For me it's immersive survival, that limited set of resources near the beginning of the game, where you have to balance doing things with what you have, and getting more resources. Immersion is really a huge part of my experience, and the reason I choose mods the way I do. Also why I enjoy the beginning of the Super Hostile maps.
Sadly, it's quite the opposite of my nephew's powergaming, easily distracted playstyle, so it's difficult for us to enjoy the same game.
In some ways the Super Hostile maps work much like the way I played World of Warcraft: Go over the same area again, and try to do it better (more efficiently) each time. I had dozens of WoW characters and never got past around level 35 for a couple years, and never felt like I was missing out on anything even as I played the same missions over and over and everyone told me I was "playing the game wrong"
Minecraft is actually the game that made me start to feel competent about my skills in a more action-oriented game. Prior to that, I stuck mostly to JRPGs and a few odds and ends -- lots of chance to think over my moves, not so much act-and-react. But Minecraft lets me control the environment so as to choose my level of engagement with the active elements, whether that's sniping from a noob tower or wading into a dozen skellies at once.
I think the part that brings me the most JOY, though -- enjoyment and wonder -- is seeing the vast levels of creativity that come from Minecraft. Whether that's in the massive builds, the variety of structures on populated servers, the redstone creations that make my jaw drop, the custom story maps (and the different ways people represent people: trying to make them out of blocks and pumpkins and levers, or using command blocks, or written signs and books, etc.), the competition maps, the maps that mimic other games, the way Minecraft gets used in education and even city planning, the different types of animals and plants and minerals and biomes added by the modding community, the Minecraft fan art, the parody songs and acted fanvids, the cosplay and Halloween costumes, the Telltale Games version, the rumors of a movie in a few years, the number of follow-the-leader games that use the same blocks and general physics even if they're not 3d games (Terraria, Craft the World, etc.), the mod reviews and Let's Plays that have jump-started whole internet personalities and sometimes created their own mythos (Yogscast), the arts and crafts... it's just so many wonderful, wonderful things that have come out of such a simple set of blocks and creatures.
So in some ways, even though I'm not playing Minecraft regularly right now, even though I have other games to explore and better things to do with my time, I'm still enlivened and enriched by it, both in my past and in my present. And seeing my nephew (Tenacious Raccoon) master redstone builds and start his YouTube channel (which should soon have some MC vids up if it doesn't already) makes me happy because he's doing that all on his own, with no help from me anymore, and he's only twelve and a half. We'll be studying video editing techniques this summer and that's mostly because we both really want to get some video game vids up (I've got one so far, at least available to the public). And so many people who inspired us are Minecraft players that it's obvious that Minecraft had a huge effect on our desire to get our channels started.
Lastly: Should really look up the Extra Credits video on The Aesthetics of Play. There are several reasons players might engage with a game, and some people have put a lot of thought into categorizing them. Lately I've been into more abnegation (letting my mind relax while playing sorta-mindless games), but I'm getting back into the desire to master things, express myself, role-play, and make order out of chaos (since it's easier to do that in a game than in real life).
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I'm trying (again) to make my first public mod pack, and I'm closer than ever before, but the Custom Ore Gen part of this build is throwing up a road block that I cannot get past. After trying for days to wrap my head around what I'm supposed to do, I finally have to admit that I do not have the time or the focus to be able to make sense of this right now, so I am hoping that someone around here might be willing to contribute to my mod pack by setting up the Custom Ore Gen configs. Or, possibly, just walking me through a little of how to do it, so that I understand enough to make sense of the rest and start experimenting.
What I need to do for this pack is coordinate a few mods that affect ores so that they give a general connected feel through Biomes o' Plenty. Mostly Metallurgy 4, though also Harder Ores and Dense Ores (which create sets of low-density and high-density ores, respectively), plus HarvestCraft's Salt Ore and BoP's gems. And possibly Et Futurum's updated stone types (andesite, diorite, granite) and Ex Nihilo's Dust.
