I live here now

[Drbretto]

Before I begin, here's a little introduction:

I played Minecraft for the first time about a year ago. I don't know why I waited, either. My whole childhood, if you have me some legos, I'd go in a trance for hours. I always thought this game was just about building pretty houses or something, and it wasn't until I randomly decided to pick it up for the PS4 that I tried survival mode and that's when I suddenly "got it"

We did this by the end of the first weekend (these are mostly me, but some of it was built by a friend of mine that plays with me) :

I could have played that version forever. There was something about it. But, it was the first of many times I thought I had that *it* world to build for years to come, but you just can't host a PS4 game without a dedicated PS4 just for it. I spent the next year trying to find that perfect world. I've started world after world, with mods, without mods, Java, Win 10/PE, different server hosts, etc. Every single time, there was something that killed it. It's been incredibly frustrating.

In those travels, however, I discovered mods, particularly FTB packs. I started with Infinity and edited it heavily to meet my personal tastes. At this point, it barely resembles the original, but the spirit is the same. This combination of tech and magic, and a bunch of add-ons meant to enhance the experience.

I learned a lot in that time. Take this vid from my last server for instance:

This may be the world's largest slime farm, producing XP and slimes. Along with mob spawners for additional drops. The vid is an older version, but by the end of it, I had the entire room rigged so all you had to do to put anything in the sorter was to drop it literally anywhere on the ground. It'd get sucked into vacuum hoppers under the carpets and into the machine, which I spent hours making as tight as possible.

Once into the machine, anything that needed to be cooked was sent to an array of hoppers, which would then process the ores and send the finished products back into the sorter to go into its place. All cobblestone would be auto-crafted down to quadruple condensed as it came in, and all stones had their own JABBA barrel to store a near infinite supply of everything. The whole thing connected to my quarry via ender chest.

I just didn't like the seed, and I didn't like having to pay $30 a month to host something with so many mods. So, despite being set up for life in that game, I had to start over one last, final time. And this time, it's for real. I'm hosting it myself now, for free. I can handle all those mods, with a draw distance of 24, hosting and playing on the same PC, running 128x textures at up to 120 FPS.

This is it. I live here now.

And that's as much for this world as it is for this thread. I will be taking everything I have learned up to this point to make what I hope will be a rather impressive, fun and hopefully beautiful world. And this is where I intend to share my progress, and maybe get some feedback/suggestions for things.

The plan is as follows:

I found a gorgeous mountain range. I will build different stations on different mountain tops. The primary method of transportation will be hang glider and rail, so each of these peaks will have landing zones and there will be a rail system that takes us all over the map.

As for mods, the goal here is to give it a feel like I wake up, stranded in this empty world, and as a survivor, I "beat" nature by building all this cool stuff. With the ultimate end goal, if there is one, to build a rocket and fly to the moon via galacticraft. Before that, though, the level of technology will be somewhere between Gilligan's Island and steampunk, as I will attempt to avoid the more streamlined automation processes for a more practical solution. For example, I will be avoiding crafting an ender IO auto-farm, preferring to build an auto farm out of individual components not meant for anything in particular.

It won't be the prettiest game you've seen, nor the most clever. Rather, it'll be something in between, and will have a bunch of little really creative nuggets that should be fun to track. Everything you will see will be my own design, though I may borrow some methods inspired from other works out there online. I won't be following any schematics or anything like that. Everything will be organic.

I will continue to add to this thread as I go along even if no one's watching, lol. But, most of the people I show these vids to have no idea the kind of work that goes into it all, so I'd love it for people to watch and follow along if you find it interesting at all.



Bonus vids inside the spoiler:

Spoiler

Some more from the original world. It won't match some of the amazing stuff that's out there, but it will always have a place in my heart.

A transit station featuring a mini diorama of the world we had already built:
Edit: At least give it until the sunset at around 2 mins

My first attempt at hiding rail tracks by making them look more "natural"

 

[Inaeo]

Always fun to see into another engineer's brain. I did laugh when I saw the line about one last world. Oh how many times have I started over now...

 

[Drbretto]

I laughed when I typed it. Hoping to hell this time it's true, lol

 

[Drbretto]

Recommend full screen, wait out the night for the sunrise.

