FOSS gamedev and creative worlds

The inspiration for this mod is my home country, Australia. I've tried to bring the landscape and flora into the game of Minetest. Enjoy and think of visiting Australia next time you travel abroad.


The Pilbara. Hot and arid. The rocky, gravel surface gets the red colour from hematite in the ground. You won't find much here save for a few Desert Oak trees and iron-ore when you dig.

Download (rename to "australia")
Code on Github
Depends: default, bucket, stairs and minetest 0.4.13-dev with Valleys mapgen.
License: BSD

Changelog
0.4 (2016-05-24)

• Added new corals and sea grass.
• Replaced coral sand with coral stone.
• Added sunken woodships and submarines with variable "loot".
• Fixed an issue with the rainforest tree schematic causing Minetest 0.4.14 to crash on startup.

0.3.1 (2016-04-22)

• Changed ore distribution to use minetest.register_ore function.
• Added uranium in two biomes if technic_worldgen mod is enabled.
• Added 4 new corals to the Great Barrier Reef biome.
• Added Brown and Giant Kelp to some ocean biomes.
• Changed muddy river water opacity. It's now much harder to see underwater in these rivers.
• Removed necessity to use voxel manipulator, voxel.lua file.
• Fixed noairblocks.
• Fixed a naming issue with some fern textures, credit: Napiophelios.

0.2 (2016-04-13)

• Added ferns.
• Fixed muddy water bucket.

0.1 (2016-04-11)

• 24 biomes.
• 6 new stone nodes, 4 non-stone nodes.
• Muddy river water.
• 48 trees.
• 10 plants.
• 4 corals.

Mapgen compatibility
The Australia mod has been designed specifically for the Valleys mapgen, currently in Minetest 0.4.14.
It will work with mapgens v5, v7, flat and fractal, but it won't be as visually appealing.
The rivers and temperature/humidity of the Valleys mapgen play a vital role in getting the feel of the Australia mod just right.

Settings
You can enable/disable biomes by opening the *init.lua* file and changing each biome setting to `1` for enabled or `0` for disabled.
This will also disable plants, trees and more that are unique to that biome.
All biomes are enabled by default. Currently, disabling the *Underground* biome will have no effect.



To-do list

• Redo some tree textures, especially wood. Some of them are great, some are awful.
• Opals in Central Australia biome.
• Work out way to place some tree and plants along rivers.
• Salt lakes in Central Australia biome.
• Adjust tree and plant distribution.
• Adjust tree size and leaf functions.
• Add some rocky beaches.
• Add some river/lake plants, especially to Arnhem land biome.
• Add terra rossa soil and grape vines in the Flinders-Lofty biome. Red/white wine.
• Add more logs.
• Add moss on trees.
• Palm trees in FNQ and Arnhem land beaches.
• Add support for survival mod/game.
• Add support for a mobs mod - Great White Shark, Tiger Shark, Saltwater Crocodile, Brown Snake, Tiger Snake, Emu, Kangaroo.

[/list]

Feel free to propose improvements or submit pull requests. Contributors welcomes.

Stunning! I'm blown away by this. I keep expecting a kangaroo to hop by. Excellent work.

Edit: This seriously needs to be one of the bundled games.

Thanks Duane, and for the code I reused from valleys_c ;)

As far as a subgame goes, I was thinking of a wasteland-survival sceanrio based on central Australia. Remove all sea water, leaving only dry creekbeds or a muddy river that requires boiling of water.

That's one idea, might let some others run with it.

I haven't created any mobs, but kangaroos and crocodiles are a must.

@demon_boy

This mod looks avesome!!!! +1

I honestly can't believe I missed this before.

How about adding a ute with a V8 donk (then again, this isn't Rigs of Rods, so ignore that) or some mobs?

Looks amazing. I will also take a look at the code. Maybe this can help with my Subgame

+1

do that mod works alongside experimental MG??

Another nice mapgen mod. :D

Looks great. That's definitely Australian water in the lake.

It is a shame that VanessaE never really makes use of mapgen mods like this one. The outback biomes are very impressive and they remind me of what deserts used to look like in Minetest.

azekill_DIABLO wrote:do that mod works alongside experimental MG??

No it doesn't. This mod relies heavily on the Biome API which mapgen v5, v7, fractal and valleys use.

If there are features in that mapgen you would like added, let me know. Or if you want support for other mods that may or may not work properly, again let me know.

The Red Centre :)

Coming soon: Ferns.

Here is a sneak preview at what the Daintree Rainforest will look like with tree ferns in the Far North Queensland biome.

whoa avesome!!! i just love this mod!! i will use it for my game

I expect to see some dinosaurs peaking their heads out from around a tree. Time to put my dinosaur model to use and set it up with the mob api.

