Darmo

Is that an area you've been over many times before? In the south crops don't die, so as they spawn more year after year, you can end up with some pretty large fields of wild crops. But usually you have to go past the area many times over the course of years.

Probably not. Aside from the fact I think a large portion of those people don't youtube anymore, there was some bitterness at the end of the 3rd season, you could tell. Besides, nowadays it's all about the short videos. Terrafirmacrack involved I don't even know how many hours of gameplay, over many days, a large portion of which was off-screen (and so effectively 'wasted' from a youtuber perspective). Why would they want to invest all that time for relatively few videos, when they could spend the same time making many more, shorter videos, that get more views in total? I doubt it would work well on Twitch, due to the large portions of grind. Unfortunately, but that's how monetizing videos works these days. If TFC2 got to a good enough point someday, who knows, maybe somebody would revive it. But I don't forsee them ever going back to TFC1.

@Salt_Water_Otter While you're creative-mode checking, you may also want to check the second layer, to see if it's marble, just in case. That is also flux.

@killsode Bioxx already has a vein mechanic implemented for ore in TFC2, last we knew. I unfortunately can't find the post (or twitter?) where he a gave a picture, but in this post he talks about what he's shooting for (it's directly after he quotes ciekma). edit: found the picture. It's from this post.

@Xhatz I'm hoping that Bioxx is taking a break waiting for the 1.13 release, which will have huge code implications from what I understand, removing the block id limit, and altering how block data is set up. It makes a lot of sense for Bioxx not to do tons of work that he'll have to redo most of with the next update. Minecon is in two weeks, with any luck they'll announce a date for 1.13 at that time. Since 1.8 they've been doing an update every 6-8 months I think, and the last one was June iirc. So I'm hoping for 1.13 in the Dec-Feb range, and hopefully a resurgence in activity. Hopefully.

@killsode This post would be a good place to start.

I feel like this is going to fight the island-hopping nature of TFC2. It may also require mechanics a bit too grindy and restrictive for some. I'd actually say the game benefits more from making the player use their skill to find multiple veins of some heavily used resources, such as copper and iron in TFC1.

TFC1 is no longer changing. The devs are working (slowly) on TFC2. There is a playable version of TFC2 for download, but it's very basic right now and really is just about worldgen. It has fire pits, and clay vessels, and very rare and scattered food, and that's about it. The few mobs will 1-shot you, so you can't use them for food yet. But the world gen is quite beautiful, and fun to explore in creative mode.

Well aquaducts are still a fun idea. I definitely support them. I just think maybe they'd be better geared toward powering machinery via water wheels. Maybe not necessarily stone age tech - this era might be animal powered if anything - but certainly in the metal era, powering mill stones and stamp mills would be attractive options I think. Kind of depends on how exactly they'd be powered, as to whether an actual aquaduct would be necessary, or just a canal. For instance a water mill that just sits in a river might give X power while a wheel that has water falling on it from a height might provide power proportional to the height the water falls? Or at least you get more power for water entering on top of the wheel, vs on the bottom? That would make aquaducts attractive vs just putting the wheel in a stream or river. Power could affect speed of operation, at the simplest. If power is an actual quantity that transfers through machines, then it could determine how many machines and at what speed they would operate. Also, on a prestige level, if some kind of fountain mechanic could be created, that might be an attractive reason to create aquaducts with cisterns perhaps. There would be pipes from the cistern drain to the fountain, and the pipes would store the data of how high the original cistern is, and then you could place the fountain nozzle, and depending on how high the nozzle is vs the height of the cistern, you would get more or less of a tall spray of water? I think people would enjoy that.

