SCICRAFT — The Dark Photon Protocol

"The last signal of the Second Renegade Flight hums in your blood. Rebuild the Lattice. The Protocol is never finished — only maintained."

SCICRAFT is a 140+ mod NeoForge 1.21.1 kitchen-sink modpack with a sci-fi / Whovian story layer. A collapsed star-empire is leaking back into reality through the Dimensional Doors; you are a proto-Time-Lord engineer rebuilding the Quantum Lattice — the emitter of the Dark Photon Protocol — and holding the global Corruption Tide at bay.

The entire pack is managed with packwiz and ships as two synchronized packs: a full client pack and a server-only pack.

Features

NeoForge 1.21.1 (21.1.248) · packwiz v1.1.0
Tech pillars: Mekanism, Applied Energistics 2, Create, FastPipes, Flux Networks, LaserIO, Modular Routers, Entangled
Dimensions: Dimensional Doors, Void Dimension, Deeper and Darker, Stellaris (rockets to moon/mars/venus/mercury)
Mobs & combat: Born in Chaos, Mutant Monsters, Nyf's Spiders, Better Combat, Simply Swords
Building: FramedBlocks, Chipped, Supplementaries, Architect's Palette, Building Gadgets, Handcrafted, Every Compat
Story layer: KubeJS-driven lore — the Quantum Lattice, the global Corruption Tide, Renegade Glass, a 9-node advancement phase tree
QoL: JEI, Jade, JourneyMap, Waystones, Curios, AppleSkin, IPN, FTB Chunks/Quests
Client stack: Iris + Sodium (native NeoForge), Cull Leaves, LambDynamicLights, Dynamic FPS, flywheel compat
Server stack: ModernFix, FerriteCore, ImmediatelyFast, Entity Culling, BadOptimizations, Krypton Reno

Requirements

Java 21 (Adoptium Temurin 21 LTS recommended)
Client: ~12 GB RAM free, 4 GB VRAM recommended (shader preset included)
Server: 8 GB RAM minimum
Disk: keep the world under 100 GB total

Directory layout

.
├── server_pack/          # Server-only packwiz pack (135 mod files)
├── client_pack/          # Full client packwiz pack (144 mod files)
│   └── shaderpacks/      # Complementary Reimagined setup guide (4GB VRAM preset)
├── STORY/                # the story — canon, items, phases, dialogue (edit here)
├── docs/                 # operations — setup, server, performance, mods
├── tools/                # gen_story.py, sync_kubejs.sh, gen_textures.py
└── README.md

Both packs are identical except the client pack adds render/shader/visual mods. Keep them in sync after any change:

bash tools/sync_kubejs.sh    # kubejs/ → client_pack
python tools/gen_story.py    # STORY/*.md → en_us.json (both packs)

Install — server

git clone git@git.mithraic.cloud:ad3laid3/SciCraft.git
cd SciCraft

packwiz install --dir server_pack
java -Xms2G -Xmx6G -jar server_pack/neoforge-21.1.248-installer.jar --installServer

# accept EULA (server_pack/eula.txt), then launch with the recommended flags:
java -Xms4G -Xmx8G -XX:+UseG1GC \
  -XX:+ParallelRefProcEnabled -XX:MaxGCPauseMillis=200 \
  -XX:+UnlockExperimentalVMOptions -XX:+DisableExplicitGC \
  -XX:G1NewSizePercent=30 -XX:G1MaxNewSizePercent=40 \
  -XX:G1HeapRegionSize=8M -XX:G1ReservePercent=20 \
  -jar server_pack/neoforge-21.1.248-server.jar nogui

Recommended server.properties: view-distance=8, simulation-distance=6. Full details in docs/server.md.

Install — client

git clone git@git.mithraic.cloud:ad3laid3/SciCraft.git
cd SciCraft
packwiz install --dir client_pack

Add client_pack as a packwiz modpack in your launcher (Prism/ATLauncher/PolyMC) or use packwiz serve from client_pack and install via the Modrinth/packwiz installers. Drop a shaderpack into client_pack/shaderpacks/ — see the README there for the 4 GB VRAM preset.

Multiplayer: players join with the client pack; the server runs the server pack. Never put client-only mods on the server (see the client-only list in docs/mods.md).

The story (short version)

Dark photons are real — a fifth force the Second Renegade Flight harnessed. They are the binding force of the Door.
You are a proto-Time-Lord — the only one who can read the Protocol.
The wound — the Flight's seal on a collapsed star-empire is failing. The Void Dimension is the leak; the Deeper and Darker is what answers.
The Protocol — rebuild the Quantum Lattice and keep it online.
The Corruption Tide — rises while Doors go unsealed (global, all players share). Re-seal Doors at the Lattice with a Void Stabilizer. No fail state — soft escalation only.
The Doctor connection is atmospheric only — Renegade Glass, Per Spatium, portal styling. Never plot-driving.

Full canon, the phase tree, and the 5-minute "add a story beat" workflow: STORY/00-index.md. Story text is generated from STORY/ into en_us.json via tools/gen_story.py — edit prose, not scripts.

License & credits

Pack content is assembled for the SciCraft server. All mods belong to their respective authors. Original story text, scripts, and pack configuration are MIT licensed.

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