Twilight at Noon

Twilight at Noon is a nuclear winter and apocalypse survival mod for Minecraft 1.21.1 (Fabric). An air-raid siren sounds, a warhead streaks across the sky, the horizon turns white, and a mushroom cloud climbs over the land. Then radioactive fallout drifts down, the sun goes dull behind a veil of soot, snow buries the whole world and blizzards roll in. Survive it with a Geiger counter, a hazmat suit and iodine tablets, and watch out for the ash walkers.

The sky, snow, blizzards, sounds and instruments work on the client alone, so they run on any server. The items, the mobs and the radiation need the mod on the server too (in singleplayer that is automatic). Good for survival and horror playthroughs, cinematic screenshots and videos, and modpacks (MIT licence).

What you get

• The strike. A siren, a streaking warhead, a bright flash (with the real double flash if you turn Reduced Flashing off), a growing fireball, a mushroom cloud with a stem and a vortex ring, a vapour dome, and a wall of dust that crosses the land and reaches you after the real delay between seeing it and feeling it. The cloud is drawn at its true size and distance, so a strike far beyond your render distance still fills the sky.
• Radioactive fallout and radiation sickness. Ash, soot and embers drift down on the wind, black rain falls for the first hours, and the dose rate follows the real "7-10 rule" of decay. Shelter matters: a roof, a basement or a cave all lower what reaches you. Absorb too much and you get radiation sickness: hunger, weakness, slowness and finally damage.
• Geiger Counter and Thermometer. Carry them in the hotbar and the dosimeter and the thermometer appear on the screen, with Geiger clicks that follow the dose rate. Right-click for an exact reading of the dose rate, your absorbed dose and the air temperature with wind chill.
• Hazmat suit. Four yellow pieces (hood, suit, trousers, boots). A full suit stops about nine tenths of the dose.
• Iodine Tablets and Canned Beans. Iodine halves the dose for ten minutes. Canned beans keep you fed in the wasteland.
• Ash Walkers. Grey survivors of the fallout with burning eyes. They do not burn in daylight, every hit carries radiation sickness, and they wander in while the fallout is heavy or the winter is deep. They drop canned beans, iodine tablets and, rarely, a Geiger counter.
• Scavengers. Wandering traders in gas masks. They sell the gear above for emeralds, buy rotten flesh and snowballs, and run from ash walkers.
• Nuclear winter. A soot veil smothers the sun, daylight dims (torches do not), the sky turns the colour of old smoke, fog closes in, and grass, leaves and water fade to ash grey and ice blue as the winter deepens. The land turns white: as it gets colder every ground, rooftop and treetop is draped in snow, patchy at first and complete in deep winter.
• A cold world that works on its own. Even with no scenario running, vanilla snowfall becomes a blizzard of wind-driven flakes and streaks. Your breath fogs, frost creeps across the screen, a thermometer shows the wind chill.
• Real sound design. More than two dozen sounds made for this mod: wind, howling gusts and a roaring blizzard, falling ash, firestorm crackle, sirens, a whistling warhead, blasts at three distances, a rumble that rolls for half a minute, ice creaking, metal groaning, a heartbeat when you are sick.
• Replayable scenarios. Five presets, each rolled from a seed code like 7K3M-Q9XD that you can share: Distant Strike, Strategic Strike, Full Exchange, Already Winter and Endless Winter. Three time scales: Cinematic (about an hour), Compressed (a long survival world) and Realistic (follows the climate studies).

Recipes

• Geiger Counter: a copper ingot on top, a glass pane between two iron ingots, redstone between two iron ingots.
• Thermometer: glass pane, redstone and iron ingot in a column.
• Iodine Tablets: sugar, kelp and bone meal, makes four.
• Canned Beans: baked potato, carrot and iron nugget, makes two.
• Hazmat suit: yellow wool, with a glass pane in the hood and iron ingots in the suit, trousers and boots.

