Archive post from the old blog. Original Post Date: January 13, 2015
Ok, I’m tired. Now and then somebody comes to me with an idea for the nth time that I’ve rejected (n-1) times, and as a decent portion of the internet is consisted of self-entitled brats, I often have to explain to them why I’ve rejected their idea. It’s interesting because it’s not even theirs. If I’ve had the idea thrown at me countless times it must be something rather generic or mundane. So I decided to make a post where I list what you will not see in botania and why. Hopefully with the objective of sending people a link to this page in response. Here goes.
Note: Just because something is not in this list does not mean it’ll be in the mod or even will ever have a chance to. It just means I don’t have it asked all the time. I might edit this in the future.
I don’t think this one requires much of an explanation. The lack of GUIs for world interaction is one of the main features of Botania. There’s definitely GUIs in the mod, such as the book and the custom crafting table for the Assembly Halo (which you won’t even notice as it’s exactly the same as the vanilla one), but none of them work for interacting with the world. In Botania you interact with the world, not a screen that alters invisible properties in the world that affect the world.
Numbers must exist. Their existence is unavoidable, in fact, you can dig into the code or a wiki and find them all spread right there like one of your French girls. However, in Botania I decided to go on an approach where you don’t see the raw numbers? Why? To encourage experimentation. Spreaders also change their output depending on distance for that same objective. It also has an objective which I find incredibly important, which is a stopgap on the urge to minmax the game. For those unfamiliar, “minmaxing” refers to the act of making sure every little number is the exact optimal value for the situation, which in leads to people actively trying to make sure they’re getting the most out of their generation, conduction, etc. I don’t want to do that with botania, I’d rather people just play with the mod rather than try to math it through.
This one gets a few people. “A larger, more expensive mana pool, maybe even a multiblock” is fairly common. You know why I don’t add it? Because it’s boring. Adding a zero to the end might make something 10x as powerful, but it sure as hell doesn’t make it 10x more interesting. Sparks exist. Lots of people gloss over them since they’re not given a massive focus, but they’re there, and augmented, given some space and a small bit of thought you can make as large of a single pool as you want. Try that, it’s a lot more interesting than just a bigger pool.
More boring stuff, just use a Mana Mirror. I’m not even going to write a paragraph about this one.
Another one that goes around the block fairly often. I can very easilly make an Alfheim dimension, the problem is simple though, what would I put there? That’s an important part of a dimension isn’t it? Not having it be a barren wasteland with absolutely nothing to see is a great idea. And in my opinion we have way too many boring dimensions in mods. I don’t want to make a exploration, dungeon or combat based dimension, as that is most definitely not what botania focuses on nor is it my forte by a longshot. So what would you do there? Gather resources? There’s no point if the elves do it for you. It just ends up as filler and tons of content that really has no place existing. I have no intention of making an Alfheim Dimension because I do not feel the need for one. Making a dimension just for the sake of making a dimension is boring and overdone.
The Daybloom is an essential flower in Botania progression, as it’s definitely the first that the player encounters. It gets outshadowed very quickly by better alternatives, and I’ve had requests to include a higher tier, more expensive version that would produce a lot more mana for free. And to that I say, hell no. This idea is an absolute trainwreck on the concept of Botania. There’s no point to design an interesting mana generation system when you can spend 2 hours midnless throwing runes and petals at a fountain until you have flowers that do that all for you. Why replace engaging elements with grunt work?