Welcome to the Mirror Arcana discussion thread! Mirror Arcana is a magic mod all about opposites, specifically the elements and their opposite nature. While this is the theme of the mod, there are a lot of things in the mod that stray from the theme, and are just magical in nature. For the sake of organization I will divide this into multiple sections...
- World Generation
- Mobs
- The Mirrorlands
- Research System
- Energy System
- Crafting System
- Custom Armor
- Custom Tools
- Potions System
- Custom Spawners
- Customized "Puppets"
This mod is open source here is the github page to see progress of the mod...
https://github.com/CuriousSkeptic/MirrorArcana
Now this list will obviously grow as time progresses and ideas come forth, however what is listed above is what I would like to have present in the first release of the mod. Now lets get into each of the above-mentioned categories:
World Generation
World generation for mirror arcana consists of 8 ores, 2 biomes, 13 mobs and 1 new dimension. Because of the size of the mob and dimension content they will be in their own categories.
The ores are as follows:
- Earth Ore
- Air Ore
- Water Ore
- Fire Ore
- Light Ore
- Darkness Ore
- Transmutation Ore
- Refinement Ore
These drop their respective essences, are used throughout the mod in crafting recipes, and through the energy system, which I will go into detail on later in this post.
Along with the ores which spawn randomly throughout the world, there are 2 biomes that are added by the mod, the Mysterious Grove, and the Greenwood, each with their respective world generation.
These biomes play a key role in finding many things used in a variety of crafting recipes. One of the most prominent things you will find is 2 types of trees added by the mod, the elder tree in the Greenwood, and the mysterious tree in the Mysterious Grove. Each of these woods are key components of many recipes throughout the mod.
Mobs
There are going to be 13 mobs added to the game in the first release. there are 6 passive mobs, 6 aggressive mobs, and 1 special mob.
The passive mobs remain unnamed, however we will called them elementals for now, each with their own elements(Earth elemental, ect.) These mobs can be bred as well as tamed. When tamed, and only when tamed, the mobs will drop their respective essences, similar to the way a chicken drops eggs. When killed they drop 1-3 of their respective essence.
The aggressive mobs also remain unnamed, however we will call them enraged elementals for now, each with their own elements(Earth enraged elemental, ect.) These mobs have their own attacks(to be determined) and drop special drops(to be determined) as well as 2-5 of their respective essence.
The special mob spawns only in the mirrorlands, a dimension that will be discussed in detail later.
It is called a puppet, has the ability to transform into mobs that it sees,(ex. Puppet sees pig, turns into a pig) however cannot transform into the player.
The puppet drops an item called puppet parts, similar to a wither skeleton dropping wither skulls, very rarely.
The Mirrorlands
The mirrorlands is a dimension that can only be found through special means in the world(the means are to be determined, but you basically find a portal, and go through.) There is one in world, however when going to the mirrorlands you can find items that allow you to craft other portals(for servers and whatnot).
A lot will go into this dimension that isn't planned yet, but suffice to say that for now this is where your going to get all of your puppet parts for "puppetry"(to be discussed later in this post).
The Research System
There are multiple ways to research in this mod, but the primary way is through going out into the world and finding rifts. In order to do that however, you are going to need to unlock a few things first.
First you will need a pedestal, crafted with some stone and some essence, as well as a piece of glass and a book.
place the pedestal into the world, right click the pedestal with the piece of glass, and then right click the glass(in the pedestal) with the book to start the process. The book will be absorbed from your inventory onto the glass, and when the process is complete you will have a spyglass. This item has many purposes. The first purpose is that it unlocks a keybinding specific to your character, that can be configured. by clicking that key it opens up the in game documentation for the game. alternatively if you do not want the keybinding you can just right click the spyglass and it will open up the documentation as well
the spyglass also allows you to see rifts, as long as the glass is anywhere in your inventory, you will be able to see the rifts. You basically go out into the world, find a rift, right click it, it plays a fancy animation(your basically looking into the rift and finding secrets of the mirrorlands) and you gain a research point. then go into your documentation, and pick something to unlock. you can pick whatever you want but it is linear in the sense that you cant unlock something if you don't have the prerequisites.
Energy System
The energy system revolves around the essence. you basically take a specific essence that you want to get energy out of, place it into an(unnamed) device that melts it down into liquid essence of its type, and then either pipe it into an energy core through a liquid node created by the mod or any other pipe from other mods, or you can place an energy core directly next to the device and it will fill up automatically. when crafting the energy cores, you can craft a total of 8 different types, each when crafted will give you 2 energy cores of that type(ex. Earth core x2). they are linked, and when one receives energy, the other one does as well.
now you can use this core wherever energy of that type is needed, however for the crafting system there is one more step. you will need to craft a statue base. once you have your statue base, you place the energy core of the type of energy you need into the base. that statue will form into an elemental statue(basically a statue base with a statue of an earth elemental for earth and so on on top). Only when energy is required will it be used, but basically when energy of a certain type is needed in crafting, the statues eyes will glow, and shoot beams of light into the unnamed crafter.
this system needs a lot of work, and I completely understand if it makes absolutely no sense, keep in mind this is pre-alpha discussion.
The Crafting System
The crafting system is rather straightforward. you place a single item in bowl-like structure(unnamed) and then the statues mentioned above will shoot essence into the bowl, filling it up and transmuting the item into whatever it may be. very work in progress and needs a lot more thought, open to suggestions and willing to completely scrap both the energy and crafting system for a better one.
Custom Armor
Custom armor is also straightforward. you craft one easy to make armor set early game, and when wearing it you gain experience. this armor set never takes damage, however in the beginning you might as well not even wear it. each level the armor gets unlocks an upgrade slot, giving you the opportunity to customize to your hearts content. whether it is flight, fire resistance, not getting nocked back, or being able to walk on water, there is a lot of options available to you.
Custom tools
Custom tools are basically the same as armor, but in tool version, start off with crappy, basically wooden tools that level up, and give you a tinkers construct like control over what abilities your tools have. there is a late game upgrade that allows you to combine the tools together basically clearing up like 6 slots, instead of having a sword pick axe shovel hoe and shears you have one item that does everything all of them do.
Potion System
the potion system doesn't add any potions to the game, rather gives you the ability to add them to yourself automatically. You will need to create a muti-block structure called a brazier, which allows you to throw in potions to be added to your character. This opens up a lot of opportunities throughout the mod that will allow you to give yourself potion effects from halfway across the world. the brazier will also be useful in unlocking various things throughout the mod.
Custom Spawners
This is very useful. ok so first things first you are going to somehow craft something that allows you to pick up spawners(not implemented).
next you are going to need to place that spawner into the crafter, dump a bunch of essence into it and create an (unnamed item).
after that you are going to need to get something that allows you to pick up mobs(have to use mirror arcanas method)
then you place the spawner in some structure, place the mob in the structure, use a bunch of energy, and then you have a spawner of that type. You can then configure spawn rates and stuff through expensive upgrades, and even add mobs to the spawner so that it will spawn different mobs with one spawner.
Custom Puppets
Similar to thaumcrafts golems, these are crafted using puppet parts, and can be configured greatly. you can upgrade specific parts of the puppet such as the arms or legs and whatnot to give it different abilities, and change the appearance as well. There needs to be a lot of work in this area to differentiate if from other working concepts like golems, but for now it is a basic idea that will be worked on in the future.
I will be surprised if anyone makes it to the end of this post, but if you managed to do so, congratulations. If you have any opinions, want to help, or anything else, lets begin the discussion!
