I'm a bit surprised at how many creepers you've survived and how little damage most of them have done...
I'm not. Creepers are infamously one extreme or the other most of the time. The "Goldilocks zone" where creepers neither tickle nor overkill you seems very narrow due to their high damage but quick falloff rate. Where that zone is depends on difficulty, your armor and enchantments, if you have and are raising a shield in time, and if you're standing level with it or not.
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"'Tis foolishness! If all were so easy, why, none would suffer in this world!"
I absolutely loved your world generation in those earlier versions. Your frustration with the update grind is a problem I relate to as well. Playing Minecraft usually results in me spending more time modding than playing. The last few times I've tried it, the game updated and a long abandoned mod that I loved from 1.12 suddenly updated to the new version. Temptation got the better of me so I updated, losing all the progress I'd made. Rinse, repeat, tedium, quit.
Going back to the glory days of 1.12 would avoid all of that - plus I'd get the beautiful terrain from RTG and Underground Biomes
Glad to hear from you, Dulciphi! Yeah, I never successfully updated a modded game either, to the point that when some people were asking me to update my 1.7.2 journal world for Explorations and Mod Development to 1.7.10 because they wanted to see updated Thaumcraft (IIRC), I refused. I just didn't want to risk such a valuable world.
And, yeah, modding is a draw. I just wrote a mod this weekend to almost always stop the harlequinization of vanilla villages in Underground Biomes. Sadly I just couldn't figure out a way to UB the stairs.
If you do want to start a 1.12 RTG world, give me a holler as I have made a significant change to the river system with the version I'm running here but it's not released. I'm reducing the innate variability of rivers to allow more significant variation in the configs - with the old system rivers could occasionally be incredibly wide and so making rivers even wider created some absurdly wide rivers.
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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.
(Yeah, I know the episodes are coming fast and furious but I'm having fun and playing a lot and I don't want my buffer to get too large as it makes it hard to respond to comments. Also, I know I write in crazy detail but part of the goal is recording my own experience to relive later and that needs a lot of detail.)
I want to gear up and I'd like to skip right to Tinker's equipment, which can be made higher durability than vanilla, is easier to repair, and often has useful special abilities. The cost is that creating Tinker's gear is MUCH, MUCH more complicated. I've pretty much got the materials and tools I need, including the Smeltery, by far the most complex of the complications, but I'm missing Aluminum Ore, which is odd, because it's never been an issue for me before.
So I have to do some mining. Wish me luck.
Another issue for mining is that in one direction I have a lava lake and in two more I'm breaking into caves from below, leaving me with one direction to mine (east). This is cramping my style, so I decide to see if maybe I can get under one of the tunnels. So I knock out one more block.
Hey! I can just build a cobble roof! One problem solved
So now I can go east and west, which feels much better. I keep going and almost immediately
Aluminum! Hey, that was easy!
Except it's not. It's just one block, which isn't enough. With the doubling of the Smeltery, that would allow 2 moulds, which would allow 1, maybe 2 types of tools. I have to keep looking.
Continuing on, after a while I hit ANOTHER lava level cave, and have to jog right multiple times to get around it. I can't remember having such a hard time mining since my second 1.7 journal (where the problem was mineshafts).
Eventually my inventory fills (I am carrying a fair amount of junk; I need to be more careful) and I return to base.
Then I clean up my inventory a bit and try branch mining off the new west shaft.
Man, this is getting ridiculous! I jog right but this time I get to continue. I continue until my pick breaks. Still no more aluminum.
Well, I have aluminum to allow casts for one type of tool, so I guess it'll be a pick. But first, I've eaten the food I brought down so I have to go topside to get more.
While there I check the Season Clock. It's hard to explain, especially when it's so small, but it's showing that Spring is almost over. Another day or two and it's Summer. In my previous journals I remember agonizing waits for Winter to be over. Now though, it's the reverse; I want the seasons to slow down. I have few Summer crops (they don't show up much in Forest and Taiga, never mind snowy climates) and I need to explore to get more, but I have no armor and no map. I'd like a couple days to mine and get resources, but I won't have them.
I harvest some crops and then head down to make my new pick. I need three parts; a handle, a pick head, and a binding. I choose wood for the handle for the Ecological effect (doesn't need a cast), an Iron pick head for Magnetic (needing a cast), and an Iron binding for even more Magnetic (also needing a cast). That's two casts, and my Aluminum is used up.
If I'd had the choice, I'd probably have picked (haha) something else for the binding, but I don't have a lot of choices right now.
I put them together for a pick and get - Magnetic III, but not Ecological! What gives?
Well, I've thought for a while that Ecological (slow auto-repair) is way too strong an effect for the easiest to get material in the game. You don't even need a cast to use it! And it overshadows a couple of other effects in the mod. So I installed Tweaker's Construct, which allows changes to Tinker's materials and effects, solely to take that effect out. Mildly annoyingly, the wood part still *says* it will confer Ecological on the tool, but it doesn't.
Now just to make a pick, I've had to find Aluminum, Copper, and Iron, make casts, create a 31 block multiblock construction needing sand, clay, *and* gravel, and construct 4 different work stations. A lot more work that vanilla's "iron and a crafting table". But the abilities and repairability are an advantage, and in addition I can add modifiers, roughly complarable to Enchantment levels. I put on Diamond, increasing my mining level and doubling durability, and 2 levels of Haste, roughly equivalent to Efficiency. That's all I can do, though; Tinker's tools can only take so many modifiers.
Now I put my nifty new pick to the test mining a branch shaft off my east tunnel. I don't really notice the speed improvement on the Quarzite (which is pretty hard) but on Blue Schist - nice. It's very noticeably faster. After less than a minute:
Finally. And three blocks this time, so I'll be able to get a fair number of items, although not a full set. I mine on for a while, and then turn back when I'm getting hungry.
I eat some, get some more food, and bring down two buckets of water for a classic 2x2 water source.
Water can be combined with lava inside the smeltery to make molten Obsidian, which can then be cast into tool parts, slowing damage to tools containing it. It also makes a good pick head. I'd forgotten how to get liquids into the Smeltery, and it took me a while to figure it out (dump the bucket into an open drain). I also had to move a chest, because sometimes I miss, and then I end up with lava dumped on the floor, which creates some problems - to put it mildly.
Now I crank out a bunch of moulds (here I'm making an Armor Trim mould) and make Tinker's Diamondized Iron shovels and picks, and Iron/Obsidian breastplate, leggings, and helmet. That uses up all my Aluminum Brass, so I can't make moulds to make anything else. Again, these wouldn't always be my material choices, but I can't use what I don't have.
I can't Diamondize the armor as that requires a more advanced Armor Station I can't make yet.
And now I go for a selfie showing me in my semi-spiffy armor, my decidedly unspiffy starter shack, and my dinky but adequate farm.
The Seasonal Clock now definitely shows Summer, so I rip up my Spring-only crops, put them in my seed chest for next year, and plant my desultory collection of Summer crops. Crops that grow Spring/Summer I leave because they're still growing, and Spring/Autumn crops I leave so they'll have a head start in their next season.
Almost forgot! Vanilla Wheat is a Summer crop, so I plant my vanilla seeds. Not so desultory now, but I still need to go exploring.
Late in the day I collect paper from my (Harvestcraft) Paperbark tree orchard, which allows a view of this moderately pretty sunset. I love Minecraft sunsets and usually have bases that allow good sunset views, but I don't get one from this shack.
I now have enough paper for a level 0 and a level 4 map, which is good.
The level 0 map gives a good view of the immediate area. You can see my survival shack with its slat roof, and the irrigation channels of the farm.
But the level 4 map is horribly placed. I'm going to be heading southeast, away from the cold, and so I'll probably immediately leave it. Nearly useless.
I snack some more, build a new boat (because I don't remember where I left my old one and it's not worth looking) and now I'm ready to head out.
Next episode: my first expedition.
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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.
A surprise feature of my Tinker's gear is that since the Magnetic (from Iron) armor attracts items, I end up picking up a fair amount of Raw Eel, Raw Squid, and Squid Ink floating on the ocean bottom, I presume from shark attacks.
Boating expeditions in RTG allows some great views. But it's views of more Forest, and I'm looking for Plains.
South of that are some coastal mountains. By now I *am* off the map. I miss Explorercraft, which made level 4 maps roughly centered on where they were made and had a different system for tiling maps.
Llamas!
Past the mountains the coast has short-tree Taiga, which isn't want I wanted to see. I'd like to get some Hot climate zones, both for resources and for someplace to stay in the winter. But it's unlikely that will be near a cool climate zone like Taiga.
