Alternatives to Mystcraft for basic mining worlds?

[Zarkov]

I'd be grateful for suggestions or a discussion around what can be used to get a basic mining dimension, without using Mystcraft.

The dimension should preferably meet the following criteria: Flat terrain, eternal day, a single biome of my choice or extreme hills, and solid terrain all the way to bedrock (i.e. no caves or water / lava). There is no need for dense ores or any other extra generation of resources.

I've only ever used Mystcraft for this, and I am not aware of any alternatives. The reason for me looking for options, is that I no longer have a sense of control over Mystcraft age generation. Also, with BoP enabled, it becomes rather tedious to collect symbols. This since ~95% (my guesstimate) of the pages are biome symbols. I currently have symbols for 128 unique biomes, with 11 copies of the most common one, but I still haven't found clear modifiers.

I understand that RNG is RNG, and that's actually what I'm trying to avoid. To me, there is no sense of accomplishment (and more importantly, fun) when it's up to Mr. RNG to decide what I achieve. There are plenty of MMOs to grind in to get that fix, should I need it.

Any tip or suggestion is welcome!

 

[SpitefulFox]

Just use /give to give yourself the symbols, then?

 

[Methusalem]

The symbols are not enough, you still won't get the age you want. There is way too much random stuff now in the latest Mystcraft versions. (I have yet to get a world with simple solid ground after trying dozens of feature combinations.)

 

[SpitefulFox]

Sounds like a problem with your age writing. There's enough symbols to control EVERYTHING about an age if you write it correctly. If things are being random, it's because you're leaving symbols out that you shouldn't.

 

[DREVL]

rape the twilight forest.

 

[Methusalem]

Sounds like a problem with your age writing. There's enough symbols to control EVERYTHING about an age if you write it correctly. If things are being random, it's because you're leaving symbols out that you shouldn't.

Extreme Hills, Single Biome, Flat, Solid ground.

Shouldn't be to hard for you then to create an age with these simple requirements?

 

[Zarkov]

Sounds like a problem with your age writing. There's enough symbols to control EVERYTHING about an age if you write it correctly. If things are being random, it's because you're leaving symbols out that you shouldn't.

The stability checklist on the Mystcraft web site doesn't seem to have any information regarding 0.10.4 or later. In previous versions I had no problems getting the ages I wanted. Do you know which symbols must be added to an age in 0.10.4 and later, to exclude any and all random generation of features? Please let me know in that case.

 

[Golrith]

There's a mod called Aroma1997's Mining Dimension. It's has various config options, it won't generate everything, but does a pretty good job.

http://www.minecraftforum.net/topic/1679684-

 

[Zexks]

Extreme Hills, Single Biome, Flat, Solid ground.

Shouldn't be to hard for you then to create an age with these simple requirements?

Where's your sky, stars, sun, and moon modifiers, your liquid and block modifiers, you're cave, ravines, villiage modifiers, weather modifiers, fog and color modifiers?

Makes me wonder if xcomp did a disservice to his own mod by releasing it early with such simply creation rules as what existed in the first incarnations. Writing new worlds is supposed to be complicated, maybe he should have waited instead of allowing people to create the easy ages we had in the beginning, so they wouldn't be so shocked as the difficulty climbed. Has no one watched the DW20 mystcraft tutorial here.

 

[Adonis0]

Where's your sky, stars, sun, and moon modifiers, your liquid and block modifiers, you're cave, ravines, villiage modifiers, weather modifiers, fog and color modifiers?

Makes me wonder if xcomp did a disservice to his own mod by releasing it early with such simply creation rules as what existed in the first incarnations. Writing new worlds is supposed to be complicated, maybe he should have waited instead of allowing people to create the easy ages we had in the beginning, so they wouldn't be so shocked as the difficulty climbed. Has no one watched the DW20 mystcraft tutorial here.

