The Minecraft Topic

[efaardvark]

The dangers of modding minecraft. 

 

[efaardvark]

So I found a small village with some beachfront property with nice views and built myself a small new outpost/base.  Just kind of messing around because I don't have time to get into big builds but with the new village mechanics I find it kind of fun to quickly clean up and fortify a town and get a simple economy going.

Hidden below are Sun- and Moon-rise pics looking out the window from the newly completed upper level (still using Sildur's shaders and "Steven's Traditional" 64x textures)...
 

Spoiler

 

[efaardvark]

Thought I'd try the "Alacrity" texture pack in minecraft.  I'm not really into fancy textures, preferring my old "Steven's traditional" x64 pack that basically keeps the original esthetic only at a higher resolution.  The alacrity pack got some good reviews however and has a few interesting features so I thought I'd give it a try.
 

Spoiler

My favorite thing about it is the bushiness that it gives plants.  Here's a couple shots of a beach.  Note the trees in the background are distinctly un-blocky.  Also note the sugar cane at the water's edge.

The other interesting feature is the conversion of upside-down stairs to proper arches.  Here's a couple identical scenes, one with Steven's:

and one with Alacrity.  Note the curves!  In Minecraft!  The age of miracles has not passed.   

Alacrity does have a few issues however.  The two biggest that I've noted so far are that I really don't like how it treats the trunks of 2x2 trees (giant spruce for instance) and it dropped my frame rate noticeably.  It also makes the nether look pretty ugly imho, especially the lava.  The highest resolution I could find was x32 too, which is a step down from the x64 pack that I'm used to.  I'm going to keep it for a few days to check it out more thoroughly but at this point I'm thinking I'll probably wind up going back to Stevens.

 

Edited February 1, 2023 by efaardvark

[efaardvark]

So I added bundles to my single-player/test game.  I haven't really experimented with them before this but I'd heard some people loved/hated them so I decided to see for myself.  I think I like them.  They're kind of like a poor man's shulker box.  You make them with 6 rabbit hide and 2 string so they're clearly an early-game item.  Shulker boxes are supposed to be a late/end game item so they're super powerful.  Bundles just seem to be designed to combat the problem of filling up your inventory slots with stacks that only have a few items in them.  You can take those 1- or 2-item stacks of sticks, cobble, iron ore, coal, etc. that seem to accumulate in the early game and put them all (well, up to 64 items per bundle) in a single bundle that only takes up one regular inventory slot.

The mechanics are a bit weird, but I think it is intentional.  Even using bundles you can still only put up to 64 items in a single inventory slot, so bundles don't actually give you any more inventory space.  Items in a bundle can be different items however.  2 sticks, 3 bread, and 2 wooden planks normally takes up 3 inventory slots, even though by themselves these items all stack up to 64 items/slot.  Seem like they should all fit in a single slot, right?  Well, with bundles you can put them all in a single bundle that does only take up one regular slot.  Makes inventory management a lot easier.

The weird bit is that you can only put one stack in the bundle at a time and there's a last-in, first-out constraint that makes items in the bundle harder to access than items in your regular inventory slots.  If the item that you want is the first one that you put in a bundle then you'll have to remove all the other items from the bundle before you get to the one that you want.  This means that items that you want to keep ready access to you'll still want to put in regular inventory slots.  On the other hand, items that you won't be needing to unpack until you get back to base might be good to put in a bundle.

 

 

Spoiler

 

[animechat]

What is best mod for minecraft?

[efaardvark]

50 minutes ago, animechat said:

What is best mod for minecraft?

That depends a lot on how you play.  I had fun with the RLCraft mod pack for a while but it was a pain to set up.  (Also makes the game really hard.)

Usually I play on my brother’s realms server so no server mods possible there and I’m fine with that.  The only mods I use consistently there are a couple visual mods.  Sildur’s shaders and a 64x texture pack called Stevens Traditional.

[efaardvark]

On 2/13/2023 at 6:23 AM, animechat said:

What is best mod for minecraft?

Sorry, I was in a rush and forgot to add the most important mod(s) in my previous post!  If you want to use shaders then you will need either Optifine or Iris.  Even if you don't use shaders or any other mods using one of those two will drastically improve your FPS in minecraft.  (Even on potato PCs.)  I used to recommend Optifine but for my purposes Iris works just as well (or better) and doesn't use as much system resources.  Optifine does have software hooks that Iris doesn't so a lot of mods require Optifine.  I don't run with a lot of mods so I can use Iris.  Most visual mods will work with either.  YMMV.

Some links for convenience..

Iris

Optifine

Sildur's shaders.  I use the "Sildur's Vibrant" version.  I've also been known to use the ProjectLUMA shaders.  LUMA hasn't been updated in a few years but it still works.

