Therighthon

Meanwhile, my mining method can only be described as special. I ignore support beams and allow cave-ins to occur as they may, taking care that they don't crush any ore (or me). I do this by placing planks or chiseled stone above my head, and by mining out any exposed ore that would be vulnerable to a cave-in before digging more stone. I usually get lost in my own mines because they follow the rough shape of the parts of the vein that I stumble upon by mining out from the center of the vein, but am only rarely trapped in because I leave myself enough durability on my pick to dig my way out of the caved-in entrance. The only time this results in large-scale loss of ore is when I am next to a cave without knowing it, but that can cause problems even with support beams. I usually don't get all the ore, but I have a fun time trying to climb out of my tunnels. Mobs aren't usually a problem because I usually dig most of the vein at once, or in rapid enough succession that spawn protection has yet to wear off, and because even when they do spawn they can't move around in the mine either, and it is usually easy to exploit the terrain to kill them.

Anyway, I might try your method on more valuable mines, because I like that it allows you to set up a framework for avoiding cave ins previously, and then  not have to worry about them from there on out.

I personally like the Technodefirmacraft modpack for this. Not only is the value of ore is increased significantly, but once you get to steel you start to be able to create machines that save the labor of forging. It also adds a whole bunch of mods that you can progress through once you get towards the end of TFC progression. That said, the total amount of time it takes to go through the pack is longer than TFC, as there is simply more content, but less of that time is spent on strictly TFC progression, as it transitions into something far more reminiscent of a standard mod pack in the mid-game. It is not for everyone, but it is a personal favorite of mine.

On 14/01/2017 at 0:23 PM, TaeoG said:

Happy New Years everyone. Now that the holiday season is over and I have spare time again, its back to development.

Currently working on Enchantments. Sharpness has increased to 60 extra damage per rank instead of 1.25, Smite and Bane of Arthropods have increased to 125 extra damage per rank from 2.5 . This is fairly consistent with my 1/2 heart = 50 hitpoints conversion I've been using so far, but may still need balancing.

If anyone is still following this, especially if you've attempted enchanting terrafirmacraft items, can you tell me what issues you've run across? Both in unbalanced enchantments or strange behaviour? Thank you.

I seem to remember silk touch being kinda wonky, I don't believe armor enchants work, but I could be wrong. I am pretty sure fortune has no effect, at least on ores. Oh, and fishing rod enchantments probably don't work. Maybe for the power enchantment you should have it do a smaller amount of bonus damage, but make the bonus damage crushing damage? Not sure if that's possible, but that way it doesn't let you one-shot stuff that a normal bow can't, while still making it a more useful weapon. Doesn't really make too much sense logically, but you could argue that the increased force is crushing, and it would be interesting from a gameplay standpoint. It could also increase the arrow speed of lower charged shots, which is the bow's main weakness. Also, what are you going to do about Javelins? Will they get their own special enchantment, or will they be made so that sharpness works with throwing?

I think it might be worth considering nerfing efficiency, seeing as this isn't vanilla MC where you progress from Iron->Diamond->Enchanted Diamond, but TFC where progression is more tiered. An iron tool with efficiency shouldn't be too much better than steel, I wouldn't think. Furthermore, if possible it should scale with how well wrought the tool is, though I suppose that should work fine already with efficiency since I think efficiency is a multiplier. Unbreaking is probably good as is, though it will need to be widened to be more universally applicable on things like chisels and scythes. Hammers and axes should both be able to receive sharpness, smite and BoA like vanilla axes. (If sharpness could be called something different on crushing weapons that would be nice, but obviously nonessential.) Since this is TC4 we're talking about, repair might want rebalancing with respect to the high durability of TFC tools. Fortune should be fairly weak on metal ores, not as strong as it is with diamonds in vanilla for example. Vanilla functions would be good for things like coal, clay and saltpeter, and for random rock drops though. It would be cool if it upped the chances of getting higher quality gemstones, particularly with diamonds from Kimberlite. Scythes should also be able to get fortune for sapling drops. If you decide to do the fishing rod enchants, then Lure could stay vanilla and Luck of the Sea could make the fish larger on average or allow you to catch squid or something. Don't forget to buff damage for thorns, and make it pierce damage so that it A. Makes sense and B. is weaker vs the ranged enemies.

