When creating a new modpack a few mods come in really handy. They are not meant for the players’ enjoyment BUT they help you turning a possible mess into a better “product”. Here are my favorite mods for modpack makers:

• World Stripper
  Don’t worry, it’s not NSFW. It’s a very handy tool that allows you to remove all stone and dirt from the chunk you’re in with the press of a key. This is very helpful if you want to make sure ore generation works as intended. Personally I used a separate world for this purpose, but theoretically you can use it in a world you intend to play in. As easily as the mod removes block, it can restore everything to normal again. Very handy and a must-have for all modpack creators.
• UniDict
  It’s not uncommon that several mods add the same kind of ore. Quickly you end up with various kinds of Copper for example, but the copper from mod A doesn’t work with recipes for mod B. UniDict solves this issue and makes the two ores compatible with another. For me it worked pretty much out of the box without even having to mess around with configs.
• Custom Main Menu and Resource Loader
  You want to create a snazzy custom main menu like you know them from those fancy FTB modpacks? Then CMM is your friend. It has a bit of a learning curve, but there are countless examples available which make things easier. Resource Loader is needed to add textures etc. outside of a resource pack, which is necessary if you want to display a custom logo, buttons or background.
• Custom Starter Gear
  I really don’t like starting Minecraft by punching trees. Especially if your modpack is supposed to have an engineering focus, you might want to let players start with access to a few tools and probably all the manuals needed. Custom Starter Gear allows you to customize what the players start with.

These are some of the mods I really like as a modpack creator. Is there anything I missed? Please let me know in the comments below!

Creating a modpack can be as easy or as hard as you want it to be. Especially with the Twitch client slapping together a modpack is extremely easy. Create a custom profile, give it a fancy name, pick the version of Minecraft and Forge you want to use. Click create and voilà there’s your modpack.

Ok, it’s still missing a few parts, like mods for example. But we can quickly remedy that. Click on “Get More Content” and you get a searchable list of the mods available on Curseforge.

Installing mods is as easy as clicking on “Install”. Twitch also automatically installs all necessary dependencies. Nifty!

What mods you choose is totally up to you. You can pick mods you enjoyed playing with in other modpacks, or try to follow a certain theme. But I highly recommend reading the descriptions thoroughly. Some mods don’t work well with others, or have known issues you should be aware of before you install them. After you’ve picked a handful of “must-have mods”, you should start the Profile and see if its running. If Minecraft crashes and burns checking the crash log might give you some insights. You can find it in the following folder: \Documents\Curse\Minecraft\Instances\<name of your pack>\crash-reports

If it does not crash, you should create a world and play around with it for a while. I highly recommend playing in Creative first and check if everything you installed is available and working. Fly around a bit and check if all the biomes are being generated correctly. Usually this is also the time when you noticed things like ores which are not spawned in the world, or that multiple mods spawn multiple versions of the same ore. This happens a lot, especially when you’re into tech mods.

Lession learned: Creating a custom modpack is not as hard as it first seemed, but the devil is in the details.

In the next part of this series I’ll recommend a few mods which came in very handy while creating WolfPack. Stay tuned!

Yesterday I uploaded WolfPack 1.06 to CurseForge. Unfortunately I wasn’t really paying attention and a couple of bugs crept in. When creating a server pack, I missed deleting OptiFine from the server’s mod folder. This meant that the server pack was rejected, so I’ll have to upload it again. Bummer. But I’ll probably just wait until 1.07 is ready.

The other issue is that while exporting the modpack I entered the wrong version number. So 1.06 is shown as 1.05 in the Twitch client. This bug is annoying but luckily doesn’t affect gameplay at all.

So, what’s new in 1.06/1.07? I added MystCraft which is a great fit for the exploration aspect of the game. It allows creating new dimensions by crafting special books. I also included Aroma1997’s Dimensional World, because it makes mining so much easier. Construct’s Armory is now also a thing and it’s a lot of fun. Creating an armor is now a much more involved and interesting process.

1.07 will also see the addition of Extra Utilities 2, since it has some great blocks and items which will come in handy with building a mob farm. The new update should be available later today and this time the server pack should also work as promised. Stay tuned!

Update: I totally forgot to mention that I made some changes to the Main Menu and Logo. Check those out below:

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When I came up with Stargazer Industrial I planned to focus mainly on McJty‘s mods like XNet and RFTools. After playing the pack for a while, I realized that I was missing certain things. There was no ore-doubling, no RF-powered smelting, no special tools. While I love what RFTools offers it doesn’t really help with the early game. I also want to do tech stuff and not worry about mobs all the time. So I am changing the focus from McJty‘s mods to mods I want to learn more about. I also want to add mods that will allow me to play on peaceful.

So here’s what I am planning:

• More Tech mods
  • EnderIO is another tech mod I love and I am sure XNet and Conduits might work great together
  • Tinker’s Construct is awesome and makes mining so much easier (I love hammers!), so I will probably add TC and a few addons
  • I just tried out Psi for the first time while playing WolfPack and it’s awesome. Building spells is like a game in itself!
  • For power creation I already have Deep Resonance, but that doesn’t mean I can’t also play around with NuclearCraft, so it’s going to be added.
  • OpenComputers is extremely exciting, and it might help with some automation.
  • I am still trying to keep the pack small, but a few additional mods like Chisel, and Inspirations will probably be added.
• A Peaceful World
  • I am currently looking for various mods that help me with playing on peaceful. I faintly remember that there was a mod that added recipes for mob drops, but I don’t remember the name. I think I’ll have to search for a while…
  • Since I am no huge fan of farming and cooking in Minecraft, I’ll probably don’t add anything that makes hunger a thing in peaceful. There will also be no farming mods.
• No punching trees
  
  • Punching trees is the Minecraft trope, but I want to play with cool machines ASAP. I will add a mod that allows me to create a customized starter kit for the player containing all the necessary manuals, a bed, perhaps some kind of satchel, and a set of tools (at least Iron), so that you can immediately start working.
  • Speaking of trees, Dynamic Trees is an interesting mod, which I tried before. Since it had some compatibility issues, I threw it out, but I might give it another try.
• A few mods will not make the cut
  • Woot doesn’t really make any sense in a peaceful world, so it will be removed
  • The Lost Cities is cool, but it doesn’t really fit the theme of the pack. It’s probably a better fit for WolfPack.

So there are a lot of changes coming to Stargazer Industrial. It will get a bit meatier, and a lot more peaceful. Stay tuned!