Darmo

In terms of large-scale features, I would like to see Badlands on some desert islands, having lots of strange small-scale rock formations.  These would be stone, jutting up from the surrounding sand.  With maybe some sandless blowouts in areas.  Even an area that has just a huge amount of mostly above-ground boulders - like the boulders from TFC1 that dotted the landscape - would be neat.  Formations that have a 'cap' stone might have that cap stone be a stone type actually different from the prevailing island stone, perhaps. (just let me know if I'm using too many pictures)

Then, at the larger scale, you can have entire regions of spires.  Bryce canyon in Utah has a dense amount of 'spire-like' formations.  I think the existing spires were on the right track, but they're too pencil-thin, and too scattered, and the bulges are sometimes a bit odd.  Zhangjiaje Park in China is an example of a spire formation area with lush vegetation, rather than desolate.  I think that perhaps if spires took an entire hex, and went very high, tapering some as they rose, that might work better.  There can also be other large-scale stone formations, perhaps forming ridges some spires as part of them.  Don't forget to add natural archest through them sometimes. 

Similarly, ocean arches, where steep cliffs enter the ocean.  I'd like to see more areas where the ocean just meets steep cliffs.   And once in awhile in these types of area, there could be arches or large spires rising from the ocean.  Even just large bouldery mounds out in the ocean would help.  It's very plain out there.  If you make something like the Iron Isles castle Pyke appear, people will build on it.
 

On cliff faces where a river runs over in a large waterfall, undercut the cliff face at the bottom, and make another lake there, making a waterfall grotto.  Make there be a chance for caves to proceed from this grotto, and maybe the water extends back several cave hexes.
 

That's probably enough pictures.   I agree with earlier posters in that I'd like to see a more craggy and mountainous center of the island.  It may be that the player just can't perceive the mountainous nature of the island as a whole, because they can't see enough of it at one time.   But perception counts for a lot, so I think more craggy terrain that shows up within a player's field of view would help - this is of course, on islands that are intended to be mountainous.  I've never really been able to perceive very well the various peaks (peaks, sharp peaks, even sharper peaks).  

Right now it seems like islands max out at around 160 elevation.  Am I mistaken or is there still another 90-ish elevation available above that?  I want to see some above treeline areas with maybe alpine meadows, and surmounted by bare rock, scrub bushes, and rare animals/plants/minerals. 

Oh, and what about hot springs?  Just not implemented yet?

Also, occasionally desert islands that are truly barren, no rivers, just a handful of oasis.  On an island like this, there would actually be a reason for a coded well structure!

I think it would be great if once the player proceeds east/west far enough, fantasy-type landscapes can start to show up.  Entire islands composed of nothing but craggy pillars jutting from the ocean (and fallen pillars as well).  Islands with enormous cliff faces, and huge eroded caverns filled with ocean, that you can sail into one side of the island, and out the other.  Floating islands.  Volcanic islands (that is, if none exist already - I haven't found any).  

I'm with Stroam, in addressing it other ways, since this is only really an issue on the spawn island I'd say.  Maybe the spawn island is just never allowed to have the 'cliffs' feature, or whatever it is that makes those really high beach cliffs.  Require that hexes within a certain radius of spawn have no more than 'x' elevation difference from on to another?  There could even be an 'easy mode' start where the player starts with 'ship wreckage' nearby, that includes a chest with some ladders and other basic stuff. 

I guess I kind of see climbing as 'cheaty', but that's me.   

I like the idea as a town thing on multiplayer servers.  It would definitely set towns apart.   Single player, not so interesting for me.

Ya, I'd say short spear should go.  It's just too similar to the spear as it stands.

Right now there's really only one version - the 79.28 version under the 'download' link at the top of the page.  Which is for use with 1.7.10 vanilla MC. 

