Request for amplified world setting in BTW 1.5.2

[WeedFather]

Despite it's extreme difficulty to navigate, I really like the amplified world type and some of the new biomes...and nothing else in Vanilla Minecraft 1.7.2. Vanilla terrain in 1.5.2 is not very inspiring and adventurous-feeling, and I feel like terrains like in amplified worlds further encourages the player to make and use ladders, stairs, rope, anchors and elevators.

So, I'm just curious. Would an add-on for 1.5.2 BTW that adds in the amplified world style from 1.7.2 be possible? I know there was a biome add-on at one time, but the maker of it pissed Flowerchild off and I think had balance issues when working with BTW.

[FlowerChild]

It wasn't just the individual involved pissing me off. I'm very leery of terrain altering mods as they tend to alter the overall balance of the game in subtle ways that might not be immediately apparent to players. Given how much time and effort I have invested in BTW's balance, and given the popular "oooo! shiny!" appeal of biome mods which tend to make people install first and ask questions later, I don't take kindly to people fucking with that balance on a grand scale and in a way that could very easily become the defacto way that people play BTW.

Thus, if someone were to create a biome mod, it would have to be someone I trust as someone who is keenly aware of the balance considerations involved for me to get behind it, and such people are few and far between. Certainly just grabbing a Forge mod or vanilla biomes and trying to tack them onto BTW would not be something I would ever support again, and I consider it a rather critical error on my part to have done so in the first place.

At present, pretty much every biome in BTW has both a gameplay purpose and disadvantages inherent in it which give them a distinct character, and not just in terms of visuals. It took me a very long time to get it to that point, and thus would expect any additional biomes to respect that and maintain that overall level of consistency and sense of purpose. In other words, I wouldn't want someone to add a bunch of biomes "just because", but rather to add individual ones because they felt it really brought something new to BTW in terms of gameplay. Basically, I treat biomes as I treat any other aspect of BTW: if they don't have a clear gameplay function, then I feel they only detract from the overall quality of the experience.

[WeedFather]

I mostly mean the shape of the terrain, rather than biomes specifically, but I'm getting that even changing the shape of the terrain generation can also mess with the balance as well. I didn't really take into consideration how BTW was designed around both the biomes AND the terrain formation, such as flat deserts making it slower and harder to traverse through them, or having to clear snow to make a path in snowy biomes, if that's what you mean.

[FlowerChild]

Terrain shape is less of a factor (still one mind you) than biomes, but you mentioned both the vanilla biomes, and the former biome mod in your post, which was mainly what I was responding to.

Still though, when you consider stuff like hunger consumption in hilly terrain in the early game, and how that aspect in particular makes living in a mountain biome difficult initially, or how trees grow more sparsely in areas with extreme elevation changes (due to their growth algorithm failing when it intersects terrain with leaves or branches), or how stratification only applies to blocks below a certain height...yeah. It's a non trivial consideration.