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Darmo

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Everything posted by Darmo

  1. A small question

    I don't know about agricraft, but seed genetics has been suggested in the agriculture thread.
  2. Encumberance Inventory system

    That was the 'new' concept, yes. I mean, I call it 'size' out of habit, and also 'size' is one syllable vs 'encumbrance', but it's the same general notion. I think you're very correct that both weigh and physical dimensions can play into how an item is classed. But so the size/encumbrance would factor into where in the inventory things fit, but also what containers they fit in, as it did in TFC1. I didn't rehash that since it's an old concept. So for instance vessels could accept up to tiny or small or whatever, backpacks another size larger, chests another size larger, etc. EXCEPT that there will be cases where certain items have their own specialized piles and racks and so forth, regardless of size. So it's not only what fits where in the inventory, but also what fits in what containers. But you're right, there could in theory be different sections of inventory that accept a certain max size. I'm a big fan of having a variety of containers, some specialized, and the good thing about enumerated encumbrance, was that a container could offset that, to give that container an advantage. So you could have a wheelbarrow which might offset 50% of the weight inside, but could only carry dirt, sand, gravel, cobble, etc. This would encourage the player very strongly to use that wheelbarrow in those situations. But even better, it allowed there to be a skill production bonus. So a normal wheelbarrow reduces the weight 50%, but an 'excellent' wheelbarrow reduces it 60%, and 'masterwork' 70%. And that would be pretty nice I think. So, there's good things about having numbers. I just think it's simpler to balance overall, and simpler for the player to grasp, without the numbers. I feel like a lot of frustration could possibly arise from the player going out to collect resources, and discovering they have plenty of inventory, but not enough encumbrance capacity, and they have to go back home and offload more. Hitting your encumbrance I think could 'sneak up' on you a lot easier that maxing out inventory/container slots. The downside to a size-without-numbers system, is that it becomes harder to give much quality gradation to items - the most obvious is more slots. So if we assume a player can only carry dirt etc on the hotbar, and a wheelbarrow provides maybe 9 slots, but requires a hotbar slot and the offhand slot, then the player nets as many as 7 additional slots (7 hotbar + 9 wheelbarrow = 16, vs 9 hotbar with no wheelbarrow). An 'excellent' wheelbarrow could have more slots. If the base 9 are 3x3, then you could add another column of 3 to the right. Masterwork another column, etc. It's not as fine-grained as percent reductions, but it can provide a bonus to skill of craftsmanship, or materials. It's somewhat easier to do for hotbar-limited items - since there's so few hotbar spaces it's easier to have a container with more slots. Items that fit in inventory will require either a smaller inventory, or different strategies to provide incentive. I do have some idea, but I'm going to make a separate post just about containers for that. As a side note, I am kind of a fan of - well, at least exploring the notion of - starting the player with may just like, 9 available inventory slots, and the clothing they wear makes more available. I know this sort of thing has been done in other mods. But that too, is kind of a different topic.
  3. Encumberance Inventory system

