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Archipelago

4 min read

Term Archipelago

An archipelago, sometimes called an island group or island chain, is a chain, cluster, or collection of islands. An archipelago may be in an ocean, a sea, or a smaller body of water.

Archipelago is a cross-game modification system which randomizes different games, then uses the result to build a single unified multi-player game. Items from one game may be present in another, and you will need your fellow players to find items you need in their games to help you complete your own.

There are a lot of games supported by Archipelago themselves, here is the full list. But if your game is not in here, you can also find third-party supported games. A few I have lisited down here:

Setup

Game setup

There are a lot of supported games, which means that there are also a lot of game guides. These games explain themselves but I’ll guide you through Minecraft as an example. Keep in mind that it will be an Linux (Ubuntu) guide.

General setup and installation

This part is required for all games. First, we’ll be installing the latest archipelago release. I personally installed the .AppImage file. You should run this.

This is the step where you should generate your .yaml file. This step is explained further in the Minecraft example. But for any other supported game, there is a similar page.

  • For third party games, they might provide you with a template .yaml file that you have to manually edit. Like Outer Wilds, they have the .yaml on their github.

Then we’ll be giving this .yaml file to the person who is going to host our archipelago game. This is almost all you’ll have to do, only thing that is left is doing the specific steps which are required for your chosen game.

Hosting

Hosting an archipelago game is easy. (if you use the webservers). Here is the official guide for this.

The steps are a bit different if you have a game that is not listed on this page. If that is the case, you’ll get more use reading the Outer Wilds + generating steps. You will need an .apworld file for that as well.

  1. get everyone their .yaml
  2. go to this page
  3. change the settings
  4. upload your .yaml files

You will be sent to your Seed Info, here you can look at the spoiler file (this lists everything).

  1. Now you’ll click “create room” to create your room.

You will be sent to your room page, here you can send people files they require. And you can track things that are going on in the background. Any progression is listed in the console. It is recommended to give all players the url to this page.

If you are inactive for 2 hours, your game will close. You’ll need to refresh the website to restart the server.

Specific game setup

Minecraft Setup

Here is the Official Guide that I’ll be quoting from.

First we’ll be generating our .yaml file from this page, you need to click export options to export the .yaml

After the archipelago game is hosted (see hosting) you’ll need to receive an .apmc file, which the can be exported from the room webpage.

This is when you click the Minecraft Client in the archipelago app. You then need to select your .apmc file. After this a console will pop-up, keep this opened.

  • You might have [y/n] prompts in your console if you do not have installed specific things on your pc, walk through these steps.

Now you should open minecraft, head towards multiplayer and direct connect. put localhost in the input box and connect.

Outer Wilds + generating steps

First off, this is the official guide.

  1. Download the local archipelago app.
  2. Download the Archipelago Mod in the Outer Wilds Mod Loader.
  3. Download the .apworld and .yaml on the Release Page of the mod.
  4. Configure your .yaml
  5. Paste your .yaml + other players their .yaml in the Players/ folder of the Archipelago app. If you cannot find it, navigate there with the app GUI and the Browse Files option.
  6. Paste the .apworld in the custom_worlds/ folder.
  7. In the local archipelago app, select Generate and this should open a terminal that will close itself. and after it has been closed, there should be an output/ folder with a .zip.
  8. Upload that .zip here to start the game.

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