Explorer's Compass in Project Infinity 0.1

Explorer's Compass is a compass that locates structures anywhere in the world. It supports all registered structures, both vanilla and modded, so it works with structures added by other mods in the pack too.^[1]

How you use it

• Right-click with the compass to open a GUI where you pick a structure or a group of structures to search for.^[1]
• Shift-right-click to reset the compass state.^[1]
• Information about the structure search shows up on your HUD.^[1]
• When the compass isn't pointing at a structure, it points at the world spawn.^[1]

The mod's config file lets you adjust things like the maximum search radius and blacklisted structures. The sources don't show whether this pack changed any of those values, so check the config in your own instance if you need exact numbers.^[1]

If you want a compass for biomes instead, the mod's own page points you to a separate mod, Nature's Compass.^[1]

In this pack

The pack ships Explorer's Compass 1.20.1-forge-1.5.9.^[2]

In the quest book, the mod appears in the chapter "Useful mods and Items", which is chapter 3 of 44 and holds 37 quests. Its quest is "The Compasses" quest, and its tasks are an item filter entry plus the compass itself.^[3]

The sources don't give a group name for that quest or show which quests come directly before or after it, so I won't guess at a position. Nothing in them ties it to the ATM Star path either.^[3]

Your first item here is simple: make the Explorer's Compass. It locates structures anywhere in the world, vanilla and modded, so you can head straight for a structure instead of wandering blindly.^[1][4]

Step 1: craft the compass

It is a shaped crafting recipe, shown below.^[4]

Explorer's CompassMod recipe

Crafting Shaped

Crafting Shaped

Cobweb	Cracked Stone Bricks	Cobweb
Cracked Stone Bricks	Compass	Cracked Stone Bricks
Cobweb	Cracked Stone Bricks	Cobweb

Recipe id: explorerscompass:explorers_compass

The pack's quest book also has a quest called "The Compasses" quest, in the chapter "Useful mods and Items" (chapter 3 of 44 in the book). Its tasks ask for the Explorer's Compass and an item filter.^[3]

Step 2: pick a structure and search

1. Right-click with the compass to open its GUI, then select a structure or a group of structures to search for.^[1]
2. Follow the compass. Information about the search shows on the HUD, and when the compass is not pointing at a structure it points at the world spawn.^[1]
3. Shift-right-click to reset the compass state when you want to start a different search.^[1]

What this pack sets

The pack's General.maxRadius is 10,000, which is the maximum radius searched for a structure. General.maxBookmarks is 64, so a compass remembers up to 64 located structures and you can point at them again later.^[5]

General.displayCoordinates is on, so the HUD can show exact coordinates and distance rather than only a direction. General.allowStructurePreview is also on, which lets you see what a structure looks like before you search for it.^[5]

Both General.structureBlacklist and General.biomeBlacklist are empty in the pack, so those lists hide nothing from the compass.^[5]

The Explorer's Compass is a single item, so there are no machines or multiblocks here. What matters is its search system. Right-click with it to open a GUI where you pick a structure or a group of structures to search for. Shift-right-click resets the compass state. Information about the search shows on the HUD, and when the compass isn't pointing at a structure it points at the world spawn.^[1]

Explorer's CompassMod recipe

Crafting Shaped

Crafting Shaped

Cobweb	Cracked Stone Bricks	Cobweb
Cracked Stone Bricks	Compass	Cracked Stone Bricks
Cobweb	Cracked Stone Bricks	Cobweb

Recipe id: explorerscompass:explorers_compass

How a structure search works

A structure search is limited by a maximum radius and a maximum number of samples. In this pack General.maxRadius is 10,000 and General.maxSamples is 100,000. A bigger radius increases search accuracy but can make the process more resource intensive.^[5]

General.asyncStructureSearch is on. The compass works out where a structure would generate the same way world generation decides it, on threads of its own, instead of asking chunk storage about every location. That leaves the server thread free and finishes far sooner. The spot it settles on is still checked against chunk storage before the compass points at it.^[5]