I think the hushing would only be efficient on large slopes if the vein actually follows the slope, and is at or very near the surface. If it does not follow the slope you'll expose only a small portion of the vein, and if it's very deep at all, it'll be more attractive to just tunnel mine it. Honestly the hushing thing seems like a historical precedent in search of a use, rather than a problem in search of a solution. I just don't feel like there are any problems that it's a good attractive solution for, and I can't really think of a good problem to create to justify it either. You'd have to drastically extend the dirt shoveling time, and I don't think that would fly. As far as a different portal, when trying to make progress, only the east-west portals will be considered progress. North and south portals are just the same tier, so you're not making any progress. So even if the north/south islands are softer stone than the east or west you tried, you're still wasting a lot time on that island having to conquer it and activate it's portals, vs if you had just been able to progress east or west. And the east/west option only works once, going from tier 0 to 1. After you're on either of the tier 1 islands, you're committed, and now going back the other way just gets you to the same tier you were on, if you were on tier 1 and are back tracking through 0 to get to the other tier 1 side, or you're going backward if you're on tier 2. You've either got the grind of tackling the entire island of hardened stone, or you're got the grind of having to conquer entire tier(s) of island you've already been at to get to the equivalent tier in the other direction. I do like the idea of different stone hardnesses, including some that are extremely tedious to do with pickaxe, as obsidian is in vanilla, because I do think it provides opportunity for techs other than pickaxe. But I just think those kind of super-hard stones should be in areas that are optional for the player, not forced upon them. I think you can make fire mining a good option by not allowing the player to affect raw stone at all with their hands, and perhaps having very small deposits of poor copper in exposed cliff/hillside areas, providing the player a tempting opportunity to utilize fire mining, vs running around nugget hunting or doing the pan/sluice thing.

I mean, there's the disappointment of having an ingot melt (momentary, part of the game rules, and the player's fault really), or accidentally ruining a crucible of blue steel (flaw in game mechanic, wastes a lot of time and material, but avoidable). But then there's the disappointment of having to spend many, many hours more of tedious work that you wouldn't have had to spend if RNG had just flipped different. It's similar to the frustration of having no flux nearby I think (which hopefully won't be a thing in TFC2), but longer and more definite, and unavoidable. It's not really the best kind of game mechanic. There's a balance that could be struck perhaps. But I think it's a fine balance. I honestly think it'd be better to have harder stones at lower Y levels, so the player Doesn't hit entire island-sized slow-downs. But they know that if they go down, they will hit harder stone. Maybe with better veins. I think TFC1 used to have a relation between Y level and size/quality of veins. I'm not entirely sure why they got rid of it, but on paper it seems like a good idea to me. Risk vs reward. Let the player choose to tackle the harder situation when they're ready, rather than making it a surprise kick to the groin. That is an interesting option, for powder kegs to turn blocks to rubble and gravel, vs disintegrating them. And could avoid some or all of the ore crushing problems. You could have a disintegration radius near the blast, where the ore is turned directly to drops, and then a further zone where it is turned to blocks of rubble and gravel. Since rubble and gravel would presumably not be crushable, that would still allow the blocks above the disintegration radius to fall, while also preventing it from crushing ore below. And since the player would still have to do the work of mining out the remaining rubble and gravel blocks, the effective radius could perhaps be larger and still be balanced. I like it. Edit: and regards streams and soil, that's well and good if source blocks dont' move soil. But what if the player *wants* actually flowing water, for the sound and look? And they want it in a soil setting, without gravel. I think it unnecessarily limits that, and probably isn't really much better than just using a shovel. Especially when veins are now long and snaking, and not circular. There will of course be rare situations where you would have natural water perfectly made to just remove a bit of dirt and do the erosion over the deposit, but otherwise I'm having a hard time imagining it being worth going through all the aquaduct hassle, vs just shoveling away the soil.

Or just build it right by the trunk. Probably a lot easier. I forget, do flint and steel not start fires in TFC? That'd be even easier if so, assuming you have iron.

