I'm familiar with that issue, but it seems to be a different issue? This doesn't happen when changing screen states. Instead, it happens while already playing. I'm using older drivers anyway (I'm using 23.11.1, whereas that issue was introduced with 24.6.1 and was resolved in the following 24.7.1 as far as I know). Thus far, it only happens in this Minecraft profile (Forge plus OptiFine plus Better Forests) and not in others.
This isn't to say it's Better Forests causing it as I don't know that. It might be, or it might be Forge or it might even be something on my end, but it doesn't seem to be that issue as far as I can tell, and since it only happens in this profile, I figured I'd at least mention it.
When this happens, the game log starts listing a lot of "server error" type information, though there are also OpenGL errors included in other places.
That would be big news if it's true, though it probably wouldn't change anything for me because the last time I tried beta 1.7.3, the performance was so bad that I considered it unplayable anyway. The frame rate was fine, but chunks rendering/updating was far too slow.
Depending on if another issue I had was still present in the latest drivers, I might be stuck on 23.11.1 for a different reason anyway.
I'm glad this at least got fixed though. Since it supposedly started with AMD's OpenGL rewrite a couple years ago, I was starting to think they'd never bother with it.
There's an area with more than the usual water and I try boating it. But then I start getting the taking damage animations and noise - although I'm not losing hearts. What's going on?
Oh, great, I've been Lampreyed.
The hitbox for the Lampreys is weird and I've not been able to kill one in the boat, so I steer to land, get out, and kill it (thank you, Manyullyn sword). I hadn't been taking damage because I'm just so geared up I heal faster than the lamprey can hurt me.
After some more swamp exploration - now on foot - I check my map one-handed to make sure I got all the desert before I move away. Good thing, too: I spot an area of desert that didn't get mapped and head over to get it.
Night falls as I'm returning to finish the swamp and I sleep on a desert hilltop with a nice view.
In the morning I map the rest of the swamp, including this small Dark Forest sub-biome.
For Better Forests I put in some variability parameters for Swamp - tree density and height vary similarly to other biomes, although the averages are less than in the forested biomes, and there's also a "grimness" parameter I use to vary the proportion of dead trees (from none to everything). I haven't backported that to 1.12 yet, though.
Then some Taiga, pretty open, with small trees.
In the center of the map is a Plains area, providing a typically bucolic RTG plains vista.
I find a river going into the desert area (where I left the airship on a hill) and boat it briefly before I have to get out becuase it's veering too far south. I get out next to this desert temple, which I'd look at if that didn't risk literally blowing up my nearly-finished 10 year dream of completely exploring out a large continent.
Hunh, does the mountain range extend all the way up here? Or is this an unusually tall hills sub-biome?
I reach the end of this pass, finding a river going south, which I take.
Evidently the mountain range *does* come up here, because it ends quickly against some foothills.
Fortunately just foothills, nothing particularly problematic.
I'd hoped to be done now, but the strip was a little too wide, so I end up with some extra walking at the end after all.
This is mostly more of the attractive open woodland, but I get one nasty surprise:
A hostile dayspawn spider. I must have run into one before at some point, but I honestly can't remember it.
Then it's time to board the airship for home. After the last time looking for my airship where I spent half a day wandering over half a max map, this is gratifyingly easy. I walk up a ridge leading to the top of the desert mountain -
And there it is.
I'm using my map to go home but as I fly over this Japanese Village (the one I flew over in Episode 113) the (IMO) unseasonal snow starts appearing on my map and I realize I'll need to fly home mostly by dead reckoning and landmarks if I don't want to dirty up my maps. Which I don't.
Night falls while I'm on the airship - but - I'm on the airship, and I've already explored these areas, so who cares.
I end up using the river near the chateau to locate it exactly. All that snow says "Zeno was here" - it fell while I was here for the winter.
I land on top of the chateau, because it just takes too long for the airship to descend to ground level. That airport I built ended up not very useful.
Inside I find a mildly obnoxious bug with the Bibliocraft fancy pictures. Three of the blocks that are part of the pictures are displaying the "missing texture" block. (Weirdly, in each case it's only *part* of the picture.) It goes away with a block update (hence the dirt) and stays away for the rest of the session, but it's still annoying. I guess I should look at it as having to dust my pictures occasionally. They're well worth the extra work. I feel very satisfied looking at them as I wander around the chateau.
And now, after 7 straight episodes without a reference to the big map - which probably left you folks pretty disoriented - it's time to show my results! Here's the map for my expedition plan: (remember, it's missing a couple of maps on the bottom which don't fit):
And here it is afterwards: (sorry they're not commensurate)
The map at the very tip of the northern peninsula isn't here, because it doesn't fit; but there isn't much land on it anyway.
There was less to the northern part of the continent than I expected, although still enough to occupy me for 7 episodes. This has a particularly strong geographic feel to it; I want to call it the "trade coast" because on this expedition I found the vanilla village at the very north end, which really wants to be made into a port for deep sea exploration, and then south of that are an Indian village, and then a Seljuk village, all right on the coast. There's also a Norman village just off the coast not too far west of where I started this exploration in Episode 109. And, there are a *lot* of mountains along the coast, which emphasize the sea orientation - it would be a total pain to walk or ride a horse between the vanilla and Indian villages, or between the Seljuk and Norman ones.
In a different world, that would have made for some fun building projects - building a deep sea port at the northern tip village, smaller ports for the Millenaire villages, and helping the villages build up. But, as I've mentioned, that's not in the cards, because mod development is driving me to start a different world to playtest Better Forests. And so:
Next episode: the Last Expedition begins.
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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.
That would be big news if it's true, though it probably wouldn't change anything for me because the last time I tried beta 1.7.3, the performance was so bad that I considered it unplayable anyway. The frame rate was fine, but chunks rendering/updating was far too slow.
"Before 1.8" meant release 1.8, and the performance of Beta, which is quite subpar for numerous reasons (such as being single-threaded, and so crude it doesn't even have Vsync or a proper framerate limit; I'm surprised it took Mojang until 1.7 to improve the latter, at least there is Optifine) isn't reflected by every version since; for example, this is a video somebody made of TMCW while flying at 16 chunk render distance (the older "Far" is roughly 12 chunks), only at the edges, and when the sun is rising, do you see chunks rendering in (due to their Intel GPU not supporting "radial" fog with the basic fixed-function pipeline; I believe the latter still occurs in the latest versions due to a mismatch in the sky/fog color during sunrise):
Vanilla 1.6.4 does have the slow chunk rendering with Vsync issue but when otherwise capped via the FPS limit it easily keeps up, aside from the occasional rendering issue on Far due to forgetting to re-render empty chunks once they receive data (this mostly occurs on Far due to the render distance being larger than the chunk load distance), Optifine again improves this though not the Vsync issue, and the 1.6.4 version (probably others as well) doesn't properly increase the view distance past 10 until you increase the render distance to 17 or more due to a coding error ("if (viewDistance <= 16) viewDistance = 10", where 16 should be 10).
If anything, the most noticeable issue in the video is the lighting errors, mostly under trees, which do at least get corrected much faster and consistently than in vanilla (vanilla 1.6.4 will also correct all of them as long as you go slowly enough that newly generated chunks don't go out of chunk ticking range (15x15 chunks) before they complete, and the outermost 3 chunks to the sides (server view distance 10) will never get checked at all, or you go forward up to 3 chunks, then back, hence why errors often persist, even when exploring as slowly as I do (maybe even worse for me since I go back and forth a lot).
Yeah, I know you meant release 1.8 and not beta 1.8.
I mentioned beta 1.7.3 simply because it is particularly bad about how it performs for me when it comes to chunk rendering/updates. The updates are so slow that during day to night (or night to day) transitions, you can see rings of different light level around yourself because the chunk updates are failing to keep up with the changing light level. It is that bad for me.
So I was just saying that while the VRAM bug being fixed was welcome, since that makes what was literally unplayable become "playable", I still consider it unplayable because of how slow it performs for me.
And yes, that odd issue with the fog during sunrise and sunset is also a thing to this day, and while it seems minor, it always broke the immersion for me (similar to the lack of round fog on pre-1.17 versions on non-nVidia hardware). I even talked about that very thing with Zeno earlier in this thread I believe. Seeing those hard edges just beyond the fog during the early or late day cuts into the immersion, which is a shame because sunrise and sunset could otherwise be such a beautiful sight. It might be minor to some people, but I can be quite peculiar on what I will tolerate because immersion is pretty important for games for me.
That's sort of the whole reason I swoon over these betters trees and forests as they are such a huge improvement to world generation. These current trees feel like something we should have moved on from long ago. For whatever reason, the game just misbehaves for me half the time whenever I dig into modded, or whenever I go back to older versions. Maybe these big trees are just too complicated for the game. I don't mean big trees entirely, since I know you've done some, but I mean at least the very large ones Zeno does. I remember you saying part of the problem was them generating near world edge and needing buffer space or something. Like maybe making such big trees like Zeno is trying to do would simply only work if chunks were larger than 16 x 16 or something. Maybe I'm pushing him to make something too impractical!?
Seeing this makes me realize that while I like the new mangrove swamps, we now have two swamps and neither of them seem "just right", whereas just having a single, more balanced swamp might have been better. I remember when Mojang announced swamps that I thought they were getting a swamp update, not just a new swamp with the old ones left with their problems.
The problem with the new ones is they are way too dense, and with no variety (so they are always super dense). Worse, they commit the same flaw earlier versions did with large oak trees and jungle trees where they generate leaves that aren't valid, so you have leaves that start decaying after world generation. I consider this a flawed design choice; if it's not valid to remain like that naturally, then it shouldn't be able to spawn/generate that way.
I think just putting the new trees in the old swamps to replace the old ones (which felt like placeholder trees all along), and making some other minor changes, might have been a better approach.
Also, how come those two center maps are missing? I know you put up partially completed maps (unlike me) so did you just forget to duplicate those two?
I remember you saying part of the problem was them generating near world edge and needing buffer space or something. Like maybe making such big trees like Zeno is trying to do would simply only work if chunks were larger than 16 x 16 or something. Maybe I'm pushing him to make something too impractical!?
It isn't so much that it doesn't work but it causes unneeded strain on the game and potential issues (or aggravating them) when features overlap, especially if this is happening often, with the main issue being recursive chunk loading / "worldgen runaway", which in extreme cases can crash the game from out of memory or stack overflow:
This can be partially solved, as I do, by reducing the random offset of features so there is a larger buffer around them; normally there is an 8 block buffer around the central 16x16 area where features are centered, allowing them to get up to 17x17 blocks in size; if you reduce the random offset from 0-15 to 1-14 you get 9 blocks (19x19), and so on, up to a maximum of 32x32 blocks, the latter of which I use for smaller structures (including vanilla temples/witch huts) so they can be placed all at once, improving how they interact with the terrain. Large structures, and caves, have to use a different system where they are placed chunk by chunk and while much larger structures can be supported (even hundreds of blocks) this doesn't work as well if they need to generate on terrain (for a tree you'd need to know the altitude of the trunk before the chunk it is in has been generated).
There is also another solution - instead of checking if just a 2x2 chunk area is loaded before placing features in it check if a 3x3 area is loaded and center them in the center chunk, increasing the buffer to 16 blocks / up to 33x33 blocks per feature, 48x48 if not randomly offset; this still runs into the issue of overlap between features, the main cause of the issues that e.g. water lakes had, which presumably led to their removal (for this reason I only place a larger version of these lakes, up to 30x30 blocks, underground), as well as inconsistent world generation depending on the direction you explore (which is inconsistent anyway since 1.13 due to multithreaded chunk generation):
At this point I have one sort of large area yet to explore, two mediums, and a couple of small areas to the east that I didn't map out, because early in the journal I hadn't learned to be systematic, plus I didn't have the airship and was avoiding highly mountainous areas.
These areas involve a lot of traveling just to get there, and with the arrangement they're in, I think it makes sense to go from one to the other, getting every one, and ending up at the Pantheon where I can show the finished map.
For the start I'm going to the large area, in the northeast. That has a mountain range in the middle: I think I'll land west of it, explore out the flats on the west side, then use the airship to map the mountain range, and finally land to the east and explore *that*.
Then I'll use the airship to explore a the small, mostly mountainous, areas I missed to the east in the early days. Annoyingly, as I'm looking closely at the map to identify the areas, I spot quite a few little dots I managed to miss. They're not visible at this zoom and it would take a good deal of flying about to get them all. I'll decide whether to bother when I get there.
And finally I'll get the assorted areas remaining in the south. I know it's a bit odd I've explored all the areas to the far south (off this map wall because of the floor) but not these; I was thinking I'd get them as I went back-and-forth to the south but then I ended up mapping the entire far southeast in one go (Episodes 100 to 104) and never did the back-and-forth.
