1.4.0 Feedback and Issues

[TechnoMysterio]

Spent a little time testing out v1.4.0, and there's some great stuff in here, good job. I'll go over some things I've found/thought of:

• Dimension Ripper. New model looks much much better, but perhaps it could have a end portal starfield effect at its core, like with Void Siphons? Just a small thought. Otherwise the mechanical changes are all good, but one small thing I'd suggest is that if a pair of Rippers shoot at an already formed rift, it could make it a little bigger. Probably with a limit on how big you can get them, as well as making them very unstable in the process, so to make using the device this way more risky.
• Timewinder changes. All good stuff here, not much I can see to improve. Perhaps have a sound play when moving time forward?
• Flux Capacitor. Firstly, great name. Otherwise there's not much I can see to improve here.
• Portal Generator. With an active portal, a pair of stabilizers seem to constantly produce flux, even when the portal is at 'Stable'. Is there an upper limit to a portal's stability? Another small change that might work is to have the generator itself display a 'Stability Gain/Loss Per Cycle' number, as with Runic Matrices.
• Catalyzation Chamber. A big problem I've noticed is that it doesn't work with any of the modded ores I've tried. I've used ores from Embers Rekindled and Bewitchment, and they don't work at all, not with any of the three stones. The transmutation stone does work with modded ingots, but nothing works with modded ores. The two vanilla metal ores work though, as well as Cinnabar ore, but not Quartz ore.
• Another thing I might suggest for the Catalyzation Chamber is to have more recipes for more modded ores, with stuff like Aluminium and Nickel ores/metals, since those two especially are quite common, even appearing in Embers, another magic mod. Maybe a transmutation recipe to convert between those two, with native and eldritch clusters as well? I do know that some other mods add custom Native Clusters, like Expanded Arcanum for Immersive Engineering ores, as well as JAOPCA for basically any new ore ever, so maybe have a config option on your end to disable certain clusters (with separate sets of options for native/eldritch clusters) for use in a larger modpack that may have another mod like that already adding custom clusters in.
• Thaumcraft tab name. I'm really not sure why this bothers me so much, but I do think it'd look better as just 'Wonders'. I kinda think it's a little redundant to have a tab with 'Thaumic' in the Thaumonomicon, a book about Thaumaturgy, but... eh, just a nitpick that my brain won't allow me to let go of I guess.

Regardless, great work on this update. Also that new background looks rather fancy, I can only wonder who got it for you...

[daedalus4096]

Thanks for the continued feedback.

• The starfield effect is cool, but unfortunately I have not the slightest idea how to do it. Maybe in the future if I make a breakthrough, but I wouldn't hold my breath.
• I already have plans to let Rippers create larger rifts if you provide them with more essentia and delay the reaction, I just haven't had time to implement it yet. Working on other stuff right now.
• Portal Generators can become Very Stable with enough work, at which point Stabilizers will stop working to improve them. Of course, they'll quickly decay back down to Stable at which point the process will start again. But then, the intent is that Portals and Stabilizers generate a lot of flux if you keep them active. Having more feedback on their stability gain/loss would probably be a good idea.
• When you say that modded ores don't work, which ones do you mean? The Catalyzation Chamber is only intended to work, with some small exceptions, with things that you can already purify in a crucible. So: iron, gold, copper, tin, silver, lead, and cinnabar. It works using the ore dictionary so it should work with any mod that properly registers them. I confirmed that it works with Thermal Expansion, but I can't test the whole mod ecosystem. If those core seven don't work, that's a bug and I'd appreciate confirmation.
• I'm sorry that the tab name bothers you, but I don't intend to change it at this point.
• Thanks again for the new research background. It's snazzy!

[TechnoMysterio]

• Do you have a decompiled copy of the TC source code (for reference purposes only, of course)? I had a look over it, and while I don't know much of coding I did notice that under client/renderers/tile/TileVoidSiphonRenderer there is reference to the end portal effect with code seemingly dedicated to creating that effect, so that might be a good place to start in getting the effect in your own models.
• That sounds like a good way to make bigger rifts.
• It was only bothersome because I left the stabilizers there for ages and they didn't seem to do anything outside of making lots and lots of flux, so better feedback would be good.
• I tested ores from Embers Rekindled and Bewitchment. For the former, copper, lead, silver, tin, and even the ones without clusters, aluminium and nickel. For the latter, just silver. The oreDict does seem to work for converting those ingots between each other (outside of nickel/aluminium), but nothing works with those ores. However, it works for iron ore, gold ore and cinnabar ore. As for additional ores, that's more of a suggestion, but I figured it'd make sense because of how common metals like nickel and aluminium are in modpacks.
• No problem, I'm just being pedantic.
• I did actually notice a minor issue with the background I gave you, where the effect forbidden research has (purple swirls behind the icon) is a little hard to see. While this isn't that bad, there is a possibility that people'll get angry that they're getting warped when they wanted to avoid that kind of stuff, but that's just a thought.

[daedalus4096]

So, unfortunately I'm not able to reproduce the Embers ore issue with the Catalyzation chamber. I've tested all three stones using copper ore from Thermal Expansion, Immersive Engineering, and Embers: Rekindled. All of them work in my test environment. However, I've added some extra logging in the new 1.5.0 release that should shine a little bit of light on why it's rejecting the ores that it does. If you can download the new release and post a Pastebin link to a log file from when you're reproducing this issue, that might help me track it down. Thanks!