FTB Ampz world 6/23 - long day of losing
6/23
Well, this was a sucky day of gaming. I'd really like to work on expanding the MineChem mod, maybe write compatibility mods to pull in ores and materials from other mods. I got the Mod Coders pack setup in Eclipse, worked through an example, only to find that I decompiled the wrong Minecraft, v1.4.7. I went looking for other game projects which aren't such a bitch to mod, or might actually want user input. Most such projects either don't install or don't run. Project Zomboid was a good effort with some crafting and scripting options, but I'm sick of that genre; I'd love to do a post-disaster survival game, just not with zombies and blood all over. Mythruna looked like a fine project, Minecrafty but open source, with notes written but a really decent-sounding programmer, but of course it doesn't even attempt to run on my machine, just click and nothing. So heck, I tried FreeCiv again, maybe I could put together a scenario for that open-source version of one of my favorite games ever ... no, even on the lowest difficulty, everything I tried to build got sacked and burned around 1200 AD. After a phone call, someone recommended Kerbal Space Program, but holy cow, every video is just 20 or 30 minutes of floating and waiting and adjusting little orbital lines; all flight simulator and no game. Whole day wasted.
Anyway, nice to get back to Minecraft. Now, looking at the MineChem a little closer, I realized one thing that had been bugging me. Organic compounds are mostly just given their elemental formula, like C2H6O for ethyl alcohol, and are almost always broken directly into atoms: 2 C + 6 H + O. Often requiring 20 or 30 empty vials to catch them all. While I do get that brevity is important, it would be far better for ethyl alcohol to break down into CH3 + CH2 + OH; fewer pieces to catch, more "building blocks" than just elements. Some of the formulas are just wrong, he gives Trinitrotoluene as C6H2(NO2)3C7H8 -> 6 C + 2 H + 3 NO2 + Toluene C7H8, when it's actually C6H2(NO2)3.CH3 (or C7H8(NO2)3). Malic acid (from apples) is given as C4H6O5, actual formula COOH-CH2-CHOH-COOH, could break into 2 CO2 + CH3CH2OH (ethyl alcohol). Good enough for a game. Trying to simulate real chemical industry would require dozens of other specialized machines that run at different temperatures and pressures, and hundreds or thousands of compounds, ions, reagents, catalysts.
Hmm. Quick run around outside, really haven't explored this world much. I think I need to build a rocket. Was thinking of building a Purification Chamber to get 3x dusts for my ores, instead of 2x in my current enrichment chamber, but that needs obsidian, which needs a diamond pick ... the usual long chain of things. I do have 5 diamonds and a bucket of water, guess I could go dump on some lava. Really need better storage in this modpack. No iron chests, all I can do are dumb wooden chests that take up so much space.
Maybe this is the modpack where I will finally build Applied Energistics stuff? Darnit, they made all those recipes more complex, with "Fluix dust" made out of Certus Quartz Dust, Nether Quartz Dust & Redstone. Well that's a pain. Made a diamond pick, found my way back down to my "lava pits" waypoint (screengrabbed), got 20 obsidian, 6 Os ore, 21 Fe ore, loads of copper all over (but what's it used for?). But looking at huge swaths of cave walls, I see no AE Quartz being generated in this world. Back to Galacticraft stuff, jot down all the recipes I can find. No recipe comes up for NASA Workbench, and no clue how the rest of the pieces work, something I saw in a video a month ago?
Back to MineChem, my first vial of Cf is about to decay. Let's see, in the real world, Cf isotopes have half-lives from 17 days to 898 years, so the in-game one-hour variety is a fantasy; in real world, all but one isotope decay into Curium (Cm) (which is the real world has a dozen isotopes with half-lives from a fraction of a second to millions of years mostly going to Am and Pu), only one beta decay to Es noted. Let's see what the game Cf becomes ... Berkelium (Bk)?
###
Pretty brain dead tonight. Just gave myself some end stone to make elements out of. 15 end stone gave 3 Li, 24 Be, 4 H, 2 Ga, 2 As, 3 Fr, 2 Si, 4 O. Then 10 more gave 8 Be, 2 Zr, Rb, 2 Si, O, 8 H, Li, Es, Fr. 12 more gave 2 Ga, 2 As, 16 H, Na, 6 Si, 6 O, 2 Li, Fr, Zr. Pretty wacky batch of elements, no other way to get most of these, that I can find. 10 more = Fr, 8 Be, 4 Si, 2 O, 8 H, 6 Li, Rb, Ga, As. last 11 gave Na, 2 Pu, Nd, 4 H, 2 Si, 4 O, 8 Be, Zr. I have a pretty good collection now. I like ho the modder handled the radioactive decay, it's like an occasional kick in the pants; the range is about 5 blocks. Still waiting to see what Bk decays into, 19 minutes to go, will read a short story or two and check back ... Curium (Cm). There are some minor stacking glitches with these chemicals; often if I double-click to add them to a chest they don't stack with matching elements, but when I pick up a stack and combine it with another stack they DO stack as expected. Not counting the radioactive ones which can't stack if they're all at different moment in their countdowns to decay.
Cleared out some vials by making 2 H + O -> H2O then H2O -> melon slice, yum.
Another handy recipe to get rid of some common stuff: 2 Al + 2 Si + 5 O + 4 OH (+ 50 MJ) -> Kaolinite, then Kaolinite -> 12 clay balls.
Still, I really want to hook up MineChem to GregTech, for all those extra ores, metals and cells full of chemicals. I tried mapping it to the many ores in the Metallurgy mod, but those were mostly fantasy ores -- I made up some funny correspondences, but it's not as good as GregTech's semi-real chemical industry.
