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🌍 The PMC Weekly October 9th, 2021chrome_reader_mode
PMC
YSG the Fox
Spoopy seasonnnnn is upon us! 👻 With the launch of our Happy Halloween Event, there are PLENTY of creepy crawly creations! This short but sweet weekly features submissions that don't fall into the Halloween category and haven't been entered into the event, as we will highlight those in the Halloween Event Summary at the end of the month/beginning of next month. We have some celestial inspired skins and a pack that pairs perfectly with one of them, a new texture pack that has outstanding pixel art, a few new mob models, and more! We don't want to spoil anything but the official interview this week is an exceptionally interesting one 😎.
 OFFICIAL EVENTS AND CONTESTS |
Happy Halloween! 👻
Happy October, ghosts and ghouls! This October we're celebrating Halloween with a month-long event. Let's find some pumpkins, brew some potions, clip on our bat-wings and go all-out with some Halloween-themed Minecraft creations!
You can enter up to FIVE Halloween-themed creations. Don't let appearances fool you: there is nothing scary about joining in on the fun. We welcome any crafty creation that fits the theme! Skins can be wicked witches and terrible monsters, or trick-or-treaters in fun costumes. You can build haunted houses or mysterious graveyards, write spine-chilling tales or add some spooks to the world of Minecraft!
Deadline: October 31st
| An UPDAAAATE! Cyprezz has been working hard to bring this new feature to you! Introducing... advanced filters!! Today, we're launching advanced filters for all major content sections to give you more control over what you're looking for and want to see. This filter system has all of the bells and whistles - range sliders, multi checkbox enhancements, custom settings that are shareable via URL, and more. Visit Cyprezz's forum post to read all about it! Here's a screenshot of the advanced filter panel for data packs! Important note: This feature is currently available for members only, desktop only. |  |
WINNERS have been announced for the Prehistoric Mobs Mob Skin Contest! Be sure to check out the Final Leaderboard to see all of top contestants!
 COMMUNITY EVENTS AND CONTESTS |
| 🆕 NEW! In celebration of their 200 subscribers, MJ_mcMaster is hosting a player skin contest called "The Green"! You must create a skin based on the theme/color green, and it must be standard resolution only. You may enter up to TWO skin! Check out the forum thread for more information! Deadline: TBD |  |
| PBL (Palette Battle League) Season 2, 2021 is underway! To enter you have to make a skin with the given grid (make sure you only use 12 of the 16 shades) you see to the right. Hosted by Bureine. Deadline: October 17 Some fun facts about PBL PBL Dates back to 2014, and is the longest running community skinning contest to date! Knightsundere wrote a blog a while back that includes many more details of its origins and covers highlights from season 1 through 4. Zitzabis curated collections for each season of PBL. You can see them all here. |  |
| YokaiS is hosting an art event where your task is to draw one of the datapacks they've made. This event is purely for fun. You must submit your artwork as a blog and make sure it somehow related to Halloween. You're allowed to enter up to 3 pieces of art! Deadline: October 23 |  |
UPCOMING DEADLINES
| 😁 (Skins) Type | Title + Link | Host | Date / Deadline |
| Reshade Contest | Fall is Near | CactiFern | October 10 |
| Reshade Contest | Fall Reshade | Alderleaf | October 18 |
| Themed Contest | Video Game Skin Contest | MarshXmellow | October 19 |
| 💾 (Mod & Data Pack) Type | Title + Link | Host | Date / Deadline |
| Datapack Contest | Marine Wonders Datapack Contest 🐬 | YokaiS | TODAY |
| 👽 (Other) Type | Title + Link | Host | Date / Deadline |
| Poster Event | Stop Bullying | PsioPsia001 | October 10 |
WINNERS of mshailz Make a Redstoner Skin Contest have been announced! Congratulations to the winners:
⭐OTHER HIGHLIGHTS |
ART GALLERY🎨
 cressmoon posted a Halloween redraw from last year in a wall post. There are the slightest of differences between the two, but the more detailed boots are the most noticeable in the one on the right! 🥾 |  In their latest art blog, Trader shares some amazing digital bust drawings. Their 4 year art anniversary is coming up soon - you can check out all of their art blogs here. |  Coffee & Croissant by ahhhlynnn is just 1 of two drawings in their latest blog. ☕ The blog includes a few inspirational quotes and a couple of questions for you to answer! |