Each island region is 4096 blocks north and south. There is a certain border region that can't have land, but generally speaking your islands are I think pretty consistently well over 3k blocks in diameter, iirc. This is known. As for ores, based on what Bioxx has told us in the past, for one thing, the early islands WILL have the things you need to tech up. It's not been made clear yet if the starting island is stone-age only with copper on the next island, or if you can get to copper on the spawn island. But if you are intended to reach copper on the spawn island, from what Bioxx has said we can assume there *will* be copper. So maybe copper spawns in the X=0 islands regardless of stone type? Or maybe only copper-bearing stones will be found in the X=0 zone? We don't really know for sure - at least I haven't been able to deduce it from what we've been given so far. I don't think it's currently the latter, but he it could probably be made so relatively easily. For a time I wondered if ores would spawn regardless of stone type, based only on X values. But all ores I've seen so far in TFC2 have been in their 'logical' stone types. But, I've not seen tons of ores yet in TFC2. They seem much rarer exposed above ground, and we don't have surface nuggets yet. So i think almost all the ore I've seen has been naturally exposed in caves. So that might address a couple of your concerns. I share some of your others, and have expressed similar concerns before. I guess we'll see where things go.

Definitely would love to see more detail and progression in mining. I like the idea of fire mining. But I think for that to be useful, there will have to be no drops from using your fist to break a block (unlike in current TFC1, iirc). But the stone age options could still be varied: 1) collecting ore nuggest from the surface 2) sluicing 3) panning 4) fire mining. That's a lot of options really, but I like that they each address a specific need. nuggets is the easy mode but limited, panning is tedious but unlimited (except by sand/gravel availability), sluicing is automated a unlimited (again by material), and fire mining get you more ore, but for more time invested, and is also limited. fire mining is also very opportunistic - you have to have a deposit in just the right spot - at the surface. I presume we would have a 'clay bucket' or something, to hold the water, unless buckets would not be metal age tech in TFC2. I'm not so sure on the dirt erosion thing. It would limit player ability to make picturesque flowing streams, and may be problematic with the TFC2 terrain generation, even assuming gravel (which TFC2 seems to line most creeks with) is *not* washed away. I do think the pickaxe as the main tool in extracting ore is a bit problematic, in that you can only extend the time so long before the player just won't do it anymore. I think this limits the time spread you can have from the lowest to highest pickaxe. I like water source blocks obeying gravity, I'm not so sure what you mean by '5 of 8 fills in the air'? There's only 6 sides to any given block. If you're counting diagonal blocks, and only the horizontal plane, that seems a bit much. I think the way it is now where any two horizontal sides causes it to fill in is fine. Is there a specific issue the 5/8 ratio addresses? Aquaducts are a fun idea, I'd love to see them necessary. But I'm not sure erosion is the best thing. I feel like water powered machinery might be a better use. I feel like removing dirt by shovel would need to be more difficult before going to all the water hassle would be attractive. I do like the notion of several grades of prodcut, leading to better and better extraction. I'm assuming there would in this scheme be, for instance, 'granite gravel', and then 'gold-bearing granite gravel'? You'd need to have both so normal gravel can spawn in streams and stuff without being easy-mode ore. So rubble yields maybe just 20%, gravel 40%, sand 80%, and powder 100% of the ore potential? That seems like a decent and compelling progression. So the player is in a hurry, they can process the rubble and gravel. If they want to get more efficiency they break up the rubble into gravel. The player can make animal powered grinders to automate the process perhaps. That's your stone age maybe. Once they're into the metals, they can make water powered stamp mills to automate it better (powered by either aquaduct, or water wheel). They can also build some form of rolling crusher mill to very slowly turn gravel to sand, but that's the best they can do in the stone age. When the player gets engines, they can make a plate crusher that will turn rubble directly to sand. And have a separate grinder to turn sand to dust, again, slowly. And then maybe some further tech that can go straight from rubble to dust. I like that this sort of chain allow you so make the player put it together in several ways. They can make a chain of relatively inexpensive and slow single-purpose machines, or they can make a huge investment and make the power hungry all-in-one machine. I think players love that kind of tech progression. It may extend the life of a mine, by causing players to only mine what they need at the time, leaving the rest for when they have better tech/automation. But, they still might choose to just mine what they can immediately, and store the rubble till later, especially in a multiplayer setting where someone else may find the stuff. Although, if rubble is very hard to transport, maybe not. Also if rubble does not fit in most containers, it would make the storage of said rubble a possible issue. The yield gradient could be extended if the refining methods also teched up a lot, and affected the yield. So pit kilning applies a 70% yield modifier, with with further techs being 80, 90, and finally 100%. Or the smelting tech could be differentiated in other ways too, if the desire is to keep it simple. Rich copper at 35 units x 40% for gravel x 70% for kilning, is asking the player to do a lot of maths (and equals 9.8 units). But it would provide a lot of tech tree options. I'm not sure wide variations in hardness of general stone types is a good idea, considering the current scheme of entire island being one stone type. It makes for a rather disappointing moment when you reach you next island and find it's all granite and very difficult to mine. I think it would make much more sense if certain desireable minerals were present only in extra-hard stone. This might require some rearrangement of the stone types though. So your general island stone is pick mineable, but you run across a vein of emeralds or rubies, and they're in obsidian, which is extra-hard. I like this especially in the context of making explosives more useful. I guess a lot depends on how faithful TFC2 intends to be to reality. Or if it's feasible to have the islands be generally of sedimentary or metamorphic nature, but having igneous extrusions or small regions, which can contain more valuable ores. One of the problems I always had with powder barrel mining in TFC1 was that to do it best you had to find the bottom of the vein and work up. Otherwise you were wasting ore via all the cobblestone that was generated falling and squashing ore blocks beneath. It was also disappointing that powder kegs didn't work exactly as stated. Near as I could tell, you got more radius if you mined out the immediate area around the powder barrel. Even centering a barrel in a 5x5 area though, I think I never got more than a 16 or 20 block diameter chamber. Certainly never anywhere near the 40 blocks claimed by the wiki. And I tried it in all 3 stone types, with the exact same results. I think if powder barrels are to be more attractive, it would be useful to change ore crushing mechanics - for instance only cobblestone/rubble blocks will crush ore blocks. Gravel and sand will not. And then powder kegs could be made to yield only gravel, thereby avoiding ore crushing. The snakelike veins, I think we've already got. I'm hoping this makes minecarts more useful. But that will depend on how easy it is to carry ore/rubble/etc on one's person, vs in conveyances.

