Rouge planets and other technology-based planet types

[MadAlchemist]

What do you think is missing or what do you think can be done better It would be cool to have some unusual world types in game. Here is some examples: 1) Dyson's sphere - sphere around the star with radius inside habitable zone. There may be habitable biomes inside. It is ok that rocket actually will land on outer surface of object - sphere must have holes or teleporters to allow enter or leave sphere, but this can be omitted in game, just land on inner side. There may be frozen planets outside sphere and any planets inside. Sun always in zenith, but day/night cycle may be implemented by placing smaller sphere inside, which changes between transparent and opaque (no need to implement this object, just turn star on/off). Sky has no stars and looks more like infinite map of a planet. 2) Ring world - simpler variant of huge artifical world. It is a belt around the star, with radius in habitable zone. Sun always in zenith, day/night cycle works by huge objects orbiting star inside ring and occluding it's light when it is night. There must be arc on the sky, with map texture, very wide near horyzon and narrow as string in zenith. Stars may be visible very well at night. World just like in Halo game or, described in every detail, in Larry Niven's book "Ring World" 3) Orphan planet - planet without parent star. Most likely completely frozen, but may have underground life or even tiny artifical moon-sized sun on it's orbit (imagine that Earth left it's orbit, but mankind survived by building huge laser (little bit less powerful like Death Star's laser) to melt moon to almost boiling state so that it is bright and hot enough to keep earth warm and do day/night cycle. Planet with micro-sun will most likely have little water, because it was consumed to burn hydrogen in fusion reactors to feed mega-laser. 4) Space Ark - huge cylindric spaceship. May be on it's own, like orphan planet, or orbit star/planet. Instead of sun, have extremely hot pole in it's axis, which provides warmth and light to it's biosphere, and may be part of engines (imagine some extremely powerful reactor in front of ship, plasma goes through the transparent pipe to the rear side of ship end expelled through the nozzles as propellant). Sky looks like map of a small country with brilliant white strip from north to south. This strip is axis of the ship and may be turned on and off to implement day/night cycle 5) Flat world - also a spaceship with it's own biosphere. Quite difficult to implement normal gravitation - it either must always fly with acceleration or manipulate gravity directly. May have no sun at all, instead heated from underground (somewhat build by species that prefer darkness?) by same energy source that provides gravity, warmth and controls movement.

All these worlds can have unusual structures, probably parts of machinery that supports these worlds (gravity generators in Dyson's sphere or flat world, reactors and moon-heating laser on orphan planet, engine and control room (maybe with cybernetic guard boss) on Space Ark, stabilizer engines in ring world (because it needs orbit correction to keep it's sun in center)

[AGiLE-EaGLE1994]

I'm pretty sure they said a permanent "NO" to Dyson Spheres. IIRC, Z said they would NEVER add those no matter how many times people asked for it because they can already be simulated with satellites. As for ringworlds and space arks, those WOULD be cool, but Minecraft worlds aren't designed to be three-dimensional shapes, and if you wanted to make these, not only would you need some mod that would allow Starminer-style gravity, you'd also need a custom world generator that could generate worlds in 3D shapes, and a chunk generator that could produce chunks higher than 256 blocks and stack chunks vertically. In other words, to make those would be such massive effort that it'd not only likely take YEARS to make, but just ONE of those world types has enough work to it that it could be its OWN mod. Just get someone to port Starminer. I'm not saying I don't LIKE the space ark and ringworld ideas, because I DO think they'd be phenomenally awesome to have, but they'd just require so much effort that you might as well make another new game to support them from scratch instead of modding Minecraft.

[MadAlchemist]

And how about orphan planets? They don't need anything related to world generation - just a planet without a star, either frozen completely, or with underground life, or heated by super-hot moon (which may be just a moon completely made from lava).

As of ringworlds, just imagine how big they must be - when you stand on object like ringworld, you will think it is flat unless you exactly know that it isn't, so vanilla worldgen is ok for ringworlds, just need to modify sky render and galaxy map.

Space Arks indeed are too small to keep flat worldgen, because they are just a cities inside a rotating cylinder...