I spot this river going in and take it. I'm not planning some grand exploration (this time; they will come); just trying to get some summer crops. I'm already far enough from home and further south would be even more distant.
The river goes for a while, and then reaches its source in some mountains.
I climb up the pass and am treated to this great view. I seem to have two choices; go left or go right. I figure left is more likely to get home and head that way.
This leads to a narrow pass and eventually this stone cross. As I step next to it I discover it is a Millenaire construction. Beyond it is the sea I just boated. So while technically this route is the faster way to get home, it's not useful because I've haven't found the summer crops or warm climates I was looking for.
I turn around, go back and take the right route (which, I guess, is also the right route).
I find some cows. This would be an unreasonable distance to try to lure them to my home, but I do get two buckets of milk. I forgot I could have converted them to Harvestcraft Fresh Milk and taken the equivalent of 8 buckets, but oh well. I'll be back.
Past the forest is this little grassland next to either some inland sea/ deep bay, or a ginormous RTG scenic lake. Plus living sheep, which I can shear for wool for more beds.
It's getting late, so I build a spiderproof pillar and bed down on the top.
What a great moonrise! My starting location is not particularly inspiring, nor is it near any kind of settlement or other great asset, and I'll probably move at some point. This would be a great candidate with that view. It's already got cows and sheep, too.
Next morning I boat across the lake, veering left (north, more towards home), discovering it's a ginormous scenic lake and not a bit of Ocean.
On the other side I find Plains, with a new set of crops *and* a Millenaire village (a Monastic Byzantine village). Presumably they're responsible for the cross on the coastal mountains. This is good because interacting with the Millenaires is one of my long term goals for this game. It also makes a base on this lake even more tempting.
Unfortunately my inventory is full so now that I've found these crops I can't take them. In desperation, I eat some things to make room and toss the egg I picked up leaving home. Of course, the egg hatches, where it's not going to get me a turkey dinner in the future. I'll probably throw a dozen spares at home soon and get nothing.
Next to the village is this cave with two kinds of Thaumcraft Crystal Ores. Thaumcraft 6 is much harder to get into than the earlier ones I played. Now you need 3 of the 6 crystal types, and they're hard to find.
I have no inventory space, so I'll have to come back to get them.
I chat with the town trader, but as is typical for starting Millenaire villages, they have nothing to trade that I want.
North of the town is a bit of Plains - with more crops I have no inventory for - and then some Extreme Hills. I'm well off my map, but I can still use it to tell whether I'm north or south of my base, and it turns out I'm just a little south. So I turn west, to the left.
Part of the way Millenaire deals with messy Minecraft terrain is to level it. Here it left an unusually tall wall (Millenaire "gives up" when the terrain is too bad so the walls are never *that* tall) and, embarassingly, I fell off it.
I cross a very low pass to this Plains with Forest beyond. I'm thinking, based on the hill and the river, that I'm almost to my base but shortly I figure out it's not so.
There are chickens here, which may be useful since they're probably not too far.
Continuing on is this large open Plains area. Although rarer than in vanilla, due to the Geographicraft complex sub-biomes, they do happen.
I've actually wandered a bit north of my base, so I veer south into this forest. The character (all medium oak, fairly open) is very similar to that of the forest around my base so I suspect I'm almost home.
Once again I spot a hill in forest overlooking a river and I suspect I'm near home.
And this time I am. You can just see my farm and starter shack in the distance on the right.
I head over to start planting my finds.
Next episode: Some Surprises
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Geographicraft (formerly Climate Control) - Control climate, ocean, and land sizes; stop chunk walls; put modded biomes into Default worlds, and more!
RTG plus - All the beautiful terrain of RTG, plus varied and beautiful trees and forests.
Better Forests Varied and beautiful trees and forests, in modern Minecraft.
I miss Explorercraft, which made level 4 maps roughly centered on where they were made and had a different system for tiling maps.
My solution to this issue was to let you recenter a map (which does erase its contents) by crafting it with a compass, which aligns it to the chunk you are in, which is how I centered these maps over strongholds (with some trial and error and eyeballing distances; I created a map as usual and filled it in to see where it had to be recentered to cover as much of the stronghold as possible); recentered maps also retain their center if zoomed out (I also have a feature where maps retain the same number unless cloned and subsequently zoomed or recentered, reducing the number of IDs used; I went up to 62 in my first world until I implemented this feature, with every map since using consecutive IDs through 72, the others are mostly every 5th ID with the files for the first 4 zoom levels deleted (as well as maps I'd originally made, and idcounts.dat (last used map ID), before making properly aligned maps for a map wall).
As far as tiling goes, I think the main issue with the way it was officially implemented is that the northwest corner is aligned to (-64, -64) +/- a multiple of their width instead of just 0,0, as I currently align them (this means level 0 maps are centered at 64, 192, etc and level 4 maps are centered at 1024, 3072, etc); an older system (I still use it for my first world) centered maps at (0,0) +/- a multiple of their width but they wouldn't align properly when zoomed out and used the player's position when not only creating but zooming a map so you had to zoom out while still in the area (they did still tile when making a new map after going off the edge of the last).
(Yeah, I know the episodes are coming fast and furious but I'm having fun and playing a lot and I don't want my buffer to get too large as it makes it hard to respond to comments. Also, I know I write in crazy detail but part of the goal is recording my own experience to relive later and that needs a lot of detail.)
Ah my goodness, for real, I can't keep up! But don't slow down if you don't want to. This is probably good timing if anything because I'm not playing, and I think Lena and Staricle both started new worlds but were also dealing with some burn out at the end of their previous ones, so faster updates here are fine.
Those forests just have a vibe that vanilla forests don't give. They give a nice fantasy-like feeling! The canopies all being high above your head give nice sight lines and make you feel like you're within a forest rather than smothered by one. The vanilla forests feel claustrophobic. I've said it before and I will say it always; they are oversized bush groves, not forests. Old growth taigas and jungles are the only two vanilla forests that come close to being this way, and even those only go part of the way there. The former still has low sight lines because there is still a lot of small size trees, and I've always felt like jungles are just a bit too dense in floor coverage. While jungles should have higher floor coverage than normal forests, it feels a bit too high so I'd like if a potential update doesn't totally skip over updating that forest type and it redesigns the ground coverage at least. Like, what is up with the "oak log surrounded by jungle leaf bushes"!? Those always felt like a placeholder that was just... left in for 14 years? Maybe jungles could be split into "jungles" and "dense jungles" with the latter being about as dense as current ones, and the former being otherwise similar with less floor coverage. There is already something in this direction, but "sparse jungles" are far sparser in actual tree coverage, and also only comprise of smaller trees. What I'm thinking of is a middle type that has current tree density with less floor coverage. Ohhhh... that would go great with a jungle temple update too!? But I'm digressing now.
Anyway, I can't help but hope for an update that brings a tree / forest redesign whenever I see your forests. That would probably be the most exciting change for me, perhaps more so than an end update even. 1.18 changed the terrain generation but that decorator layer that covers it is still stuck in the past. And in my mind, they clash. Yes, I know there's concerns about how it may add annoyance to acquiring wood for some players, but I can think of multiple options that can address that. It's not like some recent additions, like mangrove wood and mud, aren't tedious to acquire anyway. Not that I think things should be tedious, but hopefully it means Mojang isn't totally scared of trying to improve this because of that one concern. There's multiple options for addressing it.
Those forests just have a vibe that vanilla forests don't give. They give a nice fantasy-like feeling! The canopies all being high above your head give nice sight lines and make you feel like you're within a forest rather than smothered by one.
Yes, but not always! There are occasionally shrub forests in RTG Plus, by design, to keep things varied. I will also mention that there's a very different feel in "normal" forests like this one, where the canopy is a few blocks above the player's head, and what I call "cathedral forests" where it's way above the player's head. It's neat to play in.
I've always felt like jungles are just a bit too dense in floor coverage. While jungles should have higher floor coverage than normal forests, it feels a bit too high so I'd like if a potential update doesn't totally skip over updating that forest type and it redesigns the ground coverage at least. Like, what is up with the "oak log surrounded by jungle leaf bushes"!? Those always felt like a placeholder that was just... left in for 14 years? Maybe jungles could be split into "jungles" and "dense jungles" with the latter being about as dense as current ones, and the former being otherwise similar with less floor coverage. There is already something in this direction, but "sparse jungles" are far sparser in actual tree coverage, and also only comprise of smaller trees. What I'm thinking of is a middle type that has current tree density with less floor coverage.
