Why do almost all modpacks have to use BoP?

[Fortanono]

NOTE: This is mainly about official FTB and listed 3rd party packs. Other packs don't have any problem using new world generation, but of course, that's a different story

So, I like Biomes O' Plenty, and many others do, but I feel it's a bit overdone. The FTB team uses that in every modpack as their "safe choice", except for Horizons, which was literally designed to showcase new mods. And that's fine for most people. It's a great mod. Each biome not only has its own foliage color, but also water color and sky color. Nether biomes are great; it's the only mod that knows how to do that. But it is overdone IMO. There are a bunch of amazing biome mods that get the boot because of this. And what's the difference between this and Thermal Expansion? While tech and magic mods can be piled on indefinitely, there can really only be one world generation mod. So they're gonna go with the most popular naturally.

But as I said, there are so many good biome mods that people need to see. Stuff like Enhanced Biomes, for example. Enhanced Biomes adds as many biomes as Biomes O' Plenty. The difference? Each one is carefully crafted to be beautiful. Nothing like the Marsh or Steppe of BoP. And besides that, it adds new types of stone (which I recommend putting in small pockets via config - modded ore will stand out otherwise), and for the first time ever, dirt! Only thing is that it needs permission, but we're talking FTB here. It'll only be a minor hindrance to ask for permission to use in FTB packs and then you're done! I bet the owner would be psyched!

But that is only the tip of the iceberg. For example, Highlands adds a bunch of new biomes, it is more popular than EB but it's still not seen in packs. ATG is cool, as is RWG (which you did use in Horizons, I'll give you that). And if you want good fantasy biomes, try Ridiculous World. I want to see stuff like that in the future to distinguish some of your kitchen sink packs from each other.

 

[JunpakuKarasu]

What do you mean "There can only be one world generation mod"? I used to play with both BoP and ExtraBiomes together all the time

 

[rhn]

Ehm you seem to be confusing "Biome and world gen mods" and "just world gen mods" here. Mods like ATG and RWG does not actually add biomes, it instead just supplies the world gen. Both of them are however compatible with the biomes with BoP, EBXL and more. And that brings up another thing: You can only have one world gen mod active, but you can have many biome mods at the time. FTB Monster did this by coming shipped and configged with ATG, BoP and Highlands. You could choose any which one you wanted as World gen and get Biomes from the other(though with certain restrictions).

Why FTB packs now only come shipped with BoP? The FTB packs are an exercise in compromise. By default the packs need to cater to as many peoples tastes as possible and at the same time run as smooth/be as bug free as possible. Complex world gens is a big performance hit for many people and it is therefore obvious something that would be left out. If some people want it, it is fairly easy to add it them selves. But as standard BoP is a great compromise for a decent variety in biomes, with uncomplicated world gen that does not impact performance too much. As an added bonus BoP is pretty well covered by most texture packs.

What do you mean "There can only be one world generation mod"? I used to play with both BoP and ExtraBiomes together all the time

There can only be one active world gen(the one you choose when creating the world), but the world gen chosen can be configured to use Biomes from other mods.

 

[Fortanono]

There can only be one active world gen(the one you choose when creating the world), but the world gen chosen can be configured to use Biomes from other mods.

You make some good points, but still, FTB doesn't add new biome mods. I just feel it's time for change in general.

 

[sgbros1]

I use EBXL more than BoP because it seems to be less laggy.

I mean, the redwood trees are awesome but deadly at the same time.

 

[SpitefulFox]

I like BoP because it has a lot of "fantasy" biomes in it compared to the other biome mods. But I guess that should be obvious since I made Ridiculous World.

I preferred BoP to ExtraBiomes even back when ExtraBiomes was the standard biome mod in packs, but nowadays I rarely play with it since my computer is really weak and BoP demands a LOT of resources to include. :/

 

[Fortanono]

I like BoP because it has a lot of "fantasy" biomes in it compared to the other biome mods. But I guess that should be obvious since I made Ridiculous World.

Yeah, I guess.

I do like the giant flower biomes.

 

[JunpakuKarasu]

Also, as someone who grew up in the midst of wetlands and marshes, I take offense at your jab at the BoP Marsh biome. Marshes are meant to be messy and wild and therein lies their beauty. (Enhanced Biomes' ""marsh"" is way too pretty and plain, eww)

There can only be one active world gen(the one you choose when creating the world), but the world gen chosen can be configured to use Biomes from other mods.

