only want to congratulate you for keeping up with your mods for over 6 years with pressure for Forge ports and the massive bandwagon of individuals updating for the sake of updating and playing only the highest version of the game for the sake of "content". You don't get much deserved recognition or ever will be in the spotlight because of those choices, the same choices that make your mods outclass most mods out there (save of Optifine). That said I will personally track you down if any of your mods disappear from the face of the earth and ask for a copy of your work so far.
I have been running using your mods for the past years in both multi and single player and never had so much bang for my buck in terms of performance to content ratio. I wish there were other modders like you around and focus on the gameplay experience rather then pump out code to make their mods playable in each 6 month update at the cost of content. You really don't get enough recognition of what you achieved so far.
I hope I see more content from you some more on both 1.6.4 and some 1.7 and pat yourself on the back for providing a better, authenthic and truer to its ideals vanilla experience than any other existing version of minecraft.
Anyway, I am not a cheerleader and I don't do flattery, I am just pointing out the facts here.
Edit: Twitch lost my account so I had to create this just to post this.
I've just tried the TMCWv4 mod and, wow, I'm very impressed... You have boosted my nostalgia for the old pre-1.7 terrain generation to a whole new level... I didn't remember how good-looking beaches and swamps used to be... Cave generation is just outstanding... And all the new biomes... I like the Rocky Mountains biome a lot.
Just a question... Is it possible to generate a world with your mod and then open it with a newer Minecraft version without messing up all the world?
I've just tried the TMCWv4 mod and, wow, I'm very impressed... You have boosted my nostalgia for the old pre-1.7 terrain generation to a whole new level... I didn't remember how good-looking beaches and swamps used to be... Cave generation is just outstanding... And all the new biomes... I like the Rocky Mountains biome a lot.
Just a question... Is it possible to generate a world with your mod and then open it with a newer Minecraft version without messing up all the world?
If you mean release 1.7, the beaches in this mod are not representative of beaches in older versions - or rather, since Beta 1.7.3, when beaches were generated in an entirely different manner (instead of using biomes the game used, I believe, a height map to determine what should be sand, and the altitude was limited to several blocks above sea level; by contrast, I changed the height smoothing the game uses between biomes so it doesn't have much influence on the height of beaches, as well as rivers); for example, here is a rendering from when I modded a copy of my first world with TMCW; you can see where beaches transition from vanilla to modded generation where the palm trees are near the center:
As for loading a world in a newer version, while older versions of TMCW did not add any new blocks or items (besides variations of existing ones, such as the new stones) this isn't the case anymore; I'm not sure what they would do but versions since 1.8 are very picky about even blocks and items with invalid data values/states, such as the new types of flowers, which I based on dandelions while 1.7+ based them on roses. Here is what happened when I loaded a copy of a world created in TMCWv4 in vanilla 1.6.4; a chunk of my base disappeared. Biome colors and precipitation will also become messed up since their biome IDs do not match (for example, Tropical Swamp has biome ID 30, which is Cold Taiga in 1.7; even vanilla has the issue that what was once snowy taiga in 1.6.4 is now snow-free).
Even separate versions of TMCW aren't guaranteed to update without issues; the upcoming TMCWv5 release will even change some vanilla blocks, such as removing the red mushroom block and making them a variant of brown mushrooms with the now-unused block ID used by red sandstone (this means that if opened in vanilla the new Badlands biome will turn into red mushrooms underground, which will all break soon as one updates. Another block I removed is locked chests (a legacy April Fool's addition with no practical use), which are now underwater grass and sea grass, while in 1.7+ they are stained glass. Other biomes also use new blocks which will likewise cause them to even entirely disappear down to bedrock if loaded in vanilla; later vanilla versions will cause them to turn into various blocks; likewise, somebody once told me they found a minecart with command block, which meant that they opened a world in 1.7+, where they use the same ID as amethyst).
In superflat, I saw about something about dungeons with a count in the upcoming TMCWv5. Is this the same as customized?
Yes, except the count is effectively double that in 1.8's Customized because they only generate up to y=127 (since 1.7 dungeons are effectively rarer because they doubled their range from 0-127 to 0-255; there isn't any use of increasing it since caves pretty much don't generate higher up and dungeons can't generate without them, or rarely in the sides of cliffs). This does mean that the maximum count that I set, 800, is equivalent to 1600 (the default of 8 is equivalent to 16, which I've suggested when using my "old caves" mods).
I've also added control of some other things, such as whether snow is generated (in vanilla you have to wait for it to snow) and whether passive mobs spawn during world generation (in vanilla they only randomly spawn after the world is generated, in very low numbers compared to normal worlds due to the mob cap), and whether certain biomes, like desert and mesa, replace stone with biome-specific blocks (sandstone, hardened clay, etc. This currently always occurs in TMCWv4 if "decoration" is enabled); I use the same code to generate Superflat worlds as normal worlds, except for the terrain generation step (TMCWv4 and earlier versions used the vanilla Superflat generator so not all features would generate, or not generate properly).
Is there a way to include mesa mineshafts and custom dungeon counter (superflat) to TMCWv4? Just curious.
I've made so many changes to TMCWv5 that it would be like copying something from 1.6.4 to 1.13 or vice-versa; world generation is entirely different (not necessarily the way it looks but the underlying code).
Also, as for TMCWv5, I could add a link to a zip file containing a changelog and updates until I finish it, since the URL will remain the same as long as I use the same name for the files (the only potential issue is if the URL ever changes for any reason; I just checked to make sure and the link for the first version, posted 5 years ago, still works). Otherwise, I have no idea where I might post future updates, including for TMCWv5 (notices of potential bug fixes and minor changes and additions; for example, I last updated TMCWv4 last December to fix a bug with mineshafts and strongholds, which you notified me about, as well as added my personal "resource pack" and a custom skin resource pack. I also plan to make a version of MCMap that can properly render the new blocks added in TMCWv5, which will likely be included after the main release).
He said he's trying to release TMCWv5 by the 16th.
This probably won't happen, given how much more I want to add (I hadn't spent much time on it in recent months, instead playing on another world, but I'd been including more things to add as I come up with them - the list of things to do is around 100 items long, about a third of everything added so far, where I've probably spent 6 months exclusively working on it instead of playing). Some of them have already been implemented in a separate mod (a modified version of Optifine, which cannot be distributed; I've been considering dropping support for it entirely as many of the changes I've made improve performance more than it does and this would allow me to add in my own settings in place of the ones Optifine added, which are broken because I've overridden its code (Optifine itself also has a bug where it only increases the server view distance above 10 if the render distance is 17 or more. The minimum can also be lowered to 8 with TMCW due to changes to mob (de)spawning); currently I still recommend it for its optimizations and Clear Water, which now only changes the underwater fog as I changed the light opacity of water to be the same as Clear Water, or vanilla 1.13+):
Complete darkness at a light level of 0 (higher levels are also darker, with the effect diminishing at higher levels so level 15 is unchanged):
The red areas are completely black, rgb(0,0,0), in the image above and will never have anything visible regardless of brightness or monitor settings (this was on Bright; the brightness setting now has no effect on either the minimum or maximum brightness, only the gamma curve between them. For comparison, in vanilla total "darkness" on Moody is still 5% brightness):
Lightmaps on Moody and Bright; the Moody lightmap is the same as vanilla except that light level 0 (upper-left corner) is completely black (for higher brightness levels levels above 0 are modified by the formula (level * scale - offset), where scale is (gamma * 0.1 + 1) and offset is (gamma * 0.1):
Smooth lighting fixes (vanilla has a blocky appearance around corners which is most noticeable in staircases like this; see MC-43968):
In this case, the shadows around blocks are skewed in vanilla (MC-138211):
Smooth lighting added to more blocks, including water (a feature exclusive to Bedrock Edition; the performance impact of my implementation is less than smooth lighting on normal blocks in vanilla so I don't know why they haven't added it to Java):
(only the center block is lit; all light-emitting blocks in vanilla do not have smooth lighting, which I've only omitted form blocks with a light level of 14 or more)
Lava and glowstone also always visually render with a light level of 15, so even if a black lighting glitch occurs they will always be visibly lit (light glitches should be much less common, and can be fixed by pressing F4, which will force a relight of loaded chunks).
This is an example of the performance at 20 chunk render distance and maximum settings (with Optifine); even then, it uses less than 512 MB of memory (259/418 MB) and server tick time is only 4.3 ms (50 max); generating a new world took only 3 seconds. Note also that the "vignette" effect was removed from Fancy (one reason I've never used Fancy is because of the darkening around the edges of the screen). Also, Fancy clouds now render faster than Fast clouds in vanilla, and Fancy leaves render 4 times faster with smooth lighting enabled (I removed it from interior faces, with their shading adjusted to give a similar appearance to the darkening from smooth lighting. Note that smooth lighting doesn't actually affect FPS unless chunks are being rendered/updated since the GPU is doing the same stuff, it just changes the brightness levels of each vertex, which are being set in any case). The rendering speed of many other things, from items to text, have also been substantially increased, by a factor of 10 or more in cases (Optifine doesn't affect any of this, only how chunks are rendered overall):
This shows how fast world generation is - it took only 3 seconds to generate a new world (it will be slower if it happens to be in a biome with big trees or mountains, but even those are several times faster than before, largely due to optimizations to the lighting engine, which took the majority of the time. Cave generation is also about 3 times faster due to using an improved RNG, which also means that every seed is different, unlike before or vanilla, where there are only 2^48 configurations of caves out of 2^64 seeds):
18:15:00 - 2019-05-03 18:15:00 [SERVER] [INFO] Starting integrated minecraft server version 1.6.4
18:15:00 - 2019-05-03 18:15:00 [SERVER] [INFO] Generating keypair
18:15:00 - 2019-05-03 18:15:00 [SERVER] [INFO] Preparing start region for level 0
18:15:01 - 2019-05-03 18:15:01 [SERVER] [INFO] Preparing spawn area: 27%
18:15:02 - 2019-05-03 18:15:02 [SERVER] [INFO] Preparing spawn area: 60%
18:15:03 - 2019-05-03 18:15:03 [SERVER] [INFO] Preparing spawn area: 97%
18:15:03 - 2019-05-03 18:15:03 [SERVER] [INFO] TheMasterCaver[/127.0.0.1:0] logged in with entity id 25798 at (-115.5, 90.0, 249.5)
Some other performance comparisons:
Time taken to render Fancy leaves:
17:56:58 - Took 2780 nanoseconds to render leaf block (vanilla)
17:56:58 - Took 2795 nanoseconds to render leaf block (vanilla)
17:56:59 - Took 2775 nanoseconds to render leaf block (vanilla)
17:57:00 - Took 626 nanoseconds to render leaf block (modded)
17:57:00 - Took 645 nanoseconds to render leaf block (modded)
17:57:01 - Took 625 nanoseconds to render leaf block (modded)
Time taken to render Fancy clouds:
22:12:23 - Took 188486 nanoseconds to render vanilla clouds
22:12:29 - Took 188199 nanoseconds to render vanilla clouds
22:12:34 - Took 188571 nanoseconds to render vanilla clouds
22:12:50 - Took 16207 nanoseconds to render optimized clouds
22:12:55 - Took 17033 nanoseconds to render optimized clouds
22:13:00 - Took 16701 nanoseconds to render optimized clouds
Time taken per spawn cycle:
16:02:49 - Took 633764 nanoseconds per spawn cycle (vanilla)
16:03:39 - Took 633854 nanoseconds per spawn cycle (vanilla)
16:04:29 - Took 634061 nanoseconds per spawn cycle (vanilla)
16:05:19 - Took 122141 nanoseconds per spawn cycle (modded)
16:06:09 - Took 129139 nanoseconds per spawn cycle (modded)
16:06:59 - Took 124512 nanoseconds per spawn cycle (modded)
Some other improvements; ladders now render their back side, making them visible from behind, and can be placed on more blocks, including glass, and are placed more consistently (only on the block you are pointing at, avoiding ladders being placed elsewhere if the block you are pointing at isn't a valid location):
Water/lava buckets were fixed to prevent "ghost" buckets (appearing to be filled/empty when they aren't) and placed liquid sources (caused by the client and server running the same code, but not exactly in sync).