The RTG team didn't redesign the jungles, because they're not horrifying in the way that the shrub forests are, and similarly I haven't gone in to "Plus" them; but in principle I could "Plus" the Jungles. I'd probably do it with a large variety of trees, using multiple types of wood, because real jungles have a huge variety of trees. RTG Plus would automatically put in density variation. The two issues are that (a) this would be a lot of work as I'd have to do a lot of trees and (b) I can't think of a good way to make a large variety of trees player-growable. The current RTG system uses one sapling for the type and various counts for the materials and size. I use an ugly hack for the RTG Swamp Willow but I wouldn't want those kind of hacks for a list of jungle trees; too confusing for the player, and the code would be hideous.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Geographicraft (formerly Climate Control) - Control climate, ocean, and land sizes; stop chunk walls; put modded biomes into Default worlds, and more!
RTG plus - All the beautiful terrain of RTG, plus varied and beautiful trees and forests.
Better Forests Varied and beautiful trees and forests, in modern Minecraft.
I was interested in the plains. Are they really smooth? One of the unpleasant features of the vanilla landscape is the deep ravines in the middle of the plains. This makes horseback riding quite risky, which is a real disappointment to me.
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Sorry for my English, I use Deepl and Google Translate.
Ravines that reach the surface are much rarer in RTG; I'm not entirely sure why (I didn't do that part of generation). Surface caves are less common because they make the ground surface look bad on the smoother surface (it looks like it's had a disease); I don't remember if that was part of the consideration with ravines. There are still *some* surface ravines; I think I showed one near my base in this journal but to give you some idea of the frequency that's the only one I've seen in the world in either the trip from spawn to my base or in this last exploration.
In one of my worlds (the Return to Minecraft world) they were so rare I don't think I ever saw one. I was concerned that something was wrong with generation. It's possible that's because I was playing with Biomes o' Plenty and maybe ravine generation wasn't working right in the BoP biomes that were most of that world.
There are options to adjust the frequency of ravines in RTG; you could make them entirely absent. I thought you could do that in vanilla, too.
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.
Ravines that reach the surface are much rarer in RTG; I'm not entirely sure why (I didn't do that part of generation). Surface caves are less common because they make the ground surface look bad on the smoother surface (it looks like it's had a disease);
There are options to adjust the frequency of ravines in RTG; you could make them entirely absent. I thought you could do that in vanilla, too.
I hope this doesn't mean they are much rarer overall, I already consider 1.7+ generation to be bad due to the significant decrease in the size and density of cave systems; it is entirely possible to make surface caves./ravines less common by simply tweaking their altitude range, or even manipulating the tunnel generation algorithm code to stay below a certain altitude, as I do with the largest caves in TMCW:
This shows part of the main loop that generates a tunnel and controls the direction it heads in, which is mostly the same as vanilla except for the block of code that constrains their altitude:
for (float vertVarMultiplier = (vertVar > 0 && this.caveRNG.nextInt(6) == 0 && width < (float)vertVar ? 0.92F : 0.7F); pos < length; ++pos)
{
float dy = MathHelper.cos(directionY);
x += (double)(MathHelper.cos(directionXZ) * dy);
y += (double)MathHelper.sin(directionY);
z += (double)(MathHelper.sin(directionXZ) * dy);
directionY *= vertVarMultiplier;
// Constrains caves to y=4-56 (max depends on radius); used by giant cave regions
if (vertVar == 0)
{
if (y > 56.0D - radiusW * 0.5D)
{
varY = -0.25F;
}
else if (y < 4.0D)
{
varY = 0.25F;
}
}
else if (vertVar == 15)
{
// Limits altitude of the largest caves to 8-60; only applied to main branches (vertVar = 15)
if (y > 60.0D - radiusW * 0.5D)
{
varY = -0.25F;
}
else if (y < 8.0D)
{
varY = 0.25F;
}
}
directionY += varY * 0.2F;
directionXZ += varXZ * curviness;
varY *= 0.9F;
varXZ *= 0.75F;
varY += this.caveRNG.nextFloatSq();
varXZ += this.caveRNG.nextFloatSq();
As seen here even a "giant cave region", the largest and most extreme cave in TMCW, rarely breaks the surface directly with most of the openings due to "vertical" caves which are generated separately, averaging less than you'd find over areas with "vanilla" caves, themselves tending to be less common because caves generate 7 layers lower (generally, as mountain and plateau biomes have additional caves generated at higher altitudes, as well as higher and/or deeper ravines, to take advantage of the higher terrain):
Interestingly enough, despite often seeing complaints of how modern generation (1.18) is riddled with surface openings on average the percentage of blocks that are air at sea level is about the same as in 1.7-1.17, which may be due to the fact they tend to be much larger (as are openings in TMCW; in any case the actual abundance is lower as the surface is generally higher than y=63, my analysis only go up to 62 and treat the world like a Superflat world as I used my own cave analysis tools which generate their own terrain as such, underground features other than mineshafts, and strongholds in TMCW, aren't included either, the data for 1.20.2 came from a web page which provided block count data for various versions)(note that some of the data seems suspect,t eh count of bedrock on the lowest layer does not match the number of chunks, they include a few older versions, 1.4.7 is equivalent to 1.6.4, but with much more limited datasets, the reduced abundance of mineshafts near 0,0 will significantly bias results that are mostly within that area):
A closer look at the breakdown for 1.6.4; "mineshafts only" means mineshafts by themselves and all parts of the structure were counted as "air" in this case (platforms over air were not generated otherwise):
A similar chart for TMCW (slightly outdated):
And unfortunately, no, other than all or none vanilla has never let you customize caves or ravines, no matter what the Wiki might suggest (as claimed on their page for "Customized", "Upper Limit Scale: Note however, that it is used in cave/cavern generation, and so setting them far apart with caves/caverns turned off doesn't give you holed terrain.", which is simply not true), I did once make a mod for 1.8 though which added whole pages of settings, as well as settings which were exclusive to Superflat (making structures, including mineshafts, more/less common, as well as larger/smaller in the case of villages. You could even get more than 3 strongholds prior to 1.9, if not placed in the same manner. Even today it seems you can't change mineshafts, only other structures, and the Superflat options were removed):
The tree themselves already have fantastic designs, but what I love about these forests is how multiple tree varieties are used to signify the precise climate of a particular location. I'd presume that the blend of oak and spruce indicates a semi-cold environment (between temperate forest and taiga)? Vanilla Minecraft also does this, but each biome is fixed and generally has the same mixture; for instance, all savannas generate with the same combination of acacia and oak trees; plains only ever has oak; taigas only ever has spruce. All that just makes transitions seem rather abrupt.
I also like the varied use of tree height and density based on relief. If you still remember, I've had real trouble traversing those mountain jungles back in a mapping expedition, but having the trees thin out and become smaller as elevation increases would be a realistic and aesthetic solution for that.
I hope this doesn't mean they are much rarer overall, I already consider 1.7+ generation to be bad due to the significant decrease in the size and density of cave systems; it is entirely possible to make surface caves./ravines less common by simply tweaking their altitude range, or even manipulating the tunnel generation algorithm code to stay below a certain altitude, as I do with the largest caves in TMCW:
I don't know the comparative frequency for underground ravines, but they aren't especially rare; I've run into them in multiple worlds while mining. RTG ravine frequency is adjustable, although it can't be increased much from default at present (that could be changed).
The tree themselves already have fantastic designs, but what I love about these forests is how multiple tree varieties are used to signify the precise climate of a particular location. I'd presume that the blend of oak and spruce indicates a semi-cold environment (between temperate forest and taiga)? Vanilla Minecraft also does this, but each biome is fixed and generally has the same mixture; for instance, all savannas generate with the same combination of acacia and oak trees; plains only ever has oak; taigas only ever has spruce. All that just makes transitions seem rather abrupt.
In the modern fork of RTG's tree system, Better Forests, the tree changes *do* reflect underlying climate and so an Oak/Spruce forest is chillier than a pure Oak one. In RTG Plus, unfortunately, aince it's in 1.12, climate information is "erased" once you get to the biome level; there's no natural way to know whether a Forest generated in a Warm or Cool climate. So in RTG Plus the variation is just random. With Geographicraft I could probably come up with some kind of system but it would not extend to a player using RTG with vanilla or biome mod biome layouts, and so it would also be complicated to write RTG Plus to operate both with and without climate info.
I also like the varied use of tree height and density based on relief. If you still remember, I've had real trouble traversing those mountain jungles back in a mapping expedition, but having the trees thin out and become smaller as elevation increases would be a realistic and aesthetic solution for that.
