Stroam

Feast or famine scenarios are only bad if you are unable to overcome the obstacle such as at the beginning of the game. No matter how much work that is put into making sure there's a viable strategy no matter where you spawn is only going to be good for single player. In multiplayer servers since you spawn with nothing the immediate area usually gets stripped of the starting resources first. Also, new players will not know how to start and can become frustrated when they are both trying to learn and not finding the resources they need. I suggest a starting package that is enabled by default. This package would contain all the supplies to survive the first few nights as well as a starting guide to help new players out. I'd go so far as to tag the starting items so that players keep the items on death (not given new ones on each death). The benefits of this are that it requires no changes to world generation and is multiplayer friendly allowing players to travel far enough to find a suitable starting area. You can already see this approach being used in a lot of successful modpacks.

This port has generated more activity on this site than I have seen for a few months.

I check the forums once every week or two these days. Since TFC does edit so many things it may benefit by switching to something like terasology or other open source minecraft clones where there is more control. It involves a lot more work but the benefits are a more stable and once progressing far enough a mod the size of TFC with an active community backing it could drive development for that project. Meaning it'll cater to the needs of TFC. The downside is attracting players and developers. First is attracting developers willing to take on the task. It's a large task both because of the scope of TFC and there's more back-end work which in Minecraft is handled by Forge. That means slow development. After developing for at least half a year, there's the issue of nurturing a community at that point. I found TFC through Minecraft like many others and that wouldn't necessarily be the case if TFC broke from Minecraft.

On top of that, there's the issue of what is TFC? Is it whatever Bioxx and friends develop? Is it a blocky version that mimics the real world? Does it mean absolutely no magic? If it's development driven solely by Bioxx, then that'll be difficult. Permission must at least be granted by him if this site were to be used to promote a non-minecraft version of TFC. I monitor the suggestion forums a lot and have noticed a split in the community on the lines of "magic". Some enthusiastically embrace it while others lament that it will be the downfall of TFC. Either way, an identity for TFC would need to be agreed upon if the plan is to have more than one developer at some point.  

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Roadmaps generally come about as a need. Since there's only one developer, who develops what he wants, when he wants, at his own pace there isn't a need for a roadmap. If you check out the GitHub for TFC2, development has not been active since June. Will it start back up? No one knows.

I'm betting when the first TFC got started none of the devs knew the scope of what was to come or how long it'd take. Now that they know better what they are getting into and changes in life circumstances, they're probably a lot more hesitant to do it all again. On top of that Bioxx doesn't want to just update TFC, he wants to take it in a new direction. A direction in which alienates some of the community. Which generates negative feedback sapping even more of a drive to develop. 

I completely get why people are asking for a roadmap or some proof that development is going on. They liked TFC and are excited about what TFC2 could be. I too was in that camp. You can find old posts from me and see the frequency, length, and content of what I posted in excitement. There are some posts asking what, when, and how can I help.

Since then I have come to the belief that if TFC2 is to develop into more than what it currently is, then these people who still want it, need to make it. That waiting on Bioxx is waiting for something that may never come. It could be done by one ambitious programmer. I see that as unlikely. A few enthusiastic programmers sure. What I'd like to see is an entire community coming together to help code and develop a version of TFC. Call it TFC CE, "community edition".  

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What is planned is still not fully formed. What you see is more a test of what's feasible rather than a sketch of things to come. You've got some good ideas. I too was a fan of Dimensional Doors. There's a lot more to consider in this case then dimensional doors had to. First, this seems like it might be the primary if not only way to go between islands. Therefore anything related to travel greatly affects play. Something like mob and item transportation needs to be considered. Should players be able to move them? How should they move them? Will there be magical means of transportation/teleportation or summoning? If travel is both ways do you have to worry about people stripping islands of resources? Is that the dev's responsibility to think about or server's? If travel is one way and one person goes west and the other east can they ever meet? etc. 

eh, I'll let it slide. 