As I understand it, this is as intended. You lose nutrition faster when you are starving, the idea being that eventually you end up with so few hitpoints due to nutrient deficiency that you are easy for mobs to kill. But you don't actually die from hunger itself. It used to work that way. I presume they decided it wasn't a 'fun' mechanic.

So the bedrock holes can't be fixed? My impression was that Bioxx was aware of them, but simply wasn't going to bother fixing them because the plan was to forbid access to those areas. Transport between boats could be instantaneous, which is the shortest you can get. Personally I'm fine with having indestructible ships or caravans or whatever. I'd trade it for more free-form exploration and especially more varied island design any day. From what I've seen of the island generation thus far, most of these islands are maybe 100-300 blocks apart at their close points. Hardly what I'd call 'vast'. That's a far cry from the endless ocean wastes of TFC1. It's nothing as far as MC boat travel is concerned. My other concern about the current portal situation is that you may end up with the player getting teched up, but possibly not finding the portal yet. And now they're ready to move on to the next island, east or west but can't find it. That could be frustrating if they just want to continue advancing, and not move parallel north-south. These portals are sometimes hidden under trees. If nothing else their structure could stand to be made larger so that they have a good chance of not being hidden by trees. Ships on the other hand, being in open water, would always be very visible. The easier mob transport via portal is a good point. Ships would be harder to accomplish that with. In the scope of a 'classic' ship design anyway. If there's grand plans for the paths dimension that's great. But kind of my two main points here are that 1) TFC2 progress is slow, and the portals and paths dimensions seem prone to bugs and just generally seem like another huge code time sink. And 2) the paths dimensions seems to be necessitating some very same-ey island design, and the very rigid nature of ocean travel. The ocean travel thing is already a concern of several people I think. Imo, it wouldn't be the worst thing in the world to cut loose the paths idea for now, leave ocean travel open, work on the more important nuts and bolts stuff, and maybe revisit paths later when the game is more playable. Perhaps after playtesting combat to see if it is a sufficient advancement brake on its own.

