New Custom Magic Mod

[stone vortex]

I’d also have to relook at the possibility of patterning essentia (been a while since I’ve been there) but i remember that being a whole hassle

[safe phoenix]

honestly essentia rn can stay how it is

[stone vortex]

Not changing essentia as a system, just how ae2 interacts with it

[winter ravine]

I personally believe there is a separate, very justified, project that is an FOSS rewrite of TC4 that integrates Thaumic Energistics directly.

[stone vortex]

I think everyone would love a foss rewrite of thaumcraft

And witchery

[winter ravine]

Eh, when it comes to witchery I am more than happy to lift the like 2-3 popular concepts from it into this mod

Like I want a potion-crafting system here

[stone vortex]

Yeah, some of it can stay in witchery, some of the more pvp focused things

[safe phoenix]

really it just partitions

you just store 1 type of essentia in a partitoned cell

[fickle slate]

Maya's isn't close to being finished but mine is working (I'm using it in my prototype magic mod)

[winter ravine]

I would be very interested in seeing this. Is it a public repo?

[fickle slate]

yeah https://github.com/GTNewHorizons/MaterialLib/

[winter ravine]

and for using it for your prototype mod, do you have usage examples (can DM if private)?

[fickle slate]

this should be everything https://github.com/RecursivePineapple/MagicMod/tree/master/src/main/java/magicmod/common/materials

it's pretty bare-bones but it does what it needs to and it works

oh and this https://github.com/RecursivePineapple/MagicMod/blob/master/src/main/java/magicmod/common/items/MagicMaterialMetaItem.java

[winter ravine]

Thanks -- these are very useful. Barebones is fine, since I assume I could just PR things as needed

Having this as an outside library for 1.7.10 I think is just good instead of cooking up something mod-specific

[fickle slate]

PRs are welcome, idk how much work this will need before it can be used in production though

[rich violet]

I have game design experience and a degree in computer science, for what it’s worth! :)

I think we definitely need to start with a “unified vision of design”.

Given how ambitious this project is, I feel like code is mostly going to be a “Lets make something really small to see if it works” and not “lets make something actually playable” for a good little bit, then it can extend from there.

Currently, I want to design out the research system and take heavy inspiration from Factorio to do so.

Different “science packs” for each of the three types, general buffs to magic (to justify a more involved research system), and just more integration into the automation side of the pack

[safe phoenix]

really honestly you wanna flesh out the basics

how do get started in the mod

treat like world building skeleton first

[rich violet]

At the moment, Magic is an incredibly manual process in GTNH. It’s possible, but difficult, to automate.

I liked what I heard someone else say, that we should “lean into” GTNH being an automation pack, it’s just that with magic we automate magical doodads instead of metal and circuits and wires.

I’d like to try my hand at designing a plan to work viable magic progression into the game up until the end of MV, and then see how that feels.

So on the docket, the steps would be:

Step 1: Design a research system and intended payoffs and progression up until end of LV. This would replace stuff like nugget duplication, transmutation, thirsty tanks, etc.. while also still allowing for progress with other magic mods like Botania. We are mostly replacing Thaumcraft functionality, but we can extend on it (especially if research is becoming more expensive, stuff needs to pay off more to justify the additional initial investment)

Step 2: Implement a rough version of this system this into vanilla minecraft (or just one mod, like Botania).

I think that sounds like a good general jumping point for this.

[rich violet]

Yea I agree. Which is why I want to focus a lot on just “what is research in this mod”, and not “what are all the details and features that grow from that”.

[safe phoenix]

honestly https://docs.google.com/document/d/14i4vfo4Mpgwm6lAWnc5NgIhtuTUgNjxx7WZfTLxkQrs/edit?usp=sharing looking over kinda gets some things right

[rich violet]

Yeah, I think it’s a good starting point for theme and general vision

[safe phoenix]

honestly golems rework be a good start as that "simple" base line automation

[rich violet]

Golems rework sounds incredibly hard 😅

[safe phoenix]

"simple"

heavy airquotes

[rich violet]

Maybe if golems were as simple as rocks in terms of function

Like, not much more complex than item pipes with a filter

[near sluice]

Just my personal opinion but I rly dont want another "Input x -> get y" type of system as a core mechanic :/ Most ppl are sick of tc bc they have researched all entries like 1000 times already over the span of multiple playthroughs. I would rather try to build on research mechanics like waterline has, but just my 2 cents

[near sluice]

Yeah lol, thats a rough "start" XD

[rich violet]

I’m not familiar with Waterline’s research system

[near sluice]

Its not research but a more convoluted system where you purify water and have to solve smol engineering tasks to do so. Like building a 4bit decoder to input the correct fluid at the correct time

Starts at LuV and goes up to UIV

[rich violet]

So you mean the water purification system in GTNH?

[safe phoenix]

honestly you could do aura thresholds

[near sluice]

Ye, most ppl know it as waterline xD

[rich violet]

I would imagine that the “research packs” for magic would be more “puzzle” and less “industrial” for sure

[safe phoenix]

honestly aura threshold seem to be a decent challenge if we got the aura right

[rich violet]

Like, less focused on mass production and more focused on doing tricky stuff to those resources

Ultimately it’s still “input x get y”, just more of a focus on the process rather than the collecting of the inputs yea?

[near sluice]

Yeah, that would be great since most progression is already of the type of : Build mb, config interfaces, input x -> output y. Having a more interesting mechanic would make it easier to distinguish between magic and tech + its imho more fun too :D

[safe phoenix]

stablize this resource at this aura amount for x long

[near sluice]

Ye, sth like that

[rich violet]

I agree that is a good philosophy to set apart magic progression and tech progression

[safe phoenix]

really you could have processes but it like a puzzle

stablize it refine it

condense it crush it

throw some loops

[near sluice]

Ye but thats just a generic line like platline, right

?

[safe phoenix]

people are gonna eventually know the puzzle answers

[safe phoenix]

more of how ya got there less destination

[rich violet]

Tech progression is much more like “consume a thousand ingots to get fast ore doubling” and Magic progress can be more akin to chemical progression?

Tech progression, as noted with stuff like “platline” or “diesel plants” already kinda has these “puzzle setups” throughout it

So yeah it’s fundamentally always going to be “you input something you get something”

But it’s good to have a vision and tendency instead of just implementing stuff and hoping it feels good

[safe phoenix]

really it more of rn options easy stuff you gonna do on repeat it the ok first line

let me give an example

[rich violet]

Tech progression is also very much “spend stuff to make machines that make stuff”, while I imagine magic progression is more like “spend stuff to learn how to do something”

[safe phoenix]

first thing first honestly getting a read on aura

unless we just want it as a thing in the top left

[near sluice]

Hmmm maybe its just me but platline/monaline and whatnot aren't imo puzzles where you'll have to do much more except building the next block in the chain of machines til you got the end. There arent any intricate mechanics (except dissolution tank) where you can rly fail. Meant puzzles more akin of t5-t8 water

But its ofc just my 2 cents, I just like having more different mechanics in my game, would otherwise just play factorio lol

[safe phoenix]

honestly with aura is getting an ammount then amplifying or condensing it

or stablizing it

pretty much i feel like a number puzzle be fun

aura get lost

[rich violet]

I gave my friend like 20 machines and a bunch of logistics stuff and told her to make diesel automatically and it took her a few hours and some guidance, that counts as a puzzle to me xd

[near sluice]

(ngl, gotta read the document on auras first lol)

[safe phoenix]

let say you need 500 aura for a recipe but you start at like 200 but are losing like 20

[near sluice]

Yeah but thats mostly just a lack of knowledge abt the tools one have, not the difficulty on setting everything up :D

[rich violet]

I think the difference between a “puzzle” and a “resource check” is kinda hazy. Puzzles don’t need to be complicated to be puzzles 🤷

[safe phoenix]

honestly number puzzle isnt hard

[rich violet]

All the puzzles have solutions, of course, and once solved they’re easy.

[safe phoenix]

keep number in this range account for loss

[rich violet]

Ideally, the LV “puzzles” are “pretty damn easy”.

[near sluice]

Thats the problem - Just chaining machines wont get harder, they just become more of a slog. Monaline is basically platline just much more annoying (with the exception of a dissolution tank)

You cant design hard puzzles that way imo x)

[safe phoenix]

really problem is that really an issuse as you can always just brute force a puzzle

[near sluice]

You cant tho with waterline

[rich violet]

Like, what kind of puzzle do you think would be appropriate for steam-LV age to unlock something like nugget duplication?

[safe phoenix]

honestly bare in mind it the basics keeping aura stablized

[near sluice]

Hmmm, that thresholding mechanic crazed thaumaturge spoke off sounds pretty doable for lv

[rich violet]

What does keeping aura stabilized look like?

[safe phoenix]

amplifiers condensers and stablizers

aura get loss as you do things

keep in range

aura can go up down or stay the same

[rich violet]

So you go to a section of the map, you amplify the aura at that section, you then condense it to an area, and then you harness it for research?

So I’m visualizing something like real life solar power, using mirrors to “amplify and condense” the sunlight, then harnessing it in a central plant?

[safe phoenix]

what visualizing is a start number of aura let say 500 and you gotta keep track of it going up down and staying same

honestly for steam LV maybe 50 or 100

and doesnt jump as much

maybe 5 points sways

[rich violet]

And maybe you can perform processes to make chunks “richer” or “weaker” in aura?

IE, you can grow a bunch of magic trees somewhere to make it so aura in that chunk is higher, then you can direct that aura to a central chunk, then you can use that for research?

[rich violet]

I’m not following what that means mechanically

[near sluice]

Ngl, sounds pretty good, especially since you could design mechanics around that where you'd have to simulate a math fuctions for complicated crafts, like having the aura points having to follow a sigmoid curve so that the craft succeeds. Would basically be a ez variant of t5 water crafting

[rich violet]

There’s a value of aura for an area, and it’s a number, and what’s the point of tracking it?

[safe phoenix]

need to stay in range

outside range bad

[rich violet]

So, you just craft a device to measure aura and you go somewhere that is the right amount? :v

[safe phoenix]

nah you have to affect the ammount

you need the scanner to get base line your starting from

[near sluice]

Hmmm, counterpoint tho - Thats t4 water already, so we'd have 2x the same mechanic x)

[rich violet]

Okay, so you:

Measure aura
Impact aura by doing a thing
Try to keep it at a stable number to research something properly

[safe phoenix]

pretty much

[rich violet]

Sounds like it could be an interesting start to a system yea

I would imagine that the LV methods are actually gradual enough, and the system forgiving enough, that we could probably skip on the measurement part entirely

[near sluice]

Ye, a lot better than just throwing items on it like every mod does imo lol

[rich violet]

just “Improve the aura in this area until the research researches”

[safe phoenix]

really you could also have loss you have to account for

[rich violet]

Then later we worry about stabilizing it, hitting certain patterns, or etc etc

Just early on, get more aura in the area and make the researches work

[safe phoenix]

or heck even less

some things dont like high aura

[near sluice]

Ye, thats atleast in my opinion a good vision :D Very easy to get into with the possibility of designing hard puzzles around

[safe phoenix]

should adding aura or removing aura be harder

like which way

[rich violet]

Yeah I agree, it sounds like a good way to start.

There’s multiple types of aura, multiple “things” that manipulate it, and researches need certain aura amounts (or patterns) to execute it.

[rich violet]

Adding should be harder than subtracting for sure

I’m imaging aura can be utilized for magical or industrial purposes as well as research

An early research can be as simple as “find a magical biome. If you can’t, throw some magical mushrooms at the ground until it ticks.”

[safe phoenix]

honestly i find having 0 aura could be a fun thing

[near sluice]

Does it matter? Would say that earlygame researches/items dont need any thresholds and then you throw them some early methods on increasing/subtracting the values at a slow pace. When you'd need certain aura patterns which require a spiking change in speed, you could force the user to upgrade their setup

[rich violet]

So, does each chunk have its own aura values like pollution does?

[near sluice]

Aye, sounds like a good idea :D

[safe phoenix]

honestly that should be the case and just have higher weights in certain biomes

[near sluice]

Hmm... Wouldnt be opposed to it, would tbh make it kinda boring tho, since you cant really interact with it in a physical way like with nodes x)

[rich violet]

I think it does matter since “aura” being a form of energy implies that it is probably going to be used for some purpose and isn’t just for research

[near sluice]

Maybe a aura manifesting device later on, which lets you see the aura as a node-kinda thingy, which lets you do more stuff with it?

[rich violet]

Yeah, which forces the player to perform “rituals” to change the environment

Instead of just having block that is energy

[safe phoenix]

really that be more condensing and moving steps

[rich violet]

And then something like the Thirsty Tank can work better with more “basic aura” and worse with less of it

I’m imagining that there’s a bunch of machines that reduce the aura in an area and work faster the more of it that’s there

[safe phoenix]

honestly 0 aura should be almost like antimagic

[rich violet]

Kinda like a wireless power system of sorts, that you don’t want to over dip into

[rich violet]

It’s a vacuum of magic. I would imagine that would be great for some things, such as particle accelerators, cleanrooms, and transmitting exotic aura types over distances.

Also I like the idea of using the pollution system as a bit of a backbone for how aura works

[safe phoenix]

honestly 0 aura should be almost what taint is in TC

[rich violet]

I don’t think so

0 aura is a lack of all things magical

Taint would be like a high corrupted aura

[safe phoenix]

desert?

[rich violet]

I imagine deserts have plenty of aura

They have life and activity and movement

Not as much as a jungle, sure, but it’s no vacuum.

I am imagining like, anti-magic fields completely blocking out all the aura in an area being akin to freezing something to absolute zero

No movement, perfectly crystalline and predictable

[safe phoenix]

Lasers?

[near sluice]

Ehh idk, I personally dislike the idea of making it pollution like a lot. Ppl stumble upon thaumcraft early because hungry nodes suck them up, spawning mobs and whatnot and tickles their curiosity. Making it a chunk based number makes sense in a kind of "äther" way where it surrounds everything and anything but it just makes is much less interesting imo

[rich violet]

It can still have “nodes” which greatly affect the immediate surroundings

Like, that design space isn’t gone

[safe phoenix]

honestly i do feel aura gotta start from some base line number

unless you wanna say it starts at 0 and we introduce it

[rich violet]

There can be these “obvious” sources of aura in the form of structures and nodes, as well as having it still function with a chunk based system.

[safe phoenix]

and it spreads

[rich violet]

I do think that each biome ought to have its own “array” of auras

As its default value

That is affected by some events and the presence of some blocks/operations

[safe phoenix]

heck TF probably briming with aura oh you opened the portal now it spreads to OW

[rich violet]

I would be hesitant to make that a great source of aura (I would find the concept of TF portal spam to generate aura a bit dubious)

[near sluice]

I mean, I get where you're coming from but I think that making it biome/chunk based results in a similar problem like with bees, where the players get annoyed that they have to search out specific biomes just to breed that specific bee (atleast earlygame). Sure, you can skip that later on but you might also scare ppl away since they live in a low aura space and dont want to move all of their infra 10 chunks away just to unlock more stuff

Most ppl already hate bees and magic

[rich violet]

I think that the biomes would only affect it minimally

Rather, the player doing stuff is what changes the aura of an area most substantially.

[safe phoenix]

honestly like humidity there gonna be some signs

80% 90% good

[rich violet]

Like, I’m imaging that to discourage “spam”, any given method of increasing aura can only increase it to a certain amount.

Like, let’s say TF portal increases aura. Having a TF portal in a chunk increases the baseline aura of a chunk to, say, 20 nature.

Having a couple great wood trees would increase it to 10.

