ExtraBiomesXL vs. Biomes O Plenty vs. ? (for 1.6x+)

[Bigglesworth]

So trying out Biomes O Plenty today, and the generation is lightyears ahead of ExtraBiomesXL. Ive traveled 10k in every direction in my ExtraBiomesXL world. While ive found fantastical places, the vast majority is snow, sand, plains, redwood forests and ocean. In BoP ive traveled but 1k in each direction and ive seen not only several variations of each of those, but several more and the generation of many is much more dramatic and natural looking. Perhaps me spawning in a lush bamboo forest made a good impression. However I haven't seen any villages yet and that is a major issue (unless im really unlucky)

I haven't looked very hard but so far these are the only two major biome mods out. What would you say are the pros and cons of each?

 

[Iskandar]

I agree that BOP is very pretty. That said, it also isn't very compatible. Most mods, now, will tie into EBXL, you will get Ars Magica structures, Thaumcraft treees, and so forth. Plus, more compatibility is coming, because, if I'm remembering rightly, the EBXL coders are adding tags to their biomes, so mods that are looking for vanilla biomes can also tie into EBXL biomes that are similar. Also, I've never seen EBXL biomes conflict with another mod.

With BOP, you have to manually go through and change biome IDs or Twilight Forest biomes will show up where they shouldn't, and I've heard of other mods that have this problem. And getting any kind of cross mod support is hit or miss.

So, yes, BOP looks good, but I can't see using it, it doesn't have near the compatibility that is build into EBXL, unfortunately.

 

[Chocorate]

Biomes O' plenty has a lot of content more than XBXL. It has cute little 2 block tall trees and barley fields and magical places. It may not have the huge trees XBXL has, but it has pretty big ones. The best part? A lot of them use vanilla wood so it's more compatible. You can also turn a lot of these off if you don't want them. It also improves vanilla's terrible biome gen where you rarely get any nice plains. BOP is much more varied and doesn't have trees that are hard to cut down.

I guess FTB likes having a very normal set of mods without anything too crazy. XBXL seems very uniform and neat, as are the Voxelmods. They're just more official that Rei's and BOP.

 

[Bigglesworth]

I agree BOP needs to be made more compatible. Adding in Forestry, Thaumcraft, and Bees to name a few. Seems like if BOP added in some sort of biome hook like XL does it would be simple for a modder to go in and choost from a main biome list what biomes they want what objects to spawn in. i suppose BOP authors could do this themselves by pointing XL biomes to BOP-like alternatives, so a 3rd party mod see that, can interpret it, and just goes about its business. That could at least supply a default that can be edited by third party if they so choose.

 

[Iskandar]

I agree BOP needs to be made more compatible. Adding in Forestry, Thaumcraft, and Bees to name a few. Seems like if BOP added in some sort of biome hook like XL does it would be simple for a modder to go in and choost from a main biome list what biomes they want what objects to spawn in. i suppose BOP authors could do this themselves by pointing XL biomes to BOP-like alternatives, so a 3rd party mod see that, can interpret it, and just goes about its business. That could at least supply a default that can be edited by third party if they so choose.

Right. That is the biggest thing stopping me from using the mod is that no other mod recognizes the biomes. There is an add-on (not updated yet) that fixes things for Forestry and Thaumcraft, which is nice, but not quite enough. Ars Magica is the deal breaker atm, as that would break my RPG pack completely.

 

[KirinDave]

I agree that BOP is very pretty. That said, it also isn't very compatible. Most mods, now, will tie into EBXL, you will get Ars Magica structures, Thaumcraft treees, and so forth.

Just wanna point out that Ars Magica "just works" with BoP. I've logged about 5 hours in that combo. As soon as either Forestry or Thaumcraft officially release for 1.5.1, we'll also see a version bump for BOP Integration. This mod works, and it works well. The only mod I want that doesn't work too well is Natura, but I am confident we can get that sorted since Natura's author is amenable to open source work.

Plus, more compatibility is coming, because, if I'm remembering rightly, the EBXL coders are adding tags to their biomes, so mods that are looking for vanilla biomes can also tie into EBXL biomes that are similar. Also, I've never seen EBXL biomes conflict with another mod.


With BOP, you have to manually go through and change biome IDs or Twilight Forest biomes will show up where they shouldn't, and I've heard of other mods that have this problem. And getting any kind of cross mod support is hit or miss.