@demon_boy

it would be cool to add swamps!!
EDit: Nice first topic :)

azekill_DIABLO wrote:it would be cool to add swamps!!

Yes :)

With stranded 4x4s...

azekill_DIABLO wrote:it would be cool to add swamps!!

Well, Australia is known as the driest continent in the world, so you won't see a swamp in this mod.

But, I do aim to add some kind of wetland to the Arnhem Land biome. Imagine admiring the waterlillies and flowers, the plethora of birdlife... and then the last moments of your life blur as a great 5-meter crocodile launches out of the water.

demon_boy wrote:

azekill_DIABLO wrote:it would be cool to add swamps!!

Well, Australia is known as the driest continent in the world, so you won't see a swamp in this mod.

But, I do aim to add some kind of wetland to the Arnhem Land biome. Imagine admiring the waterlillies and flowers, the plethora of birdlife... and then the last moments of your life blur as a great 5-meter crocodile launches out of the water.

Well, we have rivers, so why not swamps?
To name a few:

• Banksia Swamp
• Becher Point Wetlands
• Burraga Swamp

wilkgr76 wrote:

demon_boy wrote:

azekill_DIABLO wrote:it would be cool to add swamps!!

Well, Australia is known as the driest continent in the world, so you won't see a swamp in this mod.

But, I do aim to add some kind of wetland to the Arnhem Land biome. Imagine admiring the waterlillies and flowers, the plethora of birdlife... and then the last moments of your life blur as a great 5-meter crocodile launches out of the water.

Well, we have rivers, so why not swamps?
To name a few:

• Banksia Swamp
• Becher Point Wetlands
• Burraga Swamp

As a proportion of the Australian landscape, swamps would be under 1%. It's hard to justify adding them to the mod. I'll stick with making Arnhem Land a wetland biome for a swamp-like experience.

Once I've done the ferns, I'll work on adding the wetlands.

Also, I have added a mangrove biome with mud and the squishy underfoot sound from the Swamp(sumpf) mod.

Use the Valleys mapgen, set the world seed to '2' and you will spawn in the middle of a very large mangrove.

p.s. Not entirely happy with the aus_mangrove_mud node texture. If anyone wants to have a crack at improving it let me know.

demon_boy wrote:

wilkgr76 wrote:

demon_boy wrote:
Well, Australia is known as the driest continent in the world, so you won't see a swamp in this mod.

But, I do aim to add some kind of wetland to the Arnhem Land biome. Imagine admiring the waterlillies and flowers, the plethora of birdlife... and then the last moments of your life blur as a great 5-meter crocodile launches out of the water.

Well, we have rivers, so why not swamps?
To name a few:

• Banksia Swamp
• Becher Point Wetlands
• Burraga Swamp

As a proportion of the Australian landscape, swamps would be under 1%. It's hard to justify adding them to the mod. I'll stick with making Arnhem Land a wetland biome for a swamp-like experience.

Once I've done the ferns, I'll work on adding the wetlands.

Also, I have added a mangrove biome with mud and the squishy underfoot sound from the Swamp(sumpf) mod.

Use the Valleys mapgen, set the world seed to '2' and you will spawn in the middle of a very large mangrove.

p.s. Not entirely happy with the aus_mangrove_mud node texture. If anyone wants to have a crack at improving it let me know.

Just make them rare......

lol - "Just". No idea how easy/hard it is, as I don't do mapgen stuff.

+1 nice mod.

Version 0.2

* Added ferns.
* Fixed muddy water bucket.

Added 3-size tree ferns to the Far North Queensland biome - specifically the Daintree Rainforest.
Added ferns to the Tasmania, Victorian Forests, and Great Dividing Range biomes.

Thanks to Duane for his schematic_saver mod. This made getting tree ferns out of Plantlife and into my mod quite simple.

OK i tried out mod with this!!!!

advice: don't have other MG mods!!!

+1

everytime i try the 0.2, i got an acces violation and a fatal error

azekill_DIABLO wrote:everytime i try the 0.2, i got an acces violation and a fatal error

Hi azekill, are you using any other mods?

Can you post the error please?

ok i will do that :)

EDIT: the error (occurs only when australia is active)

I've never used the Windows version.

Does the fatal error happen when you start the game, or during play?

And do you have just the Australia mod active, or play with other mods enabled too. Which mods?

I only test with the Australia mod active.

I'm working on the next release (should be ready in the next 2-3 days). I'm having issues getting the noairblocks working for the coral in the Great Barrier Reef.