Biome colors are smoothed over a larger area, while still being less resource intensive than vanilla since I read directly from the stored data in a chunk (the client isn't allowed to access the biome generator, which has caused issues, even crashes, in vanilla):
There's also many more bugfixes; for example, I've occasionally noticed that the player's POV jumps after exiting a GUI, which seems to have become worse with an update, which I was able to completely fix with a simple change to the class the game uses to record mouse movement:
// Fixes a bug where mouse movement in a GUI screen changes the player's POV in-game
// after closing the GUI by the relative movement inside it.
public class MouseHelperFix extends MouseHelper
It should also be noted that I've made more changes that nerf mob farms; for example, mob spawning only spawns mobs in 25% of chunks per spawn cycle, making it 4 times slower per chunk, with the frequency of passive mob spawn cycles doubled (one ever 10 seconds, twice as slow per chunk. For hostile mobs this is still more than enough to keep the mob cap full when flying around and I saw no effect when I tested it in a world I was playing on; this change also significantly reduces the tick time). Mobs that drop resource items, like iron golems and zombie pigmen, also only do so if the player kills them (there really isn't any reason for most mobs to drop anything unless the player kills them, but I did not change most drops). Mobs also can never spawn above the Nether ceiling (the range is fixed to y=1-125), which is also forbidden to players in Survival mode (you'll take damage similar to being in the void).
There is one change that is an advantage though; the actual height in a column is used instead of the "lc" value (a change made in vanilla in 1.8), which included empty chunk sections so if you ever loaded the topmost section (y=240-255) it would permanently affect spawn rates (the game never deletes sections once they have been loaded; certain lighting glitches occurred due to the server not sending them to the client, which I fixed). This also slightly increases natural spawn rates (e.g. a flat surface at y=65 (ground at y=64) would previously use an lc value of 64 + 16 = 80, now it is 65. Similarly, a deep ravine like this would see a much higher spawn rate at the bottom, without having to be wide enough to have whole empty sections inside).
Also, you can preview the underground of TMCWv5 with the following utility, which is a basic Java app which shows the locations of caves, mineshafts, and strongholds, including the ability to generate maps of the area, not including strongholds yet (the version for TMCWv4 only printed out locations, and only centered around the origin. A good way to find things is to first run it with a large radius and no "map #" option, then make maps of the areas of interest using a smaller radius (maps are limited to 4096x4096 pixels/blocks, or 2048x2048 blocks when a scale of 2:1 is used):
Note that you can use this without having to install Java if you change the path to point to the runtime the launcher downloads (see the "help" file, the launcher will also show the path to the Java executable, which should be changed to java.exe instead of javaw.exe).
Here are some examples:
A 1:1 rendering (50% of original size) of a 3072x3072 block area centered around 0,0 in the seed "12345"; green areas have air at sea level (y=62) and are potentially exposed (this is based on the color scheme that Unmined uses, including the way changes in elevation are displayed):
A 2:1 rendering (full size) of an 800x800 block area including the giant cave region furthest to the east above near the top-left, with a network cave region near the lower-right and a giant cave near the top-right:
The same area, but with the altitude limited to y=13 (equivalent to y=20 in vanilla, a good layer to find denser cave systems; you can also see the variation of caves better):
This was the largest cave found within 8192 blocks of the origin (1 million chunks), with a volume of 680,000 air blocks; compared to TMCWv4 the maximum size of caves and ravines is considerably larger. To put the size of this cave into perspective, it is equivalent to all the caves and ravines in about 970 chunks in 1.6.4 and 1160 chunks in 1.7+ (the area shown is 384x384 blocks or 24x24 chunks, so the single large cave has twice the average volume of a 1.7+ world over the whole area. Even then, a giant cave region is even larger, averaging about 1.25 million air blocks):
The largest ravine, with a volume of 516,000; I didn't check in an actual world but it probably does go from the surface all the way down to lava level :
(a depth of 59 for a ravine means that it goes from y=4-62, the number of layers between lava level and sea level, and the maximum depth shown).
The largest circular room, with a volume of 84,000; these are relatively small compared to other caves, in part because they are much less varied in shape (circular rooms are a single semi-spherical cave segment with half the usual width-height ratio. I haven't added them yet but a discussion in this thread game me the idea to add variants based on generating ravines or other caves in a 360 degree pattern):
The largest mineshaft, with 408 structure pieces (a 1-4 support long section of corridor, crossing, staircase, or the central room), which makes it about 40 times larger than the smallest mineshafts and 4 times larger than average (a very small mineshaft can be seen in the upper-right corner of the previous image. Vanilla can rarely generate mineshafts with only the central room, but I fixed that a long time ago):
This probably won't happen, given how much more I want to add (I hadn't spent much time on it in recent months, instead playing on another world, but I'd been including more things to add as I come up with them - the list of things to do is around 100 items long, about a third of everything added so far, where I've probably spent 6 months exclusively working on it instead of playing). Some of them have already been implemented in a separate mod (a modified version of Optifine, which cannot be distributed; I've been considering dropping support for it entirely as many of the changes I've made improve performance more than it does and this would allow me to add in my own settings in place of the ones Optifine added, which are broken because I've overridden its code (Optifine itself also has a bug where it only increases the server view distance above 10 if the render distance is 17 or more. The minimum can also be lowered to 8 with TMCW due to changes to mob (de)spawning); currently I still recommend it for its optimizations and Clear Water, which now only changes the underwater fog as I changed the light opacity of water to be the same as Clear Water, or vanilla 1.13+):
Complete darkness at a light level of 0 (higher levels are also darker, with the effect diminishing at higher levels so level 15 is unchanged):
The red areas are completely black, rgb(0,0,0), in the image above and will never have anything visible regardless of brightness or monitor settings (this was on Bright; the brightness setting now has no effect on either the minimum or maximum brightness, only the gamma curve between them. For comparison, in vanilla total "darkness" on Moody is still 5% brightness):
Lightmaps on Moody and Bright; the Moody lightmap is the same as vanilla except that light level 0 (upper-left corner) is completely black (for higher brightness levels levels above 0 are modified by the formula (level * scale - offset), where scale is (gamma * 0.1 + 1) and offset is (gamma * 0.1):
Smooth lighting fixes (vanilla has a blocky appearance around corners which is most noticeable in staircases like this; see MC-43968):
In this case, the shadows around blocks are skewed in vanilla (MC-138211):
Smooth lighting added to more blocks, including water (a feature exclusive to Bedrock Edition; the performance impact of my implementation is less than smooth lighting on normal blocks in vanilla so I don't know why they haven't added it to Java):
(only the center block is lit; all light-emitting blocks in vanilla do not have smooth lighting, which I've only omitted form blocks with a light level of 14 or more)
Lava and glowstone also always visually render with a light level of 15, so even if a black lighting glitch occurs they will always be visibly lit (light glitches should be much less common, and can be fixed by pressing F4, which will force a relight of loaded chunks).
This is an example of the performance at 20 chunk render distance and maximum settings (with Optifine); even then, it uses less than 512 MB of memory (259/418 MB) and server tick time is only 4.3 ms (50 max); generating a new world took only 3 seconds. Note also that the "vignette" effect was removed from Fancy (one reason I've never used Fancy is because of the darkening around the edges of the screen). Also, Fancy clouds now render faster than Fast clouds in vanilla, and Fancy leaves render 4 times faster with smooth lighting enabled (I removed it from interior faces, with their shading adjusted to give a similar appearance to the darkening from smooth lighting. Note that smooth lighting doesn't actually affect FPS unless chunks are being rendered/updated since the GPU is doing the same stuff, it just changes the brightness levels of each vertex, which are being set in any case). The rendering speed of many other things, from items to text, have also been substantially increased, by a factor of 10 or more in cases (Optifine doesn't affect any of this, only how chunks are rendered overall):
This shows how fast world generation is - it took only 3 seconds to generate a new world (it will be slower if it happens to be in a biome with big trees or mountains, but even those are several times faster than before, largely due to optimizations to the lighting engine, which took the majority of the time. Cave generation is also about 3 times faster due to using an improved RNG, which also means that every seed is different, unlike before or vanilla, where there are only 2^48 configurations of caves out of 2^64 seeds):
Some other performance comparisons:
Some other improvements; ladders now render their back side, making them visible from behind, and can be placed on more blocks, including glass, and are placed more consistently (only on the block you are pointing at, avoiding ladders being placed elsewhere if the block you are pointing at isn't a valid location):
Water/lava buckets were fixed to prevent "ghost" buckets (appearing to be filled/empty when they aren't) and placed liquid sources (caused by the client and server running the same code, but not exactly in sync).
