Advice on setting up a mod pack

[Golrith]

Not sure where to post, as it's general, mod packs, and FTB influenced. This seemed a safe bet

I've decided to take the plunge and setup my own mod pack (1.5.2), based on my preferences after playing DW20, and seeing various lets plays and various forum topics. Can't wait to sort out all those ID conflicts!

Primary aim of the pack is to maximise world gen variation, then after that offer tech and magi-tech mods that don't overlap in functionality too much, and don't have "grind" or hundreds of steps of crafting for one item.

Secondary aim is an alternative config where world generation is "wasteland" based, making for a difficult start finding food and wood, fully expect players to starve a few times at the start!

Also open to suggestions, and yes, will make config files available if anyone wishes to download all the mods and try it out. I may even look into a small server too.

and so, on with the mods!

World Gen:
Biomes O Plenty
Natura
Ruins (by atomic stryker)
Nether Ores

Tech mods:
Thermal Expansion
Buildcraft
Railcraft
MFR
Applied Energistics
Thaumcraft 3
Forestry

Exploration/Adventure:
Dimensional Doors

Other mods:
ChickenBones Chicken Chunks, Enderstorage, and Translocators
Modular Power Suits
Iron Chests
OmniTools
Bibliocraft
RedLogic
SGCraft (Stargates - aka portal system)
Aroma1997s Dimensional World (Mining World Mod)

Mods purposely excluded:
IC2, GregTech and associated common IC2 addon mods. Not a fan of GregTech, and IC2 is pretty stale nowadays, so willing to try alternatives.
Mystcraft - while I love the linking books, the direction that mystcraft development is heading in is not to my tastes, there's so much potential being missed by trying to stick to "Myst lore". Too much Black Ink and RNG luck involved.
ComputerCraft - turtles are getting too powerful, and too often it's a case of "a turtle is the best solution" but not the most creative solution
Factorization - for me, doesn't offer much and not very consistent with recipes and what the mod offers, with "magical" and tech items.
EE3 - aka, the mod to turn iron into enderpearls - enough said...
Steves Carts - involved multi-stage crafting, most common use is just tree farms


Mods unsure of:
Atomic Science & Mekanism (from Universal Electricity) - looks interesting from various Let's Plays, included as a tech alternative as IC2 removed
Fossils and Archaelogy (http://www.minecraftforum.net/topic...uild-0005-pre-release-2-updated-june-19-2013/) - Could be interesting for a "just for fun" mod.

Thanks for your time, and for any feedback.

 

[PeggleFrank]

I haven't seen any proof of dimensional doors killing worlds. It has its own world gen dungeons which are pretty neat and it lets you make your own mystcraft ages that (from previous experience) aren't as hard on your computer/the server you're playing on, and also make interesting nexus's.

Mekanism doesn't provide even close to enough content to fully replace IC2. You should just get the entire Universal Electricity bundle if you want mekanism, from what I can remember they work quite well together to provide as an IC2 replacement.

Forestry essentially lets you breed bees and trees to generate everything for you. If you want to mess with bees/trees, keep it on. Also, don't bother with the hard core forestry config option, that's just going to piss you off. If you want it to be harder then you're out of luck.

Ars Magica might be a good addition for the magic feel. It's pretty indepth but it provides lots of variations of spells and you can even create your own via a summoning ritual.


Also, I have some configs that you might find useful. They're for my 1.5.2 modpack which I believe has all the mods that you have, although if you have forestry enabled it'll instantly crash because of... forestry reasons. If you end up going without forestry then it might save you some of the hassle of editing them yourself, although the configs aren't very future-compatible.

 

[Golrith]

Thanks for the info and offer Peggle. I may be confusing the terms Mekanism and Universal Electricity, so I'll check that out better.

So far 18 mods downloaded and working nicely (mostly world gen). Soon all the tech mods.

 

[PeggleFrank]

Oh, and Ars Magica provides lots of world gen. Lots.

More than any other world-gen mod you've ever seen in the history of everything. More than the number of biomes in biomes o' plenty. (Ok, maybe not that many, but you get the idea)

 

[Bellaabzug21]

I'd agree with peggle, but i'm pretty sure mithion still has a "we ask you policy" on Ars Magica unfortunately. The bane of all mod packs that is.

