It is the beginning of space colonization. With a growing earth population and limited resources, humanity has begun to explore the stars for a suitable new home. The search has taken them far into the cosmos...
You were selected to investigate the wacky system designated as EPIC 204--almost 400 light years from earth. To your surprise, you find the system is habitable! There is already a thriving native ecosystem with new plants, creatures, and strange biomes!
But EPIC 204 holds some hidden secrets that make living there dramatically unlike earth. Instead of a planet, the system is a dense cloud of asteroids sharing a breathable atmosphere, swirling about a Red Dwarf Star. Because of this, it has strange weather patterns and rapidly changing seasons, with a year lasting only 25 days! On top of that, it is filled with many hostile creatures that seem to resent your arrival!
You and your trusty AI companion, the Biosuit Mark 12.3b are charged with traveling to, and observing the system for one year (25 days) and reporting back. Your task is to observe, catalogue the native life forms, and study the environment. That was the plan, but only a few days into the mission a massive meteor shower damages your ship and you find yourself stranded in an alien world...
Thus begins your quest to survive and eventually escape from this strange star system. To succeed you will need to learn how to survive in the harsh conditions of EPIC 204--a world with rapidly changing seasons and strange weather with harsh winters. The system is filled with exotic biomes teeming with strange new creatures and also holds a series of strange ruins for you to explore and a dark secret... Can you make it out alive?
Recommended Settings and Options:
- Leave particles enabled as they are used for custom creatures and technology. If particle weather like snow or dust storms lag your game you can turn off particle weather in the Holodeck game settings instead of for the whole game
- Render distance of 16 recommended, for visibility and exploring. Due not use a render distance of lower then 11 or you may experience lag, low mob spawning, and visibility issues when exploring, especially in Singleplayer mode. This is due to a long-standing bug in minecraft.
- Multiplayer chat must be on, the biosuit uses the chat to talk to you. If you have this setting off you won't see it!
- Use Medium GUI or smaller and at least 720p in your profile settings. If you use large GUI or 480p or the lore will run offscreen for some items.
- Use vanilla 1.12.X and use a vanilla or forge jar if playing multiplayer on a server. You can make forge mods work with the map but there are some bugs with using craftbukkit so we don't recommend using it.
- Make sure to enable command blocks if you are running this on a server. Map will not work without them.
- Allocate 2 GB RAM to Minecraft in the launcher settings for best performance if you are playing Singleplayer. The game will run with the default of 1G but 2G is much better:
(1) Open minecraft launcher > click on "Launch Options" > click on your profile >
(2) enable the JVM arguments and edit the Xmx argument to say: -Xmx2G.
Doing this will make maps with command blocks run much better.
You should NOT need to allocate more then 2G in SP! If you allocate more then 2G, your java launcher may experience garbage collection and lag due to a bug in the way minecraft uses resources! - Have 4 GB RAM if you want to play this map on a server in multiplayer. It will lag if you have 2G or less allocated on your server.
- Mod and Texture Pack Notes:
You can use whatever resource pack you like. The map was designed with vanilla textures. Optifine is recommended if you want to see the dynamic lighting effects present on mobs like the Firefly.
IMPORTANT Note About Mods: The 1.12 version of this map, Beta 1.7+, is compatible with Forge. Craftbukkit does not work with the map as it changes the way command blocks execute and mobs spawn so do not use it! - Suggestions:
- Tired of reading all the Biosuit comments in singleplayer? If you want, you can turn on the 1.12 Minecraft Narrator and set it to "narrator reads all" setting. If you do this, the game will read every biosuit comment to you! Some players like this and some find it annoying, but I think it is a cool way to use a new 1.12 feature. Especially in singleplayer! Keep in mind you can change the voice settings to something you like better. It is based off your system narration settings:
Mac: system preferences -> accessibility -> voice
Windows 10: PC -> Ease of Access -> Narrator - It is highly encouraged to install Optifine and turn on the Dynamic Lighting option as many custom creatures have dynamic lighting effects! Your game will also run better! For those of you who never had to install OptiFine without being able to use Forge before, here's a small guide that for the official launcher:
- Go to [url=https://optifine.net/downloads|_blank]https://optifine.net/downloads[/url] and download the latest OptiFine version for 1.12
- Find the jar in your download folder and double-click it
- In the window that opens, click "Install"
- Start the launcher, make sure that the profile called "OptiFine" is selected by using the drop-down arrow, edit the profile if you wish to change any of the settings there (such as allocating more RAM as discussed above), then you're ready to launch the game!
- The new settings will appear under video options, click through them and make sure to turn on dynamic lighting! - Forge mods that go well with Space Expedition: credit Akitori
"Hello everyone! This is me Akitori here today! Imma explain some mods I use in space expedition, and why I personally use them:
- Fast Leaf Decay by Lumien: Reason being is that it makes leaves decay faster...I’m a impatient potato.
- Advanced Shulker boxes: this might seem weird, but in Space expedition, this is quite useful. Normally, if you make the spaceship your home, you’re unable to place shulker boxes, so this makes shulker boxes useable, even inside the ship!