Biome colors are smoothed over a larger area, while still being less resource intensive than vanilla since I read directly from the stored data in a chunk (the client isn't allowed to access the biome generator, which has caused issues, even crashes, in vanilla):
There's also many more bugfixes; for example, I've occasionally noticed that the player's POV jumps after exiting a GUI, which seems to have become worse with an update, which I was able to completely fix with a simple change to the class the game uses to record mouse movement:
// Fixes a bug where mouse movement in a GUI screen changes the player's POV in-game
// after closing the GUI by the relative movement inside it.
public class MouseHelperFix extends MouseHelper
It should also be noted that I've made more changes that nerf mob farms; for example, mob spawning only spawns mobs in 25% of chunks per spawn cycle, making it 4 times slower per chunk, with the frequency of passive mob spawn cycles doubled (one ever 10 seconds, twice as slow per chunk. For hostile mobs this is still more than enough to keep the mob cap full when flying around and I saw no effect when I tested it in a world I was playing on; this change also significantly reduces the tick time). Mobs that drop resource items, like iron golems and zombie pigmen, also only do so if the player kills them (there really isn't any reason for most mobs to drop anything unless the player kills them, but I did not change most drops). Mobs also can never spawn above the Nether ceiling (the range is fixed to y=1-125), which is also forbidden to players in Survival mode (you'll take damage similar to being in the void).
There is one change that is an advantage though; the actual height in a column is used instead of the "lc" value (a change made in vanilla in 1.8), which included empty chunk sections so if you ever loaded the topmost section (y=240-255) it would permanently affect spawn rates (the game never deletes sections once they have been loaded; certain lighting glitches occurred due to the server not sending them to the client, which I fixed). This also slightly increases natural spawn rates (e.g. a flat surface at y=65 (ground at y=64) would previously use an lc value of 64 + 16 = 80, now it is 65. Similarly, a deep ravine like this would see a much higher spawn rate at the bottom, without having to be wide enough to have whole empty sections inside).
Also, you can preview the underground of TMCWv5 with the following utility, which is a basic Java app which shows the locations of caves, mineshafts, and strongholds, including the ability to generate maps of the area, not including strongholds yet (the version for TMCWv4 only printed out locations, and only centered around the origin. A good way to find things is to first run it with a large radius and no "map #" option, then make maps of the areas of interest using a smaller radius (maps are limited to 4096x4096 pixels/blocks, or 2048x2048 blocks when a scale of 2:1 is used):
Note that you can use this without having to install Java if you change the path to point to the runtime the launcher downloads (see the "help" file, the launcher will also show the path to the Java executable, which should be changed to java.exe instead of javaw.exe).
Here are some examples:
A 1:1 rendering (50% of original size) of a 3072x3072 block area centered around 0,0 in the seed "12345"; green areas have air at sea level (y=62) and are potentially exposed (this is based on the color scheme that Unmined uses, including the way changes in elevation are displayed):
A 2:1 rendering (full size) of an 800x800 block area including the giant cave region furthest to the east above near the top-left, with a network cave region near the lower-right and a giant cave near the top-right:
The same area, but with the altitude limited to y=13 (equivalent to y=20 in vanilla, a good layer to find denser cave systems; you can also see the variation of caves better):
This was the largest cave found within 8192 blocks of the origin (1 million chunks), with a volume of 680,000 air blocks; compared to TMCWv4 the maximum size of caves and ravines is considerably larger. To put the size of this cave into perspective, it is equivalent to all the caves and ravines in about 970 chunks in 1.6.4 and 1160 chunks in 1.7+ (the area shown is 384x384 blocks or 24x24 chunks, so the single large cave has twice the average volume of a 1.7+ world over the whole area. Even then, a giant cave region is even larger, averaging about 1.25 million air blocks):
The largest ravine, with a volume of 516,000; I didn't check in an actual world but it probably does go from the surface all the way down to lava level :
(a depth of 59 for a ravine means that it goes from y=4-62, the number of layers between lava level and sea level, and the maximum depth shown).
The largest circular room, with a volume of 84,000; these are relatively small compared to other caves, in part because they are much less varied in shape (circular rooms are a single semi-spherical cave segment with half the usual width-height ratio. I haven't added them yet but a discussion in this thread game me the idea to add variants based on generating ravines or other caves in a 360 degree pattern):
The largest mineshaft, with 408 structure pieces (a 1-4 support long section of corridor, crossing, staircase, or the central room), which makes it about 40 times larger than the smallest mineshafts and 4 times larger than average (a very small mineshaft can be seen in the upper-right corner of the previous image. Vanilla can rarely generate mineshafts with only the central room, but I fixed that a long time ago):
World generation in general is completely different, the same applies to every other version (it is more like the difference between Minecraft 1.0, the current game, and a Minecraft 2.0, which would be a completely new game, rather than Minecraft 1.6 and Minecraft 1.7); this is mainly because I replaced Java's Random with my own superior RNG (every possible seed will generate a completely different world; in older versions/vanilla every seed was one of 65536 seeds which had the same cave generation and other features, as described here).
Even some block and item IDs will be different; for example, I combined red mushrooms (block ID 40) with brown mushrooms (39), with 40 now used by red sandstone. Diamond ender chests now have their own tile entity (previously they used the same one as ender chests, with the block ID telling them apart), flower pots are now tile entities, and empty spawners are a single block ID with the ID used by lit empty spawners now used by saguaro cactus (I added the ability for metadata to affect things like light level and opacity; vanilla has to use separate blocks for things like redstone ore).
A lot of this was done to conserve block IDs, of which there are still about 60 left, as well as simplify code; e.g. all types of wood fences are a single block ID so all code that checks for fence blocks only needs to need to check for a single block, avoiding the need to fix a lot of code, this is also why I originally made amethyst ore a variant of obsidian (it was previously its own block) so I didn't have to change the pickaxe code to give it the mining level of obsidian.
*Here is a list of all the biomes, blocks, items and other things I've added so far (including in previous versions); the mod has reached the point where there should be some sort of Wiki or similar to describe everything (for example, Link Removed):
A list of all Overworld biomes, sorted by ID and their sub-biomes.
Ocean (0)
- Sandy Ocean Shallows (108)
- Quartz Sand Ocean Shallows (109)
- Frozen Ocean (10)
--- Winter Taiga (5)
--- Ice Hills (48)
--- Winter Forest (54)
--- Ice Plains Spikes (73)
--- Iceland (116)
- Tropical Ocean (107)
--- Forest (4)
--- Jungle (21)
--- Tropical Swamp (30)
--- Mixed Forest (31)
Plains (1)
- Forest (4)
- Forest Hills (18)
Desert (2)
- Desert Hills (17)
- Desert Beach (57)
- Desert River (60)
- Desert Riverbank (92)
Extreme Hills (3)
- Extreme Hills Edge (20)
- Extreme Mountains (53)
- Gravel Beach (75)
Forest (4)
- Plains (1)
- Forest Hills (18)
- Lake (46)
Winter Taiga (5)
- Winter Taiga Hills (19)
- Frozen Lake (47)
- Gravel Beach (75)
Swampland (6)
- Swamp River (58)
River (7)
- Riverbank (90)
- generates in most biomes unless indicated
Frozen River (11)
- Frozen Riverbank (91)
- generates in most snowy/frozen biomes unless indicated
Ice Plains (12)
- Frozen Ocean (10)
- Ice Mountains (13)
- Frozen Lake (47)
- Ice Hills (48)
- Ice Plains Spikes (73)
- Gravel Beach (75)
Mushroom Island (14)
- Mushroom Island Shore (15)
Beach (16)
- generates between most biomes and ocean unless indicated
Jungle (21)
- Jungle Hills (22)
- Jungle River (59)
- Quartz Beach (99)
Hilly Plains (23)
- Plains (1)
- Hilly Plains Hills (24)
- Lake (46)
Forest Mountains 1(25)
- Extreme Forest Mountains (27)
Forest Mountains 2 (26)