Together, it’s still just 20

But because you have both, it’ll “generate to 20” faster than if you just had the portal

Or something like that?

And if you want even higher aura, you’re going to need more sophisticated methods than slapping it down a portal to the twilight forest

[near sluice]

Man, would love that idea but you know how much and how complex stuff like that is to implement? xD Write it down but a barebone aura system where you just get randomized aura values bound to a chunk sounds like a doable starting point

[safe phoenix]

honestly aura being like humidity could be a good

[rich violet]

It sounds simpler than golems xdd

[near sluice]

Ye xD

But much more of a slog with a lot of hardcoding involved lol

[rich violet]

Make it like pollution, but if the pollution generator checked the chunk it was in and had diminishing returns if the chunk is spread above a threshold of pollution

[near sluice]

(or atleast some dictionaries/valuemaps for the blocks, you get what I mean lol)

[rich violet]

I would imagine most blocks do nothing to aura xd

[safe phoenix]

yeah we not witchery

with ritual power

[near sluice]

Ye but even 200+ blocks with different aura aspects is annoying xD But yeah, still a lot better than golems, 3d pathfinding is fucked x)

[safe phoenix]

what if they never had to move

or can only move in set way

you create path

[rich violet]

Like, biomes just have their own “aura values” that they want to be at they tend towards.

The capacity of a chunk is determined by some formula of whatever is in there “of note”. Ie, a dragon egg probably does something. The player has access to some ritual nonsense that can increase it.

The generation speed of aura is also determined by a combination of the biome and what’s in the chunk.

I’m imaging pretty harsh diminishing returns to discourage “spam”.

[safe phoenix]

honestly golems being on a rail system be interesting

you create there path

[rich violet]

I guess we doing Factorio trains now

Yeah why not just do drones

[near sluice]

I mean, thats just railcraft lmao

[rich violet]

go from point A to point B. Go through walls for all I care.

[safe phoenix]

hey we got magic

nothing says they cant

[rich violet]

Exactly.

Boom golem rework: I guess we doing Factorio drones

Can we breed the drones to make new drones for the factory?

And improve their speed, carrying capacity, and make new species of drones with mutations?

[safe phoenix]

nah we just doing mighty morphing

[near sluice]

As long as a player can do all stuff without moving places, I'm all in for it (like even in a "ba"d aura chunk, they can modify it enough to make everything work, even tho its harder to get to that point)

[rich violet]

Yea absolutely

And well

There’s always “literally changing the biome”

[near sluice]

Ye but again, most ppl hate doing magic already, especially witchery xD

[rich violet]

we doing magic in the magic mod turns out

[near sluice]

Ye but you have to make it interesting for most ppl, not just for the 3 ppl in the backcorner who like doing witchery lol

[safe phoenix]

i could be evil

maybe

[near sluice]

[rich violet]

I imagine that stuff is possible in just about any given biome (unless you’re choosing an intentionally fucked biome) but is just faster and easier to do it in the right biomes

[near sluice]

Ye, sounds good to me :D

[safe phoenix]

if in bad biome you got 2 options which one ya wanna hear

evil or tame

[rich violet]

the nether

[near sluice]

Evil :3

[rich violet]

Chicken Jockey

[safe phoenix]

you have aura... ok

so when ya get hurt and die from infernals +aura but it capped

you make a graveyard biome

[near sluice]

Basically like a sinister node you spawn after enough deaths

[rich violet]

I mean I died a lot trying to recover my corpse(s) in Stone Age

[safe phoenix]

pretty much

make dying fun

[rich violet]

I think permanently altering the biome of the area is kinda janky xd

I could imagine gravestones providing some minuscule amount of “dark aura” as a bit of a meme

[safe phoenix]

that actually be funny be like hey ya know blood magic yeah you in LV bud please step in this aura extrator

as it saps you health

[rich violet]

im thinking that each point of “aura” is actually kinda exponential in nature

IE, as you increase the aura of an area, it gets much less effective to keep increasing it.

So a value of 50 aura as displayed to the player might actually be stored internally as 10,000,000,000, while 25 is stored as 1,000,000 for example.

So a gravestone would contribute like, 2 aura.

[floral nacelle]

I know its off topic but what you think about this?
#1358178489995493518 message

[near sluice]

Ohhh, love it as a concept <3 Personally, I always wanted more usage of magic lenses/items in gt multis like HILE, wouldnt be opposed to a magic mb too :D

Only problem I see is the usecase/why rn. Primal aspects/permutatio can be very easily passived already, same with lots of other aspects (essentia bee is problematic too), and there arent that many things you can make with massed aspects where you could justify the initial building cost of that multiblock or getting it at a reasonable tier, which goes back to tc balancing :/

Maybe a second mode for assembling magic items would be cool? Where you would put a very cheap base catalyst into the mb and shoot it with aspect-rays to transform it into usable materials, like producing void ingots with base material + alienis/metallum beams or with higher multi-tiers an alternative way of producing ichor blocks without the need of bm materials

[floral nacelle]

i was thinking about crafting infinity armor with it

and using in big thaumtorium MB

[floral nacelle]

for magic oreproc

[near sluice]

That idea is great too, we would need more usecases tho for botania/witchery materials, since they're kinda only used randomly a bit at uhv/uev x)

[near sluice]

Ohhh, yeah, if we'd get more tools in general which uses aspects continuously (like magic oreproc) then sure, that laser multi would be amazing :D

[near sluice]

Definitely better than another dire crafting recipe x)

[weary gust]

what if we take from othwr magic mods here and have puzzle solutions vary by worldseed

[weary gust]

thinking of the portal Personality Cores from Portal 2 here

[weary gust]

this is good so we can scale all yhe way to endgame :D

[weary gust]

it makes sense to have at least a couple EU generation methods as connective tissue back to main GTNH
ShinraCo Lifestream Reactor anyone? lol

[rich violet]

My concept for the types of aura:

White
The primal and most accessible form of aura. Kind of the “do everything and anything” juice for early game. Distilled forms are gonna be better though, usually.

Red
health and blood.

Orange
heat and the sun.

Yellow
lightning and movement.

Green
plants and animals

Blue
water and the moon

Purple
corruption and eldritch

“Black”
Not actually a color of aura, just what happens as aura is almost entirely removed from an area.

Ultraviolet
Undiscovered form of aura that is of the highest forms of energy. Destruction on a quantum level.

[wheat cave]

I think natural philosophy has some interesting ideas about magic

Connections and links between objects to do stuff like alchemy and medicine

Base aspects are earth, fire, air, water, mercury, sulfur, salf

Research is a minigame like chain reaction

[floral nacelle]

what if to create high tier magic you just look at high tech environment with magical thinking? like "default" magic is magical thinking being used on nature

or i am too abstract and you can't just do that

[winter ravine]

Hermeticism is influential on a lot of magic systems, and is pretty interesting to research. Alchemy is a little hard to directly adapt just due to the insane prevalance of elements, but the idea of the natural 4 (air/water/earth/fire) underpinning everything is I think fair game and was back of mind when I wrote the original doc. Essentially, raw magic aura (thinking of referring to it more as an aether, because of aetheric vs auric) is composed of the four. Systems can separate out and transform elements. Aura/aether being "divinely" created out of primordial chaos.

But yeah, I have been doing reading into a lot of other systems

I very much strive to hit a line for a magic system that easily exists alongside the scientific rules of the tech side. I was originally a bit like what I think шmTheSupremeПипес was getting to, with magic just being unexplainable science, but I think for that to be compelling it needs a truly unexplainable root. In this case, a very nebulous notion of a Divine.

[wheat cave]

I think alchemy could work if balanced right, works as a catalyst that only works under certain conditions

[winter ravine]

Kinda in the same notion of modern science has very, very good rules for why nearly everything works but you drill down far enough and eventually it's just Big Bang

[winter ravine]

I do see some form of alchemy

but more process focused than actually deriving straight from hermetic notions of alchemy

[wheat cave]

Also blood magic would be cooler if it uses the four humors

[fickle slate]

let's not add chaos magic

[wheat cave]

I think that magic as hidden links between things would be good at linking different magic and tech mods together

[rich cove]

This sounds like Natures Aura at its core

https://www.curseforge.com/minecraft/mc-mods/natures-aura

And a bit of Ars Nouveau https://www.curseforge.com/minecraft/mc-mods/ars-nouveau

[weary gust]

If we want to connect this to existing mod lore, we can adapt thaumcraft's extra order and chaos aspects
either directly as 6 primal aspects, or:
possibly as a more difficult to extract byproduct from that primordial chaos bubbling and/or from the splitting process
(fire and air could lean more entropic, earth and water more orderly? random composition? biome dependant? idk)

similar ideas on there being an unknowable root on the magic end
rough doc i sketched of an alt take puts the thaumic aspects as essentially entities that are fuelled by the processes of living minds
platonic-realm concept of Order and Fire and Eldritch and... boots i guess
Philosophy, observation, etc of these entities would in theory alter them as they are like.
pseudo-physical concepts with their own alien ways of understanding and interacting with the world

main example being: the eldritch, which I think are just a product of the actual unknowable "pantheon" of magic. this places them as just part of a broader ecosystem, and not even a necessarily STRONG one either (just one whose nature connects them closely to humans for predation and headcrabbing).
They aren't all-powerful gods with spooky powers, but an outgrowth of an intersection between the alienis, exanimus, and cognito aspects.

Of course, I wrote all the things in that rough I did under the assumption that a) we want to keep thaumcraft indefinitely but b) cease relying on it to hold things together for the closed source reasons. So, I did my best to adapt your aura idea as i understood it to a framework that would force thaumic stuff to still work, but be a smaller facet of overall aura/aether as the True Underpinning Magic.

I think the work needed to keep thaumcraft's order and chaos aspects thaumcraft specific could also be fun- classical 4 elements for GTNMagic, and then this anomaly over here, and what sort of magitech can we use to exploit this? :D

[wheat cave]

Honestly i hope for a better negative effect of magic with new mod, i think negative effects should primarily affect progress and machines, affecting the player is kinda pointless as the player isnt whats important, same thing applies to pollution

For instance the negative research into fire aspect would be that things that use water aspect would be impacted

Instead of the player might catch on fire

[rich violet]

I imagine that there isn't really that same "research driving you crazy" mechanic as there is in Thaumcraft personally

The downsides to using aura I think would be more along the lines of, certain machines prefer certain balances of aura, so you're going to want to set up seperate areas for specific devices with different needs

[woeful pebble]

So we would have aura be normally at a pretty low but clearly non zero ambient level that is quite balanced but possibly either fluctuates somewhat or is not in perfect balance (maybe a separate purity mechanic)

Based on the discussion so far and my own ideas I would imagine progressing through magic would give you the ability to better:

• Concentrate the aura to higher than ambient amounts (the obvious answer for being able to scale up your magical infra and soft gating certain magic behind progress)
• lower the amount of aura closer and closer to zero (a perfect aura vacuum should be very hard to make and keep up with high benefits for certain easily disturbed processes)
• push the balance of the four elements toward some of them (this would obviously be able to benefit or enable machines, rituals or other processes based on those elements and hinder or stop prosesses based on the missing/opposite ones)
• get the four elements closer to perfect balance (a really interesting possibility for any process that basically cascade into straying further and further from that balance possibly for explosive or similiarly distructive possibilities like vacnukes)
• combine/split/transform some of the elements into sub-elements (for when you need certain stuff for alchemy or magitech etc)
• processing those sub-elements back into the elements (to not "pollute" the chunk and for being able to continue doing those processes as well as possibly purifying chunks of their minute amount of sub-elements to get the required purity for some later processes)

That leaves research and or possible rituals etc. with interesting challenges like having to switch the balance of the four elements from 40/20/20/20 to 20/40/20/20 across some time period

Also for the balance or certain level of aura thing to not be super easy (or just require a lucky chunk/biome etc.) we could either get some random time based variation on the aura or make it tied to some processes like time of day and phases of the moon (those came into mind as the easiest and strongest contributors) so that when you progress further in tiers the requirements for fluctuations would get stricter and so at the start you wouldn't have to worry about it but a bit later you would have to account for or counteract the sun, then a tier later the moon etc.

then most things you find should mostly just affect the aura in a balanced or in the four elements way but some more eldrich/impure stuff like portals and thaumcraft stuff and maybe spawners should definitely affect the sub-elements too witch would be bad at the start but possibly useful for certain things later on

[woeful pebble]

I think it could be interesting to think about which of the three branches of magic had these 6 capabilities and are some of them shared or all of them split into the 3 categories

[floral nacelle]

probably

also i think space should be more magical/esoteric

[weary gust]

as long as the moon isnt covered in a bunch of weird animal and plant life im fine with it
at least one space dim should remain desolate qnd space-y
...why are there zombies with space equipment also, anyway

[weary gust]

Hexcasting looks very cool, particularly what ive seen of its spell circles

[rich violet]

alright got some feedback on the concepts and want to talk about it a bit

basically, the concept of "what is doing the research" would be good to get down.

A way to do this is just making a "thinking machine", which could be a variety of things.

Options could include:

Mob brains/nervous systems

Your own brain

Mushrooms (mushrooms are weird and can kinda act as a hivemind)

Circuitry

Your own brain (with circuits in it)

Using this as a way to "research" would probably be good so that we can distribute more of the difficulty of research from purely "aura manipulation" to other fields

[weary gust]

I like the thinking machine idea for research, mushroom idea is appealing. hovering panels of mycelium or slime mold sort of things suspended somehow could have a very dynamic look- different runes and nodes could be filled in by growth, maybe even have a finished like. research pattern item at the end. Or, if we want to get gross with it, brain tendrils could ALSO connect researches, i guess... later tier like Wetware boards perhaps?

perks of this method:
-aesthetics. Imagine a central magic "brain" you keep the team's research data in: hovering panes of tinted glass with glowing organic shapes of various colors in them. the ME system requests a pattern, a bolt of energy connects the brain controller to the requested pattern, glass un-tints for a bit, very cool very fancy.

-ought to be simple to code the effects, in theory: (x) number of random points (determined by research difficulty?) are placed on a plane and told to draw lines to the nearest ones slowly. vary node and line thickness as desired until it looks weird enough. Hide these shapes from view (and cease bothering to render em) unless players are really close AND its actively in use.

-weirder options can also come from here: if you want difficult researches where you have to place the points and some other complications exist. quality researches that are somehow more efficient or consumable researches that require re-supply could use these research-panels in place of circuits in crafting operations. then again i didnt ever engage with the random capacitors in EIO so idk if id care much on the quality front at least lol

of course im also very in favor of player brain with circuits. Unsure how that would work from a gameplay perspective in the context of GTNH scale, it almost seems old-fashioned to put a player in the middle of so much infra? so i guess making it literal with physical/wireless/endertech connection to the factory makes more sense than just player brain on its own

[woeful pebble]

If we have the aura split into the 3 portions of creation destruction and tech then imo the fungus thing would work really well for the creation side if we'd like to have different methods of research for each category. Tech could have it be more centered around complex aura manipulations and destruction something else more thematic to it.

