Mystcraft Reborn

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Mystcraft Reborn is a modern re-interpretation of the classic Mystcraft mod. With mechanics inspired by Myst (1993), players can write new dimensions, linked together with teleportation books and portals. Players can also take photos and videos with the camera item, which are printed into picture books. The camera doubles as an easy telescope for zooming in and out. Mystcraft Reborn is designed to be a well-balanced addition to survival-friendly modpacks.

Get started with making new worlds (Ages):

• Craft a notebook
• Collect biomes into the notebook by finding one, then capture it by opening the book there. A notebook can store up to 16 biomes. 
• Craft a new descriptive book
• At the writing desk, place a notebook into the left slot, then an empty descriptive book into the right slot. Clicking the symbols from the notebook's biome inventory will queue them for transfer to the empty descriptive book. Alternatively, in creative mode, you can spawn a notebook with all biomes available. To make a fully upgraded writing desk, use a biome encyclopedia to store all of your collected biomes in one place.
• Finalize your selection at the writing desk. You can also remove individual biomes from the transfer queue on the right.
• Remove the descriptive book from the writing desk to finalize it. You can leave the notebook in the desk to make a dedicated authoring station. 
• Open the descriptive book to initialize the new Mystcraft age, which will only use the biomes listed on its originating descriptive book. Once you open a descriptive book, it cannot be edited at the editing table.
• Click the page to travel to the new age. You can exit using a rewinding book, linking book, or a descriptive book for a different age.

How to fast travel:

• Place a book into the crafting table to make a linking book. Once the linking book is removed from the crafting table, it will record a 2-second video clip of your environment. This will be used as the linking book's preview, which can be placed into item frames for animated displays. 
• Open the linking book and click the page to fast travel to where the linking book was crafted.
• Optional: use rewinding book or portals for two-way transit. 

How to make a portal:

• Create a nether-portal-style frame from any crystal block color, with a book receptacle occupying one of the portal-facing blocks. Make sure the receptacle is facing outwards, or upwards if placed at the bottom row of the portal frame. You can also make 3-dimensional portal frames for cube-shaped linking portals.
• Place a descriptive book or linking book into the receptacle. Linking portal blocks will fill the frame.
• Optional: Adjust frame and portal color with a coloring book.

How to use the camera:

• Select the camera in your hotbar. 
• Press the scroll wheel once to enter telephoto mode. The player can zoom in and out using the scroll wheel. To exit this mode, click the scroll wheel again.
• To take a photo or video, right-click with the camera equipped. You must have at least one piece of paper in your inventory to print the capture onto. When the camera is used, it will ask if you want to take a photo or video. Photos are stored in higer resolution than videos due to Mineraft's item size limit. If video is selected, you'll be prompted to enter a video clip length. Keep in mind this will affect file size. When capturing photo or video, a countdown is displayed before capture. 
• Once your capture has been finalized, a piece of paper is consumed from the player's inventory and transformed into a picture book.
• Picture books that have a photo inside of them can be opened. To view the full-screen image or animation, click the page while its open.

How to manage your Mystcraft Reborn data:

• To delete a linking book or picture book, insert them into the book shredding receptacle. 
• To delete an entire mystcraft age, insert its descriptive book into the shredding receptacle. You'll be prompted for confirmation, then the age will be permanently deleted. This will deactivate all portals and books that link to the deleted age. 

How to display books / create signs / holograms:

• Place a picture book or linking book into a book player block to display photos or videos via hologram. Alternatively, books can be put into item frames for display, but will have significantly less features.
• After inserting a book, you can right-click the book player block to adjust how your book's media is displayed. Holograms can be up to 36x36 blocks in size, and offset by 17.5 blocks in any direction. In addition to facing any direction, book players can also be used on floors and ceilings - intended for use as custom rugs or skylights.

