#paradise-lost Friday 13 May 2022

we settled on Quartz which is luckily a very versatile decorative block palette

I think shroomlights would look underwhelming/not as grand as is fitting to the dimension theme

However, changing the portal would be an interesting idea for multiple reasons

A lot of biomes would bot be safe for a player to just pop into

Eg: the snow biomes with their freezing mechanics

all portals lead to the same spawn island when players enter the Aether and it's always the basic Highlands biome

it was a cool idea but turns out it kinda just sucks lmao

it means most players don't even realise there are other biomes 😂 😂 and it makes it hard to get people to diversify their playthroughs

so I would definitely say don't use our solution lmao

I think the solution really is to have some low entry point but high maintenance mechanic that can mitigate harsh elements early on

high maintenance enough to not allow the player to settle in an area but low entry enough to not immediately kill the player

so they have tools to move AWAY from hostile areas if they spawn in or come across them

Alright, now I can talk about this

Am on computer

So the two main thigns to consider

First and foremost is the afforementioned thing of safe biomes

Or to be more accurate to how we design the world, safe regions

The snow region has already been mentioned as to why the player would not want to spawn there, being thrown in there without any insulating equipment would end in a swift death

But the big issue here is that the dangers that each region poses are both varied and not always so clear

Just going over the regions relevant to progression (+ the snow region since oh well we have mentioend it already)

The highlands are... actually pretty safe since they are your standard babbeh biomes.

The Snow Region doesn't just cause passive frostbite build up, but also has a few nasty enemies that the player could spawn near + a field boss. The Eternal Peaks don't have any overarching environmental dangers, but depending on what exact biome you spawn on you either have to deal with venom swamps that shut down your health regen if you dip a toe, or hard to traverse mountains (or both) - also vilebloods but those are only a danger if the player decides to attack them. Hearthgrove is an area that I have not yet formally presented to the team so for a tldr: blazing pink forest sprinkled with giant ice crystals. This place has a combination of environmental frostbite, thermal vents, and vicious lategame enemies + another field boss. Golden Steps / whatever the final main region will be called is... actually fairly safe as long as you don't piss off the valkyries... which given how people play mc it is a 50/50 chance on whether they get their skulls crushed by buff divine tomboys.(edited)

One solution I've thought about is to mark certain biomes as "safe" or not, similar to how mc marks biomes for spawn safety. Then, instead of portals generating based on translated coordinates, they wire you to the nearest safe biome so you don't disintegrate in an endgame area the moment you take your first step.

Along with that, there could be a way to make "unsafe" portals that do hook up directly similar to nether portals, for things like fast travel

Regardless, I do think that makes the issue clear

Oh also, another thing but imho if we change the portal material we should unhook it from the nether and make it so you can access the dimension using only overworld stuff.

It would mean people could start venturing into the dimension earlier which would make progression smoother. + people are more likely to get hooked into stuff they get dragged into early

@cr24 @Jack Papel @CDAGaming pinging you on this one

We can do this, wouldn’t be too bad. We could already do this with CPA with PortalFrameTesters. We can override that

This could be a bit odd though if say player enters the aether at coords A, arrives to aether at coords B, travels a bit then builds new portal and arrives back at coords C. Coords A and C could potentially be thousands and thousands of blocks apart

Regardless I can add the ability in CPA to specify the starting area to begin picking a location to place the portal. That should be enough, you would then just search for the biome and input those coords. CPA would then just continue as normal attempting to find a valid location to place the portal

Or we could go one step further and just allow completely custom portal destination placing