 Carcharodontosaurus added 2 new drawings to his blog: "Ravenous Sea" (shown above) and "Jaws that shatter bone". We highly encourage you to check out the art blog, as it is FULL of some really intriguing drawings of Dinosaurs, Dragons, and organics! |
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OTHER BLOGS📚
In addition to illustrative art, we saw quite a few literary art pieces in the Blog Section this week. Here are a few of our favorites:
Dancing Shadows by Cardinal System
Death Follows by chickenpants93
Philosophical Life-Time by MoonAstraea
CELESTIAL INSPIRED SUBMISSIONS🌙
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In celebration of their 400 subscribers, budg1e made this skin titled "would you like a mooncake?" this skin is based on the Chinese mid-autumn festival which is celebrated by eating mooncakes. Mooncakes are a special pastry made up of Cake flower and golden syrup with lotus-paste based filling. Yum! 🤤 | This skin may not visually appear to be inspired by the sky, but the name certainly is. Stella means "star" and is DragonsDungeon latest skin. The skin is acutually inspired by a song called Stella-rium by Kano. The music video contains a character which Dragons based this skin off of. | This purple pastel skin was create by Mellie for angelicteaaa's birthday! The skin titled "l u n a" is a recreation of angelictea's persona Starling and uses a lighter purple palette than the original. We love both versions of the persona! |
| While browsing trending submissions for these celestial inspired skins, we came across this back by Eveee_cx that seamlessly fits here. Celestial tools was created for Absolutegrace's 2.5k Instagram subscriber milestone and contains tools that replace the Diamond pickaxe, sword, shovel, axe, hoe, deepslate and diamond ore and block. The pack's soft colors of this palette pairs perfectly with melliee's luna skin we highlighted above! |  |
FEATURED TEXTURE PACKS
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| One of the newest texture packs on PMC is receiving outstanding reviews! Gleam things, created by Viper_png, is a cartoony vibrant 16x resource pack with a unique pixel art style. It's still a work in progress, however, a substantial amount of blocks are already finished. Be sure to favorite this pack if you want update notifications! | pigeo has been making improvements to some Minecraft blocks for about four months now! They've replaced salmons with a shrimp model, parrots with a toucan and more recently silverfish with a cockroach and cod with beaver! |
FEATURED MAPS This colorful intersection is part of Turnia Island and was created by muse_syu using the MiniaTuria resource pack and mod! The island is FULL of beautiful buildings, a fair ground, soccer field, school, a large town clock, a train, vehicles, foliage, and the coziest of vibes! ℹ️ More information about the mod can be found on their website: https://miniaturia.club/en/mt1122/ |  |
WORLD GENERATION DATA PACKS 🌎
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| More Dungeons by Endernice61 adds 6 new dungeons: Pillager tower, dark tower (shown above), supply fort, pillager pit, temple, and skeleton dungeon. All of the dungeons have custom loot and advancements, too! | Imagine a Minecraft world made up of just the ocean biome... well, you don't have to imagine it because SirMephistoPheles666 created a data pack where the world only generates ocean biomes! |
Click for the official interview with Starmute
Starmute came recommended by their peers in this forum post and there's no question why; they've been on Planet Minecraft for just over a year and have taken the data pack section by storm with some of their world generation packs that you may recognize. Their most popular pack, Incendium, has over 269,000 views and nearly 75,000 downloads! Here are three of their world generation data packs - you can check out all of their submissions here!
 Nullscape - End Reborn |  Incendium - Nether Expansion |  Terralith - Overworld Evolved |
How did your Minecraft Experience begin?
I heard about Minecraft way back in the Alpha days of 2010, when somebody on a forum for another game was whining that he could never mine enough diamonds to craft new tools. I tried Classic back then, but I got bored.
I didn’t think about the game again until 2011, when another random conversation convinced me to just try the game out for myself, in Beta 1.6.6. I ended up being one of those people who was SUPER hyped for the Aether mod when it was being teased. When it finally came out, I spent way too much time playing it.