How a biome search works

Biome searches sample locations on a grid. General.biomeSampleSpacing is 32 blocks in this pack. Lower values are less likely to step over a small biome, and higher values cover the same area in fewer samples.^[5]

Heights are sampled too, which is how cave biomes can be found from the surface. General.biomeVerticalSampleSpacing is 64 blocks here, and 0 would check only the height the search started at. That searches several times faster but only finds biomes reaching that height. Away from the starting height, General.biomeDepthSampleInterval (4 here) controls how coarse the grid is. Raising it is faster but can step over a small cave biome, while 1 samples every height at every location.^[5]

General.maxBiomeSamples is 2,000,000 in this pack. That is far more than a structure search uses, because a biome can lie anywhere and each sample is much cheaper. General.asyncBiomeSearch is on, so biome searches run on their own threads and finish several times sooner.^[5]

Server load and cooldowns

• General.maxSearchTimePerTick is 10 ms. It caps how much of each server tick searching may use. It is shared by every running search, so one player's search can't crowd out another's.^[5]
• General.searchRequestCooldownMillis is 500 ms, the minimum time between searches started by the same player. Faster requests are ignored.^[5]
• General.shareCooldownMillis is 3,000 ms between locations shared by the same player, so sharing can't flood chat.^[5]
• General.teleportCooldownMillis is 2,000 ms between teleports requested by the same player, since teleporting loads and usually generates the destination chunk.^[5]

Repeat searches and bookmarks

You can search for the next instance of a located structure, skipping the locations already found. General.maxNextSearches is 100 in this pack. Once that many have been collected, or every instance within the search radius has been collected, the collected locations are forgotten and the search starts again from the closest instance. At 0 the compass always locates the nearest one.^[5]

General.maxBookmarks is 64. That is how many located structures a compass remembers so you can point at them again later. The oldest is dropped once the limit is reached.^[5]

Previews, HUD, sharing and teleporting

General.allowStructurePreview is on, so you can see what a structure looks like before searching for it. The server assembles it the way world generation would, off the server thread and without placing it anywhere, and keeps the most recently viewed ones. General.structurePreviewResolution is 1024 cells across, which the config describes as large enough that no structure is shrunk, so a preview is one cell to one block. General.structurePreviewMaxBlocks is 200,000 cells, and a structure whose visible surface doesn't fit is shrunk until it does.^[5]

General.displayCoordinates is on, so the HUD can show the exact coordinates and distance of a located structure rather than only the direction. General.allowSharing is on, so players can announce a located structure to everyone on the server. General.allowTeleport is also on, and it lets players in creative mode, opped players, or players in cheat mode teleport to a located structure.^[5]

What the compass offers

General.hideStructuresThatCannotGenerate is on. The compass leaves out structures that no dimension of the world could place, so you aren't offered searches that can only come back empty. Both General.structureBlacklist and General.biomeBlacklist are empty in this pack. Both accept wildcards, with * for any run of characters, so an entry like minecraft:*village* in the structure blacklist would hide every village.^[5][6]

The pack's file is an empty list.^[7]

Explorer's Compass doesn't have tiers in this pack. The recipe dump lists one item, Explorer's Compass, made by one crafting recipe, so progression here comes down to making that one item.^[4]

Where the quest book puts it

The pack's quest book covers the compass in "The Compasses" quest, called "The Compasses". It sits in the "Useful mods and Items" chapter, which is chapter 3 of 44 and holds 37 quests. The quest has two tasks: an item filter entry and the Explorer's Compass itself.^[3]

Crafting it

The compass is made with a shaped crafting recipe, and the pack's dump lists it as a mod recipe, so this is the mod's own recipe and the pack has not changed it. Here is the exact in-pack version:^[4]

Explorer's CompassMod recipe

Crafting Shaped

Crafting Shaped

Cobweb	Cracked Stone Bricks	Cobweb
Cracked Stone Bricks	Compass	Cracked Stone Bricks
Cobweb	Cracked Stone Bricks	Cobweb

