TomeWyrm

Which is fine, I'm just striving for accuracy of information. If nobody argues these semantic things, people will become lazier about this stuff, and good accurate information will become harder and harder to find. I'm not saying that it is impossible to get most of the features of ExtraFirma in the latest version of TFC. I'm saying that the accuracy of the original point to which I responded leaves something to be desired. The point, for me, isn't "There's a way to work around this" or "please help me get all these features in the new version with some combination of mods". My point is that the top of the page is demonstrably inaccurate, and I'm merely giving information that isn't misleading for anyone that comes by in a few hours, days, or even months. Say someone is watching a TFC video with ExtraFirma installed, and loves... I dunno... the colored bookcases. There's a link in the video description to this thread. Reading more about the mod, this hypothetical person likes what they see and wants to play with ExtraFirma in their more up-to-date version of TerraFirmaCraft. Unfortunately ExtraFirma is incompatible with the new version. So this person reads the last few forum pages to see if maybe an update is being planned. They notice that it appears to (unfortunately) be abandoned. They continue reading to see if maybe someone has created a spiritual successor (or right-out remake). They then reach the post by Terex. Terex says something that implies that a lot of functionality from ExtraFirma is in this other mod. All I was doing was making it so that someone doesn't have to investigate the other mod thread to find out that, no in point of fact Decorations Addon does not have "a lot" of the functionality of ExtraFirma. It only has the Adobe/Mud bricks and the lanterns (which are in two or three mods now). I'm not going to post my minetweaker file and quadrum resource pack that allows me to duplicate the bookcase feature, both because that's not been requested and because that doesn't exist (I quit playing TFC a while back, and nothing has brought me back as of this post). One of the things I've been waiting for is a mod like ExtraFirma. Dedicated to working within the theme of the mod, but extending functionality, filling in gaps, or both. As far as I'm concerned, Minetweaker is great for "normal" modded play, but a large portion of TFC is (as far as I am aware, even with ModTweaker) unsupported. You can't use it to add new anvil recipes, or barrel recipes. While things like Tabula Rasa can add custom blocks and items that you can texture to your hearts desire (assuming you're an artist or know one), they can't integrate with the FEEL and mechanics of TFC in even close to the same way that an addon can. Maybe if I was a programmer and has spare time, I might start working on ExtraFirma: Reborn! But I'm not. All I can do is keep my subscription to this thread, hoping for news on an update or an ACTUAL replacement, and in the meantime make sure the information on this thread stays as accurate (and therefore useful) as possible.

Heh, I knew all of that. I'm currently using Custom Ore Generation to "fix" the worldgen of Chromaticraft... and that's actually the biggest problem with using a lot of forge mods in TFC. Worldgen. Unless I want to play with Ex Nihilo/Ex Astris and completely invalidate the entire "believability" core pillar of TFC... at which point why am I playing TFC? But that still doesn't invalidate my original point :-p. Just because you can work around lost features with Minetweaker and Tabula Rasa, Quadrum, and/or CustomThings doesn't mean they're not missing features, after all.

• Steel Tracks: Crafted like the Wrought Iron tracks, but with Steel. • Redstone Logic Tiles: http://i.imgur.com/1VrFiW7.png Didn't know about the OreDict features I will admit, I'm not used to the OreDict support, and switched back to non-TFC for my minecrafting because most of my friends are new to the game and want to play with less of a Total Conversion experience than TFC requires. That's still 4:12 features that are covered by TFC and a new mod versus features that aren't. Mud/Adobe, Lanterns, Name tags, Iron Bars. Part of the feature of ExtraFirma bookcases is that they come in all the TFC woods. Name tags I'll grant you are covered (more sensibly than the brass ones in my personal opinion). STEEL tracks, the OP points out that wrought iron tracks already existed. Iron bars is precisely as the ExFirma feature. Compass: Honestly the magnetite makes more sense, and having both would be a nice alternative, but oredict doesn't technically cover that feature. Comparators and Repeaters isn't "repeaters only". The 8:1 dying is a change to the 1:1 dying, and is therefore a feature that isn't covered. To be perfectly honest, the lanterns aren't actually duplicated features either, it's an extension/improvement/addition. Can't recall the adobe color (I built out of wood and straw not adobe), so that could also qualify as being different, though it's functionally the same with an extremely similar crafting mechanic... different aesthetics does not a new/different feature make IMHO.

