The Harmonic Gate and the Soundforge

The Soundforge is NeroNotes' composing dimension: a small, quiet, starlit platform floating in the void, reached through the Harmonic Gate — a powered machine block. Composition happens there by design; everything else in NeroNotes (Resonant Blocks, resonance channels, Resonators) works everywhere, from your first day on Earth, with no gate in the way.

Placeholder art note: like the Stage 3 blocks, the Harmonic Gate's textures are generated placeholders (matte black with a violet neon arch) until a real art pass replaces them.

The Harmonic Gate#

A blast-resistant, matte-black block with a violet neon arch. The arch stays dim while the gate charges and lights fully once a crossing is affordable — the block answers "can I go?" at a glance.

Crafting#

Shaped recipe, 3×3:

The plates and glass are matched by tags (c:plates/nero_alloy, nerolandcore:materials/plasma_glass), so any mod's Nero Alloy plates or Plasma Glass variants work. Both materials come from Neroland Core.

Powering it#

The gate accepts energy on every face through Neroland Core's shared energy capability. Any Nero machine output works, and on NeoForge and Forge the capability falls back to standard Forge Energy, so third-party FE sources (for example Energized Power) charge it too.

Two server config keys in config/neronotes.properties shape it:

• gate.energy_capacity — the gate's internal buffer (default 16,000 NE).
• gate.teleport_energy_cost — energy per crossing into the Soundforge (default 8,000 NE). Returning is always free. An operator can set the cost to 0 to make crossings free.

No progression requirement#

Nothing in NeroNotes is progression-gated. Entering the Soundforge needs exactly one thing: a charged Harmonic Gate — craft it, power it, walk through, from your first day on Earth. (Earlier development builds sealed entry behind a Neroland Core progression gate; that was removed for standalone-first play.)

Crossing over#

Right-click a charged Harmonic Gate and you arrive on the Soundforge platform: a polished blackstone deck under a fixed starfield, with four inset lights and a Harmonic Gate at its centre. Around it stands the composing furniture: the transport lectern (opens the sequencer), the Disk Press, the Publish Lectern, four pattern walls along the north rim and seven voice pedestals along the south rim. The platform is built by the mod on your first entry — there is no worldgen in the void — and re-entering heals a vandalised platform.

Your exact position, facing and dimension are saved before you leave, server-side.

Getting home#

Three guarantees, so you are never stranded:

1. The centre gate. Using the Harmonic Gate on the platform returns you to exactly where you entered from — no energy, no checks. If someone broke it, re-entering through any gate rebuilds the platform.
2. The command. /neronotes soundforge return works for any player inside the Soundforge (it is an exit, not a teleport — it does nothing anywhere else, and needs no operator rights).
3. Logging out inside is safe. Your return anchor is stored with the world and survives restarts. If the anchor is ever missing or its dimension no longer exists, the gate sets you down at the world spawn instead of nowhere.

Your data#

The Soundforge keeps one small server-side record per player who has entered: the return position and your in-progress composing session (the sequencer's working score). It stays inside your world save, is never transmitted anywhere, and is erased by NeroNotes' per-player data purge (see Privacy and your data).