Mountainous Desert (28)
- Desert (2)
- Mountainous Desert Hills (29)
- Desert Beach (57)
- Desert River (60)
- Desert Riverbank (92)
Tropical Swamp (30)
- Quartz Beach (99)
Mixed Forest (31)
- Plains (1)
- Mixed Forest Hills (32)
- Lake (46)
Bushlands (33)
- Lake (46)
Mega Tree Plains (34)
- Spruce Hills (35)
- Lake (46)
Mesa (36)
- Mesa Plateau (37)
- Mesa Edge (38)
- Desert Beach (57)
- Desert River (60)
- Mesa River (61)
- Desert Riverbank (92)
- Mesa Riverbank (93)
- Mesa Plateau Forest (106)
Birch Forest (39)
- Plains (1)
- Birch Forest Hills (40)
- Lake (46)
- Poplar Grove (77)
Mega Forest (41)
- Mega Forest Hills (42)
- Lake (46)
Taiga (43)
- Taiga Hills (44)
- Lake (46)
Volcanic Wasteland (45
- Volcano (94)
- Volcanic Peak (95)
- Volcanic Wasteland Beach (76)
Lake (46)
- Plains (1)
- Desert (2)
- Forest (4)
- Jungle (21)
- Taiga (43)
Frozen Lake (47)
- Winter Taiga (5)
- Ice Plains (12)
- Ice Hills (48)
- Winter Forest (54)
- Ice Plains Spikes (73)
Ice Hills (48)
- Ice Plains (12)
- Ice Plains Spikes (73)
- Gravel Beach (75)
- Ice Hills River (103)
TMCW Mega Taiga (49)
- TMCW Mega Taiga Hills (50)
- Taiga (43)
Big Oak Forest (51)
- Lake (46)
- Big Oak Forest Hills (52)
Winter Forest (54)
- Frozen Lake (47)
- Winter Forest Hills (55)
- Winter Forest Mountains (56)
- Gravel Beach (75)
Savanna (62)
Savanna Plateau (63)
- Savanna (62)
Savanna Mountains (64)
- Savanna (62)
- Extreme Savanna Mountains (65)
Roofed Forest (66)
- Roofed Forest Hills (67)
- Meadow (81)
Mega Taiga (68)
- Mega Taiga Hills (69)
- Taiga (43)
Mega Spruce Taiga (70)
- Mega Spruce Taiga Hills (71)
- Taiga (43)
Flower Forest (72)
- Plains (1)
- Forest (4)
Ice Plains Spikes (73)
- Ice Plains (12)
- Gravel Beach (75)
- Ice Plains Spikes River (102)
Mega Mixed Forest (74)
- Mixed Forest (31)
- Mega Mixed Forest Hills (110)
Poplar Grove (77)
- Birch Forest (39)
- Lake (46)
- Poplar Grove Hills (78)
Desert M (79)
- Desert Beach (57)
- Desert River (60)
- Oasis (80)
- Desert Riverbank (92)
Meadow (81)
- Lake (46)
- Meadow Forest (82)
Rocky Mountains (83)
- Swamp River (58)
- Rocky Mountains Edge (84)
- Rocky Mountains Peak 1 (85)
- Rocky Mountains Peak 2 (86)
- Rocky Mountains Summit (87)
Great Forest (88)
- Great Forest Hills (89)
Quartz Desert (97)
- Quartz Desert Hills (98)
- Quartz Desert Beach (100)
- Quartz Desert River (101)
- Quartz Desert Riverbank (102)
Mushroom Forest (104)
- Mushroom Forest Hills (105)
Badlands (111)
- Badlands Mesa (112)
- Badlands River (113)
- Badlands Edge (114)
- Badlands Mesa Edge (115)
Iceland (116)
- Iceland River (117)
- Iceland Mesa (118)
- Iceland Mountains (119)
A list of all new blocks and items sorted by their ID and data values, and other features:
**************************************** Blocks ****************************************
Granite (1:1)
Polished Granite (1:2)
Diorite (1:3)
Polished Diorite (1:4)
Andesite (1:5)
Polished Andesite (1:6)
Non-spreading Grass (2:1)
Coarse Dirt (3:1)
Podzol (3:2)
Compressed Cobblestone (4:1)
Mega Tree Sapling (6:4)
Palm Sapling (6:5)
Dark/Swamp Oak Sapling (6:6)
Acacia Sapling (6:7)
Quartz Sand (12:1)
Gravel Sand (13:1)
Gold Gravel Sand (13:2)
Sandstone Gold Ore (14:1)
Quartz Sandstone Gold Ore (14:2)
Red Sandstone Gold Ore (14:3)
Hardened Clay Gold Ore (14:4)
Snow Gold Ore (14:5)
Packed Ice Gold Ore (14:6)
Blue Ice Gold Ore (14:7)
Nether Gold Ore (14:8)
Sandstone Iron Ore (15:1)
Quartz Sandstone Iron Ore (15:2)
Red Sandstone Iron Ore (15:3)
Hardened Clay Iron Ore (15:4)
Snow Iron Ore (15:5)
Packed Ice Iron Ore (15:6)
Blue Ice Iron Ore (15:7)
Sandstone Coal Ore (16:1)
Quartz Sandstone Coal Ore (16:2)
Red Sandstone Coal Ore (16:3)
Hardened Clay Coal Ore (16:4)
Snow Coal Ore (16:5)
Packed Ice Coal Ore (16:6)
Blue Ice Coal Ore (16:7)
Sandstone Lapis Lazuli Ore (21:1)
Quartz Sandstone Lapis Lazuli Ore (21:2)
Red Sandstone Lapis Lazuli Ore (21:3)
Hardened Clay Lapis Lazuli Ore (21:4)
Snow Lapis Lazuli Ore (21:5)
Packed Ice Lapis Lazuli Ore (21:6)
Blue Ice Lapis Lazuli Ore (21:7)
Cave Grass (31:3)
Cave Fern (31:4)
Rose Bush (37:1)
Peony (37:2)
Lilac (37:3)
Allium (37:4)
Blue Orchid (37:5)
Oxeye Daisy (37:6)
Paeonia (37:7)
Poppy (37:8)
Red Tulip (37:9)
Pink Tulip (37:10)
Orange Tulip (37:11)
Yellow Tulip (37:12)
White Tulip (37:13)
Cyan Rose (37:14)
Azure Bluet (37:15)
Brown Mushroom (39:0; all mushrooms are now one block)
Red Mushroom (39:1)
Green Mushroom (39:2)
Blue Mushroom (39:3)
Purple Mushroom (39:4)
Red Sandstone (40:0)
Chiseled Red Sandstone (40:1)
Smooth Red Sandstone (40:2)
Full Smooth Red Sandstone (40:3)
Smooth Stone (43:8)
Full Smooth Sandstone (43:9)
Smooth Quartz Block (43:15)
Bookshelf (47:1-47:15; DV is stored books)
Amethyst Ore (49:1)
Block of Amethyst (49:2)
Reinforced Quartz Sandstone (49:3)
Sandstone Diamond Ore (56:1)
Quartz Sandstone Diamond Ore (56:2)
Red Sandstone Diamond Ore (56:3)
Hardened Clay Diamond Ore (56:4)
Snow Diamond Ore (56:5)
Packed Ice Diamond Ore (56:6)
Blue Ice Diamond Ore (56:7)
Sandstone Redstone Ore (73:1)
Quartz Sandstone Redstone Ore (73:2)
Red Sandstone Redstone Ore (73:3)
Hardened Clay Redstone Ore (73:4)
Snow Redstone Ore (73:5)
Packed Ice Redstone Ore (73:6)
Blue Ice Redstone Ore (73:7)
Thin Cactus (81:8)
Red Clay (82)
Spruce Fence (85:1)
Birch Fence (85:2)
Jungle Fence (85:3)
Underwater Grass (95:0)
Sea Grass (95:1-5)
Tall Sea Grass (95:6-10)
Mossy Stone Brick Monster Egg (97:3)
Cracked Stone Brick Monster Egg (97:4)
Chiseled Stone Brick Monster Egg (97:5)
Granite Monster Egg (97:6)
Diorite Monster Egg (97:7)
Andesite Monster Egg (97:8)
Non-spreading Mycelium (110:1)
Red Nether Bricks (112:1)
Sandstone Emerald Ore (129:1)
Quartz Sandstone Emerald Ore (129:2)
Red Sandstone Emerald Ore (129:3)
Hardened Clay Emerald Ore (129:4)
Snow Emerald Ore (129:5)
Packed Ice Emerald Ore (129:6)
Blue Ice Emerald Ore (129:7)
Stone Wall (139:2)
Granite Wall (139:3)
Diorite Wall (139:4)
Andesite Wall (139:5)
Sandstone Wall (139:6)
Quartz Sandstone Wall (139:7)
Red Sandstone Wall (139:8)
Brick Wall (139:9)
Stone Brick Wall (139:10)
Mossy Stone Brick Wall (139:11)
End Stone Wall (139:12)
Quartz Wall (139:13)
Netherrack Wall (139:14)
Hardened Clay Wall (139:15)
Flower Pot (converted to tile entity)
Moderately Damaged Anvil (145:2; Very Damaged Anvil is now 145:3)
Quartz Sandstone (160:0)
Chiseled Quartz Sandstone (160:1)
Smooth Quartz Sandstone (160:2)
Full Smooth Quartz Sandstone (160:3)
Quartz Sandstone Stairs (161)
Magma Block (162)
Dry Ice (163)
Cyan Coral Block (164:0)
Blue Coral Block (164:1)
Purple Coral Block (164:2)
Pink Coral Block (164:3)
Red Coral Block (164:4)
Yellow Coral Block (164:5)
Cyan Dead Coral Block (164:6)
Blue Dead Coral Block (164:7)
Purple Dead Coral Block (164:8)
Pink Dead Coral Block (164:9)
Red Dead Coral Block (164:10)
Yellow Dead Coral Block (164:11)
Kelp (165)
Cyan Coral (166:0)
Blue Coral (166:1)
Purple Coral (166:2)
Pink Coral (166:3)
Red Coral (166:4)
Yellow Coral (166:5)
Green Mushroom Block (167)
Blue Mushroom Block (168)
Mega Tree Leaves (169:0)
Palm Leaves (169:1)
Dark/Swamp Oak Leaves (169:2)
Acacia Leaves (169:3)
Packed Ice (174:0)
Blue Ice (174:1)
Opaque Ice (174:2)
Tallgrass (175:0)
Large Fern (175:1)
Large Rose Bush (175:2)
Sunflower (175:3)
Large Peony (175:4)
Large Lilac (175:5)
Large Blue Orchid (175:6)
Diamond Ender Chest (176)
Cobweb block (177)
Empty Monster Spawner (178:0)
Empty Monster Spawner (lit) (178:1)
Saguaro Cactus Log (179:0)
Full Saguaro Cactus Log (179:3)
Saguaro Cactus Sapling (179:4)
Bone Block (180)
Ruby Ore (181:0)
Sandstone Ruby Ore (181:1)
Quartz Sandstone Ruby Ore (181:2)
Red Sandstone Ruby Ore (181:3)
Hardened Clay Ruby Ore (181:4)
Snow Ruby Ore (181:5)
Packed Ice Ruby Ore (181:6)
Blue Ice Ruby Ore (181:7)
Ruby Block (182)
Rail Block (183:0)
Activator Rail Block (183:1)
Detector Rail Block (183:2)
Powered Rail Block (183:3)
Stone Stalagmite (184:0; 4 rendered variants)
Sandstone Stalagmite (184:1)
Quartz Sandstone Stalagmite (184:2)
Red Sandstone Stalagmite (184:3)
Hardened Clay Stalagmite (184:4; 17 rendered variants)
Packed Ice Stalagmite (184:5)
Large Stone Stalagmite (184:8; 4 rendered variants)
Large Sandstone Stalagmite (184:9)
Large Quartz Sandstone Stalagmite (184:10)
Large Red Sandstone Stalagmite (184:11)
Large Hardened Clay Stalagmite (184:12; 17 rendered variants)
Large Packed Ice Stalagmite (184:13)
Coconut (185)
Prickly Pear Cactus (186)
Fake Torch (187:0)
Dim Fake Torch (187:8)
Purple Mushroom Block (189)
**************************************** Items ****************************************
Amethyst (422)
Amethyst Hoe (423)
Amethyst Shovel (424)
Amethyst Pickaxe (425)
Amethyst Axe (426)
Amethyst Sword (427)
Amethyst Helmet (428)
Amethyst Chestplate (429)
Amethyst Leggings (430)
Amethyst Boots (431)
Ruby (432)
Wooden Hammer (433)
Stone Hammer (434)
Iron Hammer (435)
Diamond Hammer (436)
Gold Hammer (437)
Amethyst Hammer (438)
Coconut (439)
Amethyst Horse Armor (440)
Empty Cave Map (441)
Prickly Pear Cactus Fruit (442)