Currently tree density does not change directly with height, until you get to heights where trees start disappearing because they'd be smaller than shrubs. That's an interesting idea. And, as I mentioned, current Jungle trees haven't been RTG'd, but that's another reason to do so. I have also found Jungle Hills to sometimes become nightmarish to traverse.
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.
The RTG team didn't redesign the jungles, because they're not horrifying in the way that the shrub forests are, and similarly I haven't gone in to "Plus" them; but in principle I could "Plus" the Jungles. I'd probably do it with a large variety of trees, using multiple types of wood, because real jungles have a huge variety of trees. RTG Plus would automatically put in density variation. The two issues are that (a) this would be a lot of work as I'd have to do a lot of trees and (b) I can't think of a good way to make a large variety of trees player-growable. The current RTG system uses one sapling for the type and various counts for the materials and size. I use an ugly hack for the RTG Swamp Willow but I wouldn't want those kind of hacks for a list of jungle trees; too confusing for the player, and the code would be hideous.
The trees aren't the issue with jungles. I mean, sure, if improvements to those also want to be considered, all the more. But I feel like those work as-is. The real issue with jungles in my opinion is that the ground is a bit too dense. And the "bush" they use, again, feels placeholder and I'm surprised it was never changed. The jungle bush and the swamp tree are two things that always felt like they were placeholder assets to me. But overall, jungles don't have the main issue most vanilla forests do, so I was just mentioning them since if a tree / forest update does happen, I was listing the parts about them could be improved. That is, make a less dense ground version, and replace that placeholder asset with something better. Jungles just need minor tweaks, not overhauls like the rest of forests.
The tree themselves already have fantastic designs, but what I love about these forests is how multiple tree varieties are used to signify the precise climate of a particular location. I'd presume that the blend of oak and spruce indicates a semi-cold environment (between temperate forest and taiga)? Vanilla Minecraft also does this, but each biome is fixed and generally has the same mixture; for instance, all savannas generate with the same combination of acacia and oak trees; plains only ever has oak; taigas only ever has spruce. All that just makes transitions seem rather abrupt.
I'm recalling a thread Zeno made some time back about Minecraft should consider formally dropping biomes, as it would allow this blending to be done better. Similar to how biomes controlling terrain generation imposed limitations, biomes themselves controlling decorations also can.
I don't know the comparative frequency for underground ravines, but they aren't especially rare; I've run into them in multiple worlds while mining. RTG ravine frequency is adjustable, although it can't be increased much from default at present (that could be changed).
I was mainly referring to caves; I'm sure you know my opinions on post-1.6.4 cave generation, which in some ways also aggravates the issue of "caves everywhere" since instead of being highly clustered they are much more spread out (the average size of a cave system is only about a third as large but they are more than twice as common, with about 76% as many caves overall and about 85% the volume, which decreased less due to less overlap).
I think the rate of caves in RTG has been reduced, because of the surface issues. I'll take a look, and if it is, see about adjusting some parameters so it's possible to crank them up to vanilla levels. It is possible to increase them in configs, but I'm not sure it's enough.
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Geographicraft (formerly Climate Control) - Control climate, ocean, and land sizes; stop chunk walls; put modded biomes into Default worlds, and more!
RTG plus - All the beautiful terrain of RTG, plus varied and beautiful trees and forests.
Better Forests Varied and beautiful trees and forests, in modern Minecraft.
As I head to my storage to get my hoe, I see a commotion in the water. When I get closer, I find it's a shark trying to attack a Turkey on land. I decide to attack. Nothing's going to eat my turkeys (except me).
To my surprise, I get hit when I take a swing. But I don't actually take any heart damage, so maybe it was the turkey?
I don't take any damage after that. I continue swatting the shark and eventually kill it. It takes a while - they're very tough and dangerous.
Part of the reason I went after the shark is that sometimes sharks drop Prismarine shards, which can be used to make Prismarine, otherwise a very hard to get material.
I can't find my hoe. Maybe I threw it away last episode when I was trying to make space. I just make a new one. It's not worth looking.
I add a fourth irrigation ditch to my farm and partially plant it - only partially because I wasn't able to bring much home. By then it's late afternoon, so I fiddle with cooking a bit and then go to sleep.
Next morning I clean out my inventory and head east, back to the Plains area, to get some more crops. I'm still missing a few staples like Onions. But, hey, that looks like a clearing in the Forest on the other side. Did I just make a multiday expedition to get something across the river from my base?
Why yes, yes I did. I even immediately find an Onion, one of my #1 desires. Also my first carrot, also quite useful, although unfortunately late because Carrots are a Spring and Autumn crop and I'll have to wait for Autumn to grow it.
I go back to the farm and plant what I found, which pretty much surrounds my new irrigation ditch. That should be enough food for now; I just need to let things grow.
I'm running low on wood, and I decide to try lumberjacking one of these RTG medium Oaks. I ladder up to near the top and start chopping, but something's wrong with my axe. It's VERY slow - about the speed of breaking things with my hand. Apart from the tool, I find the tree pretty choppable, but the bad tool makes it crazy slow. I get down and decide to try to figure out what's going on with my tool.
I make another iron axe, using a different binding, and it's even WORSE. Speed 0 - it literally does nothing.
Then I put two levels of Haste (a Tinker's modifier) on the axe head and now it's pretty fast - definitely faster than a plain vanilla axe. But I'm still bothered by the unenhanced version. I look online for reasons, and after not finding a reason for a while, wonder if it's something with the Tweaker's Constructs I added to take out Ecological. Turns out that's it: I had misunderstood the Mining rate modifier and zeroed out the base mining rate. I fix it, but the way Tinker's does its code that doesn't change the existing tools, only future ones. Oh well, they're still pretty decent. At some point I'll replace them.
With the sort-of-fixed axe I finish chopping down the Medium Oak and end up with 63 wood. It's a moderate amount of hassle, more work than chopping a dozen vanilla shrub Oaks, but acceptable. My tinker's axe has a benefit from Magnetic - the items from chopping are drawn to me and I don't have to crawl out on branches to pick up stray blocks.
I check the caves to make sure mobs can't get out and they look good. Things have gotten a lot calmer around here.
Now I boat up to the Cold Taiga just to the northwest of my base forest - watching carefully for that Polar Bear - to pick up some Snow. Why?
Because Snow and fruit allows Smoothies, a more filling food than just a fruit. This means less hassle when eating and less to carry.
It starts raining and then gets quite dark. It's almost sunset but not quite and so I suspect I'm in a thunderstorm even though I don't hear thunder, since Serene Seasons' unique feature for Summer is lots of thunderstorms. I try to sleep and succeed, which is more evidence this was a thunderstorm.
Next day I harvest some crops from my farm and while searching for uses find two meals I can make using beans and meat: Bibimbap and Surf and Turf. My food situation continues to improve.
As I now have plenty of Iron, I make a Spice of Life Lunchbox, which can hold 6 different foods. Or could, if I could remember how to use it. Eventually I figure out that I'm supposed to right-click with it while it's closed to fill it, which is a bit counterintuitive.
Now I do some branch mining, looking first of all for some Aluminum so I can make casts to finish off my equipment. I'm also looking for more Copper to make (Tinker's) Bronze and, of course, for Diamond.
I find a deposit of Aluminum with 4 blocks, which should do for now, but not Diamond or Copper.
I mine until my Pickaxe is about to break, then take advantage of one of the big bonuses for Tinker's tools - field repair. Using a Sharpening Kit made from 2 ingots of the main material of the tools restores it to maximum durability. Great convenience.
And I can finish off my armor set with some boots. I now have another material (Aluminum Bronze) I can use for the plates to get an extra effect, here Depth Explorer to make my boots provide a little more armor when deep underground - like when mining!
I branch mine some more to find Diamonds (to improve my armor and make a good sword) and Copper (to make the Tinker's material Bronze). I go through the durability of my pick almost twice, well over 1000 blocks, but although I find a lot of things I've already got, I don't find any of either. It occurs to me the Diamonds might be a bit hard to spot in the Blue Schist so I walk through my tunnels again looking - but I still don't find anything.
All this cobble is filling up my chests so I make some more. But I can't expand freely in any direction - I have a lava lake on one side, a lava pool on another, and awkwardly placed caves on the others. I don't yet have a ranged weapon (no string) so I don't want to clear the cave. It's getting pretty cramped in here. So I decide to take a break and head outside.
Next episode: Exploring goes awry.
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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.