Where did you learn how to create data packs?
This is gonna sound silly, but almost everything I do with worldgen is either something I taught myself, or something I invented. Usually this means it’s pretty awful at first!
This has been the case since the beginning. In 1.16, our options for features were a lot more limited, so I created some pretty questionable techniques. Some of these methods were honestly pretty horrible. Let me give you an example…
In Incendium’s Toxic Heap biome, there are spikes made of lime stained glass. In early versions of the pack, this is how they were made:
- Generate the surface of the biome as snow. Yes, really. This is needed because ice spikes can only be placed on snow.
- Use a cave with a ‘carving mask’ feature to randomly place ice spikes along the cave’s path.
- Use another carving mask to place a ‘replace blob’ at every single spot along the cave’s path, to turn the packed ice to lime stained glass.
- Use yet another carving mask to put back the netherrack that the cave deleted.
- Spam replace blobs across the entire chunk to turn the surface’s snow back to lime terracotta, the intended surface block.
These days, I really like to stay on the cutting edge with worldgen. Every time we get a new feature, I immediately tear it apart, even reading the game’s code to see how many ways I can twist it into something completely unintended.
Lots of other developers have pushed the worldgen meta forward too. Sulfenir and Aelve have been a huge help; they deserve a lot of credit for discovering new techniques and helping me understand them.
Do you know any coding languages?
I’m pretty decent with Java, and my knowledge of C++ is passable, but programming has always been more of a ‘means to an end’ for me. I’m really just an artist who just so happens to know how to do a bit of coding.
What inspired you to start creating datapacks?
I had been getting pretty bored of playing survival Minecraft, and while reading the snapshot patch notes for 20w28a, which had just been released that same day, I noticed that custom biomes had been added. I had been looking for a good nether mod for a while, but I couldn’t find one that had a lot of opportunities for new mob farms, so I just decided that I’d make one myself. It was supposed to be a small little datapack with maybe four or five new biomes. Aaaaaaand that turned into Incendium.
How long does it typically take to create one of your world generation data packs?
That can vary a lot. For the first release: Nullscape took only three weeks, Incendium took a month, and Terralith took nearly a year! I would say it’s more interesting, though, to discuss how long it takes to create a biome. Those also vary wildly.
There have been times when I just have an idea, get a burst of inspiration and throw together a beautiful biome in an hour. Terralith’s Yellowstone was that way - the entire biome took me only an hour and a half to make, and it’s the best one in the pack.
On the other hand, sometimes I decide that I want to invent a brand new system when I’m crafting a biome. This happens pretty often; I almost never reuse techniques in multiple biomes, because I want every biome to have its own unique feel. Inventing new worldgen techniques is a verrrry time-consuming process. Terralith’s Mountains biome took around 10 hours. Salt Mountains took 20. The Salt Mountains were probably the hardest biome for me to create because I wanted different stone layers in the actual mountain… which meant I had to tune about 10 different layers of features. Pain.
Can you tell us (or at least give us a hint) as to what data packs you’re currently working on?
Well… my next big project is something that isn’t even a datapack at all!
About a month ago I met a guy named Ciosciaa, who’s essentially the Bedrock Edition version of myself (though, he’s a lot more of a ‘programmer’ type than I am, and honestly he’s a lot smarter too.) He has made some absolutely amazing technological advancements in Bedrock Edition’s worldgen system. After talking with him, I knew that we had to make something together.
We’ve started a company called Stardust Labs, and we plan on releasing a Bedrock Edition port of Terralith for sale on the Minecraft Marketplace!
Who in the datapack community do you look up to?
Oh boy, there’s a lot of awesome people in this community.
Hashs has some of the highest-quality packs on PMC, and I can’t deny that I greatly appreciate her crusade against low-effort content.
rx97 is a godly coder; his skill with function code is crazy. He was good enough that I even hired him to optimize Incendium (and fix my old awful function code), and his improvements have been pretty amazing.
Finally, kanokarob is a great dev, and in some ways I see him as a representative for the datapack community in general. His recent video about our community is really underrated, and I highly recommend you check it out!
