'm probably very close to done.
A bit of lowland biomes before the mountains of the peninsula.
The peninsula is set off from the rest of the continent by a deep bay. That's not an island out there; it's the coast on the other side I just passed.
I round a mountain cape, and then the peninsula starts the straight line section that surprised me in Episode 55 - I haven't see this kind of thing from Geo before. Usually coasts have more ins and outs, and such straight sections as I see usually run in cardinal directions. But, it's good that it can throw in a little more variety.
Soon I'm approaching the next map (which I haven't made yet)
And just on the next map is a vanilla village, on what I'm virtually certain is the very northernmost tip of the continent. Normally I'd be pretty inspired by this - I love capes, and ends, and romantic vistas onto vast oceans. And having a village there would make it perfect, because I could develop it into an ocean port. But in this world the ocean is probably a bit *too* vast even for me - it's more than likely 10K blocks or more to the next land, since this world *only* has continents, and somewhat sparse ones at that. And finding it honestly would probably be over a hundred thousand blocks of searching. I *have* done that kind of thing before, in my "To the Ends of the World" journal, but I'm not feeling that right now.
As expected, this is the end of the continent. Maybe smaller than I expected, even.
One last little surprise from Geo - a tiny island cape that is just a bit north of the mainland. Land's End Cape.
I go around since I'm not sure the boat's draft will let it go through.
And - I'm done! Back onto an existing map. I have explored the *entirety* of a large continent's coast, in Hardcore, even. A decade long dream accomplished! And, honestly, I'm glad I didn't do this in 1.6 vanilla, because with only 7 biomes, all of which were basically the same everywhere (other than the crazy Extreme Hills formations) it would have been SULTIFYING. But with the greater number of biomes in 1.7 era generation, plus the tree and (sometimes) terrain variety from RTG plus, it's been - pretty fun! Although I admit that after 10 months and over 100 episodes, I'm glad to be done with this part.
I'm still going to finish the interior, but since it turned out the northern part was already mostly done, it's not going to be *all* that much more work. I think I can finish everything in this game year.
Next episode: the Beginning of the End
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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.
If you want RTG trees in modern Minecraft, you know where to get them! (Better Forests)...
I do, but I thought this was sort of a work in progress with not as much done with it yet. I thought you were waiting to finish this world before working more on that.
I'm also at a point where I'm not playing much right now.
Those shoreline pictures are yet another example of what I love about RTG's shores over vanilla's. Do you intend to adapt the "continent" changes from RTG into Better Forests, or is that an unknown due to how much work it could be? Now that I think of it, while the trees are the glaring sore spot in vanilla world generation, the older continents are something that I miss too (just... not on the scale of 1.6 and older because that's way too much).
Better Forests is done, for now at least. I didn't do anything for Old Growth spruce/pine, Jungle, or Mangroves, but I'm not currently planning to - those forests don't bug me like the scrub forests do. The requests I've had for continuing are for modded biomes and I don't plan to tackle that (any large biome mod would be a LOT of work) unless there's big demand.
In terms of continents, there's already at least one mod that puts islands and continents into an oceanic world (called, logically, "Continents") and learning the new terrain generation well enough to write my own seems not worth it.
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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 wasn't making that observation from the standpoint of maps alone, but also how it actually is in-game. Hot regions, or specifically the desert and badland biomes, seem disproportionately uncommon compared to cold regions.
I'm not sure what the answer is since Minecraft seems to use "multiple layers" (like humidity, and so on) to define what goes where, but whatever could be done to make desert and badlands a bit more common would go a long way to improving this.
It's worse because deserts are one of the only sources of some things, like camels or Green die. But even if it weren't for that, I'd say those biomes should be a bit more common for the sake of it alone, because they stand out in particular in that they feel too uncommon, at least to me. Having done enough large scale travel in 1.18+ terrain, those are the "types of terrain" that feel like they need an increase (and not really a very large one, but enough to matter). Everything else feels mostly alright.
(Keep in mind I'm largely talking about 1.18+ here, but I noticed a similar trend seemed to be emerging on your map, which is what got me to ask about it.)
Thanks; that's a bit helpful since I didn't understand the details, but based just on experiencing it, I had a feeling something like that was going that made it lean cold more than hot (if not outright, then at least enough to make desert and badlands specifically be much less common than snowy regions).
And yeah, it's not like hot regions are super rare or anything. If you include all the hot region biomes, like jungles (which can be enormous), savannas, and whatnot. I sort of look at desert and badlands as the hot region biomes though, whereas jungles feel more "humid tropical" and savanna feels more "dry warm". They all might be classified as hot by the game (I think?), but most of my references to "hot regions" are probably going to specifically be referring to the desert and badland biomes. Sorry if that wasn't apparent before.
At least how it currently works is a whole lot better than it was 1.7 when they first introduced climate zones.
Yeah, the Brown leaves with snow just doesn't... "feel Winter enough" to me I guess? But it's probably the only "practical enough" way to do it since, as you said, trees probably look too funny without leaves.
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Curse Premiumin 1.7 era, desert, badlands and savanna were "hot" while jungle was kind of mutated warm temperate (rarely, an enormous are of warm temperate was assigned to be jungle). Now jungle and savanna are both warm temperate (wet and dry respectively, with forest and plains getting medium humidity warm temperate) and only desert and badlands are "hot".