Do you have any plans for an anvil replacement? Perhaps one could combine two enchanted tools on a TFC anvil through welding/metalworking? You'd have to add heat mechanics for them though, and ideally make the tool heads detachable for the process. Maybe a second tab could be added to the TFC anvil with the vanilla anvil functions?

That's all I can think of for the moment. Nice to see that you are still working on this project, and thanks for sticking with it.

I do like that 2nd body shape better, it makes it so that the head isn't such a big jump from the back and brings out the arch in the back. It also makes the proportions look a lot better to me and makes it look a lot like a box with a head. That said, the curve of the body is most noticeable when looking at it from the side, and in game you will almost always be looking down on them so it probably isn't a huge deal. I definitely like the new bands, but I think they could be increased in contrast to differentiate them from the rest of the body a bit more.

The texture looks like a chess board. It needs to be less regular so that you can tell it is white spots on a black background, and more importantly so that it looks natural. I continue to not like doubling the texture size, because it looks out of place in game, but I think it will be alright with this model. I think it would be better if the bottom part of the neck was on the same pixel scale as the rest of the neck though. The head needs some shading as well. Aside from the texture though, the shape looks right, and I like what you did with the tail.

It feels too tall, and have you tried curving the body in any way? I feel like the latter might be overcomplicating it, but at the same time it just doesn't look quite right as a box. Maybe the head could be curved down more? As for the texture, having double the resolution in the middle doesn't look good, and will look super noisy if this is going to be scaled down. And sorry I haven't done anything for TFC2 in a long time, but I have been busy and uninspired.

Pretty sure Silverwoods spawned semi-rarely in vanilla forest biomes. Played a 1.7.10 pack a long while ago, and they cropped up quite frequently in some areas. That said, TFC is a mod built around exploration, so it is acceptable to make people take some time to find magical biomes, I would think.

Made this a couple days ago, but didn't have internet. Remembered it again today, so here we go. The teeth are currently made of boxes, but if it is deemed necessary I will make them into planes. I am pretty happy with the shape of the body of well, but of course I am always open to critique and suggestions.

Crocodile.MCModel

5 hours ago, TaeoG said:

K, I'm taking your suggestion, every 10oz of food will have 1 of its base aspect, and every oz of a sandwich or salad.

The base aspects currently are as follows

• Protein -> Corpus
• Vegetable -> Herba
• Fruit -> Herba
• Grain -> Messis
• Dairy -> Permutatio if cheese, Sano if milk

Any suggestions? I would rather that fruit and vegetables have separate aspects, but I can't think of one that works.

There are also secondary aspects, things like sensus for carrots, haven't decided on those yet however

For the fruit base aspect, maybe Victus or Fames. Could be Permutatio as well, as that is traditionally used for seeds, but since TFC doesn't technically divide its food groups biologically, that makes less since. And you are already using that for milk anyway.

15 hours ago, yeahminecraft16 said:

I love this idea so much- and yeah it would be awesome to have LOTS of more flora, as well as let the community help out with it. It would also be good to have things like epiphytes or bracket fungi (which you did kinda mention the epiphytic ferns, but more than just ferns (as much as i love ferns :P)). One mod that does this really well actually is Plant Mega pack, and although it uses the cross plant model, for things like vines, ground cover, bamboo, epiphytes, etc, it poses some model ideas that could work in TFC too.

Playing Plant Mega Pack as part of TNFC is part of what gave me the idea for TFC2. I like the mod, and think plants are great for adding atmosphere. And, if TFC2 ends up having alchemy, it will be good to have a large variety of plants and flowers.

1 hour ago, CALEBXD101 said:

I don't mind lava but do you have to insert it manually or can you place it over a lava source block. That would spice up exploration.