You have several very popular packs. What do you think attributes to their success? Do you advertise them anywhere other than publishing on PMC?
Lots of things! With Incendium, everything was sort of perfectly timed. I released the pack on the same day 1.16.2 came out (with support for custom biomes), so there was a bit more attention coming to Minecraft in general at the time.
Terralith was different: I hyped it up for almost a year before releasing it, and posted pictures in a bunch of Discord servers, but I really don’t think that even helped much. In the end, the most important thing was the fact that I was blessed with a video from AsianHalfSquat, the king of mod reviews. This was really lucky for me - being featured by a YouTuber (especially one with a great audience like his) got me tens of thousands of downloads in just a couple of days. The morning of that video, I think I had around 250 people join my Discord. It was amazing.
Out of all of the ones you’ve made, which one is your favorite?
It's obviously Anvil Sand Farming, why would you even ask th
…Okay, it's Terralith, hands down. I've put so many hundreds of hours into it; sometimes I feel like it might be the greatest thing I've ever created overall, not just in Minecraft.
What advice do you have for members that are looking to get their data pack more noticed/popular?
Oh, another good question! I have a lot of random bits of advice so I'll just put them down rapid-fire.
- Don't make popularity your main goal! Just put love and effort into what you make, and people will enjoy it.
- Spend a LOT of time figuring out a good name. Personally I'm a huge fan of one-word names. Often when I create datapacks, I go through long lists of possible names and throw them into a search engine to see if anyone has used them before.
- Try to build up a community as soon as you can. Having a lot of cool people to support you helps so much with creating better content (shoutout to TheKingWhale, tacocatter , Netheferious, Botany, and my Patrons!)
- Make content that people will want to keep using, rather than making things just for the novelty.
- pls don't make op loot packs thanks
What are your top 3 data packs that others have created?
That’s a tough one. This is gonna take me a while!
Crois’s Dungeon Now Loading is incredible. The amount of structures and content in that pack is just wild, and it's not even finished yet.
Hex gets bonus points for completely rewriting his structure generation system from postgen to proper worldgen. Extra bonus points for being incredibly skilled with the jigsaw system.
The Creeper's Code is another great one. There's a huge amount of content to explore in that pack, and it's all so well optimized too. TCC basically invented function code standards, as far as I'm concerned.
I have to give some credit to WilliamWythers for his excellent Overhauled Overworld pack. In terms of raw effort it's gotta be up there, and I appreciate the way he designed all of his biomes after real places. While the strictly realistic style isn't something I'd usually use, it's definitely an amazing pack with a ton of effort put into it.
I know you asked for 3, but I also want to mention that I love small datapacks with a clear purpose. Packs like beqaa’s AntiF3, rx97’s EnderChest+, and Scommander_’s Friendly Difficulty are awesome and add a lot to the game!
What do you think defines a good datapack?
Love and effort makes a good datapack. Innovating and doing things no one ever thought of makes it great.
A while ago, William Wythers asked me how I made my mountains in Terralith, and to teach him how to do something similar. I told him a little bit about my method, and I encouraged him to take a look at my code. But instead of just letting him copy it, I challenged him to invent his own method of generating nice mountain peaks. He took my challenge, and came back with a really awesome result a couple of days later. While there were still some issues with chunk borders, he managed to make peaks work pretty well with snow layers, which was something brand new.
This kind of innovation is what drives the datapack community forward! When developers invent new methods and techniques like this, everyone benefits, and that's wonderful.
If you were to learn another ‘niche’ skill in Minecraft, what would it be (create texturepacks, skin, etc).
You must’ve read my mind! Almost every single interest that I have is something incredibly niche.
About a year ago, when I started working with iskall85 on the Vault Hunters modpack, I met a guy named KaptainWutax, who is an absolute god of seed finding. He showed me some insane things like a ‘noodle stronghold’:
Since then, I’ve always taken an interest in seed finding and all the associated wacky phenomena it can find, but I’ve never personally gotten into it. I’d love to start someday!
Do you play any other video games other than Minecraft?
I really enjoy playing the Touhou Project games. Shoutout to the 2 people reading this who know what that is!