Sharks try to get on land!? Does the turkey not run after being attacked!?
I can't help but notice you didn't fill in the farming irrigation with water yet. Flowing water tends to bother me.
Also, why do the fences extend over the water that far? I understand the single block overhang if the area is enclosed and you want to stop hostile mobs from being able to walk around, but that's three. In either case, I'd probably want to put fences or walls underneath the water so that it doesn't look like the fence is awkwardly hanging over the water surface.
I'm usually pretty good at spotting if a rainstorm is a thunderstorm right away due to the sky color and overall brightness of the surface. Day to night or night to day transitions can make it a little harder to tell, but even then they have a distinct difference.
I think the Shark was approaching the Turkey but not reaching it. Turkeys don't run, they fight back! I was very surprised the first time.
Flowing water doesn't bother me. It can even be used for hopper pickup.
Fences are out over the water because mobs will try to get in and I want to make it take a long time. They're not in the water because this is 1.12 and that would create a hole in the water, which is much worse.
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.
They're not in the water because this is 1.12 and that would create a hole in the water, which is much worse.
Oh, right... waterlogging wasn't as good until 1.13 wasn't it? This is one of those times were I am reminded of limitations and worse behaviors of older versions. Once you get used to something for long enough, you just sort of... forget about the previous way.
I would occasionally use upside down stairs or slabs along the edges of docks. I started doing this even before the current waterlogging mechanics back in 1.2.5, and I remember being disappointed when I found out the limitations of how it all behaved. Fences would be worse because they only take up a small portion of block space and the air gap awkwardness is visible from more angles, so I understand why you would avoid those.
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"'Tis foolishness! If all were so easy, why, none would suffer in this world!"
I'm not. Creepers are infamously one extreme or the other most of the time. The "Goldilocks zone" where creepers neither tickle nor overkill you seems very narrow due to their high damage but quick falloff rate. Where that zone is depends on difficulty, your armor and enchantments, if you have and are raising a shield in time, and if you're standing level with it or not.
"'Tis foolishness! If all were so easy, why, none would suffer in this world!"
If you're having performance concerns with Minecraft, I hope this may prove useful.
A retrospective of the most important game to me (or, a try to stay awake while I never stop talking about something challenge).
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Curse PremiumYay
This makes me so happy to see.
I absolutely loved your world generation in those earlier versions. Your frustration with the update grind is a problem I relate to as well. Playing Minecraft usually results in me spending more time modding than playing. The last few times I've tried it, the game updated and a long abandoned mod that I loved from 1.12 suddenly updated to the new version. Temptation got the better of me so I updated, losing all the progress I'd made. Rinse, repeat, tedium, quit.
Going back to the glory days of 1.12 would avoid all of that - plus I'd get the beautiful terrain from RTG and Underground Biomes
Actually, you've got a great modpack there.
Very tempting indeed.
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Curse PremiumGlad to hear from you, Dulciphi! Yeah, I never successfully updated a modded game either, to the point that when some people were asking me to update my 1.7.2 journal world for Explorations and Mod Development to 1.7.10 because they wanted to see updated Thaumcraft (IIRC), I refused. I just didn't want to risk such a valuable world.
And, yeah, modding is a draw. I just wrote a mod this weekend to almost always stop the harlequinization of vanilla villages in Underground Biomes. Sadly I just couldn't figure out a way to UB the stairs.
If you do want to start a 1.12 RTG world, give me a holler as I have made a significant change to the river system with the version I'm running here but it's not released. I'm reducing the innate variability of rivers to allow more significant variation in the configs - with the old system rivers could occasionally be incredibly wide and so making rivers even wider created some absurdly wide rivers.
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 004: Trying Tinkering Two
(Yeah, I know the episodes are coming fast and furious but I'm having fun and playing a lot and I don't want my buffer to get too large as it makes it hard to respond to comments. Also, I know I write in crazy detail but part of the goal is recording my own experience to relive later and that needs a lot of detail.)
I want to gear up and I'd like to skip right to Tinker's equipment, which can be made higher durability than vanilla, is easier to repair, and often has useful special abilities. The cost is that creating Tinker's gear is MUCH, MUCH more complicated. I've pretty much got the materials and tools I need, including the Smeltery, by far the most complex of the complications, but I'm missing Aluminum Ore, which is odd, because it's never been an issue for me before.
So I have to do some mining. Wish me luck.
Another issue for mining is that in one direction I have a lava lake and in two more I'm breaking into caves from below, leaving me with one direction to mine (east). This is cramping my style, so I decide to see if maybe I can get under one of the tunnels. So I knock out one more block.
Hey! I can just build a cobble roof! One problem solved
Aluminum! Hey, that was easy!
Except it's not. It's just one block, which isn't enough. With the doubling of the Smeltery, that would allow 2 moulds, which would allow 1, maybe 2 types of tools. I have to keep looking.
Continuing on, after a while I hit ANOTHER lava level cave, and have to jog right multiple times to get around it. I can't remember having such a hard time mining since my second 1.7 journal (where the problem was mineshafts).
Eventually my inventory fills (I am carrying a fair amount of junk; I need to be more careful) and I return to base.
Then I clean up my inventory a bit and try branch mining off the new west shaft.
Man, this is getting ridiculous! I jog right but this time I get to continue. I continue until my pick breaks. Still no more aluminum.
Well, I have aluminum to allow casts for one type of tool, so I guess it'll be a pick. But first, I've eaten the food I brought down so I have to go topside to get more.
While there I check the Season Clock. It's hard to explain, especially when it's so small, but it's showing that Spring is almost over. Another day or two and it's Summer. In my previous journals I remember agonizing waits for Winter to be over. Now though, it's the reverse; I want the seasons to slow down. I have few Summer crops (they don't show up much in Forest and Taiga, never mind snowy climates) and I need to explore to get more, but I have no armor and no map. I'd like a couple days to mine and get resources, but I won't have them.
I harvest some crops and then head down to make my new pick. I need three parts; a handle, a pick head, and a binding. I choose wood for the handle for the Ecological effect (doesn't need a cast), an Iron pick head for Magnetic (needing a cast), and an Iron binding for even more Magnetic (also needing a cast). That's two casts, and my Aluminum is used up.
If I'd had the choice, I'd probably have picked (haha) something else for the binding, but I don't have a lot of choices right now.
I put them together for a pick and get - Magnetic III, but not Ecological! What gives?
Well, I've thought for a while that Ecological (slow auto-repair) is way too strong an effect for the easiest to get material in the game. You don't even need a cast to use it! And it overshadows a couple of other effects in the mod. So I installed Tweaker's Construct, which allows changes to Tinker's materials and effects, solely to take that effect out. Mildly annoyingly, the wood part still *says* it will confer Ecological on the tool, but it doesn't.
Now just to make a pick, I've had to find Aluminum, Copper, and Iron, make casts, create a 31 block multiblock construction needing sand, clay, *and* gravel, and construct 4 different work stations. A lot more work that vanilla's "iron and a crafting table". But the abilities and repairability are an advantage, and in addition I can add modifiers, roughly complarable to Enchantment levels. I put on Diamond, increasing my mining level and doubling durability, and 2 levels of Haste, roughly equivalent to Efficiency. That's all I can do, though; Tinker's tools can only take so many modifiers.
Now I put my nifty new pick to the test mining a branch shaft off my east tunnel. I don't really notice the speed improvement on the Quarzite (which is pretty hard) but on Blue Schist - nice. It's very noticeably faster. After less than a minute:
Finally. And three blocks this time, so I'll be able to get a fair number of items, although not a full set. I mine on for a while, and then turn back when I'm getting hungry.
I eat some, get some more food, and bring down two buckets of water for a classic 2x2 water source.
Water can be combined with lava inside the smeltery to make molten Obsidian, which can then be cast into tool parts, slowing damage to tools containing it. It also makes a good pick head. I'd forgotten how to get liquids into the Smeltery, and it took me a while to figure it out (dump the bucket into an open drain). I also had to move a chest, because sometimes I miss, and then I end up with lava dumped on the floor, which creates some problems - to put it mildly.
Now I crank out a bunch of moulds (here I'm making an Armor Trim mould) and make Tinker's Diamondized Iron shovels and picks, and Iron/Obsidian breastplate, leggings, and helmet. That uses up all my Aluminum Brass, so I can't make moulds to make anything else. Again, these wouldn't always be my material choices, but I can't use what I don't have.
I can't Diamondize the armor as that requires a more advanced Armor Station I can't make yet.
And now I go for a selfie showing me in my semi-spiffy armor, my decidedly unspiffy starter shack, and my dinky but adequate farm.
