Modpack Concept discussion: Shattered Lands

[GrimJahk]

After a brief series of exchanges in a different thread these concepts started to come together into an interesting possibility:

Islands map over a void

Materials over the void have a chance to decay based on material and distance from player (durability dependent. Wither proof will not decay, wood = poof)

Condensed Essence (or CE for short) is a proposed material that is needed for growth/expansion

NEW Features to discuss added at top of list:

Silverfish infestations (per island possibility?)
Themed islands (mob spawners, volcanic, slime, spawners, toxic, etc.)
Miniature shielded zones that may collapse when that core (crystal CE) is removed
Low entry mining tools that either produce slowly or wear out fast
Sporadic mini Islands all over the place <1 chunk in size to be farmed for CE?
Large Islands with a 1:50 spawn rate (10+ chunk diameter, but LOW CE spawn)
Average Island size 3-5 chunk radius
1-3 chunks to nearest island
No flight, Teleporters and other travel is fine
Normal ore gen
Normal Biomes (except Ocean)
Bottom of each Island that is directly above the void is bedrock

After starting this I thought of a new idea as well

Repurpose Ex Nihilo's system to handle the "CE" that is added into world gen.​

• No more relying on the sieve to get standard mats
• Explore to get CE
• Sieve CE to get additional resources and Binding Essence
• Binding essence is one of the early goals, as It is used to make decay proof bridges

I want more thoughts and Ideas for this, I will add them in and hopefully someone will take the concept and make it a reality

 

[GrimJahk]

One of the original triggers to this:

I'd like to one day see a skyblock that isn't so void. More of a sky island pack. None of this sifting nonsense. But actual world gen woth ore and maybe even dungeons

You'd have your start island with the tree, the water and your lava source. But you'd have in the distance sparce but sizeable chunks of ore gen and mini floating forests with animal spawners every 250-500 blocks (what ever distance that will make it feel expansive).
The ore deposits would be rather large, sizeable enough to warrant quarrieing. I'd say the smallest will have dimensions of 5x5x5 the chunks may or may not be just pure ore, maybe a mix of richness.

Not sure what mods could do a sky dungeon well though, was thinking maybe RogueLike Dungeons could do it but they generate rather unpredictably and might look like a hot mess.

I would make sure open block gliders and that spring board mod where added for some neat early mid game aerial travel. Perhaps controlling the use of jetpacks (removeing them or making their energy cost prohibitive for long distance) and requireing the use of Archemedies Airships for propper long distance air travel. Of course that mod's been known to be a buggy mess so it might be better to just allow jetpacks. But if that's no longer true bring on the air ships.

But a Skyblock that was more then 'sift to success'. I'd consider doing myself but it feels like quite a time investment. Agrarian skies 2 tried to add exploration but it kinda fell flat.

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[GrimJahk]

I think this would be a key to making that world work interestingly for me. Bonus if the bridges "break" somehow if they're not made out of Special Material X, so that you have to expand at a measured pace.

(Dunno how I'd do the breakage. Maybe meteors fall constantly between the islands and smash non-material-x to pieces)

 

[Pyure]

If you really want multiple islands, and you want people to be able to build on them (even tiny things like miners or infrastructure), something is needed to "stabilize" a given area.

 

[GrimJahk]

If you really want multiple islands, and you want people to be able to build on them (even tiny things like miners or infrastructure), something is needed to "stabilize" a given area.

The islands themselves would be stable, because the decay is from Y 0 on up until it hits bedrock/decay proof blocks.

Early on you would be forced to bridge to expand since you'd not have enough CE to build your own island. since the decay would be triggered by being too far from a bridge, close islands strung together would be viable still.

And by decay I'm thinking a slower version of the vanilla leaf decay mechanic. So, if you travel too far for a short period of time, only a few bits might need replacing, not the entire bridge

 

[Pyure]

Oh I get it. So long as you don't try to build "below" an island (or beside it for that matter) you'd be fine.

Which is kinda neato because for creative purposes, it would be neat if some islands were a bit porous: vertical holes you'd have to work around.

