[world generation compatibility] Idea for classifying world generation pieces

[keybounce]

Note: I am not a modder. I am a user. I am trying to understand the how/why of multiple world generation mods working together.

 

So I've been playing around with a bunch of mods. Things like NetherOres, Twilight Forest, and Mystcraft. I've been hearing about things such as RedPower (marble!), Simple Ores, and other such things.

 

And ... well, there's something called "Dense Ores" in mystcraft. Simply put, it tries to generate all known ores (everything registered with forge) in higher quantities, at higher than normal Y's.

 

And there's things like better ore distribution/custom ore distribution, both of which want to change how ores are laid out, to give more meaningful clusters instead of completely random vanilla layouts.

 

Not to mention lots of mods that add custom critters for specific dimensions.

 

So what's the issue that I see?

 

Both SimpleOres and NetherOres add ores that normally only generate in the nether.

But as far as I can tell, there's no hook in forge to say "This is a nether ore", or "This is a normal/overworld ore", or "This is a custom new-dimension material, only generate in my custom dimensions".

There are no hooks to permit altering how they are generated -- Better Ore Generation basically has a config file where you spell it out in detail. Which works well enough. But then there's no way for a Dense Ore age in Mystcraft to ramp the generation up higher than normal without having to take over the generation completely, ruining the motherlode/vein style distribution.

 

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What do I see as potential resolutions? Again, I am a user that wants to work with mods that alter world/dimension generation.

 

1. Indicate if a given world piece -- animal, mineral, plants, biome, etc -- is nether only, hell only (note that those are not the same since Mystcraft lets you have a hell biome in a non-nether age), or correspondingly end/sky only, or "Normal dimensions/overworld compatible", or "custom dimensions only".

 

2. A way to run ore generations, with the output being a list of locations where the ores should go, rather than being actually modified in the ground; this would permit mods to alter the generation results of other mods.

2b -- ideally a way to specify a seed other than the normal world seed, for secondary/multiple generations.

 

3. Equally, now that I think about it, that same sort of behavior -- the output of the generation is a list of locations and changes, rather than changing the blocks in the ground -- for surface decorations, or entities spawned at chunk generation.

 

Note that case #2 -- ore generations being a list rather than ground modifications -- would permit mods such as Mystcraft, which generates very large amounts of stone exposed to air in the dark (floating sky islands) to work well with mods such as Redpower -- which assumes that stone exposed to air in the dark must be a cave and not in very large amounts

[OvermindDL1]

Might want to speak to xcompwiz about that as he is making very useful and sweeping additions about things in this area.