Jungle and savanna aren't supposed to be uncommon at all in modern generation, and I saw quite a lot of them playtesting Better Forests.
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.
Thanks for the further clarification. In that case, I feel relieved because when I typically refer to hot regions in modern versions, I am typically referring to those two biomes specifically, so it seems I was actually correct in my usage of the phrase for those biomes if hot regions don't pertain to other biomes.
Yeah, those ones feel alright. They always felt like intermediate steps between temperate regions and hot regions to me (which is why I was always referring only to desert and badlands as hot regions, despite not knowing for sure that they were truly the only hot regions).
And I'm definitely glad jungles aren't rare anymore.
The one(s) that feel rare are, again, deserts and badlands. I guess if there's only two hot region biomes and probably cold region biomes, Mojang made the temperature range smaller to try and prevent them from being too monotonous when they occur (similar to how temperate regions felt in 1.7 to 1.17). Maybe they need to make them a hair larger (0.25 to 0.5?) and add a third hot biome, like some alternate type of desert that is a bit more uncommon than regular desert? I mean, deserts could use an update anyway so it's certainly an idea to mend both issues at once.
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Curse PremiumI think the error was more making the hot zone essentially monotonous (all barren biomes) than the size. When they do occur, they can still be pretty big, which is a problem for play since all the biomes other than wooded badlands are pretty challenging starts. So making them bigger creates more problem starts - and because they're on an extreme of a distribution, not *that* much easier to find: there won't be many more; it's just that the existing ones will be bigger. Cold zones can include both cold and warm taiga, plus Ice Plains is a much less challenging start since it has trees. IMO hot zones should have been much larger, including dry to wet with Badlands/Wooded Badland, Desert, Savanna, and Jungle in that order. That would have broken up the barren hot zones more, so they would be easier to find while reducing the chance of a rough start, since you'd more often be able to escape to an adjacent survivable biome by *either* a temp change or a humidity change. And putting Wooded Badlands into the dryest category (based on weirdness) adds an escape to weirdness for the driest areas, where there's probably not a humidity escape..
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 105: Back to the Mines
As I come down the stairs from the attic, I remember I'd wanted to work out some interior design ideas to implement this winter. But my mind has been elsewhere recently - mostly working on my Better Forests mod, which is now officially released for 1.20.1, as well as some real life issues - and I don't have any ideas. This is a problem I have frequently - I build nice buildings but don't get around to putting matching decor inside. I'll try to think of something but time is getting short.
I could make some more, but I'm disinclined to, because I don't anticipate playing all that much longer in this world. I want to try playing with the Better Forests mod in modern Minecraft, and so I expect I'll probably be finished this world once I'm done with this continent. I have plenty of food already for that; it's just at the Pantheon.
For now I head down to mine the Iron I'll need for more maps.
I'd forgotten these stairs are LONG! Building on a mountain gets nice views, but there's a price to pay in the commute to mining level.
I'd been thinking about hiking off to the north part of the mines to activate the Norman village there but - as I mentioned, this world is on a timer, and I probably won't do anything with the stained glass I might have gotten there. So, instead, I just branch mine next to the smeltery area.
Initially I'm in the Blue Schist of the area, with the usual minor annoyances like this Silverfish. One even manages to hit me once. Embarassing, given the state of my gear.
I hit one cave, and my new more daring self chooses to explore, but it's a tiny little thing.
Then another, and this one's a bit odd - just these two conjoined large chambers. My valor is meaningless; there's no mobs here. Not a lot of exposed ore either.
I realize it's midnight and sleep to speed the end of winter. Should have done that earlier.
Then into a marble zone, also with the standard annoyances. I have a little PTSD from this particular situation, having lost a journal world to accidentally falling in a hole like this and being unable to get out.
Then a Soapstone zone and then:
Ooh, Rhyolite! This is an interesting stone - but I guess it doesn't matter, as I'm unlikely to use it.
As my inventory approaches being full, even with combining coal, redstone, etc. into blocks, I hit this mineshaft. Which new, braver Zeno might take, but I don't have the inventory space. So I head back.
I figure I'm under the jungle and glace at my Atlas, curious how far I've gone.
MUCH farther than I'd thought. I've actually gone past the entire hot zone and, darn it, got snow on the map. I'll have to clean that up sometime next year.
Back in the smeltery area, I put away my haul, including about 90 Iron Ore blocks. That is more than plenty for a couple more maps; I should be done with mining at this point as I don't expect to make any more gear.
I grab another snooze. Almost done with the first month of winter by my estimate.
Now for the hard part - thinking of something to do with the chateau interior decor. I'd been thinking about it for a while, and I'd tossed around ideas like trying to fit in a living room or putting a dining table near the kitchen. But I finally picked another - Bibliocraft custom paintings. Bibliocraft has the ability to make Minecraft paintings out of *any* PNG file, provided it's properly placed in a texture pack.
So, when I found a pac of Van Gogh paintings in Bibliocraft - is that not perfect for the chateau? - I was horrified to discover the paintings loaded as the "missing" texture. So I tried several other downloadable packs - with the same result. The problem is that Minecraft changed the texture pack format between when Bibliocraft introduced the feature and 1.12. So it can't read these old 1.7 version packs. Great.