On 11/4/2017 at 11:06 AM, Darmo said:

@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.

Since TFC uses sooo many blocks it does make sense. There's sand, dirt, grass, and stone for each rock type. Several different leaves and logs. Won't need to do the workarounds that we currently do for blocks. I honestly hope he redoes the inventory gui more like baubles or tinkers.

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If you'd like something to happen faster, by all means, step up to the plate and code it yourself. As Tony pointed out it is a massive undertaking. Each small code segment would need to be ported separately or you'd end up performing shotgun surgery. Also unless you are very familiar with making mods for minecraft and TFC code, it'd almost be easier starting from scratch. At that point, you'd have to ask yourself do you want to spend all that time and effort recreating something that already exists or want something new and fresh to put your name on. My personal philosophy is I live for the new and don't wish I had last seasons flowers this year as well, for the beauty of a rose is that it is fleeting. There is no sight I could be perfectly content with staring at forever and no sound I could listen to for eternity.

I totally agree that a mine should last almost the entirety of a play. Many mines IRL have lasted multiple generations. 

Thank you, Tony. It's really nice to hear another opinion. I like the idea of different hardness of stone as well. I could see the over-encumbered effect working, even if I dislike the idea of ever moving slower in Minecraft. Players would definitely need to plan out their mining better. It does involve a mining mechanic, a container, a lift, and a cart pulled by an animal. As far as the lift goes, that's no easy feat. It'd have to have the same sort of functional support that boats have. A cart Bioxx is already working on so that'll probably be a thing. I do like your idea of when damaged it instantly drops what ever is on your back. Doesn't require the player to think and has a nice element that can be played around with. You are right that in order for infrastructure to be at a mine there must first be infrastructure so that the miners can spend time mining instead of working toward food, water, shelter, and materials. If that is needed then either multiple people need to be involved or need NPCs to trade with.  

Since there are 9 islands running north to south what if harder stone never showed up in the center, but had a higher chance the further north or south you went? That way if you wanted to avoid them you could. That along with the temperature extremes will also have a natural effect of funneling people closer to the middle islands creating a higher chance they will bump into each other. Players could then choose how hardcore they want to be by moving further north or south knowing that they may encounter these harder stone types. 

I also like your idea of encasing ore's in veins of harder stone because it lets you mine through the softer stuff quicker so you can get to the ore faster while also being another indicator that you are getting close to the good stuff. Since the veins of ore snake around the harder stone also let you know the edges of the vein.

If you also increase the hardness the further down you dig it would slow the progression of the mine which would extend its life allowing mining techniques to change with depth. It'd also make modifying dungeons more difficult to modify after an island has been conquered. 

You may be right about the hushing, but players have wanted aqueducts for quite some time. Even if it's not an optimal solution, it still gives players another choice. 

I just played the age of progression modpack some time ago and it hurt you instead of being harvested when you tried punching through wood with your hands. I think the same thing applied to stone would be amusing and fitting. 

Since all the islands slope up from the sea to the center you may find hushing to be more effective than it is with other types of worldgen. I don't think the hard stone will be that big of an issue either since you can always go back to the previous island and try a different portal. I guess the stone and hushing would need to be tested. Hushing probably depends on how much time and effort it takes to make aqueducts and how useful it is vs how easy it is to dig.

In this scenario, I imagine clay buckets. I actually got so used to clay buckets in various modpacks that for awhile I thought it was a vanilla feature. As the hardening stone till no one wants to mine it anymore. That's a little bit of the point. You may want to soften up the stone using other techniques so that it can be mined easier. Rubble and smaller would be easier to mine than raw stone.

Gravel would not wash away and the water must be flowing to wash away dirt. If it's a source block next to dirt it wouldn't wash away the dirt. I think this limitation would prevent the creation of "picturesque flowing streams ". Air being filled by water I am including the diagonals on the same Y level. That may be overkill now that I'm thinking about it. 

