World Instability and Forge 4.2

Sorry for not updating the blog recently. I have been very busy (and forgetful) and not thought to keep everything bouncing.

I have been streaming over at twitch.tv/xcompwiz, as well as present on the IRC channel and even on MineTV, so there has been news. 😛 Just not here.

At the moment Mystcraft is being tested for balance. More specifically, I have added a whole new system to handle world instability in Mystcraft Ages. Now there is more than just the well known decay effect (which from now on will be “black decay”). There are lots of new mechanics like worlds with poisonous surfaces; worlds where the sun will set you ablaze; worlds where you find yourself weakened or slowed; even meteors. Let those who thought that 100 dense ores symbols were a great idea beware!

That said, all of these new mechanics need to be tested not just for bugs but also for balance. Do they work well together? Do they compare well to the instability of the world? What tier of instability is right for a randomly generated world? How many instability effects should it have? At what point should worlds start to fall apart or at what tier can the mechanics attack resources? All of these questions and more have to be considered and everything must be weighed and measured over and over. It’s the hardest part of game design and development: Game Balance.

Once that’s all done then the release will be set. We’re already feature-frozen, meaning nothing new from this point on without really good reason, so it’s pretty much just testing and bug fixing.

For everyone asking when I’ll update Mystcraft to whatever version of Forge: the next release of Mystcraft will require Forge 4.2 and should work on any version after that. The next release of Mystcraft will go in the Mods folder. It is no longer a jar mod.
A big thanks to Lex and cpw for merging my pull requests into Forge. 🙂 Lex has been working over the past month getting different things in and showing me how to improve my changes to work better with Forge and cpw pulled the remaining changes into Forge this morning. We’re all set. 🙂

Cheers!

20 thoughts on “World Instability and Forge 4.2”

  1. Sounds like you have added a lot of new and interesting mechanics. As an aspiring mod dev I would love the opportunity to help bug check. Even if you have all the help you need, I am very eager to check mystcraft out when this next installment goes public.

  2. Looking forward to it, congrats on making such an awesome mod a mod folder mod 😀

    Say that 5 times fast

  3. Oh thats really good news.

    We kinda updated our server. And now lost all mystcraft resources 😛

  4. Does the sky burning affect mobs as well? I suddenly have visions of creepers burning in sunlight, and laughing at them for a change.

  5. XCompWiz – We have a complete server running (ic2 bc3 forestry logistics pipes railcraft computercraft nuclair stuff chest mods portalgun)

    If you like, we can test updates for bugs

  6. This is really exciting news, I was just starting to get antsy about needing to upgrade to a newer version of forge, really exciting to hear this will soon be a mods folder mod.

  7. I’m throwing money at my screen, but nothing is happening. This mod is the BEST. I can’t wait for that update. 🙂

    1. @Imrtltrl: If you actually feel like throwing some money at Mystcraft development there is a chipin widget at the top right of the screen. 🙂
      Sorry to folks for keeping you waiting. Balance testing is always the slowest process in game development. It’s really easy for me to write new features, but testing them is slower and testing for balance is even slower still. I’m hopeful that it will be up within the next week!

  8. Just gotta say- I can’t wait til this is released. My server is a hair behind on some other mods due to required forge version, and this mod is -far- too awesome to remove just to get the latest Railcraft :p

  9. I am aware of the fact that forge is updated for the release with mystcraft, and my server is waiting for the update of mystcraft, and if I read the post correctly mystcraft is ready, so I was wondering if there is an expected time for the release!

    Thanks- Nate

  10. Hi,

    Any news on this version? It has been 8 days since this post and our entire server is waiting for the update… We want chunkloaders back!

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