Mud and Lanterns... that's not "a lot". It's missing Candles; Composite Crossbow and Bolts; Melee Weaponry; Bookcases; Medicine; Name Tag; Steel Tracks; Iron Bars; Compass; Redstone Logic Tiles; Carpets re-dying; Red, Yellow, Brown, and Green Dyes (alternate methods of obtaining); Ropes and Rope Anchors. Maybe you only used ExtraFirma for the decorative blocks, but I know I wanted the crossbow and redstone logic tiles at the VERY least.

March, 6 months ago. He was last active on these forums June 5th... That's never a good sign.

Please, for the love of Notch. If you do decide to make your lanterns extinguish make them last WAY longer than the torches. Like... ingame months at a time. Redstone control would be cool, as would fueling them with oil/fat/what-have-you. But the single biggest gripe raised on the torch thread was lack of reasonable long-term lighting options.

No I'm not ignoring it (and I'm pretty sure everyone else isn't either. At the very least their statements aren't hard to reconcile with "I don't like the way things are RIGHT THIS VERY MOMENT"), I'm saying that "in 6 months" is a ridiculous amount of time to wait for a change that SHOULD have gone live with the torch change. Maybe have the lanterns disabled by default so you can see what the torch burnout does, maybe even disable the crafting recipes and see that way then add a new config in a hotfix/patch. Not "let's break a core Minecraft mechanic and use our entire player base as ALPHA testers" because I sure don't consider core gameplay overhauls to be open beta test material, at the very least not as opt-out; make it opt in and then you get willing testers.Monsters and fighting are a core part of the game (Bioxx even said so), which means affecting our main means of dealing with them, as well as just about the ONLY reasonable light source we have for aesthetic purposes WITHOUT GIVING US AN ALTERNATIVE just strikes me as a bad idea.---------- You are assuming that:A )The playerbase is willing to raise a stink instead of tolerating the change or just not playing. This could simply be another straw on the camel's back or the final one that breaks it. Most people are actually very non-confrontational, and non-communicative. I've found out about a lot of problems from second-hand conversations being brought to my attention by one of the participants, both in my time as a chatroom moderator and as a server admin. Getting someone to actually tell me "Yeah, I don't like X" is like pulling teeth with a set of pliers made of silly putty most of the time.B )The admins actually know this is a configurable change. While they SHOULD know that, if wishes were wings pigs would fly. There SHOULD be no conflicts over oil in the middle east, we SHOULD have vehicles that run on renewable energy and power plants that work as carbon sequestration methods, the NSA SHOULD have undergone reform years ago...My entire point boils down to "keep this as disabled by default until we've got lanterns and we can actually try this out properly" because I do think this is a nice bit of early/mid game tedium. But ONLY if it has a mid/late game workaround/fix.Otherwise it's just an all-game tedium with literally no benefit other than "those torch forests are gone" which could have been solved in other ways. Make torches that are within 14 blocks of at least 4 other torches spawn monsters or burn out, or maybe make them unplaceable at certain densities, or... yeah. What ended up happening is "Let's make lighting builds a pain, and give our spawn protection a workout". The issue is that within three days people on this thread pointed out some flaws in the current implementation and just recentlyCerus corroborated with actual experience.Most of us aren't saying "EWW THIS CHANGE IS STUPID YOU GUYS SUCK", most of us are saying "we think you implemented the change poorly, we'd like you to fix that".----------Note that I actually LIKE this change. I always thought torches not burning out was really odd... even Notch was seriously contemplating adding it at one point. But you've disabled (intentionally or not) most of the other options we have aesthetically and functionally. We're now mostly limited to cheating (vanilla torches, glowstone, redstone lamps); using ugly Jack-o-Lanterns; using the unintuitive, dangerous, and VERY late-game lava; or using another mod.The simplest way to "fix" this is just make the default for the config files set torch burnout to 0. That doesn't overwrite the already set config files, and means all the new people don't have to deal with it if they don't want to. Put up a text prompt/warning saying "If you like the new torch burnout or don't and would like to change it, check the wiki for instructions on how to change a configuration setting". Et voila! Anyone that has been playing with this and likes it will either keep their config or set the new default back to 48 if they create a new config file, and the rest of us can just go back to playing the way we liked. Odds are all the data you're trying to collect via LP'ers will keep coming in, and the huge portion of us that are complaining in this thread will shut up finally.-----------I so wish you could pop up a config prompt before letting people into the game... then again more tedium before play would probably suck.