There would have to be gold bearing blocks as you've stated. You've also got the idea for the extraction right but I was thinking less linear more like 20% raw, 40% rubble, 70% gravel, 90% powder, with the last 10% needing specialized processing such as mercury for gold or magnets for iron. Don't want to get too much into the processing but I'd like to see specialized processing for each ore. I dislike how in nearly all ore processing in mods is treated the same. Starting off with a mallet and quern, then moving to an animal, water, wind-powered grinders would be great. Could also be used for making flour and other products as well. I imagine if crushing decreased weight and size you'd want to at least do that at the mine.

I get that getting to the next island and discovering it's a hard stone could be disappointing but it's those disappointments that makes TFC what it is. Most would be bored if there weren't disappointments. I wouldn't want the game too easy, plus I'd take a large vein in a hard rock over a small vein in any rock any day.

I also didn't like the powder barrels as they seemed too difficult to make for how useful they were. I'm thinking more like immersive engineering explosives that mine the blocks, but instead of turning them into items drops like immersive engineering does, places the blocks back down as gravel and rubble with a high chance of filling in the air spaces with bonus rubble and gravel from random blocks that were mined. Basically softening up the surrounding stone to make it easier to mine and generating extra ore in the process. You'd still need a pick and shovel to collect the debris. I'm imagining some stone types you wouldn't really want to mine through with just a pickaxe. The harder stone would also make good walls.

Mining is very difficult. For the longest time, it was limited to surface veins in relatively soft rock or relied on water erosion. The ancient Egyptians knew of fire setting where you heat the stone up really high and then douse it with water to cool it off rapidly causing it to fracture and break. Large scale mining didn't happen till the Romans had developed a vast network of aqueducts. These they used in a method called hushing where they would create a reservoir and then break a seal causing it to rush down with much force, washing away the topsoil and exposing the vein beneath. At which point they used fire setting to break up the rock. They used similar methods underground and mining with a pickaxe or other handtools wasn't that common until iron tools were developed.

In vanilla gameplay, you make pickaxes out of different materials. The material determines how much damage the pickaxe does to the block, and determines if the block drops any resources. The differences between a wood pickaxe and a diamond pickaxe are how long it lasts, the time it takes to break a block and does mining it return any resources. The experience, however, doesn't change. Mining a stone block with a wooden pickaxe is the same as any ore mined with a diamond pickaxe. The mining hazards in Vanilla Minecraft include water and lava pockets, drops, and mobs. They spice up mining by adding mine shafts, caves, and gravel pockets. I'd like to say different ores and stone types but they are so similar in hardness that it doesn't really feel different and are more for decoration than to change the mining experience.

Mods have changed things up with adding different tiers such as flint, bronze, and cobalt. Doesn't change the experience, just adds more steps. The mod tinkers construct has changed the experience by changing the way the pickaxe works, All of a sudden you can customize it to mine a larger area, autosmelt, give experience orbs, different repair mechanics, works just as good as under water, and other abilities. If the number of modpacks it is used in is any indication of how much players enjoy it, It'd say it's well liked and all it did was change the tool for the activity. Mods that have changed the experience have done things such as adding gas pockets, chances of an explosion, creatures that spawn upon breaking a block or in the dark, and pools of poison.

Mining in TFC1 shakes this up with various collapse mechanics requiring supports or blocks above may fall down and turn into rubble. Similar mechanics are implemented in TFC2. Some additions that would make it more challenging and fun include different stone types should have varying hardnesses, different ways to mine it, air quality, and large snaking veins.

Let's start by going over various mining mechanics. The first is that buckets work like vanilla glass bottles. They can be filled but can not pick up source blocks. This is due to no matter how many buckets you take out of a swamp, ocean, lake, or river by hand, you'll never empty one like that. Make air blocks also fill in if surround by at least 5 out of 8 water blocks and water source blocks obey gravity. Gameplay wise this makes water features obstacles to be filled in and not emptied. It also means aqueducts would need to be made if the player wanted to transport it. Which brings me to a mechanical change of dirt. If dirt is exposed to flowing water for more than a few seconds it erodes away, aka destroyed. This will allow people to hush like the Romans did to find ore veins under the topsoil. It also means that players need to be careful when altering sources of water so they don't end up washing out more than they wanted to like their fields.

