Mod Pack Ideas - low-end system

[netmc]

I was showing my nephew Thaumcraft just the other day, and he was blown away by it. He hasn't played much modded minecraft since 1.5. I tried giving him the pack I was playing, but it was too much for his laptop to handle. I will probably set up a server for us to take on a lot of the back end load, but still wondering what I can do to lighten the system requirements.

My modpack was built around thaumcraft and botania along with some dungeon mods (gravestone, dungeon pack, hardcore ender expansion) and twilight forest. I also have a few little other tweaks like deadly world and lava monsters. Any thoughts or guidance on paring down the mod list? I assume, the fewer mods the better, but some can be a little bit tougher on a low end system than others. Any suggestions?

Edit:

Mod list for 1.7.10:

Automagy
Bibliocraft
Botania
Carpenter's Blocks
ChickenChunks
Chisel
Craftable Horse Armor
Damage Indicators
Deadly World
Dungeon Pack
Forbidden Magic
Gravestone
Growthcraft
Hardcore Ender Expansion
Haycraft
Hopper Ducts
InfiniBows
Inventory Tweaks
Iron Chests
Jabba
Journeymap
Lava Monsters
Natura
NEI
ObsidianPlates
OpenBlocks
Primitive Mobs
Storage Drawers
Thaumcraft
Thaumic Exploration
Thaumic Tinkerer
The Twilight Forest
Zan's Minimap


I will probably pull Journeymap in favor of Zan's or REI, but not sure what else I should strip out and remove.

 

[PhoenixSmith]

Is this a 1.7.10 pack? If so FastCraft is almost a neccesity for non gaming pcs. Thats a pretty small pack actually, so I would assume it's size is not the problem.

Also-

 

[ljfa]

And no Iron Chest. Wow, are you really going for walls of double chests and barrels?

But apart from that it looks OK.

 

[MacAisling]

Journeymap, the warp effects from Thaumcraft, & having too many mobs spawning all hurt my computer's performance. So I'd say at least remove Jouneymap & set the config for Thaumcraft to wuss mode. I can run with Gravestone mod installed, but can't explore the dungeon complex unless I'm in peaceful.

This is all in single player, I have no idea how running with a separate server would effect performance.

I don't use any of the mods that just want to kill me before I have a chance to do anything, so no advice on those. The only other thing that really gives me trouble is IC2exp.

People with gaming computers seem to complain when their fps drops below 30 or so, but for me 8-15 fps is playable as long as the tps is ok.

 

[netmc]

Journeymap, the warp effects from Thaumcraft, & having too many mobs spawning all hurt my computer's performance. So I'd say at least remove Jouneymap & set the config for Thaumcraft to wuss mode. I can run with Gravestone mod installed, but can't explore the dungeon complex unless I'm in peaceful.

This is all in single player, I have no idea how running with a separate server would effect performance.

I don't use any of the mods that just want to kill me before I have a chance to do anything, so no advice on those. The only other thing that really gives me trouble is IC2exp.

People with gaming computers seem to complain when their fps drops below 30 or so, but for me 8-15 fps is playable as long as the tps is ok.

I'm with you on the fps. My old system I used to play on regularly got 8-15 fps. It reached almost 20fps with optifine. I just had to be careful with how many machines and microblocks I used in an area as too many would drop me down to an unplayable 2-4fps.

I have already removed gravestone, deadly world, lava monsters, and primitive mobs. I'm thinking about adding in open blocks though for the gravestone it offers as well as the sleeping bag. It has a few fun and useful blocks that I don't think will change the game play much.

And no Iron Chest. Wow, are you really going for walls of double chests and barrels?

But apart from that it looks OK.

I will be adding in iron chests along with storage drawers. I found having just the regular size chests and barrels in my current world a bit too limiting. Not to mention, sorting golems don't see double chests as a single storage location, but instead as the two they really are. It presented a few issues using double chests with golems.