Glad ya like it Falcon. I will say, there was a portion of the original thread that I think was lost when the post above yours was merged in, or during the forum switch or something. As I recall it was Kitty or Bioxx explaining that minecraft doesn't provide the capability for a block to drop different drops based on the tool used. They can only say "I'm broken, now I drop this!". So my suggestion in that regard became more problematic. I never responded to that issue, maybe I'll do that now: So I'm not entirely sure how the new model system works exactly, but my impression is it's a bit more flexible than was initially thought in the chiseling discussion. Apparently you can combine models together to a certain degree? Idk. But proceeding off that assumption, a way I thought to get around the block-drop conundrum was to have each specific tool change the 'slice' of meat to a new slice. So there would be a 'meat' slice (default), and a 'bone' slice, and a 'tendon' slice, for example. If the player wants to get a higher bone yield they right click with the bone-getting tool, and chance that slice to a bone slice. Then that slice drops more bones. Perhaps arrange it so each slice can only be changed once (so it requires a little thought), and perhaps also limit the number of bone/tendon slices a given haunch can yield. That seems like it might work around the block-drop limitation? It gets more complicated with more 'dissection-ey' stuff. If a mob drops four haunches, even if you limit each haunch to one 'eye' slice for instance, the player could still theoretically get up to four eyes from one animal. In such case you might have to limit mobs to dropping only two haunches (but you could still get two hearts or livers?). Or you'd have to start making separate parts. Haunches, rib cages, and heads - each limited on what slices they can produce. That starts to kind of require several generic models of these things, or many animal-specific models. Perhaps specialty items are only obtainable at the corpse stage? I would absolutely be down for making those models though. Still a lot of issues at that level of detail, but maybe we'll be lucky to even get the first level of detail. I'm hoping the current hiatus is kind of due to maybe waiting for 1.13 and the big changes with metadata and block ids? Which if past patterns are followed might be in December?

