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Natesky9

Rail, Rails, Rails!

10 posts in this topic

So, with the current state of transportation in Terrafirmacraft, there are only 4 methods of transportation. Foot travel, Horses, Boats, and Minecart. Given the theme of Terrafirmacraft being more of a progressive tech-tree, options are opened up to you based on your location, resources, and preference. If you never find horses, jute, or leather, traveling by horseback is impossible. Boats are the obvious default travel over large bodies of water. But what I'm suggesting is something that I was surprised that never was fully utilized, both in TFC, or Vanilla Minecraft. That would be rails, my friend.Given that Terrafirmacraft is such a manual, rustic-style mod that makes the game more believable, It would only make sense that aspects in the game would resemble real-life practices. In that regard, Mineshafts were created to haul out large amounts of ore out of a location. However, in Terrafirmacraft, the player has ample enough inventory to clear out an entire vein in several trips. The player's inventory has never changed in the entire history of minecraft, and it never may, but that is a different topic.My suggestion is to improve rails to become more intuitive, better suited to fit therole that they were designed for, and more believable in their creation. This post only highlights the largest changes, although given the chance, I could write pages on this topic. But I'll try to keep it short.

 

Making the Rails

 

Crafting rails in Terrafirmacraft is much cheaper than in vanilla, netting an entire stack for one-eigth the cost! That's a really nice incentive to make rails, however the process to make them is currently... Lame.What I suggestInstead of the current method of laying ingots and sticks on the ground, ingots need to be worked on an anvil, similar to tools. One ingot is stretched out into x number of "Rail" 

http://wiki.resonant-rise.com/images/9/98/Standard_Rail_%28Railcraft%29.png

The number can be changed, but more can be made with a higher smithing skill

Up to a cap of 1 ingot -> ~32-ish rails. Equates to the same cost now of 4 ingots -> 64 tracks

These "Rail"s can then be crafted with sticks/planks/logs to make the finished rail tracks.(Currently, Powered rails are the standard for using railcarts at all, but that's not very realistic, or befitting the theme. I'll get to that later) 

So, now that you have the finished rails, what do you do with them?Getting the Wheels

Once again, shaping ingots into an object with your bare hands isn't very intuitive. And to that, i suggest a simple change and a whole lotta white space, because I've got a bunch more to say, but I won't bore you with it.

 

Minecart recipeSince they are carts, and not iron boats, you have to form the metal into sheets. Then you can just use your imagination and pretend that you've just made a minecart. (There would be more, but again, too long) HOWEVER, I want to emphasize that I want to stray away from powered rails, at least until a better system is implemented. As a replacement, since furnace minecarts are impossible to craft, a small solution would be to make a player-powered hand cart.

http://goo.gl/dKP1Hc

This type of cart moves by being clicked on by a player riding in it. That's it. It just pushes other carts. Now, an alternative longer down the line would be an improved version of the furnace cart, because that poor thing never got any attention. I do admire the lack of a GUI, but my god, do they suck.

 

What do they do?

A minecart, for all intensive purposes, was designed to cart things out of a mineshaft. And as Vanilla ores don't spawn in large veins, it never was much of a priority. Instead, Command blocks were made *grumble* 

But seeing as TFC has a much more classical mining method, the purpose of a minecart fulfils the theme. They can carry tools, players, ore, tracks even! But how does it do it??Players can simply sit in an empty minecart. Wow, that was simple.

Rails can be placed in carts, up to a stack (or more)Chest carts may still be an option, but for their purposes here, they'll store what a normal chest can store.

Possibly, just maybe, they can store blocks that may soon be too heavy to carry by hand (barrels, log piles, ect)

And last but not least, without even a chest, a minecart can store 1 cubic meter or raw ore. This may take some consideration, as deciding how to render the storage cart may prove difficult, and may be scrapped altogether.

 

There is much more that I want to suggest, however I'm tossing this idea to see how it's accepted.

Tell me what you think, your opinions on it, and if you believe it would add content to the game. I really want to see a more integrated experience involving more than just the player and the inventory, and have more of a tool-oriented environment. Leave your comments, even if you don't like the idea!

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It's much more likely that TFC will just add compatibility with Railcraft.

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It's much more likely that TFC will just add compatibility with Railcraft.