 

[GrimJahk]

Exactly! Possibilities are endless.

One ultimate goal possibility: Wand of Bedrock placement...

 

[Someone Else 37]

This sounds like it could be a neat idea.

I'm not sure how much I like the "stuff decays unless it's above something decayproof" idea, though. Perhaps a better option would be for stuff to decay unless there's a certain amount of blocks nearby. Islands would spawn with a great deal of stone, so they wouldn't decay. But a bridge built out into open space would, since a bridge (especially a thin one) would be far away from any large mass.

Then again, that sounds like it'd be a heck of a lot of work to calculate. Hrm.

Returning to the idea of meteors that periodically spawn and smash things, perhaps each island could generate with some kind of meteor-repelling forcefield block at its center. Building with range of the field generator would be safe, but (of course) bridges in the space between islands wouldn't be. And eventually you'd be able to craft your own forcefield blocks (or steal them from other islands?). Would be an easy target for griefers on servers, though, so... hmm.

Another problem with the "islands generate with bedrock underneath" idea is that quarrying an island would leave a huge bowl of bedrock that would just look awful. Maybe, instead of bedrock, either an invisible and intangible decay-proof block of some kind (maybe even at the bottom of the world), or another decay-proof block that quarries would either collect or destroy. It could even be the most concentrated ore of Concentrated Essence. I like that idea- strip-mining the undersides of islands for materials, dooming everything above to fall into the Void. Heck, you could work that into the lore of the pack: the world used to look pretty normal, but then something happened and the world kind of just fell apart, except for the CE and the things it supported. So the islands mark the locations of the original veins of CE, weathered over time.

Speaking of stuff falling into the Void, rather than just having blocks vanish, they could be turned into falling sand entities that would actually fall into the Void. That'd be a nice visual touch.

One thing I'd like to point out, though, is that if you guys put this together in 1.8 or 1.9, it'd probably be a good idea to leave out Psi, or at least disable the Conjure Block and Conjure Block Sequence tricks if that's even possible. Free instant bridges that you don't care if they vanish because they're free, and can go any distance because your Psi energy refills faster than it takes to walk along them? Probably gamebreaking.

In fact, Psi has quite a few ways of emulating flight that could be abused in this setting. Blink combined with Place Block or Conjure Block to create an instant platform under your feet; Push/Pull the block under your feet and Add Motion to yourself to stay on top of it, etc...

Also worth noting that Psi is able to transfer your progression from world to world, although it's not like it's hard to progress through the mod from the beginning if you know what you're doing.

 

[GrimJahk]

Good feedback! I only know 1.7.10 so I think along those lines. I LOVE the "changes to sand and falls" concept!! (except the part where decay happens outside 65-128 blocks distance... unlikely to see it, would have to change implementation somehow)

Sounds to me like Psi can break ANY pack.

Most quarry tools I know stop at bedrock, but I like the concept that more or denser CE is found further down. Can also have two versions of ores, regular and dense Dense requiring advanced mining tools for increased rewards...

Better yet, let's steal from other games and have ore veins that actually mean something. A single ore block, when mined with tools drops an amount of broken ore of that type, (can follow the rest of ex nihilo path from there to get just a bit extra) The more advanced the tool, the more "Broken" drops. Each naturally spawned ore is good for, say, 40-60 broken ore. Early progression is to get automation in place to do that for you. So, you can set the mining rig to work on one ore while you look for more or other types.

One way to balance "Bowl" exposure is that CE or Bedrock exposed to sunlight turns to energized glowstone and floats away... ;-)

 

[Someone Else 37]

I think there's a mod that adds ore deposits that, when mined, drop a normal ore block and instantly replace themselves with an ore deposit with slightly less ore in it, so you can mine it over and over again until it runs out. A bit like the ore veins in Fortresscraft Evolved, except I don't there's an equivalent of the ore extractor. Might only be in 1.8; I don't know for sure.

You might be able to encourage the use of Buildcraft mining wells one way or another. Maybe by having ores tend to spawn in vertical shafts, cheapening its recipe, and/or starting the player off with one?