Have you read, understood, and followed all of the rules listed in large text at the top of the suggestions forum?(Yes/No): YES My butchering suggestions stem from a few things - my general love for more 'in-depth' processes (seeing the charcoal pit mechanic in an LP was a strong driving force for me to try the mod) the lack of incentive to *ever* make any type of knife other than a stone knife, and the general ease of getting food in the mod - which may or may not be a concern of the devs at all, I don't know. I searched the TFC1 suggestion forums and found this post, which seemed relevant and had some dev opinions. But, that was two years ago, and my idea is I think different enough to warrant a separate thread, not to mention some game additions since then. So in general, food is easy to get. Meat is also easy to get in large quantities. You just axe your animal to death --> meat shower. I think the game might benefit both from an aesthetic sense, and a progression sense, from adding detail and progression to buthering, not just in skill, but in the tools used. I think several factors, not just butchering, could play into how much meat is gained. INITIAL DROP ON KILL, AND FIELD DRESSING First, the initial drop. No longer will most mobs drop cuts of meat. They drop a corpse, or a haunch, or something like that. The corpse is optional, depending on how much work the system is decided to need. But the common factor, is bulk. A small corpse - i.e. a pig - can be carried on the back. Larger corpses - bear, cow, deer - cannot. they overburden the player no matter what and certainly do not stack. They are a placeable object, so the player can place them. But they can also just be tossed like an item and left to despawn. If placed, they become a block (two for large). Presumably a generic corpse texture for each size, unless we want to get detailed per animal. butchering skill is no longer gained just by killing. It is gained in the later butchering acts. SMALL ANIMALS - birds & fishes Birds, fishes, and other very small animals are a special case. They probably just remain as they are now. Unless it is desired to make the player pluck the feathers from their corpse. But irl it's far, far easier to pluck a dead bird immediately after you kill it, so it's probably reasonable to leave them as is, EXCEPT that I don't think they should drop bones. There's not a chicken in existence with a bone in it's body that would make a good knife handle, never mind axe handle. OPTION - Texture Skinning If you don't just want the skin to pop off, you can add it to the process. This is done like the current hide scraping mechanic, changing the texture of the block, presuming that's even still a thing in 1.8. This can go pixel by pixel for lots of work (remember, it's 5 or 8 sides of a cube now, not just 1) or just side-by-side for less work (but still lots of durability off knife). The player then hacks at the corpse to dismember it. They get 'haunches' of meat from the corpse (also hide if the optional skinning mechanic is not used). Depending on size of animal, they can get more or less haunches. Skill could also play a factor in this. Haunches are themselves a placeable item, but come in only single block size. They do not stack, and can be carried on the back. Maybe inventory as well if we're going easier. But they do NOT fit in vessels. OPTION - Method of Kill Reduces Meat It would be good if the possible haunches were NBT data perhaps (since they don't stack anyway), and the corpse dropped can have the potential haunch number reduced depending on kill method. A bludgeoning kill has a strong likelihood to reduce the haunch count, as it ruins meat, and ruptures internal organs, which spoils the meat. A slashing attack is better. Piercing attack is best - especially if it could be coded to incentivize javelins and arrows. At this point, the player has completed the field dressing of their kill. If it was a smaller animal they might have carried it back to their hut on their back slot, but if it's large, they had to do this in the field, with the attendant dangers. The player now has haunches. If they're in the stone-age, they have to cook and eat the haunch as is. This reduces the amount of meat. The cooked haunch also still cannot fit in a vessel (provided this is not too complicated to code, as I assume right now food-vessel-fitting is purely based on ounces via ounces determining size?) The haunch also cannot go into a sandwich or salad (again, if not too complicating of the system). These things firmly establish the cooked haunch as a stone-age thing. Without fitting in a vessel they will rot faster, and will take up inventory space with it's 1-stack. Those in addition to reduced meat on cook, and not useable in meals will mean they will only be desirable early on, incentivizing full on butchering when the player has the tech. BUTCHERING ENVIRONMENT Butchering starts with a butcher block. So the player has to have their grid. The butcher block is a single block (crafted via 6 logs in top rows, 3 sticks bottom row. Butcher blocks are back-only carryable. A haunch can only be placed on top of a butcher block. Anywhere else is "too dirty" and it immediately pops off. Once placed, the player then uses their tool to start cutting off cuts of meat. This could be done again, via the texture-picking option, with each side of the cube popping off meat when done, or the haunch will have 8 slices, like a stack of coal or snow. It'd be more fun if the slices were vertical rather than horizontal like charcoal and snow, but if I understand the 1.8 system correctly, that would result in 4x as many blocks required. In any case, the player has to chop off each slice of meat, for which they get their rewards. However, each time you destroy a slice/pick a side, the game checks if there are any dirt, sand, clay, or gravel blocks anywhere in a 5x5 cube centered on the haunch. If so, decay is immediately added to the slice, due to the unclean environment. Additional decay is added if it's raining and the haunch can see the sky. This is to incentivize the player to have a proper room in which to butcher, and basically not butcher in the field. OPTION - Ground Butchering Butchering haunches might possibly be doable on the ground. This would allow stone-age folks to butcher, and in that case maybe haunches aren't edible, to simplify things. You simply place the haunch on a surface and start cutting off the slices. But again, there is the check of the environment for dirty blocks. Additional decay is applied if the haunch is not on a butcher block, and more if the haunch can see the sky and it's raining. This allows stone age people to butcher, but with greatly reduced efficacy. And possibly a lot of stone knife wear, if they have to cut off tons of decay right form the start. BUTCHERING REWARDS So the player can get meat obviously. But how about bones? What about other meat items? I think it would be interesting if there were an Ark-like system, where using different tools gives better chance for different items. So using a knife give more meat, less bones. However using a cleaver nets more bones, less meat. Now that example is not logical - the whole purpose of a cleaver is to chop bone. So if you want SAPs (Stone Age People) to to get less meat, then there's no stone cleaver, only metal. If you want them to be able to butcher meat properly, then either the knife nets the meat, or you make stone tool cleavers. If it were desired to have further products from butchering, more tools could be brought in - a fillet knife for instance. Or accessory requirements - you have to use a knife and have a sharpening steel in the hotbar (not sure if the block breaking mechanic recognizes that sort of thing though, which is where texture-picking might have an advantage). Tool tier could also affect the gains. more meat/bones/whatever from higher tier tools, or maybe more exotic gains have a base-line of a certain tier to gain. This is to incentivize someone to actually make a metal knife. More exotic gains could be things like fat, tendon, intestine, or bladders - fairly obvious possibilities I think. SAPs should have a very hard time getting special items I think, or at least certain ones. Additionally (not to sound to much like Ark) there could be certain pieces - choice meat, prime meat, liver, tongue - that can be used to tame specific wild animals (which animal takes which item could be randomized per seed) they could also of course be eaten. These items could again tie into skill, tool type, and tool tier. SUMMARY So summary of process in general: - Kill mob, which drops corpse item. Back carryable for small animals, large corpse overburdens, even on back. - Place corpse on ground. Process corpse for skin and haunches, likely in the field. - Take haunch to butchering block in clean room, choose tool for desired product, break 'slices' for product. I believe the overall result of this system would be not only an engaging and believable butchering system, but making meat have a bit more of a 'tech tree' associated with it, and generally take more time to get. Also people would actually make metal knives hopefully. I think it could make the system interesting, without being grindy, and it involves no GUI at all. It would definitely give something more for the farmer/animal husbandry person to do, as it would not be nearly as easy to get the meat as it is now. And yet meat is still accessible to SAPs for survival purposes (birds drop meat using the current mechanic anyway). I've thrown out a lot of variables though, for instance quantity of meat could be affected by: - player skill - tool type - tool material And then the following three options, which do not affect meat amount produced, but add decay, affecting the net gain. - Butcher block or not - Environment clean or not - Exposed to rain That's a lot of variables and it would take some balancing. Maybe some affect quantity of meat less, and are more about getting the extra stuff. There may be technical issues - especially with regards to whether block breaking can require accessories in the hotbar, and if texture-picking is even going to be available in 1.8. In any case, thanks very much for reading another of my long posts, and please comment!

