Origins: Synthomorph - Synthesized Forms

[@Future-Frost]

Data Pack Download Link: modrinth.com/datapack/synthomorph-origin

[@CaptainMonkeyFez]

I feel like the forms that require more valuable items should last longer. For example, the cow is almost identical to the goat but getting stacks of beef and leather is pretty easy compared to any surplus of goat horns. As it stands, there is no incentive to using the goat form.

[@Future-Frost]

A fair critique, I will keep this in mind in v2.0 of the data pack.

[@DeepDishDepression]

​@@Future-Frost I agree that more valuable DNA should be stronger, but I'd continue it to even within one mob. A rabbit's foot should last much longer than a rabbit's hide for example

[@mantacid1221]

The sheep form should take the color of the wool used. Could be a fun way to trick other players who know that certain colors correspond to certain forms.

[@mantacid1221]

I think it would be a good idea to go increase the duration of commonly-used forms, as if your body is adjusting to the change.

[@dtfe3]

I like the idea of this origin, but I feel like it doesn't last long enough. You want to stay in a synthesized form but also using the abilities of said synthesized form gives you a fairly large penalty to how long you can stay as the synthesized form. This makes sense from a balance perspective, but you are already restricted from wearing armor. Which means you're giving up the ability to have enchanted armor. This debuff in of itself is kinda crazy imo. Especially in a modded minecraft setting. So in the end you are encouraged to avoid using the abilities of your form in order to utilize the passive benefits of it. Not only that but these synthesized forms have their own debuffs which are applied along with the existing ones (well the ones that aren't base form specific) Now I looked at the link and saw there is another positive ability that grants natural armor. Not sure how good it is, but that hopefully makes up for the armor issue. If you want a suggestion, I'd recommend changing how long the synthesized forms last. But I don't think you should make them last a long time right away. Make the player work for it. My suggestion is keeping track of how often and long a player has been in the different forms overall. The more they have been in a form the more mastery they gain over it, making it last longer and longer with the abilities consuming less of the duration. With this you may also want to include a way to cancel a form, though there should probably be some sort of downside to doing so. (Oh and for the ones that have to be wet in order to gain certain abilities, I'd suggest a way for them to hold onto wetness for a while after leaving the source of it unless they are exposed to something that might dry them out. A glow squid in a desert will dry up faster than one in a jungle. Or one that's standing next to or in fire.) Those are my thoughts. Cool stuff though. Love these kinds of mechanics.

[@NufPro.]

The armor thing is really limiting, I agree. Maybe certain armors should be wearable, like leather or chainmail due to them being "stretchy"

[@Future-Frost]

Thank you for the feedback. Some notes to clarify some of the points you brought up: - The latest update added Adaptive Carapace, which gives you armor based on how many forms you have discovered. - Most armor enchantments are made up for in the different forms: - Want feather falling? Use Slime, Magma Cube, Chicken, or Rabbit. - Want fire protection? Use Blaze or Magma Cube. - When it comes to the form time, I believe the current duration works well, though I understand it might feel short for some players: - Consider how much food you have to eat in the base game. - The origin reduces the amount you need to eat by 50%, and that 50% is then used in synthesizing. - Leaving your current form was added in the latest update, this even includes a screen to confirm that you want to leave the form. - Adding a timer to allow water-based forms to be temporarily still considered wet has been added to my to-do list. - I will consider implementing a mastery system for the individual forms. This will likely be a good ways out though, probably being released as a version 2 of the data pack. - Thank you for playing the data pack, I hope you have fun with it despite its faults. - If you would like to discuss these points in more detail, I suggest you join my Discord server where we can talk more.

[@cordak_Blaster]

"more use more time" idea is very good, the logic of with more time using a synth you get to stay in that form later is just logical and cool, although forms like wither shouldnt have much time added imo

[@Artefactual]

I feel like if you made an evolution to the origin like ive seen some other creators do, then it should have a mastery wheel, that you can switch between discovered forms freely (and no dna expiry at the cost of having your hunger nerfed back to basic, if not a bit worse in order to simulate you using energy to preserve stored dna).

[@Yukiharuwu]

couldn't watch through the entire video since i started getting dizzy from the additional camera effects, but this is well made!

[@Future-Frost]

Sorry, I should have thought about that. I think it's a fun mod and makes camera movement feel good. I can understand though how it could make someone feel dizzy. I'll keep that in mind for next time.