 

[Celestialphoenix]

This sounds like a pretty cool excuse to play around with the 'light bridge' from Rotarycraft (and the block ram)

Two ideas I really like is the CE/mineral deposit holding up the islands, and the various material types collapsing when exposed to void/sunlight.

Pyure's porous islands are also fairly neat, it'll make a interesting exploration feature (island collapsing as you exploit it)

Building into this- a rare crystalline form of CE, which keeps the lowest layers stable.
If any of these crystals are damaged/removed, the lowest layer turns to stone and fails. (at an accelerated rate?)​

Also wondering if silverfish could do something interesting?

 

[GrimJahk]

I added a few thoughts to the list above.

Thinking seed rates for Islands(chunks) Large(10):Regular(~4):Tiny(<1) 1:50:200

 

[Azzanine]

Not sure about this concentrated essence stuff, if I had Ex nilio at all id merely relegate it to dirt production and a convenient early game option for gravel and sand. Maybe gun powder, bonemeal, redstone and tree/crop seeds.

I was thinking of ore spawning in different ways. Like you'd see a huge chunk of iron 100 or so blocks away with small speckleing of nickel, with long veins of nether quartz spekled with gold through out.
Coal would be low, just above diamond level coal will have a chance for a vein of diamond inside it.

The void withering seems like a neat challenge but a more natural and convenient method of gaugeing height would be beneficial Rather than using F3 all the time.

I also like the idea of having IE be the central tech mod. I can imagine little floating lslands with little power poles joining nearby islands together.
Actually was the skyhook feature ever properly implemented? That thing sounds like it would be made for this type of hypothetical pack.

As for teleportation, im not 100% sure I'd want that but I suppose having to travel by glider or airship might get old quick. So it could be an end game perk. Not sure if I want tesseracts either but to be frank it might get a bit tedious to transport items from island to island and people love their centralized power. I'd love for IE power poles to be the premier option for power distribution but chunk loading can be a bitch with that sometimes. Also there's that odd bug where your cables dissappear.

As for Psi; such a neat mod. However it suffers the same drawback ComputerCraft does by being way too powerful and able to do anything. It would be hard to balance around. You could only get more broken if you allowed a turtle to use a CAD. Would subvert a lot of the challenge.

Mods I'd like to see in;
Magic:
Thaumcraft, with Automagy, Thaumic Escoteria' Witching Gadgets maybe Thaumic Tinkers (kami stuff might want to be controlled) also Thaumic Horizons.
Botania.
Blood Magic and maybe its few addons.
Maybe witchery.

Tech:
Flaxbeards Steam Power.
Immersive Engineering with Immersive Integration.
Pneumaticraft.
BuildCraft and it's entire suite.
Maybe RF tools with its teleportation controlled.
Maybe AE2 and or logistics pipes.
Open Computers, it's a slightly more tiered version of CC.
Project Red.
A Tech mod I'd like to explore would Be Magneticraft
Id also like a frame mod of sorts.


Power gen im not certain about, probably a tweaked Big Reactors and or that Flux Crystal one from mcjlty guy.
Might want to think about power gen more.

Quality of life mods:
Open blocks. (Mainly for the glider)
Extra Utilities.
Storage Drawers.
JABBA or some sort of dolly replacement.
Hopper ducts for early automation.
Agricraft.
Pam's Harvestcraft
Possibly a point of contention but I'd like to see Spice of Life, but some people hate such mods. I'd tweak the config to be a bit more forgiving. I also WOULDN'T pair it with hunger overhaul.

I'd also like if it would avoid single block solutions. Hence why I avoided listing EIO and MFR even TE. But this is just me.




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[Someone Else 37]

Ooh, light bridges. I like it- those are pretty endgame, so no worries about balance there.

Also, Railcraft has those laser tracks as a cheaper alternative, with the downside that they require you to be in a minecart.

