Before getting into the changes, I think it's important to pass on the context of this update. For quite a while now, one of the most common bits of criticism leveled at Quark was the sheer amount of extraneous and extremely niche content included in it. A very substantial amount of people pointed at features such as Stained Planks or the random brick types as a stain on what otherwise is something they enjoy.
While "if you don't like it, don't use it" is a common answer to these bits of critique (especially given Quark's configurability), I think that dismissing them like that is reductive to the problem at hand - the fact that the mod does, in fact, contain a lot of features that would get you laughed out of a Mojang meeting if you tried to suggest them.
With that, I'm taking the 1.18 idea of revamping the world to also revamp the mod and trim out all the features I deem "bloat". Some of the features cut are bound to be ones you like, and for that, I'm sorry. I understand that every feature is bound to be someone's favorite. Fortunately, most of the stuff being cut here is fairly simple, and if anyone wants to take some time to make a mod with them in, that's totally cool.
The following features were either added 1:1 to vanilla or similar enough features were added that I feel continuing to have them in the mod constitutes as content duplication.
- Axe Leaf Harvesting
- Cave Roots
- Color Slime
- Crevices
- Deepslate
- Dirt To Path
- Endermites Form Shulkers
- Improved Sleeping
- Marble
- Mega Caves
- Realistic World Gen
- Speleothems
- Tallow And Candles
- Turf
- Underground Clay
- Voidstone
The following features were removed as they are a complete technical mess and a pain in my backside every time I have to do a port. There's nothing inherently wrong with them, they're just absolutely awful to maintain so I thought I'd take the chance to get that piece of mind. They may come back later.
- Chain Linkage
- Infinity Water Bucket
- Springy Slime
- Tie Leads To Fences
- Improved Mount HUD (forge API changes on the overlay system made this a pain to do now)
The 1.18 Underground Biome system holds a lot of possibilities for future expansion, but for the port I decided to try and play it safe and not dive headfirst into that, as such all of the underground biomes, excluding Corundum and Permafrost (more on that later), have been removed. Properly structured Underground Biome content will be coming to Quark in the future.
- Brimstone Underground Biome
- Elder Prismarine Underground Biome
- Glowshroom Underground Biome
- Lush Underground Biome
- Overgrown Underground Biome
- Sandstone Underground Biome
- Slime Underground Biome
- Spider Nest Underground Biome
The following features were removed as an attempt to fix the issue of combinatorial explosions with items in the mod. Simply put, some things just straight up have too many variants and result in ridiculous amounts of different items being generated. I do not enjoy this level of added overhead for minimal gain, and as such, the following have been cut.
- Dyed Item Frames*
- Stained Planks
Vertical Planks(added back by popular request)
*I'm planning on having these available back soon as an RGB dyeing thing like how leather armor works, I just opted to leave it for later.
The following features were removed as I simply didn't find them that worthwhile to have around. Specific shout out to Biotite and Weather Sensor as a great relic of a past era where this was considered solid content.
- Basalt Bricks
- Biotite
- Charred Nether Bricks
- Lit Lamp
- Magma Bricks
- Mushroom Chest
- Pavement
- Quilted Wool
- Redstone Inductor
- Sandy Bricks
- Shallow Dirt
- Snowy Bricks
- Warped and Twisted Blackstone Bricks
- Weather Sensor
- Auto-Walk is now unbound by default
- When Auto-Walking, a little HUD element will show up letting you know
- Beacon Redirection is now a separate feature from Corundum
- If Corundum is disabled, Amethyst can be used instead
- Quark no longer takes over generation for vanilla clustered stones (Andesite, Diorite, Granite)
- Calcite spawns in large clusters in Mountains
- Blossom Trees are now Blossom Oaks, with Oak Wood instead of Spruce
- Their shape has been slightly tweaked and they now grow as an "oversized" Big Oak rather than just a recolored Big Oak like before
- New textures by Sully
- Bottling Clouds has been moved to the appropriate new cloud level
- Clouds are no longer solid
- Changed to Shear Vines for consistency with the vanilla mechanic
- Use Shears instead of Flint and Steel
- Sorting and Management (Insert/extract/etc) buttons are now opt-in for other mods' screens rather than opt-out
- Insert and Extract now change tooltip when you're sneaking to indicate their filtered mode
- When opening a screen, if chest searching was previously enabled, the bar won't stay selected immediately so you can still leave it by pressing E
- Now works when there's a Grate directly under it.