    Fourth factor is size. As in, physical dimensions. Like Stroam said, irl a fishing pole is light, but you can't even fit it in a barrel. The interesting thing is TFC1 *already* had both size(tiny, very small, small, medium, large, huge) and weight (light medium or heavy) according to the wiki. I never really noticed that before I was researching into this. Because out of all those classifications, the only mechanical effects that I ever really noticed were that some items fit in vessels/barrels and a couple items can only be carried on the back (full barrels/vessels and anvils). I don't know if the querns and beds things were just kept small for convenience, or just waiting until better systems(handcarts) were coded, which never happened for TFC1. Stroam there's good ideas there but it's a little OT compared to the OP I think. I'm going to try to stick with Konlii's original stuff. In the context of Konlii's weight system, what I'm going to say is, it's going to come down to mining. The mining system needs to use conveyances. Everything else can dance around that, but mining, being integral to tiered advancement in metals, I think can be made into a localized enough activity to not 'slow down' the entire game, but also make minecarts and other animals good and necessary. Before getting into this, I will say that I'm feeling like the 'unstackables' encumbrance still seems a bit much Konlii, unless it's not an absolute. For instance what if we don't want potions to stack, for game balance sake? This is how vanilla does it right? Despite being small, they exist only in stacks of one, I presume to keep the player from just having oceans of potions to breeze through stuff. I think that's a good mechanic, but I think it's not good to have them weigh huge amounts. And I can only imagine they would not be the only case - wands, rods, maybe even special books, all might want to be unstackable. I think it would be better if all items simply had an encumbrance assigned. But then how to limit the number of weapons, tools, and armor carried? My suggestion for limited 'major gear' carried would be - if code-possible - to make add a break-point where items can ONLY be carried on the hotbar and in special slots. This takes the entire 'inventory' out of the equation, and limits these items purely based on a limited number of slots available, but still leaves the vast player inventory for use with all the little 'collectibles'. In the context of the OP, I think tier 4 - heavyweight, would be the candidate. Now to back up a bit, the way I'm envisioning the inventory system is the hotbar, the offhand, 4 belt slots, and back slot. All visible along the bottom. offhand, back, and belt slots are essentially extensions of the hotbar that only are available for certain items (offhand) or when supplementary items are worn on them (belt and back). When you're actually in the inventory screen, there are also the vanilla four armor slots, an additional four clothing slots (maybe) and 'baubble' slots for 2 rings, necklaces, etc. That's just how I envision it, it of course may (probably) won't shake out that way. So back to tier 4 encumbrance. Armor pieces (metal armor that is) can only be carried on the hotbar, or worn in the armor slots. Not allowed in inventory. I think this accomplishes Konlii's goal of making armor a cumbersome item, without making it have to weigh insane amounts. Shields - hotbar or offhand. Two-handed weapons (as discussed elsewhere) offhand, 1 hotbar slot, and 2 sheathe slots. Empty barrels - hotbar or back. Full barrels - hotbar AND offhand (2 slots). They slow the player immensely, and the player cannot climb ladders or jump, but the player can still move up and down stairs - this is an attempt to simulate 'rolling' the barrel, without forcing Bioxx to animate that. Although I guess if the barrel were shown in front of the player horizontal, that would still be a nice accessory thing, and similar to the barrel-on-back thing. This will encourage localization of barrels, and basically allow the player to 'roll' them to a cart for further transport. Anvils could be same as full barrel, or maybe also have the option to be carried on the back alone. So that's a few examples. As many mods as i've seen that toy with inventory slots, I'd hope that limiting some items to hotbar+ slots would be code-possible. I feel this solution kind of accomplishes Konlii's goal of having certain items come 'at a premium' without having to ramp up the encumbrance levels so much. But now, where I was heading this whole time, mining. So I'm going a bit OT here, but it's in service of trying to tie this system into the world more. Basically, I'm thinking for TFC2 it'd be a good idea for ore blocks to drop themselves when mined, and then the player has to process them to get the ore out. So ore blocks themselves would then be tier 4. This allows the player to carry a certain amount of them on their hotbar. But while mining the player will certainly have other things on their hotbar, so they'll have to find a balance. But if ore block max stack were 8, then the player could carry 72 max and that would be only if they stowed their pick and other hotbar stuff. Bioxx has suggested before that TFC2 ore may be reduce per-block, but even at vanilla levels, 72 normal ore is only 18 ingots. Not a ton by any means, but still enough for a lot of tools and some armor. So maybe stack size of ore blocks is 4, or ore yield is smaller, but however that shakes out, the point is to try and make the max ore blocks carryable not all that great. Barrels are no longer an attractive long-range transport, and ore blocks can't fit in backpacks. It'd be a fine balancing act between making early-game ore processing not be too onerous, but still keeping conveyance useful in both early and later phases of the game. I think processing ore blocks to get ore will help because you can bring in tiered processing that varies the yield. Early game processing would be easily mobile, but low-yield, while late game would be very expensive and tough to move, but higher yield. So, coming full-circle, I've tried to keep to Konlii's suggestion, but I've tried to reduce the need for number in the thousands, with drastically encumbering unstackables, by introducing a mechanic of hotbar-only items. I think this would allow for a greater number of low-tier encumbrances, and reduce the need for a huge upper limit, by keeping items we want to control the numbers of limited to the hotbar, which will already have regular tools and such competing for that space.
  4. Encumberance Inventory system

