geocraft header

Geocraft is a mod about geology, from ores to new kinds of stone. The main goal of Geocraft is to achieve more realistic ore gen in Minecraft, as well as adding new types of stone and cosmetic blocks based on them. With Geocraft, your ores will no longer generate in clumps, rather, different ores spawn in different, configurable "mines," from layers of coal to spidery metal veins, with support for many other mods that add ores and extensive configuration.

The pic above shows all three forms of stone so far. Marble is on top, basalt in the middle and limestone on the bottom.

Geocraft: AKA Better Ore Distribution 3!

As stated above, Geocraft changes the way that Minecraft generates it's ores, allowing for actual mines instead of randomly distributed chunks. I took a lot of the ideas of the Better Ore Distribution mod by Marcopolo1613 and put my own spin on in for Geocraft. Instead of ores being generated in every single chunk, Geocraft will give each type of ore a chance to generate a "mine". Each mine will then generate the veins that you see in normal minecraft. This means that ore will be concentrated in certain locations rather than spread out evenly like in Vanilla. Right now the defaults are fairly light, but by going into the configs you can make ores much rarer and make the mines much larger. The mines aren't just random clumps either, they follow structures, from spidery veins to layers, adding a new depth of complexity to mining. Also, by the defaults, you can find "trace mines" on the surface, these can be helpful in the early game.

Editing Ore Generation

Level 1

Level 1 configs affect ALL ores, they are.

rarityModifier - Changes the rarities of ALL ores. It is a multiplier. Larger numbers mean further apart , smaller means closer together. This doesn't change the amount of ores in a mine, it changes the rarities of the mines themselves, so a larger rarityModifier with an appropriately larger volumeModifier would have the same "rarity," but be more spread out in larger chunks.
volumeModifier - Changes the number of veins in each mine for ALL ores. It is a multiplier. Larger numbers mean more ore in a mine, smaller means less.
genTrace - Setting this to false will disable the creation of all trace mines.

Level 2

For each ore there is a config option for:

mineRarity - Probability of ores being generated in a chunk, larger number mean less likely, as it is 1 / mineRarity. 10 means that there is a 1/10 chance of a mine being created in each chunk. 50 is a 1/50 chance and 1 means it will make a mine in every chunk.
- Changing this for the stone/soil mines and trace mines will have no effect. They always generate in every chunk.
mineSize - Roughly, it's the number of veins to create, although that's not always true. What is certain is that larger numbers mean more ore in a mine and smaller means less. Setting anything to zero disables it.

How does it work?

Geocraft uses special code, called a hook, to prevent Minecraft from making any ores the normal way. Instead, Geocraft will collect data about these ores and save them for later, when it will use the data it collected to create new rarity and density values. By default, Geocraft will make mines ten times more rare, but have ten times more ore.

Once Geocraft has encountered a new ore for the first time, it will then generate it in it's own way. Geocraft does not create it's ores at the same time as the rest of the world. Big mines would take too long and cause too much lag, so instead Geocraft will create the mines more slowly over time. This does mean that if you travel faster than you computer can handle, you can outpace Geocraft and reach a part where it hasn't generated yet. This is especially true for new worlds or dimensions. If you do come across an area with absolutely no ores, stone or soils, don't panic. Just wait a minute or so for Geocraft to catch up, and be grateful that it didn't cause a lag-spike-of-death trying to make all that at once. When Geocraft reaches your area, it will generate all the ores in one chunk almost instantly; if you blink, you'll miss it.

Geocraft has a config option called generationRate. By default, it is set to 1. Setting this number larger will cause Geocraft to generate terrain faster. This will cause more lag, but for less time. Setting it smaller will cause less lag, but over a longer time. If the lag cause by Geocraft bothers you, try adjusting this value accordingly.

Geocraft should work in all dimensions, including mod added ones and Mystcraft ages. Custom Geocraft-added nether ores have not been added yet, however, they will probably be included in an upcoming update.

Geocraft uses the Ore Dictionary to allow any ores that can generate in stone to also generate in any other blocks registered as stone.