Steven's Traditional textures (I use the 64x)

My system specs:

• AMD Ryzen 7 2700X CPU (8/16 cores clocked @ 3.7GHz)
• 32GB RAM
• AMD Radeon RX 6600XT GPU w/8GB RAM
• OS is Ubuntu linux 22.04.1 LTS (aka "Jammy Jellyfish")

(You can probably get away with a lot less cores on the CPU, especially with newer CPUs, and a lot less system RAM.  also, until recently the GPU was an ancient Radeon RX480.  It was about half as powerful as the 6600XT but it worked fine for minecraft using the above mods.)

hth...

Edited February 16, 2023 by efaardvark

[efaardvark]

[efaardvark]

It sounds like 1.20 is going to bring at least one big change.  Netherite gear is now going to require a "Netherite upgrade smithing template" as well as the diamond armor/tool and a netherite ingot to craft.  The template by itself requires 7(!) diamonds and another template to duplicate, making that netherite gear extremely expensive and difficult to obtain.

 

 

[efaardvark]

Pekora is right up there with the "best" - and by that I mean worst - of anime's mad scientists.  Sure it was only chickens THIS time, but remember, she's also got that caged warden in her basement.. and has already "introduced" several of her genmates to it. 

"If you don't try anything dangerous, you won't be able to have a scientific breakthrough."  -  Pekora

 

[efaardvark]

For anyone using the Iris mods for minecraft (i.e Sodium, the popular OptiFine replacement) there's a situation that you might want to take note of.  Apparently curseforge has finally broken so completely that Iris, devs for the popular Sodium shaders mod for MC, has stopped publishing new versions to curseforge.  The last version on curseforge is Iris/sodium 1.6.1 for mc 1.19.4.  Starting with Sodium v 1.6.4 (for mc version 1.20+) this and future versions of Sodium will be published on modrinth.

That in itself isn't a big deal but according to announcements on Iris's discord server apparently Curseforge initially decided to punish the Iris folks by deleting their account, citing wording in Iris's curseforce page that directed downloaders to modrinth for more current versions.  Not only that but curseforge then allowed 3rd parties to create a "new" mod named Sodium and publish it to curseforge.  This was obviously a very dangerous situation as especially with the new version of minecraft there's going to be a whole bunch of people hitting curseforge to dl the latest version of Sodium and not getting the mod they expect.  (This all also applies to other Iris-related mods like lithium btw.)

As I type this the situation seems to have been resolved, but I encountered it and thought it disturbing enough to want to warn people of the potential danger of downloading and installing a mod from a source they didn't expect.  I didn't (and don't) want to get into the gory details here but if you're interested in the background drama/discussion you can take a look at this 'tubie/report on the situation. Also this tweet from the Iris twitter account.  There's also the discussion on the Iris discord server that I mentioned earlier, the invite link to which is on the irisshaders.dev page.

If in doubt, the main Iris page is https://irisshaders.dev/.  Start from there and it should direct you to the proper dl site for the Iris mod(s).

hth...

 

[efaardvark]

What happens when you turn ChatGPT loose in minecraft?
 

 

[efaardvark]

Mob vote: Armadillo, penguin, or crab?

[efaardvark]

To the tune of "We Didn't Start The Fire"...
 
 

 

[efaardvark]

So I thought I'd experiment a bit with Litematica.  Litematica is a fabric mod that lets you place virtual builds in your world.  In survival it doesn't build them for you but in creative it will actually place the blocks.  Pretty handy and since I already have fabric installed for Iris/Sodium and the Distant Horizons mod installation of Litematica is just dropping 2 files in the "mods" folder.

As an experiment I decided to add an area to a town I'm building / fortifying as a base in a survival game.  The newly-created area looks like this in stock MC:

 

For the test I copied an existing house (the one whose roof is barely visible at the far right under the BetterF3 overlay) into a Litematica schematic, then pasted two of the copied schematics into the world.  (Below)  As I said, Litematica won't build things for you in survival, but it will let you place and orient "ghost" copies like this.  The two buildings with line-boxes around them and with a greenish glow to them are the copies.  I rotated one copy around 180 degrees to get the doors on the two copies to face each other.

Once the placement is as desired you can lock the image in place.  The images are slightly transparent and completely virtual.  I mean, everything in MC is virtual, but you can walk through the walls of the placed schematics in-game.  (note this means you can't do things like open doors or climb stairs.)  Then you can go back and place the blocks to "fill in" the schematic with actual blocks. 

 

This mod looks like it'll be pretty useful.  Especially since you can import / export builds from the game.  You can save a schematic, which then appears as a file in the computer.  You can upload this file online just like any other file.  You can also download other peoples' schematic files for placement in your own worlds.  Of course you can also do stuff like build something in a single-player, creative-mode game then save the build as a schematic, and load it back in to a survival world game to recreate it there.

 

Edited February 11, 2024 by efaardvark
litematica link

[efaardvark]

Iris shader support in Distant Horizons is awesome...
 

 

Edited February 17, 2024 by efaardvark

[efaardvark]

So I've been using the distant horizons mod for a while now.  I think it's a keeper.  It really changes the game, especially if you like to explore.  I find I don't get lost nearly so easily for one thing.    Wandering around is a lot easier when you can use distant objects such as mountain peaks for navigation.