One thing I loved about TFC1 was raw stone and how you obtain it. By making a specific way of obtaining it, raw stone and products made from it became purposeful. You were building with something that was purposely collected for the purposes of building instead of what was left over from mining. This gave extra meaning to the builds and in the same way, could give extra meaning to ore processing. To do this you’d have different levels of crushed stone and ore. In order from large to small, it’d be raw, rubble, gravel, sand, powder. By breaking up the ore blocks you can extract more of the ore from the material with diminishing gains. The player would mine raw stone and it would have a chance of spawning rubble and gravel upon being mined. You’d be able to crush rubble into gravel with a hammer. Gravel, rubble, or raw stone containing ore can then be processed to extract the ore with the finer grains yielding more. This would make mines last longer and allow the player to extract more from a mine than simply the amount of blocks contained within it. By extending the life of the mine, any infrastructure built becomes more useful.

Picks may be great for soft stone but what if there was a wider variation in different stone hardness? It makes some stone more desirable to mine through than others. For harder stone there can be the mechanic of fire-setting. The process is simple. Make a fire on the stone and give it enough time to heat up. Then release water that upon contact with the fire will put it out and fracture the stone beneath it turning it into rubble and makes it easier to mine. This adds strategy to mining.

By varying the hardness of stone, it'll make some stone less desirable to dig through encouraging different techniques and different locations. This variation also increases gameplay This will make some stone more favorable to mine in than others.

With all this rubble spawning and fire being lit underground, air quality may be an issue. Rubble spawning generates dust, fires generate smoke, and some ores when mined or turned to rubble generate explosive gasses. These pollutants can make it quite hard to breathe. Some techniques to help out is letting the dust settle, building mine shafts, and later on maybe dust masks and oxygen masks. Ventilation shafts let smoke escape and the dust settles over time. While in dust or smoke the player's oxygen bar would go down as if they were underwater. These add additional obstacles with different ways of solving them.

If a player dives into alchemy they can develop gunpowder and various explosives devices to help them in their mining. The first being a rather crude powder barrel that you set next to a wall and light the fuse. When it explodes it takes out some of the stone around it generating more rubble and gravel that would be generated by mining by hand. This is useful for getting more ore out of the mine. It also has a chance of collapsing more than what was intended. A more refined version may be placed, plugged, and then when the fuse is lit and it explodes it checks for empty spaces and tends to explode more in that direction, collapsing more and in a directed manner. These explosions, however, generate a little smoke and a lot of dust. This adds just another mining tool useful for excavating larger sections resulting in less time spent mining for the player. Also useful for getting through harder stone.

Last but not least is large snake like veins. Large to increase the life of a mine, again to make infrastructure more useful, and snake like so the miner has to pay attention to where the vein is going and decrease the effectiveness of quarries. They are a horrible solution to the problem of small, uniformly mixed veins, and boring mining mechanics.

These changes would add a little bit more variation to holding down two buttons routine. It adds a little more danger, some different tools for different problems, and requires more active thought to effectively mine. For truly devilish fun, rocks that explode and surround you in a shell of silverfish eggs, filled with water.

The portals are a way of connecting the islands without crossing the deep sea which due to how the terrain is generated can have holes in the bedrock. It also allows for the transportation of non-item entities such as pack animals and trains. It is lockable preventing players from skipping island tiers. The distance between island is vast, so it shortens the distance needed to travel. Dimensions are a well-established mechanic of minecraft making it easier for Bioxx.