    It's probably useful to keep in mind that Bioxx's stated goal with even bringing weight into the game is to bring an actual need for conveyances. And due to the way minecraft stack sizes work, we can't make the player's inventory have a fraction of the stack sizes of, for instance, minecarts. Apparently the stack size limit is innate to the item, and if a container (e.g. the player's inventory) limits stack size, then *all* stacks have the same limit - they're all 'chopped down' to the same level. So if a minecart allows stacks of up to 64, but the player's inventory is limited to stack sizes of 16, then the player's inventory will limit *all* stacks to 16. So native-16 stacks will be the same, 32s will be halved, and 64s will be quartered. So it makes it hard to make minecarts superior, because in vanilla code the player's inventory allows all stacks sizes. So in a vanilla context your only solutions would be to 1) blanket-limit the player inventory - which would become inconsistent having all stacks the same limit. 2) increase the slots of minecarts to be much better than player's slots - impractical given the player inventory is already huge, or 3) increase minecart slots AND reduce player slots, to keep the number of minecart slots sane, but still superior to player slots. I would guess that at a minimum, solution 3 would require minecart slots of 36 (a 33% increase over vanilla), and player slots of half that: 18 (a 33% reduction from vanilla player inventory slots). I do now know if slot numbers higher than 36 are allowed, but if not these are inelegant solutions, and don't allow for a lot of fine gradation. Because stacks sizes are not scale-able (only chop-able) and slots can quickly get out of hand I think. So, enter a third factor to make the system more fine-tuneable. TFC1 added size to the equation, but it didn't really utilize it very well. You basically had 'items that fit in vessels', 'items that you can only carry on your back', and everything else. And it was not implemented consistently (querns and beds in vessels anyone?). But it added much-need variety to the inventory system. Now for TFC2 - as either a fourth, or replacement-third factor - arrives weight/encumbrance. I think the game *needs* a third factor *at least* if there is to be any progression at all in terms of containers, or use for more than one conveyance. Slots and stacks alone are not a finely scale-able system. I think most people were fine with the size mechanics in TFC1, and I think it was an excellent third factor. I still think it is enough, without weight being tossed into the mix. But that's for another post. So my point is, 2 factors are not enough, you should count size as a third factor already, and weight should be discussed as a fourth factor. Regarding armor speed debuffs, I'm not a big fan of speed debuffs, generally speaking, but they do have their place and I could see armor being such a place, especially in single player. But it would need to be supported - and by that I mean you would need to provide the player a way to carry their armor on their horse or cart, without using every inch of capacity (so there's room for loot), to the dungeon or whatever, and then they put it on right before going in. That or the debuffs will need to be finely tuned to be noticeable, but not onerous (30% sounds kind of onerous to me). But it would be another hook for smithing skill and magic, and maybe even different types of armor, and in that sense I support it. I don't think material type should play into it, I think material type should affect tier vs. tier damage, and maximum enchantment tier. By different types of armor, what I mean is rather than having breastplates with 1 to 3 layers, you would have chain, scale, and plate armor (for example). And those would have the differing speeds debuffs. More graphics, but also more variety.
  5. Handling your wood, Carpentry and logging.

    Tree Felling - like it. You're saying the existing living tree logs turn into rubble in place? not only trunk, but also the branches up in the air? So the player has to be careful where they stand lest they be hit with falling tree rubble? Skill level - Not sure adding skill level into the time-to-mine equation is a good idea. It's already a small enough difference just using metal tiers. I don't like the idea of tool racks being tier 2. Not sure about ladders either, but that might depend on how ores and mining shake out. Doors and gates as tier 3 might be excessive. Is it assumed then that the player will just have to use ladders or palisades with jump-gaps, or dirt blocks, until then? In that context one of the best loot items from early game dungeons will be doors (unless they don't have them). Making wooden buckets masterful might be a bit of a stretch. How about clay buckets randomly break, wood buckets have durability (they rot), and metal buckets last forever (or have higher durability, at least)? From a game balance perspective I'm not clear what the advantage of wood barrels is that makes them advanced tier, aside from a presumably slightly larger inventory. Log Refining - an interesting system, but what can one do with timber aside from making sawhorses? Is it purely just a limited-use intermediate step? Can one make ladders or fences with it? Moisture - though it appeals to my detailed side, seems like a bit too much probably. Coopering - That's a lot of steps. As mentioned above, what advantages are you envisioning for barrels, vs large vessels? In TFC1 is was 33% more inventory, or double the liquid capacity. I do like the idea of barrels being harder to come by, just not sure THAT much harder... So in general, skill benefits the player in terms of getting higher lumber yield? It doesn't affect finished product? Also tree felling speed as suggested, but I'm not sure that's a good idea, unless felling times go up quite a bit. Overall I like giving a greater sense of accomplishment and process. I do think it would result in some of these items becoming important dungeon loot, although they'd probably be very heavy, so not very lootable. I could easily forsee the basic result being that the player just moves into dungeons for the early game, for easy access to doors and chests. Unless dungeons have special rules where mobs will spawn in them no matter light level or player time spent. Or early game dungeons don't have doors and chests. But that's getting OT. Personally I'd like to see more item-level benefits to the skill, so it's not all so predicated on time and output. I've been mulling a lot of container ideas so maybe I'll make a post on that.
  6. [0.2.4] TFC2 Prerelease

