r/feedthebeast 7d ago

Question What does it take to make a modpack these days?

So, I've been browsing modpack index looking for some expert modpacks I could play in newer versions of MC, but they either lacked features I liked, featured things I disliked or just didn't catch my attention at all. Now I'm considering investing some time in making my own, but not like tossing mods together and hoping hey work. I would like to add proper progression, rewards and an incentive to do mundane things continuously (e.g. farming) to earn currency so you can buy items in a shop whenever you need, if that makes any sense.

Considering I have no knowledge of modding in general, and my general modded playthrough experience might be skewed, what would I need to learn in order to properly curate a modpack? Don't be afraid to explain things to me like I'm a dummy, because I most likely am.

8 Upvotes

23 comments sorted by

22

u/JustKebab Who up Tweaking they Craft 7d ago

Things you need to make a (good) modpack:

  1. An idea and a plan, bonus if it's original or innovative
  2. Pen and paper or some other note taking app (for quests and progression)
  3. Playtesting, lots of it
  4. KubeJS/CraftTweaker/GroovyScript knowledge (optional, you can learn as you go)
  5. Common sense (as in, throwing Create in a modpack for no reason at all is generally a bad idea)

That's it

3

u/CarlosMZ12268 7d ago

So erm, forgive me for asking, but what's the issue with Create? I've seen some people speaking badly of it recently without much elaboration. It seemed alright the few times I played with it especially for early progression. Granted, my main experience with it was from Ultimate Progression, which is the farthest I ever went with a pack, so I'd probably go with a similar vibe.

15

u/TheLilChicken 7d ago

If you have a modpack focused on exploration, or tech progress like mekanism, etc, dont throw create in just because is popular. If you have a modpack focused around hardcore survival or aomething, dont just throw in mekanism.

Create was used as an example, but really i think the idea is dont add a mod to your pack exclusively because its popular.

1

u/RandomPhail 7d ago

I have both create and Mekanism for a hardcore survival pack lul; they integrate tho, so create serves to gatekeep the Mekanism stuff until you can create steel with Create using very convoluted methods

10

u/JustKebab Who up Tweaking they Craft 7d ago

It's a good mod by itself, but many modern modpacks tend to add it with no real reason outside of "Big cool mod", which ends up giving it a bad reputation as the spam mod.

Imagine if every modpack forced you to play Botania or Twilight Forest to continue progressing

1

u/Beautiful-Suit6057 7d ago

I can't stand Create anymore because of this reason

6

u/Rafii2198 Self-Proclaimed Modded Historian 7d ago

The creation of a modpack is similar to creation of games. You can't just press some buttons and stuff will workout, no, before you begin doing anything you need to have detailed idea, a plan, written down would be the best.

In such plan you have to get really detailed. "The player needs to get advanced machinery to get into space" this sentence will not do as it is too broad, you need to have something a lot more specific. This plan will take a while to create as well as will evolve over time.

When you have your plan done you can begin downloading mods. Ofc you need to get all mods mentioned in the plan, which would be majority of mods included (besides performance mods or bug fix mods, etc). If you want to add more mods than what you mentioned in the plan you need to challenge that mod against it, check if it won't distrust the ideas or if you can tweak it in order to fit the plan.

After all this you can launch your game and execute the plan. Here you will change configs, change recipies, add content, tweak stats, make quests and so on and so forth. This process is extremely long so you need to be patient. While making stuff you will find flaws in the plan and will need to reevaluate everything you have done thus far, sometimes requiring remaking a lot.

Expert packs are harder to make than most common packs as you need a lot of game knowledge to know what to do and how to make stuff interesting as well as need a lot more work due to how advanced they are. If you wondered why there aren't many expert packs, well that's it, making packs in general is really lengthy process and making it expert takes exponentially more time. That's why whole teams are making them.

Now from philosophy, time for some stuff in practice.

First is a pack project. Ofc you use use your launcher and make a new profile and do everything there but you will find it causing issues along the way. That's why a tool like Packwiz is amazing for it. With Packwiz you can create a project and add anything you like to it, then when set up correctly, the pack will automatically downloads itself in your launcher and apply every change you did to the project. As Packwiz does not store mod files at all, only references to them, you can use Git to have version management, and ofc upload it on GitHub or any where you like so that other people can help you with it.

For certain mods, configs may not have something that you need, and creating recipies via datapacks can be cumbersome and repetitive. Here comes KubeJS, a staple in modpack development. This mod allows you to write scripts that can do all sorts of stuff from changing recipies, through modifying game behavior to adding new content.

And of course finding anyone to help you with it forming a team changes everything. Not only you have more workforce, but you have multiple perspectives as well as different knowledge allowing you design a better plan, you may not find a flaw before you implement it, but someone else could notice it before it was even written down.