- Charcoal Block and Blaze Lantern now properly burn indefinitely
- Added Glow Berry Sack
- Is no longer considered an "Underground Biome"
- Corundum Clusters generate above Deepslate and are now slightly larger
- Now uses Amethyst sound effects
- Clusters now have the same bounding and collision box as Amethyst Clusters
- Waxed Corundum is now craftable in the same was as Waxed copper blocks
- New textures by Sully
- Variants can now be crafted in the Stonecutter
- Recipe changed to use Obsidian as Biotite isn't there anymore
- Every ladder type now has the Iron Ladder behavior (can freestand as long as there's a ladder above)
- Improved the Config so you can include only the parts you want
- Merged Shulker Box Drop-In, Right Click Armor, and Lava Bucket as Trash into Expanded Item
- Now using the vanilla item interaction system rather than the homebrew ARL one
- This fixes compatibility issues with mods like Mouse Tweaks
- However, it loses the + and tooltip
- Shulker Boxes can be right clicked onto other items to add them in rather than just the item onto the box
- Feeding Troughs are now considered 1.5 blocks tall for animals so they don't get on it
- Now spawns only below Y=0
- Now spawns only when the light level is exactly 0
- Improved AI logic for sleeping on furnaces
- Glowing Glass Item Frame is made with Glowing Ink Sac
- Added Azalea and Flowering Azalea variants
- Are now named "_ Leaf Hedge", because "Azalea Hedge" sounded weird (eg. Oak Leaf Hedge, Spruce Leaf Hedge)
- Now using vanilla's tooltip system, so now they'll always fit and won't use janky spaces, hurray!
- Tooltips that previously went outside the box such as maps and shulker boxes now go inside for consistency with Bundles
- Merged Iron Plates and Iron Ladder into Industrial Palette
- Added Iron Pillar block
- Variants can now be crafted in the Stonecutter
- New textures by Sully
- Added Azalea and Flowering Azalea variants
- Copper derivate blocks are now considered magnetizable in the same way as iron
- Vanilla candles overtake the old quark candles as influencers
- Stacking 4 candles in a single block counts as max influence now (+50%)
- Updated the GUI texture to use the new lapis icon
- Now spawns between Y=-10 and Y=10
- Improved configurability so you can now change the spawn distancing parameters
- Cactus Paste is now Moss Paste, made by smelting Moss
- Removed Green Dye recipe as it's not needed anymore
- Variants can now be crafted in the Stonecutter
- New textures by Sully
- Now spawns only between Y=-50 and Y=0
- Replaced ore blocks in the loot table with the respective raw ores
- Added Raw Copper and Rabbit Hide to the loot table
- Merged Cobblestone Bricks into More Brick Types, you can still turn off bricks individually
- Added variatnts for Calcite, Dripstone, and Tuff
- Calcite variants are taking over where Marble variants left off
- Slate is now Shale. This is purely a name change
- Updated worldgen cluster sizes if Big Stone Clusters is disabled
- Merged Paper Decor and Bamboo Mats into Oriental Palette
- Bamboo Mats are now crafted as a carpet size block with the same rotation properties
- 4 Carpet size Bamboo Mat = 2 Full Bamboo Mat
- Updated maps to the new vanilla biomes
- Snowy Tundra map is now Sandy Plains Map
- Mountains map is now Windswept Hills map
- Giant Tree Taiga map is now Old Growth Pine Taiga map
- Is no longer considered an "Underground Biome"
- Spawning logic is the same, but now relegated to the top of Frozen Peaks biomes (Y > 105)
- Renamed from Item Pipes to Copper Pipes
- Recipe now uses Copper Ingots instead of Iron Ingots
- Retextured accordingly
- Redesigned the main screen with a nice panorama and new button layout
- Is now crafted with Prismarine Crystals instead of Biotite
- Retextured accordingly
- Is now using the same system as Bundles for adding and removing items
- Supports right clicking onto an item in the inventory to add as opposed to just the item onto it
- Inventory interactions use bundle sound effects
- Now spawn only below Y=0
- Now spawns only when the light level is exactly 0
- Heart of Diamond drop rate is now 100%
- Now spawn only below Y=0
- Now spawns only when the light level is exactly 0
- Increased the spawn rate and amount that spawn at once
- They now eat Glow Berries
- Bundles are now craftable with the same recipe that was to be introduced to vanilla
- Bundles and Sculk Sensor will also show up in creative properly
- Right clicking a "ghost item" when using the Recipe Book to craft loads up the recipe for that item
- This creates a "crafting queue" where the items you're trying to craft show up above the result
- Upon crafting the current item, the previous recipe that wanted it is loaded automatically
- This is kinda hard to explain in text so here's a video
- This feature was available in the Experimental module previously, but wasn't fully completed
- New friendly doggo that spawns in mountain biomes
- Tamed and interacted with in the same way as a wolf
- If not sitting, will fetch any arrows or tridents you throw after they land and bring them back to you
- If you're holding a torch, they'll look around for dark spots and get mad at them so you know what to light up next (video demo)
- Having them sit on a bed makes them turn sideways and look very derp which is cute
- This feature was available in the Experimental module previously, but wasn't fully completed
- Furnaces crafted from Deepslate or Blackstone have new textures
- Blackstone Furnaces can emit soul fire if placed over a soul fire holding block
- Otherwise, they both behave entirely the same as normal Furnaces
This is just the start for Quark in 1.18 and beyond. I'm going to take a short break now to regain my energy, and then we'll get to bringing in the cool content you know quark for. Sully and I have been brainstorming upcoming features. Here's a little teaser...
Happy Holidays to everyone, I hope you enjoy Quark 3.0.
Bravo good sir, we're rebooting our server to 1.18 shortly and Quark is one we have used since 1.15.2. Keep up the good work and regain that energy!