Thrainn, you haven't ever had a server you liked with a community you liked, and a mod configured (by default) to a setting you didn't like, have you? Defaults are terrifically important.Heck, as an experiment, try finding a few servers using the Monster pack that are using v25z of Reika's mods (DragonAPI, RotaryCraft, ReactorCraft, Geostrata, etc.). Now try and find one single server that has those mods updated AND changed the "Rainbow Fluorite" option to false.I know that I am in the oh so vanishingly small minority that tweaks and modifies and configures like a madman. That's the trick, I know that I am in the minority. Which means the majority of people don't tweak every mod to be more to their liking. Those are the people I am trying to champion for. The huge portion of the TFC playerbase that don't even know this discussion is going on. Because the basic rule of thumb for forum announcements and discussions is that you're getting under a quarter of your users looking at whatever-it-is, and of those maybe a tenth will actually comment? The thread is an amazingly biased sample of the community because it's the people that check the forums, know about the change, and have a desire to speak up that are talking in here... obviously more people are willing to vote in the poll, because I can see the way the poll is tallying up.What I'm trying to keep in mind is the 90% of people that either don't know they can comment/vote, or more likely aren't assertive enough to do so. Instead, people like that will just leave, and give recommendations against the mod in the future. Ask anyone reasonably high up the administrative chain in a service industry. Complaints are taken seriously because if one in a hundred people have the chutzpah or are annoyed enough to fill out a complaint form that means that every complaint is likely 100 complaints pretty similar to it. Most of whom either barely tolerate it, or more likely, just leave.So yes, in my particular case this is a complete non-issue. If it was unconfigurable I would just use MineTweaker to make a 1:1 crafting recipe for TFC torch -> Vanilla Torch... or make a recipe for glowstone, or hack myself in some redstone lamps, or install ExtraFirma... or... yeah. I'm well versed in mucking with mods, I build my own packs to play with and have been doing so since MC was still in Beta. I was around back when IndustrialCraft and Buildcraft were first getting started, back before "Equivalent Exchange" existed...But that's not the point. The point is that many people in this thread are raising actual legitmate concerns, doing so in a civil manner, and are being dismissed and/or ignored. By you, by other people, even by Kitty.You're just saying "I find that whole config/default discussion so incredibly ridiculous!" but anyone that's been on the tech support for packs or servers, or just paid attention to forums at the right times can tell you: defaults are important, vitally so. Incidentally, I'm bringing some reasoned arguments and trying to provide examples (though I'm not citing them because oh gods finding examples would be a nightmare... I could attempt to do so if you're still skeptical though). You're just saying "that's silly" like it will make the problem disappear. The ostrich approach doesn't actually work :-)This entire concept is why there are giant "balance" debates out there. Because defaults are vitally important!