Boats were buggy until recently and increase chunk loading/generation, one of the more expensive server processes. Boating across nothing but water is also boring, where the path dimension most definitely will not be. I don't know what all is planned for them but I do know they are like a sketch of what is to come as they currently are. For instance, in the future, players may encounter a swift death if they stay in the path dimension too long, even if there might be tempting reasons to do so.

TFC2 will have magic and isn't pure tech, so portals are not outside of the scope. A NPC caravan/ship or other such devices would have to be indestructible which might make less sense than an indestructible portal.  

The animals moving about is already in place. 

Old world generation broke with the new minecraft updates. I know you are hesitant about the new island system but having played with it, it doesn't feel much different other than you won't be using a rowboat to cross an ocean. You'll be using the path dimension.

4 hours ago, chepelink said:

Stroam, you made my day. I was feeling blue but you made me had a nice laugh. Don't ask me why I found so funny thinking how to "abstract" from 5 to 8.  Don't mind me 

 

Any way, 

For one side I understand changing the numbers to not longer fit a pre-understood system. I like the idea in general, but I am thinking, is it complexity for the sake of complexity? What if, instead of the classical nutritional approach we focus on a more RPG style approach? For example, Strength might, Mind fluidity,  Endurance (HP), Mana veins, and Stamina. These are an example (and maybe a bit bad), but the general idea is that each food instead of being in a single group, they have different "RPG nutritional" values that works toward a particular clear goal. They can also have consequences for over eating or the lack thereof: Too much STR and your "muscles" grow big and slow you down your swings, to little and your carry capacity suffer, and so on. You can also balance towards healty balanced diets; after a particular threshold the "body" start to have adverse effect if the values are not balanced enough, you can die or you can explode (and die).

 

The idea is the "same" from the nutritional approach, just with a different, more gaming, focus. It is believable since you can say that "it is the reflection of a healthy diet, just you are measuring different things". And with that you are free from the "mundane real world".

That's a thought. It brings to mind final fantasy 15 where different foods give you different temporary buffs. The parts I like is it is abstracted from reality yet familiar enough to be recognizable. The only downside I see is lining up the buffs with the expected stat. Strength is directly translatable, but is Endurance more hp, absorption, or resistance and what is Mana fluidity? As long as the buff and the name make sense then it's okay to use RPG terms for nutrition and it might even gain a wider audience for TFC2. 

Inspired by this topic and this topic.

On 8/19/2015 at 8:09 AM, TonyLiberatto said:

Also please do not even bother arguing about implementing a real nutrition system, based on the individual vitamins, mineral and components of each food. That would bring so much controversy to the game, that even if the Devs were Nutritionists, it would still be one way, and they can never agree, one week eggs are killing you, the next eggs are good for your health. So I say lets stick with the 5 food group and not delve into that territory.

3

While I think the 5 basic food groups is something everyone is familiar with I agree with other individuals it should be abstracted to eight(insert manageable number) groups.

By abstracting it and changing the number from five you no longer have the issue of people arguing over how it matches to reality. Next food items should have a different amount of each and they don't have to make sense, for instance, boiled and scrambled eggs could have different nutrients. This makes it easier to balance and code.

Each category then keeps track of the last four(insert your favorite number here) foods consumed in that category. If you eat the same thing then the nutrients you get from that item is reduced. 

As the categories fill up the player gains buffs to health or other stats. While this is difficult to figure out what gives what, as long as a player eats a variety of foods they don't need to know what gives what. Those who want to minimize the variety of foods they need to eat or want to consistently get the full amount of nutrients will become chefs and greatly benefit from a system like the TFC1 cooking skill but for nutrients instead of taste. On top of all of this, there is hunger and saturation which I wouldn't change other than giving a temporary slowness debuff if more hunger is restored than you have room left for. A reminder that eating too much is bad for you but that's because I'm evil. Watching someone fighting something in a let's play who then starts eating to regain health and ends up eating too much, causing slowness and dying from it would put a smile on my lips.

When I was thinking up this system I had these principals in mind. 

