About the Texture Pack, Overlay, and Shaders

The limitations of vanilla Minecraft

Despite being a sandbox,vanilla Minecraft has its limits and does not provide the variety of blocks and items necessary in our recreation of Middle-Earth. So how can we build Tolkien’s world whilst being limited by the base game?

What is the ArdaCraft Modpack?

To improve the experience on the server, and make our stunning builds possible, we use a variety of mods in the project. The biggest of these is Conquest Reforged- this is a massive mod we have worked with since 2017 which adds thousands of blocks for us to work with and takes us past the bounds of ordinary Minecraft. Other mods in the pack improve the world in different ways; giving us custom armour and weapons, moving doors, ingame maps and many, many more.

What is the ArdaCraft Overlay?

Whilst Conquest is a fantastic mod, we are not in full control of it. This means that sometimes, we need a block or specific item for our map that is not present in the modpack. The solution? The ArdaCraft Overlay, updated regularly, which allows us to replace existing blocks with our own textures that are more relevant to what we are working on. For example flowers from the base game being replaced by crops for use on farms. What’s the use in having realistic blocks if you can’t see properly them, though?

What are the ArdaCraft Shaders?

Similar to its block palette, we find that vanilla Minecraft’s light physics leave a lot to be desired. That’s why our shaders folder, which comes installed with the modpack, contains a variety of shaders which all take our world to the next level. They implement realistic clouds, shadows and light to create an almost magical experience that complements our amazing builds (link to locations page). The shaders  include Bliss, a popular Minecraft shader, which we use and edit of in our reels, and Rethinking Voxels for underground areas. 

What is the ArdaCraft Resource Pack?

For our base Resource Pack, we use Conquest Reforged, which is related to the Conquest mod. This retextures most blocks from vanilla Minecraft to make them more suited to our project. The resource pack is used to create the best possible looking block palette and therefore better builds.

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