    You dig a 2-deep pit. Place the jug in the bottom (no shifting required). Unlike TFC1, now only 1 item fits in a pit at a time. now right click four grass (not shift-place), which will fill up the bottom cube. Now make a firestarter, and right click on the grass till it lights. Unlike TFC1, you now only get a few campfire-like flames, not a roaring inferno. Once the fire is started, place a log on top (not shift-place). Just one log, placed as normal. Not 8 like TFC1 (so the log cost has went down from 2 per item, to 1 per item). The top of the log should be flush with the top of the ground, and you should see smoke coming off it. now place a dirt block on top of the log. You should see smoke coming off the dirt block. Now wait 8 hours. When it's done, the grass is replaced by charcoal, and the log disappears, so the dirt will fall down flush with the ground. If you're not there when it happens, and come back later, the dirt can grow grass on top, and so appear as if everything vanished (so you may actually want to make the pit one deep, and build the next level above ground, so it's easier to tell where it is if you lose track). Dig up the dirt block, dig up the charcoal, and the fired jug will be at the bottom. You can break it or right click with an empty hand to get it. And btw, you can actually place the jug on level ground, and place the straw cube on top, exposed. But near as I can tell it won't light without having suitable walls around it, and 1 level above it (logs are not suitable, for instance). On the topic of tree-elks, they are majestic except they sound like bear, and man, when they drop down on you from a tree you just cut, that is exciting! Also they will 1-hit kill you. So enjoy their majesty from afar, or at least don't antagonize them.
  7. Encumberance Inventory system

    It's a way, and I like it, as I see a couple advantages to the system. I'm curious what relative advantages/disadvantages you see in this system? Is it mainly the trying to shut down arguments about "real" weights of items? Because I'd say that's a valid advantage. The other advantage would be the player could configure the encumbrance points by class, and alter the overall scheme much faster than if they had to alter every individual item. That also does seem like a big advantage. Just curious if there's any other considerations. Also I'd suggest perhaps tiers beyond "immobilizing", for vehicle conveyance. I'd like to see items that immobilize the player, but can be carried in a cart (full barrels, beds), and yet more items that are too heavy for a cart but can be carried in a minecart (I would place bloomery and blast furnace in this category). With donkeys and horses playing in there somehow. Maybe replace "immobilizing" with "massive", followed by huge, mammoth, and gargantuan, if necessary? Beyond those generalities, how do you see a full player kit playing out? Since TFC2 seems like it's basically going to have a building/mining phase, where you're in a conquered island and building or gathering resources, and then a conquering phase where you're in unconquered land and can't break blocks, it does seem reasonable to have heavy armor take significant weight, since the player won't really have any reason to carry blocks in the conquering phase. Then they could switch to lighter armors during building/mining, in theory. So in the conquering phase, what should the player be able to carry? Chest plate is far from the only armor and I feel like 1/3 would be a bit much. You've got 4 body armor slots, plus a shield, plus a weapon, could be considered the basic kit. Should we not consider what this entire kit should take first, rather than a specific piece? What will the player be likely to carry beyond armor and weapons? Healing items and food? Maybe repair materials if that's a thing. But they also need to have some room left for looting right? We're not going to expect them to conquer first and come back to loot later are we? They may not be able to fully conquer on the first go, we need to allow them to take away whatever loot they can surely. I would forsee ingots, ore, books, and weapons and armor being important loot items. Where would these fall in your weight system? Light for books, medium for the rest?
  8. A small question