The new version of Terrafirmacraft - TFC2 - is still in very early alpha and has almost no gameplay yet.  The changes that Mojang made to vanilla minecraft in 1.8 required a total re-write of the mod.  This is why the only 'full featured' version of TFC is only available for 1.7.10.   Bioxx has been keeping the new version - TFC2 - up to date with the latest vanilla versions, so there is no TFC of any sort available for 1.8 to 1.10.  Your only choices are 1.7.10 (the original TFC, or TFC1), or 1.11.2 (TFC2). 

Now as for what mods for TFC1 might be best, that's another thing entirely.

Still have that errant stepped palm tree appearing one in awhile.  Also palm trunk destruction particles have the no-texture purple-black look.

In the desert, I found an incident of a cactus spawning on top of tackweed.
Had an incident of two rivers merging and forming a higher level intersection:

Also, that screenshot of the higher merge, that's a temperate climate island at tropical Y.  Is there really some part of the world that has a temperate climate, but lies on the equator, irl?  It seems a was to have temperate way down there.  Seems disappointing - I mean, if you're at the equator, you're probably looking for tropical or at least sub-tropical climate. 
And finally, a couple more river portals.  One is bridging the river entirely.  It happens more than one might expect, it seems!

As an aside, I wonder if it might be a good idea to give portal structures more height?  I'm not sure if the goal is to make them hard to find or not, but I've seen a couple that were so hidden by trees, I never would have seen them if not for the biome map.  It seems like it might frustrate players who are just ready to move to the next island, if they can't find a portal.

I applaud the simplification.  I don't think weight is likely to factor very heavily into the equation, given all the stuff a player must carry.  I think the carry limit will likely be rather high.  So the 2kg separating spear (both single handed) and short spear, probably will favor the spear in almost all cases, given its superior reach and damage.  I'd get rid of one of them probably.

I'd take warhammer over mace any day for 500 more grams and .2s slower. 

Maul at +3 damage vs Great mace, cons .4s slower an d+4 kg, seems worth to me.  But I could be wrong

I think your maces and hammers are pretty redundant - morning star excepted of course, being 1 of only 3 single handed melee piercing weapons (or 1 of 2, if one of the spears gets removed).  That is, *serious* weapons.  Yes, I'm looking at *you* dagger/knife.

I do wonder though, what's going to be the graphical difference between a mace and morning star?  A few spikes?  I don't think any chain-using weapons are going to be a good idea, given minecraft's limited rendering ability.  What if instead of morning start you did a rapier?  Or ditch short spear, and make regular spear 2-handed?  Just a thought.

Finally took a trip down to the tropics!  Found a very suspect palm.  Might want to nix that blueprint from palms!  I love the feel of the tropics though.  The Kapoks are so different from other trees, and then the palms of course, love em!  Makes me want palm frond thatching. 

Later found a portal that spawned in a river hex.  It's pretty ok in this case, but I wonder if portals maybe shouldn't spawn in river hexes, or if portals come first, maybe rivers should be prevented from flowing through portal hexes?  It's not a huge deal though.  They are magic after all!

And finally, I was wondering if the way cliffs generate with pockets of soil is intentional?  It seems weird to me.  I love the exterior look, with uneven stone parapets, but if you remove the dirt you have these weird little ditches, that could actually make convenient early days hiding spots, but just seem odd.  I feel like it'd be better if these cliff face dirt/sand blocks could be limited to 1 block deep.  The 'parapet' is definitely necessary to keep sand in place - although it would be interesting seeing the sand drifts that develop at the base of cliffs if deserts didn't have the parapet.  They'd just be stark wind-blown stone cliffs, which wouldn't be bad for a desert.

I've been trying to decipher what the biome map means, and not having a lot of success.  I thought maybe they were moisture related, but couldn't see any hard correlation between the F3 moisture data and the hexes, except maybe very broadly.  If they are terrain related, and the grey are supposed to be 'mountains', they're very subtle mountains.  If I had one big complaint about the world gen thus far, it's that there's not really any dramatic peaks or rock formations.  Nice cliffs and gorges sometimes, but the central areas of the maps are not a lot discernible from the periphery for the most part, imho.   Was wondering if we could get a clue as to what some of the biome hexes are, or represent in general.  Here's the key I have so far:

The "desert insland" and "desert coast" also appear on temperate maps, I mainly put the "desert" designation to show they are the primary two hexes that desert maps are composed of.