This is going to be a LONG expedition but the seasonal clock says it's only mid-Spring so I'll have plenty of time. Perhaps I'll run out of food and have to abort, but I think I can make it work.
The dining room of food is a convenience in the chateau, but turns out to be a pain for loading my lunchbox. I have to check each plate's inventory individually, and on top of that there's a bit of rearrangement based on what I've eaten lately; I want all the "old" foods in one lunchbox so I can start with the other.
But, hey, it still looks nice.
I'd been planning to sleep afterwards (I arrived at night), but rather to my surprise by the time I'm done it's already day. Whatever, I'll just take off.
But the disadvantage of not sleeping is that precipitation is more likely (it's now been a full double-length day since I slept, and the precipitation counter counts that as two days.) It was bright and sunny when I started up the stairs, but in the short time it takes to get to the roof it's started snowing.
Well.
Precipitation is a hassle because, in Spring, it's still snowing in Taiga and Extreme Hills. When I was out in the field I ended up just lumping it, but here the option of just waiting it out is a bit more appealing, because I'm in the chateau. After dithering a bit, I decide to just hang out in the chateau for the day.
First order of business is the annoying giggle of a witch that presumably spawned in the night. I can't see her through the windows, but once I step out the front door I spot and dispatch her immediately.
And then - what to do for the rest of the day? Maybe some decorating? I wander about the chateau a bit trying to think of what to do.
After a while I decide to try Ye Olde Trapdoors as Windows trick to break some large white patches. And - kinda meh? Maybe I should have just used pictures, but I thought a little variety would be good.
Then I move the anvil from upstairs, between the enchantment area and the bedroom set, to the bottom floor on the east, next to the printshop area. It had looked out of place in the more decorative upstairs. Then I start thinking about some kind of living room area where it was.
But before I develop any plans, it's dusk, and I grab some shuteye to head out in the morning.
I don't want to snow up the map in the mountain areas I'm going to fly over near the chateau, so I fly straight north some distance before I pull out my Atlas.
I continue north to where I want to start exploring. In this shot I'm over the mountain range that splits the northern unexplored area, although here I'm still over previously explored terrain. The unexplored area starts just past that copse of tall birches, so I descend over them and set down a little beyond to explore the western side.
First is the plains-ish area you could see there, quite pleasant apart from this cave trap. But you can probably identify the challenge ahead.
Dark Forest. I pull out my sword and start a perimiter run.
Going up the west side, I find a tongue of Plains going in I use to map some of the interior.
Then I continue to the next map north, and wrap around it, where there's a sometimes confusing mix of Taiga and Dark Forest, with the relatively dark Spruce trunks making the boundary somewhat unclear. I run into this vanilla Taiga village, but I don't need to trade anymore and it's too early to need to sleep.
A clearing in the Dark Forest lets me slip south back on to the previous map, and now I encounter my first problematic hostile. But once I pull out my crossbow it's easily dispatched.
I'm pretty hungry, but my meal plan has a cake next, and I want to put it off as long as possible, because once I place it and start eating it I'll have to leave it. So I want to get as much out of it as possible.
I get to the east side of the forest and here it reaches the sea, so I end up boating alongside it. Then I come to the moutain range - the Dark Forest reaches all the way to that. I get out and start walkind the hillsides just about the Dark Forest.
Finally I reach "starving" and plop down a Pumpkin Cheesecake to gorge. I don't finish it all, leaving this bit for the birds.
At one point edgewalking is not enough and would leave an unexplored area in the middle. Treetopping is not an option because of the hillside, so new Brave Zeno(tm) plunges a bit into the forest to finish the job. No nasties, though.
Then, shortly before sunset, it abruptly starts snowing. I wish the clouds would change some to give you an idea what's coming - getting cloudier before precipitation, either with more clouds or darker ones. I forge ahead as fast as I can to minimize snow accumulation, then once I judge it's sunset I slap down my bed and jump in. I timed it correctly and I get to sleep.
I'm done with this section, so in the morning I find the airship and prepare to head off.
Next episode: The end of the Spine
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.
Now I have some mountains to map. The mountain chain arguably goes the entire length of the continent, from here in the northeast down to the big bay in the southwest, with one small break for the Japanese village I found in Episode 27. It crosses with or splits into most of the other ranges in the continent, apart from some coastal ranges and one in the far west. I'm calling it the "spine" because it does sort of seem like the spine of the continent.
My mapping starts with some Extreme Hills with a dusting of snow from the snowstorm late last afternoon.
Then it shifts to a cold climate and Ice Mountains.
I had been expecting it to continue all the way to the northern coast, but it unexpectedly peters out in the Snowy zone. I decide to land the airship and proceed on foot.
I spot a couple of Better Animals walruses; normally they are by the sea but these have decided to hang out next to a little pool instead (although close to the sea).
The mountain range runs NE-SW here and following it has put me near the western edge of the map I'm on (the more northerly of the two I was exploring last episode; this one is 2 north of the chateau map). I head west on to the next map, through this copse of Cold Taiga trees.
That turns to Mega Taiga as I move on to the next map, with these odd-looking leaves up in the air. They turn out to be from an Inuit village which has apparently just chopped down a tree (they are decaying as I watch.) Quite a coincidence to show up just now.
At the east gate of the village is a Forest Hills overlooking a river which almost, but not quite, goes where I want - it's just a touch far east for proper mapping.
I continue NE along the coast, into the first of the two big peninsulas in the region. There's a small range of hills here; not sure if it's linked to the Spine or just a large sub-biome.
I continue north-east through a mix of Plains and big tree Oak Forest. There's a little coastal swamp here; I don't know how I've found so many logical coastal swamps up here on the north coast - but I like it.
Briefly the river does go where I want; but it veers east to head out the east end of the peninsula and I have to get out to map the last bit of the north tip.
Having reached the tip, now I turn south along the east coast of the peninsula. It's all big tree forest here; pretty open with great under-canopy views and with a few Spruces mixed in.
Night falls; in forests I occasionally see duskspawning, so I pillar up next to a clearing to sleep. Yes, I partly picked the clearing for the sunset view. What can I say? I like pretty.
Continuing south, it's still big trees; but now there are a few Birches mixed in rather than Spruces.
And now I spot the worst lighting bug I've ever seen. Worse, nothing fixes it; temporary torches, placing dirt blocks, nada. What's going on? I look up.
Oh. It's not a lighting bug, it's the shadow of a Tinker's floating Slime Island. I'm a little surprised I didn't notice it way back when I boated this coast in Episode 55. I guess the big trees block the view from a boat.
Then the terrain shifts to dominated by Plains, with this coastal swamp, one of the ones I explored - and fought Moose in - in Episodes 54 and 55. I hadn't completely explored it out (I think this was the big one) and I have to dip into it a bit.
I turn back north-northwest to get a bit of unmapped terrain. The trees certainly look nice in spring colors. And I'm really appreciating the Mega Taiga trees with RTG addins lately - they make for a really nice view.
Then back south to the swamp. It's a bit odd that Serene Seasons ends up making Swamp into these supersaturated colors 8 months out of the year - red in autumn and winter, and this blue-green in the Spring. I think of Swamp as on the dingy side.
I turn back west along the south edge of the map, and I'm starting to think it's not that the mountain range *ending*, it's that it turned west. Fortunately I don't have to do any mountain climbing - I turn north for my next pass just at the bottom of the mountain ahead.
North takes me into the largish snowy zone where I left the airship, here Cold Taiga. It mixes with Taiga a bit, and then I'm into the Ice Plains with scattered hills where I left the airship. I reach the end of my pass, and then turn south for my final one.
Before I finish it, though, night falls, and I bed down on the plains.
Next episode: an unpleasant surprise.
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.
In the morning I continue south through snowy terrain with scatted trees.
I reach the bottom of the map, completing this area, and head west to the next map for my last pass. But here I notice that in my obsession with dealing with the Dark Forest I missed a spot in that area! Argh.
So after I finish the pass and get in the airship, I boat back across the bay (boating because the ship goes faster in the water than in the air) to finish it.
Most of the area is Taiga with occasional clearings.
Only at the very end is a lake where it transitions to snowy terrain. I boat out the lake and I'm done with the mapping. Now I need to get back to the ship, and weirdly the best way turns out to be using a vanilla boat on the ocean, because at the end of the mapping I'm really near the ocean and even vanilla boating is almost twice as fast as walking. So I boat to the boat.
Then I boat back across the bay, and take to the air to resume mapping the Spine. The one pass I did last episode was not nearly enough, so I do another to the south. Here I'm flying over a Millenaire Japanese village. The shot doesn't show it all, but I'm impressed with how well the Millenaire villages adjust to even fairly difficult terrain. It's a shocking contrast with vanilla villages, which can become a mess just from hillocks and rivers, never mind rugged terrain like this.
Two passes is *still* not enough, so I start a third back north.
Night falls, but airship - I can keep going, and even have an advantage if it starts snowing. I turn to the east, because I've mapped almost all of the two maps above this (other than a small bubble at the bottom of the next map east, which I am going to be sure to remember!)
As I surmised last episode, the mountain range - the end of the Spine - does go the length of the land area on the map.
Bubble remembered! No thousand block backtrack for this little blob.
In the end the Spine *does* reach all the way to the coast (well, OK, there is this tiny strip of Desert) - but to the east coast of the unexpored area, not the north I was expecting. Here's to surprises; they keep exploration interesting.
And now it does start precipitating, so I snooze it off in the airship.
There's a little area of Savanna left at the tip and normally I'd explore it on foot - but it's placed so that doing that would require substantial extra walking. So I just overfly it here.
I'm still not done with mapping the spine - I've done three passes to the west, but on this last east-west I've only done about one and a half (half on foot last episode and one just now.)
So I head back east, over this Indian village I saw in Episode 54. Again, note how it copes with the Mesa outcropping in the middle of it. A vanilla village would probably have a building way up on the outcropping with a door either opening onto a precipitous drop or into the mesa. But the Millenaire village just goes around.
At the end of the pass is a Dark Forest, which I overfly. Then it's time to land and finish off the area on foot.
But where to land? Positionally I'd like to land in the Birch Forest there, but it has no clearings. Eventually I land on the side of the mountain.
I knew the now 2 and a half passes didn't completely map the mountains, but I figured I could do the rest from the flats, or at worst the foothills.
I was wrong. I end up having to go into the mountains and some rugged terrain. I take a fair number of falls, although I don't take much damage because I'm wearing my Feather Falling boots.
Fortunately I don't have to cross any of the massive ridges, and after few more bumps and scrapes, I'm down to the flats. Still Birch forest, too.
After the Birch Forest is the Mesa. In the distance is the Indian village and I guess I shouldn't talk them up *too* much as I see there's a village gate halfway up one of the formations. Still, vastly better than vanilla villages.
I finish off the Mesa and turn back to finish the rest of the area.
I'm just getting back into the Birch Forest when sunset forces a snooze break.
The lake is the spot I originally thought was a bay back in Episode 54, but which is actually separated from the ocean by a thin strip of land. In the distance on the left you can see the Mesa Plateau island I thought was impossible - until I saw it.
As you can see by the trees, this is all shrub forest, pretty close to a vanilla forest although there are some of the shorter RTG Birches mixed in.
Continuing on I find a river, but it's not going where I want to go - when finishing these little bits I don't have much choice of direction.
Ahead is more of the Swamp, and I plunge in.
And just like the first time I was in this swamp, it's lousy with Moose. And they're mean. I must be rusty, because it takes six whacks to kill this one. After than I take to potshotting them with the crossbow, but even with my Manyullyn Iron-powered super crossbow, it's two shots to kill each one.
Near the end is oak Forest, here with Spruce mixed in. The trees are taller again, getting closer to more typical RTG heights.
Then it's back to the Birch Forest for the last bits. But without warning -
Where did she come from? I see her only a split second before she hits me with the poison splash. I skewer her quickly with a crossbow bolt, but I'm still poisoned and - I forgot my milk. So I have to suffer as my hearts tick down. Damage Screenshot takes 37 shots during my suffering. I have 6 hearts left at the end, though, due to the boost from my Tinker's Contructs Armor.
Then it's back to the airship, which is quite a bit east of where I thought it was, necessitating some more clambering and short falls.
And - I'm done with the North! And the first major part of the Last Expedition. I board the airship and set off for the next area to explore - ironically, leftovers on my spawn map, of all places.
Next Episode: the First Shall Be (almost) Last.
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.
Having finished exploring the northern part of the continent, I prepare to head south to the last largish unexplored areas, in the southeast of the continent although not all the way to the south. On the way, though I plan to map out a number of smallish areas I missed for various reasons, mostly early on. Ironically most of them are on the first map I made, the spawn map.
I head out over one of the many, many swamps along the coast of the northern part of the continent. This is purely random, as far as I can tell, making an interesting demonstration of how randomness can sometime create something that makes sense to our pattern-loving minds.