But yes I agree that mycelium sounds really cool as that kind of concept

right the tech based research could be magitech based circuitry and the destruction one could be mob brains since those would also work well thematically and would share enough aspects to be similiar while still allowing the opportunity to differentiate between them

[sacred grove]

fungus ought to be destruction; it rends down complex material into more basic components

trees and plants and the like take simple compounds and turn them into more complex ones

[weary gust]

we are fast approaching a build-ur-own demiurge kit lol

[woeful pebble]

Fungus is really misunderstood as a part of the ecosystem since it's basically the basis on which everything else works it's not as much destroying as it's recycling. I think the idea was that destruction is inherently wasteful and that is basically the opposite of what fungus does. It's much closer to how animals function than fungus or plants.

like fungus and different bacteria are why plants are able to grow so I feel like that works a lot better in creation with them being in symbiosis vs animals that mostly just greedily come and eat stuff (ofc they also have things where they are crucial to ecosystems but you could have an ecosystem without animals or maybe even plants but having one without fungus seems really hard)

[sacred grove]

the ocean is mostly fungus-less

but yeah, i get it

[winter ravine]

.

[fickle slate]

#audit-log to the rescue .

I like the idea of having to balance a finite production of aether. If you don't balance your conversions properly, your whole system backs up or has some other negative effect (maybe runes/machines get damaged and need to be replaced).

I can't envision how your green/red/blue system will be implemented. It sounds too vague to serve as a vision for game systems (though I'm sure you're editing it right now ).

[winter ravine]

It was the classic enter instead of shift-enter

[winter ravine]

So I had a lot of time while proctoring an exam to think more through core concepts and come up with first practical steps.

First is Aura, which I shall henceforth refer to as Aether for aesthetics, simply because aura has no good descriptive adjective. Seriously:

• Auric: of or referring to gold
• Aural: ew, and of or relating to hearing
  Meanwhile aetheric/aethereal are clear to use.

One thing that's important, when designing this, is to thing of the mechanics and then of the theme. The theme ultimately serves the gameplay. There are a few ideas which were what motivated this AoI. With Aether, it was a notion of streaming0economy based automation. Mentally, I envisioned a system that looks like the TC4 vis relays, but is obviously far more involved and complicated with stuff like splitting the beams apart. The idea behind the automation is you have some generation capacity, and can consume up to that capacity. With splitting, there's now optimization for balancing your consumption of the split components. So, various automations would have steps and processes that consume some components, and overall you're looking for ways that the whole system balances.

That's the mechanic idea. The original doc details some thematic backing for it. During that exam, I had some time to come up with a system I really like. Basically, Aether is a composite of three main aspects (names not final):

• Green: Aspect of Stability/Constance: the notion of keeping things the same as they are; stability
• Red: Aspect of Destructibility/Challenge: the notion of forcing a change in the status quo; passion, conflict
• Blue: Aspect of Adaptibility/Change: the notion of changing to suit the current environment; learning

Yes, this primal energy/light decomposes into RGB. This maintains and solidifies this theme of the number 3. Some potential further decomposition could be the aspects into the 6 primal TC4 aspects (Red => Ignis/Perditio, Green => Terra/Ordo, Blue => Aer/Aqua) and other aspects (Red => Consumption/animal, Green => plant, Blue => human). Probably decomposition would not go beyond 12 total (primal => 3 aspects => 12 sub-aspects). At a high level, these are aspects of life. Life has some stable base (green), but will seek a possible improvement (red) or be subject to an outside change, and it balances to keep what is currently good with improvements change can bring (adaptibility). This paradigm can be adapted to many processes. As a simple example, take creating a metal ingot. Here, a mage induces change (red) to break apart the ingredients, forms them into a new alloy (blue) and solidifies it into a new ingot (green).

Aether is produced and, as life does, decays. Mechanically, the streaming mechanism and limited capacity is that aetheric decay is some function of the amount of aether. My initial thought here is a cubic root (theme of 3). The idea being in-game, say a chunk generates x aether, then the equilibrium point of that chunk is cbrt(x). Mechanically, decay is a natural anti-buffer, and gives a lot of room for creating and balancing systems around creation, storage, and consumption.

Now, how does aether work with processing systems? Here's an idea that's probably my concrete first step: Aetheric Steel. This would be a very low-level material, very similar in design purpose to Thaumium in TC4. The initial processing chain would probably be horrifically inefficient; some single-block construct which consumes raw aether and does the three steps previously described internally. Then, future more efficient processes would use constructs specialized to each step that take only the relevant aspect of aether, obtained through splitting. Future, more complex chains, might involve machines that transmute one aspect to another, or which "polarize" an aether beam (again, mechanically, a strong theme is optics). Optics, in the context of GTNH, is a fun thing to explore because it's basically untouched in the tech side of the pack, and light-based systems are very easily made "magical". You can also see the secondary motivation for the aspects to be RGB -- mentally, I see raw aetheric beams as white. The initial personal spell/crafting focuses (like TC wands) will probably be some refined crystal.

To end, one other system I've had ideas for is what is the automation for moving items around. Here's something that was in the back of my mind when I was talking about runes in the original document. I think it would be interesting to design automation as some spell. I think these spells could be composed of more basic parts, runes that specify certain actions. Mechanically, this would be very, very similar to Scratch-like, drag and drop coding (or, if you've played Revolution Idle, like that game's macro builder). You could have a component that grabs or places an item from/to some marked storage or a component that waits some for some condition (time/redstone/item presence), as two examples. The spell could have a trigger and/or be looped. Progress could involve unlocking more/upgraded component runes or unlocking spell rings (squares? triangles?) that can fit more components or act over larger areas.

[woeful pebble]

Sounds really good. Looking at the early progressions it would probably be a good idea to in addition to aetheric steel choose a few more basic magical materials from other basic stuff like glass stone wood (maybe an interesting option to have a magical liquid since that could work with optics) and then spell out what type of properties they have as basic building blocks to help have internal consistency and plan usage for those materials easier

[fickle slate]

Per-chunk aether is difficult to implement well. Also, I've always thought it felt odd in other mods (like tc6) because chunks are an implementation detail of MC, they aren't really a game mechanic. The player has to account for chunks because of game limitations, not because they're an interesting system.

I was working on an aura rift system where rifts are discrete entities that spawn in the world. The intention was that each rift had its own energy type, regeneration rate, and buffer capacity. You'd draw energy from rifts as needed and they'd refill as long as they were loaded.

When I worked on them last the regen curve was just linear but something like a sigmoid would be much more interesting since you'd want to maintain the rift around 50% full instead of pulling as much as you can.

[winter ravine]

I was thinking of a bronze-type material

[winter ravine]

Ultimately I think I need to tie back to chunks somehow if I want to keep some idea of an ambient floor and also the notion that you can scar an area. I do think chunk-reliance would in effect fall off over time as the player progresses to have more effective as well as artificial aether sources such that they're just worried about their own system. Otherwise, it could fall back to being solely an internal system with there just being ambient aether gatherers that have some minimum distance from each other.

[woeful pebble]

if it's ambient aether gatherers then imo minimum distance would work less well than having some mathematical formula for how the efficiency drops when there are multiple close to each other

or maybe you could have both

[fickle slate]

What do you mean by scar? I assume you mean overdrawing the aether destroys its regen rate. Or maybe certain actions corrupt it into a less useful form?

[winter ravine]

I was thinking more of an active corruption or some deliberate overdraw, like just consuming the area to get a lot of power really quickly for some powerful action/process/spell

[woeful pebble]

I do think having aether be a constant flow rather than a regenerating resource would be a lot more interesting and be more unique in the pack. That being said I do also like the sigmoid function for a regenerating source although imo that could be used for something else

[fickle slate]

I like the idea of some demonic ritual changing the nature of the space around it. If you run a consumptive ritual for too long then it engraves itself on the history of the aetheric fields or something. Holy/nature rituals would be directly impeded by it, causing them to be less effective.

[woeful pebble]

also having it be rifts or something else would make it too close to thaumcraft and kind of distance it from the world in general instead of it being omnipresent

[winter ravine]

It would mostly be a flow, I'd balance the numbers such that buffers are basically not enough to ever complete a process, but are enough for systems to come online

[winter ravine]

Yeah I'm thinking dark magic is essentially Profane. Aether is tied to life by some divine truth. It can easily be used to guide or manipulate things along natural pathways (like blooming plants or forming metals), so long as you maintain some balance with the aspects. Darker, more profane magic can do more powerful or unnatural things, or ignore aspect balance, but very often scars the area. An area low in life is low in aether, and an area low in aether is hostile to life.

[woeful pebble]

You could also make it so that research/rituals/processes that tie into red are typically shorter and more violent requiring higher peak consumption rates which inherently make buffering a more viable option for those

where as something to do with green would probably have higer consumption during a longer period of time and blue would not focus as much on pure numbers as changes in different aspects etc.

the end game of red magic supported by green and blue would then basically be those strong buffers with the other two working to increase the overall production and deal with the side effects of red

[winter ravine]

I also think I should clarify where that post relates to the doc. Such per-aspect processes are more in the "middle" branch of the original doc, the one focused on transformation. I still like the idea of a natural/divine magics branch which more works with raw aether (low power, ecological) and a dark/profane magics branch which explores the idea of no or anti aether (high power, destructive). As in the doc, the very bursty and high-power nature of such dark magic means that it explores designing buffers to enable its craft, as the lighter branch explores ways to generate or collect more raw aether in the first place.

[fickle slate]

Will the paths be mutually exclusive or will they enhance each other?

[winter ravine]

the latter

Ideally, you can progress through them however you wish

but pushing one super far while neglecting the other two gets very hard

[woeful pebble]

Yeah we should make sure that stuff from each branch will work to make the other two easier but not impossible to do without

[winter ravine]

since they all basically monopolize key aspects of this streaming economy: collection, manipulation, and storage

it is far easier to balance split consumption streams when you can use buffers to smooth any minor imbalances

[woeful pebble]

this discussion makes me wish the mod was ready and I could try how far I can get without any red magic

[fickle slate]

will you be able to void extra aether or will you have to deal with all of it? I think the latter would be more interesting since you could have waste byproducts that you have to recycle or dispose of.

[woeful pebble]

latter definitely right?

[winter ravine]

Neglecting red would be hard, what I think you'd be more thinking of is neglecting "black" (dark magic)

[winter ravine]

I'm thinking that not properly returning raw aura (so consuming a bunch of red but not equally blue/green) is bad to do consistently

and that's the puzzle

[woeful pebble]

yeah that's what I meant

basically do a full run with no buffers at all

[fickle slate]

So you draw red, perform some process on it which converts it to untyped, then have to return it? And if you overdraw too much red vs blue/green the aether fields suffer?

[winter ravine]

I think it's more you draw raw, and split it into RGB. You consume the R, but not the GB. This unbalances the local aether

With maybe fun effects depending on the type of inbalance

Since I kind of see R and G as being fundamentally opposed but moderated by B

[fickle slate]

I'm imagining some sort of collector crystal that pulls the RGB aether from the local field and pushes it to some sort of prism that splits it into R/G/B.
You use a filter lens to pull the red into some other process, but what happens to the G/B? Does it get voided, which depletes the local aether field?

[woeful pebble]

it would either have to be sent into other processes or just escape back into the aether field making it so there is now impure non white aether in the field

[winter ravine]

If it's not consumed or buffered it returns to the local field, potentially unbalancing

I'm thinking you have a collector pylon, and a return pylon for returning recompiled aether to the local field

[fickle slate]

What stops you from looping the recompiled aether back into the process? Is it some sort of depleted variant?

I'm guessing there won't be mechanics that physically prevent you from linking the pylons together because that would make the system feel too guided IMO

[woeful pebble]

It would have to be that you get less back than you use

[winter ravine]

You can't dump more than you initially draw in

[woeful pebble]

I don't think there is anything bad in general about allowing loops

ah right wait that would mean you would either have infinite aether or make it so you can void it

hmm

[fickle slate]

IMO it defeats the whole purpose of the generation and destruction branches because it negates the need for better gathering and you can just set up a process that runs forever.

[winter ravine]

processes can be overall aether-neutral, just momentarily borrowing aether and returning it

[winter ravine]

but how do you feed all the processes?

it's not infinite input

[fickle slate]

Extracting Pylon -> Splitter Prism
Red -> Some Process (Red -> Raw) -> Recompiler Prism
Green + Blue pass around unused via lenses or something
Recompiler -> Extracting Pylon

I made a typo, it should be Recompiler -> Splitter Prism

[winter ravine]

So I think with your red > raw there's a caveat

[woeful pebble]

the obvious answer to stopping that be an infinite loop is just making so you get less raw back so it's not infinite

[winter ravine]

like overall, there is conservation of energy

if red > raw it's like 1 red > 0.333 raw (0.33 each aspect)

still unbalanced

[woeful pebble]

also I think the whole constant flow thing will be made a lot easier if we make it so when the aether (that's not in a container) doesn't have a place to go it immediadly escapes back into the aether field

[fickle slate]

Is 1 unit of raw aether worth varying amounts of red/green/blue or is it 1 raw = 0.3 red, 0.3 green, 0.3 blue?

[woeful pebble]

and that could be somehow be worse than having it be send purposfully

I think we should probably make it so raw is more dense in the sense that 1 raw = 1 red, 1 green, 1 blue

[fickle slate]

Because if the raw aether created at the end of the process is balanced then over time the raw aether in the Recompiler -> Extracting portion will trend to 50% green and 50% blue. The red would only be consumed but you'd never transmute the green/blue into more red.

[winter ravine]

yeah this does make sense

[woeful pebble]

yeah and that's the reason why you need to deal with the green and blue

[fickle slate]

But can you take the green/blue from the splitter and feed it back into the recompiler, or does the recompiler only accept raw aether from finished processes?

[winter ravine]

feed to recompiler

identically to if that process output B

The recompiler produces raw proportional to the minimum input aspect, and any excess aspect is just dumped to local field

Now, mechanically

All this stuff will probably have to be per tick

or something, I think the system only works with a global timescale

[woeful pebble]

I think the way to do this is that unless in a container the aether can never stop means we can have it always move into the next step and if there is no valid next step it escapes

[winter ravine]

yes I def agree on never stop

if it's not buffered it ends up back in ambient

[woeful pebble]

that means the aether coming from behind it doesn't have to worry about having space to move

[fickle slate]

How does dumped aether affect the local field? If you don't use the green/blue from your splitter I assume they get dumped back into the field. Does split/non-raw aether disrupt the field?

[woeful pebble]

I would assume yes

split aether would be worse than raw but better than split and unbalanced

[winter ravine]

There's also a scale component

a little unbalance is fine, natural decay handles it (so early game not very punishing)

[woeful pebble]

in essence our system doesn't have any collision so there should never be very difficult calculations regarding the flow of aether since any given aether unit doesn't have to care about any other aether just the infra around it

[winter ravine]

yeah it's mainly on if a machine holds aether and does a recipe or consumes/transforms some amount per tick during the recipe

probably the latter

but I shall explore this

[woeful pebble]

and we can make the splitting of aether into different paths work with basically a resistance type calculation where it will split the aether based on the resistance of the route (unless using a splitter that defines the proportions itself)

I don't think machines should have a higher aether buffer than at most the amount it takes in during 1 tick and the amount it outputs per tick

[winter ravine]

Most, yeah. Streaming resource

[woeful pebble]

unless of course it's specifically done to have a buffer with the destruction magic but that's an exception

[winter ravine]

but some stuff like rituals may get charged

oh, and that's a fun thing with a decay rate

[fickle slate]

idk if I like the "unused is dumped back to the field" mechanic. It basically rewards adhoc setups because you don't have to worry about managing the unused colours.

If the extra gets voided then the player is forced to deal with it somehow. Early game it doesn't matter as much because of the natural regen/decay but once you start processing lots of aether it will quickly become an issue.

[winter ravine]

you need to be feeding it enough that it'll actually fill the buffer and not hit equilibrium too low

[fickle slate]

As a bonus the consumptive path will be an emergent phenomena. If you consume too much aether in a ritual you drain the local field, maybe to the point of destroying it.