The Seasonal Clock now definitely shows Summer, so I rip up my Spring-only crops, put them in my seed chest for next year, and plant my desultory collection of Summer crops. Crops that grow Spring/Summer I leave because they're still growing, and Spring/Autumn crops I leave so they'll have a head start in their next season.
Almost forgot! Vanilla Wheat is a Summer crop, so I plant my vanilla seeds. Not so desultory now, but I still need to go exploring.
Late in the day I collect paper from my (Harvestcraft) Paperbark tree orchard, which allows a view of this moderately pretty sunset. I love Minecraft sunsets and usually have bases that allow good sunset views, but I don't get one from this shack.
I now have enough paper for a level 0 and a level 4 map, which is good.
The level 0 map gives a good view of the immediate area. You can see my survival shack with its slat roof, and the irrigation channels of the farm.
But the level 4 map is horribly placed. I'm going to be heading southeast, away from the cold, and so I'll probably immediately leave it. Nearly useless.
I snack some more, build a new boat (because I don't remember where I left my old one and it's not worth looking) and now I'm ready to head out.
Next episode: my first expedition.
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 005: The Hunt for Hot
Well maybe the map isn't THAT bad.
A surprise feature of my Tinker's gear is that since the Magnetic (from Iron) armor attracts items, I end up picking up a fair amount of Raw Eel, Raw Squid, and Squid Ink floating on the ocean bottom, I presume from shark attacks.
Boating expeditions in RTG allows some great views. But it's views of more Forest, and I'm looking for Plains.
South of that are some coastal mountains. By now I *am* off the map. I miss Explorercraft, which made level 4 maps roughly centered on where they were made and had a different system for tiling maps.
Llamas!
Past the mountains the coast has short-tree Taiga, which isn't want I wanted to see. I'd like to get some Hot climate zones, both for resources and for someplace to stay in the winter. But it's unlikely that will be near a cool climate zone like Taiga.
I spot this river going in and take it. I'm not planning some grand exploration (this time; they will come); just trying to get some summer crops. I'm already far enough from home and further south would be even more distant.
The river goes for a while, and then reaches its source in some mountains.
I climb up the pass and am treated to this great view. I seem to have two choices; go left or go right. I figure left is more likely to get home and head that way.
This leads to a narrow pass and eventually this stone cross. As I step next to it I discover it is a Millenaire construction. Beyond it is the sea I just boated. So while technically this route is the faster way to get home, it's not useful because I've haven't found the summer crops or warm climates I was looking for.
I turn around, go back and take the right route (which, I guess, is also the right route).
I find some cows. This would be an unreasonable distance to try to lure them to my home, but I do get two buckets of milk. I forgot I could have converted them to Harvestcraft Fresh Milk and taken the equivalent of 8 buckets, but oh well. I'll be back.
Past the forest is this little grassland next to either some inland sea/ deep bay, or a ginormous RTG scenic lake. Plus living sheep, which I can shear for wool for more beds.
It's getting late, so I build a spiderproof pillar and bed down on the top.
What a great moonrise! My starting location is not particularly inspiring, nor is it near any kind of settlement or other great asset, and I'll probably move at some point. This would be a great candidate with that view. It's already got cows and sheep, too.
Next morning I boat across the lake, veering left (north, more towards home), discovering it's a ginormous scenic lake and not a bit of Ocean.
On the other side I find Plains, with a new set of crops *and* a Millenaire village (a Monastic Byzantine village). Presumably they're responsible for the cross on the coastal mountains. This is good because interacting with the Millenaires is one of my long term goals for this game. It also makes a base on this lake even more tempting.
Unfortunately my inventory is full so now that I've found these crops I can't take them. In desperation, I eat some things to make room and toss the egg I picked up leaving home. Of course, the egg hatches, where it's not going to get me a turkey dinner in the future. I'll probably throw a dozen spares at home soon and get nothing.
Next to the village is this cave with two kinds of Thaumcraft Crystal Ores. Thaumcraft 6 is much harder to get into than the earlier ones I played. Now you need 3 of the 6 crystal types, and they're hard to find.
I have no inventory space, so I'll have to come back to get them.
I chat with the town trader, but as is typical for starting Millenaire villages, they have nothing to trade that I want.
North of the town is a bit of Plains - with more crops I have no inventory for - and then some Extreme Hills. I'm well off my map, but I can still use it to tell whether I'm north or south of my base, and it turns out I'm just a little south. So I turn west, to the left.
Part of the way Millenaire deals with messy Minecraft terrain is to level it. Here it left an unusually tall wall (Millenaire "gives up" when the terrain is too bad so the walls are never *that* tall) and, embarassingly, I fell off it.
I cross a very low pass to this Plains with Forest beyond. I'm thinking, based on the hill and the river, that I'm almost to my base but shortly I figure out it's not so.
There are chickens here, which may be useful since they're probably not too far.
Continuing on is this large open Plains area. Although rarer than in vanilla, due to the Geographicraft complex sub-biomes, they do happen.
I've actually wandered a bit north of my base, so I veer south into this forest. The character (all medium oak, fairly open) is very similar to that of the forest around my base so I suspect I'm almost home.
Once again I spot a hill in forest overlooking a river and I suspect I'm near home.
And this time I am. You can just see my farm and starter shack in the distance on the right.
I head over to start planting my finds.
Next episode: Some Surprises
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.
My solution to this issue was to let you recenter a map (which does erase its contents) by crafting it with a compass, which aligns it to the chunk you are in, which is how I centered these maps over strongholds (with some trial and error and eyeballing distances; I created a map as usual and filled it in to see where it had to be recentered to cover as much of the stronghold as possible); recentered maps also retain their center if zoomed out (I also have a feature where maps retain the same number unless cloned and subsequently zoomed or recentered, reducing the number of IDs used; I went up to 62 in my first world until I implemented this feature, with every map since using consecutive IDs through 72, the others are mostly every 5th ID with the files for the first 4 zoom levels deleted (as well as maps I'd originally made, and idcounts.dat (last used map ID), before making properly aligned maps for a map wall).
As far as tiling goes, I think the main issue with the way it was officially implemented is that the northwest corner is aligned to (-64, -64) +/- a multiple of their width instead of just 0,0, as I currently align them (this means level 0 maps are centered at 64, 192, etc and level 4 maps are centered at 1024, 3072, etc); an older system (I still use it for my first world) centered maps at (0,0) +/- a multiple of their width but they wouldn't align properly when zoomed out and used the player's position when not only creating but zooming a map so you had to zoom out while still in the area (they did still tile when making a new map after going off the edge of the last).
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?
Ah my goodness, for real, I can't keep up! But don't slow down if you don't want to. This is probably good timing if anything because I'm not playing, and I think Lena and Staricle both started new worlds but were also dealing with some burn out at the end of their previous ones, so faster updates here are fine.
Those forests just have a vibe that vanilla forests don't give. They give a nice fantasy-like feeling! The canopies all being high above your head give nice sight lines and make you feel like you're within a forest rather than smothered by one. The vanilla forests feel claustrophobic. I've said it before and I will say it always; they are oversized bush groves, not forests. Old growth taigas and jungles are the only two vanilla forests that come close to being this way, and even those only go part of the way there. The former still has low sight lines because there is still a lot of small size trees, and I've always felt like jungles are just a bit too dense in floor coverage. While jungles should have higher floor coverage than normal forests, it feels a bit too high so I'd like if a potential update doesn't totally skip over updating that forest type and it redesigns the ground coverage at least. Like, what is up with the "oak log surrounded by jungle leaf bushes"!? Those always felt like a placeholder that was just... left in for 14 years? Maybe jungles could be split into "jungles" and "dense jungles" with the latter being about as dense as current ones, and the former being otherwise similar with less floor coverage. There is already something in this direction, but "sparse jungles" are far sparser in actual tree coverage, and also only comprise of smaller trees. What I'm thinking of is a middle type that has current tree density with less floor coverage. Ohhhh... that would go great with a jungle temple update too!? But I'm digressing now.
Anyway, I can't help but hope for an update that brings a tree / forest redesign whenever I see your forests. That would probably be the most exciting change for me, perhaps more so than an end update even. 1.18 changed the terrain generation but that decorator layer that covers it is still stuck in the past. And in my mind, they clash. Yes, I know there's concerns about how it may add annoyance to acquiring wood for some players, but I can think of multiple options that can address that. It's not like some recent additions, like mangrove wood and mud, aren't tedious to acquire anyway. Not that I think things should be tedious, but hopefully it means Mojang isn't totally scared of trying to improve this because of that one concern. There's multiple options for addressing it.