Oh? What about people that aren't the admin of their server? How about the vast majority of people that don't know what a config file is? Maybe they aren't aware that it even IS a configurable option.People that hold a stance like this are one of the things I generally feel like screaming at. You literally don't get it if you believe "it's configurable" is an acceptable way to defeat a criticism or complaint, as though they're some vile evil thing that needs to be dealt with. It's nearly as bad as "Well if you don't like it don't play it" or "Find a server that does it that way then". That's SO not the point that espousing that viewpoint means you yourself have honestly lost the argument in the eyes of anyone that actually gives a damn, and has real experience with trying to find a server that doesn't run with (nearly) 100% default configs, or just having to lose your friends and the sense of community you gained because some admin or other made a choice that you can't stand, or abused their power, or whatever.One of my favorite quotes by immibis (a mod author) is "First rule of configs: 90% of people won't see your configs. 95% of people won't change them." which links to this blog post: http://blog.codinghorror.com/the-power-of-defaults/It is beautifully summarized by the final paragraph:

Because Bioxx is against ANY permanent light source. Honestly I can see his point, and if we had (in-game) month/year long light sources (so actual real-life weeks) then we could enjoy the torches realistically burning out without having to rely on building a cramped base, hoping our fellow players don't stay logged on a lot while we're offline, and using the absolutely hideous jack-o-lanterns (which you can't always hide), and horrifically dangerous and late-game lava for our light sources when we can't be lighting the darn things every real life hour.Which is why I said "I dislike the mechanic, and changed the config files to turn it off completely." despite the fact that I do actually like the mechanic. Because with the way the game is at the current time, the actual answer to the question they REALLY are asking with the poll (not "What is your opinion about torches burning out as a mechanic", but "how do you like the mechanic of torch burnout as currently implemented in TFC") is "hell no, change it back until you get an actual alternative both in spawn protection and aesthetic lighting"The instant they give me lanterns that last a real-life week (or, honestly permanent... but Bioxx doesn't like infinite light sources so there's a snowball's chance in hell of THAT getting into the game), I'll change my answer to "I love it!" Because it really does make the early game more suspenseful and makes caving more difficult, makes it a (relatively) difficult task to secure a mine, and all sorts of intriguing gameplay changes for the early game... but that's all this is, a neat change for the EARLY game with no mid-to-late alternatives... and that's why I'm waiting until ExtraFirma updates to 1.7.10, so I don't have to keep playing with non-default settings because while I like the change I can't stand the lack of reasonable alternatives.