Ideally, I'll end up with an ore distribution that follows the Biomes, so that the player who wants certain types of ore can find them more easily if they run around and find the right types of biomes. For example, the Utility Ores would be far more common in swampy areas, while iron would be easier to find in mountainous areas. Plus, the ores that you want first (copper, tin, zinc) would be close to the surface across most biomes, while those you can't mine right away would be pushed down below the surface, so that you only find Mithril, Orichalcum and the makings of Steel if you dig down quite a bit.
But some special biomes can override and give these closer to the surface: the Mystic Grove has Astral Silver and Mithril throughout, the Lavender Fields have Silver close to the surface (and plenty of cool-colored gems, including Lapis Lazuli), the Cherry Blossom Grove has the ingredients for certain alloys (Damascus Steel, Hepatizon, Angmallen), and the Bamboo Forest has surface-level Emeralds (because of the color correspondence). The Oasis might have Platinum closer to the surface (still kinda deep). Certain dead biomes would have Dust blocks on the surface. The special biomes and dead biomes wouldn't have low-level ores (copper, tin, zinc) at all, so they're pointless when you're starting out. And Salt Ore would generate primarily on beaches, most notably the White Beach.
If anyone is able to help me accomplish my goals here, I would very much appreciate it! I could put together a much more detailed list of what I'm after.
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Ahh, I cry
Immersive Craft is very close to what I want, and has cupboards, and offers better storage options in general. It's slightly more complicated visually than I appreciate, but well within tolerances.
...and it's for 1.8.9+
I cry
(That aside, this mod build is progressing pretty well. I'm getting a feel for what I want and what I need, and which parts need to change, and it's all shaping up into modules that I think will work well together. And I'm running across a few random mods that improve the general experience and actually have a 1.7.10 option, which is nice (I can't get the Kiwi, sadly, since it's much more recent... it was cute and fit perfectly into the vanilla aesthetic, too).)
(Also Little Tiles turns out to be no good. Unless I'm misunderstanding it, it appears to be Creative Mode Only, so so much for that idea. I'm still glad to know about it! Might help with some custom maps later on, if I ever have time to work on them.)
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Okay, tried Dynamic Surroundings, and yikes! those sounds are terrifying and I do not want them. I'll likely play around with configs or such to see if it's possible to turn off most of the content but have just the better rain functionality, but I expect I'll end up finding Better Rain in my old mod builds and using that instead.
Any chance, though, that you could change the download link to not go through Adfly? That site is deceptive as all hell and I'm very concerned for my computer any time I end up going through it. It tries to trick you into pressing things that can install malware and it's just a bad site. I stopped before I even got through enough to download the mod this time, as it was trying to get my to bypass some of my computer's safeguards against popups and adware, and I wasn't going to do that.
Your profile says you haven't been active since 2018, but if you happen to see this, it would be nice if you could establish a download link that avoids such a dangerous process just to get the mod.
ETA: Yeah, I definitely want this in my builds. Not Dynamic Surroundings, just this. And I see this in your main post:
Having gotten back to using this mod, I find I don't want to live without it. I'm glad you added a Mod Pack permission before you left! This is definitely going in my Core Pack thanks for creating it!
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Going through the configs on my 1.7.10 and wishing I could choose which spawning pattern for each creature to follow, instead of just their spawn rates. Like, it'd be neat if Lost Miners, Mimic Chests, and Tomes spawned as creatures (only once, don't despawn). Would also be nice to specify height ranges at which they spawn, and possibly which biomes -- gimme a bit more to tweak, and especially a way to fix spawn details in Super Hostile maps (which typically overspawn underworld creatures because the ground level is much lower than the vanilla Minecraft settings).
That aside, I'm already looking forward to running into some of these guys again! Been a while since I had random tools attack me, or had to watch out in swamps so I didn't get bit.
Making me wish that I could specify which tools could Haunt me -- bring in a bunch of random Metallurgy tools, for example, or Machetes and Snow Shovels.
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Well, that used up a good hour of my morning XD
Your comment sent me to look up if something already exists, and I found Tiny Storage, which is... almost what I'm after. But it's got about twice as many types as I need, and it's all based on the basic Chest shape, just a bit smaller (would really like more visual variety). Still, I went over the options in a massive comment... and then it flagged that as spam, so I'm back here with that same comment (and annoyed that it won't let me edit or delete the comment that is now emblazoned with "SPAM" and has been turned a bright coral color).