Sure they can be easier, but the thing is, for each modifier you leave undefined, say you leave off sun and weather. It will randomise a number of modifiers onto your world equal to the number of essential modifiers you have left off (Not all the ones you stated are essential, liquid, block, cave, ravines, village, fog and colour aren't essential) This can lead to unstable worlds as it may actually randomise in an instability such as explosions.

So just because you CAN create worlds with less definitions, doesn't mean it's a good idea. It's still randomised as to whether that world will work, it's just more likely that it will work compared to the last few versions

 

[Henry Link]

Personally I like the direction xcomp is going with the writing. If you have played myst or read the books you would know that writing an age is very complex process. What I'm not so sure about the grind to get the pages.

 

[Conguy97]

Check out Direwolf20's recent tutorial on how to create stable mystcraft ages

 

[Adonis0]

Personally I like the direction xcomp is going with the writing. If you have played myst or read the books you would know that writing an age is very complex process. What I'm not so sure about the grind to get the pages.

Agreed, it seems to be the only aspect that's letting the mod down a little. In my opinion he's done things very well, even the mechanics to add abilities to linking pages.. Enchanted ink :3

I look forward to when/if he can tweak the page collection to be something other than a grind

 

[Zarkov]

Writing new worlds is supposed to be complicated, maybe he should have waited instead of allowing people to create the easy ages we had in the beginning, so they wouldn't be so shocked as the difficulty climbed.

Complexity and difficulty is one thing (that I have absolutely no problem with), but it's not the same as unavoidably leaving things to chance. Maybe it is possible to reliably get the ages that I'm looking for, it's just that people seem to be a bit reluctant to provide actual examples of such age writing. The examples I have found so far are usually for 0.10.3 or earlier.

I think the huge range of features and possibilities in Mystcraft is a bit of an overkill for what I'm after, but I didn't know of any alternatives.

There's a mod called Aroma1997's Mining Dimension. It's has various config options, it won't generate everything, but does a pretty good job.

http://www.minecraftforum.net/topic/1679684-

Thanks!

 

[Methusalem]

Where's your sky, stars, sun, and moon modifiers, your liquid and block modifiers, you're cave, ravines, villiage modifiers, weather modifiers, fog and color modifiers?

Makes me wonder if xcomp did a disservice to his own mod by releasing it early with such simply creation rules as what existed in the first incarnations. Writing new worlds is supposed to be complicated, maybe he should have waited instead of allowing people to create the easy ages we had in the beginning, so they wouldn't be so shocked as the difficulty climbed. Has no one watched the DW20 mystcraft tutorial here.

What are you talking about??

What I described there, was not the list of pages. These were the basic requirements for creating a mining age. Please let me repeat those in a way, that makes it easier for you to follow. The mining age is supposed to have the following properties stuff:

• Extreme Hills, Single Biome
• Flat terrain
• Solid ground (as in no caves, no mineshafts, no deep lakes, no non-stone tendrils, no ravines, no dungeons)

Everything else, randomize away ... as long as the random elements don't introduce instabilities.

For the record, I don't mind complicated descriptions. When trying to create an age with the requirements above, I also created rather complex books where pretty much every detail was spelled out. (Well, except maybe the Foliage Color. ) Even tried to balance out all the properties of the pages, like Nature, Growth, Civilization etc. But even after adding a dozen features to the description, that I don't mind to have (Villages, Obelisks, Huge Trees, Surface Lakes etc.) and explicitly defining all materials, it would still add additional elements like Deep Lakes or Mineshafts. And believe me, I've tried dozens of variations with different numbers of features in it.

The point is, the current system is either >too< random or the grammar system has still some bugs to work out in 0.10.05.

And if you can come up with an age description, that fits the basic three requirements above, I would be very grateful. Thank you!

 

[Zexks]

What are you talking about??