After some research, I found Biblocraft includes a folder with the correct new format, zipped up within the Bibliocraft mod file (an odd distribution choice, if you ask me). So I unzipped a copy of the mod, pulled it out, put in the pics I wanted, put the folder into the Minecraft Resource folder - and now it didn't see ANYTHING.
Well, maybe it needs to be a zip file? So I zipped up the folder - and still nothing. This, folks, is why people burn out on modding, because so much of it is like this these days - you try one thing after another, and nothing works, and you don't know why, because so much of Minecraft modding these days is getting resource paths exactly right or fiddling with arcane grammar in JSON files. You don't even get an error to fix, just - nothing.
Finally, I found a comment that the problem is that the zip has to contain the *contents* of the resource pack folder - but not the folder itself. And with that, finally, it worked!
So back to the game to use it.
As it turns out, the Painting Press needs a lot of iron, so I will have a use for the 11 doubled to 22 blocks of Iron I got from this mining trip, after all.
I grab some things that don't belong in the smeltery (I'd put them here before I built the chateau, or left them by accident) and haul them upstairs to the chateau.
One of the thing is some eggs, but when I try to put them away I find my cooking ingredients chest is full, and in particular has a lot of eggs.
I fry one stack to Fried Eggs with a Harvestcraft recipe. Guess I'll be doing some cooking this winter after all, just to use up my food ingredients.
Another one of the things was a few vanilla eggs - I should just toss those in the bird pen and hope. I should have done that on the way back up, but I take the opportunity to grab some leftovers in the kitchen and haul them back to the farm. I have developed an organizational system where I leave partial stacks in the farm storage, and only haul them up to the kitchen in groups of 16, because the kitchen storage is pretty full, and I have enough that I only cook recipes in large batches.
Hope is betrayed. No chickens.
I chop down some spruce trees I was farming - I'll need the wood for picture frames. While I'm putting the leftover ingredient bits into the farm storage I notice a peppercorn. Oh, right, pepper! I'd forgotten about that. So I check the trees.
One is fully ripe but this other one - right next to it - has barely started. Weird. All I can think of is that maybe the distance is *just* right so that one was loaded but this one wasn't while I was mining that branch.
Then back up to the roof of the chateau to get what's in the airship chest. I raise it off the ground, dissassemble, pull out the chest contents (mostly sugarcane and paper) attempt to reassemble for parking (so it won't get snow on it) and - f i z z l e -
I guess it was trying to assemble the whole chateau because of a torch underneath (already removed in this pic). But I should have gotten an error message? But that was apparently the problem, because once it's gone, I can indeed reassemble the airship. Done.
Ah, Minecraft sunsets.
I head to the other side of the roof to watch the moonrise. I built this chateau for the views, and by gum I'm going to enjoy them!
Next morning it's time to get started, by making a Bibliocraft Painting Press. Three and a half blocks of Iron! Expensive - but not for me, at this point. I put it against the wall but - hey, I should try to make a nice workstation out of this. I always like functional areas.
Hmm but that doesn't look so good. Well, I'll use it for now until I think of improvements.
Paintings need painting canvases which in the Biblio recipe need white Wool which - of which I don't seem to have any?
I run down to the sheep pen, hurting myself in my haste, thinking I'll need to start emergency white wool collection - but I needn't have worried. I have almost 2 whole stacks in the ranch storage. I just hadn't bothered to bring them up.
So now it's time to start picking pics. An embarrassment of riches, right, with all these multimillion dollar Van Goghs? WAY better than the vanilla pic options (which are, TBF, 15 years old, for computers with notably inferior graphics). But there's also some pictures that don't look like Van Gogh, such as the ones in the upper left and right corners. They almost look like some kind of Minecraft landscape -
Because they are. I loaded the texture pack, along with the Van Goghs, and a few other downloaded pac pics, with the best 50 landscape pics from the first few months of playing this world (I'd pulled them out to choose gallery pics for the RTG mod pages). And although I really want to use some of those Van Goghs, it's those pictures I'm going to start with.
So I make a bunch of painting canvases, and a painting frame, pick one of the sunset pics and
Slap it on the wall.
And that is pretty darn satisfying. It's fancy enough for the chateau, but more to the point, it's really satisfying to have a landscape picture FROM MY OWN MINECRAFT WORLD on the walls of my fancy base.
But - I can do better. This was a test to make sure it worked. Now to get going on framing and sizing.
Next episode - some frustrations, but *even better* wall pictures!
Geographicraft (formerly Climate Control) - Control climate, ocean, and land sizes; stop chunk walls; put modded biomes into Default worlds, and more!
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I actually like this approach. It prevents the desert/savanna alternating repeat we had from 1.7 to 1.17. Savannas should be an outlying transition on the edge of these barren hot cores, and jungles should be humid warm regions.
I think they were made smaller specifically to avoid that monotony. Maybe there needs to be a new sub-type or two for deserts to be mixed in to break it down further, but I think the size needs to be increased a little while maintaining the current approach.
I don't think the focus should be on the size of individual biomes anyway, at least not anymore. The focus should be on the size of the climate regions, while using the biomes to provide variety within those regions. At least, that's how I look at it now. And with what 1.18+ has going on, it's hot regions being too small and thus uncommon in particular that sticks out. If the concern is making them too monotonous for their newly larger size, then do the opposite and slightly scale everything else down to reach the equilibrium. I've stated a slight scale reduction isn't something I'd be opposed to either.