Anyway! Feedback on that option: It's for 1.7.10, yay! It was last updated in 2015... and the latest comment is about a crash error in 2017 (yeeee... that makes me nervous when I'm trying to build a public mod pack).
Given my general focus (fairly simple, low-level tech that allows for medieval-level or pioneer-level homesteading -- pre-industrial, pre-modern, uncomplicated), the sheer variety is putting me off a bit. Still, about half of the chest types sound actually pretty good.
I'd prefer powers of 2 (this thing stores two items, that one stores four, this stores eight, that stores 16 -- maybe there's a 12 or 24 in there), but this thing is built on powers of 3, which isn't too bad. There's apparently a Drawer (it says "Draw") that has three sets of 3, which I like and is close to my idea for cupboards or shelves or dressers, which'd be more like this (all in one GUI):
OOO_OOO
OOO_OOO
Tiny Chests and Micro Chests sound pretty decent; in fact, put those together and it's probably all I really need (although "chest that stores one item" is actually a bit smaller than I want -- four item stacks sounds like a decent minimum).
It talks about the possibility of Bookshelves for books, Potion Racks for potions. Now we're talking! Add in something like an Icebox for food and we're basically where I want to be. Then Storage Bags, which appear to be portable storage options, and that could replace my Backpacks mod quite handily and with less complicated mechanics. Here's my preferred "bag" recipe, using Leather (O), String (x), and a space in the middle:
OOx
O_O
OOO
Filter Chests: I don't see much need for these in general, but if they were portable and attracted like items, they could be significantly useful. I recall World of Warcraft having a mechanic like that: Here's an Herb Bag and an Ore Bag, so when you pick herbs they go directly to the Herb Bag (until it's full, then they fill your inventory) and when you're mining ores then the Ore Bag gets filled up. I could see bags for food; seeds and saplings; wood and wooden items; stone and bricks; dirt and podzol; ores; gems; etc.
Wool Chests and Clay Chests: Well, getting colored chests is nice, and having tiny chests in different colors is useful. Wool is a bit of an odd choice -- not terrible, but in a pared-down version I'd only have the clay.
Lockable Chests: Honestly, since I play solo mostly, and the rest of the time with nephews, this doesn't impact me. Though I could see the benefit in a public mod pack, so I guess I would include it for my current project. Personal Safe: Similar.
Though... wait.
Okay, I'm imagining a Safe being the only storage option that is player-specific -- no lockable chests -- and I'm considering the issues if another player breaks it. Because it has to be breakable, right? Or else it becomes dangerous to let troll players have access to it. But... consider a Ghost Safe, maybe that requires a Ghast Tear to make, and for the player who placed it it's a solid block, but other players experience it as a translucent block that they can't stand on or interact with. (Okay, this is now making me think of some other issues that could cause, as this essentially makes areas that one player can affect that others can't affect. But it might still be useful. Hmm. Maybe an Option as to the behavior of the Ghost Safe? Unbreakable block, breakable but stays as a dropped item until the owner retrieves it (along with the contents), breakable (maybe twice as difficult to break as Obsidian) and despawns and drops the items, breakable and despawns along with all the items it was carrying...?)
Anyway.
Trash Chests: Okay, come to think of it, not a terrible idea, though I'd kinda more prefer a trash can where you right-click to deposit an item to be destroyed (and, yes, it'd keep the last item placed there, or maybe the previous four stacks, like a recycling bin where you can rescue things if you clicked it accidentally).
Quarry Chests and Vacuum Chests: Definitely not my style. Peaceful Chests: Nah, I've got that functionality covered. Piggy Banks: If piggy banks were the only weird piece in this mod, I'd be fine with them; they're actually pretty cute, and in keeping with Minecraft mythos/style.
So, on balance, actually pretty useful. Now it's just that crash error that's making me wonder: Did the author figure out what caused it or is there not enough info there to diagnose and solve the problem? I don't think I'd risk putting it in a public mod pack.
