SURVIVALIST MOD

Minecraft Mod

Page Contents

The Survivalist Mod is a mod developed for Minecraft to increase the game difficulty by adding temperature, thirst, and more.

There have now been more than 13,000 downloads on planetminecraft.com. There were also a number of people who downloaded the mod and created a YouTube video while testing it, which can be found at the bottom of the page.

Title Image for Survivalist Mod Alpha. A Minecraft figure looks out to the sea where the sun is setting.

Released: 2013

Type of Mod: Gameplay, Difficulty

Game: Minecraft

Team Size: 3

Duration: 1 year

Play: planetminecraft.com/mod/survivalist-mod/

My Responsibilties for this project were Art, Design, UI, and Recipe Design.

Design

Added Mechanics:

No Health Regen: the player must heal using bandages etc.
Weight System: the player has a limit to how much they can carry.
Relative Hunger: Hunger increases based on activity levels, so sprinting or digging will cause the hunger bar to empty faster than the base game.
Food Rot: Food items such as raw meat will begin to rot, and will poison the player if ingested (similar to rotten flesh).
Thirst System: This is not included in the base game, and works like Relative Hunger.
- Items like water skins, clay jugs, and glass bottles were added and could be filled with water to allow the player to drink when away from the sea / rivers.
Biome Temperature: If the biome temperature is high, food will rot faster, whereas cold temperatures will stop the food from rotting. If the body t
Body Temperature: The Biome Temperature affects the player's body temperature in various ways. If the player is too hot, the thirst will increase, and if the player is too cold, they will move slower (similar to the base game mechanic of an empty food bar).
- We included new items like Heatpacks and Icepacks to allow the player to travel to different biomes while keeping their body temperature stable.

An image of a Minecraft inventory containing bandages, plastic botles and heatpacks.

Modded items including bandages, water bottles and heatpacks.

Art

Back in 2013, I used Microsoft Paint to create the art assets for the mod. I made sure that the canvas size was the same as the existing icons, and created art ranging from items to UI. Icons created included bags, temperature items, a barrel for tanning solution, water containers, first aid items, and rotten food. There was more art created, but I'm unable to locate the files after so many years.

UI

The UI created for the survivalist mod had to include some of the new mechanics, like weight, temperature, and thirst.

UI Remake

If I were to remake the Survivalist Mod today, I would update the HUD based on my UX experience. This would include:

Move the Thirst Meter above the (existing) Hunger Meter, and ensure the art is the same size as the Hunger icons.
Potentially move the different temperature bars, make them both horizontal, and place them on either side of the existing HUD at the bottom of the screen.
Label the Body And Biome Temperature bars.
Remove Current Weight from the HUD, and place it on the Inventory screen with a backpack icon.
Add the recipes to the inventory screen (the mod was developed before that was included in vanilla gameplay)

Recipe Design

I created a recipe for each new item introduced with the mod. These were developed by researching recipes for existing items, and some real-world logic.