    My impression is that using Harvestcraft is the long-term plan. However, there is reason to believe that getting the initial crops from gardens is not set in stone, but perhaps just expedient for now. If you're asking if there will be a mix of Harvestcraft foodstuff, and native TFC2 stuff, hard to tell. But if you want more stuff, for now you may do better to suggest stuff to Pam, maybe. Which may only be doable through her patreon, maybe.
  9. Snapping Turtle

    Ya, I think that might work. Hard to know for sure till we see it in action. If you're good with it, go ahead and put *final* in the title.
  10. Snapping Turtle

    Yes, looks good. Neck box needs a proper name though. And the head gizmo is still in the wrong spot and the head box too long, if the turtle is ever going to look to the sides. It needs to have a z position of around -1, and then you'll have to modify the z offset of the head, jaw, and lip, to get them back in the right spots, and shorten the head box. Just rotate the head on the Y axis, and you should see what I mean about it clipping into the shell.
  11. Weapons, sheats, and ranged weapons

    Honestly I think your original instinct was better - exaggerating the weights for balance. Until we know what the TFC2 player carry limit is, it's hard to say for sure, but I see basically two options - either the player carry weight will be very high to deal with all the stuff that players like to carry, or certain items are going to have ridiculously low weights. If you google what a modern special forces soldier carries in gear, you'll probably find answers from 27 to 54kg. So you might ask yourself how you think the game will deal with that. Minecraft being a hoarding game, it seems to me likely the player's capacity will be much higher, just to allow for all the stuff. And in that context, if you want to have a meaningful difference between weapons, where the player factors weight into their choice, then the differences need to be non-trivial. And I'm guessing that a 5kg total weight range is going to be kind of trivial in TFC2. I would suggest not trying to stick too closely to 'real life' weight numbers, because the game is not real life and the amount the player can carry is - I believe - not going to be very close to real life. It's very possible for "real life" to get in the way of good game design. Not saying your number couldn't use some adjustment. But realism is not the end-all.
  12. Snapping Turtle

    I was wrong on the neck. It looked better with it, especially the scrunched up version. Kind of bulldog-like. Just make sure the neck color matches the other skin. Otherwise it actually looks like he's wearing a turtleneck sweater. For the lip/beak, what you did there is better than the orthogonal, though it's probably going to be rarely visible from the player's pov. I was suggesting a further 90 degree rotation around Y, so from the front you see a triangle. If you look at a snapping turtle head-on, they have a descending beak point, when viewed from the front. I tried it in the screenshot below. But seeing it, I'm kind of ambivalent. Your call. The lower body shell (plastron) serves no purpose, you're showing these very low angle shots but mostly what players will see is this: You can't see the plastron at all. You'll see it for a moment when the turtle dies, and that's it. It really has no point. You can put the bottom texture on the bottom side of the mid-bodyshell, and it will have the same effect. It needs to go. Without that bottom shell you could have gotten by with 64x32 instead of 64x64. Actually probably could anyway, but it's a pain to change it after it's made so I'm not asking you to change that. But in the future, animals this small really shouldn't need a texture larger than 64x32. The tail ridges, I see you did them with one 2d plane rather than separate ones. So at least they're not individual pieces anymore. But when I look at the turtle, my eyes are drawn to those tail ridges. And to me that's exactly the opposite of where you want the attention to be. They're small details, and the only small details. They begin and end on the tail, and so they hold the attention there. It's not that I dislike them, it's that they unbalance the model, by providing more detail in that spot than exists on the rest of the model. There will probably be room in swamps for a 'boss turtle', and that turtle? He's going to have tail ridges, shell ridges, and a serious beak. He'll have detail end-to-end, and it'll be great. This little guy is cool, maybe annoying, but he's not a deadly threat. Lets save the next level of detail for the deadly threats, so they don't just look like scaled up versions of 'normal' animals. Edit - Technical Notes: The head rotation point, it's good to keep in mind that when the animal looks around and watches the player, that's the point it will rotate around. Right now you have it rather far back in the shell and I'm guessing the turtle's head will clip into the shell if it turns to the sides very far. Might be a good idea to move it to be a voxel or two behind the eyes. Similarly, the tail pieces both seem unnecessarily sunken into the parts ahead of them. Even if animated, I don't think they'll probably rotate all that much. The first tail piece's rotation point should at least be flush with the back face of the shell, not outside it, and the second piece's rotation point flush with the back of the first piece. You could slightly sink them, so as not to show cracks when 'wagging', but as mentioned earlier I doubt the wag would be very drastic, and so the cracks probably not all that noticeable. So it's probably not critical.
  13. [0.2.4] TFC2 Prerelease

