Enhance Mystcraft Integration

📎 Requires completion of the Mystcraft API's biome symbols functions.

Just stopping by to record what I mentioned on irc, some further options for ExtrabiomesXL Mystcraft integration beyond simply adding biomes as symbols. Sorry I didn't notice your responses, I was watching television.

1.) Mystcraft has a balancing system in place called instability. Unstable ages (Ages being dimensions) are the result of poorly written ages, and from ages where the player is being greedy. Cracked sand spawning in the world and spreading would be a good low level destructive mechanic. (Compared to other destructive mechanics already in such as meteors.)

2.) Players can write symbols in their ages to generate things like lakes or the obsidian pillars from the End. Patches of quicksand would be a very good fit for this style of symbol, players may want quicksand in their desert ages for example.

Not just cracked sand. Hmm...

Would it be possible to detect "permanent night" worlds, and add permafrost? The world will freeze, and unlike normal worlds, there is no sun to thaw it out and restrict it's growth.

Or permanent day worlds, or no weather worlds, and add the cracked blocks -- they are retarded by rain, and spread faster if it's always day.

Actually, I think that would require some changes to the instability choice system. Adding a cracked block spawn as instability has less of a consequence in a world with rain or a day cycle, so the amount of "instability" could be considered to be different in both cases.

Which implies the question: Can a form of instability have a variable value to it, that is determined by the instability code after examining the world it is going into?

The entire "Time" section may be removed in favor of something different (and far cooler) that makes that even harder to do than it is now, rendering checking for eternal night more impossible than it currently is.

My understanding of cracked sand is that it spreads, and it's being worked on as something that must be fought against but can be defeated. That, plus the way it spreads, already makes it a low level instability effect. Having an age that helps the player to fight it (I'm assuming rain helps here, so Eternal Rain for example) is perfectly fine if it provides a low stabilizing score anyway, the same way Cave Worlds are innately not affected by surface effects such as scorched.

The current version, coming in the near future, was redesigned by me and AnonTheMouse specifically with the goal of not destroying normal worlds; something that could be safely allowed on a 24/7 server.

Yes, the old version was a low level instability that would, if not actively defended, spread over the whole world. The new version is naturally restrained both by some biomes and by the rain cycle. Equally, there is "permafrost", constrained by hot biomes and daylight. And, most importantly, they have gone from "entirely negative" to "special features" -- things that will make you want to seek them out and work with their downsides to harvest their upsides.

Among the things you can do (design doc; not sure how much Scott could code):

1. Farm dirt and sand to repair creeper damage, and collect new landscaping blocks. In particular, now a renewable source of glass.
2. Crop fertilizer, used in large volumes, that won't grow flowers or trees (so it supplements, instead of replacing, bonemeal)
3. Potential for a "wind" mod to spread dustbowl-like conditions that destroy farms, or real-life "fertile dried desert" to improve farmlands. (See real-life Sahara; there's a dried lake bed in the middle that has something like a 10,000 year re-occurrence cycle that fertilizes much of the world.)
4. Farm clay (documentation hints at, but does not actually specify how.). Clues to how can be observed if you find the conditions naturally.
5. Potential for a new tech tree based on frozen redstone, inspired by the "Anti-Griddle". This was deliberately made hard to set up, and require you to set up a base in hostile territory (you can move the cracked sand and dirt, but you cannot move permafrost -- you have to live there :-).

I guess the point is, the various spreading blocks -- two cracked blocks, one frost block -- are only "instability" in worlds that lack their natural counters (rain for cracked, day for frost), or possibly for worlds where that counter doesn't work (world is so cold that even in the sun it doesn't warm up enough; rain is so light that at best it's just a light drizzle and the cracked blocks stay dry.)

Hmm ... THAT might make a good instability if EBXL is installed.

is compatibility complete with MystCraft? I would like to close this and move the ideas to a new issue.

Yes.

The Mystcraft team has sad that Cracked Sand is not a good form of Mystcraft instability.

Distilled and rebooted in #191