"'Tis foolishness! If all were so easy, why, none would suffer in this world!"
If you're having performance concerns with Minecraft, I hope this may prove useful.
A retrospective of the most important game to me (or, a try to stay awake while I never stop talking about something challenge).
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Curse PremiumYes, but not always! There are occasionally shrub forests in RTG Plus, by design, to keep things varied. I will also mention that there's a very different feel in "normal" forests like this one, where the canopy is a few blocks above the player's head, and what I call "cathedral forests" where it's way above the player's head. It's neat to play in.
The RTG team didn't redesign the jungles, because they're not horrifying in the way that the shrub forests are, and similarly I haven't gone in to "Plus" them; but in principle I could "Plus" the Jungles. I'd probably do it with a large variety of trees, using multiple types of wood, because real jungles have a huge variety of trees. RTG Plus would automatically put in density variation. The two issues are that (a) this would be a lot of work as I'd have to do a lot of trees and (b) I can't think of a good way to make a large variety of trees player-growable. The current RTG system uses one sapling for the type and various counts for the materials and size. I use an ugly hack for the RTG Swamp Willow but I wouldn't want those kind of hacks for a list of jungle trees; too confusing for the player, and the code would be hideous.
Geographicraft (formerly Climate Control) - Control climate, ocean, and land sizes; stop chunk walls; put modded biomes into Default worlds, and more!
RTG plus - All the beautiful terrain of RTG, plus varied and beautiful trees and forests.
Better Forests Varied and beautiful trees and forests, in modern Minecraft.
I was interested in the plains. Are they really smooth? One of the unpleasant features of the vanilla landscape is the deep ravines in the middle of the plains. This makes horseback riding quite risky, which is a real disappointment to me.
Sorry for my English, I use Deepl and Google Translate.
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Curse PremiumRavines that reach the surface are much rarer in RTG; I'm not entirely sure why (I didn't do that part of generation). Surface caves are less common because they make the ground surface look bad on the smoother surface (it looks like it's had a disease); I don't remember if that was part of the consideration with ravines. There are still *some* surface ravines; I think I showed one near my base in this journal but to give you some idea of the frequency that's the only one I've seen in the world in either the trip from spawn to my base or in this last exploration.
In one of my worlds (the Return to Minecraft world) they were so rare I don't think I ever saw one. I was concerned that something was wrong with generation. It's possible that's because I was playing with Biomes o' Plenty and maybe ravine generation wasn't working right in the BoP biomes that were most of that world.
There are options to adjust the frequency of ravines in RTG; you could make them entirely absent. I thought you could do that in vanilla, too.
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 hope this doesn't mean they are much rarer overall, I already consider 1.7+ generation to be bad due to the significant decrease in the size and density of cave systems; it is entirely possible to make surface caves./ravines less common by simply tweaking their altitude range, or even manipulating the tunnel generation algorithm code to stay below a certain altitude, as I do with the largest caves in TMCW:
for (float vertVarMultiplier = (vertVar > 0 && this.caveRNG.nextInt(6) == 0 && width < (float)vertVar ? 0.92F : 0.7F); pos < length; ++pos) { float dy = MathHelper.cos(directionY); x += (double)(MathHelper.cos(directionXZ) * dy); y += (double)MathHelper.sin(directionY); z += (double)(MathHelper.sin(directionXZ) * dy); directionY *= vertVarMultiplier; // Constrains caves to y=4-56 (max depends on radius); used by giant cave regions if (vertVar == 0) { if (y > 56.0D - radiusW * 0.5D) { varY = -0.25F; } else if (y < 4.0D) { varY = 0.25F; } } else if (vertVar == 15) { // Limits altitude of the largest caves to 8-60; only applied to main branches (vertVar = 15) if (y > 60.0D - radiusW * 0.5D) { varY = -0.25F; } else if (y < 8.0D) { varY = 0.25F; } } directionY += varY * 0.2F; directionXZ += varXZ * curviness; varY *= 0.9F; varXZ *= 0.75F; varY += this.caveRNG.nextFloatSq(); varXZ += this.caveRNG.nextFloatSq();As seen here even a "giant cave region", the largest and most extreme cave in TMCW, rarely breaks the surface directly with most of the openings due to "vertical" caves which are generated separately, averaging less than you'd find over areas with "vanilla" caves, themselves tending to be less common because caves generate 7 layers lower (generally, as mountain and plateau biomes have additional caves generated at higher altitudes, as well as higher and/or deeper ravines, to take advantage of the higher terrain):
Interestingly enough, despite often seeing complaints of how modern generation (1.18) is riddled with surface openings on average the percentage of blocks that are air at sea level is about the same as in 1.7-1.17, which may be due to the fact they tend to be much larger (as are openings in TMCW; in any case the actual abundance is lower as the surface is generally higher than y=63, my analysis only go up to 62 and treat the world like a Superflat world as I used my own cave analysis tools which generate their own terrain as such, underground features other than mineshafts, and strongholds in TMCW, aren't included either, the data for 1.20.2 came from a web page which provided block count data for various versions)(note that some of the data seems suspect,t eh count of bedrock on the lowest layer does not match the number of chunks, they include a few older versions, 1.4.7 is equivalent to 1.6.4, but with much more limited datasets, the reduced abundance of mineshafts near 0,0 will significantly bias results that are mostly within that area):
A closer look at the breakdown for 1.6.4; "mineshafts only" means mineshafts by themselves and all parts of the structure were counted as "air" in this case (platforms over air were not generated otherwise):
A similar chart for TMCW (slightly outdated):
And unfortunately, no, other than all or none vanilla has never let you customize caves or ravines, no matter what the Wiki might suggest (as claimed on their page for "Customized", "Upper Limit Scale: Note however, that it is used in cave/cavern generation, and so setting them far apart with caves/caverns turned off doesn't give you holed terrain.", which is simply not true), I did once make a mod for 1.8 though which added whole pages of settings, as well as settings which were exclusive to Superflat (making structures, including mineshafts, more/less common, as well as larger/smaller in the case of villages. You could even get more than 3 strongholds prior to 1.9, if not placed in the same manner. Even today it seems you can't change mineshafts, only other structures, and the Superflat options were removed):
https://www.minecraftforum.net/forums/mapping-and-modding-java-edition/minecraft-mods/1292668-1-7-1-13-themastercavers-mods-and-tweaks?comment=194 (I never released this properly because it didn't work outside of MCP due to some class file corruption during reobfuscation)
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?
The tree themselves already have fantastic designs, but what I love about these forests is how multiple tree varieties are used to signify the precise climate of a particular location. I'd presume that the blend of oak and spruce indicates a semi-cold environment (between temperate forest and taiga)? Vanilla Minecraft also does this, but each biome is fixed and generally has the same mixture; for instance, all savannas generate with the same combination of acacia and oak trees; plains only ever has oak; taigas only ever has spruce. All that just makes transitions seem rather abrupt.
I also like the varied use of tree height and density based on relief. If you still remember, I've had real trouble traversing those mountain jungles back in a mapping expedition, but having the trees thin out and become smaller as elevation increases would be a realistic and aesthetic solution for that.
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Curse PremiumI don't know the comparative frequency for underground ravines, but they aren't especially rare; I've run into them in multiple worlds while mining. RTG ravine frequency is adjustable, although it can't be increased much from default at present (that could be changed).
In the modern fork of RTG's tree system, Better Forests, the tree changes *do* reflect underlying climate and so an Oak/Spruce forest is chillier than a pure Oak one. In RTG Plus, unfortunately, aince it's in 1.12, climate information is "erased" once you get to the biome level; there's no natural way to know whether a Forest generated in a Warm or Cool climate. So in RTG Plus the variation is just random. With Geographicraft I could probably come up with some kind of system but it would not extend to a player using RTG with vanilla or biome mod biome layouts, and so it would also be complicated to write RTG Plus to operate both with and without climate info.
Currently tree density does not change directly with height, until you get to heights where trees start disappearing because they'd be smaller than shrubs. That's an interesting idea. And, as I mentioned, current Jungle trees haven't been RTG'd, but that's another reason to do so. I have also found Jungle Hills to sometimes become nightmarish to traverse.
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.
