Echoes in Ink: The Living Printshop

Echoes-in-Ink---The-Living-Printshop

mods JAM - Echos of the past

Semantic investigation roles and world saved data guarantee the complete starter inventory across chunk unloads and server restarts. Starter mode stays active in every visited printshop until a complete press actually pulls its handle, so leaving an earlier ruin cannot permanently remove required parts. After that real press run, newly investigated printshops switch to their stable specialist profiles.

Before that first press operation, opening a chest inside a confirmed printshop adds one deterministic physical kit for that workshop: Workshop Broom, Printer's Brush, Magnifying Lens, Printer's Archive, Press Screw, Press Handle, Press Platen, and Press Carriage. This does not replace the variant's specialist loot. Reopen an already-looted printshop chest in an existing world to receive the kit; no new world is required. If the chest is full, overflow goes to the opening player instead of disappearing.

Printshops generated before 1.1 are upgraded when an unbound investigation node is next cleaned. Their old furniture is assigned deterministic semantic roles; rewards belonging to already searched mandatory roles are compensated through that migration interaction. If every old node was already fully searched, use the Printer's Brush on any investigated printshop furniture once more to trigger the same one-time recovery bundle.

The starter printshop guarantees:

• Workshop Broom, Printer's Brush, Magnifying Lens, and Printer's Archive
• Press Screw
• Press Handle
• Press Platen
• Press Carriage
• one basic Wooden Printing Matrix
• one Damaged Archive Page
• paper and enough basic ink for the first printing attempts
• instructions and a clue leading to another location

The screw, platen, carriage, and handle are bound respectively to the main press frame, second machine remains, cellar cache, and marked floor cache. Mandatory rewards do not use weighted rolls and cannot be rerolled by breaking a node.

Later printshops use stable specialist reward profiles rather than a second mandatory press assembly.

Their primary rewards include:

• matrix fragments and specialist matrices
• composed metal type formes
• additional ink and paper
• damaged documents and archive clues
• decorative prints and posters
• workshop-specific stories and echo events

Generic archive shelves and loot chests no longer contain Restored Chronicle Pages. That page must be printed from a Damaged Archive Page.

Ordinary ink_stained_floorboards are decorative. Each generated workshop now contains only the configured three-to-five suspicious targets: uncommon loose boards and at most one high-value hidden floor compartment. The Magnifying Lens distinguishes them with localized feedback, particles, and a quiet chime.

Generated printshops select and persist one of four functional types, each with two stable layout subvariants:

• Rural Woodcut Workshop — timber annex, carving props, woodblock fragments
• Town Type Foundry — brick/stone foundry, cabinet rows, metal type and Ink Pads
• Scholarly Archive Printer — catalog wing, correction desk, documents and maps
• Burned Clandestine Printshop — charred shell, blocked front, crawlspace and secret notices

Their footprints, entrance positions, roof collapse, cellar/crawlspace, machine remains, props, deterministic investigation rewards, and optional chest tables differ. Every variant also contains several cobwebs, laid papers/prints on work surfaces, and wall posters. enablePrintshopVariants=false preserves the rural layout selection for compatibility.

Abandoned printshops generate in two ways. Beside vanilla villages they share the village chunk grid and sit on the outskirts rather than on the well; every village gets one workshop, and larger plains, meadow, savanna, and taiga villages also get a second shop on the opposite side. A second, independent grid still scatters extra ruins through forests, swamps, and other workshop biomes. /echoesinink locate_printshop finds the nearest of either kind.

Matrix, ink, and archive progression

Later investigation can reconstruct two reusable specialist forms through data-pack crafting recipes:

• Village Chronicle Matrix = Upper Matrix Fragment + Lower Matrix Fragment + Missing Letter Insert
• Forbidden Notice Metal Forme = Lead Type Set + Iron Chase + Missing Headline Type + Printer's Notes

The Village matrix prints a Village Chronicle; the forbidden metal forme prints a prohibited notice. Both outputs are readable, unlock their own archive entry, and provide workshop-specific story leads.