The lava is part of a multiblock structure, so you could build the furnace in the lava and it would work, though I haven't tested personally.

51 minutes ago, Darmo said:

Agreed.  I don't know how plants affect the graphic overhead, but I've seen some pretty plant-heavy play-throughs in single player at least, and forests and jungles especially would benefit from new plants.  I would think that if MCMC could have a few model pre-sets, for 1, 2, and 3-high plant sprites, and all the user has to do is load their texture they've made, that would make it pretty easy for people to make plant textures.

yeah, I think that would be a good solution. I am not sure if you would want to use a generic model for a 3 block tall plant, as I for one think that large plants using the cross model start to look like cardboard cutouts. We could have another Google doc for any plants that would require custom models, like bamboo, or ferns that grow on the side of trees, or for that matter ferns that look like ferns and not like horsetail. You would maybe want a model option for vine varieties and one that lies flat like moss.

It seems pretty obvious at this point that TFC2 is going to feature a lot more animals than TFC1. But what about plants? One thing that I have always found lacking in minecraft and TFC is the lack of interesting plantlife. TFC1 can pull off a grassy meadow look with its grass and wildflowers, but falls apart in forests and jungles by using the same plants. Even when plants are supposed to look different, they often look samey because they all use the cross model, and can just be walked through heedlessly.

I propose that we build a list of plants that would fit within various biomes, and allow the community to help texture and model new plants. Perhaps Bioxx could add a way for MCMC to export to .json block models, to make it easier for people who want to help. I for one don't know any programs as good as MCMC, and model by hand usually, which most people probably wouldn't want to do, and takes too long.

Too Much Time is one of the most popular mods to play with TFC based on modpacks I have seen. But, it is a mod that is very limited in scope. It doesn't respect latitude, meaning that equatorial days vary as much as polar ones by season.

Of course, realism in this respect isn't really attainable in TFC 1, because you would end up having to divide the world into thousands of regions, and probably add timezones in order to avoid walking into a night region from a day region without ever passing through a twilit region.

The island system of TFC2 presents a simple solution. Since islands are probably only going to be reachable by portal, the abrupt change in time would be acceptable. Therefore, you could split the world into nine different regions corresponding to the nine different latitudes of islands. Each region would follow their own schedule, allowing polar nights to stretch on for months, while at the equator days wouldn't vary between seasons in the slightest. More temperate regions would vary more similarly to TMT, and the southern hemisphere could be respected.

Additionally, the sun could track different courses through the sky based on island and season, either as an aesthetic thing, or as a way to calculate the season if TFC2 sees the removal of our internal calendars. Furthermore, there should be auroras visible sometimes during the long polar nights.

These changes, while not being realistic, unless the islands of TFC2 are spaced a lot farther apart vertically than horizontally, would add a lot of individuality to living on different islands, and make polar survival in particular very cool.

41 minutes ago, TaeoG said:

Also, Thaumcraft by default has Lead bars being part metallum, part ordo, while my intention was to make it metallum and poison. Thoughts?

I like the venenum better, personally, as it makes more sense than ordo. But, if you don't have many other sources of ordo, then it could be really useful to have it give ordo, and the same could be said of venenum if you don't have many sources of that. But if you already have pretty good sources for those, then I would say it comes down to personal preference. I kind of like Venenum better, but there is definitely value to be had in keeping it true to TC4. Also, it would be easier to transmute stuff into lead using ordo, assuming ordo is available from the chiseled stone in TFC like it is in vanilla with stone and the sandstone tiles. Lead is pretty much useless in TC4 and TFC both, but it would play better with other mods if you use the easier aspect to obtain.

I like it, but the bottom texture could use just a tiny bit of detail and variation so it isn't completely flat.