[AGiLE-EaGLE1994]

I'm sorry! I totally forgot you mentioned orphaned planets! Yeah, those would probably be EXTREMELY easy to implement compared to the other ideas. And I have an idea on how you could use vanilla world generation (or vanilla-esque world gen): Have the world generate as a really long rectangle that wraps around on the east/west or north/south sides, while having a certain (even) amount of land chunks in between, followed by a wall on the edges of the land and a glass covering above that that extends to 256 blocks tall and eventually connects to another wall on the opposite side the ground could extend to around 32 blocks down, but the sea level would be 92 to compensate, and under 31 blocks down you'd have reactors, living quarters, storage rooms, and other such areas, and possibly air conditioners (for cold biomes), water pumps and fountains (for oceans), or heaters (for hot biomes). Have no clouds for ringworlds so they don't go through the roof. The inner and outer walls could have rocket launch/retrieval platforms, satellite bays and unmanned vehicle hangars. This would require a custom world generator but it'd be a lot easier to make than a 3D world generator.

[MadAlchemist]

Actually, ring world does not need a roof - only walls. Rotation creates artifical gravity that holds atmosphere. And it is so huge that it's nearly impossible to reach walls or opposite side of ring - if star is same size as Sun, ring radius may be something between Venus and Mars orbit diameter, depending on how warm or cold builders wanted it. And there must be engines built into the walls, to stabilize ring and keep star at center of system. On the image - outer ring is a ringworld itself, radius - tens of millions of kilometers. Inner set of ring segments are objects that rotate faster then ringworld and provide day/night cycle by occluding star's light. They also are a huge solar panels, feeding all ringworlds machinery. Segment of ring displays how it is built inside. Cyan is armosphere, light-gray - bedrock, blue - oceans, dark grey - rock, green - fertile soil, red - all machinery that support's ring stability. Note that even smallest island actually is of same size as earthlike planet. So, there is no need to implement walls, engines and other stuff unless player want to travel millions of blocks. And visiting opposite side of world is even more diffisult, nearly impossible - but, wrapping around east/west is still a good idea. In normal game, where player walks only tens of thousands of blocks at most, it is enough to render custom sky (very wide map-like textured belt on east and west sides of horizon, going thinner when looking up, and string-like near zenith, and center is behind the sun. And these rectangles moving slowly in the sky, occluding sun at night). P.S. sorry if image isn't good enough - I am not good at drawing.

[voidsong-dragonfly]

Of these, the only one I see being implemented in any capacity (large technological worlds or ringworlds and such are pretty hard to do effectively, especially with limited Vanilla block choices and similar, plus AR isn't really looking for technological planets so much as better natural ones) are orphan planets. They've been on my todo but I have had other things I have wanted to do first. And yes, no dyson spheres/swarms. Make a bunch of solar satellites. Does the same thing better than any dedicated block or structure or world ever could.

EDIT: Orphan planets would not have artificial suns either, as those don't work too well with the current lack-of-extraterrestrial-technology focus of the mod.

[MadAlchemist]

EDIT: Orphan planets would not have artificial suns either, as those don't work too well with the current lack-of-extraterrestrial-technology focus of the mod.

Just make a lava moon (or moon made of somewhat brighter and hotter from another mod), and give it star-like texture, and artifical sun is ready. No need to create "artifical sun" type of object, because, as I have said, it is actually an extremely hot moon. No need to implement alien technologies, just need more textures for objects. And let's modpack developers care how aliens made their moon so hot and how they keep it always so hot.

What if I put some extra textures of planets and moons inside mod's JAR file? Will be these textures available in planedDefs.xml, or they must be registered somewhere in mod code?

[voidsong-dragonfly]

You can load them with a resource pack as long as the images sizes and filetypes are correct.

[PercyJames]

wait, how do you add a planet without a star or a black hole?

[voidsong-dragonfly]

You cannot right now.

[blockninja124]

I would love just a simple generation type that would generate basically a vanilla flatworld (overworld) type and all the other planer settings (its 3d shape in space, etc.) would just be normal "earth" planet type

[voidsong-dragonfly]

1.16 all generation is controlled via MC dimension datapacks. If they can do that, that's how you'd be getting it.

[blockninja124]

1.16 all generation is controlled via MC dimension datapacks. If they can do that, that's how you'd be getting it.

Sure, but I usually play the 1.12 version of this mod.

[voidsong-dragonfly]

1.12 is getting no more content updates.