What I described there, was not the list of pages. These were the basic requirements for creating a mining age. Please let me repeat those in a way, that makes it easier for you to follow. The mining age is supposed to have the following properties stuff:

• Extreme Hills, Single Biome
• Flat terrain
• Solid ground (as in no caves, no mineshafts, no deep lakes, no non-stone tendrils, no ravines, no dungeons)

Everything else, randomize away ... as long as the random elements don't introduce instabilities.


For the record, I don't mind complicated descriptions. When trying to create an age with the requirements above, I also created rather complex books where pretty much every detail was spelled out. (Well, except maybe the Foliage Color. ) Even tried to balance out all the properties of the pages, like Nature, Growth, Civilization etc. But even after adding a dozen features to the description, that I don't mind to have (Villages, Obelisks, Huge Trees, Surface Lakes etc.) and explicitly defining all materials, it would still add additional elements like Deep Lakes or Mineshafts. And believe me, I've tried dozens of variations with different numbers of features in it.

The point is, the current system is either >too< random or the grammar system has still some bugs to work out in 0.10.05.

And if you can come up with an age description, that fits the basic three requirements above, I would be very grateful. Thank you!

Think of it like this. In order to create a world a book must have a certain number of all of those symbols I mentioned. Either the user puts them in or they are randomly generated. Modifiers either increase or decrease the chance of things getting added. You're juggling an equation that has a back up RNG system for any variables that are not specifically defined. The most specific you are (the more variables you define) the less likely it is to need to use the RNG to fill in. So like the guy under my original post said, those symbols aren't "essential" per se, they are essential to controlling the RNG.

 

[SpitefulFox]

From my understanding even letting the RNG choose anything can cause instability on it's own, even if the symbol would have been fine had you added it specifically.

As of the latest version, randomly selected symbols do NOT cause instability unless they normally would if chosen manually.

 

[Adonis0]

Think of it like this. In order to create a world a book must have a certain number of all of those symbols I mentioned. Either the user puts them in or they are randomly generated. Modifiers either increase or decrease the chance of things getting added. You're juggling an equation that has a back up RNG system for any variables that are not specifically defined. The most specific you are (the more variables you define) the less likely it is to need to use the RNG to fill in. From my understanding even letting the RNG choose anything can cause instability on it's own, even if the symbol would have been fine had you added it specifically. So like the guy under my original post said, those symbols aren't "essential" per se, they are essential to controlling the RNG.

Incorrect, the symbols that I stated have no effect whatsoever on the RNG whether they're in there or not

Basically, the essential things are what are the bare minimum for describing a complete world. Colour for example is not essential then, it does not matter what colour the sky is, but it does matter if there's biomes or not. It doesn't matter if there's caves or not, but it does matter if there's a sun.

Think of it as anything cosmetic (gernerated structures included) is non-essential, whilst anything that can change the physical nature of the world i.e. is there day or not, is the world flat or not is essential

 

[Henry Link]

Incorrect, the symbols that I stated have no effect whatsoever on the RNG whether they're in there or not

Basically, the essential things are what are the bare minimum for describing a complete world. Colour for example is not essential then, it does not matter what colour the sky is, but it does matter if there's biomes or not. It doesn't matter if there's caves or not, but it does matter if there's a sun.

Think of it as anything cosmetic (gernerated structures included) is non-essential, whilst anything that can change the physical nature of the world i.e. is there day or not, is the world flat or not is essential

I'm not sure I agree with this. Reading the myst books and playing the actual game. The writing they described had to be very specific. Things like sky color had to be included. There was even mention of manipulating the sun & stars to the point it put a small black in the middle of one myst age(world). So I would say thing like sky color are needed to be very specific. If you aren't specific enough a random page gets added that could potentially cause instability. Now as for the mod mechanics, I'm not sure how much of this xcomp has programmed in. I think he still in the process of getting writing system to sort of match this. The only part I don't like so far is the tedium of collecting the symbols needed.

 

[zorn]

Where do you find pages? Ive checked every village for 2000 blocks in every direction, and only found a few pages. Im nowhere near being able to make an age. Is there some hidden spot to find pages?