    I have noticed more large caves exposed to the surface, though some were double and triple feature islands. I don't remember exactly when I started noticing them - double and triple caves were added right around 1.11 I think.
  14. [0.2.4] TFC2 Prerelease

    I have to say, the new swamp biomes are really nice. The added trees should help make them more forboding, and also helps them blend better with the surrounding landscape. I've seen swamps on medium and high moisture islands though: (World Seed: [-5659303800418067522] | IslandMap: [1,0] | PlayerPos: [BlockPos{x=5000, y=99, z=1300}]), and (World Seed: [-5659303800418067522] | IslandMap: [0,0] | PlayerPos: [BlockPos{x=1533, y=84, z=2779}]) and (World Seed: [-5659303800418067522] | IslandMap: [-2,0] | PlayerPos: [BlockPos{x=-7380, y=94, z=2019}]). And I've seen marshes on Very High moisture ones. I thought they were fixed as to which shows up, depending on moisture, but maybe not, maybe it just affects the chance? I will say that I think swamps should show up on plain old High moisture islands. Very High and Max seem too rare. Swamps are too great to have be that rare. Second Mesas, I love these too. They add a lot of 'medium scale interest, that a player can perceive at once. And they make great building platforms. I anticipate all kinds of castles and hilltop forts. I did find mesas on an island that did not have mesas in the feature list. I reloaded and checked the seed to make sure it was not a blank seed: World Seed: [-5659303800418067522] | IslandMap: [1,0] | PlayerPos: [BlockPos{x=6696, y=156, z=1393}] Also, this island (World Seed: [-5659303800418067522] | IslandMap: [-2,0] | PlayerPos: [BlockPos{x=-7380, y=94, z=2019}]) had both the 'low land' and 'mesas' features. compared to the other islands with mesas, which were scattered all over and very obvious, I could see no obvious mesas on the map of this island, nor did I see any flying around. So I don't know if 'low land' is de-amplifying the mesas and making them disappear? Don't know if this is how those are intended to interact, or if mesas should form at normal heights, despite 'low land' feature? Another mesa island map with mesas scattered al over; Overall loving how the terrain generation is going though. Spires still need work but swamps and mesas are really great.
  15. Snapping Turtle

    Let's not do ridges on the tail, especially full thickness ones. Let's save that for more monstrous creatures (and maybe alligators). But if you want to go for alligator snapper and try some rotated corner-up boxes on the back of the shell, rather than the dome, I'd go for that. If the shell isn't the turtle's icon, I don't know what is.
  16. Whitetail Deer

    I'll try the raised neck tonight. If you're talking about the thinner parts of his front legs, with regards to two segments, that was how Krono's caribou was made, so I just left them. It'll only ever come into play if we do some fancier animating. Right now you can assume that legs will be animated as one rigid piece, rotating at the shoulder.
  17. Whitetail Deer

    Whitetail Deer model (based on Krono's caribou model), with buck and doe textures. I think maybe just use Konlii's Roe fawn for the whitetail fawn as well, if we're having fawns. Deer_Whitetail.MCModel
  18. Snapping Turtle

    Ha, that is cute. I'd take that thin lighter-green box on the bottom - which mostly won't be visible at all - and put it on the top as a slight dome to the shell. Neck box seems a bit odd at the color it is. Is there a reason it doesn't match the body or the shell? And did you try it without the neck box? It probably doesn't need it. It'd be needed if the head were going to be animated to snap forward, but at this point I don't think that's likely. The tooth/beak, I'd suggest turning it 45 degrees so it's point-down. That might make him look a bit more threatening. I get that their eyes are yellow, but without the pupil (and I'm not saying to put one in) it seems a bit weird to me, like he's a zombie or something. I think maybe just normal black for the eye might be better. I'm not on my MCMC computer right now, so can't comment on the technical details at the moment. Also go ahead and re-post the shark model here, so we have it in this forum.
  19. Skill Books and Tech tree

