Minecraft Forums

"Simple" compared to how that title reads without that word, anyway. I just want four biomes glued together and some bedrock starting areas I can build off of so I can start designing the starting conditions.

I've tried doing this a couple different ways and encountered only frustration, so maybe someone with greater skill than mine would be able to do it for me. Here goes:

I'm after something similar to Skyblock, but in four distinct environments as per the four classical elements: Earth, Wind, Fire, Water. Once I have the base map I can get into Creative mode and design all the starting conditions and Hardcore Questing Mode quests, but I need the map to start with.

You start in a little bedrock spawn area floating at the center (0,0) with enough space that it won't screw up spawning for either single-player or SMP. From there you can look down from little viewing areas of colored glass at the four distinct areas beneath, and choose which one to try, then press a button to be teleported there with a basic resource setup (I'll handle the command blocks stuff myself).

There's a boundary (I prefer it to be circular) around the four-quadrants area, where it merges with a natural world outside. If you don't care to get artistic here then don't worry about it, but if you do: The Air area is separated by high peaks (far above cloud level), the Water area by a waterfall down to a canyon river, the Fire area by a volcano or lava lake that seeps up from the bedrock layer, and the Earth area by a swamp. Note that opposing elements should be diagonal to each other: Air vs. Earth, Fire vs. Water.

Each starting area (a 3x3 bedrock platform that I will build off of) will be in roughly the middle of the quadrant, unable to see any others -- it should look like the world goes on forever. The Water starting area is in the center of a giant lake or inland ocean. The Sky one is above the same body of water, but in its own quadrant and above the clouds, and the biome should be a cold one. The Fire one is a red Desert (I'd make use of red sandstone if 1.8 had mods by now, but for now call it red stained clay, with small dunes of red sand, and some dead bushes). The Earth one is a Savannah, a thin layer of dirt (2 layers deep) over stone, but where the dirt is 85% "grassless dirt" and only 15% regular dirt (and no grass -- you have to start your own). The base height is 64; Fire has a fair number of height spikes due to the dunes but otherwise the areas are pretty much flat.

I... think that's basically it. If anyone could make this for me -- even if it's not quite as fancy as described -- I'd be most grateful.

That's odd -- when I first submitted this post it looked like the forum ate it, so I redid it, but now the original version shows up here.

I guess this ought to be the main one, since it got edited a bit by the time I posted it. Can anyone delete the other version?

By the by, if no one cares to make this request for me, I'd also accept a solution that involved teaching me how to do this for myself. Because I've tried MCEdit and World Painter, and both of them are difficult to use for anything large-scale. I can't figure out how to even draw a straight line or bucket-fill an area on World Painter. I did manage to get a circle of sandstone made, surrounded by void, but then I couldn't draw in the void for some reason, and from there it was just bits of experimenting until I threw up my hands and came over here to post this request.

Quote from Electrifeye»

Just looked at your own posts and realized you probably know more than I do about the mods stuff ;). Hope the other stuff helped though.

I will definitely look over that resource you linked; I love looking through lists to see if there's stuff that'd obviously improve my pack that I just hadn't run across yet. As long as it doesn't get overwhelming, like it did the other week.

Bear in mind that I am not making a public pack -- it is a pack purely for the enjoyment of my family, which'd be me, my nephews and niece who visit (in some configuration) almost every weekend, and possibly my dad. I don't need to worry about mod permissions when using a pack that is entirely for private use on my home computers.

It is at least possible that if I get a decent pack set up, I might seek to make it available to the general public, but that doesn't seem likely; one of the highlights of modding is that each player gets to choose their own setup, and my playstyle is quite distinctive and in contrast to a lot of other players' styles. But if I did decide to do that, I'd make sure to look over each mod for specific modpack permissions, drop any that refused permission, and abide by the necessary requirements with the rest.

More likely, if the map ever got in some completion-like state, I'd submit the map and tell people which mods were required (and which ones just useful) from the mods I'd installed, and let people get their own mods. More trouble on their side, but also more customizability; much less trouble on my side.

Anyway.

Giving a quick look at single-player WorldEdit... does that mean I don't have to mess with Bukkit? Because I don't use Bukkit.

There's a fancy little word called "moot" which means, roughly, that the law might have that somewhere in the bits that nobody cares about because the evidence is difficult to gather (or nonexistent) and it's too much of an annoyance to prosecute for such a little "crime" and people do it all the time and it doesn't hurt anybody and maybe the only reason it's even on the books is that it costs more than it's worth to actually remove it.

"Moot" applies to bits like these:

• Making CDs for your kids to listen to, or for a friend to get them interested in a band you like
• Letting a passel of grandkids play your video games or use your software even though the EULA says it's only for one user
• Passing mod packs around a family household or small group of friends

When something is moot, only the most scrupulously by-the-book type would even consider it a problem in the first place. And, generally, what is done in the privacy of your own home is nobody's business but your own.

It's when money changes hands, or when things get passed around to a larger audience, that the mod creators' desires need to be taken into consideration. Then, you try to abide by their standards. Setting up a specific pack for a handful of nieces and nephews is not a problem.

You're probably right about people not wanting to bother with a custom map if it requires a lot of mods that aren't bundled together. But it's unlikely I'll get my map into working order anyway. I have spent like ten hours just trying to put together four general quadrants with appropriate biomes and properly randomized minerals, fossils, and other goodies. I still have a full quadrant to go with that. I am champing at the bit to get to the actual work of crafting the areas by hand, and I can't do that until all the cut-and-paste is done... yargh.

Still wish someone would make this mod. Or point to one that exists already. I'm far enough along with it that I don't want to switch tactics now, I'm frustrated enough that I don't want to pick up new software (even if it's likely to be cool when I finally get around to trying it), and yet World Painter's mountains leave a lot to be desired.

Quote from Electrifeye»

don't forget about good old creative mode.

Creative mode is what I do most of the stuff in. The thing is, creative mode is not capable of doing what I want to do, which is make specific biomes (and appropriate randomized land and resources) for large chunks of land. Human-based randomization is not only insufficiently randomized but would take far, far longer than what I'm doing already, and as you'll note I'm already thinking this map is taking too long.

Well, there's not a whole lot more I can say other than that people are generally a lot more happy to help you than they are do stuff for you. I know that's how I am.

Actually, although a lot of my suggestions go through without being answered, I've had a fair few that either got made for me (like my two-sided bookcase suggestion) or that attracted interest enough to get started as a mod team (though sadly none have made it to completion yet). I think the ratio hasn't been too bad so far.

Though, yeah, I don't think the custom map is going to happen... I think the custom-map-making mod is more likely.

That being the case, I think I'm doing this wrong. I think I should go to someone who's already good at messing with biome stuff.