###
Well, this was a sucky day of gaming. I'd really like to work on expanding the MineChem mod, maybe write compatibility mods to pull in ores and materials from other mods. I got the Mod Coders pack setup in Eclipse, worked through an example, only to find that I decompiled the wrong Minecraft, v1.4.7. I went looking for other game projects which aren't such a bitch to mod, or might actually want user input. Most such projects either don't install or don't run. Project Zomboid was a good effort with some crafting and scripting options, but I'm sick of that genre; I'd love to do a post-disaster survival game, just not with zombies and blood all over. Mythruna looked like a fine project, Minecrafty but open source, with notes written but a really decent-sounding programmer, but of course it doesn't even attempt to run on my machine, just click and nothing. So heck, I tried FreeCiv again, maybe I could put together a scenario for that open-source version of one of my favorite games ever ... no, even on the lowest difficulty, everything I tried to build got sacked and burned around 1200 AD. After a phone call, someone recommended Kerbal Space Program, but holy cow, every video is just 20 or 30 minutes of floating and waiting and adjusting little orbital lines; all flight simulator and no game. Whole day wasted.
Anyway, nice to get back to Minecraft. Now, looking at the MineChem a little closer, I realized one thing that had been bugging me. Organic compounds are mostly just given their elemental formula, like C2H6O for ethyl alcohol, and are almost always broken directly into atoms: 2 C + 6 H + O. Often requiring 20 or 30 empty vials to catch them all. While I do get that brevity is important, it would be far better for ethyl alcohol to break down into CH3 + CH2 + OH; fewer pieces to catch, more "building blocks" than just elements. Some of the formulas are just wrong, he gives Trinitrotoluene as C6H2(NO2)3C7H8 -> 6 C + 2 H + 3 NO2 + Toluene C7H8, when it's actually C6H2(NO2)3.CH3 (or C7H8(NO2)3). Malic acid (from apples) is given as C4H6O5, actual formula COOH-CH2-CHOH-COOH, could break into 2 CO2 + CH3CH2OH (ethyl alcohol). Good enough for a game. Trying to simulate real chemical industry would require dozens of other specialized machines that run at different temperatures and pressures, and hundreds or thousands of compounds, ions, reagents, catalysts.
Hmm. Quick run around outside, really haven't explored this world much. I think I need to build a rocket. Was thinking of building a Purification Chamber to get 3x dusts for my ores, instead of 2x in my current enrichment chamber, but that needs obsidian, which needs a diamond pick ... the usual long chain of things. I do have 5 diamonds and a bucket of water, guess I could go dump on some lava. Really need better storage in this modpack. No iron chests, all I can do are dumb wooden chests that take up so much space.
Maybe this is the modpack where I will finally build Applied Energistics stuff? Darnit, they made all those recipes more complex, with "Fluix dust" made out of Certus Quartz Dust, Nether Quartz Dust & Redstone. Well that's a pain. Made a diamond pick, found my way back down to my "lava pits" waypoint (screengrabbed), got 20 obsidian, 6 Os ore, 21 Fe ore, loads of copper all over (but what's it used for?). But looking at huge swaths of cave walls, I see no AE Quartz being generated in this world. Back to Galacticraft stuff, jot down all the recipes I can find. No recipe comes up for NASA Workbench, and no clue how the rest of the pieces work, something I saw in a video a month ago?
Back to MineChem, my first vial of Cf is about to decay. Let's see, in the real world, Cf isotopes have half-lives from 17 days to 898 years, so the in-game one-hour variety is a fantasy; in real world, all but one isotope decay into Curium (Cm) (which is the real world has a dozen isotopes with half-lives from a fraction of a second to millions of years mostly going to Am and Pu), only one beta decay to Es noted. Let's see what the game Cf becomes ... Berkelium (Bk)?
###
Pretty brain dead tonight. Just gave myself some end stone to make elements out of. 15 end stone gave 3 Li, 24 Be, 4 H, 2 Ga, 2 As, 3 Fr, 2 Si, 4 O. Then 10 more gave 8 Be, 2 Zr, Rb, 2 Si, O, 8 H, Li, Es, Fr. 12 more gave 2 Ga, 2 As, 16 H, Na, 6 Si, 6 O, 2 Li, Fr, Zr. Pretty wacky batch of elements, no other way to get most of these, that I can find. 10 more = Fr, 8 Be, 4 Si, 2 O, 8 H, 6 Li, Rb, Ga, As. last 11 gave Na, 2 Pu, Nd, 4 H, 2 Si, 4 O, 8 Be, Zr. I have a pretty good collection now. I like ho the modder handled the radioactive decay, it's like an occasional kick in the pants; the range is about 5 blocks. Still waiting to see what Bk decays into, 19 minutes to go, will read a short story or two and check back ... Curium (Cm). There are some minor stacking glitches with these chemicals; often if I double-click to add them to a chest they don't stack with matching elements, but when I pick up a stack and combine it with another stack they DO stack as expected. Not counting the radioactive ones which can't stack if they're all at different moment in their countdowns to decay.
Cleared out some vials by making 2 H + O -> H2O then H2O -> melon slice, yum.
Another handy recipe to get rid of some common stuff: 2 Al + 2 Si + 5 O + 4 OH (+ 50 MJ) -> Kaolinite, then Kaolinite -> 12 clay balls.
Still, I really want to hook up MineChem to GregTech, for all those extra ores, metals and cells full of chemicals. I tried mapping it to the many ores in the Metallurgy mod, but those were mostly fantasy ores -- I made up some funny correspondences, but it's not as good as GregTech's semi-real chemical industry.
###
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