That may be the case, but with that logic, nearly everything this mod offers has already been made in a mod. One of the main benefits to TerrafirmaCraft is that it is all one collective mod, and not just a bundle of smaller mods to rely on content. Besides, Vanilla offers rails, they're still in the game, so why not improve them until the decision is made to rely on Railcraft to bridge them?Besides, There are elements of TerrafirmaCraft that would be ruined if it were to rely on Railcraft, which relies on Buildcraft/thermal expansion for certain things to work. And we know why that can't be possible

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That's the thing, TFC's end goal was never to be the end-all be-all mod that includes everything. We're not like the developer of BTW, who intentionally made his mod incompatible with everything. We want you to bundle TFC with other mods to expand on content and customize the game to how you want to play it. TFC is a large enough mod on its own already, and with only 2 people with the title of Developer, they have a hard enough time keeping up with updates as it is. That's why there's 4-6 months between each and every major build release. Servers in the past have bundled TFC with Railcraft with very few hiccups, and Bioxx himself has stated before that he'd rather just add compatibility, than integrate mods that do things well enough on their own.

 

As for your concerns, could you please be more specific about exactly which elements of TFC would be ruined with relying on Railcraft? As a matter of fact, Railcraft actually doesn't rely on Buildcraft or Thermal Expansion for it to work. It plays nicely with those mods, but they aren't actually required to be installed for 99.9% of the features in the mod. You say "And we know why that can't be possible" and yet there is a BuildCraft/TFC crossover mod in our addons section that for the most part is completely funcitonal: http://terrafirmacraft.com/f/topic/3864-164b7817buildcraft-tfc-crossover-mod-wip/

 

So no, we don't know why, because it is possible.

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Sorry for OT, but i have a question. Kitty, would it be possible to put somewhere a list of mods that are or are planned to be compatible with TFC and so similar features will not be implemented. I believe it would dwindle the amount of topics such as this one and when I see such posts i feel like there are dozens of mods i should be playing along tfc that I'm not aware of.

As much as i hate disclaimers like this, I apologize in advance for my mistakes. English is not my native and it's 2.07am here, so I hope you understand :)

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As for current mods that work with TFC, there is everything in our addons forum, some of which are crossovers so obviously the mod that is the other half of that as well. A plethora of client-side mods also work very well. For example, here's the list of mods that I usually use in combination with TFC:

  • Damage Indicators
  • Inventory Tweaks
  • Not Enough Items (Code Chicken Core)
  • Optifine (Standard Version Only)
  • Smart Moving (& Player API)
  • WAILA
  • Zan's Minimap
  • Mapwriter

As for other mods, it's probably easier to list what is incompatible vs what is compatible. First and foremost, any mod that has vanilla-based world generation is not compatible out of the box (Plants that grow on vanilla grass, ores that spawn in vanilla stone, animals that spawn in vanilla biomes, etc.). However, the ores can be added via TFC's config option, and many mods have configurations for themselves as well to help with compatibility. There are also third party mods such as CustomNPC and Minetweaker that will help bridge the gaps that occur with crafting recipes, as well as ore dictionary stuff.

 

The only two things I can think of that are completely incompatible (i.e. will crash your game) with 78 is mods that add other dimensions (Galacticraft or Aether), and mods with their own armor. The mod armor won't work anyways, because of how TFC changed how players take damage. It also needs to be kept in mind that health is scaled much differently than in vanilla, so by default many mobs from other mods will be a 1-hit-kill with just a fist. Once again, a handful of these mods allow configuration for this, and there is probably a 3rd party mod out there as well to help.

 

One big final disclaimer that I want to put on this post: TFC is still in beta. We know that we aren't 100% compatible with a lot of mods, but we're working on it. It may not be the highest of priorities and therefore might not be complete any time soon, but it is a goal at the end of the journey that we are trying to aim towards. For example: I've spent many hours implementing an extensive ore dictionary for 79, meaning that the 3rd party mods used to create custom crafting recipes will be much less necessary.

 

If there is a specific mod that you would like to see compatible with TFC, let us know. However, compatibility is a two-way street, in that we as the TFC staff can only go so far. The author of the other mod is likely going to have to make some steps towards compatibility as well. Contact both mods about adding compatibility. In the majority of cases, we're more than happy to add compatibility with that mod to our to-do list. There may be a few exceptions of mods that just as a whole will never really "fit" with TFC, but that still doesn't mean we are going to intentionally be incompatible.

 

As I've stated a few times on this forum before, if there is already an existing mod that adds a feature, and adds it well according to the Dev's opinions, we aren't going to copy that mod into TFC. Instead, we will simply make TFC compatible with said mod, so that you can play with them both together. This is how modding works. Not only is it a modification, but its also modular. Customize the game as you want to play it.