[woeful pebble]

I think the idea here is that any sort of unintentional dumping will unbalance/harm the aether field

[winter ravine]

Also, maybe another thing that arises from the math just inherently

but you have less and less red to pull from

aether decays according to concentration of all aether

[woeful pebble]

so adgoc setups work if you do it once or twice but if you want to automate it that way you'll destroy the aether field

[winter ravine]

or stall

I want destruction to be more deliberate

This is something where I think it'll be good to explore once I have a first prototype of the aether system

[woeful pebble]

yeah my main point is that unintentional dumping will eventually make the field into one that cannot feed the process that dumped the aether into it anymore

[fickle slate]

Yes but if you have this setup there won't be any unbalancing because it's a zero sum. Every unit of aether you extract is eventually returned. If typed aether blocks raw aether regen it would be fine. The only way to unbalance the local field otherwise is to store too much of one colour, which isn't very interesting.

Extraction -> Splitter
Blue/green are dumped implicitly because they aren't used
Red -> Some Process -> Raw (1:1:1 RGB)
Raw -> Recompiler (output = min(input red, input green, input blue))
All red is dumped since there's no green or blue
Recompiler -> Return Pylon

[woeful pebble]

wether the reason for that is destruction or unbalance etc. will depend on the processes and stuff that is dumped but the end result is the same - for long term passive processes you have to deal with the buproducts

[fickle slate]

Making severe destruction deliberate is fine, but I think even the natural path should have to be cognizant of damaging the field by doing something stupid.

[winter ravine]

1W > 1R1G1B, 1R > .3W, return .3W1G1B

but I dunno about this red > raw

[woeful pebble]

if you have a process that makes red into raw then you'd no longer have red you'd have blue green and white which means eventually your field wouldn't have any white

[fickle slate]

I imagine the natural path has some way to multiply aether. If your generation is unbalanced you can disrupt the local field. Not to the point of damaging it, but it may make your rituals less effective to the point that they stall.

Extraction -> Splitter
Red/Green/Blue -> Some Generation Process -> Raw
Raw -> Recompiler -> Return Pylon (more aether than was extracted)

[woeful pebble]

I don't think having white aether be the byproduct of a process be the norm at least in large quantities but also you wouldn't have to put it into a recompiler

since that makes white out of red green and blue

[winter ravine]

I think at a large-scale, the overall idea is that the local aura produces X per tick. A process consumes Y and returns Z per tick. You can sustain X/(Y-Z) of the process per tick. Of course, if the aether is not returned balanced, but requires balanced, then that Y-Z is an underestimation and you sustain less of a processs

If you have a process that just consumes a red per tick, and returns 0 red or raw, then Z is 0

"What about draining over X per tick" - this is where I think bad things happen

[woeful pebble]

I liked the idea of producing aether proportional to the amount of pure aether in the field so if you dump split aether it'll eventually producing less aether

so there is a real penalty for letting it escape but it doesn't destroy stuff unless you let it go on long enough where the aether produced drops below the aether you drain

or in the case of lower level stuff maybe you are only capable of draining up to a certain % of the aether production so if you let this happen eventually the process will just tend to 0 aether output but the area is not permanently damaged

and then you would want to upgrade to higher level extractors because the lower level ones can only get like 50% of the aether production (maybe even less) at max, but the trade off is that now you're capable of overdrawing the aether if you don't calculate your consumption or let the aether generation drop because of split aether

[winter ravine]

As a design overall, I think collection pylons:

• start too slow to do any real harm unless you really try
• Once better, have safeties you have to manually disable/set lower to do more risky draining

[woeful pebble]

I don't think you should have to manually disable safeties to have a chance of mismanagement causing real harm

that's like saying nukes shouldn't explode if you don't press a button that says hey "do you want me to explode instead of just shutting down when overheating"

I think it should just be a feature of the higher level collection pylons

[winter ravine]

The safeties are basically automatic shutoffs

higher level ones could be more fine-tuned

like low-level safeties are very safe, overly so

there's an incentive to turn them off

but people that hate permanent damage can keep them on

[woeful pebble]

imo the player should have to plan and make those safeties themselves instead of having it be an inherent feature

[fickle slate]

I'd prefer to have to build something to throttle pylons. Pylons would always pull at 100% of their throughput, but mirrors (or something similar) can throttle them down based on some signal. Mirrors would act like a transistor, so you need to feed them with other aether to control them.

[winter ravine]

Can see

[fickle slate]

Then you could make some sort of detector crystal that draws a tiny amount of aether. You run that aether through some combination of splitters and recombiners to control the mirrors.

Like if you need to draw 10% red, 40% green and 50% blue you'd need to have a detector crystal that feeds into three PID channels that then get recombined into a mirror signal.

[winter ravine]

It might also be something like manual control (very good control) or auto (really dumb/conservative). The latter could be nice for stuff like remote outposts

[fickle slate]

Or maybe just a shutter for earlier, less advanced setups.

And the shutter somehow prevents the upstream machine from sending aether through it

[woeful pebble]

I don't think the pylon should be a smart block

at maximum at the higher levels maybe you can set the amount it draws instead of it being constant but you should have to always tell the pylon how much it draws it doesn't need to know anything else

[stone vortex]

Thinking on the usage process the example being from red -> raw when used for a process, would it instead be more compelling to transform from red -> either blue or green? Something that would represent the process happening? I.e. if you beamed something to turn an ingot molten the thing it would release would be green rather than raw aether

[fickle slate]

My only concern with the current plan is that it feels very linear. Setups have discrete components, and those components remain the same throughout the entire mod's progression. I think control automation would go a long way to mitigating this.

[woeful pebble]

I think this is the case of both are good and we are just going to have to make a lot of different processes that have different consumption requirements and byproducts you can also use the aspects and sub aspects for this at later stages

[fickle slate]

Like every setup's backbone would be Extractor -> Splitter -> Process -> Recompiler -> Return but each step would have to be controlled. Early game you can just 'turn' a knob but eventually you'll have to use aether to control it.

[winter ravine]

Definitely support room for automation

also, interesting point

if collectors can conflict within a radius

then you could need like rotating mirrors to switch what runs

I do regard most of the aetheric handlers as dumb tools, like literally the splitter just being a magic prism

[woeful pebble]

I don't think the system would become linear just look at the splitter you get 3 different products that you can send to different processes (sum might require just red some might take blue and green in a 2:1 ratio etc.) and you need to make sure the aether flows in right amounts to the right places then you have multiple processes that you have to balance so that you have red green and blue in the right amounts to recompile and return

[floral nacelle]

Pleease make it worse (in good meaning) than chromaticraft 🙏

[stone vortex]

So if I’m understanding correctly, aether is generated by life, and it decays, but why does it decay? Does it dissipate into nothingness or is aether a closed system and it decaying is it transforming to something else?

[fickle slate]

The balancing portion is just a few minutes in a spreadsheet, I don't think it's interesting enough to hold up everything else.

[woeful pebble]

when you add aspects and sub-aspects to this system as you progress the things you have to build to make sure your aether usage stays balanced it will also increase in complexity

[fickle slate]

Unless you don't give the player exact numbers, but that turns into an exercise in frustration because you'd never know if setups are stable.

Like maybe some setup is slightly out of balance, but it's slow enough that it would only show up after hours of running. Showing numbers and equations would prevent that but it'd take the magic out of it.

[woeful pebble]

You could have part of the progress be increasingly accurate measuring devices though personally I dislike not having the numbers available

[stone vortex]

Unless you had an easy way to tell if something was stable without revealing the numbers

[winter ravine]

I don't quite know how I want to thematically explain this. It could decay and/or it could annihilate with some sort of anti-aether that's just naturally less prevalent

[winter ravine]

Exact numbers will be visible

I'm someone that reads code and writes numbers to wiki, I'm not going to hide stuff like that

[fickle slate]

I don't think you can programmatically because it's like a variant of the halting problem. A person has to punch all of the equations into excel to figure that out.

[woeful pebble]

I think one interesting possibility here is having the exact numbers of some recipes be based on the seed like in embers so figuring out what the numbers are for your seed could be part of the process and it would also mean you wouldn't have universal answers to everything

though I guess that could be unbalanced with some seeds having way easier combinations than others

[fickle slate]

that would just move the problem up one step. The recipes/ratios still have to be deterministic, even if they're completely random. You would just have to punch those into excel too.

[woeful pebble]

I don't think every or even most parts of the progress in the mod at least the early game have to be something you can't solve with excel

[stone vortex]

I was thinking more like something that you could use to compare two aether values. I.e. raw before process set and raw after process set.

[fickle slate]

agreed, I'd prefer to never involve excel in the first place

[winter ravine]

This will not be magic beamline

[fickle slate]

I'd much rather add automation so that you don't have to rely on math or experimentation

[stone vortex]

Fair, but pre automation you’ll probably still want info about process balance

[stone vortex]

Rip beamline not existing last time I played through, I will have to experience it in a couple months

[fickle slate]

Those setups should be simple enough that you can just subtract the outputs from the inputs to see the net aether

[stone vortex]

It could be interesting to think about, i.e. if aether as it “decays” transitions into more life, then that could explain how dark magic scars an area. Something like “the different colors of aether need equal amounts of the decay, and the drastic unbalancing of x aether color has created a runaway reaction by being hostile to life which prevents more of the other colors being generated to dissipate the excess”

[weary gust]

i like it, follows old Paracelsus' alchemical model with its tria prima (Salt/body/stability, Sulphur/soul/combustibility, and Mercury/volatility/spirit.)
Red as ignis/perditio being destruction is neat, the thaumic result would be a cold beam of red?
idk. the idea that they dont split into their opposed pairs is interesting, especially for me as a thaumaturge lol

i beg of you find something to call it besides a variant of steel, GTNH has worn the word steel down in my head to nothing

[weary gust]

this sounds like the TC2 implementation of aura! you could yoink aura nodes with a laser and merge them in that version, it was very cool.

[weary gust]

localdifficulty is barely implemented as a mechanic- ive heard for months now theyve talked about adding a way for pollution to interact with mobspawning, but i think this mod may have a better claim on that part
although, we kinda have to ask... is undeath the opposite of life? a twisting of it? just part of the ecosystem?

Also: there used to be a version of the Magic Energy Absorber that could cause global effects by way of overdrawing the whole server's aura back in early GT (mindcrack pack or earlier kinda era).
Thoughts on a similarly destructive aether siphon? :3

[weary gust]

idk how much a 'pre automation' phase really fits into the design portion of a GTNH mod, truthfully
i am DEFINITELY an outlier, but... steam age infusion run has taught me a lot more can be automated a lot earlier than people perhaps expect. it takes more "dumb" or redstone-heavy setups, but its entirely doable
leaving it to the player to decide how automated a process is is one of the strengths of gtnh imo
and weaknesses- look at the poor folks handcrafting to the moon and quitting rip

[weary gust]

cool lore hook for "how does mob spawning work"
research of and control over mobspawning feels like a very natural branch for this mod to eventually follow, especially in the Sacrifice/Scarring branch for undeath maybe?

Im also interested in making use of magic pollution for our own ends.
at the advanced end, we could start spawning an entirely new set of mobs with sufficient unbalances
or overfilling an area with Green so heavily that ambient essentia would start to crystallize (similar to how sin shards show up?)
or creating magic extremophiles for use in other processes- no quick and easy aether pewter bee you have to make it able to live in + adapt to the pocket of aura required before you can even START rollin' those dice
Generally these SHOULD still be bad and unsafe probably, but... yknow they say that about vac nukes too and ive been fine so far :)

[woeful pebble]

Definitely agree that while the pollution should be bad for aether production having extreme single aspect environments for some purposes would be interesting

[woeful pebble]

Maybe mobspawning is a result of the aether not being able to flow in the natural system (partially randomly but could be interesting to have it be increased by stuff that damages the aether or having a lot of split aspects/colours) and then "escaping" the system by spontaniously creating creatures similiarly how when in our systems when there is no place to go it will escape to the aura field

This also means the mobs that are spawned could be different based on the different colours/aspects/sub-aspects that arent flowing with the mobs resulting from real damage to the aether field being a lot stronger and more eldrich than the ones from simple imbalances and normal processes

That would also give an obvious reason why you might want to damage the aether field in some area or make certain aspects dominate which would make for an interesting addition when making mob farms

Which gives more chances for something to go wrong in your plan to damage the aether field in some area that you've definitely secured and has no other adverse effects and no chance to spread 🙂

[chrome idol]

Punch a hole in the weave! Who gives a damn, we're stargating here

[weary gust]

on the subject of containment: witchery null catalyst is used in this pack in a few spots:
demon plinth, standard anti-magic witchery gear and... nether stars, for some reason, which really makes me wonder what their deal is magically lol

perhaps instead of buffering aura (other than any nessesary backend stuff obvs) we can basically make a low aura point inside a shield, and "unshield" it to make it interact with the local aura again
buffering a negative aura value to help take care of any spikes, kinda like the blood ph buffering i guess?

very much based on these funny underwater hydrobatteries lol

Unlikely, but... i also want some anti-science gear, and having null catalyst based anti magic gear (but not Bad and Witchery) would be the best way to do that. Ichor robes can't be EMP'd, or smth :P
tech players have forgotten the Tekkit Wars of days past where magic and science fought
bwahahaha cue lightning ill show them all etc etc
if they have to play magic mod to make anti-magicmod gear i still would count it as a win >:)

[formal geyser]

i think a lot of you guys here would like writing your own ttrpg magic system

[chrome idol]

something something sufficently advanced magic is indistinguishable from technology

[barren relic]

as a player of the pack who likes magic somewhat... id have to throw in my own 2 cents and say i think i would prefer just, idk, a thaumcraft remake thats coded better

one where new integrations could be done far easier.

i would rather not it have a massive mechanical re-do

partially because the ability to go back and play classic thaumcraft was one of The Things that drew me to GTNH in the first place

[fickle slate]

tc's staying as it is because it's too useful and it would be too difficult to replace. I'm sick of it though, hopefully we make research easier

[zinc hound]

no ones talking about getting rid of thaumcraft right now

also theres very little interest in remaking tc. if you want to do it go ahead

[barren relic]

sorry

[weary gust]

We're mainly talking about unhooking critical progression from thaumcraft
Realistically I can't see any reason to remove thaumcraft ever, once it can survive as a branch of the magic tree instead of the root

There are essentially hidden production lines weaving botania, thaumcraft, and (for some reason) witchery together to provide some actually p decent resource production. IC2's removal is a very different case imo, since most of its functions occur elsewhere in the gregtech it spawned. It became vestigial, in a way that I really doubt thaum would be.

My understanding is this. apologies if i have things wrong, but:
Options to scale, to streamline, and eventually to bypass thaumcraft may exist, but... to put it bluntly thaumcraft things are made of wood and stone, where this mod can choose to make its things of like, superconductor inlay on laser etched gems if it wanted.

thaumic theming fits better in the early stages where it exists currently, when magic is a difficult force of nature that can be harnessed for basic gains (xp crafting, for example). Later, at ichorium, you get the feeling of mastery over magic, and then...

nothing. magic is complete until the magical properties of dragonblood are required in the sci fi, and even that you can just clone it's still ultimately a type of animal even if its a magic one.

wheras this mod can be shaped to span from stone age to stargate without compromising the thaumcraft we know*. and so, we can just... leave it there, keep the GTNMagic mod relatively light in that era, and have it unlock botania/bloodmagic/thaum. linking the three branches through the earlygames of the big 3 magic mods roots it solidly thematically imo (which is needed because we want science players to use magic more), and then it's up to balance concerns how inter-linked we want these mods to be.