Not all biomes are going to be equally accommodating, especially for a start. I don't think that's a problem, because you're not locked into a given, random world just because you got it. If you start a world, and you don't like what you see, you can just start a new world.
Also, it's nice to see the house again. You were at the second place so long I almost forgot about it. it reminds me of when I made my second location and then went back to my main village after so long.
Making buildings but not internally decorating them is something I know all too well. The vast majority of my locations in my oldest world are like that. In my recent worlds or locations, I've definitely decorated as I went, or simply built only if I had a purpose to it, so I've avoided that problem more as time went on. I also tend to like spacious areas anyway, so not having it cluttered with decoration is just fine by me as a fallback.
That might get me playing again, haha.
Been there, done that. I was trying to make a single change to one of the texture packs I was using way back when, and accidentally zipped it back up in a separate folder and it took a moment to figure out why the game wasn't recognizing it.
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Curse PremiumWith my proposed system you wouldn't see Desert/Savanna repeats. The shift from badlands-desert-savanna-jungle would work like the old snowy-cool-warm-hot shifting back and forth over relatively large distances, with sometimes shifts into the suitable temperate climates instead. Desert/Savanna showed up because Jungle wasn't hot, Badlands rare, and you wouldn't realize Plains was Hot, so pretty much you only saw those two biomes, and they didn't have an internal structure.
Yes, biomes differ in difficulty, but desert/badland starts are especially brutal - no wood and no food, as a rule. For a game with a big elementary schoolkid audience, that's too much. Pre-1.18, you could generally just walk out, but that's often not so possible anymore.
*I* kinda forget my chateau base during these long absences.
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 106: Watching Wearily for a Witch
Typically, Bibliocraft provides a variety of frames to make pictures look even better. There are options for all the basic woods, and up to four "tiers" of framing around a picture. I pick two as a standard; I figured that would look formal without obscuring the nice looking pictures I plan to put up.
I have to knock the existing frame off the wall to put up a fancier one. So I go ahead and try a different picture as well.
Ooh. Well that's different.
I knew it Bibliocraft *could* do pictures in aspect ratios other than 1:1, although I figured after the first pic came out 1:1 the others would too. I actually prefer it this way, and Bibliocraft has a way to make a 1x2 frame - although that's going to take some work.
I take the 1x1 picture and a 1x1 frame to make a simple bedroom set for my bed upstairs. Then I head back down to start assembling the equipment for a 1x2 frame.
Grahrr.
Oh *^&*, I've got another zombie spawn. I thought I fixed this back in Episode 57.
ee hee hee hee hee
A witch too! Arghh!!
I head down to check the gaps under the floor where I last had the noisy zombie problem. But this time nothing is there.
Hmm, maybe spawning in the attic? I thought I'd fixed that, but maybe???
I check the attic cautiously, crossbow at the ready. But, no, that's clear too.
Then I check the tunnels I dug underneath the chateau the last time I went hunting zombie noises.
Ope, there's the zombie! Goodbye, zombie! How did it spawn, though? Everything seems properly lit.
But there's no witch.
ee hee hee hee hee
Make that no *visible* witch.
I check around in the tunnels, but I can't locate the witch.
ee hee hee hee hee
I start digging new rooms to hunt. The earlier tunnels ended up a maze, so I'm trying to be a bit more systematic. I dig a room roughly where the noise is, then staircase down four blocks, then dig another room, etc. But I'm not finding her and I keep hearing that cursed cackling.
ee hee hee hee hee
I'm so anxious I break my pick from overuse.
Fortunately, for once, the repair kits I ALWAYS carry with me come in useful.
ee hee hee hee hee
But, as I dig down, the noise is actually getting fainter. I'm pretty sure I'm in the right x-z coordinates, because I'm using subtitles, and they show directions. Could she be above me?
I decide to try digging in under the front again. There's a creeper waiting outside, but it's easily crossbowed.
But there was a *second* creeper. And you can see by my misplaced target, I missed it, even at this close range (how embarassing). I back up, but I bump into the wall behind me.
BOOM.
I am actually *completely* unharmed, although there's an impressive dent in the hill. I don't have enough dirt on me to fill it in, so I get more from inside. Sorry, forgot to take pics.
ee hee hee hee hee
Then finally, I start digging right under the chateau, using the directional subtitles to guide me.
I found her! KILL THE WITCH!!!
So how did she spawn?
In a failed stairway to the smeltery, which I gave up on because it came out of the hillside. But I didn't completely fill it in. The problem is a lot like the last one, where I'd left a few blocks unfilled.
Lesson learned: Fill in ALL the blocks underheath a base. Don't be lazy!
And FINALLY I can get back to hanging pictures.
To join picture frames, I need the Bibliocraft screw gun. Which needs Orange Terracotta. Which needs Hardened Clay.
I start the furnace.
It also needs a block of Redstone. Which - I seem not to have in the chateau?
Plenty down in the smeltery - after that long hike, unfortunately. Then I make the Screw Gun. Put two frames on the wall next to each other, screw gun right click the first frame, screw gun right click the second frame, put the landscape back up.
Nice.
