Minecraft Modpack Madness

As some of you may be aware, especially if you're following me on Twitter, I am currently working on a modpack that I will, more-than-likely, be distributing to the public.

What kind of modpack? Well, it definitely won't be some mish-mash of mods just haphazardly thrown together. When I first thought about making my own modpack, I was playing a lot of UHS3, Agrarian Skies, Magic Farm 2, and Blood'n'Bones and I loved seeing what the pack authors did to REALLY lay down the challenge on the player via config tweaking or the MineTweaker/ModTweaker mods.

I held off on actually working on it as I was working on learning how to use Mine/ModTweaker and their syntax, but now that I have a decent handle on it, I think I could really do some damage.

As for the "focus" of the pack, what I am envisioning is a pack that is a marriage of sorts between the packs that I mentioned above and a few other packs that I have played recently. It's going to be really difficult, but not impossible. Good resource management (and some luck) will be a huge help.

At current moment I have a few goals for this pack, and I will be developing more as I go on:

• Create an arrangement of mods that provides a challenge while remaining lightweight and relatively lag-less; I'm aiming for less than or equal to 100 mods, although I will allow a variance of 10 mods
• Find ways to integrate the mods together into a well-made mesh with a tough, staggered, but satisfying progression (UHS3 style)

Yeah, those are lofty goals. I know. But, I believe that I'll be able to pull this off.

I'm still thinking about the mods I will use, but I have an idea of the "core" of the pack. I will eventually figure out the full list and post it somewhere.

Now, onto something I'm still iffy on. Showing the pack's progress. If you follow me on Twitter, you'll know I took a break from making videos for YouTube due to stress already wearing down on me (I suffer from anxiety, and the fact that I kind of need better equipment to do videos "properly" was getting to me). However, I'm thinking that I will do a series on YouTube very similar to mDiyo's videos as he was building his Magic Maiden modpack. Unfortunately, on September 2nd, I will be returning to school which will force me to record said videos over the weekends, assuming that I'm not absorbed in studying, I will try to upload them over the weekend too, but I can guarantee that I will slip up.

What will this mean for my other videos? I honestly don't know. If I find the time, I will continue the series.

In any case, that's pretty much it from me, so take care everyone. I'm out! Take care.

Autism Awareness

Under normal circumstances, I try not to reveal too much of my own life on the internet, but today's, for lack of a better word, special. It's World Autism Awareness Day (#AutismAwareness & #WAAD on Twitter) and, for reasons described below, I decided to type up this post. I'll try to keep it short, but no guarantees.

While I was browsing Twitter on the bus to college this morning, I came across a link that Cloudhunter had tweeted that led to his own blog and a post titled "Autism and me" (Link: http://cloudhunter.co.uk/post/70732371271/autism-and-me). It gave me the inspiration and final push to write this as I have been trying to formulate something in my head for the past while now. As I type this, I have his blog post open in another tab as there's a few points that I want to echo.

In case you haven't figured it out, I have autism, but more specifically, I have Asperger Syndrome (I'll abbreviate it as AS). AS is a form of autism that give the "afflicted" (I loathe negative labels) a form of "hyper-intelligence" in a certain field. If you need a frame of reference, think of the character Sheldon Cooper from the TV show "The Big Bang Theory," although, personally, I'm nowhere near as neurotic. On the other hand though, AS can severely diminish a person's ability to perform at a social level. I am riddled with social anxieties as I am not aware of the proper "social protocols," this tends to mess with me to the point where I am a recluse. Not fun.

I was diagnosed with not only AS, but also ADHD about two years ago. I won't go into too much detail on ADHD, but it was a part of the reason why I remained undiagnosed for 18 years of my life.

Like anything in life, AS, for me, comes as a double-edged knife (my favourite metaphor/simile; I can never remember which). On the one hand, there's the intelligence I possess plus the other multitude of nuances. On the other, there's the social anxiety, very slight and mild OCDs and a whole bunch of other things.

Even though it may seem that AS is more negative than positive, it has been a huge boon to me. Throughout my entire life, I've known that I was different, but never knew why. Now that I know why, it has quelled a good number of demons that I had and brought me a semblance of peace.

Over time, even before I got the diagnosis, I managed to retrain myself and my brain to figure out social matters to a degree with the help of my parents, but it's still extremely stressful and draining on my emotions. And so, making friends for me is difficult and I have to be careful how I spend my energy. However, like Cloudy said in his blog post, the internet REALLY is a wonderful invention. It's allowed me to make friends and talk to people from all over the globe without having to deal with the anxiety of face-to-face interaction. If it weren't for the internet, I would've never been able to become friends with Max Firestorm and Pandora (awesome guys).

I think I've rambled enough. Suffice to say that this is no where near what I want to say on the matter, but I promised myself to limit this post and not let my long-winded tendencies run rampant.