Not sure why you phrased it with a 'but'. I don't really like the portal system either. So I think we're in agreement, though maybe for different reasons. The portal system as I understand it was basically brought in as a hard enforcer of island progression - the player had to defeat an island boss to get a key(s?) to activate the portals. The boss being presumably very hard to beat without tiering up your weapons and armor. But I think this could probably be tolerably enforced simply by having the armor-and-weapon-using mobs of successive islands equipped with better gear. It's true that minecraft mobs are dumb, and a player could probably kill high-tier mobs while under-geared, if they really put in the effort and want to do it. But it'll be more difficult - my alternate weapons and armor suggestion would specifically help address the issue. In my original suggestion there, a weapon 1 tier below the armor would do 25% of it's damage. So even if the player is dancing around the mobs, they're using 4x the durability of their weapon just based on number of hits, nevermind if gear takes more damage opposing higher tier metals. The really abusive part of minecraft is missiles, which mobs are usually ill equipped to handle. But if taking on higher tier armor with inferior missiles, the player is going to be spending TONS of resources and time making all those arrows (metal arrow heads would NEED to be a thing in this system). Combined with forbidding block placement before an area is conquered, I just really think the game can be balanced to mostly enforce/strongly encourage the metal tier progression without the hard enforcement of portals and boat forbiddance. The boat issue can be strongly discourage simply by strong ocean mobs hanging around the sector borders, or deep ocean chunks, I think. I don't think it would be worth the player risking getting killed at sea and losing their gear, vs simply following the intended tiering pattern and being safer. Or, as you say, have the option of purchasing passage on a ship. The cost being perhaps 4-5x the metal amount required for a full kit of gear. So the player can gear up and boat themselves at X cost, or pay for passage at 5X cost. Maybe they can even build boat with hulls plated in the metal of the island tier, and that metal makes the boat immune to the specific mobs that are meant to prevent boating across sectors easily. The nice thing about ship transport, it seems to me that it could simply be out in the ocean (but inside the border mob ring - player boats to shore in a normal little boat) and so not near as touchy about how and where it appears. And no paths dimensions (well, at first maybe) so that avoids fiddling with that for awhile. Just seems to me like it'd save some effort on Bioxx's part, and give players more flexibility, if they want a free-ocean-and-boating world.