 

The only exceptions to this whole statements are Optifine, and Cauldron. These two mods edit base forge classes, the entire framework that TFC is built off of and many times compatibility just isn't an option. A fantastic read about situations like that can be found here: http://forum.feed-the-beast.com/threads/psa-mcpc-and-modded-minecraft.37480/

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Thank you for a quick reply, but it seems i got misunderstood a bit :)

"As I've stated a few times on this forum before, if there is already an existing mod that adds a feature, and adds it well according to the Dev's opinions, we aren't going to copy that mod into TFC"

All I'd like to know is a list of mods that fit in this category. But perhaps it woud be too long of a list to create. The problem I have is that i feel I'm not getting the full experience out of TFC by missing some mods that The Devs and Our Beloved Moderator Kitty deem worthy of playing. And considering that I spend more time watching your series than actually playing, I am confident i know what mods do You use.

Oh and to clarify maybe - i was thinking of mods that alter the gameplay and add new blocks/features and not being talked about on forums.

I think posting sth like "we won't do x becouse mod y does it and we like it" in the "do not post following suggestions" topic would be useful and could make moderating easier for you.

After all I won't force you to do it, i just think it could be useful if you'd have time and willingess to interrogate Bioxx and Dunk about it ;)

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Thank you for a quick reply, but it seems i got misunderstood a bit :)"As I've stated a few times on this forum before, if there is already an existing mod that adds a feature, and adds it well according to the Dev's opinions, we aren't going to copy that mod into TFC"All I'd like to know is a list of mods that fit in this category. But perhaps it woud be too long of a list to create. The problem I have is that i feel I'm not getting the full experience out of TFC by missing some mods that The Devs and Our Beloved Moderator Kitty deem worthy of playing. And considering that I spend more time watching your series than actually playing, I am confident i know what mods do You use.Oh and to clarify maybe - i was thinking of mods that alter the gameplay and add new blocks/features and not being talked about on forums.I think posting sth like "we won't do x becouse mod y does it and we like it" in the "do not post following suggestions" topic would be useful and could make moderating easier for you.After all I won't force you to do it, i just think it could be useful if you'd have time and willingess to interrogate Bioxx and Dunk about it ;)

 

Oooooh. That list is really short actually, at least because nobody has really made posts on the forums for it. I may miss a few, but the big ones are stuff to do with weather (the post should be on the first few pages of this forum still), Thaumcraft, cubic chunks (which probably won't happen because its a lot of effort), and Bibliocraft (The author of which has already said he will do a TFC compat addon when we release TFC for 1.7).

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You say "And we know why that can't be possible" and yet there is a BuildCraft/TFC crossover mod in our addons section that for the most part is completely funcitonal: http://terrafirmacraft.com/f/topic/3864-164b7817buildcraft-tfc-crossover-mod-wip/

 

So no, we don't know why, because it is possible.

For Terrafirmacraft to be compatible with Railcraft, Alot has to be done to even make the items craftable. Let's look at how much has to be changed:

(Yes, I've looked at the BC/Railcraft crossover mod)In Railcraft, in order to make the rolling machine to begin making rails, you need a crafting table and pistons. Well, neither of those are available in Terrafirmacraft. So special recipes must be made for crafting the rail components. Which is exactly what my post is suggesting, just in the theme of within the mod.I could go down the entire list of things that aren't available in TFC, like:

Making the components in railcraft have different prerequesites that aren't available in TFC, like the boiler requres fire charges, which requires the netherCoal coke requires bricksFurnace carts, which aren't craftable in TFC

Nearly anything in the mod that can't be crafted, have to have a alternative recipe

Many more inconsistencies in which a special version of the mod would have to be developed specifically for Terrafirmacraft 

That's just the crafting differences, let alone some mechanics that would be overlooked, but are important.

For instance, most things powered in railcraft run on steam, which requires a replenishable source of water, and without other mods to provide this, you're left with the water tank from Railcraft that gains water over time, which requires banded planks, which require slime in order to be crafted.

Locomotives run off of fuel and steam, of which requires a water station, and since Hoppers and any sort of automated mechanical system are removed, this makes it difficult to make things work.Besides, if Railcraft is meant to be a partner mod to it, but requires another developer to make a compatible version, what's the difference between adding someone to the Dev team rather than allowing someone to make a plugin for a core feature of the game?

If anything, that gives the main developers LESS control over the additions to the addon.Honestly, it doesn't make sense to me to forgo a logical component of a feature already implemented and instead rely on a heavilly modified version from someone else not even in the mod dev circle.

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Railcraft compatibility is easy. Just use Minetweaker

http://minetweaker3.powerofbytes.com/

 

Minetweaker can be used to make craftable pistons, bricks, furnace carts, fire charges, hoppers etc in TFC

 

Sure some of the things you have to do sound kind of cheaty (make nonsensical recipes for materials normally found in the nether), but thats what you have to do until the devs fix dimensional travel (don't hold your breath for that one)

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