Geocraft also uses the Ore Dictionary on the ores it generates, and will only allow one type of each ore generate. This means that if you have IC2, Forestry, Thermal Expansion, and any other mod that adds copper and tin ore, Geocraft will only allow ONE type of copper and one type of tin to spawn. You don't have to manually turn them off.

Geocraft also has default values for all vanilla ores, as well as Copper, Tin, Silver and Lead. Geocraft adds it's own special ores for these metals, for more information look in the Ores section and will spawn if complex ores are enabled, as by default.

Not all mods use the vanilla method of ore generation. As such, these mods may not be caught by Geocraft and will not be affected, generating as they normally would. If there is a mod which does this that you feel SHOULD be caught by Geocraft, you can either contact that mod author and ask them to implement my API, or leave a ticket here and someone will consider making special code to handle it.

Geocraft is currently known to work well with the following mods.

IC2
Forestry
Thermal Expansion
Thaumcraft (only for shards, amber and quick silver aren't affected)
Metallurgy
Gems+
Mystcraft
Twillight Forest
Factorization
Applied Energistics
Ender IO
Tinker's Construct

Geocraft will also work with most other mods, including those that are not on this list, this list is just for mods that have been confirmed to work well with Geocraft.

Stone

There are three types of stone that Geocraft generates.

Marble
Basalt
Limestone

They form in veins just like dirt and gravel.

What can I do with them?

At the moment, they are used only in decoration, and they are also in the Ore dictionary so they can be used interchangeably with cobblestone and smooth stone.

How do I get all the different variants of them?

Each kind is the same, so we'll use marble as an example.

Marble is found in world.
When mined, Marble will drop Marble Cobble.
Marble Cobble can be smelted back into Marble.
Four Marble in a box craft Marble Bricks.
When Marble Bricks are mined they will drop Cracked Marble Bricks.
Cracked Marble Bricks can be smelted back into Marble.
Four Marble Bricks in a + pattern will create Carved Marble Bricks. (See picture below)
Carved Marble Bricks can be smelted back into Marble.
Nine Marble craft nine Marble Pavingstones.
Marble Pavingstones can be smelted back into Marble.

In other words, each kind can be transformed to any other kind at no loss. (not counting fuel and pick durability)
carved bricks picture
pavingstones picture

Ores

Geocraft adds custom ores to the game for Iron, Coal, Gold, Diamond, Copper, Tin, Silver and Lead. Custom ores are planned for Redstone and Lapis Lazuli. It also adds a new ore: Terra Quartz. Gold ore is found in quartz deposits, a non-quartz based sold ore is planned. Terra Quartz can be crafted into Nether Quartz using Soul Sand (see NEI, picture coming soon.)

The ores are (mostly) named after their real life counterparts. For example, cassiterite is tin, whilst hematite is iron. Most of these ores can be refined normally, some have less yield than their vanilla counterparts, some more.

In Gold veins, five times more quartz than gold will spawn, this is currently not configurable, this may be changed. Different ores will spawn in different structures, this can be configured. The structures currently implemented into Geocraft are:

MineCoal: the mine for coal. Creates layers of coal in a way that tries to represent how coal ore deposits are found in real life. If complex ores are enabled, it will also generate dense coal and make the structure more realistic and complicated
MineGold: the mine for gold, creates long tendrils. Can be modified by enabling complex ores
MineTrace: trace mines
MineCylinderComplex: this mine creates spider like veins for ores if spider veins are enabled, the name refers to how they are generated. Good for metals. It can also generate small ore spheres.
MineDiamond: is active if complex ores are enabled. Will create tall spires of kimberlite, some of it diamond bearing
MineVanilla: vanilla, old-school ore clump generation.

Lots of ore properties can be changed in the config, and complex ores can be enabled and disabled. This helps Geocraft be easier to balance as ore rarity, the difficulty of mining and how ores spawn can all be modified.

Installation

Install RedGear Core ¹
Download Geocraft
Place the .jar into the mods folder

¹ Must be version 2.0.0 or higher

You can check out our source code and run highly experimental code (you'll have to compile it) using our Github:

https://github.com/RedGear/Geocraft