House. Singular.Oh and you can't build a house/compound more than 65 blocks interior without using f3 and be assured that the middle will actually extend spawn protection to the edges. I could point out why that is, but it's mostly pedantry anyway.I don't like building like that anymore. I've been forced to by neccesity and being nice to server resources so I have to keep as few chunks loaded as possible, I've built entire bases (well the modded bits of it anyway) inside of a single chunk to avoid stupid chunk loading bugs. It's boring, I'm tired of cramped and compact.In TFC I build more realistically, I don't put my loud, noxious and dirty forge/foundry near my nice pristine house. I don't put my loud, stinky, loud, noxious, loud, and annoying (did I mention loud?) animal barn/stalls/pasture/stables next to either of them. I keep my farmland near water for irrigation (mostly out of neccesity there, if I had red steel from the start, I would terraform the landscape a bit and make a natural spring and irrigate that way). I don't build a house, I build a COMPLEX. That complex is not centered around my house, that complex gets buildings placed where they make sense and often where I don't have to do massive amounts of terraforming. Most of the time that means that my base sprawls over 10s of chunks and there are precisely 0 guarantees that any of that will stay spawn protected all of, most of, or even much more than barely some of the time. I don't mind the mobs being in the surrounding wilderness, and even intruding on my paths. But I secure the individual base components the only way I can: Light. What this change does is remove that as an option in anything but single player, unless I build out of non-flammable material and/or use extra thick walls or dig out a sub-basement while building so I can hide jack o lanterns I have had to roam thousands of blocks to find the pumpkins for. Or I get to log on every hour and re-light my outposts. Or I hope to god that I have less than 8 outposts... or there are a lot of them within 2-ish chunks of one another... or that I log on more than once a day for a length of time not less than 1/8th the time I will be gone for... Another thing this forces me to do is use the immersion breaking F3 screen to actually figure out where in the heck my chunk boundaries are.The problem with using your play style as an example, Kitty is that not everyone plays like you do and you're making the game harder for those people without giving them a way to mitigate or nullify that change (other than the config setting, which as I've already pointed out: You can't rely on config settings to fix a problem. Defaults are defaults for a reason, and they're what are going to be used 95+% of the time.). You've also implied heavily many times that your style of play is more valid than their style of play.I can point to plenty of people that log on and don't build in spawn (which TFC's resource distribution discourages ANYWAY), have day jobs, have other social commitments, and otherwise don't log on once a day for 3 and a half hours, every day. Plenty of servers have night owls and different time zones so that the server is on practically 24/7. Not everyone wants to impinge on others builds so they go a few hundred blocks away until they find a place they like so as not to wreck the view of anyone else with their stuff. They still play with other people, they still talk to others, they're not "playing single player" by any stretch, but while they're on they'll be unintentionally screwing everyone else over. I know that my personal servers have had a max of 6 people at any one time, and our bases were hundreds of blocks apart because Person A felt like building in a desert, while person B wanted extreme hills, persons C and D built a base together in the nether, and such. We did not build a single gated community because that tends to require a unified building style or a committee, or a unified builder, or some other nonsense that just makes more work for everyone else. We were all online at pretty much the same times, and we STILL would have ended up logging on to bases dark, dank, and full of walking corpses/spiders the size of horses/gangly teleporting thieves that hit like mountains/big walking green phallic exploding bush creatures, and the like. I know that I have a weekly D&D game that would mean if my server was up and my other friends were playing at that time? I would log on Monday, EVERY WEEK to a base full to the brim with mobs. Why would I want that?Yes, I'm the server admin, and I could turn off that setting in the config. But then I would have to poll all the players and get a supermajority to agree, because that's how decisions are made on my servers. We run default, and unless there's a stability issue (which as the only admin and the resident tech geek, I just fix and let everyone know that I fixed it and what caused the issue), any deviation runs past the whole crew and takes a week. Except minor version updates; SOP there is to just roll those out.----I'm happy you have realized that there are problems with the implementation as it currently stands. What I'm asking for is an honest look at the numerous suggestions that have been brought forth both from the aesthetic and mechanic camps on why we, in particular, do not like this change; instead of the off-hand dismissals and deflections those suggestions and criticisms had been receiving.Also I wish Bioxx would realize that putting the userbase on hold with an experimental balance change in a release version (specifically stated to "see through LPs and other sources how players actually adapt to the changes") isn't the best way to endear yourself with your users. Most people don't like being unwitting beta testers.