Just for reference back to previous discussion, see the "Regional Difficulty" thread from 2015.

I can say that with regard to hexes, I remember Bioxx saying something about this having a lot to do with rivers.  Basically in order for rivers to path correctly they need to generate from the centers of whatever shape.   otherwise severe height differences between shapes cause problems.  So, you can have rivers travel at 90 degree angles, or 60 degree angles.  60degree is obviously better.  I'm not sure what else might factor into the decision. 

1 hour ago, Allekatrase said:

It's the ocean.  There were streams running to the edge all over the place but they all stopped, defying physics instead of being waterfalls.  The next island I went to was almost entirely covered with desert highlands but had green valleys with lakes and streams cutting through it.  It looked amazing.

Ya, Bioxx has already said that the water not falling thing is more a problem with vanilla water mechanics and is low priority.  You can force it to update by just replacing a piece of water with a torch or something.  So really it's fixable by the player, in areas where it's important to them.

I agree the desert valleys are pretty nice.  It looks like those two streams in your picture did their falling water pretty well.  I too kind of hope there's be some sand noise introduced around the edges of the green hexes.  Not a huge deal though.  What bugs me more is that the trees  that show up in desert valley hexes sometimes seem very at odds with the desert.  You picture in particular captures it for me - I'm not aware of anywhere that conifers like that grow near sandy desert environs.  They're usually more stunted I think.  If not already the case, I'd suggest restricting desert island trees to the smallest size category, if nothing else.  Now if there is ever a 'badlands' island type (or sub-area of desert islands) that would go better with more trees I think

@MiaMia  I actually love the grass on stone.  It's a bit like moss.  I think it tends to blend things better, so it's not always stark differences.

7 hours ago, Allekatrase said:

I don't know if there's a trick to getting water to flow during worldgen but I ended up on an island with short cliffs into the ocean in many places and where the streams ran to the edge they didn't flow over the edge.

Is that a freshwater lake, or the ocean?   I like it whatever it  is.  I think it's good to have something other than beach sometimes.

So having generated several biome maps, I discovered that the island layouts are exactly the same east-west.  All internal swamps and lakes are also exactly the same.  Portal locations differ (the red hexes are just the hex you're in when you generate the map), and rivers and heights are different, though for all I know the heights may have to do with the islands having different terrain features.   It also generated the spawn island biome map to look like desert, when it in fact was not desert.  World seed is  -3064229721071771081.  The middle series of islands in this map has the largest swamp I've seen yet, btw.  Has several trees scattered out in the swamp, which I think is good and should perhaps happen more.

Also, when rivers enter swamps, there's some rough voids that go on.  I know water issues aren't a high priority, but just thought this might have more to do with the swamp generation, than with water behavior itself.

That map you posted Bioxx, I see on the southwest there appears to be a tributary system with 6 sources?!  I'm wondering if it's 7 blocks wide at the end.  I would love to have that seed, to check that out.  I've never seen more than three steams feed together I think.   Do the hexes track the steam size?  So in theory, if water wheels were a thing, could one require they be built in a 'level 3' or greater stream hex in order to work?  Level being the number of sources contributing?  Or one big lake-to-ocean river, which from what I've seen would be level 7 in size?  That way a player couldn't just build them on any old water source...

10 minutes ago, The0newithnogame said:

forgive my ignorance, on the image Bioxx linked to, what are the yellow and red hexes?

I'm going to guess yellow is gates (note there are four), and red is maybe a dungeon?

I'm familiar with the origin story of the creeper model.  It's funny to me he didn't want to 'throw away' a model that - at least with proper modeling program - would take about 5 minutes to make.   I'm just saying they make no sense at all.  The best I could rationalize them would be as a necromancer cobbling together corpses with explosives inside.  Though somehow we never do find Zakuro.  I do think it'd be fun to have entire islands controlled by necromancers and their minions.