Yeah, that's why it's 'used to', I've become too lazy and I didn't have enough incentive to go through the trouble, lol.
But looking through their biomes again, I've remembered why I loved ExtraBiomes enough to manually put the mod in if it wasn't present, so I'll probably go back to using both.

 

[epidemia78]

I always preferred Highlands myself. But its not been managed too well in the current version and full of bugs. So now I dont use any biome mods at all and it helps with performance tremendously.

 

[rhn]

I always preferred Highlands myself. But its not been managed too well in the current version and full of bugs. So now I dont use any biome mods at all and it helps with performance tremendously.

Highlands is great(if nothing else then for its biomes), but sadly it is not covered by Soartex Which kinda ruins it for me... (which is sad because it is not their fault)

 

[GreenZombie]

Ehm you seem to be confusing "Biome and world gen mods" and "just world gen mods" here. Mods like ATG and RWG does not actually add biomes, it instead just supplies the world gen. Both of them are however compatible with the biomes with BoP, EBXL and more. And that brings up another thing: You can only have one world gen mod active, but you can have many biome mods at the time. FTB Monster did this by coming shipped and configged with ATG, BoP and Highlands. You could choose any which one you wanted as World gen and get Biomes from the other(though with certain restrictions).

Why FTB packs now only come shipped with BoP? The FTB packs are an exercise in compromise. By default the packs need to cater to as many peoples tastes as possible and at the same time run as smooth/be as bug free as possible. Complex world gens is a big performance hit for many people and it is therefore obvious something that would be left out. If some people want it, it is fairly easy to add it them selves. But as standard BoP is a great compromise for a decent variety in biomes, with uncomplicated world gen that does not impact performance too much. As an added bonus BoP is pretty well covered by most texture packs.


There can only be one active world gen(the one you choose when creating the world), but the world gen chosen can be configured to use Biomes from other mods.

Sadly, there can also only be one Biome provider at a time as well. Not as a hard, but more as a practical limit. Other claims of success notwithstanding, the limited space available for biome ids - as well as the somewhat horrid config that the biome mods ship with by default means that any attempt to mix and match is pretty much doomed.

This is a bit of an overstatement. If you don't mind the occasional biome popping up in the wrong place then go ahead.

If, however, you do, then you need to go into the config for all the biome adding mods - because FTB default configs don't cater for this - and ensure that - other than blatant id overlaps, that special care is taken with biome ids that are below / above 128.

Ever biome id below 128, that can generate in the overworld, either needs to have either an empty slot at id+128, OR have an acceptable substitute, because the minecraft world generator WILL pick the high biome ID to generate -M biomes if its not null.

Which really means that mods like BoP, EBXL etc need NEED to change their default configs to pair up their biome id's as this would effectively almost double the amount of biome id's available.

 

[GreenZombie]

I'm giving you a like, but please explain that again in more detail. I had to tinker quite a bit to get biome conflicts sorted out when I made my world, but I am starting to think I've caused some of them to not exist.

Ok. So, biome ids can be between 0 and 255.

As we can see here http://minecraft.gamepedia.com/Biome Minecraft reserves 0-39, and 128 to 167. Note that all the biomes from 128 to 167 are associated with a biome id that is exactly 128 lower, and are usually named <something> M.

So the basic logic of the minecraft world generator is it will generate terrain with biomes in the range 0-127. Then it will do a random check to see if it should generate a "M" varaint, and if so, add 128 to the biome id it is creating and check if that exists.

This means that if mod "a" adds a biome at 40 that is supposed to generate in the overworld, and mod "b" adds a biome at 168 that is NOT supposed to generate in the overworld, it will still randomly occur in the overworld whenever minecraft started placing biome 40 and decided to promote it to the M variant.

We can either react to this by not assigning biomes above 128 at all. Which really reduces the number of available biomes.

OR we can, given a set of mods with biomes that may or may not spawn in the overworld - assign the non overworld biomes below 128, and the overworld biomes above 128. i.e. Twilight Forest could be mapped to 40-80 and EBXL could be 168-208, as the EBXL biomes are already above 128 minecraft wont try and substitue them, and as the TF biomes don't generate in the overworld they won't be a problem.

But, if/when you run out of large biome ranges that don't generate in the overworld, Then you need to take your remaining overworld biomes and pair them up. Pair biome 81 "some kind of desert" with biome 209 "some other kind of desert".