As sunset falls, I'm flying near the Lonely Inn on the coast on the north of the chateau map, first seen in Episode 24. The northern part of the continent has a lot of coastal villages, especially on its west side. But then the eastern part has none on the coast - only this Inn. On a whim, I land the ship and take a bed for the night.
Then in the morning it's on to the spawn map. There are three areas to explore here - the northern coast, which I didn't finish in Episode 07 because I wanted to get home and got off at a break in the coastal mountains. Then there's the largish area to the northeast that I wrapped around in Episode 07 and then never came back to finish. And finally there's a small area on the south of the mountains to the east that I just didn't get when I did the parts east and west. I think I was racing because of snow, but I don't remember when or why exactly.
First is the coast, obviously.
I start by mapping a medium, swampy island I spotted after I left the coast, also in Episode 07.
But the rest of the unexplored coast turns out to conceal a fairly large mountainous area. I boat around the edge, and then take to the air to map the interior.
The interior has an unusually high mountain plateau - although I guess you can't tell from the pic. I was surprised to find it after flying so far up from the coast. On the left you can see part of a Japanese village, with a wall around it. I wasn't expected a newly discovered village to be so developed - it takes a while for a Millenaire village to build a wall. I wouldn't think it was close enough to my first base to be active much, so I am quite surprised to see it. But, obviously it was active, somehow.
As you can see, there was quite a bit left on the northern coast. Now that it's done, I head to the second major area. This is the mountains to the north of the pass to the ocean I found on my very first exploration expedition.
And there is the pass I marveled over in Episode 04 - and, yet, which I never did anything with. I ended up building my long-desired mountain base at the chateau, which also has some spectacular views - if perhaps not quite as spectacular - but which was better positioned as a base to map the continent, since it's toward the middle and not on the eastern edge.
Then the third, smallish area, which is on the south side of this peak. That finishes the areas on the spawn map, but there are several more similar areas on maps south of it.
I fly over a large hot area on the way to the next map south.
First is an area of Dark Forest I didn't get because I explored it before I learned to be systematic about them.
I could have done this one on the ground - it even turns out to have a clearing, with the requisite ruined farmhouse, easily accessible from the coast. The clearing is full of feral sheep, which aren't quite close enough to see in this pic. The proprietors probably went out of business because there area already *so* many sheepherders on the continent (for some reason Millenaire has a really high rate of lone sheepherder ranches).
It's a little hard to see, but there is a rough line of unexplored dots, going south on the far (western) side of that frozen river. They're unexplored because, well, they're hard to see and I didn't notice I was missing them. They're only clearly visible on a map wall because of the dark background.
That leads to the area to the south, which I missed because it was mountainous. Although I *could* have done this on foot - you see the valley area to the right, which is accessible from lowland areas.
Then on the western edge of the map is another area of mountains I didn't quite do. I remember the expedition but I can't think of any keywords to search up exactly what episode it was.
Then on to the next map to the west - this is one map south of the chateau map. Oddly, I'm missing the northeast corner, because I generally get parts like that on trips to get places further away from my bases. But this map I approach from the Chateau and the map to the west I approached from the Seljuk base, so I never passed through that area on the way to something else. So I map it now.
Then south to the next map, where I know there are some more missed areas, over the snowy zones typical of this map.
Oops, that's the map to the south*east*. This map has the one big area remaining, which I plan to do on foot. I head west.
This map is mostly water, with one peninsula - with a sort of sub-peninsula. I first saw this in episode 52, where I got the "achievement" of being attacked by all the Better Animals leeching animals, by being attacked by a Bobbit Worm. I missed this because I was doing a water expedition - although I should have gotten out and done it then.
As I'm doing it I notice one tiny unexplored dot on the sub-peninsula and head over for that.
Shouldn't have - it has an Extreme Hills subbiome, with snow on it, so I've snowed up my map. Well, whatever.
Then there's one tiny area I missed on another peninsula which just reaches this map on the south. This I missed because it's on one of the giant Savanna M formations I marveled over in Episode 52.
This would also make an interesting area to build a base in.
Then I head to the map to the west, with the big unexplored area. I'm going to to this mostly on foot. But first, I'm going to fly the airship to where I want to take off from, on the west side. I fly along the south of the unexplored area, getting some mapping in in the process.
There's an Indian village here, the one I visited in Episode 52 to get the Marco Polo achievement. But I didn't see the north part of the village (it goes around those Mesas) and I didn't notice the ground platform for that fancy building. I'm not exactly sure how it got that complex pattern - some interation between RTG and Millenaire, I guess.
As I fly on I notice:
Mountains. Ooh, I'd forgotten these. I hope they don't mess up my ground exploration plans.
After I finish the pass I land the airship in a Savanna area, confusingly mapped by vanilla mapping routines to look like a forest (sigh). It looks like I got most of the mountains from the air, so I think I'll be fine on the ground.
Next episode: back to ground exploration.
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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.
Oh my goodness, that little house by the beach is romantic. It has a single palm tree and everything, haha. I really wish beaches got some love in vanilla (and palm trees would make good additions).
I know I say I often find RTG too smooth in its generation, but the gradual generation really works immediately off shore. Didn't you say it drops deeper at a point beyond the shore/continents? If I was back in 2013 and2014 when I was really working on my original world and i saw that shoreline somewhere in it, that would be an instant decision to make a village/city there.
But the rest of the unexplored coast turns out to conceal a fairly large mountainous area. I boat around the edge, and then take to the air to map the interior.
Also would have been another likely spot for a location within that bay.
The fog reminds me of how it was back in earlier versions. I think it was thicker back then?
Definitely begging for a sprawling village/city on the low flatlands backed by that raised terrain, and with multiple, large docks/shipyards docks running into the ocean with some ships out there.
One of the bad things about this journal is that, having explored a large continent with lots of spectacular places for bases, I haven't had time to build them. There have been lots of missed opportunities, the ones you mention among them. Although I'd have left that little inn alone, because I like the imagery of the little house alone on the coast, and as I mentioned, it's really alone. It's surprisingly logical, because there *is* a Norman village not too far inland; it's like like the seaside resort for that town.
Yes, the RTG Deep Ocean is deeper than the coastal Ocean. That was aimed at the complaint about ocean worlds that you could get "lost" in the ocean. Even in vanilla 1.6 generation, though, I noticed that a lot of trips that went on for hours actually passed pretty close to land - you just couldn't see that. With Deep Ocean deeper than ocean if you boat within render distance of the *ocean* next to land you'll see it's there. As a result, wiith anything like the default Geo setup, you just can't get lost in the ocean.
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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.
After landing in the Savanna, I head north over a small knoll into some temperate Forest.
It's an oak/spruce forest, and I run across a stand of pure spruce trees. There's a certain chance of a given tree being either spruce or birch, varying by location, and just by chance a bunch of adjacent ones here are spruce.
Also by coincidence it's right next to real Taiga, on the way to a snowy region.
North of the snowy area are two small areas I missed mapping; a small bit of Taiga just beyond it that I must have missed by accident; and this mountain area I avoided on a trip exploring to the south in Episode 53. At the time I thought I didn't want to do it on foot, yet here I am. It's not bad at first.
But there is some serious mountain climbing. It's slow and I take a couple of falls, but it's not a large area and soon I'm done.
Side trips done, I head back to the main unexplored region and resume mapping its exterior clockwise, with more regular forest. But I spot a dayspawning creeper and reach for my crossbow which is - not there? Where did I put it?
I run a distance away and then start hunting in my inventory and backpack, without success. But as I'm hunting -
SSSSS
Unoh, evidently I didn't run far enough.
BOOM! And yet, I don't even take a half heart of damage. I guess Creepers are a lot less dangerous these days.
And then I get attacked by a baby zombie, which I dispatch with my Manyullyn sword. I resume hunting through my inventory, and soon realize - I just don't have it. I must have dropped it by accident. Hunting through my screenshots, I can figure out when - when I was exploring the northern coast of the spawn map last episode, I accidentally hit the shift key and dismounted the boat, plunging into the water. I guess I got a little discombobulated and hit the drop key then, and I didn't notice until now because I hadn't needed the crossbow. I didn't mention this last episode because I didn't have any pics, and it seemed like just a minor embarrassment at the time.
Normally, this would drive me to a (temporary) ragequit - but - I'm almost done with this world; does it really matter? I actually have a Power 4 Infinity bow I carry around as backup (for exactly this kind of thing) and really, it should be enough. So I soldier on (if a bit less well armed).
After rounding the corner and starting south through a mixed Plain and Forest area, I spot a Bear and figure I should check to make sure I can still aim a vanilla bow (the Tinker's crossbow has a much flatter firing arc and is way easier to aim).
Evidentally I still can. And is this really the first time I've shot something with a vanilla bow in this world? After some thought I realize it is; I had the crossbow before I got a good supply of feathers. Actually, I *still* don't have a good supply of feathers; I've been raising Better Animal birds at my bases and they don't drop feathers.
Night falls and I sleep in a Plains area. As I awaken I get a screen refresh, which probably means the season has shifted to summer (since I was already in late Spring). Kind of a cyclical bookend to the game then; I'll end it in the same season I started (Summer).
I spot an Enderman and kill it for a pearl. I have a real shortage of Pearls in this game. Normally I get them by hunting Endermen when I'm working outside in my base at night; I can stare them over the fence without have to deal with anything else. But in this game neither of my two bases had a large outside region; I never bothered with the Seljuk base and it would have been too much trouble (and ugly) on the mountains of the chateau. I'll never use it; I'm not going to have enough to go after the Ender Dragon, but, force of habit.
At the southeast corner is this lovely lakeside Flower Forest. The map seems to indicate the lake goes some distance to the southeast but I'm seeing a shore in that direction?
Because there *is* a shore - missing from the map because it's part water Swamp - and then *another* lake.
I successfully dispatch a dayspawn Creeper with my enchanted vanilla bow, so, yes, it will suffice. I need two shots but it does have a much faster rate of fire.
Turning back west, I head into a Swamp, but decide to switch from mapping with a counterclockwise spiral to mapping with north-south passes - because this way I can finish near the airship rather than at the center of the map.
I end up turning a bit west, because of some mountains ahead, and find yet *another* large, pretty lake. It's a Land o Lakes around here!
Then I find a river going my way and get a bit of riverboat mapping in (it's fast!)
On my pass south I hit yet *another* lake, and then get a great view from this Plains area. You can see I'm not doing a good job adhering to the north-south passes (due to the terrain, mostly the lakes).
By the time I reach that Birch M grove you can seen in the previous pic, it's sunset, so I pillar up into the trees to sleep.
In the morning, I find this big Flower Forest sprawling up onto a hill. I end up doing only a half pass and turning back south, because my last pass went so far from cardinal south.
At the south end of this half-pass I spot the mountains I saw last episode and worried a bit about; unnecessarily, at it turned out.
On the final pass north I spot this clearing with Sunflowers. Not sure how that happened, but not complaining. Not at all.
Then a bit of the Snowy region, and then.
Dark Forest. Sigh. I *thought* this was going too easily. I start walking the perimeter.
Here they are the much taller ones from before I revised them mid-journal. I end up going well east of plans, and then coming back along the north of the forest.
I have to dip into the Dark Forest just a bit to finish mapping it, but I encounter no difficulties. I don't have to test how well I can function with a vanilla bow in a more challening situation than a single mob.
A last bit of the Snowy region, then some forest (Cold Taiga in the shot, soon changing to temperate forest), then one last lake, and - I'm done with one more map. Only one more left!
Then it's time to find the airship on the Savanna.
Oops, not fast enough - I'll have to sleep the night.
But - even on the Savanna, it proves surprisingly hard to find the airship (because of the short viewable distance). I briefly consider asking the villagers in the village before remembering they can say nothing but "mmm" "Mmm" and "MMM!". It's getting late; I'm a bit sleepy IRL.
Finally I spot it, after several minutes of looking (!!!), once again west of I where I thought it was.
Next episode: The Last Map, and The End (but still not that one.)
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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.
BOOM! And yet, I don't even take a half heart of damage. I guess Creepers are a lot less dangerous these days.
They sort of aren't that dangerous. That's why I feel like they could do with an adjustment to their damage to make it more smooth. Honestly, the range even needs increased. As it is now, the damage is very high if they are right on top of you, but then the damage drops off fast, so it becomes trivial if you have any distance between you, and if you use a shield on top of that, it really is trivial.
They feel like they're still balanced for a version of the game that hasn't existed in over a dozen years; beta 1.7.3 and older, before sprinting was added. Back then, the whole idea of the creeper was to be aware of your surroundings, and to be ready for sudden unexpected threats in unknown terrain.
With sprinting and shields, they just don't feel like they're balanced properly.
I resume hunting through my inventory, and soon realize - I just don't have it. I must have dropped it by accident.