It is not as bad as you say it is. Natura and Tinker's Cosntruct is all that is not working right, and those mods are new.

And also: if you include EXBL in a modpack right now most mods will break because they haven't updated their APIs. They literally cause a crash on launch. This is why I am using BoP.

 

[Bigglesworth]

Nice. I would really like to see BoP replace XL. Unless the XL team really puts time into improving their biomes. Dont get me wrong, I like XL. It is a step forward over the default gen, I just think BoP is to XL as XL is to default.

 

[Iskandar]

Eh, I think my biggest problem with both BOP and EBXL is that you can't edit biome rarity. I can turn a biome off, but I can't turn it down, or up even. I'd be perfectly happy if I could, for instance, get a world that was 75% vanilla biomes and then 25% from some other biome mod. Or, if I could turn down snow biomes to be a 5% or 10% chance to generate.

Also, I would dearly, dearly love for one mod or another to bring sanity to the way biomes generate. Terrafirmacraft does this neatly by making the z axis (I think, the north south axis, anyway) represent distance from the equator. 0 z would be the equator, where you find your junles and deserts, and then as you move further away you get your semi-tropical, then temperate, then artic biomes. It limits useful terrain gen from 17k to -17K along the z axis, but it also means you have none of this bullshit of a snowbiome next to a desert biome anymore.

 

[Bigglesworth]

Finally did find a village in a savanna biome none yet in some of the more odd ones.

 

[Bigglesworth]

Snow biomes already seem to have a less than 10% chance to spawn in BoP from the several k blocks ive been flying around. I know thats an issue in XL. I too would like a % config though. All I see right now is you can turn on/off biomes, but id never want to turn a biome off. 1% chance at least.

It shouldent be difficult to add variables to the code itself and have them point to the .ini file when calculating biome weights but the problem is getting them to do it

 

[Golrith]

BoP doesn't force villages to spawn unlike EXBL, any villages that do spawn are limited to the vanilla rules. i.e. a flat area. This does make villages a lot more rarer in BoP as a result. But they do spawn. In my BoP test world I started in a Woodland that had a village near the spawn, travelling around I found a further 2 villages. One in an apple orchard, the other on a plains.

You might find it easier/quicker to start your own village by curing zombie villagers. BoP villages are more of a rare resource.


Overall BoP get's my vote, for it's variety and fine level of detail. It does conflict with Twilight Forest, Buildcraft and Xeno's Req, but once you track down ID conflicts, works great.


In my current game world, I've started on a Savanna "island". Across a river is a BoP swamp leading to a mushroom forest/swamp and a dying forest. Across a small ocean there is a large tropical island with palm trees and a TC3 wisp spawner ruin on a hill, out of the corner of my eye I spotted a barley field island, but couldn't take a good look as I was running away from Wisps....

 

[Skyqula]

For those compatability issues: http://www.minecraftforum.net/topic...-add-on-for-biomes-o-plenty-v051/page__st__40

Its fixes it for 1.4.7 and he is working with the BOP team to intergrate his mod so the 1.5.1 version will (eventually) support it by default. As for the biome ID's, thats realy a non issue if it gets taken into the FTB modpack. Or those universal config settings...

 

[Zjarek_S]

And also: if you include EXBL in a modpack right now most mods will break because they haven't updated their APIs. They literally cause a crash on launch. This is why I am using BoP.

I haven't got this problem at all with EBXL 3.12.2 (from mods that could cause it I'm using MFR, Natura, Forestry, BC and IC2).

 

[Bigglesworth]

Yes, XL doesnt crash at launch for me either. Not sure what he is talking about there. However BoP works fine too with some ID tweaking.

 

[Iskandar]

Ars Magica had a problem for a bit because it included an old API. Fixed now.

 

[KirinDave]

Its not just Ars Magika. Edited for lolphone.

 

[Bigglesworth]

I set the biome size to 1 so i could get more in an area. I dont mind too much that Twilight Forest is bugging through in parts. Its certainly more of a lively world with small biomes.

 

[EternalDensity]

Maybe it's lively but I prefer bigger.

 

[Bigglesworth]

I also set it to 40, from the default of 4. I went 10k blocks and was still in the same biome. Big enough?

 

[Jay Cee]

I set the biome size to 1 so i could get more in an area. I dont mind too much that Twilight Forest is bugging through in parts. Its certainly more of a lively world with small biomes.

-snip-

That looks awesome - especially with the shaders!