Touhou is an insanely difficult series of bullet hell games made by a dude in Japan who goes by ZUN. This guy makes the entire game by himself - music, art, coding and everything else.
I love the bullet patterns and the challenge, but the music is what always gets me.
My favorite Touhou game is definitely Perfect Cherry Blossom, partly because of Yukari Yakumo’s boss fight, which is one of the coolest boss fights in any game ever.
Also Necrofantasia from that game is an amazing song.
I’ve actually 1cc’d two of the games (Imperishable Night and Unconnected Marketeers) on Lunatic difficulty. Would not recommend unless you have a lot of patience and enjoy the death sound.
Are there any hobbies outside of Minecraft that you have?
Too many!
I make fractal art. This is actually where a good part of my worldgen ‘instincts’ come from - the whole process of creating worlds using pure math is actually really similar to creating worlds with blocks. Here’s a picture of one of my favorites that I've made:
I also build lasers:
And I make plasma globes and other plasma artwork:
I've also played piano since I was around four years old! I'm not that great though.
What is your dream career?
I actually have quite a good job right now! Of course, making a career out of Stardust Labs would be pretty awesome, and it's definitely the goal I'm working towards with Ciosciaa.
Do you have any pets?
Sadly, no. I love cats though.
Tell us a fun fact about you!
The name “Starmute” is reaaaallly old. I created it around 2009.
There was a game called Orbz that I played when I was very young. In that game, you could add ‘bot’ players to a server, and they had names picked from a list. One of the standard bot names there was “Starmule”. I corrupted it to “Starmute” and I’ve kept that name ever since!
Anything you'd like to add?
Well, I’d like to just thank PMC once more not just for interviewing me, but for existing and providing such a great platform for creators! PMC is the reason I've had this amazing success with my Minecraft content and I'm very grateful for that.
Create an account or sign in to comment.
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Bruh, I made a freaking story blog (yes, it's still unfinished, but still...), and that's getting pretty popular! (Slowly)
I'm also getting a bunch of skins done!
*angery*
So... how was I not mentioned? >:T
Anyways, congrats to the person who got interviewed!
I'm also getting a bunch of skins done!
*angery*
So... how was I not mentioned? >:T
Anyways, congrats to the person who got interviewed!
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Have patience fellow arist! :) Keep on posting, enjoy your time and have fun. Some day it will happen automatically. Asking for it might make it harder to get into the mentions.
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I know, I know... (EEEEEEEEEEE)
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There's been no mention of Carvin has there? Make sure you get your profile buddy people!
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This interview is fantastic, big props on great questions. Starmute's answers are really well elaborated and has just the right amount of depth in his perspectives. I think this is the best interview I've read thus far in great part to how focused it is, I felt some of the recent interviews were a bit all over the place so this was awesome. Shoutout to mentioning Touhou, every song ZUN makes is fantastic and the greatness of the adaptations of his melodies by other artists cannot be understated! I need to play the games at some point too, I know so much about them from the osu! community but never got around to them. Thank you for introducing me to a section of minecraft I didn't know anything about to both of you, and best of luck with the marketplace project Starmute!
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Thank you, I'm glad you enjoyed my interview! Glad to see somebody else who's interested in Touhou!!!
If you want to start playing Touhou games you should definitely start with the latest one (Unconnected Marketeers). The card system is really fun and allows you to play the game pretty much however you want.
If you want to start playing Touhou games you should definitely start with the latest one (Unconnected Marketeers). The card system is really fun and allows you to play the game pretty much however you want.
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Fun fact: This was actually the very first time I had actually read through an entire interview.
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Same
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Same lol
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Same boi!
10/10/2021 2:35 am
This reply was removed by the poster or a moderator.
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..I'm not sure how that's relevant at all.
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Wonderful interview!
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Great interview and weekly!
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Thanks for the mention 👌 finally got more time to draw stuff again
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Good job!
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GGs to all the people who got it!
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eyyyy
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AYOOO CONGRATS TO 1ST AND 2ND IN THE PREHISTORIC CONTESTT
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AY YOOOO THX FOR THE CONTEST :)
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Dat's why I'm in :D
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Really cool PMC weekly as usual! The new advanced filters are really great!
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thank you so much for the mention!