Welcome to the New World!

I have a tremendous amount of basic setup left to do, so this post is just to introduce the world. Gorgeous, ain't it? This is just a small part of it, and the first angle I tried. Everywhere you look is absolutely gorgeous.

Doesn't look like I've done much, with little more than a safety box to sleep in, but most of the work so far is mining and preparations for the future. My nether seed is atrocious and it's going to be difficult setting up a pump because it's a solid mile to an ocean, with all kinds of baddies on the way.

This is Biomes O'Plenty, latest version for 1.7.10

The seed, which is seared into my memory forever with the number of times I've had to re enter it getting everything right, is -5605768792063021583

Much, much more to come over the next few weeks!

 

[Softwerker]

Hey that's indeed a nice place. But the shadow of your tower at 2:11 cuts into the immersion.

 

[Drbretto]

Haha, I prefer to think it adds to the mystique, lol. Or something like that anyway.

 

[Inaeo]

I've never used shaders, but that looks beautiful. Do the shaders use more CPU, or is it mostly a RAM hit? I have more RAM than I know what to do with, but my processor barely rivals a high end graphing calculator. Wondering if I could manage it, if only for a few artsy shots.

 

[Drbretto]

Shaders drop me from hovering around 78-90 fps with internal shaders, down to 25-33 with some things dumbed down, like lower res shadows.

I do believe this is bottlenecked by my processor. I have 16 gigs of RAM and the textures seem to be dependent on that.

We'll be sure in a few days, because I bought a new processor. Originally it was to support the server, but now that I'm running SP, I'm hoping it'll let me run the shaders full time. Right now, I switch back and forth accordingly, but I'll be going from 3.2 GHz to 4.4, so it should be a huge difference.

Edit: with the recording software running, and shadows boosted, etc, I recorded that video at 5 fps because I know i was going to speed it up. It doesn't look quite that good all the time, but pretty close. Edit, it also too about 15 minutes to finish loading the chunks. That's 32x, I play on 24.

 

[KingTriaxx]

If you like mountains, and you're in 1.7, I suggest looking at Highlands. In particular the Flying Mountains. They're truly spectacular.

 

[Drbretto]

I have done a map on Highlands before. They were gorgeous, too. But this thing goes on for miles. That's like 15% of it, and the view is amazing from every angle.

Broke ground today. Recorded an hour and a half of quarry action for another time lapse, but my computer ate it. I'm really having some troubles getting a single vide capture program to work right. And while trying to fix that, I broke something else and am getting borders on torches and plants and whatnot. This game is never-ending tweaking.

But it's all goodness it's just a quarry. The dig is going to end up being my starting base. I will use the space underneath to build monster spawning platforms, using openblocks fans instead of water conveyors. This will allow it to collect ender pearls. And instead of a traditional dropper, it will force the mobs to drop into a golden spike, which acts like a player kill for rare drops and XP, which will be collected by a vacuum hopper and sent above ground for sorting.

In the space between the mob spawners and the floor will be used for auto sorting and processing mechanisms, which will be sent to appropriate chests in the actual building. The goal will be similar to my previous base, just more efficient and I will hide the bulk of the ugly parts. The theory will be the same, though. Being in the base will generate XP, arrows, ender pearls, and mob heads, and the whole base will auto sort, cook, and convert cobblestone to quads. In the back of the building will be spiral staircase tower to a nice lookout height, where I will pump the xp from the juicer, next to the enchanting tables.

Don't wanna plan much further ahead until I get this part done. I will record a quick tour once it's done.

 

[KingTriaxx]

Fair enough, though I'd raise you Large Biomes. Still I'm excited to see what you come up with.

Try out OBS. I use that and it doesn't seem to have a problem with any game I throw at it. Plus it's free. Just fire up Minecraft, tab over to OBS, and set up a game capture for Minecraft. As long as that's the name you give it, it'll probably have the correct program pre-selected. And since MC uses the same program name for all modpacks, you only need one setting of it. (Might need a new one for a different game version but I'm not sure.)

 

[Drbretto]

Hey, just might get my chance to try that out someday. If I've learned one thing, I've learned it's never the last one, lol. I want to do a 1.10 game some day when more mods are on it, and that gives more options to play with, too. Like amplified large Highlands or something.