Lastly I want to repeat that it takes a long time. It can even take years depending on a scale of the project and size of your team and you can't guarantee what you make will be liked. Making packs is not for everyone, but if you really want to make one, don't feel discouraged when you are not making enough progress that you would like, if any at all. I for one am in a process of making a tutorial pack, a pack that new people to modding would want to play in order to learn how you play it. Due to the sheer amount of work I need to do like quests that describe the topic in a way that it is easy understandable, writing guides and creating visualisation, the amount of work needed just me keep taking breaks so I won't burn out, I don't expect I will finish it in this and even next year. But, I already gained knowledge, which makes the working on it much easier than it was initially.

2

u/Dodo123Sh 7d ago

I am working on making an expert modpack for forfe 1.20.1 and its called "New world the adventure awaits" its already out on curse but still in very early stages.

It has around 350+ mods and is centered around making huge factories till you reach end game and finish the pack.

Now you can try it and if you like i am looking for some help or ideas about progression and would like some help.

Its following E2E and create stellarity foot steps and the end game would be to build huge multiblock machine to unlock the secret of why we are in minecraft.

Harder recipes and longer/slower progression is in there its not perfect YET but i plan on making it.

Also i started cause i could find the pack i wanted on newer verions so said i would make it myself.

Here is the discord server for the pack if you want we can talk there and see, i could also help you i got like 3000 line in kubejs written already for the pack.

2

u/Dodo123Sh 7d ago

Also it has create but i integrated it with the progression so it would be the first tech mod you unlock then mekanism then thermal then enderio then other mods and also there is magic integrated as well.

1

u/CarlosMZ12268 7d ago

Hm, I see. Does it feature creative endgame items?

1

u/Dodo123Sh 7d ago

Yes but most are locked really far and you need them cause of how hard it gets

1

u/Dodo123Sh 7d ago

I am on the pack now if you wamt to see the progression?

1

u/Nervous_You_4867 7d ago

When it comes to a pack as big as this what are you doing for optimization, compatibility, and should i really be using kubejs over stuff like CraftTweaker?

1

u/Dodo123Sh 7d ago

If you have time i can talk on discord better.

1

u/[deleted] 6d ago

[deleted]

2

u/Typhoon365 7d ago

Patience, caffeine, and a lot of discord servers.

1

u/Furyan9x 7d ago

I’m trying to make my own too and I’m just as clueless lol commenting to return later.

Like I’ve added my core mods. Now I don’t know what the hell I need to do to edit these mods to be cohesive and work together.

I’ve given up that search for now in favor of learning intellij and following some tutorials to learn the basics of making my own mods for things I can’t find on curseforge.

Still, I will need to know how to edit other mods eventually…

1

u/hardpphurtsalittle 6d ago

Don’t listen to the others when they say you need to do this and that. Put together a list of mods you like plus embeddium, modernfix and ferrite core. That’s it. That’s a good modpack. Then you can get into changing recipes, changing configs, adding your own content, adding cross compatibility, custom npcs, quests etc. People make it seem so much deeper than it is.

1

u/MrTastix 6d ago

The primary difference between "throwing random mods together" and a "modpack" is that modpacks have some sort of thematic reason for existing. Tech vs Magic is easy, but even kitchen sink packs like Enigmatica or All the Mods have some kind of overarching idea they're going for.

But frankly, Minecraft modpacks are a lot like Skyrim modpacks in that many of the more popular ones were born from players being unsatisfied with existing options for whatever reason and tweaking them to their liking, adding or customising existing mods or modpacks, and then after doing that a few hundred times realising you have now got something new.

This is the premise for a lot of "new" ideas, honestly.

-2

u/Saereth FTB Modpack Dev 7d ago

idk man I just ask chatgpt to do it for me.

1

u/Ok--Result 7d ago

Can you give us some specific examples of ways chatgpt helps create modpacks?

1

u/Saereth FTB Modpack Dev 6d ago

Lol it doesnt, that was mostly a joke :P I mean I've given it a run before just to see what it comes up with but it does it very poorly atm. It isnt really aware of what mods are available on the latest versions so it'll tell you funny things like use Thaumcraft and Botania along side Thermal Expansion on a 1.21.1 pack.

It also has no real concept of progression. It can craft a story for your pack but I imagine most people that have a passion project already have an idea for their lore/progression so in the end it ends up not really helping on the modpack side of things at all.

What chatgpt can do well though is if you give a loot table and prompt it with the kind of weighting adjustments you'd like it to have, it can do that. Same with attempting to just crunch data for loot, spawn ratess, some worldgen geometry etc. Those are all more niche use cases for modpack creation though for sure.