Keep in mind that in vanilla Thaumcraft, nuggets have 1 metallum each, making them give more metallum than ingots, which only give 3, or 4 for iron. I am not sure what you plan on doing with transmutation, whether you are using nuggets like vanilla, ingots, or ore, that is what you are going to have to balance metallum values around, and making sure nothing gives more metallum than that so that you can't dupe stuff. Assuming you are using nuggets for transmutation, and they all have 1 metallum totaling 9 per ingot, you could get away with the 1-2-3 system for ores, because you never end up with more than 9 metallum per 100 units. That said, I think it might be better to do transmutation with ore, so that you can't transmute an easy to process metal into something harder to process. That causes a whole new set of problems, because the 1-2-3 system would mean if rich ore was used for metallum, you could get 45 units of poor ore for every 35 units of rich, which wouldn't be game-breaking, but it would be sloppy, and to get around it you would need to use a 2-3-5-7 system for ores, where 1 metallum equals 5 units, meaning that every ingot would either have an awkwardly small amount of metallum, or an awkwardly large one. Furthermore, it would need to change to adjust to the configs, since a lot of TFC modpacks adjust ore values.

TL;DR - There are a lot of things to be considered when it comes to metallum, because its primary usage is for transmutation, and since it is the only aspect that I can think of that can converted back and forth between essentia and a meaningful item. It is only complicated by the 3 different configurable ore sizes of TFC. What you are doing now should be fine for the time being, and when you get around to transmutation you can reinvestigate. Also, I am bad at writing TL;DRs.

Awesome, I am excited to play around with it!

How does this look?

Alright, seems to look a little less like it was dipped in butterscotch now.

Alright, I widened the horns' bases, and re-angled them a little bit, as well as bumping up the neck and fixing the qiviut layer.

MuskOx.MCModel

I think the whiskery-mane part needs to be made smaller by a pixel or two. The neck feels a little bit too long as well, and the ears are a little complicated, but I think they work for the lynx. Also, I feel like the bobcat at least should have a separate model with shorter legs and without the extra point on the ears.

Okay, I have made some changes, not sure if the neck is what you were suggesting or if you want it higher and thicker.

MuskOx.MCModel

1 hour ago, Darmo said:

I might add, that with regard to the player breeding lots of animals, option C would be best, and moreover they should spawn often in the vicinity of the player's animals. This should also be true of crops.   This would be a direct difficulty mechanic.  So the player has a lot of poultry?  weasels spawn more often, and try to kill the chickens.   larger animals, you get wolves, big cats, and other predators.   Bears too maybe.  If the player has a bunch of crops, then raccoons, deer, and pigs start appearing and attempting to attack the crops.  The more of these things the player has, the more predators and crop hasslers appear. 

Depending on difficulty desired, maybe a simple fence stops most of these.  Or maybe it doesn't, and the player must employ a variety of counter-meatures.   Weaseles and raccoons can just walk through a split rail fence (if code feasible).  So the player must construct wicker fence panels (made from sticks) or simply build a 2-high wall of solid blocks around the chickens.  Deer can jump 3 high, so the player has to build an extra-tall fence to keep them out.   Bears can break through wood fence, so a stone fence is needed.  And if all else fails, guard animals (finally a use for wolves).

So I think there should be a game challenge spawning aspect, that is separate from any natural ecosystem mechanic.  These challenge spawned creatures might be different in that if they reach their target and kill a few animals or destroy a lot of crops, they then despawn.  Or if they can't get to their target for a certain amount of time, again, they despawn.  At least, the non-violent ones.  If a bear gets in and kills the player's guard animals, and starts killing livestock, maybe it won't go away on it's own and the player has to deal with it.

The notion of wild animals respawning on their own to keep a balance, is fun, but I wonder how that would affect the challenge level of the game, in terms of the player being able to always hunt for food.  If hunting were made harder, so that non-breedable prey animals flee if the player gets within a certain range and isn't sneaking, that would probably help balance the situation.

Yeah, hunting would have to be rebalanced. They could always just make it so that the animals drop less food.

I like the idea of having to keep animals away from crops and animals. Crops should probably be made easier to protect, with stuff like scarecrows because otherwise it would get really annoying. So, while protecting animals would be more dynamic and unpredictable because it relies on AI, defending crops would be more predictable and systematic, similar to support beams. I really like the idea of having sheep dogs though. That would be super cool.