I unbind the drop item feature for this reason. Too many times I'd press Q and drop something and not want to. If I ever want to drop something, which is rare to begin with, it's likely to be more than a single one of something, so I can just do it from the inventory.
I was surprised to find older versions of the game don't allow you to unbind things. That actually may have been why I never unbinded it from the start and suffered with it while dropping things for years.
They sort of aren't that dangerous. That's why I feel like they could do with an adjustment to their damage to make it more smooth. Honestly, the range even needs increased. As it is now, the damage is very high if they are right on top of you, but then the damage drops off fast, so it becomes trivial if you have any distance between you, and if you use a shield on top of that, it really is trivial.
They feel like they're still balanced for a version of the game that hasn't existed in over a dozen years; beta 1.7.3 and older, before sprinting was added. Back then, the whole idea of the creeper was to be aware of your surroundings, and to be ready for sudden unexpected threats in unknown terrain.
I've made similar changes myself; I changed the damage-distance calculation to a linear one with a lower maximum and higher minimum, 36-6 on Normal (1.5x that on Hard), in part to balance out changes that nerf player armor (from 80% to 66.6% max damage reduction, which is a 1.67x increase in damage taken after armor; this comes out to 9.8 in vanilla and 12 in TMCW, so you still take more damage point-blank, on the other hand, even on Hard you can still survive with one heart left, without any enchantments, much as you could in vanilla before 1.9, in fact, on Easy you can survive with no armor at all since they only deal 19 damage):
Creeper damage for vanilla and modded / after max armor damage reduction / ratio after armor
D V (80%) M (66.7%) Ratio
0 49 (9.8) 36 (12.0) 1.22
1 37 (7.4) 31 (10.3) 1.39
2 27 (5.4) 26 ( 8.7) 1.61
3 19 (3.8) 21 ( 7.0) 1.84
4 11 (2.2) 16 ( 5.3) 2.41
5 5 (1.0) 11 ( 3.7) 3.67
6 1 (0.2) 6 ( 2.0) 10.00
It is worth noting that Mojang also slightly nerfed explosion damage, from 49 to 43 for a creeper on Normal, to ensure it is possible to survive a point-blank hit in full Protection IV diamond armor on Hard. Interestingly, the change to the explosion damage formula was never noted in the Wiki, in fact, it sounds like they consider it to be an error, though it is true that it is hard to actually achieve the maximum possible damage since there has to be zero distance between the explosion center and the target:
(note that an 8 is now a 7, the value the Wiki also shows in the formula)
For comparison, this is how I modified it, for creepers only (the default formula is functionally the same as vanilla, I just merged * 2 / 8 and left variables as floats), and only affecting living entities, else e.g. items (5 HP) will always be destroyed within the entire blast radius, unless shielded (which itself was changed; solid blocks are less effective and fully transparent blocks have a further 50% reduction in shielding; in vanilla even tall grass or snowcover can almost completely negate damage to entities, oddly enough, this is considered to be intended, at the same time, a similar issue affecting block damage, which I also fixed, is considered to be a bug):
There is also another major change I made - prior to a an AI update in 1.2 creepers continued moving during their countdown, a feature which I restored - so they can get closer before exploding, which also often deals a lot of knockback (I often get launched high into the air, which will easily finish you off even if you do survive as described above; Protection enchantments do nullify much of their danger, as they always have, and this is arguably the biggest gameplay balance issue since Beta 1.8, besides the extremely fast health regeneration from hunger since 1.9 (though eating and healing were instant in Beta 1.7.3, partly offset by not being able to stack food, so you'd need several slots on your hotbar to be able to eat multiple times in succession).
I did reduce the range at which they stop their countdown, from 7 to 5 blocks (damage extends out to 6 blocks) to compensate, as well as help ensure that if they explode they will deal damage to their target (I see many players not even bothering to try killing them, they just step back and receive little or no damage at all).
Another thing I've always wondered about is if mobs used to be faster; the "old" and "new" entity AIs use different systems to calculate movement speed, the Wiki doesn't give any actual / meaningful values (the ones given are just the "attribute" and suggest that mobs should be far faster than players); as an illustration when they updated endermen to the new AI in 1.8 they didn't adjust their speed attribute so they became much faster, while other mobs have been adjusted, one source says that zombies move at about 2.28 m/s, barely half your walking speed, a direct interpolation of their attributes (0.23 for zombies and 0.25 for creepers) suggest they move at about 2.5 m/s; when sprinting you can enlarge the gap by about 3.1 m/s, or 4.7 meters in the time they count down, or 5.6 and 8.4 if they are standing still, nearly double the distance.
Also, I thought to note I'd made another improvement to explosions:
// TNT minecarts drop 1-3 iron ingots
if (this.explosionType == TNT_MINECART && this.exploder != null)
{
this.exploder.entityDropItem(new ItemStack(ItemIDs.ingotIron, this.nextInt(3) + 1, 0), 0.0F);
}
(also, another recent change that I consider to be extremely annoying is the inability to separate minecarts; I'd have to craft them instead of simply taking them from mineshaft chests; mineshafts themselves had also already been nerfed enough, from being much rarer to having less valuable loot (while exploring one extremely large complex of mineshafts 14% of all the diamonds I collected were from mineshaft chests, this hardly seems game-breaking and they are harder to find and explore than surface structures). This change was also made in response to a complaint that they were inconsistent with the new chest boats, instead of making the latter work like minecarts had for a decade, and astoundingly, "fixed" in two weeks, considering all the much more important issues that haven't been fixed in years).
Yeah, I can't make heads nor tails of any of that code stuff, but that sounds like the general idea of what I would do to try and fix them. The issue with balance changes is that it usually cascades into needing to make balance changes elsewhere (such as armor balance), and on and on, so isometimes a total overhaul is needed to make a few changes and they might consider it not worth it. Right now though, it feels like the damage from creepers is so extreme but the threat range is rather narrow. This results in creepers that feel like they either do very little or they just kill you most of the time. Making the damage cap lower allows you to make the range larger (I suppose this part is optional, but it would be welcome for my taste) and increase the damage at a farther range without it being a strict overwhelming buff.
In a game where sprinting, knockback, blocking, and so on is present, they feel like they've lost a bit of their unique identity. Their entire conditional is that you're supposed to avoid them by being aware of your surroundings, and while having one sneak up on you shouldn't be an guaranteed and harsh penalty, they feel like they're "just another mob that does a bit of terrain damage without being a threat to the player" and it feels... so... bad. There's so much more potential here.
I can't comment on old mob behavior or speed since I started playing with 1.2.5 (and even then my memory won't always notice small differences), and while I did play prior versions, my time with them was more limited.
Again ironically, this last map is the Pantheon map (well, one of them; it straddles two maps). The reason is one that's come up several times; I figured I'd map it flying out to map further places, but didn't do that often enough to finish the map. I did do a lot; you can see there's not that much left - but not everything.
The village here is the Nitwit village from Episode 49. There's a spectacular Jungle Hills, really a mountain, behind it, but it's too far to render in this pic.
I'm going to start with the lower region. My plan is to fly the airship to the far end (mapping as I move it), then land and backtrack on foot. There's a problem, though: the far end is forest and may not have a place to land.
I'm in luck, though; there's a Geographicraft clearing *right* where I want it. But:
As I'm coming in for a landing I try to take a pic, and hit the left shift key instead, causing me to plummet from the airship to a tree limb.
And now I'm up in a tree, pretty far up as you can see these are big trees. I could just chop my way down, but that will leave the branches above me hanging, which I don't want to do. I also don't want to go to the trouble of chopping one of these monster trees down, so I end up laddering down the side of the trunk by placing two blocks of dirt on the side, standing on the top, digging one, placing another beneath, etc.
And then after a while I botch *that* by accidentally digging out both blocks (shovels are fast) and plummeting the rest of the distance. But by then it's not far.
In spite of all the time on clambering down, the airship hasn't reached the ground yet. I sit for a while, and then realize I don't have to wait; I can just explore the region and it will be down by the time I get back. So off to the east I go.
Gotta love RTG Birch Forest M. I've had complaints about the work it takes to chop one of them down, but I figure you don't have to chop every tree - and they look so good!
Then there's some ordinary birch forest, some swamp,
And finally a Plains with a small rocky hill. I have to clamber around on the hill a bit to finish this area, and then I'm done. So, back to the airship.
When I get back it's near sunset, so:
I enjoy the sunset and then sleep in the clearing.
In the morning I take off to head to the last area, and take a pic of the trees as I rise though them.
And AGAIN fatfinger the left shift key and plummet to the ground. I'd had a problem with hitting the function keys, which are right above the number hotkeys on my laptop, and reconfigured the keyboard to require holding the Function key down to activate them. But that's right next to the left shift dismount key, and I seem to have jumped out of the frying pan into the fire. So I rereconfigure my keyboard and:
Have to w a i t for the airship to descend to the ground again.
For this last region, I'm going to fly on the eastern edge, and then, again, land, dismount, and explore the rest of the area on foot. Then I'll fly to the Pantheon, which is the grey blob on the top edge, about 1/4 of the way from the left corner.
I land in a Plains area, with a view of the vanilla part of the vanilla/Byzantive double village from Episode 50.
I head along the top edge, over this hill affording a view of some forests ahead.
I'm hungry, but it's time to have another cake, so I'm going to put off eating until I'm starving to eat as much of the cake as possible.
At the end of the pass is a mountain, but I don't have to climb it, and I can just admire.
Now I turn south through more forests. Ahead I spot some swamps, but I'm hoping I don't have to go into them.
BZZZT! Sorry, Charlie. In I go.
I reach "starving" and place and eat a pumpkin cheesecake.
I get through about 3/4 of it and leave the rest for the ducks. Of which there aren't any in this world.
Near the south of the pass is a large lake affording a great view of the Jungle mountain overlooking the Nitwit village I mentioned earlier. I'm hoping I don't have to climb that thing.
Bzzt! Again. And it's a tough climb with a lot of 2 high jumps.
Night falls before I reach the top, and I have to sleep in a portaledge on the mountainside.
In the morning I scramble to the top and - another obstacle.
Vanilla places Jungle trees in RTG, so the nifty RTG light tracker doesn't get used, and there's a nasty dark spot in the valley between the two peaks of the mountain. I have to fight off 4 zombies, a skeleton and - something - I'm not sure what - skulking behind a bush there. I'm guessing it's a Zotzpyre, the Better Animals giant vampire bat. Whatever it is, I kill it with a couple of arrows.
Great views from up here. Another great place for base that will never get built.
I descend the far side to finish the pass in a Flower Forest. Then I turn north for one last mapping pass.
It's a BIG flower forest. I'm in it a good ways.
Then back into the Forest, now a mix of Oak and Spruce.
The remaining area is too wide for a single pass, so I go left and right. Less efficient than straight up and down, but more efficient than an extra pass back down.
I finish in the large Plains area where I landed. Then into the airship to the Pantheon, to see - the finished map! Whohoo!
Oh, but the Pantheon is still snowed in because I left it in winter. And if I handle my Atlas there, it'll snow up the map. Fortunately, it's Summer, and snow will melt. But I have to circle the Pantheon several times before enough of it has melted to make me comfortable.
I approach the Altar reverently, eager at FINALLY having a complete map of a large continent - in Hardcore, even!
And there it is! OK, there's a few missing dots here and there, but nothing you'd notice; it practical terms it's comple-
Wait.
No, it's not.
There's still two areas large enough to see (if not big) - just to the left of the Bearclaw Sea. They are pretty small, and I guess I could pretend it's done, but it would grate on me. And they're not far, they're on the *other* Pantheon map (figures).
So - this wasn't the last map after all. I still have a little cleanup to do.
Next episode: REALLY the last map.
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.
Is it bad if I looked at that jungle hill and thought "I hope he has to climb that" before you said you hoped you didn't have to?
I like the way RTG does terrain patches on mountains, and jungles on mountain sides always appealed to me. Except, ironically, when i have to climb them in hardcore (okay, I was awful for hoping you'd have to climb it after all).
It might be silly, but the inner bay not being completed is what stood out the most to me. There's the other one in the far Southeast too, but it's so far away from where you are, and so far near the edge and ocean, that it doesn't bother me as much.
Like real mountain, RTG mountains are good to look at but often not too fun to deal with. I don't blame you for wanting me to climb the mountain; you get a story out of it and you don't have to run back and forth looking for places to climb further up. At times I had to use a parkour trick of moving sideways while jumping up to get to a spot to the side that was only one up from where I was but 2 up from what's orthogonally next to it.
Not liking the gaps in the inner bay isn't silly; it's not technically part of the continent, but it does look out of place in a way that the little bays on the far edges don't.
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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 familiar with that issue, but it seems to be a different issue? This doesn't happen when changing screen states. Instead, it happens while already playing. I'm using older drivers anyway (I'm using 23.11.1, whereas that issue was introduced with 24.6.1 and was resolved in the following 24.7.1 as far as I know). Thus far, it only happens in this Minecraft profile (Forge plus OptiFine plus Better Forests) and not in others.