Gates installed in GTNMagic can lock off parts of the other mods more elegantly than thaumcraft researches, which i think is the biggest departure being discussed. It could lead to some things in thaumcraft being locked by something outside of itself in some cases, which is frustrating but already in the pack (looking at you, stainless steel screws).

*not that thats allowed in any case, with closed sourced bits and all.

[winter ravine]

That is pretty close to what I had in mind, yes. This would supplant TC as the "core" magic mod, and TC would be a branch of side content like Blood Magic/Botania are currently. A big thing would be nuking the research pages that gate those mods and replacing them with hopefully something a bit more interesting in this mod. And yes, this mod should be much easier technically, thematically, and design-wise to scale into the later tiers of the pack than the current magic setup.

[barren relic]

ok, sorry

i was just worried

[woeful pebble]

it's fine it's understandable to have doubts about changes to things you like and I can easily see how this might seem like a plan to completely replace thaumcraft at first glance

[summer folio]

holy crap a magic mod that isnt thaumcraft?
this would be the single greatest addition ever (mainly the not having to do thaumcraft part)

[inland pivot]

Has there been any development on this programmatically yet? Or is it still solely in the design stage?

[weary gust]

theres a skeletal framework for rituals
nothing else im aware of but i may be wrong

[stone vortex]

I believe ruling has started working now, I was going to ping in a couple weeks and see how I can jump in to help

[inland pivot]

Good to see this pack always evolving in new ways

[summer folio]

the main gimmick i love in magic minecraft is costumisable spells (to an extent its the only gimmick i love)
now iirc blood magic has something like that but..... i havent messed around with it because i havent had access to earlygame BM yet, only touching it for the draconic generator in like UHV (when any personal tools need to be absurdly busted to be relevant for me)

and yes i only avoided touching BM because thaumcraft also fueling BM blood is a MASSIVE pain in the ass if you dont know what ur doing

so uhh gib "ars magica 2 gtnh edition".... dont worry about how easily breakable costum spells are im sure adding noita to minecraft wont be exploited

[vital kestrel]

lets not pretend pvp and pve progression isn't already broken and exploited in so many different ways already from steam age

[fickle slate]

The blood magic spells are underwhelming. It's an interesting system but its content is lackluster.

[summer folio]

wdym you have so many options
like a crosbow, and a crosbow, or how about a crosbow?

[weary gust]

for melee you have the rapier or an overchanted kikoku

[vital kestrel]

Imagine a world where the crossbow has to compete with wand foci equally powerful or melee weapons that actually don't risk your life

sigh

Also we got openmodularturrets for some reasons

Imo it would be cool for the new magic mod to have some mechanics interact with Blood Moon or mob invasions. So you could spend the night actively trying to defend yourself or maybe through turrets and get some useful rewards after

Blood Moon really feels like something which has to do with Blood magic or magic in general

[sacred grove]

shadowbeam focus ignores i frames and does like 20 dmg/t i tihnk

[wise violet]

It would be nice to have other viable options and HV+ options that thematically fit the tech level. Like a laser rifle or a rail gun, or even a gunpowder rifle.

[summer folio]

yeah some non-crossbow options arent horrible.
i saw thaum has a mace that does like 30 damage or something? not bad and i think u can buff it further too

oh and you also need a backup stick incase vampire pigmen doesnt see a wood component in your main weapon

and overenchanting is uhhh.... i mean it exists i guess (not downplaying it just, idk never struck me as interesting to put a bazillion levels of sharpness on a weapon, also sounds tedious to setup and do)

[vital kestrel]

I think overenchanting is fine as long as you pay an exponentially increasing amount of mana or exp instead of placing and breaking a diamond spike

Maybe considering the PVE content we have now its not impressive but if the new magic mod will add new enemies, structures, dimension and bosses it could potentially ruin the experience of it

[weary gust]

replacing the Random Things blood moon (or just its shader) would let us remove the horrible red filter, maybe put in a good one even
and mob spawning as a Force of Magic is fun

[vital kestrel]

i agree honestly

it also fits thematically magic as there is no other explanation scientifically for why zombies and skeletons assault you otherwise

maybe blood moon would be a state in which life and death essence lose the narrow boundary that separates them and this brings a ton of undead mobs alive, while allowing you to get access to magic that otherwise would be unaccessible during regular moon phases or days

i know nothing about magic IMO but i would like to reinvent blood moons as a part of gregtech that doesn't traumatize new players and becomes an annoying red filter once you've settled in a hole

[winter ravine]

max-potency primal staff with mages mace might go up to 50 or something ridiculous, I basically oneshot any non-boss mob

I was thinking of doing a noita-like spellcrafting system for personal spells. I'm a big fan of doing spell systems as providing base tools and letting player's craft the actual spells. Though for now, such a system is a bit lower prio

btw @fickle slate I think I've goot a good system for doing the aether calculations completely disconnected from chunks

just using the ArrayProximityMap4D introduced in GTNHlib for the maglev stuff

where basically collection points would serve as effectively masters of the system and calculate what their own ambient level is based on what else is in their effect range

[weary gust]

noita like including self-explosion potential?
i think thats cool and on brand if so just asking how much warded glass i should pack for the trip :D

[wise violet]

Wooden tinkers tools should be effective against Vampire Pigmen and Witchery Vampires, and silver and astral silver tinker's tools should be effective against Witchery Werewolves.

[wise violet]

It does take an exponentially higher amount of mana or LP. The XU spike is a loophole that has been patched out.

[wise violet]

They aren't, but it would be nice for internal consistency.

[summer folio]

Yes but if yoy just changed your setup and for some reason the wood doesnt count its nice to have a backup

Like for me was the case. (Idk what i did i maybe just removed the wood on accidenr)

[wise violet]

Alternatively, just use a Kikoku. The divine damage kills all mobs.

[summer folio]

Bro why couldnt this have been told to me the first time i asked about it

That is uge

It gets increased by sharpness etc too?

[fickle slate]

[wise violet]

By both Sharpness and Wrath. Divine damage also damages and kills players in creative mode.

[summer folio]

👀

dayumn

[wise violet]

Don't forget the Pain enchant. It does additional damage that bypasses armor. Sharpness 6, Wrath 6, and Pain 3 on a Kikoku is the best you can get without doing a Mana Enchenter/Blood Magic Enchanter + Disenchanter loop.

[vital kestrel]

Yeah i saw it later in a Neurotic Goose video, just wanted to share my opinion on overenchanting

[red crater]

In 1.12 kikoku just kills the mob after iirc 40 hits, I haven't tested but it's probably the same here

[sacred grove]

pain also bypasses iframes

its also divine damage i tihnk

or at least magic

[wise violet]

The Vampire Pigmen? In GTNH with enough sharpness/wrath/pain it will one shot vampire pigmen.

[red crater]

Should work on any mob if it survives that long

[summer folio]

This might be a hot take but i think vampire pigmen should be removed or reworked. Theyre an non-optional nether enemy that effectively nerfes any non-woodtag/divine weapon's viability

[wise violet]

What do you mean?

[summer folio]

Wanna use tc mace for example? No lol get fucked waste a inventory slot on a stick

[wise violet]

I like having something not trivialized by a crossbow

[summer folio]

Thats a crosbow issue not a vampire pigman issue

If you wanna make crosbows worse with mobs that resist it, whichis a really bad idea imo, just make witch spiders spawn in the nether, that way you dont incidentally nerf every woodless melee weapon

[red crater]

The 1.12 iteration of the kikoku will kill a mob(I want to say by doing max int void damage?) after enough hits regardless of hp remaining

I'd assume 1.7 behaves the same

[zinc hound]

i dont think so

[sacred grove]

it doesnt

ive spammed gaia with a pain kikoku, and it doesnt die

[red crater]

Huh interesting. I'm guessing no plans for UIE to add that?

[zinc hound]

no

[inland siren]

Gaia has a very low Damage cap

Under 100 health

Under normal circumstances I don't think I've ever done more than 40 or 50 damage per melee on it even with a 300 dmg weapon, in NH I've done ~93 I think?

[wise violet]

No Kikoku in UIE?

[weary gust]

from my understanding, no strange 40 hit mechanic

[zinc hound]

currently there is no kikoku

definitely not backporting exu2 mechanics though even if we decide to add it

[weary gust]

Injecting praecantatio with the Seroconverter from Thaumic Horizons can make someone generate vis
this also gives a negative side effect at higher concentrations
Auram, however, gives the vis generation effect without the flux flu and does it better

perhaps in light of this we should ask #1303360863633145968 to add midichlorians as a pollution type
vis discounts and debilitating warp for all in my smogcloud

[weary gust]

anyways jokes aside idk i just thought it was neat how that lined up with the aether from living things concept so far
these mods were all grown in the same pop cultural soil, makes sense there'd be some bleedover
(plus there's also the balance aspect obvs. in base TC your one reliable source of auram pre-Eldritch is wisp spawners
wisps as an enemy are resistant to most easy farming methods, so unless you spam dart golems it'd be more scarce.)

[weary gust]

@ past me:
unsure how to explain why mushroom islands dont spawn mobs with this
are the mushrooms... eating the undeadness?
plus, what does it ""mean"" that mobspawning is biome dependant not dimension dependant in many cases
by 'canonizing' game mechanics, as with chunks, we also risk falling into "woooooOOOooOoo magic is all about figuring our you're in a computer" and thats boring.

and. slime chunks. Limus is a magic aspect on its own i guess, its just strange?

[sacred grove]

sliem spawning in swamps is tied to moon phases afaik

[weary gust]

^on that note, werewolves and vampires also

Hm. maybe it is kinda planet related, somehow. less "the moon is in retrograde" and more "the three body problem is hard enough when you're just working with like. normal matter and gravity.
figuring out exactly how the moon (presently full of void and darkness essentias if I recall) interacts magically with the overworld, which itself is situated between Twilight Forest, Alfheim, Hell... That'd make anyone hit warp cap real quick

[barren relic]

zombies and skeletons: in an area very heavy in decomposers, anything dead decays too soon for the magic to take hold
creepers: being a plant-based creature, whatever method of reproduction creepers have is choked out by the overwhelming presence of mushroom spores and mycelium
spiders: starve due to lack of other things to prey on

which does bring up a question... wtf are the mushroom biomes decomposing???

with the cubic chunks underground biomes thing thats in proposals, some sort of biome that generates underneath mushroom biomes, made of dead and dying organic matter, would be cool

so as to explain wtf is sustaining said mushroom biomes

[weary gust]

We have an answer for why there's so much oil gushing out of GTNH worlds
something vast and dead lies below.... perhaps many somethings
i guess we kinda knew that already from the flesh biome in the Nether, but... idk Still Wakes the Deep was a good game lol

[barren relic]

hmm... i suppose, but i feel like a mushroom biome is on a much smaller timescale than the formation of oil

[weary gust]

almost certainly lol

[vital kestrel]

Imo the Moon in Gtnh has already some stuff going on with magic (mostly Blood Moon and Moon charm from witchery) but once a player phisically gets there you see an empty landscape with occasional villages and some craters with small dungeons

Moon should be integrated with a magic mod just like Twilight forest lets you start Botania in virtue of being a magical place

Since Blood Moon is a thing maybe we could add some blood-magic to the Moon? There are even meteorites there which is cool but somehow goes in conflict with BM being literally a progression skip with meteorites

[weary gust]

glitched mars seed

i assume we want to spread New Magic Mod to space as well, and so i am still thinking about planet magics
aether being unequally distributed between the planets during solar system formation
perhaps sometimes even to "unstable" levels

This provides an alternative to polluting your own terrain to get anomalous magic materials: just go and have a star trek episode until you have enough of the anomaly's magic dust/ingot/etc to proceed. For servers, where griefing potential may be too high to leave imbalance effects on, this still provides a rougte.

possibly some sort of machine network that would benefit from being installed on more planets (and the moons too once you run out of space and need more).

picked two pictures of orrery planet model things with very different aesthetics
theres not much of a defined aesthetic/"physical" style to this mod so far to my knowledge?
thaumcraft likes gold and runes and vaugely gothic aesthetics, botania has plant
do we just... use the tier metals? idk

[fickle slate]

I figured the different branches would have different aesthetics. Regeneration would be a lot of white (maybe with gold accents) and plant life. Tech would be a lot of cool colours and grays with pipes/gears/etc hanging off the earlier tier machines. Destruction would be blacks and reds with spikes and ominous runes everywhere.

I think it would be interesting if you could glance at a setup and roughly know what everything does by colour and by shape. In game design it's important to use specific markers to communicate info to the player.

A good example was in the modern doom games. They put neon green in the path the player should take. It stood out from the environment well because the environment colours were desaturated grays and reds for the most part.

The one thing that bothers me about astral sorcery is the altar design. I can never tell which altar is a higher tier without having to go through the recipes.

[vital kestrel]

I like the idea of planetary magic but what if planets themselves were the "standard" progression of gregtech with only tech going on and instead each planet got its magic from their own satellite?

[weary gust]

could be!

[winter ravine]

Yeah pretty much
White/gold/light blue, marble, soft angles, like Astral sorc
Gray/brass/purple, stone, utilitarian, like Thaum
Black/silver/red, basalt, sharp angles, a bit like BM

[wise violet]

Does this recharge your wands pretty quickly?

[weary gust]

primal shrooms would still be more optimal likely
however i thibk they shouldn't be bonemeal-able for balance reasons and have been relying on nodes mostly until now

it's about 1 vis a second, maybe more, for duration up for 5+ minutes with 8 auram. simple enough with terra wart or aurelia.

at my level, its a wand charge or three per injection depending on which aspects i get and which i can find normally

[wise violet]

Can you still use an XU Builder's Wand to place fully grown primal shrooms?

Or did that finally get patched out?

[weary gust]

never heard of that one, idk

[whole meteor]

Id be so excited to do textures for this

[whole meteor]

With uie still in the works you might be able to ask in that aoi

[zinc hound]

it’s an issue with primal shrooms not with the wand

the shrooms don’t correctly report where they aren’t allowed to be placed

or didn’t. it might be fixed now

[weary gust]

Every mod has a potion system. Blood magic chem set, botania brewery, thaumic horizons seroconverter.
Rather than make our own potion system, i think some method of auto application would be interesting.

likely hv+, or tiered variants in some way. (If we can figure out the moon we can figure out a camelbak backpack)

Technical side:
-10 to 15 sec wait period between checks
-limited whitelist space
-if a buff is applied, has less than 15 sec, and has a source item in the inventory*, consume the item.
-unsure if it should work for things that are also food such as the Marshmallow. Perhaps a different auto eat utility?

*unsure if this is easily checked or if a list would need to be made. Whitelist idea suggested to discourage some creating a max potions "how did we get here" build too early

[inland siren]

yk you can drink from the adventurepack lol

Brew bag from witchery is cool for keeping brews for quick use

[weary gust]

i did nlt, how does thay work

[fickle slate]

you put the potion in one of the tanks, set the hose item to drink mode, select the proper tank, then hold right click (or w/e they're called, I haven't done this in over a years )

it's pretty cool, I used to use it for health potions

[wise violet]

Can you drink milk from an Adventure Backpack?

[shut fractal]

if you take a bucket of it out from the backpacks tanks yea

[wise violet]

I want to slurp it out

[whole meteor]

straw addon

[weary gust]

presumably doesnt work with botania potions or bloof magic flasks

[solid dune]

I'd be interested to jump in as a junior mod dev. I'm an experienced Java dev, not a lot of Minecraft modding though. So if there are tasks that are mostly just "work" that can be picked up with the way you want to approach this?