The landscapes are working, but now let's start on those Van Goghs! I try one in an undecorated space between two upstairs windows.
1x1 is too small. But Biblio lets you scale pictures. 2x2 would be asymmetric so
3x3 is probably too big. But I'll leave it for now - it *is* a nice pic.
grark grark
Now I hear grunting noises. Sigh.
A zombie pigman in the attic, of course. Spawned by the Nether Portal. Is peace within my own base too much to ask? Evidently, yes.
I put a different Van Gogh on the other side. They are a bit large, but the place does look better.
All these frames are really chewing up my wood supply, so I plant some more Spruce trees. Annoyingly, there's no Spruce forest nearby and I've got to farm for this. I could probably mix in some other woods, but I like the look of the spruce frames.
2x2 frames fit nicely on the west wall.
The east wall has some stuff in some spaces, so I use some 2x1 landscapes there, with the justly famous Starry Night as a centerpiece.
Alright, That's some meaningful progress on upstairs decor. Let's try something different now for variety.
Next episode: maybe I *will* do a dining table.
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 like the picture frames. I really like them because they have subtle depth by being 3D models instead of just a flat texture. There 's a number of things in the vanilla game (ladders, rail, etc.) that I think really should have models by default at this point, or at least an option to by default without having to resort to resource packs. Like having "fancy" be the 3D models and "fast" being the old flat ones.
I also like the idea to use screenshots for pictures. I always considered manually doing this with the resource pack function, but never did.
I generally find 1 x 1 pictures are too small. The smallest i tend to use are 1 x 2 or 2 x 1, and even then I tend to prefer 2 x 2. It's a shame as a substantial portion of the pictures seem to be 1 x 1.
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Curse PremiumBiblio is ahead of you. It allows rescaling pics, and I use that a lot next episode, because you are totally right that 1x1 is too small, especially in a large place like this.
Also, agreed on the nice 3D textures on the frames. Nuchaz (the author of Bibliocraft) had good taste. He is missed (he quit after the 1.13 changes.)
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.
That's precisely why I want to see some of these things be adopted in the vanilla game. Mods are a great strength of Minecraft, but it's a tale as old as time that eventually most stop updating.
Do the resized pictures look much worse?
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Curse PremiumThe resized pics have the usual issues with scaling bit maps. In this case, the resolution of the pics is so high you don't notice any problems.
Edit: I guess across the room those two 3x3 Van Goghs look messy, but that's a screen issue. They're tree paintings and at this distance each branch is much smaller than a pixel, so the tree turns into a cloud of quasi-random pixels. Up close they're great.
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 107: Dining Delightedly
Appropriately, as I head over to start on the dining area, I am hungry. Fortunately this is right next to the kitchen and I fix the problem with a few snacks.
Initially I try a 3x2 table, but it's far too small for this space, so I upsize to a 6x2.
I decide on a relatively tame color palette for the upholstery. The colors have to be the Minecraft wool colors (they're actually carpets), so I go with grey and green to match the floor.
There are three different things Biblio can do with a carpet and a table - underneath, on top, and as a display item. This is controlled by various combinations of use-clicking and shift-use-clicking on various parts of the table, and I keep getting them wrong.
Even after finally getting it correct I couldn't tell you which is which.
I'm planning a lot of pictures on the walls so I need a lot of Spruce wood.
I'm going to put Bibliocraft Dinner Plates on top of the table, both for looks and for usage - you can eat off them - but they need a fair amount of Nether Quartz to make. For the third time this winter, I have to stomp down to the smeltery because I don't have enough of something upstairs at the chateau.
There certainly is plenty.
I check my seasonal clock - about 60% through winter, although probably about half through my time at the chateau since the first few days were spent coming back from the far southeast corner of the continent.
I use Cactus Green for the chair seats.
When I put the chair backs on they come out a mess of orientations, and I can't figure out how to control it. I know the screw gun can rotate them, but it can also remove the seat color or the chair back. So again, the controls are overloaded, and it takes a while to figure out exactly *how* shift-use-clicking can rotate them (it's clicking on the chair *legs*.)
I head outside near dusk to collect some more spruce for all the painting frames I plan to place in the dining room, and decide I want to use the pepper I spent so much effort looking for, so past sunset I'm harvesting peppercorns and pulling it out of the farm storage. But, I manage to get it done and get back to the chateau before I see any mobs spawn.
The reason: it wasn't actually past sunset, it just *looked* like it was because the sun was behind the giant jungle trees. I'm struck, though at how much nicer this area looks just from adding those two pictures. Probably you folks, who haven't run up here to sleep a hundred times, won't even notice, but for me the impact is visceral - it suddenly feels much more "homey".
I make a row of chairs on the other side of the table, adjust the backs again, and then decide to cook recipes to fill all the plates. I'll want some milk for cooking (it also makes cream, butter, and cheese) but - I've somehow misplaced my spare buckets. Rather than hunt through all the chests to see where I've accidentally put them, I just make 4 more - I have plenty of iron.
Then I start cranking out recipes - starting with Pancakes, which use some of the large supply of eggs I've built up.
Ironically, the pork I was collecting this past game year goes unused - because I left it at the Pantheon. The Pepper - which I'd been planning for a pork dish - ends up in some Coleslaw.