This isn't to say it's Better Forests causing it as I don't know that. It might be, or it might be Forge or it might even be something on my end, but it doesn't seem to be that issue as far as I can tell, and since it only happens in this profile, I figured I'd at least mention it.
When this happens, the game log starts listing a lot of "server error" type information, though there are also OpenGL errors included in other places.
That would be big news if it's true, though it probably wouldn't change anything for me because the last time I tried beta 1.7.3, the performance was so bad that I considered it unplayable anyway. The frame rate was fine, but chunks rendering/updating was far too slow.
Depending on if another issue I had was still present in the latest drivers, I might be stuck on 23.11.1 for a different reason anyway.
I'm glad this at least got fixed though. Since it supposedly started with AMD's OpenGL rewrite a couple years ago, I was starting to think they'd never bother with it.
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Curse PremiumEpisode 115: Hurrying Home
After passing through a lot of pretty forest
It's back to swamp.
Oh, great, I've been Lampreyed.
The hitbox for the Lampreys is weird and I've not been able to kill one in the boat, so I steer to land, get out, and kill it (thank you, Manyullyn sword). I hadn't been taking damage because I'm just so geared up I heal faster than the lamprey can hurt me.
After some more swamp exploration - now on foot - I check my map one-handed to make sure I got all the desert before I move away. Good thing, too: I spot an area of desert that didn't get mapped and head over to get it.
Night falls as I'm returning to finish the swamp and I sleep on a desert hilltop with a nice view.
In the morning I map the rest of the swamp, including this small Dark Forest sub-biome.
For Better Forests I put in some variability parameters for Swamp - tree density and height vary similarly to other biomes, although the averages are less than in the forested biomes, and there's also a "grimness" parameter I use to vary the proportion of dead trees (from none to everything). I haven't backported that to 1.12 yet, though.
Then some Taiga, pretty open, with small trees.
In the center of the map is a Plains area, providing a typically bucolic RTG plains vista.
I find a river going into the desert area (where I left the airship on a hill) and boat it briefly before I have to get out becuase it's veering too far south. I get out next to this desert temple, which I'd look at if that didn't risk literally blowing up my nearly-finished 10 year dream of completely exploring out a large continent.
Hunh, does the mountain range extend all the way up here? Or is this an unusually tall hills sub-biome?
I reach the end of this pass, finding a river going south, which I take.
Evidently the mountain range *does* come up here, because it ends quickly against some foothills.
Fortunately just foothills, nothing particularly problematic.
I'd hoped to be done now, but the strip was a little too wide, so I end up with some extra walking at the end after all.
This is mostly more of the attractive open woodland, but I get one nasty surprise:
A hostile dayspawn spider. I must have run into one before at some point, but I honestly can't remember it.
Then it's time to board the airship for home. After the last time looking for my airship where I spent half a day wandering over half a max map, this is gratifyingly easy. I walk up a ridge leading to the top of the desert mountain -
And there it is.
I'm using my map to go home but as I fly over this Japanese Village (the one I flew over in Episode 113) the (IMO) unseasonal snow starts appearing on my map and I realize I'll need to fly home mostly by dead reckoning and landmarks if I don't want to dirty up my maps. Which I don't.
Night falls while I'm on the airship - but - I'm on the airship, and I've already explored these areas, so who cares.
I end up using the river near the chateau to locate it exactly. All that snow says "Zeno was here" - it fell while I was here for the winter.
I land on top of the chateau, because it just takes too long for the airship to descend to ground level. That airport I built ended up not very useful.
Inside I find a mildly obnoxious bug with the Bibliocraft fancy pictures. Three of the blocks that are part of the pictures are displaying the "missing texture" block. (Weirdly, in each case it's only *part* of the picture.) It goes away with a block update (hence the dirt) and stays away for the rest of the session, but it's still annoying. I guess I should look at it as having to dust my pictures occasionally. They're well worth the extra work. I feel very satisfied looking at them as I wander around the chateau.
And now, after 7 straight episodes without a reference to the big map - which probably left you folks pretty disoriented - it's time to show my results! Here's the map for my expedition plan: (remember, it's missing a couple of maps on the bottom which don't fit):
And here it is afterwards: (sorry they're not commensurate)
The map at the very tip of the northern peninsula isn't here, because it doesn't fit; but there isn't much land on it anyway.
There was less to the northern part of the continent than I expected, although still enough to occupy me for 7 episodes. This has a particularly strong geographic feel to it; I want to call it the "trade coast" because on this expedition I found the vanilla village at the very north end, which really wants to be made into a port for deep sea exploration, and then south of that are an Indian village, and then a Seljuk village, all right on the coast. There's also a Norman village just off the coast not too far west of where I started this exploration in Episode 109. And, there are a *lot* of mountains along the coast, which emphasize the sea orientation - it would be a total pain to walk or ride a horse between the vanilla and Indian villages, or between the Seljuk and Norman ones.
In a different world, that would have made for some fun building projects - building a deep sea port at the northern tip village, smaller ports for the Millenaire villages, and helping the villages build up. But, as I've mentioned, that's not in the cards, because mod development is driving me to start a different world to playtest Better Forests. And so:
Next episode: the Last Expedition begins.
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.
"Before 1.8" meant release 1.8, and the performance of Beta, which is quite subpar for numerous reasons (such as being single-threaded, and so crude it doesn't even have Vsync or a proper framerate limit; I'm surprised it took Mojang until 1.7 to improve the latter, at least there is Optifine) isn't reflected by every version since; for example, this is a video somebody made of TMCW while flying at 16 chunk render distance (the older "Far" is roughly 12 chunks), only at the edges, and when the sun is rising, do you see chunks rendering in (due to their Intel GPU not supporting "radial" fog with the basic fixed-function pipeline; I believe the latter still occurs in the latest versions due to a mismatch in the sky/fog color during sunrise):
Vanilla 1.6.4 does have the slow chunk rendering with Vsync issue but when otherwise capped via the FPS limit it easily keeps up, aside from the occasional rendering issue on Far due to forgetting to re-render empty chunks once they receive data (this mostly occurs on Far due to the render distance being larger than the chunk load distance), Optifine again improves this though not the Vsync issue, and the 1.6.4 version (probably others as well) doesn't properly increase the view distance past 10 until you increase the render distance to 17 or more due to a coding error ("if (viewDistance <= 16) viewDistance = 10", where 16 should be 10).
If anything, the most noticeable issue in the video is the lighting errors, mostly under trees, which do at least get corrected much faster and consistently than in vanilla (vanilla 1.6.4 will also correct all of them as long as you go slowly enough that newly generated chunks don't go out of chunk ticking range (15x15 chunks) before they complete, and the outermost 3 chunks to the sides (server view distance 10) will never get checked at all, or you go forward up to 3 chunks, then back, hence why errors often persist, even when exploring as slowly as I do (maybe even worse for me since I go back and forth a lot).
TheMasterCaver's First World - possibly the most caved-out world in Minecraft history - includes world download.
TheMasterCaver's World - my own version of Minecraft largely based on my views of how the game should have evolved since 1.6.4.
Why do I still play in 1.6.4?
Yeah, I know you meant release 1.8 and not beta 1.8.
I mentioned beta 1.7.3 simply because it is particularly bad about how it performs for me when it comes to chunk rendering/updates. The updates are so slow that during day to night (or night to day) transitions, you can see rings of different light level around yourself because the chunk updates are failing to keep up with the changing light level. It is that bad for me.
So I was just saying that while the VRAM bug being fixed was welcome, since that makes what was literally unplayable become "playable", I still consider it unplayable because of how slow it performs for me.
And yes, that odd issue with the fog during sunrise and sunset is also a thing to this day, and while it seems minor, it always broke the immersion for me (similar to the lack of round fog on pre-1.17 versions on non-nVidia hardware). I even talked about that very thing with Zeno earlier in this thread I believe. Seeing those hard edges just beyond the fog during the early or late day cuts into the immersion, which is a shame because sunrise and sunset could otherwise be such a beautiful sight. It might be minor to some people, but I can be quite peculiar on what I will tolerate because immersion is pretty important for games for me.
That's sort of the whole reason I swoon over these betters trees and forests as they are such a huge improvement to world generation. These current trees feel like something we should have moved on from long ago. For whatever reason, the game just misbehaves for me half the time whenever I dig into modded, or whenever I go back to older versions. Maybe these big trees are just too complicated for the game. I don't mean big trees entirely, since I know you've done some, but I mean at least the very large ones Zeno does. I remember you saying part of the problem was them generating near world edge and needing buffer space or something. Like maybe making such big trees like Zeno is trying to do would simply only work if chunks were larger than 16 x 16 or something. Maybe I'm pushing him to make something too impractical!?
Seeing this makes me realize that while I like the new mangrove swamps, we now have two swamps and neither of them seem "just right", whereas just having a single, more balanced swamp might have been better. I remember when Mojang announced swamps that I thought they were getting a swamp update, not just a new swamp with the old ones left with their problems.
The problem with the new ones is they are way too dense, and with no variety (so they are always super dense). Worse, they commit the same flaw earlier versions did with large oak trees and jungle trees where they generate leaves that aren't valid, so you have leaves that start decaying after world generation. I consider this a flawed design choice; if it's not valid to remain like that naturally, then it shouldn't be able to spawn/generate that way.
I think just putting the new trees in the old swamps to replace the old ones (which felt like placeholder trees all along), and making some other minor changes, might have been a better approach.
Also, how come those two center maps are missing? I know you put up partially completed maps (unlike me) so did you just forget to duplicate those two?
It isn't so much that it doesn't work but it causes unneeded strain on the game and potential issues (or aggravating them) when features overlap, especially if this is happening often, with the main issue being recursive chunk loading / "worldgen runaway", which in extreme cases can crash the game from out of memory or stack overflow:
https://www.reddit.com/r/feedthebeast/comments/5x0twz/investigating_extreme_worldgen_lag/
https://www.minecraftforum.net/forums/minecraft-java-edition/discussion/2763162-i-discovered-a-new-structure-within-minecraft?comment=4 (I caused the game to crash by setting the size of dirt to 100 in Customized, leading to infinite recursion)
MC-117810 Nether Lava Trap generation often loads new chunks (even vanilla has had more minor variants of this issue. I'll note that the related issue for emerald ore doesn't actually cause issues since it is only single blocks)
This can be partially solved, as I do, by reducing the random offset of features so there is a larger buffer around them; normally there is an 8 block buffer around the central 16x16 area where features are centered, allowing them to get up to 17x17 blocks in size; if you reduce the random offset from 0-15 to 1-14 you get 9 blocks (19x19), and so on, up to a maximum of 32x32 blocks, the latter of which I use for smaller structures (including vanilla temples/witch huts) so they can be placed all at once, improving how they interact with the terrain. Large structures, and caves, have to use a different system where they are placed chunk by chunk and while much larger structures can be supported (even hundreds of blocks) this doesn't work as well if they need to generate on terrain (for a tree you'd need to know the altitude of the trunk before the chunk it is in has been generated).
There is also another solution - instead of checking if just a 2x2 chunk area is loaded before placing features in it check if a 3x3 area is loaded and center them in the center chunk, increasing the buffer to 16 blocks / up to 33x33 blocks per feature, 48x48 if not randomly offset; this still runs into the issue of overlap between features, the main cause of the issues that e.g. water lakes had, which presumably led to their removal (for this reason I only place a larger version of these lakes, up to 30x30 blocks, underground), as well as inconsistent world generation depending on the direction you explore (which is inconsistent anyway since 1.13 due to multithreaded chunk generation):
MC-55596 Some chunks in the same world seed seem to have different versions
https://imgur.com/a/https-bugs-mojang-com-browse-mc-55596-hkCz5t4 (an example)
There are some ways to mitigate this, e.g. I reseed the decorator RNG prior to each main decoration step.
TheMasterCaver's First World - possibly the most caved-out world in Minecraft history - includes world download.
TheMasterCaver's World - my own version of Minecraft largely based on my views of how the game should have evolved since 1.6.4.
Why do I still play in 1.6.4?
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Curse PremiumEpisode 116: The Last Expedition Begins
At this point I have one sort of large area yet to explore, two mediums, and a couple of small areas to the east that I didn't map out, because early in the journal I hadn't learned to be systematic, plus I didn't have the airship and was avoiding highly mountainous areas.
These areas involve a lot of traveling just to get there, and with the arrangement they're in, I think it makes sense to go from one to the other, getting every one, and ending up at the Pantheon where I can show the finished map.
For the start I'm going to the large area, in the northeast. That has a mountain range in the middle: I think I'll land west of it, explore out the flats on the west side, then use the airship to map the mountain range, and finally land to the east and explore *that*.