[weary gust]

soulsand cant be ignited by Lord of Hellfire research. rip

[fickle slate]

I don't think there is anything that can be done by other people right now. Ruling is still creating the core systems, so we're waiting for him to set out a design first.

[solid dune]

Alright, I'll keep following this thread to see if anything changes there! I might also look around for other "good first issue" type things to pick up

Just need to get up and running with mod dev somehow

[fickle slate]

We have plenty of issues on the tracker if you just want to contribute to the pack, but a lot of them are deceptively complex. This mod won't be ready for play testing for a while.

And you can always PR your own ideas, just keep in mind that you should ask dream or boubou for permission for bigger projects first.

[solid dune]

That sort of thing sounds like something I'll think about once I get further into the pack, I don't know it enough yet 🙂 but I do see two "good first issue" labelled issues, will take a look later. Is the "GT new horizons modpack" repo the right one to look at, even if the bug is in related mods?

[fickle slate]

yeah, we've forked every mod we're legally allowed to, so the repo will be under the GTNH org

[solid dune]

deceptively complex

Yep, that sounds like any long-running project

[solid dune]

But should I look around the entire org for issues, or are they grouped in the "parent" project?

[fickle slate]

There's the one main issue tracker, but some of the more important mods have their own trackers (like Angelica and lwjgl3ify)

[solid dune]

Alright, thank you

[fickle slate]

!dev has a lot of useful info for setting up your environment

[pure stratus]

https://wiki.gtnewhorizons.com/wiki/Development

[woeful pebble]

damn I didn't even realize that was a label I should probably also look into those

[winter ravine]

Yeah as a quick update, I've been making good progress on the aether system itself, but this work isn't really condusive to multiple people yet. As Pineapple mentioned, getting involved with the current repos is good. This mod employs a similar dev environment, and future work on pack integration is best done understanding how the other mods already work.

[lost bolt]

Is there anywhere to see the planned features for this mod? Because with all due respect I’m not backreading 1000 messages in one go

[weary gust]

doc at the top is still decent, since mostly this has been non-devs like me talking about magic mods generally

[fickle slate]

No, right now it's essentially just a framework with no features. The idea is that it'll entirely replace thaumcraft as the core magic mod for the pack, but TC won't be removed because it would be too much work to replace and it's too iconic.

[winter ravine]

To be honest, given time, I will absolutely look at cleanroom TC after I get this mod's framework done

[weary gust]

by 2050 itll all be GTNH specific code
2060, a standalone game

[tiny robin]

GTNH unity port when

“Focus D, Stargate is up ahead”

[red prawn]

Idk if unity would be fitting for gtnh

For one, its closed source afaik. Godot would be open source. And secondly, Im guessing that they would write it from scratch, either Java for partial compability or cpp / rust for performance

Feel free to correct me if Im wrong

[limpid island]

i mean we already have a custom render engine

[weary gust]

unity'd be a bad fit from my limited understanding, i was expecting more of a '5 years of dev hell later we have our own' situation
the 'factorio route'
or i guess more accurately, the devs keep replacing things i would have assumed were immovable
and so i no longer can be 100% sure that even Minecraft Itself is going to remain essential forever

[fickle slate]

I had an idea for the 'machines' for the life path. Crystals and lenses would be the generic aura movement system, but the life path's specialty would be plant engineering. It's kind of like botania, except it isn't just flowers.
The consumption path would be similar, except it uses flesh manipulation to make meat machines.
The models don't have to be anything fancy, it's just the theme. I imagine making custom plant and flesh horror models for everything would be difficult.

[winter ravine]

I definitely agree on the flowers/plants, I was anticipating some of that (like some extra Aether sources being flowers, potentially some Botania cross-mod). Flesh is also an interesting idea, I think I'd definitely prefer it act as a secondary theme. Overall, I envision that branch's aesthetic as "Mordor-like" (sharp angles, dark), but I think flesh-inspired stuff has some good design space for some mechanics as well as highlight-aesthetic (like what fills a basin).

[formal geyser]

will any rocks or minerals perhaps be used in this

[winter ravine]

Certainly various gems and other crystals

[formal geyser]

glad to hear it

[weary gust]

tc cleanroom: now with Hardcore Flux mechanics?

[inland pivot]

A dedicated effort to port GTNH to it's own engine will never work out, but a ship of theseus situation seems inevitable

Especially with headway being made in stuff like cubic chunks, which would fundamentally replace worldgen

10 years from now it's going to just be the code for steve running around in a different game, like that one mario 64 library

[fickle slate]

There's probably going to be a point where we could do it in theory, but so many ASM transformers and mixins rely on the MC code that it would be impractical to replace MC, unless you wanted to rewrite those or make modifications to the engine directly.

We already overwrite a good chunk of MC's code, so it'd just be a matter of glueing everything together and filling in the gaps

[chrome idol]

Is this part of the reason why startup times are they way they are? Because you're basically reinstalling minecraft

[fickle slate]

That's one way to look at it, but it isn't exactly what's happening. In most games startup times are from loading assets into memory. In MC most of the startup time is caused by registering things and initializing memory properly. Like creating items and putting them in the item list.

[chrome idol]

Fair enough

[ancient kiln]

GTNH hytale port when?

[little moon]

Has there been any actual progress on the mod itself by the way?

[tiny robin]

Ruling is/was laying the ground works for stuff to actually get started but idk how much they’ve got tbh

[fickle slate]

Yeah, ruling has the core systems worked out. He asked me to look at the PR but I haven't had much time recently

[winter ravine]

Yeah, basically I have a working implementation of the initial Aether system. Most of the functionality is there, maybe some tuning in the future. Took quite a bit of time since new mechanic, and there's a lot of edge cases to handle plus the whole server-client synching stuff with a render. Essentially, I have examples of Aether collectors and machines that relay and use it, as well as a render (attached image). The nice thing about having 3 aspects, and tying them to RGB, is that this render will shift hue depending on the underlying Aether unit (so if it's just B, it's a solid blue line). Been working a bit on modelling and ensuring I've covered edge cases of this system.

Like render stops at obstruction

One thing is that I'm taking a lot of care to ensure the systems I'm building are both extensible and scalable. I already did a slight refactor to make it easier to design Aether-manipulating systems in outside mods (such as GT). I've also designed the entire system to be cross-dim compatible, since this line-of-sight system is pretty nice but does not scale to very high counts or very long distances very well, so the system would support teleportation-based systems

Overall the system supports what I'd mentioned previously. There are devices that collect from the ambient Aether (which is not chunk-dependent). These devices maintain their own measure of the ambient level, and have an effective range. They receive a production malus for any other collector that is within their range, and Aether released in their range is added to their ambient. Thus, a large range is ideal for routing more release into it's ambient, but then you must deal with needing to spread out (or have inefficient) collectors.

Next thing I'm working on is that basically right now is using specific blocks as the Aether connects (like Thaum vis relays) rather than the machine blocks themselves just having lines go directly out of them.

And maybe needing to work on the current ambient Aether system a bit since I don't think its functioning as I'd prefer.

[shut fractal]

It seems like a mix of the thaumcraft 4 centivis system and the thaumcraft 6 aura system

I like it so far

Will aether be more abundent in some spots than others or just a static value?

[winter ravine]

Largely static because I'm not the biggest fan of making a chosen base location sub-par by RNG. I have considered variation by dimension

[shut fractal]

i think by dimension would be good since there more magically inclined dimensions like the twilight forest or even the eldritch dimension and the nether aswell

[hasty isle]

might be interesting to have naturally unbalanced aether fields in "unstable" dimensions like the nether. That is if it fits the gameplay of course

[weary gust]

if nether or other dims are wierd so i def think keeping ow and pdim standardized is still a good plan
if we really can shoot lasers crossdimensionally that would look very cool :D

[shut fractal]

It would be cool if the cross dim transfer thing was a circle of floating runed stone creating a portal

[little moon]

What if it were more abundant in some places but there was some kind of long distance transfer mechanism for it?

[woeful pebble]

Well if the system supports teleportation based systems that would probably be possible but I don't think you would want to add another thing to consider for bases in addition to bees/crops/humidity and many of the location specific recources like clay and structures like villages, dungeons and spawners

sure most of those factors aren't actually that important but it would push players further into trying to find optimal base locations instead of just saying something is good enough

[little moon]

Make it so player built stuff reduces the pool so you have to go out of your base far enough to get the pure source

[woeful pebble]

Unironically not a horrible idea

Would mean most stuff in the early game is good enough and then later you either need to process it more to get what you need or get aether from somewhere else

This could work together with the pollution rework that is surely coming soon

[weary gust]

would alterations to the thaumic horizons seroconverter be possible? i know thaumcraft itself is arr (+ a distant future cleanroom candidate) but several of its addons appear to be NH customs, TH included
pointing those extra aspects at some of the spare witchery effects or something could be fun, and manabeans already cross the mod divide as is

and on the subject of manabeans and magical ecology: would magical forest biome or other mods' forms of magic impact the aether?

[winter ravine]

I was thinking maybe something block/structure based where you can find it then take it back with you for a bit of a boost at home, for early game exploration rewards

[weary gust]

idk if yall have an internal one yet but if you dont
mod name pitch: MaGE
Magic and Greg Extended, or similar acronym
GLaDOS-like magic controller not included [thus far]

[ruby juniper]

Are there any plans for astrology related activities a-la astral sorcery?

[shut fractal]

wasnt astral getting backported?

[formal geyser]

nawr

it was discussed but it isnt

[shut fractal]

Oh okay

[winter ravine]

not currently

[ember flint]

Hi everyone. I’m 100% on board with the goal: make magic feel like its own real progression branch in GTNH, not just side content

But I’m a bit worried about the "new framework mod first" direction. Right now the AoI basically introduces a full new backbone (magic energy, tools to work with it, research tree), which is already implemented in Thaumcraft. It can easily turn into having two Thaumcrafts from the player's PoV - multiple overlapping mechanics that are doing the same job.

What I would suggest instead is to do a cleanroom TC implementation first. Then, once we own the code, we can extend/modify it to better fit GTNH experience, and use it as a framework for future magical content.

If this direction is interesting, I’d be happy to join an open TC effort

[fickle slate]

From what I understand, thaumcraft is staying but it's going to largely be optional and for QoL. This new mod will be the general 'gtnh magic mod' and we're going to be adding several of its machines/resources into the main progression path. TC probably won't be cleanroomed any time soon. It has too much content and its addons are too tightly coupled to its internals, which means that you'd also need to rewrite its addons at the same time.

[ember flint]

I get the point about TC being huge and addons being tightly coupled — yes, cleanroom TC is not a quick win

My worry is more about the design shape we end up with. If the new mod is meant to be the central magic backbone , while TC stays in the pack even as optional, we’re basically committing to two parallel stacks:

• a general magic energy/progression/research layer from the new mod
• and a TC-specific energy/progression/research layer for anything that still uses TC

That’s the duplication I’m talking about. Even if TC is optional, players will still see two different fundamentals, and content will keep pulling in both.

To me, cleanroom TC as a starting point reduces the amount of unknown design space. Once we own the internals, then it’s much easier to experiment without shipping a second competing stack.

[fickle slate]

The problem is that that project would take thousands of hours, and no one here has enough time to do that even if several people work on it. It's taken months to reimplement extra utilities and that's a comparatively simple mod with much less content.

It's easier to just leave thaumcraft alone and make our own systems

[zinc hound]

im more interested in slowly obsoleting thaumcraft through a new mod. there are many reasons that have been discussed why we would prefer a unique system rather than a thaum reimpl

[weary gust]

anything aiming to take thaum's place is a daunting project
so is making magic progression that can be both an alternative and a main focus

from that perspective i def get why "just make them the same project" is appealing

As long as the utility remains and the aesthetics are good in some way ill probs be satisfied
though maybe all the dramatics about harnessing cosmic forces of spacetime can wait until its actuall on tier
at present you crack the laws of magic in like LuV or something and then forget about them

[formal geyser]

girl you have too many ideas you need to learn how to code fr

[weary gust]

yeah

[idle vessel]

ladies and gentle man, listen. I have almost done the full Astral Sorcery Magic Mod migration, And It will be planed to finish this month

If you have any interests, feel free to tell me

And Actually I am also working on tiered AS altar for staged magic gameplay

[formal geyser]

HUH

[zinc hound]

what is the license and limitations

last i heard the author would not allow us to backport with an open source license

and wanted private repository

its unacceptable under those conditions

[formal geyser]

it'd have to be a rewrite with completely new textures and code and similar features

[idle vessel]

texture I think is not very easy to not reuse the source, Code I think it is using extremely different API in 1.7.10 written by myself. So I think it's ok

[zinc hound]

but what are the conditions of the permissions you got

[idle vessel]

I saked dream master and he help me got a GTNH - use - only license

Actually I don't like it

[formal geyser]

tbf not a lot else really happens in 1.7.10 these days

[zinc hound]

yes, but what are the conditions? does it require us to run a private repository?

[idle vessel]

not yet confirmed. I will check with dream master and hellfirepvp

[limber haven]

am pretty sure we can get a oss licence for it going
i have a bunch of considerations that should be adjusted in the mod itself to have it be a.. sensible pick for the pack in terms of how its features play out

since you'd have to essentially just recompile and rehost the mod in an adjusted manner anyway, it shouldn't be too hard to look into adjusting it in code itself

[floral nacelle]

maybe we could add like shortcut easier recipes for some materials with thaum LHC module with essentia beam infusing the item, but they dont have much utility because you can already get this items
like
iron dust + praecantio -> thaumium dust
thaumium dust + praecantio -> thaumnite
thaumium dust + tenebrae -> void dust
void dust + tenebrae -> shadow dust
iron dust + tenebrae -> shadow iton dust
salt gem + ignis -> firestone

and maybe one with infusing dracnium into awakened draconium

[little moon]

this would mess with progression

[weary gust]

tooj will get mad if you put magic in his science multis

[floral nacelle]

i showed him, he said aproximately that

but i l ike this idea..

[valid wasp]

i only hate magic as it is

techification of magic has my 100% approval

it just doesnt rly make sense in LHC

[ancient kiln]

Lock LHC behind thaumcraft and watch Tooj go postal

[fickle slate]

LHC essentia input hatch when? I want to accelerate potentia to 0.99c and collide it with motus.

[valid wasp]

if anyone can do it it's you

[fickle slate]

[valid wasp]

[weary gust]

step 1: accelerate particle to near lightpseed
step 2: inject motus into system
step 3: particle gets more speed per speed
step 4: add chiseled stone bricks to create arcane stone bricks
its just that simple!