As for the goblin sappers, that's not my idea of course.  Makes more sense than creepers though, to me.  Goblins and orcs are so ubiquitous in fantasy it's hard for me to imagine them not ending up in TFC2 in one form or another.  As I understand it, from way back when, the idea is that there will be dungeons or strongholds that control different parts of the islands, and you have to defeat the 'boss' in them to unlock the ability to place or destroy blocks in that area.  So ya, enemy camps are pretty much already planned as I understand it.   It would definitely be interesting if they could respawn in a more minor form though, even after the main stronghold is destroyed.

5 hours ago, Konlii said:

That's a fair point and probably the smart way to go, but where is the theme in having zombies, bow-wielding animated skeletons, and mutant green explodey-pigs?

That's legacy stuff from vanilla minecraft.  Granted, possibly the most successful, most poorly planned game ever, so I mean, who needs a theme right?  But my own hope is that as TFC2 matures, those things will be much more limited, to logical scenarios.  Though creepers are pretty hard to logic, imo.  Suicidal powder-keg carrying goblins?

For me on the other hand - coming from my Dungeons and Dragons background - trolls are lanky terrifying regenerating beasts that you can only kill with fire or acid, and have no special relationship with stone or sunlight.   I didn't mean to say that referencing an existing ouvre is bad - it's actually a good game strategy, because your audience can immediately have familiarity (Orcs are evil pig-nosed humans.  Dragons breath fire and hoard gold.  Dwarves speak with a Scottish accent) which from a roleplaying and immersion standpoint allows them to more easily 'slot in' to the world.  I was just pointing out it doesn't have to be that way, and moreover there are many ouvres to choose from.  

One way the devs could go is just say 'hey modelers, show us what you got'.  And we'd each go with our personal favored stuff, and it could end up rather chaotic and incoherent.

Another way, they could give a setting to pull from.  Tolkien, D&D, Discworld, Classical Greek, etc.  Should give a more coherent experience, though some settings would have an inherently limiting selection.

Or there could be an idea.  'Guys, we're picturing a war between humans, fey, and devils.  Go to work'.  That sort of would allow us to cross several ouvres, but still work toward a coherent theme. 

I guess I'd prefer to see some kind of coherence, if not a theme/story, rather than just whatever enters our heads.  But we'll see.

1 hour ago, Strait Raider said:

Ocean water glitches might sometimes be related to decoration spawns. I found this area with lots of broken sugar cane in it (picked most of them up before I thought to screenshot)

I'd guess it's due to the new sand physics.  If you hadn't noticed, sand now falls if it has *any* potential lower adjacent spot.  It's no longer supported by two or even three adjacent blocks.  All it takes is a block update.   So there's a chance that there was sand in those spots, with reeds on top, and there was a empty trench adjacent, and the whole row of sand fell into it.  Maybe.

1 hour ago, CJHKing2 said:

Was exploring in Creative mode with JourneyMap and had the following crash:

I think Konlii reported the same crash earlier.  It seems to be a problem with the new tree types.  Probably best to not try to go to the tropics until Bioxx resolves it.

Found an interesting elevation mis-match going on at an inland desert lake.  The 1-block change was pretty extensive.  The 2-block difference was much more limited in scope.  At the time I took those screencaps I hadn't yet noticed the journeymap coords were obscured by the island features list.  But if you go to that seed, and go I think 1 island west, that's the island.  You can use island coords from there.

An interesting feature of these inland lakes is that, near as I can tell, they always have a large river exiting to the ocean.

I love the level of river detail, where two rivers combining makes the subsequent river wider.  It seems like every time a tributary gets added, another block in width is added to the successive river sections.  I think the lake-to-ocean rivers are 8 blocks wide.  I love that thoughtfulness of the world gen!  Now I just wish we could have swamp estuaries at the mouths of rivers.

@TonyLiberatto  The next level of detail would be if there could occasionally be a pool of water below the stalagtites (instead of stalagmite)!