Ironically, after making an effort to use up all those eggs, including egg salad, which uses two eggs per serving, what stops me is a shortage of - eggs. And I end up scrounging in the bird pen and the farm storage to get enough for the Mayo the Cole Slaw needs.
It does look appetizing! It also fits my desire to combine looks and usability, since I can eat off the plates, or use them to refill my lunchbox.
Winter is almost done - I'm in to the last month, with only a few days left. Yes, I'm clockwatching.
Then I put framed Van Goghs in the dining room - resized to 2x2 - between the doors, and 1x2 landscapes above - although one landscape comes out in a 1x1 ratio and ends up in a 2x2 frame.
And some chandeliers - but the map intrudes into the view, and doesn't look right. I can't move it - there's no room.
Maybe I can put in a wall?
Turns out I can just squeeze in a wall without hitting the map. So I start.
But I step into the kitchen and get distracted by a renovation I'm planning *there* - to put all the storage as "cabinets" above the work area.
I also realize I'll want a few more painting canvases, and I've used up all my string (part of the Biblio recipe). So I head down to the farm area, because some of the (many) crops I'm growing are Harvestcraft fiber crops.
I go ahead and harvest everything apart from the wheat, of which I have too much already. I probably don't really need any more food, but what the heck, I've got some time to burn before Winter ends.
I'll also need a little more White Wool, and I do a sheep shearing round as well, since I'm using a lot of cactus green wool, and I'm running low. Doubt I'll need any of the other colors but, again, it's something to do.
Now I go back to finish and decorate the new wall for the dining room. MUCH better, although I could maybe use another painting or two, even though strict symmetry with the other wall is impossible since the interior door (just out of sight on the right) isn't symmetric to the next exterior door.
One sheep has gotten lost and, somehow, stuck at the chateau gate. I free it and lure it back to the pen. Would make more sense just to butcher it and dye another, but I'm feeling softhearted (as usual).
Then I finish the kitchen reno. Not perfect, since chests are too big to pass as cabinets, but I need a lot of storage for all my food supplies and nothing else will do. Still, better than before.
And - still not *quite* spring. What else to tackle? Oh yeah!
Next episode: some landscaping! (finally)
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.
This update has me wanting to play Sims 3 again.
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Curse PremiumEpisode 108: Llamas Looking at Landscape Leveling
I'm going to expand the landscaping around the stairway to the front entrance. I want symmetry, so I need to expand the area of evenly sloping land, by adding a little on the left and digging a lot on the right.
Oh look, the llama construction inspector is here. Better be careful! They look grumpy.
I should have taken a "before" pic. This after most of the leveling, although there's some still left on the right.
Gonna need a lot of spruce leaves for bushes, so I go after the disorganized Spruce tree farm with my Silk Touch pick.
Then I put up some lilacs in bordered beds.
Hmm, could use a little more something.
I put in some bushes, so on each side there is a subordinate symmetry around the lilacs. I also have to knock the hill on the right a bit further back. This is another of those 3D situations - it looks like it wouldn't be *that* much work to clear off the rest of that hill - but it would.
Is it Spring yet? Is it Spring yet?
Evidently not. Pretty sure those distant grasses would turn blazing green if it were. How close, anyway?
Oh Come OOONNNN!
I bustle around readying for the next exploration - making torches, getting map supplies, and filling my lunchboxes. I'm going to take the in-chateau lunchbox as well as the traveling lunchbox - my foods are generally not as filling as the ones I made for travelling, but a double supply should be enough.
I made a couple cheesecakes during the winter and I bring those to enjoy vicariously, as my real-world waistline dictates heavy desserts like that are a *very* exceptional treat.
It's *still* not Spring (I head down to a Plains area next to the river source to check). Looking for something to do, I carve away at the hill to the right of my landscaping. As predicted it's a lot of work since the hill is getting higher in that direction. I spend the rest of the day digging and get about 2 more blocks out.
Next morning I modify some of the first floor door/windows to allow ingress and egress. Initially this was important security, to keep mobs out, but now that the hilltop is secure it's not necessary, and occasionally inconvenient.
And then, finally, the snow starts melting down in the Plains grass down by the river. It's Spring!
So here's the plan for the start of the expedition. I'm going to go west, just north of my current mapping to add a bit, to the coast I reached back in Episode 58 (yowza, 50 Episodes ago!) From there I'll follow the coast north - I'm not sketching that as obviously I have no idea what it will do.
I wait until I'm away from the snow around the chateau to pull out my maps. I notice a few unmapped dots in the upper left corner of the map so I head there first to get them.
A lot of the scenery I pass brings back memories, like this hillside Roofed Forest I struggled with in episode 25.
I map those missing dots in the corner,then cross to the map to the NW to start mapping the outbound leg.
It's mountain here, unsuprising since mountains are the most common reason I stop exploring.
I wiggle back and forth between that map and the one to the south, as I have stuff to map on both sides. I've finally mastered this technique in the poorly maneuverable airship.
It's mountains almost the whole way, and at sunset I'm still over them when I stop the airship to sleep the night.
The next day I finally finish with the mountain and even head out over forest, and then this little Ice Spikes hill I spotted, also in Episode 58.
And then, finally the ocean, and I start to descend for boating.
And that's when the game crashes.