[valid wasp]

HONESTLY adding motus to decrease energy cost or increase particle energy is a super cool idea lol

alright pineapple make it happen

[fickle slate]

sure, if you can figure out the mechanics I'm sure I could code it. I don't know much about the LHC beyond "it collides particles and makes new ones"

[ancient kiln]

Motus makes particle go faster than the speed of light and proceeds to break spacetime and ends the universe

[fickle slate]

hey @valid wasp look what I made. It shaves 4 ticks off each second, and consumes 1 fabrico every 4 ticks it removes

[valid wasp]

i fear your abilities

and i fear for your sanity

thats super cool tho imagine if thaum was integrated like this more

and imagine if there was a 3x3x3 textureless cube that did infusion recipes with 0 risk at the cost of a lot of power

also that essentia input hatch texture is 🔥

[fickle slate]

I just copied the center from the essentia buffer

[valid wasp]

now how does it work with AE2

[fickle slate]

it doesn't

[valid wasp]

where crafting input magibuffer

[fickle slate]

I think you can just put an essentia export bus on it but I haven't tested it

[fickle slate]

it should be possible with the new stack changes but we'll have to see

adding recipe check support would be a lot harder though, the system is very dumb right now

[tiny robin]

Think bigger, imagine if we instead had some kind of new open source, custom magic mod that replaces Thaum entirely and is more easily integrated into NH… someone should make an AOI for that

[inland siren]

[summer folio]

Yknow what i want i want psi but balanced

[weary gust]

A custom spellcasting method sounds both cool and very hard to pull off successfully

New and gregified wands you can accidentally Noita yourself with

[safe phoenix]

really i agree with this stance really it comes down to what we deem as primary and secondary

honestly that does raise a fair question what do we deem essential to current magic progression ie it all optional i get that but whats actually there

whats QoL that primary

really if this is stance we going forward as improving none ae2 functionality inventarium might actually have a use case if we could improve mob pathing thru a mixin

as that really what hold that system back is the golems and there rather strange interactions

[weary gust]

Unique powers of magic in this pack at present
-resurrection in True Hardcore/ while out of quest lives
-creation of extradimensional pocket pre-iv, construction of teleport network
-exchange tools (shifting crust, equal trade)
-warded blocks
-Overchanting
-multiple challenge runs [not a point to balance around while things are in flux/maybe ever]
-Transdimensional item transportation [NH version needs to be gateable because rockets rework in #1469820725882786014 down the line: if its too easy, it wont be fun]
-golems are a cool idea that need a full reimagining to fit in a pack like this. Devs probably dont want to have a bunch of little guys running around all the time, looking for tasks and pathfinding.
-The One Ring
-runic shield actually block a lot more things than you'd think. (including the bleeding status for some reason)
-Warp, for good and ill. I think saying "Bluhhh eldritch madness" is silly, but magic that alters the wielder is cool...
maybe another route? one where the progression goes from "ignorable" to "management" to cackling madly shouting "unlimited power" organically. maybe keep the random withers just for fun

Early automation via many apparatus, early inventory-with-searchbar, early automation via golems, and many others are now removed.
As infusion lockdown continues, the benefits of early magic shrink in kind. Not that nugget "duping" isnt powerful,
but now it's piston boots until MV.

[safe phoenix]

really item transport is the key i honestly have no idea what the limit is on a mirror

[weary gust]

Presently no limits other than tiergating to my knowledge
limited throughput, but not meaningfully so
interdimensional instant teleports for the low cost of maybe some ordo if you feel like paying, but azanor was balancing against vanilla so its extremely optional

biodome and galaxia AOIs have both talked about a mechanism to research a planet and unlock bonuses,
i think "teleportation of items to this planet" is a fair enough thing to put in there
Some sorta magical transciever infra would be my other pitch.

in theory you could still go up in one rocket with all the tools to set it up in one go
It'd have to be a galaxia process for a GTNMagic resource/research to prevent tying the mods together outside of NH context

[safe phoenix]

the pocket dim isnt that great in comparison to pdim warded blocks are mainly for practicality till you dont need nukes anymore overenchanting is not needed as your pretty much immortal by like HV

[weary gust]

pocket dim is a mid dimension but a very good teleport method
LV tech for the same ability as the stargate

Overchanting isnt for immortality, its for extracting unreal quantities of energy from undeath
which id be fine removing, and doubly fine with some elaborate multiblock doing the same thing without letting sharpness C weapons out into the wild

[safe phoenix]

true but you more likely to use witchery for that realistically having what modern has with the waystone and the teleport to coords would be good as the charm we have is super gated

[weary gust]

witchery teleport consumes waystones i thought, is there a way to make it not wasteful?

[safe phoenix]

honestly with set up you make unlimited waystones

[weary gust]

warded blocks are useful for me the whole game, i dont need serverutils cheaty protections

[safe phoenix]

really it a matter of how we get player to item or item to player

heck early game prospecting be goated

[vocal galleon]

another golem win

[formal geyser]

i think a boss fight could solve a lot of problems too

[vocal galleon]

ok now you're dragging it

[formal geyser]

low taper fade

[winter solstice]

has any significant work happened on planning since the doc came out? i just read the doc and it seems verrry bare bones

and like seems like no one has edited it in a while if ever

[fickle slate]

We talked about the core mechanics a while back but I don't know what the end result of a gameplay loop iteration will look like

[winter solstice]

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/z3n9NwdF5xs?feature=share

ideas :3

[inland siren]

This is very similar to a system I have been craving for a while, like the Mystic Branch from Witchery but less closed off/square

https://youtu.be/GF7UrGjOIEc?si=0K0Fq_d3lqpLh2gR&t=296
A more magical styled variation of Intangibles in-world guide is something I have been wanting to mess with implementing in a mod at some point but I have no idea how much of that was made possible by 1.8 rendering

[weary gust]

intangible was cool for the short while it existed
seed-randomized labware puzzles, messing with souls, kinda an upgrade of some Thaumic Horizons stuff

[weary gust]

hexcasting also looks neat from future versions, and maybe kinda like what youre describing
its hexagons though

[winter ravine]

This is actually a neat way to think through this problem, thanks for sharing. I want to do some more modular sort of spell crafting, but it's very hard to think of what the components should look like. Taking historical glyphs/runes/symbols has the issue GT runs into with the periodic table of eventually being too limiting, and coming up with custom runes is hard. Using fixed points to refer to aspects, and drawing runes as the connections between those aspects, I think has quite a bit of potential.

[inland siren]

Yeah I'm sad Emoniph left the modding scene I feel like his mods had a ton of potential, I've still barely cracked the surface on Intangible and despite having played Witchery hundreds of times in the last 10 years there hasn't been a single time I used it without learning about some new obscure mechanic, it has the depth of an Ocean and few mods compare IMO.

[inland siren]

Is Hex casting its own mod/mechanic or is that smth from Ars Noveau? I havent played much modern

[weary gust]

Hexcasting is its own deal, and witchery made my run (briefly) possible
i still have some of the fortune iii books from Lilith lol

[inland siren]

Lmao nice

Man I've only fought lilith like twice, still never done Vampirism legit and in a full run

[weary gust]

steam age flight, its something alright

[inland siren]

I tried my first GTNH run but I already was a wolf and I didn't know you had to do vamp first and then lycanthropy

[inland siren]

Fair

[vital kestrel]

realizing that balancing combat one day means balancing witchery
and balancing witchery means playing it 💀

i've never touched the mod outside of the ritual for biome change but i've heard it makes stuff like turning you invincible

[inland siren]

Not to worry, I have done everyone the favour of having 4000 hours of Witchery experience

[inland siren]

So many things

Let me find the brewing spreadsheet

Idc your opinion on witchery it has WAY more content than anyone thinks

[weary gust]

as a decadelong thaumaturge: respect

[inland siren]

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1dHx-lc8NfeJxX802P2yac3murtQaS_MaIpBx-fcDqkI/edit?gid=0#gid=0

[vital kestrel]

i know but it's kinda lost media

[inland siren]

Not quite

https://discord.gg/4Cz78dfM

https://legacy-wiki.msrandom.net/site/witcherymod/

[vital kestrel]

oh there is a server? that's cool af

i'll check it out 👀

[inland siren]

Complete with bug preservation channel

[weary gust]

i heard there was a way to use witchery mirrors to make yet another pdim

[inland siren]

Yeah its easy asf too lol

Brew of erosion can break mirror walls

I think it only goes up like 50 blocks too so you can use otherwhere infusion to just teleport up to the top of the mirror complex

[weary gust]

nice :D

[stone vortex]

You could also look into ideas like newtonian casting.

https://follypedia.fandom.com/wiki/Newtonian_Spells

[winter solstice]

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCdQrjOzkelgXHTk9dvdsApQ this channel would also be a really fun typa style to model a magic system after :P

he has a ton of stuff

including like mana being produced by a dedicated mana organ body part sometimes

wait was that a differnt chanel?

omg there was two

il send other once i find it

oh my i seem to have lost the channel

this is so sad they were doing such novel stuff

https://www.youtube.com/@monlenz THIS ONE :3

https://youtu.be/-mvLxx36XTg

https://youtu.be/cwCV1opXBv8

https://youtu.be/_PoY4vSuU6k

id love for you to have to do mana channeling cyborg style implants like in monstergardens spellcasting

https://youtu.be/y_NPuMvWlKk?list=PL13nWQlCTsSzbOBCu-AKmaQWPoThEomZj more stuff :3

[weary gust]

Thinking about this writing system again, and operator switchboards, and also base thaum, and of course this mod.
I dont know how to check where dev is at (short of bothering ruling out of the blue) so. as usual im writing fanfiction about mods lol
from my current understanding of this mod aka Lux Aetheria (what exists of it so far at least):
-theres R G and B magic aether lasers you get from the overall aether and which must return to it eventually
-i dont know what they coorespond to (if anything) in terms of classical elements, so ill assume we're going more abstract with it
-Aether has to be balanced equations and cannot be buffered, otherwise the local aether becomes unbalanced
-three paths of messing with it and alchemy is one of them

Alchemical aspects pitch (essentia replacement)
-we should redo which aspects exists. I get that its the (old) funny number but having one of the fundamental forces of magic be Shoes is just silly. It can still be 69 aspects if thats how it turns out
-If our new primal aspects are the Red Green and Blue, we could do a triangular or circular aesthetic for the writing.
-spectrographic analysis to learn what's in an item, bye bye thaumometer now is the age of destructive testing
-UUM (+ ???) ==> Alchemical condensation precursor (Similar role to acids for bee combs and the limiter plants have now)
-beesentia removed so we can make it a resource worth managing

Extra rambling
-magenta and other non-spectral colors hitting around MV with the other magic unlocks?
-Mid to lategame, using the same sort of aesthetics as the wizard drawing thing, synthesizing alchemical juices that do not exist in nature at all. Simple aspect synthesis might be drawn like the example you found. More advanced and gated synthesis should start to look like spirographs and other geometric patterns for that cool "drawing a magic circle anime style" feel

[wise violet]

Is this a full backup of the old wiki? It was taken down during my first GTNH run.

[inland siren]

Yes it is

There is another one but it has a really cursed domain name 💀

[hollow stone]

I hear about magic drawn from, tied to, and limited by the land, and I think "continent-scale ritual circles"

[fickle slate]

I wanted to make hundred block wide rituals involving combinations of specific blocks but I couldn't figure out how to do it well

and then the ritual would increase the ambient energy or something

[winter solstice]

that sounds so neat ngl...

i like magical architecture

like building your base in a way that channels specific magical fields to certain areas like a funnel

its such a unique way to integrate your magical system into the world

[hollow stone]

EoHs as nodes in a giant ritual circle

[shut fractal]

A possible way would be having something like a rune symbol multi in a chunk that links to another and/or adjacent chunk to form a multi chunk grid

Not sure how much it would affect performance but i figure you could get it down to a manageable level

[fickle slate]

I already have a system for dynamic rituals. I was thinking more along the lines of "put water attuned blocks in this pattern to increase the local water energy".
Multiblocks are fine for tech mods, but they don't feel magical enough.

[shut fractal]

Oh ok, i thought it would good for the idea of a big multi chunk ritual system

[fickle slate]

This is one of my prototype systems, but afaik it won't be included in the new mod. I wasn't expecting it to be, I just wanted to see if something like this was possible.
#1358178489995493518 message

I think it turned out pretty well, but it would take a lot of work to make it interesting

[shut fractal]

oh yea that does seem good

[wise violet]

I think your ritual system is dope

[fickle slate]

Thanks. I've been thinking about making it a proper mod but it would take a lot of time to make all of the content. The idea is that you'd use artifacts, entities (demons and spirits) and other mechanisms to convert energies into other energies. The basic energy types would be harvested from finite rifts.
I wasn't sure what the end of a game play loop would be. I figured you could use the energies to make multis (fusion reactors, ebfs, etc) faster or more efficient.

I made the rift system, but the renderer is lackluster

It's pretty cool. I hooked into worldgen, so lava lakes spawn fire rifts and water lakes spawn water rifts. Earth rifts spawn randomly underground and air rifts spawn high in the world.

[winter ravine]

I might've either missed or forgotten this, but the overall idea (crafting spells from runes, not having prebuilt complete rituals) is something I was envisioning. It might need some adaptation for the changes to Aura, but it looks like a very good base. Idea wise, I had this in the past: #1358178489995493518 message

[fickle slate]

I'm not surprised you missed it, this was a few months back. I have the core of the system working but there's no 'terminal' runes that do anything. From what I remember, you can find aura rifts in the world, extract aura from them, and transfer the aura between arrays in a ritual.

[inland siren]

Perhaps a slightly more magical "Hologram projector" type item or ritual? Maybe even a full altar of sorts in which you actually convene with old gods to learn and progress and divine knowledge from? I've been daydreaming of some type of magical "hologram"/in world type guide thing for a while, really unsure how one would execute it but it's an experience I've been craving xD
Something that really feels larger than life and makes the player feel like they're tinkering with things far larger than themselves but isn't so large that it feels overwhelming/not worth the time/effort. Something with a learning curve but one that has tangible though not necessarily immediate rewards.

I brought up Intangible earlier in the thread because despite it being a very bare-bones mod I feel as though Emoniph had some really strong concepts, especially the guide "book" being something you spawn and interact with in the world as opposed to the Thaumonomicon which is effectively just a magic block item that technically contains every bit of knowledge on all the content of like 20 mods but which has a really drawn out and arbitrary system for unlocking that knowledge and with a minigame so over-saturated that most people don't even read the entries they researched.

Something more engaging than spending 20 hours in a research table would do wonders.
I love thaumcraft and Witchery but their documentation is virtually all locked within reading and there is very little in the way outside of youtube videos for visual learners, both have visual representations of their mechanics at least in part, but even just to touch on Witchery I think an NEI handler for the circle magic would do wonders and combined with information tabs would show people just how much content the mod has in the circle rites alone, though barring a cleanroom version of Witchery I do not know how much customization of rituals is a possibility, the modern Enchanted mod has some really awesome visual effects that are fully customizable for circle magic with json files, and the packdev for the Reclamation modpack cooked even harder than the ones in the base mod(Enchanted devs words, not mine lol)

[safe phoenix]

hexcraft been on rise too

[floral nacelle]

should we send this to Dream?

[weary gust]

I made that in ms paint because i was annoyed at Bee Essentia
if an option is too good its boring, so i decided to sketch out an overcomplicated but infinite source of essentia i wouldnt find too broken? plus magic needs aesthetics or its just more Meatballcraft

Essentia drainer being only a handful of EV parts means that you can get effectively infinite nugget 'duping' before even leaving for the moon. That felt too early, especially since I also want something like the magical brewery multi (Magic LCR hooray)

in the long term, I think we need a New essentia. One that is designed to scale, provides resources players need, and. doesnt have Shoes as a fundamental force of the universe
in the meantime: it would be nice if essentia felt... more 'real?'
BeEssentia isnt a gate related to magic really, its related to bees. at the very least, magic should provide the main source of solving magic's problems.

I guess: i dont mind but i dont wanna bug a stranger on the internet to look at my thaumcraft themed doodles? shrug

[shut fractal]

whats the essentia drainer?

