PaleoTest adds various prehistoric creatures and plants to Minetest Game. This mod aims for a Zoo Tycoon type experience, with creatures being capable of escaping and players having to ensure their Dinosaurs mood and hunger don't drop too low.
Dinosaurs
- Tyrannosaurus
- Spinosaurus
- Carnotaurus
- Velociraptor
- Brachiosaurus
- Triceratops
- Stegosaurus
Mammals
- Mammoth
- Elasmotherium
- Procoptodon
- Smilodon
- Thylacoleo
Reptiles
- Mosasaurus
- Elasmosaurus
- Pteranodon
- Sarcosuchus
Fish
- Dunkleosteus
Plants
- Cycad
- Horsetails
- Metasequoia
Caring for animals:
Mood
A mobs mood is important to keep track of. If it gets too low the mob will become aggressive towards it's owner and won't obey orders, and some larger mobs may destroy blocks (if the option is enabled). To keep mobs happy, include a Scratching Post and/or Pursuit Ball in their enclosure.
Hunger
A mobs hunger is also important. If it gets too low the mob will begin taking damage until it reach about 1/3 it's maximum health, and it's mood will begin to lower. To keep mobs fed you can feed them by hand or keep a Feeder in their enclosure. Mobs have differing diets so it's important to make sure you have the right feeder in their enclosure. To check the mobs diet, right-click it with the Prehistoric Field Guide.
Cloning Mobs
Getting Fossils
The first step in cloning a PaleoTest mob is getting Fossils. Fossils spawn somewhat deep underground and drop a variety of items when dug. The item you want to clone a mob are Fossils or Ancient Bones
Getting DNA
Once you have Fossils or Ancient Bones you can attempt to get DNA. To get DNA you'll need the Fossil Analyzer. Once you've obtained the Fossil Analyzer, you can insert Fossils or Ancient Bones and wait a few seconds for it to finish analyzing. Once this is finished, the output can be a few different items, most of the time you'll get Sand or Gravel, but if you're lucky you'll get DNA.
Turning DNA into a mob
Now that you have DNA, you'll need a DNA Cultivator. Once you've obtained the DNA Cultivator, you can insert the DNA and it will begin cultivating. After a few seconds you'll have one of three possible item types: Egg, Embryonic Sac, and Syringe.
Eggs
Eggs can be hatched by placing them down next to any block that light levels equal to a torch. You can monitor the eggs progress with the Prehistoric Field Guide. After a while the egg will begin to move. Shortly after that, the egg will hatch.
Embryonic Sacs
Embryonic Sacs are simple, just right-click the ground and the mob will pop out.
Syringes
Syringes are used by right-clicking a supported surrogate mob (currently only supports a few mammals from petz). Once you've right-clicked the surrogate you can monitor the pregnancy progress with the Prehistoric Field Guide. After a while the mob will be born.
Supported Mods
Petz
Certain creatures from Petz can be impregnated via syringe and all meats from petz can be used as food
Mobs Redo
Meat from Mobs Redo can be used as food
Cooler than Draconis, fight me.
The good
This is my favourite mod by ElCeejo. It's not even for the dinosaurs themselves, but the gameplay. Scouring your world for fossils, never being quite sure what you'll find, the fossils are rare enough that you'll never be overloaded with them, providing that extra bit of motivation to delve into yet another cavern (which Minetest badly needs). Often enough your fossils end up being duds, but even then, the bones and other materials you get can still be put to use.
When you do find something cool though, another level of fun begins. Now you have to set up a labratory and play John Hammond in Jurassic Park. Like the fossil hunting gives you a reason to immerse yourself in the world, this mechanic gives you a reason to build more rooms. That's all before you get to managing your own menagerie of living dinosaurs, with feeders and various other tools.
The catch
This mod is an underdog compared to Draconis, so PaleoTest might not see as many updates or fast fixes when issues emerge. There were some texture issues for some dinosaurs and depending on the texture pack you’re playing with, sometimes the stone texture of the fossils doesn’t blend in making them easier to find than they should be.
But the potential...
As some players have requested, there could be an option for wild spawning dinosaurs - this could be done by having a special lost valley biome that generates very rarely and is isolated from the rest of the world by mountains (ala Arthur Conan Doyle's ‘Lost World’. You could also go full 90's action figure and embrace adding craftable cockpits, turrets, catapults and all kinds of gadgets onto dinosaurs.
Small tweaks I'd like to see
I'd love more lab gadgets and optionally depending on an electricity/power mod, to give you more reasons to build infrastructure. Also, electric fences that require generators opens up room for sabotage!
Dinosaurs don't spawn naturally.
add a feature that makes dinosaurs and biomes spawn naturally otherwise its useless
High quality extinct mobs
Everything about this mod is pretty awesome and I'm a big fan of it: I'm sort of being overly critical here to try to review this mod as best as I can.
The dinosaurs themselves - The mobs feel very consistent in the style as well as the textures, ElCeejo has obviously put a lot of work into making things stick to a certain design! The animations are also great, and each animal (except for water mobs and flying mobs) have a sleeping animation during night, which is really cute. Pathfinding is pretty decent, especially compared to other existing mobs mods. The amount of mobs added here, as well as the quality, make for a great experience: I look forward to new updates.
There are a few obvious problems: for example, the pteranodon model has a missing face, as well as the plesiosaurus model, which doesn't make for a good look. Things like velociraptors and smilodons can glitch right through solid nodes because of their small collisionboxes and high speed: and you're going to have some trouble building an aviary for your pteranodons too because they seem to glitch through anything with a bit of lag.
The dinosaurs can also be fairly robotic at times. Sadly, there is no good way to fix this without a lot of new pathfinding code and animations, which no other mod does except draconis (and a few animalia mobs).
For animals with big collisionboxes, enclosures can be easily made and maintained. The electric fences included with the mod will keep your dinosaur inside the enclosure, but it will also damage the dinosaur each time the collisionbox goes into the electric fence, killing dinosaurs if you aren't careful. I'd love to see a better implementation of this concept: like an electric shock which doesn't actually damage the mob, but makes it run a small distance from the fence.
Despite these issues, this is truly an underrated mod with stunning visuals and gameplay, kudos to ElCeejo. More in the comments->
Great mod, needs more dinosaurs
I love this mod but its lacking in herbivorus dinosaurs to complete my parks so here are my sugestions for the mods future: Therizinosaurus, edmontosaurus(regalis), struthiomimus, angkylosaurus, parasauralophus, igaunodon, magyrosaurus, and new blocks: guest spawner: spawns ai that follow paths and look at dinosaurs path selecter: select what block counts as path
Incredible
Incredible, this is a nice mod ! Dinosaurs in minetest, simply awesome ! I really like this mod.
I highly recommend.
Death message
Would it be possible to display a death message of our tamed dinosaurs like ARK?