Red Clay (443)
Iron Nugget (444)
Raw Rabbit (445)
Cooked Rabbit (446)
Rabbit Hide (447)
Rabbit Stew (448)
************************************* Enchantments *************************************
Mending (70)
Smelting (71)
Vein Miner (72)
Depth Strider (73)
*************************************** Entities ***************************************
() = variants
Husk (yellow, white, red, Nether)
Stray
Baby Skeleton (Stray)
Mega Slime (size 8 slime)
Giant (Husk)
Endermite (Nethermite)
Rabbit (9 variants)
When mined with a hammer the following blocks drop different items than usual:
Block Drop(s) (1-2-3) = with Fortune
Polished Granite 1 Granite
Polished Diorite 1 Diorite
Polished Andesite 1 Andesite
Cobblestone 1 Gravel
Compressed Cobblestone 4 Cobblestone
Planks 4 Sticks
Gravel 1 Gravel Sand
Gravel Sand 1 Sand
Wood 4 Planks
Lapis Block 9 Lapis
Dispenser 2-4 Cobblestone (up to 5-6-7)
Dropper 2-4 Cobblestone (up to 5-6-7)
Sandstone 1 Sand (up to 2-3-4)
Gold Block 9 Gold Ingots
Iron Block 9 Iron Ingots
Smooth Stone 2 Stone Slabs
Full Smooth Sandstone 2 Sandstone Slabs
Smooth Quartz Block 2 Quartz Slabs
Brick Block 2-4 Bricks (higher chance of 4)
Bookshelf 3 Books + 2-3 Oak Planks (up to 4-5-6)
Wood Stairs 1 Planks
Wood Chests 2-4 Oak Planks (up to 6-8-8)
Diamond Block 9 Diamond
Crafting Table 2 Oak Planks (up to 3,4,4)
Furnace 2-4 Cobblestone (up to 6-8-8)
Sign 1 Oak Planks (up to 2 with a higher chance of 2)
Wooden Door 2-3 Oak Planks (up to 4-5-6)
Iron Door 2-3 Iron Ingots (up to 4-5-6)
Ladder 2 Sticks
Cobblestone Stairs 1 Cobblestone
Stone Brick Stairs 1 Cobblestone
Stone Pressure Plate 1 Cobblestone
Wood Pressure Plate 1 Oak Wood Planks
Jukebox 1 Diamond + 2-4 Oak Planks (up to 6-8-8)
Fence 1-2 Sticks (up to 2 with a higher chance of 2)
Trapdoor 1-2 Oak Planks (up to 3 with a higher chance of 3)
(Mossy)Stone Bricks 1 (Mossy)Cobblestone
Mushroom Blocks 1 Mushroom Pores Block
Fence gate 2-4 Sticks (up to 5-6-7)
Brick Stairs 2-4 Bricks (higher chance of 4)
Nether Brick 2-4 Nether Bricks (higher chance of 4)
Red Nether Brick 1-2 Nether Bricks (higher chance of 2)
Nether Brick Stairs 2-4 Nether Bricks (higher chance of 4)
Nether Brick Fence 2-4 Nether Bricks (higher chance of 4)
Red Nether Brick Fence 1-2 Nether Bricks (higher chance of 2)
Enchantment Table 1-2 Obsidian (up to 3-4-4)
Cauldron 3-4 Iron Ingots (up to 5-6-7)
Redstone Lamp 2-4 each of Redstone and Glowstone Dust (higher chance of 4)
Sandstone Stairs 1 Sand (up to 2-3-4)
Emerald Block 9 Emeralds
Cobblestone Wall 1 Cobblestone
Mossy Cobblestone Wall 1 Mossy Cobblestone
Stone Wall 1 Cobblestone
Granite Wall 1 Granite
Diorite Wall 1 Diorite
Andesite Wall 1 Andesite
Sandstone Wall 2-4 Sand (higher chance of 4)
Quartz Sandstone Wall 2-4 Quartz Sand (higher chance of 4)
Red Sandstone Wall 2-4 Red Sand (higher chance of 4)
Brick Wall 2-4 Bricks (higher chance of 4)
Stone Brick Wall 1 Stone Brick
Mossy Stone Brick Wall 1 Mossy Stone Brick
End Stone Wall 1 End Stone
Nether Quartz Wall 2-4 Nether Quartz (higher chance of 4)
Netherrack Wall 1 Netherrack
Hardened Clay Wall 1 Hardened Clay
Anvil 18-24 Iron Ingots (up to 25-26-27)
Slightly Damaged Anvil 14-18 Iron Ingots (up to 19-20-21)
Moderately Damaged Anvil 9-12 Iron Ingots (up to 13-14-15)
Very Damaged Anvil 4-6 Iron Ingots (up to 7-8-9)
Gold Pressure Plate 1 Gold Ingot
Iron Pressure Plate 1 Iron Ingot
Redstone Block 9 Redstone Dust
Hopper 2-3 Iron Ingots (up to 4-5-5)
Nether Quartz Block 4 Nether Quartz
Nether Quartz Stairs 2-4 Nether Quartz (higher chance of 4)
Coal Block 9 Coal
Amethyst Block 9 Amethyst
Bone Block 9 Bonemeal
Ruby Block 9 Rubies
Quartz Sandstone 1 Quartz Sand (up to 2-3-4)
Quartz Sandstone Stairs 1 Quartz Sand (up to 2-3-4)
Living Coral Block 4 Coral
Dead Coral Block 1 Gravel Sand
Red Sandstone 1 Red Sand (up to 2-3-4)
**************************************** Smelting ****************************************
New fuels:
Fuel Items smelted
Paper 0.17
Carpet 0.335
Book 0.5
Wool 0.5
Bow 1
Bowl 1
Fishing Rod 1
Ladder 1
Wooden Button 1
Wooden Hammer 1
Sign 2
Torch 2
Bed 3
Crafting Table 4
Boat 5
Bookshelf 6
Wooden Door 6
Chest 8
Note Block 8
Jukebox 20
New smeltable items (tools/armor only include iron/gold/chain):
Item Result (% back)
Red Clay (item) Brick
Red Clay (block) Hardened Clay
Amethyst Ore Amethyst
Raw Rabbit Cooked Rabbit
Shovel 3 nuggets (33.3% * durability)
Hoe 4 nuggets (33.3% * durability)
Sword 6 nuggets (33.3% * durability)
Axe 9 nuggets (33.3% * durability)
Pickaxe 9 nuggets (33.3% * durability)
Hammer 15 nuggets (33.3% * durability)
Shears 4 nuggets (33.3% * durability)
Helmet 15 nuggets (33.3% * durability)
Chestplate 24 nuggets (33.3% * durability)
Leggings 21 nuggets (33.3% * durability)
Boots 12 nuggets (33.3% * durability)
Horse armor 1 ingot (N/A)
Empty bucket 1 ingot (33.3%)
Iron Bars 1 nugget (29.6%)
Rail 1 nugget (29.6%)
Powered Rail 3 nuggets (33.3%)
Activator Rail 3 nuggets (33.3%)
Detector Rail 3 nuggets (33.3%)
Iron Door 2 ingots (33.3%)
Compass 1 ingot (25.0%)
Clock 1 ingot (25.0%)
Pressure Plate 1 ingot (50.0%)
Hopper 2 ingots (40.0%)
Anvil 12 ingots (38.7% * damage state)
I found a mineshaft with 800+ rails at 924, 17, -590. The seed is -6992127116659929679 using TMCWv4. The mineshaft also connects to a 2nd smaller shaft with 100+ rails.
Is this mod now abandoned or something? I really wanna try out the features of TMCWv5.
Anyway i'm suprissed that there are still people making JAR mods that don't use any modloader, considering almost everyone uses Forge these days. That's kind of amazing honestly.
Is this mod now abandoned or something? I really wanna try out the features of TMCWv5.
Anyway i'm suprissed that there are still people making JAR mods that don't use any modloader, considering almost everyone uses Forge these days. That's kind of amazing honestly.
Not at all; I was just mostly playing on various worlds up until recently, so I didn't spend much time on modding, and over that time I decided to make a complete overhaul of much of the game's rendering/world generation/file IO/etc systems, as a sort of "super-Optifine", which in itself has become a project as large as the update to TMCWv5, then I'll have to integrate the two (all these changes have so far been based on vanilla. Since Optifine itself will no longer be compatible I also want to add as much configuration as possible, e.g. render distance and FPS limit sliders, more on/off/fast/fancy settings, etc) - due to this I've considered releasing an intermediate update based on TMCWv4 which includes these changes (many of them do not affect anything that TMCWv4 does). At the same time, I've come up with more features to add to TMCWv5, then all of it will have to be tested.
Aside from the mod itself I've also been working on utilities for it, such as a standalone biome mapping program that can make a full biome map instead of relying on AMIDST and only being able to show general layout (AMIDST crashes if it encounters unknown biomes):
This is based on TMCWv4, with the biome map at the top and actual world at the bottom:
Actually, I just updated TMCWv4 with an updated version of the "CaveFinder" utility which can generate maps of the underground (caves, ravines, mineshafts, strongholds) without having to generate a world in-game or use an external mapping utility like Unmined, and it is far faster than using both (the "MLG" files, which were intended to be put into a server jar on top of the mod and used with Minecraft Land Generator to generate a Superflat-like world with caves, are more or less obsolete, as will the "AMIDST" files in the future; neither will be included in future versions), plus a few fixes to textures (e.g. MC-167018) and a minor tweak to cave generation (the seed "TMCWv4", which I used for a Survival world, now has the original generation from before I added a check that ensures that certain types of caves generate within 1000 blocks of the origin, which caused various changes; this mainly means that I don't need to use a patched copy to keep the generation the same in my own world).
Not at all; I was just mostly playing on various worlds up until recently, so I didn't spend much time on modding, and over that time I decided to make a complete overhaul of much of the game's rendering/world generation/file IO/etc systems, as a sort of "super-Optifine", which in itself has become a project as large as the update to TMCWv5, then I'll have to integrate the two (all these changes have so far been based on vanilla. Since Optifine itself will no longer be compatible I also want to add as much configuration as possible, e.g. render distance and FPS limit sliders, more on/off/fast/fancy settings, etc) - due to this I've considered releasing an intermediate update based on TMCWv4 which includes these changes (many of them do not affect anything that TMCWv4 does). At the same time, I've come up with more features to add to TMCWv5, then all of it will have to be tested.