I did install OBS, but I couldn't figure it out in under 3 minutes, so I went back to an easier one I had, which is action, which worked for the time lapse but immediately started crashing afterwards. I'll give it some time and figure it out soon.

 

[Drbretto]

So, I don't know what biome that is. The in-game description for the biome is moon or mars depending on whether I'm in a peak or valley. I'm wondering if it's literally something from galacticraft mixing with biomes o plenty. Like that's a martian landscape, but mixed with a tropical island or something.

Has anyone seen a mountain range like that? It literally goes on similar to what you see in that video for probably literally the size of Rhode Island (I will measure it out when I build the map room - It's probably not QUITE that big, lol)

Edit: Closest thing I can think of is that it is pulling highlands and tropical islands together and I'm still convinced it's Galacticraft making this happen

 

[Inaeo]

BoP has had an issue with what I refer to as "Dimensional Bleed" through 1.7. This usually happens when two mods try to use the same Biome ID numbers. BoP thinks it's using its own biome, but in reality it's grabbing the conflicting biome and shoving it into some interesting places. Typically in FTB packs, this.manifested itself by allowing Twilight Forest biomes in the Overworld (and a crashy instance with Thaumic Horizons, since fixed). I assume that BoP thought it was picking one of its own, but in fact grabbed some from Galacticraft. In your case, I'd say you won the lottery.

 

[Drbretto]

New video has arrived! Just a quick tour of the property. This was my first time using this recording software, so I apologize for both the stuttering and the window bar on the top. The game ran fairly smooth that whole time, so I assumed it was recording as smoothly. I'll get this all perfected eventually. I'm still experimenting.


Anyway, everything you will see here is under a state of extreme unfinishedness. With the exception of the bedroom, almost everything to see is a placeholder. I will ultimately polish it top to bottom as I go along.

But, well start with my bedroom. It's iron clad spawn proof. I used carpenters blocks around the edges of the floor and ceiling of the room, which is why you can see it from space. Even if something managed to find the stairs, you have to open an iron door with an obsidian pressure plate, which can only be actuvated by a player. It has a basic setup for convenience. Crafting table, three ovens. All built into the floor to not spoil the view. Before finalizing, there will be 4 transport coming from the main sorter. Two will keep the ovens stocked with coal, one will keep all my adventuring supplies, food (room service!), torches, etc, and I'll have an obsidian chest for my most valuable things, like diamonds, emeralds, etc. All will be connected to the sorter.

I also have 2 different enchanting tables. One is normal, the other one is preeetty close to cheating, buy it still costs levels, so I'm allowing it. It lets you build your own enchants as you see fit. It's generally best to use the normal enchanter first because it'll take 3 levels for a level 30 base, then put it in the advanced enchanter to spend a ton of levels making it better. There's 6 magical wood in between, which I mostly made so I could make golden spikes for the mob juicers. Those 6 count as 30 bookshelves for both tables so it doesn't overwhelm the view.

And what a view it is. I will sit there in that room looking out at the view figuring what I'm gonna do, all in service if that view. I will be careful to make sure I only build to compliment the view from my room. I have some really exciting long tern plans. Stay tuned.

This plans will include the last thing in that room, the ejector. Being that I primarily get around via hang glider, I will build something like this into each station, and one big one for long term flights. They're basic. Just pistons. But extra long. I have a mode called more pistons that lets me build pistons up to 8 blocks high. They're going to come in handy.

I am using clouds for landing. I disabled the overworld clouds because they look terrible next to the shader's clouds. But, you can still harvest them from the nether and the End. The ripple effect is a bug with the shaders, but I like it anyway. The purpose of the clouds, if this isn't common knowledge, is for landing. If you fall on them, you don't take damage. You just float through and land on the bottom of the block. Now I can glide around like a bird, and I'll build these different stations with their hights in mind so I can get around easier.

Basically the video runs around all over to show the basic layout, but it's just me flying around from one place to the next, just a day in the life. It's hard to see what things are going to be yet, but this is just the foundation, and every project needs a solid foundation. You'll appreciate next week's video a lot more seeing all this junk first

Anyway, enjoy!