[weary gust]

apimancer drainer, requires supernatural and timelordly bees but i think none of those bee lines is significantly gated by the time you get titanium?

i think i had timely bees back in HV last time without even aiming for them

[rocky granite]

Yeah I'd be down for rebalancing the aspect combinations and how they work

[north karma]

Yo, an idea if y'all have a research minigame like thaumcraft: reward perfect researching somehow.
If you take thaumcraft for example, every time you complete a research with as few hexagons as possible, without erasing a hexagon, and without repeat aspects, you increment a counter. This counter can then give some other bonus related to research, like maybe bonus hexagons already filled. The higher the counter (the bigger your streak), the bigger the bonus.
This would:

1. Reward engaging with the minigame in a way that isn't mindless (spamming ordo and instrumentum)
2. Potentially speed up research with the bonuses
3. Abuse the player's dopamine circuitry by giving them a streak counter to chase

Although, I guess having to think about doing the research would actually slow the research. 🫢

[real whale]

Was backreading some of the earlier ideas / design doc and had a thought:
What if this is the solution to the Pollution problem?
If pollution was integrated into GTNH's magic system (Chaos/Death/Destruction), players would have a reason to not just turn it off.
It would also give you a way to "import" the magic system into dimensions that don't naturally support it.

[placid ledge]

Hi, I'm pretty new to this AOI setup. Is there a core/repo/branch to work with, or a main doc?

[floral nacelle]

#1358178489995493518 message

[weary gust]

normal machines make smog, our funny magic metal boxes (1m cubic lathe for example) make The Miasma
everyone loves the processingline for The Miasma

[safe phoenix]

all electricity is magic

it just science

[real whale]

AoI's vary significantly in their scope and stage of progression. Some are actual confirmed proejcts with development hours behind them, some are still concepts in the planning stages, and some are "this thing exists, should we adapt/adopt it for GTNH or not?" proposals. A new core magic mod would be quite possibly the biggest project ever for GTNH, and (as far as I'm aware) there is no code or repo, it's still an idea at this point.

[real whale]

magic is just science we don't fully understand

[placid ledge]

I see. I was just wandering since the doc was overall really vague. The only thing I didn't really get was in what form is aura supposed to exist. I get the X/s design but should it be handled like a more physical resource or more like BM's "blood network" or proximity based in regards to the environment. The direction of the mod would be totally different depending on the choice. I guess since it's supposed to progress to later stages of the pack something internally lightweight would be preferred. Is there some consensus?

[real whale]

That kind of discussion is exactly what most AoI's are for - hammering out ideas, details, weighing balance implications and community interest.

[weary gust]

I def agree lightweight is important
Summary of last few months of rambling in here for the new folks:

To my knowledge we still dont have an idea of aesthetics or gameplay? Thaumcrafts jars of alchemyjuice, botanias spreaders and pools, blood magics soulnet... they all have a foundational aesthetic. Aside from the idea of "beams of rgb light are cool" i dont think we have one here yet, but the magic stuff is currebtly called "aether"

so far our lore for this mod is "magic comes from living things and the local environment", and with a focus on letting players manipulate that environment for desired results. we want this to theoretically be pdim acessible i assume, or else adoption may suffer

Personally, i would like the magic to be based on constant flow and balancing. A magic that is designed to encourage passive automation would feel at home in GTNH

I like the proposed 3 branches of magic. with nature, alchemy/chemistry and blood magic separated we have three ways of interacting with the world using magic that roughly coorespond to the historic/surviving magicmods

we should add a new version of Warp

[real whale]

leylines perhaps?
The idea of magic flowing along invisible rivers is a pretty well known fantasy trope. You can lean into relatable concepts of ebb, flow, current, pressure, basically all the hydrodynamic river stuff.

[placid ledge]

When it comes to the aesthetics I think it would be good to distinguish between mechanical and theme ones. What I mean is that for thaumcraft the juice jars are mechanical and the forbidden knowledge is the theme. Similarly for botania would be mana handling mechanics and fantastical botanics theme, and for Blood magic bloodnet mechanics and sacrifice and suffering for the theme. Normally this wouldn't matter but while designing I think its prudent to keep it somewhat seperate.

So for The Mod aether manipulation would be the mechanical part. From what I gathered since The Mod is supposed to tie together the rest of the magic systems the theme should be mostly neutral and facilitate the mixing of ideas. My first instinct tells me that using thelema as inspiration could work since its basically a moshpit of occult and religous ideas (to my limited knowladge). It's also pretty popular nowdays for worldbuilding (tree of life, ritualism, and the concept of will), and most importantly already exists. Unfortunatly I dont know much about it so I will probably pick up a book before going further with this.

As for the implementation of aether I was thinking of tying a network (like bloodmagic) to the arcane nexus (from the doc). The player wouldnt nesseserly have to interact with it as directly as in blood magic, so there could be some abstraction layer. That would be pretty flexible and lightweight. as for the enviorment part of the equation, there could be a pylon(s) (maybe a multiblock connected to the nexus) that would act as a designator for the area that the player could change to affect the aether generation/gathering. It would also give some depth as the amounts of pylons that could be connected to the nexus would be limited, as well as their tier that could change the active area and effectivness etc. This would allow the player to control which area is taken into consideration, and it would scale easily without causing too much lag.

[placid ledge]

The lay lines idea seems pretty perfect for the nature as a source. From what I recall Mahou tsukai mod for newer versions had that idea, but I dont remember the datials. In our case the only real concern would be to not make the lay lines physical (worldgen) so scouting for base locations is not annoying

[foggy turtle]

Leylines would also potentially incentivise exploring and then setting up outposts to build your early game magic infrastructure on top of one. With later progression points containing ways to 'shift' a leyline or artificially create one on your base.

[weary gust]

taking this to the three magicbranches, heres my understanding with this lens

-Core mechanics:
a) Creating magical pylons, possibly at a far distance from the nexus, and connecting them there. Possibly while the pylons arent chunkloaded, definitely in a lightweight manner
b) Upgrading (and possibly being upgraded by) the nexus.
c) Ley lines idea is interesting, whether natural or synthetic.
d) based on the above: magic processes that involve chaining tuned pylons together?
Not sure what that would look like, other than it would be cool to have tabs of your own machine 'constellations' in the nexus
e) All forms of magic in the mod interact with aether, but nature most directly
z) Magical pollutants and using them for evil gains. Everyone loves the miasma!

-Nature mechanics: uses the throughput of aether. idk about earlygame, but lategame having to keep an entire magic ecosystem (food chains and all) sounds like a tough Waterline-like.
-Nature theme: balance, maybe dependant on natural cycles like rain and day/night?|

-Blood mechanics: mobs or multis that provide mobs' functions? Uses living things to store aether, and kills them to release it
-blood theme: Standard evil goth magic, pursuit of magic for dominance and power. Spooky death expected, maybe spirits and rebirth too? All abstracted down for lag reasons of course

-alchemy mechanics: magical chemlines could be cool. more weirdly specific magic labware. Maybe include some elements of on-worldgen randomization? or would that suck idk. Uses exposure of matter to Aether.
-alchemy theme: Magical proto-chemistry. Since making gold is so easy here we will need another goal.

[foggy turtle]

I don't think scouting for one would be too annoying if there are ways to easily track them down like the biome compass.

[sacred grove]

considering how many ppl like ember/ember rekindled, a soft randomness on the alchemy could be cool

[real whale]

Agree. Shouldn't be hard to balance making them common enough that it doesn't pose a serious difficulty by the point of the game the player wants to interact with them.

[weary gust]

Noita has its hooks in me relatedy
two runs in a row i found midas draught waterfalls... and died badly of course, but

[sacred grove]

maybe it could be present in every 'center' of a biome?

[real whale]

or make them guaranteed in magical themed biomes. We've got a good number of those.

[foggy turtle]

Combine it with a few subtle indicators in the world gen itself when there is a leyline present and players can be making notes of more magical areas while scouting for ore deposits.

[real whale]

you could have magical type biomes have lots of energy but have it be relatively disorganized, so good for starting out. As you progress, you get better tools for manipulating leylines and handling more organized (stronger current) flows. This would mirror the electric tiers of GTNH nicely.

[weary gust]

im boring, id be fine with it just being by minecraft region
pay no attention to my base planbned to be on a region corner also

[foggy turtle]

Yeah, and it also mirrors how you get water at the start of the game as well.

The area you start has a humidity value which maps somewhat to ambient energy. Then you quickly get better ways to extract water from other places.

[weary gust]

Oh yeah, we can coorelate water and life and life and magic, so water and magic isnt out of the question

[real whale]

magical biomes = easily accessible surface magic = high humidity equivalent

[weary gust]

if humid and (x) modifier, biome is (y) percent magic

[foggy turtle]

Could make it a fun challenge if someone wanted to run around exploring at game start looking for that golden starting chunk with lots of magical stuff in it and a high humidity.

[real whale]

but once you get infra it's better to dig a well or dam a river etc.

[foggy turtle]

Yep.

[placid ledge]

So in the begining you get someing like a TC6 vis but rate based and later on, by either pylons or other system, you get your own sources

[weary gust]

excited to build large scale magical interconnected infrastructure with this mod :)

[real whale]

I also really like the idea of having several layers of magic because it shifts the value equation. Do you set up near that magical forest so you can have an easy start, or do you move closer to a deeper but more powerful leyline for the midgame? Tough it out with low ambient power and go straight to engineering your own? choices = fun

[foggy turtle]

I also like the idea of concepts mapping pretty well to other parts of the pack.

[placid ledge]

as long as carefully implemented it would be super cool

[real whale]

yeah, implementation is always going to be the bugbear. Theory crafting is relatively easy.

[foggy turtle]

Because the idea of ambient magic may map to humidity, but maybe the idea of an easily reachable leyline vs a deeper well of magic nicely maps to oil spouts vs oil fields.

[foggy turtle]

I DM D&D, I can theorycraft shit for you all day xD

[weary gust]

Galaxia has an amber planet in the works
having to use a magic spool to draw up ancient tangled leylines from below that sounds epic

[foggy turtle]

Don't ask me to implement anything though, java is not my wheelhouse.

[real whale]

RPG enjoyers for life. high five

[sacred grove]

how does that even work
amber is an organic substance

[placid ledge]

I always try to keep it in mind but since biomes already have humidity it could literally piggyback off it

[weary gust]

step 1: magic tree planet
step 2: died badly
step 3: preserved via whatever scifi technobabble gave us Naquadah

thers a bunch of lore, i forget

[foggy turtle]

Another random idea to throw out there is actually tiering 'magic' or 'aether' (I'm not sure what terminology is going to be used for the actual resource) into different states of matter. Like maybe the player starts off using ambient magic and the leyline stuff gives a high enough rate that you can produce liquid magic to be used in recipes. Then eventually you'll need to develop infrastructure to compress it into a solid?

So it goes Gaseous > Liquid > Solid as progression points for using it in recipes as well.

[real whale]

assigning an ambient surface magic level based on biome + RNG + maybe some bonuses for "magical" set pieces shouldn't be too difficult from my (admittedly limited) understanding.

[foggy turtle]

It strikes me that the oil field generation code could be used as an easy reference for that.

[placid ledge]

if it would be handeleb physically and not as a network some compressed version would be a must for later on for sure

[weary gust]

thaumcraft aspects get more high concept the more magically dense they are
maybe only simple aether exists in nature, and we have to mix weirder stuff ourselves?
aether always trends back towards less complex over time??

[real whale]

I like that, it works well with the concepts GTNH already builds on.
also follows the fantasy leyline trope well, so it's going to have some built-in verisimilitude for players.

[foggy turtle]

I like this as well yeah, my thought was that all compression from gaseous is man made with the amount of aether required being orders of magnitude apart. Like maybe going from gaseous to liquid requires 100 units of gaseous aether and the only reasonable way to supply that is by tapping a leyline.

[weary gust]

I like slowly unlocking more stable ways to store it as an unsatable, ephermeral resource
before we build of spacetime we build of thaumic monopoles

[foggy turtle]

Then going from liquid to solid requires 100 units of liquid and the only reasonable way to get that is to converge multiple leylines together.

Or artificially tap a font into the core of the overworld itself.

[weary gust]

like GT amps, it scales as it compresse

[real whale]

also works well with the geological constant that the deeper something is, the more pressure it's under and the denser it gets.

[placid ledge]

yeah and since the dec implies its suppesed to have different forms because of alchemy it would make sense

[weary gust]

the concept of "anima mundi" as geological phenomenon...

i guess ff7 did it first

[sacred grove]

kinda reminds me of cultivation lol

[foggy turtle]

I was genuinely thinking of this.

And how currency in Xuanhuan novels often starts with mortal money, then becomes a liquid which is useful for cultivation then some crystallised version.

[sacred grove]

tbf, cultivation as a whole is basically of the same vein
abosrb the energy of nature, slowly purifying and condensing it until you can form a solid core that will begind doing so automatically, etc.

and the whole time it's perfused with elements of nature that you want to weed out until only the one you directly use is left

[foggy turtle]

Yeah, I think looking at how cultivation works in actual Xianxia could be an interesting reference point.
https://www.reddit.com/r/ProgressionFantasy/comments/1rzpm3n/part_1_of_3_i_grew_up_in_china_on_wuxia_novels/ This is an interesting series of reddit posts about the genre.

[sacred grove]

also has large arrays that condense the energy of the world into its confines

[placid ledge]

I dont know how viable it is from code side but altering the laylines could for example change how often it rain for example etc. so that would tie into the env changes

[sacred grove]

rain isn't regional unfortunately

[placid ledge]

ah yes

[real whale]

ooh, having the leylines affect your biome would be awesome. Another way to manipulate climate for bees and crops? yes please.

[sacred grove]

maybe if you could open a pocket dimension from tapping the leyline?

[weary gust]

theres basis for it in this games' magic already. look at last stand enchant
draw all the energy from so much stuff lol

[placid ledge]

making mystcraft could be time consuming. maybe like a dungeon thaumcraft style but more chaotic in nature or smthing

[sacred grove]

iw as thinking planar dim from thaumic horizons

[weary gust]

Legally Not Vaulthunters ™

[foggy turtle]

I think we could easily pull lots of inspiration from things like cultivation or even broader magic tropes but it depends on the ultimate scope of this addon. Is the end goal to eventually replace all the other magic mods with it or just remain providing the spine that they are attached to?

Because shifting or tapping leylines with large formations that you build a base on top of sounds really cool to me and once you get into the idea of formations I can see it over time becoming something that conceptually replaces Blood Magic really quickly.

[formal geyser]

somethin like that

[placid ledge]

From what I understand its supposed to tie the magic mods together like GT does for tech, and also be a backbone for latter half of the pack when TC, blood magic and botania stop being as relevant

[formal geyser]

rule of cool my friend

[weary gust]

Big picture/far future: The devs want all the All Rights Reserved mods out if possible so they can tinker freely
that makes witchery and thaumcraft precarious, idk what blood magic is
depends on how the implementations here go, and would probably need to be some sort of gradual shifting if/when the old mods become 'old mods'. like with ic2

for now: its the part of magic Post IV and onward

[real whale]

Backbone first, possible full replacement is a nice future wish but such a massive project you can't start there.

[weary gust]

mostly: fill in the second half of magic for the game

[formal geyser]

galaxia very much runs on rule of cool bc physics are in the way of being fucking awesome

[foggy turtle]

Sure, but knowing it could allows for parts of the design space to more easily step on the toes of the other mods currently in the pack.

[placid ledge]

I was looking into how thaumcraft handles aspects for items and I wanted to end it all

[real whale]

That's what anyone who looks into TC says. Truly written by eldritch.

[foggy turtle]

I downloaded a pack of game icons for some D&D stuff the other week and found all the thaumcraft aspect icons 🙂

Turns out they were just taken from somewhere.

[real whale]

Yeah, TC is... let's say not on solid grounds in terms of copyright.

[weary gust]

Many such cases in thaum, we couldnt reuse their assests if we wanted lol