Aside from the mod itself I've also been working on utilities for it, such as a standalone biome mapping program that can make a full biome map instead of relying on AMIDST and only being able to show general layout (AMIDST crashes if it encounters unknown biomes):
This is based on TMCWv4, with the biome map at the top and actual world at the bottom:
Actually, I just updated TMCWv4 with an updated version of the "CaveFinder" utility which can generate maps of the underground (caves, ravines, mineshafts, strongholds) without having to generate a world in-game or use an external mapping utility like Unmined, and it is far faster than using both (the "MLG" files, which were intended to be put into a server jar on top of the mod and used with Minecraft Land Generator to generate a Superflat-like world with caves, are more or less obsolete, as will the "AMIDST" files in the future; neither will be included in future versions), plus a few fixes to textures (e.g. MC-167018) and a minor tweak to cave generation (the seed "TMCWv4", which I used for a Survival world, now has the original generation from before I added a check that ensures that certain types of caves generate within 1000 blocks of the origin, which caused various changes; this mainly means that I don't need to use a patched copy to keep the generation the same in my own world).
Ahh, i get it now. Glad to see this giant mod project still alive. I think it really needs more popularity since you are pretty much making a fork of Minecraft. Anyway, i really love how in TMCWv4 the caves are really varied and i'm excited for the madness that will be unleashed in TMCWv5. Also the terrain is really cool, although i suggest to make it a bit less flat since i'm a fan of pre-beta 1.8 mountains and stuff.
I think the whole armor and diamond nerf stuff would make some of the less experienced people not wanna play your mod, so maybe you could make turn them into configurations that you can change on the world generation menu. Other than those minor complains, your mod is really great.
I think the whole armor and diamond nerf stuff would make some of the less experienced people not wanna play your mod, so maybe you could make turn them into configurations that you can change on the world generation menu. Other than those minor complains, your mod is really great.
I only reduced the damage dealt by weapons by one, so a diamond sword is as strong as a diamond sword in 1.9 and later (the attack damage is displayed as +6 but it is actually 7 since it is added to your unarmed damage; since 1.9 it replaces it, or the total damage is displayed. For TMCWv5 I've changed it so the total damage, including damage added by Sharpness/Smite/etc is displayed). Amethyst still deals as much damage as diamond did, and axes penetrate armor so they can be stronger (every 4 damage dealt penetrates 1 armor point down to a maximum of 60%; for mobs with axes the rate is 2 damage and 80% penetration, the same as 1.9's mechanics without armor toughness).
Of course, there is the "cooldown" mechanic but unlike 1.9's version you can attack as fast as you can as long as you don't hit the same mob too often (in TMCWv4 missed hits don't count at all but I've changed that so they do count if you miss more than once per second; either way, you have to make at least 2 bad hits in a row to actually activate the penalty, which is based on a counter which gradually increases/decreases, and since a Sharpness V sword deals up to 14.25 damage a slight reduction will not be noticeable; at least 10 damage per hit will kill most mobs in 2 hits).
The armor changes are likewise not too different from 1.9; full armor reduces damage by 66.6%, which is equivalent to diamond armor in 1.9 when taking 16.6 damage (going down from 80% to 66.6% means penetrating 3.33 armor points, which takes 4 damage per point for diamond, and 5 damage for the upcoming Netherite. Unlike 1.9, only axes can penetrate armor, using the same mechanics when dealt by a mob). Protection enchantments also reduce damage by a fixed amount, unlike vanilla 1.6.4, where full Protection IV is randomized from 40-80%, while I made it a constant 60%, much as 1.9 removed the randomization (in this case, 64%); the specific forms are also considerably stronger (a constant 80% instead of 52-80%). There is also the reduction in peak damage dealt by creeper explosions, from 49 to 36 but not dropping off as quickly (in vanilla they deal about half the maximum damage if you let one walk up to you and explode; however, I allowed them to keep moving while counting down so they can get much closer). Of course, I normally only wear a chestplate/leggings/boots in vanilla for 68% damage reduction (plus helmets dropped by mobs) with Protection IV on two pieces (averaging 77.6% damage reduction with a minimum of 74.4%); by simply adding Protection IV to my boots I can offset the reduction in armor protection (76.2% damage reduction).
A much more controversial change is all the nerfs I've made to mob farms; in TMCWv4 I nerfed mob spawners so that mobs spawned from them stop dropping XP and loot if more than about 50 spawn in succession, which is still plenty to get things like blaze rods (they can also recover over time, similar to what Mojang apparently once planned to add; see the first entry); I also changed mob despawning so only horizontal distance matters (i.e. a mob farm at y=200 will still be affected by mobs spawning near bedrock), if within a smaller area (a 96 block radius instead of 128 blocks). For TMCWv5 I've made many more changes, including making mobs like iron golems and zombie pigmen require a player kill to drop mineral drops (Mojang implemented this in a 1.8 snapshot but the outcry made them remove it) and fixing the looting bow bug (it only works if you directly dealt damage with a melee weapon). Mob spawn rates were also reduced by a factor of 4 (25% of chunks can spawn a pack of mobs per spawn cycle, with passive mobs attempting to spawn twice as often as in vanilla to help offset their already low spawn rate, not that this makes much difference since they normally don't spawn due to world generation spawning many times the cap), and up to 12 times if the mob cap can't be maintained (1 instead of 3 attempts per individual mob within a pack of 4); normal mob spawns on the surface at night or in caves aren't noticeably impacted (I tested this change while playing; the main reason for this change wasn't so much to nerf mob farms but as an optimization).
Also, spawn chunks are no longer permanently loaded; they are only loaded during initial world creation, going on top of the Nether in Survival deals void damage, and bedrock can't be broken by any means other than Creative mode (I'm not actually certain but the way I coded it in means that it shouldn't be possible as I check if the block being replaced is bedrock at the lowest level of chunk data access, albeit only for the general "setBlock" method but my own custom "fast" methods are only used by world generation, same for a method which is only called when a player breaks a block), and I fixed scheduled block updates so they need chunks loaded around them to work (mainly to fix issues like MC-119994), as well as duplication bugs (and potential chunk corruption) due to synchronization issues with file I/O (MC-119971; this has been the cause of occasional errors when generating chunks, though I've never experienced it while actually playing since I don't generate new chunks very quickly (the faster chunks are generated the more likely that it will occur), and otherwise I never had any chunk issues aside from one old world (Forge 1.6.2) which had a chunk with the wrong biome, which is due to another synchronization issue which I fixed by making the client only read biomes from loaded chunks).
I found a abandoned mine with 500+ rails, and today one with 327 rails. You found one with 757, can they get any bigger than that or reach 800?
only want to congratulate you for keeping up with your mods for over 6 years with pressure for Forge ports and the massive bandwagon of individuals updating for the sake of updating and playing only the highest version of the game for the sake of "content". You don't get much deserved recognition or ever will be in the spotlight because of those choices, the same choices that make your mods outclass most mods out there (save of Optifine). That said I will personally track you down if any of your mods disappear from the face of the earth and ask for a copy of your work so far.
I have been running using your mods for the past years in both multi and single player and never had so much bang for my buck in terms of performance to content ratio. I wish there were other modders like you around and focus on the gameplay experience rather then pump out code to make their mods playable in each 6 month update at the cost of content. You really don't get enough recognition of what you achieved so far.
I hope I see more content from you some more on both 1.6.4 and some 1.7 and pat yourself on the back for providing a better, authenthic and truer to its ideals vanilla experience than any other existing version of minecraft.
Anyway, I am not a cheerleader and I don't do flattery, I am just pointing out the facts here.
Edit: Twitch lost my account so I had to create this just to post this.
If only this had forge support, this would work great with the weather mod too.
I've just tried the TMCWv4 mod and, wow, I'm very impressed... You have boosted my nostalgia for the old pre-1.7 terrain generation to a whole new level... I didn't remember how good-looking beaches and swamps used to be... Cave generation is just outstanding... And all the new biomes... I like the Rocky Mountains biome a lot.
Just a question... Is it possible to generate a world with your mod and then open it with a newer Minecraft version without messing up all the world?
If you mean release 1.7, the beaches in this mod are not representative of beaches in older versions - or rather, since Beta 1.7.3, when beaches were generated in an entirely different manner (instead of using biomes the game used, I believe, a height map to determine what should be sand, and the altitude was limited to several blocks above sea level; by contrast, I changed the height smoothing the game uses between biomes so it doesn't have much influence on the height of beaches, as well as rivers); for example, here is a rendering from when I modded a copy of my first world with TMCW; you can see where beaches transition from vanilla to modded generation where the palm trees are near the center:
As for loading a world in a newer version, while older versions of TMCW did not add any new blocks or items (besides variations of existing ones, such as the new stones) this isn't the case anymore; I'm not sure what they would do but versions since 1.8 are very picky about even blocks and items with invalid data values/states, such as the new types of flowers, which I based on dandelions while 1.7+ based them on roses. Here is what happened when I loaded a copy of a world created in TMCWv4 in vanilla 1.6.4; a chunk of my base disappeared. Biome colors and precipitation will also become messed up since their biome IDs do not match (for example, Tropical Swamp has biome ID 30, which is Cold Taiga in 1.7; even vanilla has the issue that what was once snowy taiga in 1.6.4 is now snow-free).
Even separate versions of TMCW aren't guaranteed to update without issues; the upcoming TMCWv5 release will even change some vanilla blocks, such as removing the red mushroom block and making them a variant of brown mushrooms with the now-unused block ID used by red sandstone (this means that if opened in vanilla the new Badlands biome will turn into red mushrooms underground, which will all break soon as one updates. Another block I removed is locked chests (a legacy April Fool's addition with no practical use), which are now underwater grass and sea grass, while in 1.7+ they are stained glass. Other biomes also use new blocks which will likewise cause them to even entirely disappear down to bedrock if loaded in vanilla; later vanilla versions will cause them to turn into various blocks; likewise, somebody once told me they found a minecart with command block, which meant that they opened a world in 1.7+, where they use the same ID as amethyst).
TheMasterCaver's First World - possibly the most caved-out world in Minecraft history - includes world download.