 

[buggirlexpres]

Here's my advice:
1: Have it ready on time. If you don't, the team at FTB may take a lot longer than you like when getting it up.
2: Make sure you have all the permissions before putting it up. Sme people can get really mad if you don't.
3: Bring in Mekanism. It offers a whole bunch of things not normally offered by other mods.
4: Keep Mystcraft instead of Dimensional Doors. DD worlds are fairly small, and won't allow you to collect many resources. A way around the instability that most Mystcraft ages offer is in the config. You can disable the instability, and allow for your users to have VERY creative worlds of their own choice. (I may just be totally missing the point here, but I know how to write fluently in D'ni (IRL), so I feel I have the right to protect Mystcraft.)

 

[Bellaabzug21]

You know gideon, not only do I like your username, but I LOVE your advice. I'd also like to point out that since Dimensional Doors and mystcraft are compatable(I actually think there's a fabric of reality mystcraft age, don't quote me though) there would be no need to remove either.

 

[natnif36]

They are definately conpatible, and both have their uses.

DD for "dungeon" crawling and exploring.
Also an amazing tool for nexi etc, better (and less dangerous) than a void age.

Mysts main property, for me at least, is making a mining age that people can quarry.
For me that's the main way it gets used, and is the most balanced way to use it.


But if including DD, whatever you do, DON'T have any biome ID conflicts, particularly with Limbo - there are these invincible monolith thing giardiasis in Limbo, and only there, however it's defined by the biome, not the dimension, so a biome id conflict with an overworld biome makes that area uninhabitable.
What's more, it's impossible (almost) to clean up, they don't despawn in peaceful, and. /kill all tends not to work so well...
The only way to get rid of then is creative mode punched (empty hand) or Portal Gun high energy pellets.
They are sucked into Red Matter missiles (ICBM) however are unharmed by them.

 

[Aidan]

I haven't seen any proof of dimensional doors killing worlds. It has its own world gen dungeons which are pretty neat and it lets you make your own mystcraft ages that (from previous experience) aren't as hard on your computer/the server you're playing on, and also make interesting nexus's.

Mekanism doesn't provide even close to enough content to fully replace IC2. You should just get the entire Universal Electricity bundle if you want mekanism, from what I can remember they work quite well together to provide as an IC2 replacement.

Forestry essentially lets you breed bees and trees to generate everything for you. If you want to mess with bees/trees, keep it on. Also, don't bother with the hard core forestry config option, that's just going to piss you off. If you want it to be harder then you're out of luck.

Ars Magica might be a good addition for the magic feel. It's pretty indepth but it provides lots of variations of spells and you can even create your own via a summoning ritual.


Also, I have some configs that you might find useful. They're for my 1.5.2 modpack which I believe has all the mods that you have, although if you have forestry enabled it'll instantly crash because of... forestry reasons. If you end up going without forestry then it might save you some of the hassle of editing them yourself, although the configs aren't very future-compatible.

Mind if I ask you in what ways Mekanism is lacking in content? I am in the need of a new project to work on.

 

[PeggleFrank]

Mind if I ask you in what ways Mekanism is lacking in content? I am in the need of a new project to work on.

If you look at the list of features that IC2 has, Mekanism doesn't have much in ways of content compared to IC2.

If you want things to work on, I can't help you in that regard, but you could try and implement some things that other mods haven't implemented (or maybe implement a variation of something that IC2 has (like elevators)). I haven't played with Mekanism too much so please ignore me if you've already implemented some of these things, but you could try and implement electrical armor, more transportation (electric minecarts/boats?), defense systems (something more powerful than the tesla coil but not over-the-top MFFS defense), redstone logic for your machines (if the world could be controlled with redstone it would be a better place), etc. Just general open-ended stuff, that's essentially what IC2 has, lots of things that were implemented over time. If you try and rush tons of features in they'll most likely be boring or otherwise pointless features that nobody will care about, and if you take ages to implement a feature the mod will have lost interest by the time you're done. So try to balance that too.