Crashes are a problem with any Minecraft, but it's worse with mods. But it is PARTICULARLY awful when you are an author of one of the mods, and you have to worry about whether you've inflicted the crashes on other people. And even WORSE when you're a worldgen modder and have to worry about your crashes inflicting possibly irreparable damage on somebody else's world.
And I, sadly, fit all these categories.
The crash was from Geographicraft trying to determine the beach for a biome number that doesn't exist in this world. There are a lot of possibilities here. I do a lot of testing and debugging, so I've used many versions of Geo, along with a variety of other mods, and configs for them. It could be the current version that has a bug, or it could be an earlier version, or it could be that I accidentally opened this world with the wrong configs at some point.
So - to the debugmobile!
After several hours, I determine the current version of Geo with the current configs will not generate that bogus biome number. So the bug was in an earlier version and is apparently already fixed. I'm running into it because Geo saves the generated biomes as part of the chunk wall prevention system. To continue, I have to make a mild change so that Geo will use a patch biome rather than crashing on a bogus biome for this operation. Then (after making a backup) I go back to the world.
And promptly plummet into the ocean, leaving the airship far above. This is a problem with Da Vinci ships: sometimes when you load a game in which you're riding a ship, the game doesn't load you as "riding" the vessel properly, and down you go. Sometimes in a boat you end up so low there's no light by the time loading is done. As a matter of protocol, I always stop and disassemble a Da Vinci ship (or airship) if I have to close the world - but I couldn't do that with a crash, obviously.
Fortunately, Da Vinci has a config option where abandoned airships slowly sink to the ground, and I've set it. This is particularly important for airships since you can't see them if they are not close so with a high altitude airship you couldn't even see it to determine where to pillar up.
So I tread water and wait.
And wait. It's a S L O W process.
And wait. It takes two minutes of treading water for the airship to come low enough I can climb back in.
And after that painful misadventure, I'm finally ready to start exploring this coast.
Next episode: The Last Coast
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 like the front entrance better, but I always felt like that staircase isn't wide enough and feels a bit cramped. initially, I didn't comment on it, but with all the detailing on the side, it stands out to me.
Maybe I feel that way because I like wider and open paths as a rule though.
Exploring on the ground is definitely more intimate, but exploring in the air (or just being on high terrain and overlooking lower terrain) sometimes gives great views, and this is one such example.
The look at the trees on the slope here is also a particular good example of why I was always excited at the thought of taller-than-vanilla trees in modern terrain generation. Modern has the underlying terrain height variation, but not the trees (outside jungle and old growth taiga biomes, which do look fantastic), whereas RTG is working with terrain that, as a rule, tends to be more flat with smaller hills here and there, but it has the impressive trees. The largest oak tree forests look the best, but usually they are flatter terrain. Seeing these tall trees here on a slop is a peak at exactly why I want to see Minecraft ditch the bush type trees for ones like RTG.
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Curse PremiumI think of a 2 wide path as "wide" so this seems fine to me. I've done 3s, but I never really thought of a four wide path. It could work here, but I'm not going to redo the entire yard for it.
If you want RTG trees in modern Minecraft, you know where to get them! (Better Forests) I'm having people ask me to make Better Forests versions of modded trees, and I'm thinking about it, although it would be a MASSIVE amount of work.
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 109: The Last Coast
I'm dropping my usual alliterative joke title for this because this is the start of a very big deal for me. When I first started playing Java Minecraft, 11 years ago, I wanted to explore an entire continent, starting with mapping its coast. But I soon found out about the enormity of pre-1.7 continents, sometimes 10s of thousands of blocks long. Worse, the coasts tended to be very complicated, so boating it was much further than even that. And, finally, maps didn't naturally tile at the time.
So I wrote my map mod Explorercraft, which allows easy map tiling, along with some other cute tricks like autogenerating maps, copying map info to maps of different orientation and sizes, and an Atlas. But before I used it on a 1.6 era continent, Minecraft updated to 1.7 - and there weren't continents anymore! Eventually I wrote Climate Control (later Geographicraft) which could put them back, and I circumnavigated some relatively small continents in several different worlds. But never anything on the scale of a 1.6 era continent. I've never fulfulled *that* dream.
But now - this continent is roughly the size of a 1.6 era continent (they were extrememly variable, TBF), and I've already mapped most of it, and most of its coast. I am absolutely loaded with map supplies, and even if there's a lot left (I doubt it) I should be able to finish the coast on this expedition. An 11-year dream is on the edge of fulfillments - and that feels - EXCITING!
So let's get started!
All the way to the edge of the map I pass nothing but mountain (I started in the bay between the snowy zone and these mountains).
I was vaguely expecting to have to make a new map, but of course I have the next map east. I was just there, even.
The little dark forest there looks like the start of other biomes. But it's not. It's just one tiny little peninsula of dark forest, and then it's back to mountains. The relatively low area to the right is a mountain valley region.
Stupid jellyfish.
After I recover from the strike, I've finally reached some non-mountain biomes - Birch Forest, Birdh Forest M, Flower Forest, and Plains. Then on to the next map to start a new map -
But I've already got this one too! Not a lot of info on it, but I do have the map.
Arghhh, these jellyfish!
As I start to recover from the strike, I see I'm about to hit a little peninsula. A vanilla boat could just go through, but this boat has too deep a draft. Fortunately, it can fly, so I take to the air briefly to get over it.