[@Mantibladee]

definitely add an ability called "Synthetic Space" Due to streching and condensing over the large amount of genetic transformations you had, you have built a kind of extra inventory into yourself. (chest inventory, keeps only stuff for synth on death)

[@burnedblackfern017]

Again this is one of the coolest and most thought out origins I've ever seen. And I wasnt expecting nearly as many forms when I heard about it. Like goodness you've done so much. Im only more and more excited to try out this origin. But I still think especially in a server or modpack setting this origin will fall behind. Yes many MANY great options and many of the debuffs you face without enchants are covered by mutations to some extent. But I still think this origin should have access to chain or leather. Chain especially makes sense to me personally as it could technically be worn by all the mutations (except maybe the wither, dudes HUGE lol) and would allow access to enchants. I also agree with the concept of a mastery/adaptation to certain mutations where they either last longer or have reduced cooldowns after transformation. I know a couple other people mentioned the no armor was a big turn away for them as well. If you decide to change it that'd be cool for sure, but its your creation so don't bend your creation to fit others standards if you dont want to. ALSO I am so hype now to see the potential warden mutation with echo shards.

[@The_Hon0red_0ne]

Great video! Its a unique origin can't wait to play the shit out of it and you 100% earned my sub 👍

[@muhammadaimanleongmuhammad9908]

This is an amazing origin

[@nightsgiftstarrealm2627]

May i make a suggestion of phantom form also having night vision to fully utilize its night time abilities? Also is there any way to increase the duration?

[@Future-Frost]

This will be added in v2.0

[@cordak_Blaster]

amazing origin! mostly origins are very much like others and only have some lame ability to compensate, while this is an entire system of unique forms for different occasions!

[@cordak_Blaster]

by the way, I just got an idea for bee synth, (i know that i have no clue how it's codes nor have any right to just claim stuff but i just wanna share it) the bee could obviously fly and would be small and weak, but it could have the ability to use its ability and get a specific effect based in what flower he is holding.

[@fungalr0dent]

big win. dis might get me 2 get back into minecraft even against my own will of the current Legal Drama but who gaf

[@donnovanash2334]

Why wasn't enderman suseptible to water?

[@Future-Frost]

@@donnovanash2334 It is supposed to be. I believe it is in fact. I must have missed an advancement.

[@AveragePAFan]

you should add a piglin form which you get if you use a piglin head

[@Future-Frost]

Added to v2.0 to-do list.

[@savvagenoneedsky7007]

maybe goat should have the ability do deal more damage with crits, since goat horn is rare and it fits thematically with jump ability

[@monke244]

made a guardian form

[@fungalr0dent]

oh yeah suggesting this in a different comment but i think editing the loot-tables of certain entities that share items (eg. horse and a cow both drop leather) should get their own tag when being killed by a synthomorph. Besides that, I think there *could* be a Horse and Feline synth, whereas a horse prioritizes movement, and a cat prioritizes being stealthy (and nimble) perchance ?

[@generic_meathead8566]

epix. What about the warden?

[@Future-Frost]

The Warden does not have a form as it doesn't have any unique drops. Though now that I am thinking about it, I might add a deep dark form in v2.0 using the echo shards.

[@generic_meathead8566]

@Future-Frost epic

[@DrakeLord213]

This is very cool conceptually, but the forms seem to have very short durations and the inability to have armor at all is a huge deal that's honestly worth like 2 or 3 negatives in one in terms of impact. You lose out on so much versatility from not being able to switch gear or enchantments at whim, and you are penalized to your transformation time for using your abilities, which just feels cruel. And to be honest, one of the positives of reducing hunger rate is in my mind as a long time Minecraft player, near worthless. Let us be honest, nearly every player at every skill level is able to find or make an infinite supply of decent to high quality food with little effort, the only thing this saves on is a little bit of time doing the munching animation every so often... I just can't see how that's that valuable. I want to like this, but some things really stick out to me, like how the Ender Dragon form feels particularly weak despite being well... the ender dragon. I assume you did this because of the ease of accumulating dragon's breath, but its just weird to see the Blaze have an arguably better form than the 'final boss' of minecraft. Sure the Dragon has a huge speed boost, that costs you about 1/10th of your total time just to use *once*. Hardly practical. Honestly I could let most of this go, my biggest gripe is the duration as many others have voiced already, you already pay so much just *existing* as this origin, and then you have to go out of your way to make use of your primary benefit - that has a cooldown on use - just to approach the power level of an ordinary character? None of these abilities are so powerful that they would make me consider it over just being vanilla most of the time. Elytra flight? Just... use an elytra. Fire immunity? Potions exist and aren't hard to make. Creeper explosion? I mean neat I guess, but if you like booms that much just carry TNT and your choice of pressure plates or redstone torches around. The other positive the Synthomorph gets is also pretty useless, and you kinda point it out yourself in the first video about it. You have to become completely blind and very slow to use the Synthesize ability, yet you have a 'positive' trait that gives you a 15 second resistance buff after synthesizing? That's *completely* counter intuitive, you are simultaneously asking the player to consider using it in combat, and telling them that using it in combat is a bad idea. So, of the 8 traits the Synthomorph has, I would consider it has 1 'fairly useful' trait with Synthesize, and nothing else that is more than passingly useful. The hunger reduction is near meaningless to a player with any level of awareness about their meters, and the resistance buff is laughably tokenistic. You could have removed the cocoon ability entirely and I don't think anything would change at all, it just isn't relevant at all 99% of the time, and the scenario where it is you don't want to try to get it off. Then you have 5 negative traits too. And your Synthesized forms have negative traits as well. Just feels... like you went to hard the other direction when you were trying to keep this balanced. I know this all sounds like I hate this data pack, but far from it. I think this is one of the more involved and interesting ideas I've seen, sort of like a modern take on the 'morphling' mod from back in the day with its own twist. And also at the end of the day, this is all just my opinion, and I wish you and your development on this nothing but the best.

