I have been working on a minecraft mod pack that has a mechanic where the player can fly between different worlds via the elytra. eg. the overworld -> moon -> mars etc. I have a few different directions I can take Mars’ design:
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Dead world with remnants of the extinct martian civilization. Environmental storytelling used to convey a mystery to be solved by the player
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HG Wells’ war of the worlds inspired with the martian statues referencing their 3 colored pupiled eyes on a villager model and red weed plants growing underground that infect plants like trees and spread on corrupted dirt (basically dirt that has had blood within 4 blocks of it) and eventually turns white and dies if its in one of the overworld dimensions
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harmless/benevelant living martians based on the barsoon series
Or some combination of those
Thoughts?
The initial design of the red weed would require contaminated soil or a tree/large mushroom to grow on. So the player would either have to be the one to contaminate the soil to farm it or allow it to spread through very densely packed trees that physically contact one another likely again requiring the player to set up the conditions for that spread to happen. I thought of letting it just spread without those conditions but I think it might be better to have it only spread because of something the player did so it doesnt irreversibly destroy the whole continent it is introduced to. But… if it spread slowly enough, it could still be contained at almost any stage of that infection.
Maybe add a weaker version of the red weed which doesn’t spread and already generates, then add a version which the player can make spread?
I added structures that contain liquid blood as decoration/ambiance and pools of blood in the nether dimension variants (there are 3 in total: caves, surface and floating islands) so that could corrupt soil which then corrupts the red weed to make it spread like a disease. All 3 of these would be from different dimensions and would never interact without the player’s purposeful actions.
The corrupted red weed would spread a carpet over grass etc. that would occasionally spawn more red weed like mushrooms do. Destroying the carpeting would be easy and because it isnt converting the grass blocks, it isnt actually destroying anything other than the trees/mushroom blocks that it consumes. OR I could make it merely generate red vines that cover them.