Then I'll use the airship to explore a the small, mostly mountainous, areas I missed to the east in the early days. Annoyingly, as I'm looking closely at the map to identify the areas, I spot quite a few little dots I managed to miss. They're not visible at this zoom and it would take a good deal of flying about to get them all. I'll decide whether to bother when I get there.
And finally I'll get the assorted areas remaining in the south. I know it's a bit odd I've explored all the areas to the far south (off this map wall because of the floor) but not these; I was thinking I'd get them as I went back-and-forth to the south but then I ended up mapping the entire far southeast in one go (Episodes 100 to 104) and never did the back-and-forth.
This is going to be a LONG expedition but the seasonal clock says it's only mid-Spring so I'll have plenty of time. Perhaps I'll run out of food and have to abort, but I think I can make it work.
The dining room of food is a convenience in the chateau, but turns out to be a pain for loading my lunchbox. I have to check each plate's inventory individually, and on top of that there's a bit of rearrangement based on what I've eaten lately; I want all the "old" foods in one lunchbox so I can start with the other.
But, hey, it still looks nice.
I'd been planning to sleep afterwards (I arrived at night), but rather to my surprise by the time I'm done it's already day. Whatever, I'll just take off.
But the disadvantage of not sleeping is that precipitation is more likely (it's now been a full double-length day since I slept, and the precipitation counter counts that as two days.) It was bright and sunny when I started up the stairs, but in the short time it takes to get to the roof it's started snowing.
Well.
Precipitation is a hassle because, in Spring, it's still snowing in Taiga and Extreme Hills. When I was out in the field I ended up just lumping it, but here the option of just waiting it out is a bit more appealing, because I'm in the chateau. After dithering a bit, I decide to just hang out in the chateau for the day.
First order of business is the annoying giggle of a witch that presumably spawned in the night. I can't see her through the windows, but once I step out the front door I spot and dispatch her immediately.
And then - what to do for the rest of the day? Maybe some decorating? I wander about the chateau a bit trying to think of what to do.
After a while I decide to try Ye Olde Trapdoors as Windows trick to break some large white patches. And - kinda meh? Maybe I should have just used pictures, but I thought a little variety would be good.
Then I move the anvil from upstairs, between the enchantment area and the bedroom set, to the bottom floor on the east, next to the printshop area. It had looked out of place in the more decorative upstairs. Then I start thinking about some kind of living room area where it was.
But before I develop any plans, it's dusk, and I grab some shuteye to head out in the morning.
I don't want to snow up the map in the mountain areas I'm going to fly over near the chateau, so I fly straight north some distance before I pull out my Atlas.
I continue north to where I want to start exploring. In this shot I'm over the mountain range that splits the northern unexplored area, although here I'm still over previously explored terrain. The unexplored area starts just past that copse of tall birches, so I descend over them and set down a little beyond to explore the western side.
First is the plains-ish area you could see there, quite pleasant apart from this cave trap. But you can probably identify the challenge ahead.
Dark Forest. I pull out my sword and start a perimiter run.
Going up the west side, I find a tongue of Plains going in I use to map some of the interior.
Then I continue to the next map north, and wrap around it, where there's a sometimes confusing mix of Taiga and Dark Forest, with the relatively dark Spruce trunks making the boundary somewhat unclear. I run into this vanilla Taiga village, but I don't need to trade anymore and it's too early to need to sleep.
A clearing in the Dark Forest lets me slip south back on to the previous map, and now I encounter my first problematic hostile. But once I pull out my crossbow it's easily dispatched.
I'm pretty hungry, but my meal plan has a cake next, and I want to put it off as long as possible, because once I place it and start eating it I'll have to leave it. So I want to get as much out of it as possible.
I get to the east side of the forest and here it reaches the sea, so I end up boating alongside it. Then I come to the moutain range - the Dark Forest reaches all the way to that. I get out and start walkind the hillsides just about the Dark Forest.
Finally I reach "starving" and plop down a Pumpkin Cheesecake to gorge. I don't finish it all, leaving this bit for the birds.
At one point edgewalking is not enough and would leave an unexplored area in the middle. Treetopping is not an option because of the hillside, so new Brave Zeno(tm) plunges a bit into the forest to finish the job. No nasties, though.
Then, shortly before sunset, it abruptly starts snowing. I wish the clouds would change some to give you an idea what's coming - getting cloudier before precipitation, either with more clouds or darker ones. I forge ahead as fast as I can to minimize snow accumulation, then once I judge it's sunset I slap down my bed and jump in. I timed it correctly and I get to sleep.
I'm done with this section, so in the morning I find the airship and prepare to head off.
Next episode: The end of the Spine
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.
Run! Run before it petrifies you!
That's lovely to leave it, not just for the animals, but like it's leaving your touch and footprint on the world.
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Curse PremiumEpisode 117: The Last of the Spine
Now I have some mountains to map. The mountain chain arguably goes the entire length of the continent, from here in the northeast down to the big bay in the southwest, with one small break for the Japanese village I found in Episode 27. It crosses with or splits into most of the other ranges in the continent, apart from some coastal ranges and one in the far west. I'm calling it the "spine" because it does sort of seem like the spine of the continent.
My mapping starts with some Extreme Hills with a dusting of snow from the snowstorm late last afternoon.
Then it shifts to a cold climate and Ice Mountains.
I had been expecting it to continue all the way to the northern coast, but it unexpectedly peters out in the Snowy zone. I decide to land the airship and proceed on foot.
I spot a couple of Better Animals walruses; normally they are by the sea but these have decided to hang out next to a little pool instead (although close to the sea).
The mountain range runs NE-SW here and following it has put me near the western edge of the map I'm on (the more northerly of the two I was exploring last episode; this one is 2 north of the chateau map). I head west on to the next map, through this copse of Cold Taiga trees.
That turns to Mega Taiga as I move on to the next map, with these odd-looking leaves up in the air. They turn out to be from an Inuit village which has apparently just chopped down a tree (they are decaying as I watch.) Quite a coincidence to show up just now.
At the east gate of the village is a Forest Hills overlooking a river which almost, but not quite, goes where I want - it's just a touch far east for proper mapping.
I continue NE along the coast, into the first of the two big peninsulas in the region. There's a small range of hills here; not sure if it's linked to the Spine or just a large sub-biome.
I continue north-east through a mix of Plains and big tree Oak Forest. There's a little coastal swamp here; I don't know how I've found so many logical coastal swamps up here on the north coast - but I like it.
Briefly the river does go where I want; but it veers east to head out the east end of the peninsula and I have to get out to map the last bit of the north tip.
Having reached the tip, now I turn south along the east coast of the peninsula. It's all big tree forest here; pretty open with great under-canopy views and with a few Spruces mixed in.
Night falls; in forests I occasionally see duskspawning, so I pillar up next to a clearing to sleep. Yes, I partly picked the clearing for the sunset view. What can I say? I like pretty.
Continuing south, it's still big trees; but now there are a few Birches mixed in rather than Spruces.
And now I spot the worst lighting bug I've ever seen. Worse, nothing fixes it; temporary torches, placing dirt blocks, nada. What's going on? I look up.
Oh. It's not a lighting bug, it's the shadow of a Tinker's floating Slime Island. I'm a little surprised I didn't notice it way back when I boated this coast in Episode 55. I guess the big trees block the view from a boat.
Then the terrain shifts to dominated by Plains, with this coastal swamp, one of the ones I explored - and fought Moose in - in Episodes 54 and 55. I hadn't completely explored it out (I think this was the big one) and I have to dip into it a bit.
I turn back north-northwest to get a bit of unmapped terrain. The trees certainly look nice in spring colors. And I'm really appreciating the Mega Taiga trees with RTG addins lately - they make for a really nice view.
Then back south to the swamp. It's a bit odd that Serene Seasons ends up making Swamp into these supersaturated colors 8 months out of the year - red in autumn and winter, and this blue-green in the Spring. I think of Swamp as on the dingy side.
I turn back west along the south edge of the map, and I'm starting to think it's not that the mountain range *ending*, it's that it turned west. Fortunately I don't have to do any mountain climbing - I turn north for my next pass just at the bottom of the mountain ahead.
North takes me into the largish snowy zone where I left the airship, here Cold Taiga. It mixes with Taiga a bit, and then I'm into the Ice Plains with scattered hills where I left the airship. I reach the end of my pass, and then turn south for my final one.
Before I finish it, though, night falls, and I bed down on the plains.
Next episode: an unpleasant surprise.
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 118: Really the Last of the Spine.
In the morning I continue south through snowy terrain with scatted trees.
I reach the bottom of the map, completing this area, and head west to the next map for my last pass. But here I notice that in my obsession with dealing with the Dark Forest I missed a spot in that area! Argh.
So after I finish the pass and get in the airship, I boat back across the bay (boating because the ship goes faster in the water than in the air) to finish it.
Most of the area is Taiga with occasional clearings.
Only at the very end is a lake where it transitions to snowy terrain. I boat out the lake and I'm done with the mapping. Now I need to get back to the ship, and weirdly the best way turns out to be using a vanilla boat on the ocean, because at the end of the mapping I'm really near the ocean and even vanilla boating is almost twice as fast as walking. So I boat to the boat.
Then I boat back across the bay, and take to the air to resume mapping the Spine. The one pass I did last episode was not nearly enough, so I do another to the south. Here I'm flying over a Millenaire Japanese village. The shot doesn't show it all, but I'm impressed with how well the Millenaire villages adjust to even fairly difficult terrain. It's a shocking contrast with vanilla villages, which can become a mess just from hillocks and rivers, never mind rugged terrain like this.
Two passes is *still* not enough, so I start a third back north.
Night falls, but airship - I can keep going, and even have an advantage if it starts snowing. I turn to the east, because I've mapped almost all of the two maps above this (other than a small bubble at the bottom of the next map east, which I am going to be sure to remember!)
As I surmised last episode, the mountain range - the end of the Spine - does go the length of the land area on the map.
Bubble remembered! No thousand block backtrack for this little blob.
In the end the Spine *does* reach all the way to the coast (well, OK, there is this tiny strip of Desert) - but to the east coast of the unexpored area, not the north I was expecting. Here's to surprises; they keep exploration interesting.
And now it does start precipitating, so I snooze it off in the airship.
There's a little area of Savanna left at the tip and normally I'd explore it on foot - but it's placed so that doing that would require substantial extra walking. So I just overfly it here.
I'm still not done with mapping the spine - I've done three passes to the west, but on this last east-west I've only done about one and a half (half on foot last episode and one just now.)
So I head back east, over this Indian village I saw in Episode 54. Again, note how it copes with the Mesa outcropping in the middle of it. A vanilla village would probably have a building way up on the outcropping with a door either opening onto a precipitous drop or into the mesa. But the Millenaire village just goes around.
At the end of the pass is a Dark Forest, which I overfly. Then it's time to land and finish off the area on foot.
But where to land? Positionally I'd like to land in the Birch Forest there, but it has no clearings. Eventually I land on the side of the mountain.
I knew the now 2 and a half passes didn't completely map the mountains, but I figured I could do the rest from the flats, or at worst the foothills.
I was wrong. I end up having to go into the mountains and some rugged terrain. I take a fair number of falls, although I don't take much damage because I'm wearing my Feather Falling boots.
Fortunately I don't have to cross any of the massive ridges, and after few more bumps and scrapes, I'm down to the flats. Still Birch forest, too.
After the Birch Forest is the Mesa. In the distance is the Indian village and I guess I shouldn't talk them up *too* much as I see there's a village gate halfway up one of the formations. Still, vastly better than vanilla villages.
I finish off the Mesa and turn back to finish the rest of the area.
I'm just getting back into the Birch Forest when sunset forces a snooze break.
The lake is the spot I originally thought was a bay back in Episode 54, but which is actually separated from the ocean by a thin strip of land. In the distance on the left you can see the Mesa Plateau island I thought was impossible - until I saw it.
As you can see by the trees, this is all shrub forest, pretty close to a vanilla forest although there are some of the shorter RTG Birches mixed in.
Continuing on I find a river, but it's not going where I want to go - when finishing these little bits I don't have much choice of direction.
Ahead is more of the Swamp, and I plunge in.
And just like the first time I was in this swamp, it's lousy with Moose. And they're mean. I must be rusty, because it takes six whacks to kill this one. After than I take to potshotting them with the crossbow, but even with my Manyullyn Iron-powered super crossbow, it's two shots to kill each one.
Near the end is oak Forest, here with Spruce mixed in. The trees are taller again, getting closer to more typical RTG heights.
Then it's back to the Birch Forest for the last bits. But without warning -
Where did she come from? I see her only a split second before she hits me with the poison splash. I skewer her quickly with a crossbow bolt, but I'm still poisoned and - I forgot my milk. So I have to suffer as my hearts tick down. Damage Screenshot takes 37 shots during my suffering. I have 6 hearts left at the end, though, due to the boost from my Tinker's Contructs Armor.