But, as far as suiting my particular needs: It's difficult to find the functionality I'm after without having a giant, complicated mod built up around it. What I'm hoping to find is a mod with a half-dozen simple smaller storage options, ideally ones that differ in shape/look instead of merely color/texture, and that shifts the vanilla Chest recipe to a slightly more complicated one (involving an iron ingot) and allows the simple wooden chest recipe to make the lowest-level container with the smallest inventory. So you start out getting wood and making tiny chests or shelves or the like, and eventually tech up a bit to get to the full-fledged Minecraft chest and whichever other storage mods I include (I'm thinking of using Storage Drawers, but it uses complicated recipes and much larger storage, so I need something at the smaller/simpler end to balance).
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I appreciate the attempt, but any of the mods with "Thaumic" in them make me run the other way. I recall them being way too complex for my interests, and I have no interest in adding weird complicated magic to the game.
Use a little blocks mod (that allows for smaller chests)
and use Iron Chests with it (so you will have small big chests)
I am having trouble parsing this part enough to figure out if you understand my base request or not. Mostly because there are two separate uses of the size terms here, so it's confusing.
I looked up Iron Chests (which I vaguely recalled): It's a way to make chests hold more items. That's the opposite of what I want.
You know how, in TFC, you make ceramic containers that can hold four items, and that's it? How it's kinda a big deal when you finally make a full-fledged chest? That's sorta what I want. That, and being able to tell, at a glance, what I (probably) put in a given container, instead of having to wrack my brain to recall how I'd organized my storage the last time I was on the game. The whole thing about storing everything in same-looking chests -- or, at best, chests of different colors -- drives me up a wall, and I want to have a few different types that look different.
So like: Here's my kitchen, and I store the fruit in the fridge/icebox, the veggies in the pantry and the spices and staple items and baking tools up in the cupboard. Here's my bedroom, where I store cloth goods and everything related to cloth in the dresser/closet. Here's my bathroom, where I store potions in the little container on the wall. It might take four cupboards to hold what two chests could hold, but it's easier to see where things are and to go right to what I want to find when I want to find it.
I looked into Little Tiles, and... wow, that is a lot of functionality. It's more complicated than my preference, but, since I don't yet have access to my preference, and since Little Tiles actually covers some of the TFC functionality I wanted (albeit in a weirder and more complicated/versatile way)... I might actually add it. Thanks for pointing me at it! Being able to make functional chairs that look exactly how I want is actually pretty cool, and allows me to avoid adding the more modern effects of MrCrayfish's Furniture Mod, which is an improvement over what I had been planning. It looks like Little Tiles allows for storage options, which is basically what I'm after; guess I'll have to experiment to see if I can make small (like 2x2) storage instead of full (9x3) storage.
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Glad you solved the crash, because I have no clue when it comes to the more complicated mods. My response to crashes is often to just cut the mods in half, figure out which half is crashing, continue doing so until I find the mod that's crashing, then decide whether I want that mod enough to take more effort at keeping it in, or just to drop it off the face of the earth for this build. (I can get a little more intuitive about which mods might be crashing, and don't have to go with full "anything could be suspect" mode anymore, but it's still a lot of guesswork.)
The way I always worked with helpers in the past was, I'd figure out what I wanted, and do my best to describe it, and they'd figure out the code or the configs to accomplish it. Then I'd look over what they'd done, figure out if it was close enough to what I wanted or if I needed to describe it more carefully, and then we'd either give it another go, tweak it, or go "Yup, that's good enough." And getting a decent base config that hits close to what I'm after would enable me to tweak it on my own with far less effort than starting from scratch.
But that's moot, as you're busy, which is perfectly understandable and hardly uncommon. Just because I have a problem (or, in this case, a desire to do things in an easier manner) doesn't mean that anyone else has a duty to help me. I toss out requests and see if anyone is interested, and if no one is interested and/or capable of meeting my request, that's not a big deal. I appreciate the thought, though
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Yeah, it was a long shot. (Though your interest in 1.7.10 and the modding scene made it slightly less of a long shot, since you're probably not a newbie.) No worries.