 

[Azzanine]

Yeah, the necessity of biome mods has been lessend as vanilla biomes keep getting supplemented.
When I make an instance with BoP I disable like 2/3 of the biomes. Marshes, deadwood forests, crags you know the fugly annoying to traverse biomes.
My latest instance only has 120 mods probably less if you discount moduals as separate mods. I've also went without biome mods and find the world diverse enough to not get bored.

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[jordsta95]

Yeah, the necessity of biome mods has been lessend as vanilla biomes keep getting supplemented.
When I make an instance with BoP I disable like 2/3 of the biomes. Marshes, deadwood forests, crags you know the fugly annoying to traverse biomes.
My latest instance only has 120 mods probably less if you discount moduals as separate mods. I've also went without biome mods and find the world diverse enough to not get bored.

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I find that the vanilla biomes aren't enough... and this is coming from someone who doesn't build for aesthetics.
But I cannot stand BoP. Poison ivy annoys me (the wither one more so), the flesh in the nether (it's useless), the ore gen it has (again, useless), half of the biomes/stuff it adds are unoriginal/boring, and the lag with it installed isn't worth it for the 2 or 3 biomes that are half decent.
EBXL or Highlands are probably the 2 I'd choose. I like the trees in EBXL and the actual world gen of Highlands. But I would be fine to part with one of them, if it meant not using crappy BoP.
The main reason I dislike BoP more than ever now, is because when trying to make an infinity server, and removing BoP and the mods that depend on it (Bibliowoods BoP), you aren't able to start the server (or at least I couldn't get mine to start), so I got ticked off with it beyond my usual "I don't like this mod"

 

[Azzanine]

I hardly noticed Highlands biomes when I used it, probably didn't set my world to work with it or it was incompatible with ATG.

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[rhn]

I hardly noticed Highlands biomes when I used it, probably didn't set my world to work with it or it was incompatible with ATG.

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I think there was a short time between 1.6 and 1.7 where ATG had limited compatibility with other mods. But in 1.6 and now it is fully compatible with Highlands. In the new version it should happen out of the box.

 

[Azzanine]

Not in the versions of ATG I used recently.

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[rhn]

Not in the versions of ATG I used recently.

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/Shrug

Mod compatibility and issues IMPORTANT:

ATG 0.9.0+ is NOT compatible with worlds generated in 0.3.0 and earlier due to changes in biome allocation and the removal of plateaus as distinct biomes.


ATG is incompatible with Better World Generation, though frankly why you would have both at once is quite beyond me.


Biome conflics are possible and happen silently, but all biome IDs are changeable in the configuration file, along with the ATG world type. The defaults are:


World id 9 Biome ids 1.6: 150-159 Biome ids 1.7+: 141-148


Twilight Forest will cause a conflict out of the box, so please make sure that if you use it, you change the biome IDs in either mod so they don't collide.


ATG is supported by directly by EBXL and Highlands, and includes small compatibility modules for Buildcraft's oil biomes and TC4's magical forest. This means their biomes will appear by default in the generator config, but you can add your own or make any changes that you wish.


A preconfigured generator.cfg for Biomes'O'Plenty can be found here.


All mods which add non-biome terrain generation features such as Thaumcraft, Buildcraft, IC2 and so forth work as expected, only mods that add whole new biomes require config modification. Buildcraft's oil biomes will spawn in the world, but they're rare, so keep your eyes peeled!

http://www.minecraftforum.net/forum...mods/1291067-atg-alternate-terrain-generation

 

[Fortanono]

Also, as someone who grew up in the midst of wetlands and marshes, I take offense at your jab at the BoP Marsh biome. Marshes are meant to be messy and wild and therein lies their beauty. (Enhanced Biomes' ""marsh"" is way too pretty and plain, eww)

Okay, sorry. It was my opinion.

 

[jordsta95]

I hardly noticed Highlands biomes when I used it, probably didn't set my world to work with it or it was incompatible with ATG.

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Well TBF highlands doesn't add many "obvious" biomes. A lot of highland biomes are biomes that are essentially vanilla biomes on steroids.
But I believe highlands does have it's own world gen option (as BoP does)... which is another thing that ticks me off. I understand it's a thing you can enable if you want it... however, I'd much rather that it be a config option, not a world gen option, because it means you sometimes can't have 2 biome mods working together