I currently have the natura redwood trees disabled. I found that even with my newer computer (still several years old), generating the trees in single player lagged out everything for 20-30 seconds. This resulted in several deaths if it was near dusk and/or enemies around when the trees generated. Playing on a server didn't generate the same type of lag. Everything worked fine. I really like the redwood trees, and since I will likely be playing with a server, the generation lag shouldn't be an issue, so I may re-enable them.

Can anyone confirm the use of fastcraft with the latest forge? I've seen some posts that recommend having it, and yet others that say it is no longer needed with the latest forge versions.

[updated original post to reflect the mod changes]

Edit: Yes, this is 1.7.10.

Edit 2: Does anyone have thoughts on Zombie Awareness? With the removal of several of the dungeon/mob add-ons, I think it might be kinda interesting to add a mechanic like this into the pack. Not sure if this will create too much overhead however (or if it will be enjoyable for myself and my nephew.)

 

[MacAisling]

Now that I'm looking at your list to see what's in it instead of what might cause problems, I see it's all magic & no tech. Good way to force yourself through the Thaumcraft early game grind.

 

[PhoenixSmith]

Now that I'm looking at your list to see what's in it instead of what might cause problems, I see it's all magic & no tech. Good way to force yourself through the Thaumcraft early game grind.

No tech... I don't think I am familiar with this concept of which you speak...

Spoiler: Whaaaaaaa......

 

[Hambeau]

I'm with you on the fps. My old system I used to play on regularly got 8-15 fps. It reached almost 20fps with optifine. I just had to be careful with how many machines and microblocks I used in an area as too many would drop me down to an unplayable 2-4fps.

I have already removed gravestone, deadly world, lava monsters, and primitive mobs. I'm thinking about adding in open blocks though for the gravestone it offers as well as the sleeping bag. It has a few fun and useful blocks that I don't think will change the game play much.



I will be adding in iron chests along with storage drawers. I found having just the regular size chests and barrels in my current world a bit too limiting. Not to mention, sorting golems don't see double chests as a single storage location, but instead as the two they really are. It presented a few issues using double chests with golems.

I currently have the natura redwood trees disabled. I found that even with my newer computer (still several years old), generating the trees in single player lagged out everything for 20-30 seconds. This resulted in several deaths if it was near dusk and/or enemies around when the trees generated. Playing on a server didn't generate the same type of lag. Everything worked fine. I really like the redwood trees, and since I will likely be playing with a server, the generation lag shouldn't be an issue, so I may re-enable them.

Can anyone confirm the use of fastcraft with the latest forge? I've seen some posts that recommend having it, and yet others that say it is no longer needed with the latest forge versions.

[updated original post to reflect the mod changes]

Edit: Yes, this is 1.7.10.

Edit 2: Does anyone have thoughts on Zombie Awareness? With the removal of several of the dungeon/mob add-ons, I think it might be kinda interesting to add a mechanic like this into the pack. Not sure if this will create too much overhead however (or if it will be enjoyable for myself and my nephew.)

Fastcraft works on many systems, but be advised... a typo was found a couple of weeks ago, apparently in the forge code that caused thousands of calculations instead of hundreds with certain blocks. The issue has been fixed in the absolute latest version of Forge, so Fastcraft may not be needed.

 

[netmc]

Now that I'm looking at your list to see what's in it instead of what might cause problems, I see it's all magic & no tech. Good way to force yourself through the Thaumcraft early game grind.

It is kinda nice to focus making a world with just one or two main core mods. Botania and Thaumcraft (plus add-ons) both can accomplish just about anything, and together, I don't think there is anything they can't do. I've noticed that when I have many mods in a pack, I don't always go through the mod in its entirety. I miss out on some of the more quirky and less used aspects of a mod. (Like the arcane ear.) With my most recent playthough of Thaumcraft, I would research 3-5 items, then go make use of them, or work on general base construction. It didn't seem quite so tedious then. The really good stuff requires a trip to the nether, so often it is playing mainly vanilla up to that point anyhow.

 

[netmc]

Thanks for the help and recommendations. This list of mods has worked perfectly. I have a server sey up with this and we were both able to get on and start playing late last night.