There's a little bay with a taiga.
And then a desert with a Millenaire town.
Desert to Taiga is a semi-illegitimate transition: it can happen, but it's supposed to be rare and small. I think, though, this is about the right distance to be a result of changing the Geographicraft climate rules earlier this year. When it transitions from old rules to new rules the boundary can have illegitimate transistions. I got a little overconfident with my chunk wall prevention system: I'll leave those rules alone in the future.
Again?!? Is this world affected by global warming? (which is increasing the proportion of jellyfish in the sea by changing ocean chemistry.)
Once again as my vision comes back I'm about to hit a sandbar (gravel bar?) I jump into the air to avoid it.
Coming back over the gravelbar I spot a river through dark forest which may be useful for exploration in the future.
I've been ignoring my hunger bar, but I've now reached "starvation". So I stop the boat to eat. But when I eat from my lunchbox, nothing happens!
The reason is that those cheesecakes I made work by Cake rules, and apparently I can't eat them out of the lunchbox. I place it on the deck and then I can eat it. Since you can't retrive a partially eaten placed cake block, I just finish the whole thing. (This is depressingly close to what I tend to do if there is a *real* cake in my real house, which is another reason I almost never buy them.)
Night falls just as a I reach the next map.
Come next morning I finally do have to make a new map.
The coast heads east into what is a very deep inlet.
And then a long way back west, only turning north around this sentinal mountain.
Then north past this mesa and this odd-looking forest. I get out to check, and it's Mesa Plateau F - but with dirt rather than sand in the low areas. The trees then spawned here; normally they are restricted to the plateaus because that's the only place that has dirt.
I know I should try to figure out what happened here - I've see Mesa Plateau F come out as expected many times - but I've had my fill of debugging for the day. It's rare enough to be "interesting" even if it's a bug.
Then a fair amount of desert, then this big-tree Savanna, and then Birch Forest. I've wrapped around another peninsula and am approaching the next map.
And I've got this one too! This is the northernmost map, which I mapped in episode 55. It had this long stretch of mountain with sea on both sides which I figured was a inland sea on this side. But, evidently it's not; it was just a long, oddly straight, peninsula. Which means I'm probably very close to done.
A bit of lowland biomes before the mountains of the peninsula.
The peninsula is set off from the rest of the continent by a deep bay. That's not an island out there; it's the coast on the other side I just passed.
I round a mountain cape, and then the peninsula starts the straight line section that surprised me in Episode 55 - I haven't see this kind of thing from Geo before. Usually coasts have more ins and outs, and such straight sections as I see usually run in cardinal directions. But, it's good that it can throw in a little more variety.
Soon I'm approaching the next map (which I haven't made yet)
And just on the next map is a vanilla village, on what I'm virtually certain is the very northernmost tip of the continent. Normally I'd be pretty inspired by this - I love capes, and ends, and romantic vistas onto vast oceans. And having a village there would make it perfect, because I could develop it into an ocean port. But in this world the ocean is probably a bit *too* vast even for me - it's more than likely 10K blocks or more to the next land, since this world *only* has continents, and somewhat sparse ones at that. And finding it honestly would probably be over a hundred thousand blocks of searching. I *have* done that kind of thing before, in my "To the Ends of the World" journal, but I'm not feeling that right now.
As expected, this is the end of the continent. Maybe smaller than I expected, even.
One last little surprise from Geo - a tiny island cape that is just a bit north of the mainland. Land's End Cape.
I go around since I'm not sure the boat's draft will let it go through.
And - I'm done! Back onto an existing map. I have explored the *entirety* of a large continent's coast, in Hardcore, even. A decade long dream accomplished! And, honestly, I'm glad I didn't do this in 1.6 vanilla, because with only 7 biomes, all of which were basically the same everywhere (other than the crazy Extreme Hills formations) it would have been SULTIFYING. But with the greater number of biomes in 1.7 era generation, plus the tree and (sometimes) terrain variety from RTG plus, it's been - pretty fun! Although I admit that after 10 months and over 100 episodes, I'm glad to be done with this part.
I'm still going to finish the interior, but since it turned out the northern part was already mostly done, it's not going to be *all* that much more work. I think I can finish everything in this game year.
Next episode: the Beginning of the End
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 do, but I thought this was sort of a work in progress with not as much done with it yet. I thought you were waiting to finish this world before working more on that.
I'm also at a point where I'm not playing much right now.
Those shoreline pictures are yet another example of what I love about RTG's shores over vanilla's. Do you intend to adapt the "continent" changes from RTG into Better Forests, or is that an unknown due to how much work it could be? Now that I think of it, while the trees are the glaring sore spot in vanilla world generation, the older continents are something that I miss too (just... not on the scale of 1.6 and older because that's way too much).
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Curse PremiumBetter Forests is done, for now at least. I didn't do anything for Old Growth spruce/pine, Jungle, or Mangroves, but I'm not currently planning to - those forests don't bug me like the scrub forests do. The requests I've had for continuing are for modded biomes and I don't plan to tackle that (any large biome mod would be a LOT of work) unless there's big demand.
In terms of continents, there's already at least one mod that puts islands and continents into an oceanic world (called, logically, "Continents") and learning the new terrain generation well enough to write my own seems not worth it.
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.