I can't put what Mekanism needs into words. If I could suggest it you probably would have implemented it by now. It just needs... things. More content. The UE modpack is more than IC2 (it's a modpack vs. IC2, obviously the modpack has more content), but Mekanism singled out by itself isn't a lot.


Didn't mean to insult your mod by saying it's lacking, by the way. Just saying that it doesn't reach up to IC2's level.

 

[Golrith]

Thanks for the further info.

I'll be doing it as a config mod pack, so you have to download the mods yourself, then install the config. Bit more work for the end user, but no issues on the config. A list of links to all the mods and versions required will be made available. Sorting out the config files is the worst part, downloading the mods is just a bit tedius. I love modders who make their mods available from direct downloads.

Not sure about Ars Magicka, from what I've seen, some spells are equal to tech in effect, but the spells are easier to obtain. I'll add it to my "Unsure" list. It's something I'd like for world gen, but not for the actual magic.


Thanks for the warning about DD and biome conflicts. I'm sorting out "pure" world gen mods first, before adding in all the tech (with it's associated lesser world gen).


Edit:
Looking into the Universal Electricity mod pack, I think I just need Atomic Science & Mekanism to suppliment the pack. Other aspects are covered by mods already in the list.

 

[Golrith]

Wonder if anyone can help. Added 4 more mods (Wild Caves 3, Underground Biomes, Meteors and Village Tavern). Crashing on new world generation, looking at the log attached, it's due to underground biomes (I think), but I can't work out why. Can anyone shed any light?
It's not happy about something

 

[buggirlexpres]

Wonder if anyone can help. Added 4 more mods (Wild Caves 3, Underground Biomes, Meteors and Village Tavern). Crashing on new world generation, looking at the log attached, it's due to underground biomes (I think), but I can't work out why. Can anyone shed any light?
It's not happy about something

Checking it out right now. Be right back.

EDIT: Are the blocks used in world Underground biomes less than 256? Otherwise, it will fail to use them for generation.

 

[Golrith]

They are all in the 2000 range. But, I thought that Forge raises the limit on Block IDs, as other mods that are working fine (such as Biomes O Plenty) has block IDs in the 1900's

 

[Bellaabzug21]

I'm no expert, but I do believe that wild caves and underground biomes tend to have issues with eachother.

 

[Golrith]

I'm no expert, but I do believe that wild caves and underground biomes tend to have issues with eachother.

You sir win the gold medal. I disabled Wild Caves, and the world loaded.

Hmm, now I could be faced with a tough choice, which underground mod to use. I like what both offer



OMG! This test world started in a small BoP Deadswamp, and right by the spawn is a witch hut, with witch. Something I've never seen generate yet!

 

[buggirlexpres]

They are all in the 2000 range. But, I thought that Forge raises the limit on Block IDs, as other mods that are working fine (such as Biomes O Plenty) has block IDs in the 1900's

Terrain gen blocks NEED to go under 256. Trust me. I have experience with modpacks and mods.

 

[Bellaabzug21]

You sir win the gold medal. I disabled Wild Caves, and the world loaded.

Hmm, now I could be faced with a tough choice, which underground mod to use. I like what both offer



OMG! This test world started in a small BoP Deadswamp, and right by the spawn is a witch hut, with witch. Something I've never seen generate yet!

Personally, I'd go with wildcaves over underground biomes as I think underground biomes is only vinilla biomes and I've never used it myself. Wildcaves also sounds better

 

[Golrith]

Terrain gen blocks NEED to go under 256. Trust me. I have experience with modpacks and mods.

I trust you, but I'm confused, as I'm getting worldgen when the block IDs are over 256. Even looking at configs in the existing FTB pack have worldgen IDs over 256, and all works fine. Not trying to argue it, just trying to understand.[DOUBLEPOST=1371761740][/DOUBLEPOST]

Personally, I'd go with wildcaves over underground biomes as I think underground biomes is only vinilla biomes and I've never used it myself. Wildcaves also sounds better

Underground Biomes is generating just fine in BoP biomes, but I think it's causing extremely slow chunk loading. Seeing the different strata of rock through the unloaded chunks though looks very impressive. I think wildcaves will indeed be the mod of choice.

 

[KirinDave]

You should ask Shneeky. He might just have what you want already. This modlist is very close to ShneekyCraft.