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Current Version: v0.3.0 (released 18 March 2022) for Minecraft 1.18.2
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1LQ2t34X-ejCXFN0RVPWW8HmZcjLSwWGK/view?usp=sharing

Old 1.18.0/1 Version: v0.3pre2 (released 15 January 2022) for Minecraft 1.18 and 1.18.1
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1MuqzDHWB9Ao-qNjATuB3BOxahkLc7oNr/view?usp=sharing

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On Data Pack Development:
UPDATE 7/10/2022:
There will be no update to 1.19, or any other updates to this project for that matter. Sorry to disappoint all those that have been waiting. The world generation code for 1.19 has changed again and I'm not able to figure out how to make the floating islands appear like they used to. In addition, I'm just tired of this project in general and I have decided to abandon it. THANK YOU to all who have been following me and this project up until now. For those of you that want to play the Aether in 1.19, the actual mod is being worked on at https://github.com/Gilded-Games/The-Aether by the original Guilded Games team.

In its current state the pack is fairly laggy/buggy/unfinished. Long story short, there is nothing really that interesting to develop anymore and the process has become tedious. There are still lots of loose ends which I never got around to polishing up (custom armor, custom mob performance). All in all, I am still proud of what I was able to accomplish in vanilla MC.

If by chance there is anybody who has lots of experience with developing datapacks that wants to continue where I let off, you can PM me and I will give you permission to do so. I would love to see the methods and concepts used in this project to live up to their full potential.

Known issues with the current version:
-Armor stands and flower pots unusable
-Holystone Furnace dysfunctional
-3 Slider Mini-boss Rooms empty
-Dart Shooter does nothing
-Chance for Slider boss room to not generate or not enough rooms in dungeon
-Empty Slider Boss treasure chest

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IMPORTANT NOTES:
-If you want to report an issue, please be VERY specific! Don't just say "X is broken" or "X is laggy" - try to be as detailed as you can.
-Aether dimension does not work on Realms because Realms doesn't seem to support custom dimensions right now. In my experience it works perfectly on singleplayer, LAN and private vanilla servers.
-Similarly, there are issues with custom worldgen with Paper, Spigot, etc. I have little ability to address issues encountered on modded servers/clients that can't be reproduced in vanilla.

-It is highly recommended to use Sodium and Lithium if you can, although it is not required. In my personal experience I have not encountered major issues using these mods. I'm not sure about Optifine because certain settings in Optifine can change chunk loading, so use that at your own risk.

Regarding the use of MC 1.16/1.17/1.18:
-I will not add 1.16 or 1.17 support because the worldgen system in those versions are outdated.

Fair use:
-If you want to use functions from my crafting/custom blocks/worldgen/etc for your own datapack, you are free to do so without crediting me.

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A rough list of features (mainly going into technical details if you are interested):

Aether Portal

• Place the 4x5 frame of glowstone and use a water bucket anywhere inside of the 2x3 area of air (just like a nether portal)
• Like a nether portal, it will try to place you in the nearest portal within 128 blocks in the other dimension. If it doesn't find one, it will try to find land to place you on within ~80 or so blocks. You shouldn't spawn on an aercloud in the middle of the void *too* often, but I don't think I will do a fix for that (since that is part of the fun in my opinion).
• Unlike the overworld-nether coordinate ratio being 8:1, the overworld-aether coordinate ratio is 1:1.

Custom Blocks System

• Each custom block is assigned a vanilla block to be its base. This determines what the block drops when the player mines it.
  
• This "base block" is hidden with 6 armor stands on each face of the block to keep the illusion that the block has not changed.
• When not looking at a custom block or walking on top of them, they revert back to their original form. This process does not interfere with any other vanilla blocks placed in the world (except for when using pistons in certain ways, which I don't see a way to fix)
• This means that even tens of thousands of custom blocks will not cause any lag, since they really are vanilla blocks when you are not looking at them.
• These are based on remodeled double half slabs (potentially ~30) and mushroom blocks (potentially 64). Right now in the datapack there is a system in place where any double half slab placed by the player is turned into its full block form (ex: double crimson slab gets converted into a normal crimson plank).

Custom Crafting - Multiplayer compatible, with shift clicking functionality and item decrementing.

• To get your first Skyroot Crafting Table, you must place a vanilla crafting table down in the Aether or in a Bronze Dungeon. You can then craft other Skyroot Crafting Tables, along with tools, slabs, stairs, and other things.
• Essentially equivalent to the vanilla crafting table in every way (except that you can't use a recipe book to autocraft things and you can't craft many vanilla recipes).
• Hopefully will provide a better experience than just dropping items on the ground
• There are now many protections in place to prevent anyone from losing any items by putting them in the wrong slot, among other new optimizations from the previous previews I have shown.
• Also, a player will get whatever items are in the crafting grid back when closing the GUI. The crafting system is pretty much finished and now it should be really easy for me to add a furnace, altar, etc. that would use similar functionality.

Custom worldgen features generated with structure blocks

• Unfortunately by far the biggest source of lag in this datapack.
• It takes about 1-2 minutes from my experience for the world to load when you first enter into the Aether through the portal. It is also a little laggy when you cross unexplored chunks in the Aether.
• However, the average TPS does stay below 50 95% of the time, meaning that you should not experience noticable server-side slowdown *too* much.
• It currently works by /fill replacing special blocks (white concrete, orange concrete, etc.) in unexplored territory with command blocks to generate the actual feature.
• If anybody has any insight on how to place structure blocks automatically without functions, please let me know. Even the tiniest optimization at this point will make a huge difference.
• There is also a custom loading screen for when you enter through the portal to the Aether (so hopefully you won't suffocate in a wall or get pushed off and fall into the void while the server is generating terrain :) ).

Random dungeon generation

• Random rooms, hallways, filled with chests with random loot.
• Each bronze dungeon has exactly 3 rooms for each of the minibosses from Aether II in the east, west, and southmost areas of the dungeon. There is also the Slider boss room in the northmost part of the dungeon.
• There is also at least one treasure room with chests encased in obsidian and guarded by a bunch of spawners.

Custom mobs

• Mobs with proper hurt and death animations using armor stands.
• The second largest source of lag in this datapack. Again, I am in need of your guys' help as to how I can reduce lag if anyone has experience with custom mob data packs.

Custom advancements

• Progression tree that resemebles the original Aether II achievements.

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Credits
• Shaders used in screenshots: BSL Shaders
  - www.curseforge.com/minecraft/customization/bsl-shaders

• Vanilla Aether assets (textures, sounds) - Gilded Games
  - gildedgames.com/

• Vanilla Aether assets (music) - Emile van Krieken
  - music.emilevankrieken.com/

• Jappafied Aether assets (textures) - Aerod, BrianIsBro
  - www.planetminecraft.com/member/aerodyt
  - www.curseforge.com/members/aerodyt
  - www.curseforge.com/members/brianisbro12

• Language Translations
  - Ukranian: ProSplash (www.planetminecraft.com/member/prosplash/)

• pack.png - u/misterslime12
  - www.reddit.com/user/misterslime12

• Functions - Most of them are completely by me
  - Parts of the custom crafting system are based off of what Cloud_Wolf showed a while back
  - Cloud Wolf's Custom Crafter Video: www.youtube.com/watch?v=bUBPfi0hdTk
  - Cloud Wolf's YouTube channel: www.youtube.com/channel/UCZnBqVITQ0dloqUU0fGxY3g