Each Ink Ball is one impression. The starter station guarantees five by default, later ink stations provide four to seven, and four new Ink Balls can be crafted from charcoal plus a clay ball. Required story progression therefore has a renewable recovery path if the starter supply is used experimentally.

The Printer's Archive now shows the four-part press checklist and tracks hashed workshop IDs, variants, recovered matrices/fragments, available recipes, printed works, and unresolved clues. Its Fabric attachment remains server-persisted and is selectively synchronized only to the owning player.

The full Codex implementation specification is available in docs/CODEX_GAMEPLAY_REBALANCE_PROMPT.md.

Printing press

The historical screw press is assembled from four recovered components:

• screw
• handle
• platen
• carriage

The press uses physical world interaction instead of a furnace-style production interface.

Typical sequence:

1. Install the required press components.
2. Load a matrix or metal type forme.
3. Apply ink.
4. Insert paper or a damaged archive page.
5. Push the carriage into the press.
6. pull and reset the handle.
7. Pull the carriage out and collect the print.

Exploration and investigation

Printshops contain investigatable machine remains, archive shelves, type cabinets, printing tables, plaques, debris, and hidden storage. Cleaning Printing Debris with the Printer's Brush takes the pile apart: scraps come free on the first stroke, then the remainder becomes paper, ink, type, and spare press parts and the block is removed.

Every generated printshop contains three almost-full chests. Beside the variant's specialist loot, the shared supply kit always includes clean paper, blank archive pages, ink balls and pads, metal type, and spare press components.

Workshop walls now carry several different hanging posters (warning, woodcut, chronicle, forbidden notice, map, and type specimen). Extra dusty and crafting tables sit beside the investigation bench, each with laid paper, notes, or a finished print.

The Faded Workshop Plaque is not filler decoration. Inspect it with the Magnifying Lens, then hold use with the Printer's Brush twice to clean both stages. During starter mode it contains the Printer's Instruction Sheet and Workshop Map Fragment; later it provides a stable historical clue. The optional Workshop Broom removes decorative cobwebs and sweeps stained decorative floorboards through their visual cleanup stages; it does not replace the Printer's Brush during investigations or create floor loot.

The Magnifying Lens can also inspect laid pages, finished prints, matrices, type formes, press parts, and hanging posters. It identifies the exact displayed item, and readable finished prints show their complete text in chat.

Every custom item and block item has two tooltip lines: a description and an explicit gameplay purpose identifying required components, crafting parts, investigation locations, optional tools, finished prints, or decoration.

Investigation state and generated loot are server-authoritative and persist across chunk unloads and restarts. Breaking and replacing investigated blocks does not reroll their contents.

Mandatory progression rewards are separate from optional weighted loot, so random duplicates cannot block access to the press.

Development

export JAVA_HOME=$(/usr/libexec/java_home -v 25)

./gradlew build
./gradlew runClient
./gradlew runServer
./gradlew runDatagen

Development commands

Configuration

The human-readable configuration file is:

config/echoes_in_ink.json

It contains investigation timing, printing duration, echo accessibility, generation flags, and debug settings.

Progression settings currently connected to gameplay include starterPrintshopGuaranteesFullPress, starterInkImpressions, and allowSparePressPartsInLaterRuins, plus the clamped suspiciousFloorboardsPerWorkshop target and enablePrintshopVariants.

Village printshops use the vanilla village salt with spacing 34 and separation 8. Wilderness printshops use a separate set (salt 20260728, spacing 32, separation 12). The numeric spacing fields in the config document the village values but do not rewrite the world-generation JSON.

Multiplayer

The mod uses a server-authoritative design. Dedicated servers must not load client-only rendering classes. Clients handle rendering, animation interpolation, particles, subtitles, and visual presentation only.

Starter mode and physical chest-kit claims are world-shared and remain active until the first real handle pull. This lets a multiplayer group recover from an abandoned or legacy ruin; each investigation node and each workshop chest kit still pays only once and cannot be rerolled. After that handle pull, the Press Screw, Handle, Platen, and Carriage replacement recipes are revealed in the player's recipe book. Later ruins may additionally contain rare spare parts when allowSparePressPartsInLaterRuins is enabled.