[@Future-Frost]

I'm going to reply to this and list out some of my reasonings for why I did what I did. I will also be listing out things I plan on changing in v2.0. I hope this doesn't come off as aggressive or anything: - Form times will be getting an update in v2.0, with rarer items increasing time. I will also be adding a system in which the more times you enter a form; the more mastery you have over the form, giving you more time. - The latest update makes up for lack of armor in that you get armor based on how many forms you have discovered. - I feel that you are looking at this origin wrong when it comes to armor enchantments. Sure, you lose the armor enchantments, but this is made up for in the individual forms have various buffs. Your different forms are your different loadouts. - When it comes to losing form time with the use of abilities, think about the hunger system, running takes extra hunger. This is the same in the form time, doing something that exerts yourself takes more form time. - The hunger exhaustion rate being reduced is solely for the purpose of that food being used to synthesize instead of being eaten. - While the Ender Dragon is the final boss of the game, it is not intended to be the strongest form. The Wither takes the role of the ultimate form of the Synthomorph. Despite this, I will buff the Ender Dragon form in v2.0. - Yet again, I would argue you aren't looking at this Origin in the right way. Yes, a lot of the abilities are just alternate ways of doing something that is in the base game; That's the point. It's an alternate progression system from the base game. - The player is not being told to synthesize during combat, the player is just given the option to. The only way one would ever reasonably think about synthesizing during combat is if there was a reward for doing so, so I gave them one. It is something that is put in place as a way of raising the skill ceiling of the synthesize ability. It's there so if you get fast enough at synthesizing, it is something that you can use to your advantage. - I feel the negative traits that are given to the synthesized forms are largely insubstantial. Most of them are trade offs of the positive abilities, like taking damage in water. While others are things like not being able to trade, in which you can just leave the form. I think that covers all of the points you made. If you would like to discuss these grievances in more detail, I urge you to join my Discord server where we can talk more easily. Edit: typos

[@DrakeLord213]

​@@Future-Frost Honestly wasn't expecting a reply at all, and I don't find your response aggressive or anything like that for the record - you wished to state your intent and mindset clearly, I take no issue with this. Seems like many of your planned updated features already alleviate the main concern I had (transformation time), and again, I do think this origin is very cool. I still personally feel like you are giving mixed messages with the cocoon positive trait - and I do understand where you are coming from, but to me it just feels fairly awkward. Being caught out in your base form is already extremely dangerous, so trying to do a minigame in the middle of that I just don't see myself ever trying in the heat of the moment, but this all things considered is a minor grievance I personally have, and I'm sure others think differently. I still feel the weight of positive to negative traits is a bit skewed towards the negative, as you yourself admit that the hunger mitigation isn't really that much of a factor, and the cocoon is rather cumbersome (in my opinion) to use practically, you have a lot of neutral traits, 1 Very good positive trait, and several negatives of varying substance. Don't get me wrong, I understand the need to have balance in something like this, I truly do, I just think that you might have tweaked a bit too much in the interest of not being overpowered, which is a completely understandable goal for the record. All in all I do think your origin is among the most if not the most unique origin I've seen offered up, and one that doubtless demanded much of you, don't let my criticism take away from the fact that this is clearly quite the achievement. I do have one last question for you though - if you are considering including other mobs not yet in the data pack, what are you planning to do about shared drops among mobs, most notably, leather? Horses, Hoglin, and Cows all can drop it, so how would you (if at all, perhaps you do not intend to ever add those creatures) solve that? P.S. I'll likely join the Discord when I get home. Critical discourse without drama is a growing rarity, and I appreciate your curtness.