How to start

Press K (rebindable) or use the Mod Menu settings button to open the Scenario Control screen, pick a preset and press Start. In singleplayer that starts the scenario for your world. Or type a command:

• /twilight start strategic starts a scenario with the siren and the strike.
• /twilight jump already_winter skips straight to the aftermath.
• /twilight detonate 300 30 sets off a 300 kt weapon 30 km away.
• /twilight skip 5 moves the clock five days ahead, /twilight stop clears the sky.

For servers

Put the mod on the server and operators control the scenario for every player with /nuclear start <preset> [seed], /nuclear jump, /nuclear detonate <kt> <km> [bearing], /nuclear skip <days>, /nuclear stop, /nuclear status, /nuclear dose [player] and /nuclear cure [player]. Two game rules tune it: twilightRadiationDamage (turn it off and the fallout is only a picture and a reading) and twilightRadiationSpeed (how many seconds of dose one second in the fallout counts for, 30 by default so that sickness comes in minutes, not hours). Without the mod on the server the /twilight commands still work, but only for you.

Settings

A full settings hub in Mod Menu: general, visuals, audio, instruments, accessibility and performance. Every effect has its own switch and slider, with a tooltip. You can turn off the sky changes only, the fog only, the snow cover only, and so on. Instruments can be always shown, or only while you carry the item.

Please read before you download

• Flashing light. The strike contains a bright flash. Reduced Flashing is on by default: it limits the flash to a soft white wash, removes the double flash and slows its rise. Camera shake can be turned off too. If you are sensitive to flashing, keep it on or turn the strike effects off.
• It can hurt. When a scenario runs on the server, standing in the fallout makes you sick and ash walkers hit hard. Shelter, a hazmat suit and iodine are the answer, and the twilightRadiationDamage game rule switches the damage off. Everything else (sky, snow, sound, instruments) is only what you see and hear. The snow is a picture drawn on top of the blocks: you can walk and build as usual, and your feet simply look a little sunk into it.
• Shaders. The snow cover, ash, blizzard, sounds and instruments work with a shader pack, but the mushroom cloud and fireball are drawn in the sky pass, which shader packs replace, so they look washed out. For the strike scenes play without shaders. Shader Safe Mode turns the sky, fog, light, strike and snow-cover changes off if a pack already handles them; particles, sound and instruments keep working.
• Dead colours re-mesh the chunks a few times as the winter deepens, which can cause a brief hitch on slow machines. You can turn that off.

Requirements

• Minecraft 1.21.1 with Fabric Loader 0.16.5 or newer and Java 21
• Fabric API (required)
• Mod Menu (optional, adds the settings button)

Questions

Do I need it on the server? For the sky, snow, blizzards, sounds and instruments, no: they work on any server. For the items, the mobs and the radiation, yes. In singleplayer everything works.

Does it work on a vanilla server? The atmosphere does, with /twilight commands that only you see. The items and mobs do not exist there. This has not been tested on a vanilla server yet.

Can it kill me? Only when a scenario runs on the server and you stand in the fallout without protection for long, or an ash walker catches you. Turn the twilightRadiationDamage game rule off for a harmless version.

Does it work with Sodium and shaders? Yes with Sodium. With a shader pack the snow, ash and blizzard look great, but the mushroom cloud looks washed out, so play the strike scenes without shaders.

Can I put it in a modpack? Yes, it is MIT licensed.

Compatibility

• Fabric API: Required
• Mod Menu: Optional, adds the settings button
• Sodium: Tested with Sodium 0.8.13: sky, fog, strike, particles and snow cover all render the same as without it
• Iris and shader packs: Tested with Iris 1.8.14-beta.1 and the BSL 10.1.8 shader pack: the game runs and the snow cover, ash and blizzard look good in the pack, but the cloud and fireball look washed out. When Iris is installed, Shader Safe Mode is switched on the first time the mod runs
• Other renderers: Not tested. The mod draws through standard hooks
• Mods that replace weather particles: Switch one of the two off to avoid double snowfall

Licence

Released under the MIT licence.