1 hour ago, TheSnarkyKnight said:

 trolls don't change color according to stone, they change to stone if exposed to sunlight.

Tolkienesque trolls maybe (or wherever Tolkien got it from).  There's nothing that says TFC2's version of fantasy has to conform to a certain pre-existing fantasy ouvre.

1 hour ago, TheSnarkyKnight said:

Tbh I don't like the drop bear very much, it just seems out of place imho.

I think Konlii's version of a drop bear may have been a bit tongue-in-cheek.

I see what you mean chunk.  It seems pretty obvious that's a dungeon. And amazing at that!  I love the room variety!  It's interesting too, the strip of grass along the waters edge in that area.  I flew over much of the rest of the island and did not see that, though I did see little river valleys with a river, and all the hexes the river flowed through were grass.  Amazing!  Personally I think it's great to have a start seed like this once in awhile.  Some people really love hard starts.

I noticed in this desert seed that occasionally there was andesite sand mixed in with the prevailing chert. 
 

I thought it must be a glitch with the falling sand mechanic, but you can see in the one picture there is a dead bush growing on top of the andesite sand, so it must not have fallen there right?  The last picture is a large area with a cave underneath that caused a massive sand cave-in.  It had by far the most andesite sand I'd seen, which is why I thought it might have to do with the falling mechanics.

Also in the temple structure I noticed this graphical glitch with a stair block

Regarding the chisels mechanic, I've come to peace with it maybe not making it in.  I'm actually glad that stairs will be a proper block, because it always bothered me a bit in TFC1 that on servers with dynmap, chiseled blocks were invisible, so that the finely chiseled roofs didn't show up on the map.  It made town look really messy on the map for the most part, because you just saw their walls and chest and junk sitting around.

44 minutes ago, ChunkHunter said:

Interesting - that's the seed reported on the creative mode screen, but it's different from the one generated by the "/seed" command...

Each island region does have it's own seed, which is separate from the world seed itself.  The region seed is what you're seeing in the creative mode screen, I think.

45 minutes ago, ChunkHunter said:

Also, what are the tower-like structures? Are these the entrances to  the rumoured "dungeons"?

Those are a geographical feature called 'spires' (if you play in creative, you'll see a list of 'island features' at the top right).   Near as I can tell they're supposed to be a natural formation.  They could probably use some work to look a bit more natural though. 

As for food, I think it's reasonable to assume that in this early alpha stage, the food balance is not what it will be in the end.  Bioxx has said in tweets you'll be better off in creative for now.   I actually welcome the scarcity of gardens.  I'm hoping it means there will be a more foraging-focused playstyle in the beginning, while one builds up a stock of seeds to settle down with.  Hunting and gathering type stuff. 

For me, one of the most interesting aspects is what I *haven't* seen yet, and that is even a speck of surface (or cave, for that matter) lava.  I'm hoping this bodes well for there being a rare volcano feature.

Issues-wise, I noticed that ash trees at least, seem to have a lot of floating leaf blocks.  I wonder if their schematics need examined?
 

Also, the last two worlds I've played, I headed north (since apparently the tropics are bugged, from what Konlii posted).  And both times I again ran into the thing where the next island north of my starting temperate island, was also temperate.  Following area again two screen shots showing me first on one side of the region boundary, then to the north.  Still showing "temperate" under island parameters.

Also of note is that the island (it was very large, but I think separate from the main island) was within 20 blocks of the region boundary, and you can see the steep change in underwater topography.  I mention this in case the generation parameters need tuning to keep players away from the boundary.  I don't know what measures are planned to keep them away, but right now it'd be very easy to see from shore there, and even reach, unless the forbidance mechanic is to actually physically wall them off, or have a big wave wash them backwards whenever they get close, or something.

The above three screenshots were all in the seed chunk posted, btw (the first one he posted from the region, not the corrected world one).
Also, bears have a REALLY high leg swing.  Could perhaps use some adjusting downward a tad?