For anyone looking to get, or are unsure whether or not to get tested, I say do it. Speaking from experience, it can bring a great deal of peace, even if it does raise a few other issues.

If you have an Autism Spectrum Disorder, don't give up. The whole of the world is still "your oyster," but you'll have to go about it a little differently. It can, and will, still work out.

Fun fact: If people like Einstein, Da Vinci, Alan Turing, HP Lovecraft, Nikola Tesla and even Beethoven were alive today, there is an extremely good chance of them being diagnosed with Asperger Syndrome. Here's a link to a page that lists a bunch of famous people that are confirmed to have AS or are speculated to have it: http://www.disabled-world.com/artman/publish/article_2086.shtml. Point is, success is very much possible.

Love you all,
Geo Terra

Let's Play Information

If anyone actually reads this blog, I am getting close to being able to start a Minecraft Let's Play that I will be uploading to my YouTube channel (link at right), and I decided that I'd post a bit of information about what I have planned.

First off, this will be a modded Let's Play; the list of mods will be "released" once I've finally decided on the medium, spreadsheet, PDF or a Google Doc. If enough people request it, I'll release my config files as a zip file. Counting mods that have multiple modules as one, there are currently 93 mods that I will be using (includes Forge, library files, utilities, content mods and plug-ins for NEI).

Secondly, I will be playing & recording this entire series on a laptop. Before you either laugh at me or start thinking that I must have one helluva laptop, I don't actually. It's fairly average. But, I won't be recording this on Windows (blech, too much resource overhead), I'll be using Xubuntu Linux, a variation of Ubuntu that uses the XFCE desktop environment with the recording program "Kazam." I adore this set-up. In Minecraft itself AND recording, I can hold a steady 30 fps without a problem and the program will encode the file to an .mp4 file live, which allows me not have to deal with TOO much editing and upload it directly to YouTube (unless at some point, I end up having some sort of intro sequence), but my upload rate tends to be rather dismal, so I tend to save the file to the shared partition between Windows and Xubuntu, reboot to Windows, then convert the file to .flv to shave off more bytes. I haven't quite found a decent enough program to do this all under Linux yet, but I'm open to suggestions.

Now for the LP itself. Due to the fact that I will be returning to college on the 6th of January, I'm aiming to keep a rate of at least one video a week at least until I've adjusted to the workload, then I may be able to record and upload more often, but no guarantees.

The series will take the form of a modified version of the "Refugee to Regent Challenge" (Link: Refugee to Regent Challenge - home) that I've taken the time to tweak to fit the mods I'll be using. I have a document that I might publish that outlines the rules of the challenge, some "micro challenges" that I've set myself, the areas of development that I've "taken" from the wiki, and the "chapters" that I'll be going through with their "limitations." The whole thing will be rather chaotic (unless my OCD smacks me around) until the point I enter into "Chapter 7" where I will be taking on the challenge's core: becoming an emperor (yes, I know it's SSP).

Admittedly, I was hoping to have the Let's Play ready and raring to go on New Year's Day (Jan. 1), but some unfortunate crashes have prevented me from starting until I can get those fixed (my own procrastination and anxiety got in the way too) and I doubt these mods have retroactive world generation.

However, this won't be just a "you-watch-me-play" kind of thing. If you're looking through my mods list and come up with a challenge that you would like to see me try (and probably fail), then by all means, let me know! If I like the challenge and can pull it off with my current set-up of mods, then I'll add it to a list of challenges I'll have on hand whenever I'm sitting at my laptop. I like other people interacting with what I'm doing. Also, if you notice a mistake that I made or know of another way I could do something that might be more "fun," LET ME KNOW! Leave a comment here, on my G+ page, or tweet at me, I might take me a little while to respond but I'll strive to interact at some level with my viewers. I will give credit where it's due for a challenge or a correction vocally in the videos; yes, shoutouts. But, if I end up getting popular, I may stop this or figuring out something else.

Finally, one last thing. IF you would like to see a certain mod included in my LP and it doesn't have any world generation or has retrogen, then please do suggest it on any of the three places that I brought up in the last paragraph, include a link to the mod, and I will seriously consider it.

See you all sometime else.

F1RST P0ST!!!

*ahem* Excuse the so-called "trolling" in the title (relevant: http://xkcd.com/269/). But yeah, this will mark my first post on this blog and will hopefully lead to many more. I'm normally very proper in my language.

Anyways, depending on how I'm feeling at the time, I may occasionally post up some information here in regards to mods that I'm developing (some people already know about one such project) and might talk about my YouTube channel. Also, it will depend on how busy I am as I'm returning to college on January 6th. As to which college; duck you. (I kid, but I'm still not telling)

I'm going to try to keep the content of this blog to just development & videos, but no guarantee. I will have a "personal blog" on Tumblr at some point in the near future. If you want to learn, maybe, a little more about me, that'll be the place. It'll be linked in the sidebar once I've set it up.