TheMasterCaver's World - my own version of Minecraft largely based on my views of how the game should have evolved since 1.6.4.
Why do I still play in 1.6.4?
In superflat, I saw about something about dungeons with a count in the upcoming TMCWv5. Is this the same as customized?
Yes, except the count is effectively double that in 1.8's Customized because they only generate up to y=127 (since 1.7 dungeons are effectively rarer because they doubled their range from 0-127 to 0-255; there isn't any use of increasing it since caves pretty much don't generate higher up and dungeons can't generate without them, or rarely in the sides of cliffs). This does mean that the maximum count that I set, 800, is equivalent to 1600 (the default of 8 is equivalent to 16, which I've suggested when using my "old caves" mods).
I've also added control of some other things, such as whether snow is generated (in vanilla you have to wait for it to snow) and whether passive mobs spawn during world generation (in vanilla they only randomly spawn after the world is generated, in very low numbers compared to normal worlds due to the mob cap), and whether certain biomes, like desert and mesa, replace stone with biome-specific blocks (sandstone, hardened clay, etc. This currently always occurs in TMCWv4 if "decoration" is enabled); I use the same code to generate Superflat worlds as normal worlds, except for the terrain generation step (TMCWv4 and earlier versions used the vanilla Superflat generator so not all features would generate, or not generate properly).
TheMasterCaver's First World - possibly the most caved-out world in Minecraft history - includes world download.
TheMasterCaver's World - my own version of Minecraft largely based on my views of how the game should have evolved since 1.6.4.
Why do I still play in 1.6.4?
Is there a way to include mesa mineshafts and custom dungeon counter (superflat) to TMCWv4? Just curious.
I've made so many changes to TMCWv5 that it would be like copying something from 1.6.4 to 1.13 or vice-versa; world generation is entirely different (not necessarily the way it looks but the underlying code).
Also, as for TMCWv5, I could add a link to a zip file containing a changelog and updates until I finish it, since the URL will remain the same as long as I use the same name for the files (the only potential issue is if the URL ever changes for any reason; I just checked to make sure and the link for the first version, posted 5 years ago, still works). Otherwise, I have no idea where I might post future updates, including for TMCWv5 (notices of potential bug fixes and minor changes and additions; for example, I last updated TMCWv4 last December to fix a bug with mineshafts and strongholds, which you notified me about, as well as added my personal "resource pack" and a custom skin resource pack. I also plan to make a version of MCMap that can properly render the new blocks added in TMCWv5, which will likely be included after the main release).
TheMasterCaver's First World - possibly the most caved-out world in Minecraft history - includes world download.
TheMasterCaver's World - my own version of Minecraft largely based on my views of how the game should have evolved since 1.6.4.
Why do I still play in 1.6.4?
Pending the upcoming death of the forums, is there another official location to follow your progress?
He said he's trying to release TMCWv5 by the 16th.
This probably won't happen, given how much more I want to add (I hadn't spent much time on it in recent months, instead playing on another world, but I'd been including more things to add as I come up with them - the list of things to do is around 100 items long, about a third of everything added so far, where I've probably spent 6 months exclusively working on it instead of playing). Some of them have already been implemented in a separate mod (a modified version of Optifine, which cannot be distributed; I've been considering dropping support for it entirely as many of the changes I've made improve performance more than it does and this would allow me to add in my own settings in place of the ones Optifine added, which are broken because I've overridden its code (Optifine itself also has a bug where it only increases the server view distance above 10 if the render distance is 17 or more. The minimum can also be lowered to 8 with TMCW due to changes to mob (de)spawning); currently I still recommend it for its optimizations and Clear Water, which now only changes the underwater fog as I changed the light opacity of water to be the same as Clear Water, or vanilla 1.13+):
The red areas are completely black, rgb(0,0,0), in the image above and will never have anything visible regardless of brightness or monitor settings (this was on Bright; the brightness setting now has no effect on either the minimum or maximum brightness, only the gamma curve between them. For comparison, in vanilla total "darkness" on Moody is still 5% brightness):
Lightmaps on Moody and Bright; the Moody lightmap is the same as vanilla except that light level 0 (upper-left corner) is completely black (for higher brightness levels levels above 0 are modified by the formula (level * scale - offset), where scale is (gamma * 0.1 + 1) and offset is (gamma * 0.1):
Smooth lighting fixes (vanilla has a blocky appearance around corners which is most noticeable in staircases like this; see MC-43968):
In this case, the shadows around blocks are skewed in vanilla (MC-138211):
Smooth lighting added to more blocks, including water (a feature exclusive to Bedrock Edition; the performance impact of my implementation is less than smooth lighting on normal blocks in vanilla so I don't know why they haven't added it to Java):
(only the center block is lit; all light-emitting blocks in vanilla do not have smooth lighting, which I've only omitted form blocks with a light level of 14 or more)
Lava and glowstone also always visually render with a light level of 15, so even if a black lighting glitch occurs they will always be visibly lit (light glitches should be much less common, and can be fixed by pressing F4, which will force a relight of loaded chunks).
This is an example of the performance at 20 chunk render distance and maximum settings (with Optifine); even then, it uses less than 512 MB of memory (259/418 MB) and server tick time is only 4.3 ms (50 max); generating a new world took only 3 seconds. Note also that the "vignette" effect was removed from Fancy (one reason I've never used Fancy is because of the darkening around the edges of the screen). Also, Fancy clouds now render faster than Fast clouds in vanilla, and Fancy leaves render 4 times faster with smooth lighting enabled (I removed it from interior faces, with their shading adjusted to give a similar appearance to the darkening from smooth lighting. Note that smooth lighting doesn't actually affect FPS unless chunks are being rendered/updated since the GPU is doing the same stuff, it just changes the brightness levels of each vertex, which are being set in any case). The rendering speed of many other things, from items to text, have also been substantially increased, by a factor of 10 or more in cases (Optifine doesn't affect any of this, only how chunks are rendered overall):
This shows how fast world generation is - it took only 3 seconds to generate a new world (it will be slower if it happens to be in a biome with big trees or mountains, but even those are several times faster than before, largely due to optimizations to the lighting engine, which took the majority of the time. Cave generation is also about 3 times faster due to using an improved RNG, which also means that every seed is different, unlike before or vanilla, where there are only 2^48 configurations of caves out of 2^64 seeds):
Some other performance comparisons:
Some other improvements; ladders now render their back side, making them visible from behind, and can be placed on more blocks, including glass, and are placed more consistently (only on the block you are pointing at, avoiding ladders being placed elsewhere if the block you are pointing at isn't a valid location):
Water/lava buckets were fixed to prevent "ghost" buckets (appearing to be filled/empty when they aren't) and placed liquid sources (caused by the client and server running the same code, but not exactly in sync).
Biome colors are smoothed over a larger area, while still being less resource intensive than vanilla since I read directly from the stored data in a chunk (the client isn't allowed to access the biome generator, which has caused issues, even crashes, in vanilla):
There's also many more bugfixes; for example, I've occasionally noticed that the player's POV jumps after exiting a GUI, which seems to have become worse with an update, which I was able to completely fix with a simple change to the class the game uses to record mouse movement:
It should also be noted that I've made more changes that nerf mob farms; for example, mob spawning only spawns mobs in 25% of chunks per spawn cycle, making it 4 times slower per chunk, with the frequency of passive mob spawn cycles doubled (one ever 10 seconds, twice as slow per chunk. For hostile mobs this is still more than enough to keep the mob cap full when flying around and I saw no effect when I tested it in a world I was playing on; this change also significantly reduces the tick time). Mobs that drop resource items, like iron golems and zombie pigmen, also only do so if the player kills them (there really isn't any reason for most mobs to drop anything unless the player kills them, but I did not change most drops). Mobs also can never spawn above the Nether ceiling (the range is fixed to y=1-125), which is also forbidden to players in Survival mode (you'll take damage similar to being in the void).
There is one change that is an advantage though; the actual height in a column is used instead of the "lc" value (a change made in vanilla in 1.8), which included empty chunk sections so if you ever loaded the topmost section (y=240-255) it would permanently affect spawn rates (the game never deletes sections once they have been loaded; certain lighting glitches occurred due to the server not sending them to the client, which I fixed). This also slightly increases natural spawn rates (e.g. a flat surface at y=65 (ground at y=64) would previously use an lc value of 64 + 16 = 80, now it is 65. Similarly, a deep ravine like this would see a much higher spawn rate at the bottom, without having to be wide enough to have whole empty sections inside).
Also, you can preview the underground of TMCWv5 with the following utility, which is a basic Java app which shows the locations of caves, mineshafts, and strongholds, including the ability to generate maps of the area, not including strongholds yet (the version for TMCWv4 only printed out locations, and only centered around the origin. A good way to find things is to first run it with a large radius and no "map #" option, then make maps of the areas of interest using a smaller radius (maps are limited to 4096x4096 pixels/blocks, or 2048x2048 blocks when a scale of 2:1 is used):
https://www.dropbox.com/s/47au3aimek87ui0/CaveFinder.zip
Note that you can use this without having to install Java if you change the path to point to the runtime the launcher downloads (see the "help" file, the launcher will also show the path to the Java executable, which should be changed to java.exe instead of javaw.exe).
Here are some examples:
A 2:1 rendering (full size) of an 800x800 block area including the giant cave region furthest to the east above near the top-left, with a network cave region near the lower-right and a giant cave near the top-right:
The same area, but with the altitude limited to y=13 (equivalent to y=20 in vanilla, a good layer to find denser cave systems; you can also see the variation of caves better):
This was the largest cave found within 8192 blocks of the origin (1 million chunks), with a volume of 680,000 air blocks; compared to TMCWv4 the maximum size of caves and ravines is considerably larger. To put the size of this cave into perspective, it is equivalent to all the caves and ravines in about 970 chunks in 1.6.4 and 1160 chunks in 1.7+ (the area shown is 384x384 blocks or 24x24 chunks, so the single large cave has twice the average volume of a 1.7+ world over the whole area. Even then, a giant cave region is even larger, averaging about 1.25 million air blocks):
The largest ravine, with a volume of 516,000; I didn't check in an actual world but it probably does go from the surface all the way down to lava level :
(a depth of 59 for a ravine means that it goes from y=4-62, the number of layers between lava level and sea level, and the maximum depth shown).