• Rewards those who eat a very varied diet and does not reward those who don't.
• Rewards those who eat more complex food items over more basic food items.
• Works even on servers with different food items without being tailored.

It accomplishes these goals by

• Having diminishing returns on foods you've eaten recently. 
• Having different categories and nutrition values.
• Evenly distributes nutrition among registered food items.

By reducing the number of categories then the player doesn't need as much variety unless you keep track of more foods in each category and reduce the number of categories each food item contributes to. If you don't have categories and nutritional value simple foods you don't have the complexity needed to represent steak which is simple and restores a lot of hunger, a carrot which is simple and doesn't restore a lot of hunger, and carrot cake which restores a lot of hunger and is complex. The number of categories also corresponds to the number of different buffs you can give a player. 

13 hours ago, Keen_Falcon said:

I am in favor of Animal Carcass and and more complex field dress system. Just killing and watching everything just drop ready is very strange to me. I don't know . Maybe a carcass drop that you carry in your back. And more food per animal but animal are more difficulty to find, with an track system and also Clean Kills when you use the bows or the spear, like an quality measure that drop the more hits you do to kill the animal. Also, you can lose the leather when you do many shoots in the animal. So the best option is just one shoot kill, also the animal don't suffer and die quickly. 

You may be interested in this thread.

If you do a bit of research you'll find it's like any game. You need to provide a reason for people to come back. If you look at Bartle's taxonomy you'll see gamers tend to be a mix of achievers, explorers, socializers, and killers. Achievers need a goal, explorers need new stuff, socializers need people, and killers need to master an ever increasing level of combat. Explorers are the hardest to keep long term because eventually, you run out of new stuff. Killers are also difficult to keep around unless you include PVP or some sort of arena and have people willing to engage. The socializers tend to like RP, dislike being killed, prefer building regulations/theme, professions, and shops. Both killers and socializers have a minimum viable population. Nothing worse than showing up to an empty arena or no one buying stuff at your bakery. What that minimum is I could only guess. Everyone likes different levels of variety. Achievers tend to be the collectors. As long as they have something to collect they tend to be fine. Now everyone is a mix of the four so there's a balancing act to be had that's unique to every server. 

Issues that all TFC servers tend to have are, people planting their crops and then they are dead next time they log in, same with stored food, spotty snow when exploring previously explored regions, too many ravines, everything getting mined out in an area, too many people having too many animals, enormous need of charcoal or coal and not very good renewable options, clay deposits becoming rare, illusion of no one playing caused being too spread out, or too many ghost buildings. Some things I've seen alleviate some of these issues include the ability to claim protected plots that must be maintained, reduction of maintenance costs for in-theme/creative builds, ability to expand the number of plots claimed via business licenses, town owned plots for roads and other public goods, plots prices encouraging grouping, plot auctions, unclaimed chunks regenerating over time, limit on tamed animals, making seasons longer, disabling beds, merchant NPC that buys goods and sells them back at higher prices, active moderation, expansions on stuff to do other than smithing.

4 hours ago, TheSnarkyKnight said:

Rewritten the weight values to represent the materials used. I think that this way it's still balanced, but let me know ;also I realize that these values rely heavily (heh heh heh) on how much an ingot weights, but as Konlii said, they are far more intuitive than an abstract   "2 kg". I personally feel that an ingot should be pretty heavy, as irl ingots are usually made to store and transport big quantities of metal.

As it is, if you read the first post on Encumbrance inventory it most likely is going to be in units of stone.

Two things. You probably won't see the vanilla recipe book being used too much before the 1.13 update since they seem to have saved all the major changes for that. Also, you are getting a little far from the subject of weapons and weapon holders.

3 hours ago, YerAWizard said:

Ok i got the log from the crash here you go https://pastebin.com/EAFViVSY

Again

" This is just a prompt for computer specs to be printed. THIS IS NOT A ERROR "

I can see you are not very learned on how to diagnose minecraft crashes so here's a guide .