- ViesCraft: Airships! While I originally thought this wouldn’t work well, its surprisingly powerful and versatile with Space Expedition, while keeping a bit of a firm hand on survival! Its rather difficult to make any ship that’s powerful enough to even work (you need to farm a lot of falls and winters, as well as mine a lot) but its a decent alternative when the server’s too laggy for elytra.
- Particle Spreader: While a small mod on its own, I personally use them for small torches/waypoints to be able to find my way back home/where I landed on a new asteroid. Though I keep forgetting to place them down…."
Check out the official minecraftforums post HERE
This map combines elements of Survival, Adventure, Puzzles, Exploration, CTM, and Command Block Technology seamlessly into one fresh new experience. Prepare to be challenged, as the normal Minecraft mechanics have been dramatically altered, and in some cases completely rewritten by command blocks running behind the scenes!
Explore an alien world, enhanced for an immersive survival and adventuring experience! Battle rapidly changing seasons, strange new mobs, extreme weather conditions, and more on this EPIC space adventuring quest!
My goal for this map is to have you feel what it is like to be an explorer and scientist! The game is filled with hidden features to discover. Observe and pay attention as you play, as many of the mechanics of Minecraft that you are used too may have changed! As you explore and discover, the AI in your Biosuit will comment and generate files about your findings back in the computer of your ship! You can read these to obtain more information about features of the game!
- I have programmed an AI companion to travel with you in your Biosuit and it is quite the chatterbox! The AI will comment on your situation, give you advice, spot and comment on new creatures and scan them, and even help you come up with new crafting recipes to try as you find new items!
- As you explore, you will scan the various creatures, ruins, and artifacts you find. All of this information gets transmitted back to your ship and you can view them as data files in the holodeck and learn more about the things you found!
- I have added real Seasons to Minecraft: there is Spring, Summer, Fall, and Winter which repeats in a 25-day cycle!
- As the seasons change throughout the year so do the creatures that spawn, the daylight cycle, Crop growth, precipitation, game difficulty, temperature, animal breeding, and daylight cycling!
- This map has custom weather! Day length changes with the seasons and there can be random meteor showers, forest fires, snow flurries, sandstorms, erratic spring rain, and even hailstorms!
- There are 4 TIMES as many creatures that spawn in the world as normal vanilla, most of them custom with new drops and behaviors! Many of them only spawn during particular seasons. Some may also require specific locations or biomes. It is up to you to discover them all and figure out what they drop!
- If you find custom fruit, you can harvest them to make special potions!
- You can also grow new plants using our custom crops system! We have added 8 new crops to the game including: Orange trees, Coconut trees, Pineapple Bushes, Kiwi bushes, Prickly Pear Cactus, Winterberry vines, Corn, and Kelp!
- You can find custom dungeons, nests, dens, and hives of strange creatures as you explore and can farm them for supplies. Some hives are only active seasonally.
- As you survive on the asteroids your physical abilities will slowly start to improve. You will run and walk faster, swim faster, your attack speed will increase, your health will improve, you will take less damage from falls, and your breath underwater will last longer! This is to simulate your body changing and adapting to its new environment.
- You can also craft physical upgrades to your Biosuit giving you some nifty new abilities like a glider, jetpack, night vision goggles, armor, ballast control, and augmented limbs!
- I have added a custom tech tree alongside the normal one with some very useful new space age items and technologies. These will be unlocked as you discover new drops from creatures, ruins, and craft new items!
- I have added new automation tools that can be crafted to enhance survival including an automatic: reycler, disenchanter, block breaker, refrigerator, meteor shield, item attractor, and creature killer!
- The map has various ruins and valuable artifacts which you can find that aid in survival and give you new abilities!
- You land in a Lander but it is soon disabled by a freak meteor shower, stranding you on EPIC 204 indefinitely! But you devise a way to escape: Craft ship upgrades to retrofit your Lander so that you can escape the system! This will take a lot of effort. Some ship upgrades require collection of supplies in survival and some of them work like a CTM map where you have to retrieve special items or salvage machines from far-out ruins or dungeons to complete the ship! In the end, you can blast off, returning for home
- The map also contains a story and a history that you can uncover as you research the world. You will eventually find strange writings, meet alien factions, and visit far-out destinations. [WIP]
The result is a new kind of survival, reimagined completely, for an alien new world with a lot of custom adventure elements. You'll have to figure out everything from the beginning, and is a lot to discover! This is an entirely fresh experience, and adapting to life in this world will be both a challenge and a joy that should fill you with memories of your first days playing survival Minecraft when everything was new!
This map has been under development since 2017 and the current version, Beta 1.12, is the finalized and polished version with hundreds of hours of playtime content. The map was never given a final ending and thus there are a few final long-range Ship Upgrades that do not craft and the ship does not launch, but otherwise, the map is complete and as we originally intended. The focus for us was always on the unique survival and adventure features, not leaving the world and ending the game. Perhaps that's why I never got around the ending. I hope you all enjoy!