The largest circular room, with a volume of 84,000; these are relatively small compared to other caves, in part because they are much less varied in shape (circular rooms are a single semi-spherical cave segment with half the usual width-height ratio. I haven't added them yet but a discussion in this thread game me the idea to add variants based on generating ravines or other caves in a 360 degree pattern):
The largest mineshaft, with 408 structure pieces (a 1-4 support long section of corridor, crossing, staircase, or the central room), which makes it about 40 times larger than the smallest mineshafts and 4 times larger than average (a very small mineshaft can be seen in the upper-right corner of the previous image. Vanilla can rarely generate mineshafts with only the central room, but I fixed that a long time ago):
TheMasterCaver's First World - possibly the most caved-out world in Minecraft history - includes world download.
TheMasterCaver's World - my own version of Minecraft largely based on my views of how the game should have evolved since 1.6.4.
Why do I still play in 1.6.4?
Will the mineshafts be the same as TMCWv4?
World generation in general is completely different, the same applies to every other version (it is more like the difference between Minecraft 1.0, the current game, and a Minecraft 2.0, which would be a completely new game, rather than Minecraft 1.6 and Minecraft 1.7); this is mainly because I replaced Java's Random with my own superior RNG (every possible seed will generate a completely different world; in older versions/vanilla every seed was one of 65536 seeds which had the same cave generation and other features, as described here).
Even some block and item IDs will be different; for example, I combined red mushrooms (block ID 40) with brown mushrooms (39), with 40 now used by red sandstone. Diamond ender chests now have their own tile entity (previously they used the same one as ender chests, with the block ID telling them apart), flower pots are now tile entities, and empty spawners are a single block ID with the ID used by lit empty spawners now used by saguaro cactus (I added the ability for metadata to affect things like light level and opacity; vanilla has to use separate blocks for things like redstone ore).
A lot of this was done to conserve block IDs, of which there are still about 60 left, as well as simplify code; e.g. all types of wood fences are a single block ID so all code that checks for fence blocks only needs to need to check for a single block, avoiding the need to fix a lot of code, this is also why I originally made amethyst ore a variant of obsidian (it was previously its own block) so I didn't have to change the pickaxe code to give it the mining level of obsidian.
*Here is a list of all the biomes, blocks, items and other things I've added so far (including in previous versions); the mod has reached the point where there should be some sort of Wiki or similar to describe everything (for example, Link Removed):
TheMasterCaver's First World - possibly the most caved-out world in Minecraft history - includes world download.
TheMasterCaver's World - my own version of Minecraft largely based on my views of how the game should have evolved since 1.6.4.
Why do I still play in 1.6.4?
I found a mineshaft with 800+ rails at 924, 17, -590. The seed is -6992127116659929679 using TMCWv4. The mineshaft also connects to a 2nd smaller shaft with 100+ rails.
Is this mod now abandoned or something? I really wanna try out the features of TMCWv5.
Anyway i'm suprissed that there are still people making JAR mods that don't use any modloader, considering almost everyone uses Forge these days. That's kind of amazing honestly.
Not at all; I was just mostly playing on various worlds up until recently, so I didn't spend much time on modding, and over that time I decided to make a complete overhaul of much of the game's rendering/world generation/file IO/etc systems, as a sort of "super-Optifine", which in itself has become a project as large as the update to TMCWv5, then I'll have to integrate the two (all these changes have so far been based on vanilla. Since Optifine itself will no longer be compatible I also want to add as much configuration as possible, e.g. render distance and FPS limit sliders, more on/off/fast/fancy settings, etc) - due to this I've considered releasing an intermediate update based on TMCWv4 which includes these changes (many of them do not affect anything that TMCWv4 does). At the same time, I've come up with more features to add to TMCWv5, then all of it will have to be tested.
Aside from the mod itself I've also been working on utilities for it, such as a standalone biome mapping program that can make a full biome map instead of relying on AMIDST and only being able to show general layout (AMIDST crashes if it encounters unknown biomes):
Actually, I just updated TMCWv4 with an updated version of the "CaveFinder" utility which can generate maps of the underground (caves, ravines, mineshafts, strongholds) without having to generate a world in-game or use an external mapping utility like Unmined, and it is far faster than using both (the "MLG" files, which were intended to be put into a server jar on top of the mod and used with Minecraft Land Generator to generate a Superflat-like world with caves, are more or less obsolete, as will the "AMIDST" files in the future; neither will be included in future versions), plus a few fixes to textures (e.g. MC-167018) and a minor tweak to cave generation (the seed "TMCWv4", which I used for a Survival world, now has the original generation from before I added a check that ensures that certain types of caves generate within 1000 blocks of the origin, which caused various changes; this mainly means that I don't need to use a patched copy to keep the generation the same in my own world).
TheMasterCaver's First World - possibly the most caved-out world in Minecraft history - includes world download.
TheMasterCaver's World - my own version of Minecraft largely based on my views of how the game should have evolved since 1.6.4.
Why do I still play in 1.6.4?
Ahh, i get it now. Glad to see this giant mod project still alive. I think it really needs more popularity since you are pretty much making a fork of Minecraft. Anyway, i really love how in TMCWv4 the caves are really varied and i'm excited for the madness that will be unleashed in TMCWv5. Also the terrain is really cool, although i suggest to make it a bit less flat since i'm a fan of pre-beta 1.8 mountains and stuff.
I think the whole armor and diamond nerf stuff would make some of the less experienced people not wanna play your mod, so maybe you could make turn them into configurations that you can change on the world generation menu. Other than those minor complains, your mod is really great.
I only reduced the damage dealt by weapons by one, so a diamond sword is as strong as a diamond sword in 1.9 and later (the attack damage is displayed as +6 but it is actually 7 since it is added to your unarmed damage; since 1.9 it replaces it, or the total damage is displayed. For TMCWv5 I've changed it so the total damage, including damage added by Sharpness/Smite/etc is displayed). Amethyst still deals as much damage as diamond did, and axes penetrate armor so they can be stronger (every 4 damage dealt penetrates 1 armor point down to a maximum of 60%; for mobs with axes the rate is 2 damage and 80% penetration, the same as 1.9's mechanics without armor toughness).
Of course, there is the "cooldown" mechanic but unlike 1.9's version you can attack as fast as you can as long as you don't hit the same mob too often (in TMCWv4 missed hits don't count at all but I've changed that so they do count if you miss more than once per second; either way, you have to make at least 2 bad hits in a row to actually activate the penalty, which is based on a counter which gradually increases/decreases, and since a Sharpness V sword deals up to 14.25 damage a slight reduction will not be noticeable; at least 10 damage per hit will kill most mobs in 2 hits).
The armor changes are likewise not too different from 1.9; full armor reduces damage by 66.6%, which is equivalent to diamond armor in 1.9 when taking 16.6 damage (going down from 80% to 66.6% means penetrating 3.33 armor points, which takes 4 damage per point for diamond, and 5 damage for the upcoming Netherite. Unlike 1.9, only axes can penetrate armor, using the same mechanics when dealt by a mob). Protection enchantments also reduce damage by a fixed amount, unlike vanilla 1.6.4, where full Protection IV is randomized from 40-80%, while I made it a constant 60%, much as 1.9 removed the randomization (in this case, 64%); the specific forms are also considerably stronger (a constant 80% instead of 52-80%). There is also the reduction in peak damage dealt by creeper explosions, from 49 to 36 but not dropping off as quickly (in vanilla they deal about half the maximum damage if you let one walk up to you and explode; however, I allowed them to keep moving while counting down so they can get much closer). Of course, I normally only wear a chestplate/leggings/boots in vanilla for 68% damage reduction (plus helmets dropped by mobs) with Protection IV on two pieces (averaging 77.6% damage reduction with a minimum of 74.4%); by simply adding Protection IV to my boots I can offset the reduction in armor protection (76.2% damage reduction).
A much more controversial change is all the nerfs I've made to mob farms; in TMCWv4 I nerfed mob spawners so that mobs spawned from them stop dropping XP and loot if more than about 50 spawn in succession, which is still plenty to get things like blaze rods (they can also recover over time, similar to what Mojang apparently once planned to add; see the first entry); I also changed mob despawning so only horizontal distance matters (i.e. a mob farm at y=200 will still be affected by mobs spawning near bedrock), if within a smaller area (a 96 block radius instead of 128 blocks). For TMCWv5 I've made many more changes, including making mobs like iron golems and zombie pigmen require a player kill to drop mineral drops (Mojang implemented this in a 1.8 snapshot but the outcry made them remove it) and fixing the looting bow bug (it only works if you directly dealt damage with a melee weapon). Mob spawn rates were also reduced by a factor of 4 (25% of chunks can spawn a pack of mobs per spawn cycle, with passive mobs attempting to spawn twice as often as in vanilla to help offset their already low spawn rate, not that this makes much difference since they normally don't spawn due to world generation spawning many times the cap), and up to 12 times if the mob cap can't be maintained (1 instead of 3 attempts per individual mob within a pack of 4); normal mob spawns on the surface at night or in caves aren't noticeably impacted (I tested this change while playing; the main reason for this change wasn't so much to nerf mob farms but as an optimization).
Also, spawn chunks are no longer permanently loaded; they are only loaded during initial world creation, going on top of the Nether in Survival deals void damage, and bedrock can't be broken by any means other than Creative mode (I'm not actually certain but the way I coded it in means that it shouldn't be possible as I check if the block being replaced is bedrock at the lowest level of chunk data access, albeit only for the general "setBlock" method but my own custom "fast" methods are only used by world generation, same for a method which is only called when a player breaks a block), and I fixed scheduled block updates so they need chunks loaded around them to work (mainly to fix issues like MC-119994), as well as duplication bugs (and potential chunk corruption) due to synchronization issues with file I/O (MC-119971; this has been the cause of occasional errors when generating chunks, though I've never experienced it while actually playing since I don't generate new chunks very quickly (the faster chunks are generated the more likely that it will occur), and otherwise I never had any chunk issues aside from one old world (Forge 1.6.2) which had a chunk with the wrong biome, which is due to another synchronization issue which I fixed by making the client only read biomes from loaded chunks).
TheMasterCaver's First World - possibly the most caved-out world in Minecraft history - includes world download.
TheMasterCaver's World - my own version of Minecraft largely based on my views of how the game should have evolved since 1.6.4.
Why do I still play in 1.6.4?
How do I stop CaveFinder from generating maps?