Then it's back to the airship, which is quite a bit east of where I thought it was, necessitating some more clambering and short falls.
And - I'm done with the North! And the first major part of the Last Expedition. I board the airship and set off for the next area to explore - ironically, leftovers on my spawn map, of all places.
Next Episode: the First Shall Be (almost) Last.
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Curse PremiumEpisode 119: The First Shall Be (almost) Last
Having finished exploring the northern part of the continent, I prepare to head south to the last largish unexplored areas, in the southeast of the continent although not all the way to the south. On the way, though I plan to map out a number of smallish areas I missed for various reasons, mostly early on. Ironically most of them are on the first map I made, the spawn map.
I head out over one of the many, many swamps along the coast of the northern part of the continent. This is purely random, as far as I can tell, making an interesting demonstration of how randomness can sometime create something that makes sense to our pattern-loving minds.
As sunset falls, I'm flying near the Lonely Inn on the coast on the north of the chateau map, first seen in Episode 24. The northern part of the continent has a lot of coastal villages, especially on its west side. But then the eastern part has none on the coast - only this Inn. On a whim, I land the ship and take a bed for the night.
Then in the morning it's on to the spawn map. There are three areas to explore here - the northern coast, which I didn't finish in Episode 07 because I wanted to get home and got off at a break in the coastal mountains. Then there's the largish area to the northeast that I wrapped around in Episode 07 and then never came back to finish. And finally there's a small area on the south of the mountains to the east that I just didn't get when I did the parts east and west. I think I was racing because of snow, but I don't remember when or why exactly.
First is the coast, obviously.
I start by mapping a medium, swampy island I spotted after I left the coast, also in Episode 07.
But the rest of the unexplored coast turns out to conceal a fairly large mountainous area. I boat around the edge, and then take to the air to map the interior.
The interior has an unusually high mountain plateau - although I guess you can't tell from the pic. I was surprised to find it after flying so far up from the coast. On the left you can see part of a Japanese village, with a wall around it. I wasn't expected a newly discovered village to be so developed - it takes a while for a Millenaire village to build a wall. I wouldn't think it was close enough to my first base to be active much, so I am quite surprised to see it. But, obviously it was active, somehow.
As you can see, there was quite a bit left on the northern coast. Now that it's done, I head to the second major area. This is the mountains to the north of the pass to the ocean I found on my very first exploration expedition.
And there is the pass I marveled over in Episode 04 - and, yet, which I never did anything with. I ended up building my long-desired mountain base at the chateau, which also has some spectacular views - if perhaps not quite as spectacular - but which was better positioned as a base to map the continent, since it's toward the middle and not on the eastern edge.
Then the third, smallish area, which is on the south side of this peak. That finishes the areas on the spawn map, but there are several more similar areas on maps south of it.
I fly over a large hot area on the way to the next map south.
First is an area of Dark Forest I didn't get because I explored it before I learned to be systematic about them.
I could have done this one on the ground - it even turns out to have a clearing, with the requisite ruined farmhouse, easily accessible from the coast. The clearing is full of feral sheep, which aren't quite close enough to see in this pic. The proprietors probably went out of business because there area already *so* many sheepherders on the continent (for some reason Millenaire has a really high rate of lone sheepherder ranches).
It's a little hard to see, but there is a rough line of unexplored dots, going south on the far (western) side of that frozen river. They're unexplored because, well, they're hard to see and I didn't notice I was missing them. They're only clearly visible on a map wall because of the dark background.
That leads to the area to the south, which I missed because it was mountainous. Although I *could* have done this on foot - you see the valley area to the right, which is accessible from lowland areas.
Then on the western edge of the map is another area of mountains I didn't quite do. I remember the expedition but I can't think of any keywords to search up exactly what episode it was.
Then on to the next map to the west - this is one map south of the chateau map. Oddly, I'm missing the northeast corner, because I generally get parts like that on trips to get places further away from my bases. But this map I approach from the Chateau and the map to the west I approached from the Seljuk base, so I never passed through that area on the way to something else. So I map it now.
Then south to the next map, where I know there are some more missed areas, over the snowy zones typical of this map.
Oops, that's the map to the south*east*. This map has the one big area remaining, which I plan to do on foot. I head west.
This map is mostly water, with one peninsula - with a sort of sub-peninsula. I first saw this in episode 52, where I got the "achievement" of being attacked by all the Better Animals leeching animals, by being attacked by a Bobbit Worm. I missed this because I was doing a water expedition - although I should have gotten out and done it then.
As I'm doing it I notice one tiny unexplored dot on the sub-peninsula and head over for that.
Shouldn't have - it has an Extreme Hills subbiome, with snow on it, so I've snowed up my map. Well, whatever.
Then there's one tiny area I missed on another peninsula which just reaches this map on the south. This I missed because it's on one of the giant Savanna M formations I marveled over in Episode 52.
This would also make an interesting area to build a base in.
Then I head to the map to the west, with the big unexplored area. I'm going to to this mostly on foot. But first, I'm going to fly the airship to where I want to take off from, on the west side. I fly along the south of the unexplored area, getting some mapping in in the process.
There's an Indian village here, the one I visited in Episode 52 to get the Marco Polo achievement. But I didn't see the north part of the village (it goes around those Mesas) and I didn't notice the ground platform for that fancy building. I'm not exactly sure how it got that complex pattern - some interation between RTG and Millenaire, I guess.
As I fly on I notice:
Mountains. Ooh, I'd forgotten these. I hope they don't mess up my ground exploration plans.
After I finish the pass I land the airship in a Savanna area, confusingly mapped by vanilla mapping routines to look like a forest (sigh). It looks like I got most of the mountains from the air, so I think I'll be fine on the ground.
Next episode: back to ground exploration.
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Oh my goodness, that little house by the beach is romantic. It has a single palm tree and everything, haha. I really wish beaches got some love in vanilla (and palm trees would make good additions).
I know I say I often find RTG too smooth in its generation, but the gradual generation really works immediately off shore. Didn't you say it drops deeper at a point beyond the shore/continents? If I was back in 2013 and2014 when I was really working on my original world and i saw that shoreline somewhere in it, that would be an instant decision to make a village/city there.
Also would have been another likely spot for a location within that bay.
The fog reminds me of how it was back in earlier versions. I think it was thicker back then?
Definitely begging for a sprawling village/city on the low flatlands backed by that raised terrain, and with multiple, large docks/shipyards docks running into the ocean with some ships out there.
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Curse PremiumOne of the bad things about this journal is that, having explored a large continent with lots of spectacular places for bases, I haven't had time to build them. There have been lots of missed opportunities, the ones you mention among them. Although I'd have left that little inn alone, because I like the imagery of the little house alone on the coast, and as I mentioned, it's really alone. It's surprisingly logical, because there *is* a Norman village not too far inland; it's like like the seaside resort for that town.
Yes, the RTG Deep Ocean is deeper than the coastal Ocean. That was aimed at the complaint about ocean worlds that you could get "lost" in the ocean. Even in vanilla 1.6 generation, though, I noticed that a lot of trips that went on for hours actually passed pretty close to land - you just couldn't see that. With Deep Ocean deeper than ocean if you boat within render distance of the *ocean* next to land you'll see it's there. As a result, wiith anything like the default Geo setup, you just can't get lost in the ocean.
Geographicraft (formerly Climate Control) - Control climate, ocean, and land sizes; stop chunk walls; put modded biomes into Default worlds, and more!
RTG plus - All the beautiful terrain of RTG, plus varied and beautiful trees and forests.
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Curse PremiumEpisode 120: The Next-To-Last Map
After landing in the Savanna, I head north over a small knoll into some temperate Forest.
It's an oak/spruce forest, and I run across a stand of pure spruce trees. There's a certain chance of a given tree being either spruce or birch, varying by location, and just by chance a bunch of adjacent ones here are spruce.
Also by coincidence it's right next to real Taiga, on the way to a snowy region.
North of the snowy area are two small areas I missed mapping; a small bit of Taiga just beyond it that I must have missed by accident; and this mountain area I avoided on a trip exploring to the south in Episode 53. At the time I thought I didn't want to do it on foot, yet here I am. It's not bad at first.
But there is some serious mountain climbing. It's slow and I take a couple of falls, but it's not a large area and soon I'm done.
Side trips done, I head back to the main unexplored region and resume mapping its exterior clockwise, with more regular forest. But I spot a dayspawning creeper and reach for my crossbow which is - not there? Where did I put it?
I run a distance away and then start hunting in my inventory and backpack, without success. But as I'm hunting -
SSSSS
Unoh, evidently I didn't run far enough.
BOOM! And yet, I don't even take a half heart of damage. I guess Creepers are a lot less dangerous these days.
And then I get attacked by a baby zombie, which I dispatch with my Manyullyn sword. I resume hunting through my inventory, and soon realize - I just don't have it. I must have dropped it by accident. Hunting through my screenshots, I can figure out when - when I was exploring the northern coast of the spawn map last episode, I accidentally hit the shift key and dismounted the boat, plunging into the water. I guess I got a little discombobulated and hit the drop key then, and I didn't notice until now because I hadn't needed the crossbow. I didn't mention this last episode because I didn't have any pics, and it seemed like just a minor embarrassment at the time.
Normally, this would drive me to a (temporary) ragequit - but - I'm almost done with this world; does it really matter? I actually have a Power 4 Infinity bow I carry around as backup (for exactly this kind of thing) and really, it should be enough. So I soldier on (if a bit less well armed).
After rounding the corner and starting south through a mixed Plain and Forest area, I spot a Bear and figure I should check to make sure I can still aim a vanilla bow (the Tinker's crossbow has a much flatter firing arc and is way easier to aim).
Evidentally I still can. And is this really the first time I've shot something with a vanilla bow in this world? After some thought I realize it is; I had the crossbow before I got a good supply of feathers. Actually, I *still* don't have a good supply of feathers; I've been raising Better Animal birds at my bases and they don't drop feathers.
Night falls and I sleep in a Plains area. As I awaken I get a screen refresh, which probably means the season has shifted to summer (since I was already in late Spring). Kind of a cyclical bookend to the game then; I'll end it in the same season I started (Summer).
I spot an Enderman and kill it for a pearl. I have a real shortage of Pearls in this game. Normally I get them by hunting Endermen when I'm working outside in my base at night; I can stare them over the fence without have to deal with anything else. But in this game neither of my two bases had a large outside region; I never bothered with the Seljuk base and it would have been too much trouble (and ugly) on the mountains of the chateau. I'll never use it; I'm not going to have enough to go after the Ender Dragon, but, force of habit.
At the southeast corner is this lovely lakeside Flower Forest. The map seems to indicate the lake goes some distance to the southeast but I'm seeing a shore in that direction?
Because there *is* a shore - missing from the map because it's part water Swamp - and then *another* lake.
I successfully dispatch a dayspawn Creeper with my enchanted vanilla bow, so, yes, it will suffice. I need two shots but it does have a much faster rate of fire.
Turning back west, I head into a Swamp, but decide to switch from mapping with a counterclockwise spiral to mapping with north-south passes - because this way I can finish near the airship rather than at the center of the map.
I end up turning a bit west, because of some mountains ahead, and find yet *another* large, pretty lake. It's a Land o Lakes around here!
Then I find a river going my way and get a bit of riverboat mapping in (it's fast!)
On my pass south I hit yet *another* lake, and then get a great view from this Plains area. You can see I'm not doing a good job adhering to the north-south passes (due to the terrain, mostly the lakes).
By the time I reach that Birch M grove you can seen in the previous pic, it's sunset, so I pillar up into the trees to sleep.
In the morning, I find this big Flower Forest sprawling up onto a hill. I end up doing only a half pass and turning back south, because my last pass went so far from cardinal south.
At the south end of this half-pass I spot the mountains I saw last episode and worried a bit about; unnecessarily, at it turned out.
On the final pass north I spot this clearing with Sunflowers. Not sure how that happened, but not complaining. Not at all.
Then a bit of the Snowy region, and then.
Dark Forest. Sigh. I *thought* this was going too easily. I start walking the perimeter.
Here they are the much taller ones from before I revised them mid-journal. I end up going well east of plans, and then coming back along the north of the forest.
I have to dip into the Dark Forest just a bit to finish mapping it, but I encounter no difficulties. I don't have to test how well I can function with a vanilla bow in a more challening situation than a single mob.
A last bit of the Snowy region, then some forest (Cold Taiga in the shot, soon changing to temperate forest), then one last lake, and - I'm done with one more map. Only one more left!
Then it's time to find the airship on the Savanna.
Oops, not fast enough - I'll have to sleep the night.
But - even on the Savanna, it proves surprisingly hard to find the airship (because of the short viewable distance). I briefly consider asking the villagers in the village before remembering they can say nothing but "mmm" "Mmm" and "MMM!". It's getting late; I'm a bit sleepy IRL.