What I have to do, basically, is read up on the config options enough to understand the basics that I mostly understood like five years ago, determine which ores I want in which biomes, determine which formations I want (small veins? large veins? big pockets? vertical streaks? surface-level scattering? etc.), and then match the numbers for a handful of settings per biome. For each of BoP's biomes, of which there are a lot.
It's "a lot of work" in terms of repeated process and pinning down the numbers, and I don't even recall how to test to see if I got the numbers right. But it's not that big a deal, I just gotta get to the point where I do it.
I miss the days when I had groups flocking around me and following my lead. Even if we never got anywhere particularly noteworthy, it was fun, and less work for me in a lot of ways. But unlike creating mods (which I couldn't do, as I have no skill in Java), building this mod pack is a task I can probably do on my own, it'll just take a while.
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If I get far enough to have it go public, I'll let you know
Don't suppose you'd care to tweak a bunch of configs to make Biomes o' Plenty and Metallurgy work together to my specifications? That's one of the biggest time-chore kinda things I'm looking at, and I think it's one of the parts that brought me up short the last time I tried this.
Basically, I want to be able to predict the likely ores based on the surface biome. I know that's not exactly based on real-world geology, but since I'm more of a surface-dweller than a miner, I'd like to be able to browse the surface until I run across certain biomes, go "Oh yay, now I can find silver!" and start digging in that area. I would like some random ores (so it's not entirely predictable), and some of the low-level ores should be surface-available in most biomes, but like the more magical ores should be in magic-type biomes, just for starters. (At some point, I had a list, but I could recreate it even if I can't find it.)
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Five Years Later: Anybody up for coding this for me? Ideally in 1.7.10, but I would also be pleased with a more recent version (I realize that many coders don't care to go back to significantly earlier versions of Minecraft).
My ideas about how these storage solutions work might be different from when I originally posted this, but the general idea is there, and I'd have to think about how it all could work. But let me know if you'd be interested in giving it a try.
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Don't suppose anyone might want to tackle this? I'd be happiest with a 1.7.10 version, but would be pleased enough with a version for the modern Minecraft builds. I'd just like to make a mod pack centered around a weekly or monthly rhythm that can alter certain game mechanics to make certain days better for certain content, maybe something like:
Just as ideas. I don't even care what sort of possibilities exist, only that I could play with a config file to pick certain capabilities for certain days, maybe up to three types of benefits per day. And, like, change the spawn likelihood per day -- maybe Thursday is the only day when creepers spawn, or maybe Saturday is the only day when Endermen spawn. Stuff like that.
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Hmm.
It seems to me that "extract a specific mod from the mod pack" is fine behavior for your own personal, private usage. If there's no normal way to recover a missing mod, this is one way to get it. I see no problem with that, and I think that most mod creators would be glad that the mod is getting used even after they've disappeared from the community. (There would be some who wanted the mod taken down for good, but I see those as a rarity, and since we're talking a 1.7.10 pack, the amount of time that has passed since the creation of the mods gives me more confidence for this assessment.)
Extracting a mod from the mod pack, and then reposting that mod, that's wrong because of the reposting, not the extracting. You're not allowed to repost individual mods; it goes against the permissions of several mods, and is generally, I think, an accepted standard limitation (only the original author gets to post the mod, unless they specifically state that others can do so).
Trying to keep people from posting ripoffs... hmm. I suppose I'll put some line to the effect of:
I want people to be able to make variations, most notably for the following reasons:
I understand that some people may make knock-off variations that don't have any of these things in mind, that make it worse instead of better, and/or that add in a bunch of content that I hate (modern or high-tech additions), but I'm a big fan of remix culture and have no problem with people extending the work of others. That seems quite natural to me. (Plus, I don't think it's possible to stop the outright plagiarists, not without expending far more effort than I'm willing to expend.)
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I'd also like to give a nod to the Lapidary mod, which msvisser created for me but which, as far as I recall, never made it past 1.6.4 (and I forget if that version was even finished). Out of the four mod projects I spearheaded and oversaw, it's the only one that made it to a reasonably playable version; Zoocraftia, the Moontown mod, and the Roughin' It mod made some amount of progress each, but at most I recall a proof-of-concept piece from Roughin' It that let me pull bark off trees and make shelters out of it (and make thinner bare-trunk blocks, which was awesome).