    So ok, that idea covers books that temporarily boost skill xp gain. Which are reasonable to let the player craft, since they're time-limited and as proposed, skill-level limited. That provides a lot of breadth of need, which is good for SMP. Another type of book might provide a direct benefit to products of skilled trades. This would make more sense with some trades than with others (cooking more so, smithing less, magic definitely), but so for instance rather than 'using' the book and having it disappear, the player puts the book on a shelf. And it perhaps takes many books to get a significant bonus. And the higher your tier, the more books it takes. So the player has some bookcases, in range of their process block of whatever type, and being in that range with X books provides a certain percent benefit to the finished products. So it only works on skills that affect finished products. Their smithing for instance would get a small smithing bonus boost on their tools and weapons. This is explained as, the player having detailed manuals nearby helps them produce better items, vs going from memory. To balance it though, the books get used up. So they have a durability which goes down each time they contribute to a item bonus. This could be rationalized as the books being used so much they eventually fall apart. Also, the books have tiers, and they must be of a higher tier than the player's skill to provide benefit to that player's skill's product. In single player, the player finds these books as loot. In SMP, perhaps players are allowed to make them, and sell them to other players. So there are two methods of obsolescence - either the player uses them so much they fall apart, or the player eventually advances to the next tier and no longer gets the benefit from the book, since they now innately know the knowledge it contains. Similar to Stroam's mechanic, The benefit is greatest for a book just one tier above the player's skill. No benefit for lower, maybe reduced benefit for 2 tiers higher, and no benefit for tiers higher than that - it's just too complicated for the player to grasp. So mechanically I imagine this as, the player produces an item that has a skill-based bonus potential. Scan a 7x7 area around the player for bookshelves. Player's relevant skill tier is 2. They have 10 tier 1 books (do not contribute), 10 tier 2 (each adds +2) 8 tier 3 (each adds 1) and 6 tier 4 (do not contribute). So the player has 28 points of contributing books within range. At tier 2, they maybe have to have 25 points worth of contributing books, so they get the bonus. At tier 4, maybe they have to have 100 points of contributing books. But all the books will have to be tier 5 (max tier) and each one only contributes 2 points (for being 1 tier above the player's skill). So not only do the amounts required go up, but the rarity of high tier books is more. SO it gets harder and harder to get a library bonus at upper skill tiers. Or not. The contributing points requirement could remain the same, so just book rarity contributes to difficulty. That might be reasonable if the books are used up over time. There could be special loot-only tomes that contribute extra amounts, no matter the player tier, to spice things up. They could in effect be 'masterwork' books, and the player only has a chance to produce them at tier 5 skill, and even then only a small percent chance. As long as they get used up, it should be balance-able. So ya, that's another option for beneficial books.
  20. Skill Books and Tech tree

    Well, what I was suggesting was in the context of having the combination of your skill decay suggestion, and my skill points suggestion, from that other thread. My skill points suggestion was that the player gains skill points at some rate. Maybe one per level, maybe one every 4 levels. Kind of depends on how many skills the game ends up with. And it could be configurable. So for single player, if the player doesn't want to deal with skill decay, then just configure it to give them enough skill points to lock in all the skills they want. On the other hand, in a SMP environment, the gain rate could be set rather low, to encourage players working together and specializing in different skills. Or decay rate could be configured, as low as 0 if the player doesn't want skill decay. Then it wouldn't matter how many points the player gets because there would be no decay. If both point gain and decay rate were configurable, the game could be adjusted to anywhere from 'easy mode' to some sort of default, to fast-decay-low-point for SMP. The point being, you can only use that to 'lock in' all skills at max if the player gets enough skill points to do that, so you adjust the gain rate to avoid that (if that's the desired outcome). So if there's 10 skills at max 5 ranks, that's a max of 50 ranks. Give the player a skill point every two levels, and they'll only have 25 skill points at level 50 (you only get a point for a given milestone once. If you lose levels and then reach it again, you do not re-gain the point, unless you also lose the point at the same time as levels). The idea being this makes the player choose if they want to focus in a few skills and lock them in at max, or lock in all skills at a mid-level. That was the idea in a nutshell, and I was just tying in the books as the mechanism that does the locking-in. So you have to have an available skill point AND an appropriate book, to lock that rank in. Either way, I really like this skill books idea.
  21. Skill Books and Tech tree