It seems pretty likely at this point that TFC2 will feature lots of animals. And, to do justice to this, I feel like there should be a better system in place than the Vanilla system of spawning animals once and that being all you get.

Basic Principle:

With this in mind, I propose that there should be an island-based system for spawning wild animals. Essentially, when an island generates it would generate a list of species that can spawn on that island, based on climate zones, and probably some randomization. Then, based on the numbers of hexes meeting certain requirements (altitude, tree cover etc.) it would determine how many of each species of herbivore it could support. Then, based on that, it would look at a food web to see how many of each species of predator the prey population could support. This should probably be made to favor a larger number of predators than would be realistic, because otherwise we would never see any predators. The island would then generate with the correct number of animals spread across it, with some bias for various locations based on the type of animal (i.e. bears could be more likely to spawn near rivers and fish from them (which would be really cool)). Then, if the count of the animals becomes unbalanced, due to the player hunting, or predators killing prey animals the population could regenerate through random spawns. (Alternatively, animals could start to reproduce when the balance was messed up, but because of the limitations of chunks loading and unloading, and the likelihood of animals being separated from mates, this probably wouldn't work.) This system would ensure that an island will never be over hunted, and that you will never be able to completely clear an area of bears etc.

For Example:

Disclaimer: All numbers and animals used in this are examples, and wouldn't be used in a final plan, as the animals may/may not be included and may/may not actually spawn temperately

Step 1: An island generates with a temperate climate, and flat terrain. The list of animals that can spawn on such islands includes bears, deer, sheep, cows, boars, bison, goats, cougars, wolves, squirrels, rats and raccoons.

Step 2: A randomizer determines that only sheep, bison, goats, cougars, wolves, squirrels and raccoons can spawn on the island, making sure to choose at least one large predator, and a few large herbivores and decoration animals.

Step 3: The island has 307 land hexes. Each bison needs 20 hexes, while sheep and goats only need 8 hexes a piece. Each type of animal is allocated 102 land hexes. As such, the island can support 12 sheep, 12 goats and 5 bison.

Step 4: Each wolf needs 4 prey animals, and each cougar needs 10 prey animals. The island can support a total of 27 prey animals. Thus, there are 13 prey animals available for each, meaning the island can support 1 cougar and 3 wolves.

Step 5: The animals spawn in the island with the world generation, with reasonable spacing between the groups. Squirrels and Raccoons spawn and despawn similarly to most hostile mobs in vanilla, and could be kept from despawning by players by some method like the nametag.

Now that the island has generated, say that the player hunts down and kills a bison. Now that there are only 4 bison, a 5th bison will be able to spawn. Because animals generally spawn in herds, the game could either spawn it with a herd, impregnate a bison at random, or wait until more are killed and form a new herd. If a cougar or wolf kills a sheep or goat, the process would be much the same. Now, say that the player successfully domesticates two sheep, and begins to breed them. Soon, the player ends up with 7 captive sheep, bringing the island's total population up to 10 sheep. Now when the wild sheep are killed off, they do not respawn in the wild and eventually only the domesticated sheep are left, but there are now 20 sheep, far more than the island would normally support.

At this point, I am not sure what should happen, but there are a few options.

- A: Nothing would happen aside from no more sheep spawns.

- B: As the number of sheep reaches the island limit, they begin to use up the hexes allocated to the bison and goats, causing them to stop spawning.

- C: As the population of sheep increases, the island becomes able to support more cougars.

So what I am asking with this, is should the actions of the player influence the balance of the environment? I am personally all for that idea, because it is always cool when actions like that mess with the environment, but it would mean the population capacity for each type of animal would have to be dynamic, rather than being calculated once when the island was generated.

Anyway, I have typed now for long enough, and would like to know what you guys think and hear some other ideas.

EDIT: Also, I meant to put this under suggestions. let me see if I can move it or not…