I like the idea of the only thing holding the islands up being allergic to sunlight. Maybe the bottom layer of the islands could be made of a form of CE ore that is decay-proof, but sublimates when exposed to sunlight or if there's not an even denser CE crystal nearby. These CE crystals, in turn, would sublimate when exposed to air. So the CE ore protects the crystals, and the chunk of stone making up the bulk of the island protects the CE ore.

Maybe this CE stuff should be a liquid at standard temperature and pressure. The most common ores have pockets of liquid CE embedded in solid rock that would be released when the stuff is mined, so you'd need some way to collect it. Silktouch and a RoC grinder would do it most effectively (assuming that Reika coded the thing to be able to produce fluids other than lubricant), but you'd need a way to collect the liquid CE earlygame.

The undersides of the islands would be cooler by virtue of being shielded from sunlight by a thick layer of solid rock, and so would be just barely cold enough for CE to crystallize. When exposed to sunlight, the crystalline CE would warm up, melt, and drip into the Void, thus destabilizing the island.

But that idea doesn't really leave room for the crystal-nodes-keep-sparse-crystal-from-decaying-and-sparse-crystals-shield-the-nodes idea. Hm.

Deep Resonance is an idea for crystals, though. Maybe this CE stuff is actually Resonating Fluid? Some machine could take this fluid, centrifuge it, and spit out random metal dusts. Could work.

 

[GrimJahk]

I think teleporters are fair game since you have to get to the island first, set it up once there, and later game, it's reasonable that cost is less of a challenge than getting there. Flight makes exploration trivial.

Another (just had it) thought: Fog of war. Island details are blocked out with haze that fades once you you are within 15 blocks of it.

 

[RyokuHasu]

Sounds like Hardcore Ender Expansion, but in the Overworld. Hey there's an Idea, keep The End with your theme and put in Hardcore Ender Expansions

I really like the sound of this pack, it could be a lot of fun!

 

[GrimJahk]

The thing I think I like the most about this pack concept is that many of the ideas we toss out are either new twists on what is available or new concepts that will require new mods to be made.

I have to admit that I am not a coder, I'm more the Architect, designing tools to do what is needed and letting the programmers work their magic.

 

[Pyure]

The thing I think I like the most about this pack concept is that many of the ideas we toss out are either new twists on what is available or new concepts that will require new mods to be made.

I have to admit that I am not a coder, I'm more the Architect, designing tools to do what is needed and letting the programmers work their magic.

Packmaking isn't about coding. If you want your pack to become a reality, you don't need to know anything about code to make it happen. You just need to do a lot of homework chasing down config stuff.

 

[GrimJahk]

Packmaking isn't about coding. If you want your pack to become a reality, you don't need to know anything about code to make it happen. You just need to do a lot of homework chasing down config stuff.

See... you lost me already... what is this "Homework" thing you refer to?

Kidding, but stuff creating new functionality, like: Sky allergy conversion to energized glowstone, void exposure allergy/decay, non-harvestable blocks with their own durability, and even creating new ores/blocks, will require someone with actual coding experience.

As far as "just modifying configs" goes, you need enough of a basic grasp of what that config is telling the core program... otherwise all you are doing is changing spawn rates or colors. (or god knows what else... I just had an image of islands made of sticky pistons spawning with Redstone blocks as ore and... BOOM!)

I can't get my server to run on the same desk without lag. Trying to build a modpack through "modifying configs" when I'm barely at the "Hello World" stage is one of those 5 year projects I have no illusion of being willing to take on.

My goal here, as I hinted at in the OP, is to create enough of a buzz that one of our more experienced modder/packbuilder people takes an interest. I will be more than happy to continue to contribute thoughts and concepts, but also willing to cede control to someone that can actually make this a reality. (not that I control anything, I just want to get the ball rolling)

 

[Pyure]

Honestly I wouldn't try to encourage/suggest doing this with any new functionality. If current mods don't support the ideas, you might as well toss the ideas.

The impression I got from your comments was that there were already mods that caused blocks to disintegrate under certain circumstances. That alone, if it exists, would allow you to assemble this pack with the core motifs intact.