[@Future-Frost]

@@DrakeLord213 My main idea when it comes to shared drops is "advanced synthesis", at least that's what I've been referring to it as in my notes. The idea is that when synthesizing, instead of only holding one item, you hold an item in you offhand as well. An example of this might be something like the hoglin requiring a porkchop and a blaze rod. Doesn't really make too much sense, but it's the only way to get around stuff like that. I always appreciate when people critique my work; at least when they aren't being complete assholes about it. I can't learn how to improve if I don't know what I need to improve on.

[@4amtoast]

How hard would it be to add forms. Here's a barebones simplified example: let's say I'm playing a modpack with some friends where certain items are hard to get (example the end being closed temporarily) or more likely everyone is using different origins made by different people meaning there's slightly different levels of what is "balance" leading to the synthomorph becoming too weak or powerful in comparison whether is done by the armor restraint or other origins just being poorly balanced (as you probably know a common occurrence) would it just be as easy as going into the code copy and pasting an already complete form then just changing around/ adding new powers, activation items, and achievements allowing me to make custom forms for modded mobs or even taking it a step further and using a custom datepack/mod to make it so certain origins drop custom items then act as activation items for custom forms. Or is it much more complicated than that like changing a form/ adding another form would break the entire origin from a coding perspective

[@Future-Frost]

I can say it wouldn’t be a good time to add new forms. I know I’m eventually going to have to add more and I’m dreading it. You need to select an item, set up a queued form entry, then have that queued form convert to just the form after synthesizing is completed. Then you need to create all of the individual modifiers and abilities and have them only be active when the form resource is at a specific value. For example, in the data pack, base form is 0, blaze is 1, chicken is 2, etc. You would also then need to set up an advancement for the new forms as the advancements are then used for the Adaptive Carapace ability. It’s a grueling process that I’m probably not describing very well. TLDR: It’s not as simple as just changing or creating a new file. It would require modifying several existing and complex files, as well as creating many more.

[@4amtoast]

@Future-Frost mmmh so it would take quite a bit of work. Anyways if I decide to take on the trial of adding custom forms then this seems to be a pretty good quick summary of what to do thank you.

[@Paryeee]

awesome

[@emilstvring7577]

What other mods were you using for the showcase (the animation mod, explosion effect mod, player UI mod, ect.)

[@Future-Frost]

Not at my computer rn. I’ll send you a link to my mod list once I’m back.

[@emilstvring7577]

@@Future-Frost Appreciate it

[@Future-Frost]

@@emilstvring7577 Some of these mods are old or have better options, I need to go though and update my mod list. Here you go though: docs.google.com/document/d/1hcGB0ZMsM7jVqngNCDlR8N8FKaCbKaNz2XN86d6UhwA/edit?usp=sharing

[@miguelmartins5968]

i am playing this origin some time there is no form with aquatic respiration i would prefer this over speed in the rain or water, another could be cool is wold be some have nightvision too its missing

[@Weebzo]

Very fun origin! I may either be deaf or dumb but can any of the synthesized forms breath under water? (Also when I try to press the glass panes to Un-synthesize they just vanish, do you know a way to fix that?)

[@Future-Frost]

Thanks for checking out the Origin. None of the forms have water breathing. I should probably add some of those in v2.0. About your issue, do you have Eggolib installed? Eggolib is required for the desynthesize menu to work correctly.

[@Weebzo]

@@Future-Frost Ah, Makes sense, Thanks!

[@miprood]

what are all the mods u using except the origin one like ALL the mods :D

[@Future-Frost]

Some of these mods are old or have better options, I need to go though and update my mod list. Here you go though: docs.google.com/document/d/1hcGB0ZMsM7jVqngNCDlR8N8FKaCbKaNz2XN86d6UhwA/edit?usp=sharing

[@KrazedKookie]

I know this would be a pain to implement but the mastery system you have been commenting about are you potentially looking at the higher your mastery of something the less difficult the transformation minigame like maybe making it much harder at first with like 10 particles but at a higher mastery only 1 or 2?

[@omarhossamsamir]

This mod looks good but I think that you should be able to mix and match different genomes for example a ghast and a blaze which will give you both their abilities but also all of their weaknesses and if you do this with mobs that share weaknesses it's amplified of course this would require a lot more skill so you can make it so that in order to do more than one together you have to use them individually multiple times you could also make the minigame harder and add extra cons for example you don't get all of their buffs ( for example the main one would give you all it's abilities but the second one you only get two and get all of it's weaknesses)