The devs have ceased development of TFC1, as they are developing TFC2. They don't even do minor bug fixes anymore for TFC1. I'm not one of them, but I can tell you that the answer to your questions is almost certainly no. Especially the 'financial' question, considering TFC of both versions are free.

As I understand it, one of the major benefits of the island system is that it allows the use of discreet climatic zones, rather than a temperature gradient system. The temperature gradient system was the thing that created the hard line of acacia forests near the equator. I really like having climatic zones, because it allows a lot of interesting variation from island to island - even east-west - that wasn't possible in TFC1. So ya, I think the island system is worth it. The islands are usually pretty big, so it's not like it feels confining. My only wish is to ditch the portal system, since it seems to have necessitated the islands all being rather same-ey in order to accommodate portal placement. I really enjoyed the islands of earlier versions, where there were large internal lakes and such. That doesn't seem to occur anymore.

Eh, nothing special about my technique in general. I basically clear-mine level by level, leaving a 2-thick floor between. I cherry pick the ores from this floor, and replace them with cobblestone to leave a smooth supported ceiling on the 'bottom' of the floor, and a smooth walking surface on the 'top' of the floor. In between I mine alternating blocks to maximize raw stone gain (and naturally reduces pick usage a bit, since raw blocks pop off without the pick). Easy to navigate, no dangerous drops, no jumping. I like to keep it simple. I'm not generally that concerned about time, and pick durability doesn't really concern me much, unless I'm at the very, very start, with my first copper or bronze pick - but then, I enjoy smithing and usually have 2-3 spare pick heads in a vessel on me at all times. I just take it one 5x5 bay at a time, and stop going in a given direction when I get less than X ores per bay. X varying depending on the ore in question and the richness, and how into mining I am at the time. After I 'finish' a level, I wall off around the ladder shaft, and leave a door, so that when the level goes dark I don't have to worry about mobs jumping me on my way up/down.

Interesting method. I'm always curious to see how others mine as well. You definitely fall on the organized side of things. After you've got your framework set up, do you just sort of 'swiss cheese' mine the ores, or do you mine in organized levels? It seems like you're setting up for swiss cheese, but your screenshots look like you've got some level organization going on.

Ok, I've made a few basic tiles: They are basket weave 1 and 2, dark bond left, dark bond right, herring, and soldier. I think they're pretty versatile, as seen in the below image. The soldiers as half slabs make good window sills and lintels, or on a stair block, good stairs or corbels. Herringbone and basket are mostly paving patterns, but you can sometimes find herringbone patterns in old structures, as infill. IRL it's normally diagonal with relation to the framing, simply because it looks better that way. The one on the right also has some basket weave. Basket weave and Herringbone irl are not structurally strong, so they're ok infilling around structure like this, but you wouldn't have built an entire wall out of these patterns, back in the day. Here are I used only the left and right dark bond patterns to make 3 different larger wall patterns: Due to our small tile size and even brick layout per tile, we'd probably be limited mostly to left and right diagonals, and then horizontal stripes, at least within standard running bond pattern. Which is a lot of tiles to make anyway, even for just a couple bond colors. Other bond patterns would bring other possibilities.

I like that a lot. I feel like he looks a lot more agile now. I did notice the neck is clipping through the ears a bit, and maybe the head being default level or down a bit, rather than 10d up, might look better, in terms of default positioning. I think the rear legs might look a bit better if the middle piece were more centered under the haunch. Also the tail will need to be modified to address z-fighting. Other than that I think it's looking good - powerful and dangerous!