Femtocraft is...
A tech mod for Minecraft. Femtocraft is intended to be a late-game oriented utility mod that performs many functions that other mods currently do not.
Theme
Femtocraft is based upon a world of Pseudo-science, where the chemistry of Minecraft is slowly being discovered by the player. They begin with Tesla-inspired electrical masterpieces, progress into a Borg-ian universe of Nanites and green, pulsating circuitry, and end with their attempts at manipulating the fabric of reality itself. All Technological Tiers have their own primary color, enabling users to see at-a-glance what interactions are possible.
What makes it Special?
Femtocraft's draw is its rich and detailed Tech Tree, with an immersive theme. Those who play Femtocraft begin with Vanilla minecraft materials, but within the course of one or two hours find themselves deep inside of Femtocraft's Persistent Tech Tree. Items in Femtocraft are made primarily with other items in Femtocraft. The goal is to avoid recipe collisions as much as possible by mainly incorporating items other mods could not provide. A united GUI theme and a simple but striking texture theme set apart Femtocraft machines from others.
Persistent Tech Tree
All player technological trees are stored separate from their player data. This enables Femtocraft to look up a particular player's progression even while they are not online. Research data is also safer in that it has no ties to any common data storage, meaning it's separate from potential corruption or unintended modification.
The practical aspect of this is that player advancements in the Tech Tree can and do persist across their machines. Finish the technology that is a 20% speed upgrade to your machines? All machines you own from here on out have that 20% speed upgrade, whether you're online or not.
Multiplayer Design
A large percentage of Minecraft players play online with other players in servers. Femtocraft attempts to accomodate and deal with potential hazards through various mechanisms. The first is TileEntity ownership. All Femtocraft TileEntities remember who placed them. Only their owner, his authorized 'assistants', and moderators can interact with or destroy these TileEntities.
The other side affect is as stated before. Because machines know who owned them, they can interact with the Tech Tree to see what technologies their owner has researched, and how these technologies will affect how they perform.
Configurability
Femtocraft is being coded with the mentality of being used in modpacks. To this end, there will always be unexpected naming collisions, ore generation modifications, and inter-mod exploits. My goal is that any constant in Femtocraft will be loaded from Configurations. From ore generation locations, amounts, to power generation constants. I will not use this as a cop-out in attempting to balance the mod. However, I understand that often it is the case that mod owners and pack creators have different ideas of what constitutes balance. In this case, the pack creator often has a greater visualization of his end goals and a larger view of inter-mod interactivity that enables him to have a better understanding of what would or would not constitute balance. To this end, I will leave the ultimate decisions up to them.
Cross-Mod Compatability
It will be possible to play this mod completely stand-alone with Vanilla Minecraft, but I am developing it with the goal of it being used in major modpacks. To this end, once I am far enough along in Femtocraft, I will attempt to keep up-to-date native cross-mod support as miniature child mods of Femtocraft. This will be accomplished through the use of peripherals, such as Femtocraft Power -> MJ Engines, and visa versa.
Femtocraft as a parent Mod
Femtocraft is Open Source. I am also planning on having Femtocraft only be the core mod for a suite of addons that I intend to release, all based upon the Femtocraft Fundamentals - Technology, Power, and Theme. To this end, Femtocraft is being designed as an API towards these main ideas - because, in the end, I myself will be using this mod as an API for other mods. If you are interested in contributing to Femtocraft, or in developing an addon, please shoot me an email. I want to know your opinions!
Femtocraft is currently in development. I will be posting snapshot updates as I implement certain features. I am planning on releasing, at the latest, by the end of June 2014.