 

[Drbretto]

No update yet due to what can only be described as bubonic death plague interrupting my video gaming weekend.

But, I do need just a teensy bit of advice on the next step.

I'm stuck on the chore part. I need to make a basic item sorter before I can properly do anything. Once you have one, you just don't go back. I need to be able to quickly dump my entire inventory at a moment's notice because I tend to jump from one project to the next.

But, I'm struggling with deciding whether to build a big flopping thing out of buildcraft pipes, which I already totally understand but will be big and clunky, or make the transition to Ender IO pipes because it looks like that's going to make it easier to hide the pipes so the structure itself can look nice.

I guess it's a kind of open ended question. If you were to build a sorting machine than can automatically sort EVERYTHING, and I mean every stupid little thing beside equipment, since equipment becomes something different with durability loss, what method would you use? I have been using diamond sorting pipes, and that let's me pick up to 36 unique item IDs per chest while passing through the rest. I'd like to have it sort to about 40 different chests and this time it doesn't matter if you can watch it go through the pipes, though I do still kind of like the idea of it.

Also, bonus question, do ender IO pipes connect directly to buildcraft pipes, or will it have to be one or the other?

 

[Inaeo]

I usually start with a Storage Drawers wall for bulk items, then having a few dedicated chests for odds and ends. You can pipe your dump chest into a Drawer Controller and it will input into all attached Drawers. Using this with TD Itemducts could allow you to prioritize the wall first, then any other items off to random stuffs storage. It's possible with EnderIO and/or other item transport systems, but I feel the need to pimp TD if you have it available.

 

[KingTriaxx]

BC and EnderIO have to have a chest between them I believe. That said, you can use anything to pump in, and then connect them with EnderIO pipes, and use an Inventory Panel to retrieve them. Panel return is painfully slow, so I say use an ender chest/pouch for a return/input chest.

 

[Drbretto]

I usually start with a Storage Drawers wall for bulk items, then having a few dedicated chests for odds and ends. You can pipe your dump chest into a Drawer Controller and it will input into all attached Drawers. Using this with TD Itemducts could allow you to prioritize the wall first, then any other items off to random stuffs storage. It's possible with EnderIO and/or other item transport systems, but I feel the need to pimp TD if you have it available.

I do have TD. I think it might have been you that convinced me to move in that direction going forward, but I haven't been able to touch the game since because of that bubonic death bug going around.

I think my biggest concern is that my need for item sorting is kind of immediate and all of these other methods will require me to learn a whole new system. I'm not 100% sure I'm even following what either of you are saying! lol. But just because I haven't actually had the time to experiment.

I was hoping for something simpler, but that's actually OK. I do think I need to keep it old school just to take the pressure off of the early setup stages then worry about upgrading it later. It's not gonna be pretty, but that's fine. I can kind of box all that noise in and just have it move up to a cleaner-looking storage room.

I think I'm going to have to look into storage drawers. The way I have been doing it, I don't just keep a ton of any one item, though. Except for building blocks, that is. And for those, I have been using Jabba because I can hold a half a million when fully upgraded. For most other things, I've basically had like a chest for this mod, a chest for all food and torches, and like two chests for thaumcraft junk, etc. But I think I can see a need for it down the line. Plus, I think it'd look nicer in the long run.

BC and EnderIO have to have a chest between them I believe. That said, you can use anything to pump in, and then connect them with EnderIO pipes, and use an Inventory Panel to retrieve them. Panel return is painfully slow, so I say use an ender chest/pouch for a return/input chest.

The only thing I understand from this is that it sounds like I can't connect ender IO pipes to buildcraft pipes without a chest as an intermediary. That can actually work. The only thing I NEED to hide is the lines going up the tower to my "bedroom". Everything in the machine room can look chaotic for now, NP.

Thanks for the help as always, guys.

 

[Drbretto]

Woah, wait a second there.

If I'm reading this right (https://github.com/jaquadro/StorageDrawers/wiki/Drawer-Controller) I could pump items into this drawer controller and it will put the items in the proper drawers for me.

Am I reading that right? because that could well be a much, much easier solution than I thought.

Edit: That's totally what you just said, lmao. Only now I am following.

New life goal accepted.