I am aware that lanterns will be added eventually. But their lack when coupled with the torch change is one of the major issues I've seen pop up earlier in the thread (and one I agree with). You've removed a mechanic without offering an acceptable option. One of the reasons we use torches is because they're relatively cheap and light things up decently well. I accept that Bioxx doesn't like torch forests both aesthetically and as a method of spawn control, and that's fine; I don't either.Another reason torches are used quite often is that they do not set things on fire, which is why Lava lighting isn't really an option... one of the most common (and aesthetically pleasing) building materials is flammable, and Minecraft fire spread is one of those esoteric concepts that most people never quite grasp, and even those that know the rules screw up with them sometimes.The other "option" brought up in this thread is Jack-o-Lanterns. And having to hide them is a pain in vanilla, and a lot of those techniques don't work in TFC. Pistons aren't craftable; glass defeats the point of hiding the light; leaves are no longer able to be shorn/sheared. Which leaves you with things like putting them under chests (which you can still see that vibrant orange around the edges of); carpets, which are tricky to use in a lot of builds in vanilla, and even more-so in TFC; using ledges and trim to hide the light (which doesn't work for many builds); using the chisel, which is amazingly distracting for many people (I can't stand 7/8ths blocks in the middle of my wall/ceilings. It's why I hate mod cables that aren't facade or FMP compatible).Especially because we're going to have to live with this change for months what with the 1.8 overhaul and the relative downsizing of the core modded MC API/Library teams.-----As for the torches, you can still prevent more than 2 torches from being produced at once... just revert the time change and let us slap a stack in there, then it reduces the TEDIUM of clicking back and forth and back and forth and back and forth and back and forth and ... you get the idea. It won't speed up the process any, it won't be "stick stack of torches in firepit, walk away for 1 minute, come back to stack of torches". It'll just remove the need to click... and click... and click... and click in two or three different places. This isn't Cookie Clicker :-) I for one wouldn't mind having to manually accept the outputs (that's something every other TFC machine/process does), I do mind having to babysit BOTH the input and output... this is one of the few places in the mod where that happens, and it is both slightly jarring and horrifically tedious/annoying.-----Cerus brings up a good point, and one of the OTHER reasons I think the "player placed blocks" idea is a good step in the right direction. If you rely entirely upon spawn protection, at best you can manage eight 5 chunk x 5 chunk squares of protection, and that involves you moving around a lot (more tedium! I don't come to play Minecraft for chores, I get enough of those in my real life). Now 200 chunks sounds like a lot, but that involves you being very VERY careful with how you do things and making sure that you stay about equal amounts of time in every one of those 8 chunks, no two of which can be closer than 4 chunks apart and... wow this is beginning to sound like a physics problem or something. So let's be generous and assume you can get... oh... 25% of that. 50 chunks. That STILL sounds like a lot, but I know that I'm going to spend VAST stretches of my in-base time in my metalworking area, and probably my "house"... which if I don't build in a tower fashion means I have to have my entire compound within a 10x5 chunk area and fully fenced in... which is rather counter to the way TFC seems to encourage outposts and spread out bases. Also I'm tired of building cramped bases where I cram everything into a set space. Let me build outposts and secure them against monster spawns somehow OTHER than my presence... maybe you could give another use to the gems and make a Protection Emitter that you feed something (more gems maybe? Oil? Lava?) and it acts like a player (or maybe shorter radius) so we can maybe feed into them with a barrel (or something)...Basically I like the idea of spawn protection, I just don't think it's enough, and even if it is, the method is a bit tedious to maintain because it's yet ANOTHER thing that must be done personally by the player with regularity.

As am I. The removal of permanent light sources in the latest update (Lava doesn't count, too dangerous. Jack-o-lanterns don't count either. They're a pain to place, ugly, and too expensive to use as hidden lighting for large buildings in TFC) is SO not my cup of tea. Not to mention the awesome additions of other melee weapons, rope anchors, medicine, the comparator/repeater, and so many other awesome gizmos and gadgets. As far as I'm concerned, TFC simply isn't as playable without your addon.