    More use for paper and SMP enhancement, I like it! So regarding the first sentence I quoted, it is a temporary buff? Can you only have one skill book 'in effect' at a time? Or do bonuses stack (with reducing effectiveness of course)? If temporary, is it time-based, or active until you reach a new rank/read a different book? Regarding second quoted sentence, what are you meaning by 'skill cap'? The max rank achievable? Is the 'difference between skill levels' a difference in rank, or in actual xp numbers? Because I'm pretty sure the xp is non-linear. And in TFC1 there were only like, 4 or 5 ranks right? Alternatively (or in addition) if the notion of decaying skill levels were a thing, and the player gained skill points upon leveling, which they'd use to 'lock in' skills so they don't decay beyond a certain point, these books could be required to do the locking in.
  22. [0.2.4] TFC2 Prerelease

    I did feel like some islands had thicker forests, that were obscuring rivers a lot on the map. I was mostly doing flyover though so I can't speak to the internal experience. I thought it seemed like a positive change, from the air. They would of course probably have a lot of mobs. But that just makes them the 'deep dark' woods, as opposed to the lighter more habitable woods. It'd be cool if the game knew which cave openings were in such woods, and put a bear or whatever there, with some lair treasure. I guess that's for the set-piece suggestions, whenever it's time for those.
  23. [0.2.4] TFC2 Prerelease

    Spawned on a desert island (I support this but didn't know if it was intended for starter island), and also found two portals one hex apart. World Seed: [2560432034865553598] | IslandMap: [0,-2] | PlayerPos: [BlockPos{x=1239, y=86, z=-6505}] I was also not sure if this was undesireable. I kind of like it, as from a SMP town perspective, I would think controlling two portals would be very desirable, even though that spot didn't have that great of water resources or anything. Makes for an interesting choice; good resources, or two portals in one town? Then, finally found what I assume is the revised spire generation! World Seed: [2560432034865553598] | IslandMap: [1,-3] | PlayerPos: [BlockPos{x=5685, y=169, z=-10341}] Althought strangely the island features list didn't say anything about spires (guess that's a teleport problem?). This happened a couple times actually. I think these spires are better, but they're pretty uniform. It might be nice if they could have some random character added to them. Maybe the points off-center, and thicker or thinner at the apex? Maybe adjacent spires can interact and form mass and arches between themselves? Btw anyone that might go to this seed and this spot in the screenshot, there's another group of shorter spires to the south of these ones. I also found instances where there were just 2 or 3, rather than lots. Then, at World Seed: [2560432034865553598] | IslandMap: [1,-3] | PlayerPos: [BlockPos{x=5757, y=145, z=-10680}] found a strange river, that went from 5 wide at top of cliff, to 8 wide at the bottom, for like 1 hex, and then down to 3 wide. Wasn't sure if this was trying to simulate a waterfall pool, or what. This island was pretty cool btw. Sharper Mountains definitely seems to have been improved! And in general I don't think I saw a single garden. So not sure if that needs another look now?
  24. Shark guards would probably be more of a feasability if you were building a ship-base, or Waterworlding it. Which sadly, if what stroam says is true, won't be an option in the current generation. If this comes to pass - not being able to enter deep ocean - hopefully the shallow portion is extended beyond just a 1-wide strip. Or maybe a medium-deep hex is added. It'd be a shame to forbid people from building pirate ships offshore.
  25. [0.2.4] TFC2 Prerelease

    I noticed that when you pick up food from gardens, it does not automatically stack. You have to go in and manually place the piece on top of like pieces. It would be really nice if it would just stack on pickup. It also seemed like there was something glitchy about decay. It seemed like it was resetting every so often, but never when I was paying attention. I know it was not a matter of the top piece decaying and starting over, because it was not taking the full 30 minutes, and stack sizes weren't going down. I don't know if it had to do with me switching in an out of creative/survival, or what. Thought I'd mention it so maybe others could watch for it and tell if it's happening, and why.