The trees aren't the issue with jungles. I mean, sure, if improvements to those also want to be considered, all the more. But I feel like those work as-is. The real issue with jungles in my opinion is that the ground is a bit too dense. And the "bush" they use, again, feels placeholder and I'm surprised it was never changed. The jungle bush and the swamp tree are two things that always felt like they were placeholder assets to me. But overall, jungles don't have the main issue most vanilla forests do, so I was just mentioning them since if a tree / forest update does happen, I was listing the parts about them could be improved. That is, make a less dense ground version, and replace that placeholder asset with something better. Jungles just need minor tweaks, not overhauls like the rest of forests.
I'm recalling a thread Zeno made some time back about Minecraft should consider formally dropping biomes, as it would allow this blending to be done better. Similar to how biomes controlling terrain generation imposed limitations, biomes themselves controlling decorations also can.
"'Tis foolishness! If all were so easy, why, none would suffer in this world!"
If you're having performance concerns with Minecraft, I hope this may prove useful.
A retrospective of the most important game to me (or, a try to stay awake while I never stop talking about something challenge).
I was mainly referring to caves; I'm sure you know my opinions on post-1.6.4 cave generation, which in some ways also aggravates the issue of "caves everywhere" since instead of being highly clustered they are much more spread out (the average size of a cave system is only about a third as large but they are more than twice as common, with about 76% as many caves overall and about 85% the volume, which decreased less due to less overlap).
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 PremiumI think the rate of caves in RTG has been reduced, because of the surface issues. I'll take a look, and if it is, see about adjusting some parameters so it's possible to crank them up to vanilla levels. It is possible to increase them in configs, but I'm not sure it's enough.
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 006: Imperfections in Paradise
As I head to my storage to get my hoe, I see a commotion in the water. When I get closer, I find it's a shark trying to attack a Turkey on land. I decide to attack. Nothing's going to eat my turkeys (except me).
To my surprise, I get hit when I take a swing. But I don't actually take any heart damage, so maybe it was the turkey?
I don't take any damage after that. I continue swatting the shark and eventually kill it. It takes a while - they're very tough and dangerous.
Part of the reason I went after the shark is that sometimes sharks drop Prismarine shards, which can be used to make Prismarine, otherwise a very hard to get material.
I can't find my hoe. Maybe I threw it away last episode when I was trying to make space. I just make a new one. It's not worth looking.
I add a fourth irrigation ditch to my farm and partially plant it - only partially because I wasn't able to bring much home. By then it's late afternoon, so I fiddle with cooking a bit and then go to sleep.
Next morning I clean out my inventory and head east, back to the Plains area, to get some more crops. I'm still missing a few staples like Onions. But, hey, that looks like a clearing in the Forest on the other side. Did I just make a multiday expedition to get something across the river from my base?
Why yes, yes I did. I even immediately find an Onion, one of my #1 desires. Also my first carrot, also quite useful, although unfortunately late because Carrots are a Spring and Autumn crop and I'll have to wait for Autumn to grow it.
I go back to the farm and plant what I found, which pretty much surrounds my new irrigation ditch. That should be enough food for now; I just need to let things grow.
I'm running low on wood, and I decide to try lumberjacking one of these RTG medium Oaks. I ladder up to near the top and start chopping, but something's wrong with my axe. It's VERY slow - about the speed of breaking things with my hand. Apart from the tool, I find the tree pretty choppable, but the bad tool makes it crazy slow. I get down and decide to try to figure out what's going on with my tool.
I make another iron axe, using a different binding, and it's even WORSE. Speed 0 - it literally does nothing.
Then I put two levels of Haste (a Tinker's modifier) on the axe head and now it's pretty fast - definitely faster than a plain vanilla axe. But I'm still bothered by the unenhanced version. I look online for reasons, and after not finding a reason for a while, wonder if it's something with the Tweaker's Constructs I added to take out Ecological. Turns out that's it: I had misunderstood the Mining rate modifier and zeroed out the base mining rate. I fix it, but the way Tinker's does its code that doesn't change the existing tools, only future ones. Oh well, they're still pretty decent. At some point I'll replace them.
With the sort-of-fixed axe I finish chopping down the Medium Oak and end up with 63 wood. It's a moderate amount of hassle, more work than chopping a dozen vanilla shrub Oaks, but acceptable. My tinker's axe has a benefit from Magnetic - the items from chopping are drawn to me and I don't have to crawl out on branches to pick up stray blocks.
I check the caves to make sure mobs can't get out and they look good. Things have gotten a lot calmer around here.
Now I boat up to the Cold Taiga just to the northwest of my base forest - watching carefully for that Polar Bear - to pick up some Snow. Why?
Because Snow and fruit allows Smoothies, a more filling food than just a fruit. This means less hassle when eating and less to carry.
It starts raining and then gets quite dark. It's almost sunset but not quite and so I suspect I'm in a thunderstorm even though I don't hear thunder, since Serene Seasons' unique feature for Summer is lots of thunderstorms. I try to sleep and succeed, which is more evidence this was a thunderstorm.
Next day I harvest some crops from my farm and while searching for uses find two meals I can make using beans and meat: Bibimbap and Surf and Turf. My food situation continues to improve.
As I now have plenty of Iron, I make a Spice of Life Lunchbox, which can hold 6 different foods. Or could, if I could remember how to use it. Eventually I figure out that I'm supposed to right-click with it while it's closed to fill it, which is a bit counterintuitive.
Now I do some branch mining, looking first of all for some Aluminum so I can make casts to finish off my equipment. I'm also looking for more Copper to make (Tinker's) Bronze and, of course, for Diamond.
I find a deposit of Aluminum with 4 blocks, which should do for now, but not Diamond or Copper.
I mine until my Pickaxe is about to break, then take advantage of one of the big bonuses for Tinker's tools - field repair. Using a Sharpening Kit made from 2 ingots of the main material of the tools restores it to maximum durability. Great convenience.
And I can finish off my armor set with some boots. I now have another material (Aluminum Bronze) I can use for the plates to get an extra effect, here Depth Explorer to make my boots provide a little more armor when deep underground - like when mining!
I branch mine some more to find Diamonds (to improve my armor and make a good sword) and Copper (to make the Tinker's material Bronze). I go through the durability of my pick almost twice, well over 1000 blocks, but although I find a lot of things I've already got, I don't find any of either. It occurs to me the Diamonds might be a bit hard to spot in the Blue Schist so I walk through my tunnels again looking - but I still don't find anything.
All this cobble is filling up my chests so I make some more. But I can't expand freely in any direction - I have a lava lake on one side, a lava pool on another, and awkwardly placed caves on the others. I don't yet have a ranged weapon (no string) so I don't want to clear the cave. It's getting pretty cramped in here. So I decide to take a break and head outside.
Next episode: Exploring goes awry.
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.
Sharks try to get on land!? Does the turkey not run after being attacked!?
I can't help but notice you didn't fill in the farming irrigation with water yet. Flowing water tends to bother me.
Also, why do the fences extend over the water that far? I understand the single block overhang if the area is enclosed and you want to stop hostile mobs from being able to walk around, but that's three. In either case, I'd probably want to put fences or walls underneath the water so that it doesn't look like the fence is awkwardly hanging over the water surface.
I'm usually pretty good at spotting if a rainstorm is a thunderstorm right away due to the sky color and overall brightness of the surface. Day to night or night to day transitions can make it a little harder to tell, but even then they have a distinct difference.
"'Tis foolishness! If all were so easy, why, none would suffer in this world!"
If you're having performance concerns with Minecraft, I hope this may prove useful.
A retrospective of the most important game to me (or, a try to stay awake while I never stop talking about something challenge).
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Curse PremiumI think the Shark was approaching the Turkey but not reaching it. Turkeys don't run, they fight back! I was very surprised the first time.
Flowing water doesn't bother me. It can even be used for hopper pickup.
Fences are out over the water because mobs will try to get in and I want to make it take a long time. They're not in the water because this is 1.12 and that would create a hole in the water, which is much worse.
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.
Brave... but not necessarily smart, haha.
Oh, right... waterlogging wasn't as good until 1.13 wasn't it? This is one of those times were I am reminded of limitations and worse behaviors of older versions. Once you get used to something for long enough, you just sort of... forget about the previous way.
I would occasionally use upside down stairs or slabs along the edges of docks. I started doing this even before the current waterlogging mechanics back in 1.2.5, and I remember being disappointed when I found out the limitations of how it all behaved. Fences would be worse because they only take up a small portion of block space and the air gap awkwardness is visible from more angles, so I understand why you would avoid those.
"'Tis foolishness! If all were so easy, why, none would suffer in this world!"
If you're having performance concerns with Minecraft, I hope this may prove useful.
A retrospective of the most important game to me (or, a try to stay awake while I never stop talking about something challenge).