Recipe id: explorerscompass:explorers_compass

In this pack's quest book, the quest that asks for the Explorer's Compass sits in one chapter: "Useful mods and Items".^[3]

The Compasses

The quest is "The Compasses" quest. It asks for two items, listed in this order: the itemfilters:or item, then the Explorer's Compass. So you need the compass itself plus the filter item the quest lists.^[3]

This is the only quest in the chapter that asks for the Explorer's Compass. No other quest in the chapter lists the mod's items.^[3]

Order

The quest data I have only lists the chapter's quests and their tasks. It does not show which quests come before or after this one, so I can't tell you its place in the chapter's order. Open the chapter in the quest book to see how it connects.^[3]

Explorer's Compass has two main config files in this pack: a common one that decides how searches work on the server, and a client one that controls the HUD, the direction strip and waypoints. Here are the options you'll most likely want to know about, with the values the pack ships.^[5][8]

Unverified The sources do not say which of these values differ from the mod's own defaults, so none of them are presented here as pack changes.

Search limits (common config)

• General.maxRadius is 10,000. This is the maximum radius searched for a structure. Raising it improves search accuracy but can make the process more resource intensive.^[5]
• General.maxSamples is 100,000 for structure searches, and General.maxBiomeSamples is 2,000,000 for biome searches.^[5]
• General.maxSearchTimePerTick is 10 (milliseconds). It caps how much of each server tick searching may use on the server thread. Lower values keep the game responsive, higher values finish searches sooner.^[5]
• General.asyncStructureSearch and General.asyncBiomeSearch are both true, so searches run off the server thread. Turn them off if a mod that adds its own structures or biome source turns out not to be safe to sample from another thread.^[5]
• General.biomeSampleSpacing is 32, General.biomeVerticalSampleSpacing is 64 and General.biomeDepthSampleInterval is 4. These control how finely biome searches sample the world, including heights, which is what makes cave biomes findable from the surface.^[5]
• General.structureBlacklist and General.biomeBlacklist are both empty, so nothing is hidden from the compass by these lists.^[5]
• General.hideStructuresThatCannotGenerate is true, so the compass leaves out structures your world could never generate instead of offering them and reporting that nothing was found.^[5]

Player features and cooldowns

• General.allowTeleport is true. Teleporting to a located structure works in creative mode, when opped, or in cheat mode.^[5]
• General.allowSharing is true, so players can announce a located structure to everyone on the server.^[5]
• General.displayCoordinates is true, so the HUD can show the exact coordinates and distance of a located structure.^[5]
• General.allowStructurePreview is true, so you can see what a structure looks like before searching for it.^[5]
• General.maxBookmarks is 64 located structures remembered per compass, and General.maxNextSearches is 100 searches for the next instance of a structure.^[5]
• Anti-spam cooldowns: General.searchRequestCooldownMillis is 500, General.shareCooldownMillis is 3000 and General.teleportCooldownMillis is 2000, all in milliseconds.^[5]

HUD and direction strip (client config)

• Client.showDirectionBar is true. The strip at the top of the screen is 240 pixels wide (Client.directionBarWidth), covers 120 degrees of the horizon (Client.directionBarSpan) and sits 4 pixels from the top (Client.directionBarY).^[8]
• Client.overlaySide is LEFT, so the compass information panel sits on the left of the HUD. Client.tooltipDetail is COMPACT, which keeps the tooltip short and puts the rest behind a held shift key.^[8]
• Client.directionBarWaypointStyle is BOOKMARK, and Client.directionBarWaypointLimit is 12 waypoints marked at once. Client.maxWaypointsPerWorld is 200 waypoints kept per world or server.^[8]
• Client.createXaeroWaypoints is true, so waypoints are copied into Xaero's Minimap if it is installed. Client.xaeroWaypointDisplay is WORLD_MAP_ONLY, which keeps those copies on the full-screen world map and off the minimap.^[8]

Extra files

The pack also ships config/explorerscompass/groups.json as an empty list, and config/explorerscompass/config.json with a single entry for minecraft:village_plains with the value 1.^[7][9]