Zoocraftia and Moontown were just too big of ideas for a ragtag coding gang to pull together (ah well, we did our best, and I'm glad that people were interested in trying), and modern mods probably account for most of that feel, if you discount the desire to make an actual functional zoo. But I'd still love to see at least a 1.7.10 for my Decorative Gemstone Blocks idea (not all the weird complexity of every other gem mod I've run across to date) and one for Roughin' It (just ran across almost all the basic functionality I want... in a mod made for far more modern versions of Minecraft).
(Those, and my Visual Variety for storage options idea, ideally with an uncomplicated design and some ability to set size and recipes via config. I know that practically no one but me wants small storage solutions, but huge chests make it harder for me to remember what goes where.)
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So... it sounds to me like, if I don't alter any of the mods themselves (which I can't do, as I have no skill in Java), but only package them together and alter the config files, then I can bundle up things with different licenses, and each mod still exists under its individual license, as opposed to me trying to find a license that accounts for all the sub-licenses. So long as each individual mod is okay with Attribution + Redistribution, the two qualities I need, and as long as I don't seek profit in any form, since some of the mods stipulate Non-Commercial as well.
Did I get that straight?
At this point, having briefly looked into CurseForge and noting that it does account for some amount of mod files not hosted on CurseForge directly, it feels like I should be able to make most or possibly all of my mod pack for that distribution point, and let them handle the rest of the details. Will this suit my desire to specify that I'm not sticking around to do troubleshooting or maintenance, specify that anyone can make a variation of my mod pack and I don't mind (so long as they're clear that it has no direct connection to me), and shove it out the door?
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Anyone here familiar with how the various license types interact, when it comes to publishing a mod pack? I'm concerned about taking a mod with X license and putting it in a mod with Y license where Y license might imply certain rights or restrictions that X license doesn't allow for.
Specifically:
Most of the mods I'm including have some variation of "Give us credit, don't make money, and you're fine." Some include "Don't modify this mod," but I'm not planning to do that, so that's fine too.
But then there's the Creative Commons Share Alike Non-Commercial License (Treecapitator).
And the Lesser General Public License (GraveStone).
Given that the entire project is expected to have nothing to do with money/profit, not even ad revenue (at least, from/for me; I don't yet know where I'd be hosting it, but I wouldn't choose a site with a paywall, and I'm not sure about the sites having ads for their own operational costs and all), I assume that the Non-Commercial thing isn't a problem. Except that the LGPL FAQ says it might be a problem, so maybe it's incompatible with the LGPL to begin with.
And I hope to kinda shove this thing out the door, with as many user rights as I can hand over (rehost, redistribute, modify which mods are in the pack, fix bugs, whatever), and claim from the get-go that I am not in a position to do any troubleshooting or maintenance. Mod Pack as-is, do what you will with it.
But then, also, that Share Alike thing is making me wonder. Because I can't create new rights pertaining to the mods I'm using (borrowing?), and convey them to the people who download my mod pack. Like, just because the creator of a given mod is okay with it being used in a mod pack doesn't mean that I can license it under a license that passes forward rights that the mod creator didn't intend.
And, the LGPL might require some copyleft provisions that I am not free to provide for the entire mod pack.
So, can anyone walk me through this, and help me understand what I'm doing here? Do I have to drop the LGPL pieces out of the pack, and just suggest that people add them separately? Do I have to drop the CC-SA-NC-BY thing out of the pack, and suggest that people add it separately? Is there some other step I have to take? If I include both, what sort of license or details do I need to also include, in order for this to be kosher for everyone involved?
ETA: Miiiiight have found it; not entirely sure: https://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.en.html#MereAggregation
So the fact that these are a group of mods that haven't been physically edited into one single program, that should be enough? I'm still hesitant, but it's looking up.
It's frustrating because it feels like these licenses were created to make things easier for creators to collaborate, but every time one of them shows up it feels like it just makes things harder :\