The mod doesn't really hurt performance either.  In fact, I find I can boost my FPS since I can drop the built-in render distance into the single digits and let DH take care of the rest without sacrificing anything but a trivial amount of quality in the distant chunks.  For example, as you can see in the screenshots I'm using a built-in render distance of only 8 with the distant horizons mod's render distance set to 512 and I'm still getting >60fps @ 1920x1080 with a x64 texture pack.  I'm using the x64 version of the popular "Faithful" textures.  Actually I've set the DH render distance as high as 2048, though at that point it does create significant performance issues.

My system isn't crazy powerful either.  I've got an 8/16 core CPU from a few years ago (2nd-gen Ryzen 7 2700X) and my GPU is a Radeon RX 6600.

They say a picture is worth 1000 words so check these out...
 

Spoiler

First is the view with DH disabled; basically the minecraft view that everyone is familiar with ..

And here's with DH enabled....

Note the cherry grove in the distance, just above the crosshair...

 

Spoiler

This is a good one for showing the difference in detail between the high detail of the built-in renderer in the foreground and the reduced detail of the DH-rendered blocks in the background.

Again, here's the DH-disabled version to start with..

 

And now the exact same view but with DH enabled... suddenly there's an ocean and mountains!

Note the grass blades and the tree leaves in the foreground vs the more solid blockiness of objects in the distance when I zoom in with the spyglass.  Things like grass and flowers are not rendered, though their color will still modify the color of the rendered block.

 

Finally here's one zoomed-in on an area of transition from built-in renderer to DH-rendered blocks.  Again, note the tree leaves and grass in the bottom part of the frame and the lower details in the upper part.  You can also clearly see where the texture of the stone surface changes.  (Sorry for the blue streaks.. It started raining.  )

[efaardvark]

"Flow" is back.... now with distant horizons!
 

 

[efaardvark]

I can hardly wait until Iris, Distant Horizons, and the shaders API for fabric all hit release status.  Already there's some awesome 'tubies with just the alpha versions.  I'm using it myself in my own games with the "Bliss" shader.  (Bliss is the only one so far with support for the DH's API.)  Minecraft with a 32-chunk render distance was .. ok.  Then MSFT added the height extension to the world and 32 chunks went back to "not enough".  I mean, from a mountaintop at y=250 even a 32-chunk render distance barely gets you to the plains at the base of the mountain.

But with a render distance of hundreds of chunks - and a decent  shader on top - it's like a whole new game.

 

[animechat]

On 4/1/2024 at 1:21 AM, efaardvark said:

I can hardly wait until Iris, Distant Horizons, and the shaders API for fabric all hit release status.  Already there's some awesome 'tubies with just the alpha versions.  I'm using it myself in my own games with the "Bliss" shader.  (Bliss is the only one so far with support for the DH's API.)  Minecraft with a 32-chunk render distance was .. ok.  Then MSFT added the height extension to the world and 32 chunks went back to "not enough".  I mean, from a mountaintop at y=250 even a 32-chunk render distance barely gets you to the plains at the base of the mountain.

But with a render distance of hundreds of chunks - and a decent  shader on top - it's like a whole new game.

 

looks really good

[efaardvark]

Blast from the past...  Has it really been over a decade?

 

[efaardvark]

Just saw an announcement that next official version of Distant Horizons mod for MC has dropped..

Quote

 

"Distant Horizons 2.1 is out, with support for Iris 1.7 and many bug fixes."

• MC 1.20.3, 1.20.4, 1.20.6 support
  • No forge support for 1.20.6 due to Forge compiler issues
  • Added NeoForge support for 1.20.6
• Massive memory decrease, especially at high render distances
  • 1024 at medium can be loaded with 4 GB of memory
• Massive database file size decrease
  • Note: This will only affect new worlds, old databases will be migrated to the new format, but have to be manually vacuumed to shrink their file size.

 

Clearly the devs have been working on efficiency for this release, based on the reduction of memory and database (hard drive) resources necessary.  And now that this version is out we should shortly start to see much broader shader support as well since the API has been bumped to 2.0.0.

Only thing missing now is a server version so low-LOD (level of detail) versions of terrain that is distant but visible can be provided to the client without the player having to actually go there.  That will be tricky to implement without potentially bogging down the server with generating terrain.  I'm not holding my breath while waiting but I'm glad that the devs are working on it.  Something to look forward to anyway.

Also this version is dropping Forge support.  Only NeoForge and Fabric are supported going forward.  Not going to get into the whole Forge vs NeoForge thing here but I expect we'll see more of this sort of thing going forward.

 

Edited June 8, 2024 by efaardvark

[efaardvark]

State of the art visual experience in MC these days..

 

[efaardvark]

Creaking mobs and pale gardens in the new snapshot.

 

[efaardvark]

Dynamic trees has been updated to 1.20.1 and Distant Horizons now works with neoforge.  So now you can get both mods working in the same game.  Pretty cool.