Well if not metadata, use an NBT flag. I haven't looked at the spawning code but it should be as trivial to check for "IsPlayerPlaced" as it is for "IsTransparent" or "LightLevel<8". Incidentally I'm not intending to provide any sort of reason to get rid of the current spawn protection mechanics... my idea is intended to be a refinement of or extension to them. The idea that areas you spend a lot of time in are "more inhabited" and therefore less likely to spawn monsters is awesome... but it should also be possible to secure a player built structure (at least one that they don't visit constantly) in a way that does not involve slabbing the whole thing with the chisel, or painting it with torches. Another really obvious point is completely decoupling light levels from mob spawns. Then light becomes a way for you to decorate your structures and see things better at night. Incidentally if you do add lanterns? Might I suggest some form of tubing so you can pump oil to lamps that are far away, possibly make an oil-lamp lit road/walkway/rail line, and also include some form of infinite light in default. It is very good that you have configuration options except for this "rule" that I've found to be quite true: First rule of configs: 90% of people won't see your configs. 95% of people won't change them. This change won't affect me in the slightest until ExtraFirma updates anyway, and then it will likely do precisely what is intended and be a reasonable change making the early game just a bit more spooky/tedious/dangerous. Because I'll have access to lanterns. If I get tired of waiting for ExtraFirma I'll either disable the config setting or "exchange" glowstone for the materials that would be required for an ExtraFirma lantern (in other words use NEI to cheat one in and delete the raw materials from my inventory that would have been consumed in the crafting). But I'm a highly atypical user, and I can only do this if I am an admin or playing in single player with cheats. That is not the case for a large majority of people. I constantly rage at people who assume "You don't like it, don't play it" or "It's configurable" are good ways to dismiss a perfectly valid opinion or suggestion, or end a discussion. THEY AREN'T. People play Minecraft on servers, servers they have little to no control over. Lots of admins are either conservative or lazy and only change configs if most of the community both knows about a change (which is far from assured, most people aren't investigators or researchers compelled to know ALL THE THINGS™) AND desires the change enough to bug the Admin(s) about it... and most people aren't assertive enough to do that. I can understand Bioxx's reasoning behind the change, I'm just saying that it should be switched to default off... the youtubers and stuff know about the change now, and they also know that you're trying to see what they do with the change, but your random users (most of whom will never go through the effort of actually talking to you about this) won't. It will appear as a sudden change, and with no alternatives to the things they want until REALLY REALLY late in the game and dealing with fire spread, or the non-renewable jack-o-lanterns (which most people don't like... and expecting someone to use a texture pack is much the same as expecting people to change servers, especially if they're ON a server. Hiding lighting is not the easiest thing to manage, and sometimes people WANT displayed lighting). ----- Incidentally now that the Crucible accepts a stack of items in the input slot... could the firepit do that with sticks? The worst part about using torches before was the constant shift-clicking. The forge makes it better, but it always struck me as a bit odd that you couldn't put more than a single stick in a firepit at a time, and it gave you TWO torches.

Actually yes it does. All it requires is a new block that only generates during World Generation. When the player picks it up, it gives the block we're all used to. And when we place it it places the block we're all used to... except that block disallows spawns. Note that grass grown on player placed dirt should also be of the "will not spawn mobs" variety.Yes it's slightly more work, and uses up more block ID's... but it also fixes the biggest issues with monster spawning in MC, and nearly the whole reason the Torch Forest ever became a Thing™; Monsters spawn in my carefully built and obviously secure base.That frees you up to provide attractive (expensive) permanent light sources for the people that want cosmetic builds, and keep or discard the current lighting/spawn interactions as you see fit, make torches burn out, whatever. If you want the "reclaimed by wilderness" effect, maybe track via NBT the "spawn protection" per-block (though THAT will probably cause a nasty performance hit) or update all the player placed blocks every hour in a mechanic similar to the current Spawn Protection. Maybe make it so mobs and unloaded chunks have a very slight decrease, but otherwise never go down? Maybe make the last bed that the player has slept in more than 5 times into a permanent source of "Spawn Protection".There are a large list of suggestions that appear to be summarily (and quite rudely in some cases) dismissed. I realise that you are all busy, but this is a discussion thread. That's what they are for; getting feedback — from BOTH the users and developers; two-way street there.-----In response to the whole "Minecraft won't let me make bigger/brighter lights"... while this is technically true of a single block, it is also easy to work around.See Thaumcraft's Arcane Lamp, Factorization's Wrath Lamp, RotaryCraft's Floodlight, the entire Greg's Lighting mod, and probably 3 or 4 dozen other mods.The "main" block simply creates a number of blocks (some in a blob, some in a cylinder, the Arcane lamp is a bit more sparing about it) that have the IsAir(true) flag/property/class/whatever, AND emit light at 15.