How to use the printing table:

• The printing table is an alternative style of crafting table designed for Mystcraft book operations. The printing table has a similar interface to the Anvil, but differs in key ways. This table is very powerful, allowing the user to easily clone books of any type, transfer media across books, load images from the internet for ingame signage, and consolidate notebooks into biome encyclopedias. If the wrong recipe is used, as of Beta 1.4 the printing table will spit out items instead of overriding them, then recommends alternative crafting recipes if any are possible with the items remaining.
• To clone books, place a book into the left slot. Then place an emerald into the center slot. A cloned book will appear in the right slot. Both books can be left within the table for storage, or withdrawn.
• To transfer media across books, place the book with media you wish to transfer on the left. Then, place the book with media you wish to replace on the right. Then, place a piece of paper in the center slot. Think of it like transfer paper. Both books can be left within the table for storage, or withdrawn. 
• To transfer online images to Mystcraft books, paste an image URL into an empty vanilla book or book & quill item. Then, put the book into the left slot of the printing table. Then, place a piece of paper into the middle slot. The submitted book will transform into a picture book with the image attached. This can be used to display any image with item frames or the book player block. The picture book can be left within the table for storage, or withdrawn.
• To consolidate notebooks into biome encyclopedias, place a notebook with biomes into the printing table's left slot, then the biome encyclopedia into the right slot. Then place one piece of paper into the center slot. This will delete the notebook and append its biomes into the encyclopedia. The biome encyclopedia can be left within the table for storage, or withdrawn.

How to use the editing table:

• The editing table is an optional intermediary step between using the writing desk and activating the descriptive book. 
• To create a new age with custom worldgen parameters, assign biomes to a new descriptive book with the writing desk. Then, before opening the descriptive book for the first time, place it into the editing table beaneath the checkmark confirm button.
• To adjust parameters, place a specific number of catalyst items into any of the slots. For example, to create an age with maximum turbulence, insert 16 diamonds. To create an age with minimum turbulence, insert just 1 diamond. All parameters have 16 levels, represented by the number of each catalyst item inserted. Any parameter not directly edited will remain randomized, as shown by the editing table interface.
• You can leave the editing table at any time to gather more catalyst items. Because of the number of items required, its recommend to have a dedicated area for Mystcraft tables with chests holding the resources they consume.
• Once the confirm button is pressed, the descriptive book is placed into the player's inventory. Open the descriptive book, then click the page after a few seconds to enter the new age.

Pro Tips

• Create multiple "sister ages" by cloning descriptive books before their first use.
• Create rugs by downloading an online texture via printing table, then placing a book player into the floor. Use the rotation feature to give the illusion of a crooked rug.
• Mystcraft allows players to obtain mob spawners in survival by mining them with silk touch. Place a spawner item into the editing table to make an age without any mobs.
• When a linking book is used, all entities within a 6 block radius travel alongside the player. This can be used for easy entity capture.
• Carry a book bag instead of sacrificing inventory space to Mystcraft books.
• Use a head lamp to explore dark ages.

Things to keep in mind:

• This mod was built on top of Mystcraft Ageless, an alpha prototype made for a competition in 2024. Mystcraft Reborn is my attempt to fix the unfinished / broken code in Ageless, and heavily expand it according to my own vision for what Mystcraft could be.
• I went through great lengths to optimize server data transmission due to picture books being up to 500kb in size. All books are cached on the client-side GPU and not reloaded. In testing I haven't seen any issues with bandwidth usage or packet failures. However, you might need mod like Packet Fixer if you intend to fill a large chest with full-length (20sec) videos. Otherwise the per-chunk NBT data could go beyond the vanilla 8MB netty handler limit, causing players to disconnect upon opening the chest. I couldn't reproduce this bug in my testing, but it's theoretically possible. Linking books are compressed down to 30kb, so this issue only applies to having large amounts of picture books with max-length video clips.
• Mystcraft Reborn was extensively tested with NeoForge 1.21.1 servers, and is fully compatible with servers in Mystcraft Reborn Beta 1.0.1 or newer. 
• It is highly recommended to use JEI mod to view crafting recipies.

Required Mods:

1. Kotlin for Forge

Nearly 300 mods have been used alongside Mystcraft Reborn without issue, but these are explicitly compatible:

• Terralith
• Terrablender
• Wover
• Biomes O Plenty
• Better Nether
• Better End
• Minecolonies
• Better Archeology You can edit the influence of mods by using /mystcraft isolateWorldGen command. With Isolate WorldGen enabled, MystCraft can pull biomes from mods but won't use their terrain shape influence. Having isolate worldgen disabled is experimental, but allows terralith to bias age generation.

Credits:

1. Special thanks to MyNamesRaph for developing Mystcraft Ageless and XCompWiz for developing the original Mystcraft.