Finally I spot it, after several minutes of looking (!!!), once again west of I where I thought it was.
Next episode: The Last Map, and The End (but still not that one.)
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They sort of aren't that dangerous. That's why I feel like they could do with an adjustment to their damage to make it more smooth. Honestly, the range even needs increased. As it is now, the damage is very high if they are right on top of you, but then the damage drops off fast, so it becomes trivial if you have any distance between you, and if you use a shield on top of that, it really is trivial.
They feel like they're still balanced for a version of the game that hasn't existed in over a dozen years; beta 1.7.3 and older, before sprinting was added. Back then, the whole idea of the creeper was to be aware of your surroundings, and to be ready for sudden unexpected threats in unknown terrain.
With sprinting and shields, they just don't feel like they're balanced properly.
I unbind the drop item feature for this reason. Too many times I'd press Q and drop something and not want to. If I ever want to drop something, which is rare to begin with, it's likely to be more than a single one of something, so I can just do it from the inventory.
I was surprised to find older versions of the game don't allow you to unbind things. That actually may have been why I never unbinded it from the start and suffered with it while dropping things for years.
I've made similar changes myself; I changed the damage-distance calculation to a linear one with a lower maximum and higher minimum, 36-6 on Normal (1.5x that on Hard), in part to balance out changes that nerf player armor (from 80% to 66.6% max damage reduction, which is a 1.67x increase in damage taken after armor; this comes out to 9.8 in vanilla and 12 in TMCW, so you still take more damage point-blank, on the other hand, even on Hard you can still survive with one heart left, without any enchantments, much as you could in vanilla before 1.9, in fact, on Easy you can survive with no armor at all since they only deal 19 damage):
It is worth noting that Mojang also slightly nerfed explosion damage, from 49 to 43 for a creeper on Normal, to ensure it is possible to survive a point-blank hit in full Protection IV diamond armor on Hard. Interestingly, the change to the explosion damage formula was never noted in the Wiki, in fact, it sounds like they consider it to be an error, though it is true that it is hard to actually achieve the maximum possible damage since there has to be zero distance between the explosion center and the target:
For comparison, this is how I modified it, for creepers only (the default formula is functionally the same as vanilla, I just merged * 2 / 8 and left variables as floats), and only affecting living entities, else e.g. items (5 HP) will always be destroyed within the entire blast radius, unless shielded (which itself was changed; solid blocks are less effective and fully transparent blocks have a further 50% reduction in shielding; in vanilla even tall grass or snowcover can almost completely negate damage to entities, oddly enough, this is considered to be intended, at the same time, a similar issue affecting block damage, which I also fixed, is considered to be a bug):
There is also another major change I made - prior to a an AI update in 1.2 creepers continued moving during their countdown, a feature which I restored - so they can get closer before exploding, which also often deals a lot of knockback (I often get launched high into the air, which will easily finish you off even if you do survive as described above; Protection enchantments do nullify much of their danger, as they always have, and this is arguably the biggest gameplay balance issue since Beta 1.8, besides the extremely fast health regeneration from hunger since 1.9 (though eating and healing were instant in Beta 1.7.3, partly offset by not being able to stack food, so you'd need several slots on your hotbar to be able to eat multiple times in succession).
I did reduce the range at which they stop their countdown, from 7 to 5 blocks (damage extends out to 6 blocks) to compensate, as well as help ensure that if they explode they will deal damage to their target (I see many players not even bothering to try killing them, they just step back and receive little or no damage at all).
Another thing I've always wondered about is if mobs used to be faster; the "old" and "new" entity AIs use different systems to calculate movement speed, the Wiki doesn't give any actual / meaningful values (the ones given are just the "attribute" and suggest that mobs should be far faster than players); as an illustration when they updated endermen to the new AI in 1.8 they didn't adjust their speed attribute so they became much faster, while other mobs have been adjusted, one source says that zombies move at about 2.28 m/s, barely half your walking speed, a direct interpolation of their attributes (0.23 for zombies and 0.25 for creepers) suggest they move at about 2.5 m/s; when sprinting you can enlarge the gap by about 3.1 m/s, or 4.7 meters in the time they count down, or 5.6 and 8.4 if they are standing still, nearly double the distance.
Also, I thought to note I'd made another improvement to explosions:
(also, another recent change that I consider to be extremely annoying is the inability to separate minecarts; I'd have to craft them instead of simply taking them from mineshaft chests; mineshafts themselves had also already been nerfed enough, from being much rarer to having less valuable loot (while exploring one extremely large complex of mineshafts 14% of all the diamonds I collected were from mineshaft chests, this hardly seems game-breaking and they are harder to find and explore than surface structures). This change was also made in response to a complaint that they were inconsistent with the new chest boats, instead of making the latter work like minecarts had for a decade, and astoundingly, "fixed" in two weeks, considering all the much more important issues that haven't been fixed in years).
TheMasterCaver's First World - possibly the most caved-out world in Minecraft history - includes world download.
TheMasterCaver's World - my own version of Minecraft largely based on my views of how the game should have evolved since 1.6.4.
Why do I still play in 1.6.4?
Yeah, I can't make heads nor tails of any of that code stuff, but that sounds like the general idea of what I would do to try and fix them. The issue with balance changes is that it usually cascades into needing to make balance changes elsewhere (such as armor balance), and on and on, so isometimes a total overhaul is needed to make a few changes and they might consider it not worth it. Right now though, it feels like the damage from creepers is so extreme but the threat range is rather narrow. This results in creepers that feel like they either do very little or they just kill you most of the time. Making the damage cap lower allows you to make the range larger (I suppose this part is optional, but it would be welcome for my taste) and increase the damage at a farther range without it being a strict overwhelming buff.
In a game where sprinting, knockback, blocking, and so on is present, they feel like they've lost a bit of their unique identity. Their entire conditional is that you're supposed to avoid them by being aware of your surroundings, and while having one sneak up on you shouldn't be an guaranteed and harsh penalty, they feel like they're "just another mob that does a bit of terrain damage without being a threat to the player" and it feels... so... bad. There's so much more potential here.
I can't comment on old mob behavior or speed since I started playing with 1.2.5 (and even then my memory won't always notice small differences), and while I did play prior versions, my time with them was more limited.
what structure is this?
https://www.youtube.com/c/brandynn
Sekai-Chan said:
This video was just as enjoyable as Technoblade’s I’ll sub to you.
*happiness noise*
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tSYuZbgeu7Y
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Curse PremiumEpisode 121: The Last Map
I take to the air to finish the last map.
Again ironically, this last map is the Pantheon map (well, one of them; it straddles two maps). The reason is one that's come up several times; I figured I'd map it flying out to map further places, but didn't do that often enough to finish the map. I did do a lot; you can see there's not that much left - but not everything.
The village here is the Nitwit village from Episode 49. There's a spectacular Jungle Hills, really a mountain, behind it, but it's too far to render in this pic.
I'm going to start with the lower region. My plan is to fly the airship to the far end (mapping as I move it), then land and backtrack on foot. There's a problem, though: the far end is forest and may not have a place to land.
I'm in luck, though; there's a Geographicraft clearing *right* where I want it. But:
As I'm coming in for a landing I try to take a pic, and hit the left shift key instead, causing me to plummet from the airship to a tree limb.
And now I'm up in a tree, pretty far up as you can see these are big trees. I could just chop my way down, but that will leave the branches above me hanging, which I don't want to do. I also don't want to go to the trouble of chopping one of these monster trees down, so I end up laddering down the side of the trunk by placing two blocks of dirt on the side, standing on the top, digging one, placing another beneath, etc.
And then after a while I botch *that* by accidentally digging out both blocks (shovels are fast) and plummeting the rest of the distance. But by then it's not far.
In spite of all the time on clambering down, the airship hasn't reached the ground yet. I sit for a while, and then realize I don't have to wait; I can just explore the region and it will be down by the time I get back. So off to the east I go.
Gotta love RTG Birch Forest M. I've had complaints about the work it takes to chop one of them down, but I figure you don't have to chop every tree - and they look so good!
Then there's some ordinary birch forest, some swamp,
And finally a Plains with a small rocky hill. I have to clamber around on the hill a bit to finish this area, and then I'm done. So, back to the airship.
When I get back it's near sunset, so:
I enjoy the sunset and then sleep in the clearing.
In the morning I take off to head to the last area, and take a pic of the trees as I rise though them.
And AGAIN fatfinger the left shift key and plummet to the ground. I'd had a problem with hitting the function keys, which are right above the number hotkeys on my laptop, and reconfigured the keyboard to require holding the Function key down to activate them. But that's right next to the left shift dismount key, and I seem to have jumped out of the frying pan into the fire. So I rereconfigure my keyboard and:
Have to w a i t for the airship to descend to the ground again.
For this last region, I'm going to fly on the eastern edge, and then, again, land, dismount, and explore the rest of the area on foot. Then I'll fly to the Pantheon, which is the grey blob on the top edge, about 1/4 of the way from the left corner.
I land in a Plains area, with a view of the vanilla part of the vanilla/Byzantive double village from Episode 50.
I head along the top edge, over this hill affording a view of some forests ahead.
I'm hungry, but it's time to have another cake, so I'm going to put off eating until I'm starving to eat as much of the cake as possible.
At the end of the pass is a mountain, but I don't have to climb it, and I can just admire.
Now I turn south through more forests. Ahead I spot some swamps, but I'm hoping I don't have to go into them.
BZZZT! Sorry, Charlie. In I go.
I reach "starving" and place and eat a pumpkin cheesecake.
I get through about 3/4 of it and leave the rest for the ducks. Of which there aren't any in this world.
Near the south of the pass is a large lake affording a great view of the Jungle mountain overlooking the Nitwit village I mentioned earlier. I'm hoping I don't have to climb that thing.
Bzzt! Again. And it's a tough climb with a lot of 2 high jumps.
Night falls before I reach the top, and I have to sleep in a portaledge on the mountainside.
In the morning I scramble to the top and - another obstacle.
Vanilla places Jungle trees in RTG, so the nifty RTG light tracker doesn't get used, and there's a nasty dark spot in the valley between the two peaks of the mountain. I have to fight off 4 zombies, a skeleton and - something - I'm not sure what - skulking behind a bush there. I'm guessing it's a Zotzpyre, the Better Animals giant vampire bat. Whatever it is, I kill it with a couple of arrows.
Great views from up here. Another great place for base that will never get built.
I descend the far side to finish the pass in a Flower Forest. Then I turn north for one last mapping pass.
It's a BIG flower forest. I'm in it a good ways.
Then back into the Forest, now a mix of Oak and Spruce.
The remaining area is too wide for a single pass, so I go left and right. Less efficient than straight up and down, but more efficient than an extra pass back down.
I finish in the large Plains area where I landed. Then into the airship to the Pantheon, to see - the finished map! Whohoo!
Oh, but the Pantheon is still snowed in because I left it in winter. And if I handle my Atlas there, it'll snow up the map. Fortunately, it's Summer, and snow will melt. But I have to circle the Pantheon several times before enough of it has melted to make me comfortable.
I approach the Altar reverently, eager at FINALLY having a complete map of a large continent - in Hardcore, even!
And there it is! OK, there's a few missing dots here and there, but nothing you'd notice; it practical terms it's comple-
Wait.
No, it's not.
There's still two areas large enough to see (if not big) - just to the left of the Bearclaw Sea. They are pretty small, and I guess I could pretend it's done, but it would grate on me. And they're not far, they're on the *other* Pantheon map (figures).
So - this wasn't the last map after all. I still have a little cleanup to do.
Next episode: REALLY the last map.
Geographicraft (formerly Climate Control) - Control climate, ocean, and land sizes; stop chunk walls; put modded biomes into Default worlds, and more!
RTG plus - All the beautiful terrain of RTG, plus varied and beautiful trees and forests.
Better Forests Varied and beautiful trees and forests, in modern Minecraft.
Is it bad if I looked at that jungle hill and thought "I hope he has to climb that" before you said you hoped you didn't have to?
I like the way RTG does terrain patches on mountains, and jungles on mountain sides always appealed to me. Except, ironically, when i have to climb them in hardcore (okay, I was awful for hoping you'd have to climb it after all).
It might be silly, but the inner bay not being completed is what stood out the most to me. There's the other one in the far Southeast too, but it's so far away from where you are, and so far near the edge and ocean, that it doesn't bother me as much.
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Curse PremiumLike real mountain, RTG mountains are good to look at but often not too fun to deal with. I don't blame you for wanting me to climb the mountain; you get a story out of it and you don't have to run back and forth looking for places to climb further up. At times I had to use a parkour trick of moving sideways while jumping up to get to a spot to the side that was only one up from where I was but 2 up from what's orthogonally next to it.
Not liking the gaps in the inner bay isn't silly; it's not technically part of the continent, but it does look out of place in a way that the little bays on the far edges don't.
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.