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Andeerz

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Everything posted by Andeerz

  1. Greetings esteemed forum goers, particularly Bioxx! I am quite happy to see a meaningful simulation of structural physics making it into TFC2!!! After watching the recent video you (Bioxx) tweeted, I was left wanting to ask you a few questions about what you plan to implement and how. So far, here is what I have. I see that a given block type has a set number of other blocks it can laterally support over the air. Is this affected by the amount of blocks supported total in addition to the distance? In other words, if I build a beam five blocks long off of some block that can support 5 blocks laterally, and then stack a million blocks directly on top at the very end, will the structure fall apart? Alternatively, if I build with this same kind of block a beam 5 blocks out and then build laterally off of the end block, will the structure collapse? If not, how much can you build off of it? Can the amount of blocks supported be modified by making arches? Will this representation of strength be configurable? Is there a limit to the amount of blocks that can hang down from a block over the air (given that it is a block that obeys this kind of physics you will be implementing)?I hope my questions are clear... In any case, I am very excited by this and look forward to where it goes. If you are looking for any sort of inspiration, by far the best Minecraft mod that simulates structural physics is/was the Block Physics mod by id_miner on the Minecraft Forums. Enviromine and all the others don't really do a good job with their attempts. The only problem with that mod was that it was not updated past 1.6.4, or at least not correctly. The 1.7 and 1.8 versions were updated by others, and they both made mistakes that make certain structures impossible that should be possible.
  2. Questions Regarding the New Block Physics Demo

    So, let's see if I understand this correctly... For a block of scan depth 3 and range of 6, you would be able to build the following: 000000 0 0 000000000000------------------where "0" is a blockand "------" is the groundbut not the following: 000 000000000000--------------Is this right?
  3. Alternate Weapon & Armor Damage System

    This idea is fantastic. I suggest that, if further balance is needed, the state of durability of a tool affect damage of the weapon or damage reduction potential of a target's armour. Let's say durability reflects sharpness. Bronze vs. steel vs. stone vs. whatever material blades (or pointy features of the business end of "blunt" weapons) do have a difference in "damage" potential in real life in terms of how sharp an edge they can hold for how long, and edges can become surprisingly dulled slicing through even bare skin if we are talking about materials encountered in TFC.
  4. Metal Tiers

    Ooooh... this reminds me. Just to tag on an idea for something that was a factor in real life: behavior of alloys at different temperatures. As an example of what I mean, there is some good evidence that back in medieval times, there were nobles who had one sword for the winter, and another for summer. What differed was phosphorus content. A small amount of phosphorus in wrought iron yields an exceptionally tough and flexible iron that holds a keen edge when made into a sword. A blade made of such a material was best used in the summer, though, because the phosphorus-rich metal was pretty cold-short, so much so that the blade would become a lot more prone to breaking in cold weather! So, in this system for TFC2, perhaps some alloys would perform wonderfully in one climate, but terribly in another! Also, on a general note about this proposed procedural metal system, I find that such an idea actually reflects a bit of what real-life metallurgists of prehistory had to go through in order to discover how to make this or that metal. If smelting fuel and the behavior (and design) of furnaces used for smelting also played a role, this could shape up to be quite a metallurgy simulator! Oh! And for those commenting on magic and the like... a fun fact is that metallurgists of old (in some cultures) were in their own right considered magicians and alchemists in the purest senses of those words, and powerful ones at that!
  5. Terrain generation

    Wow... I must try that mod out that vladthemad suggested. Those are pretty fantastic screenshots.
  6. Encumberance Inventory system

    Darmo, I think that kind of "special wear spots" idea might be good, and could take the place of the encumbrance feature of CDDA. And I think it is easier to see being done as it is essentially an expansion upon the current way Minecraft handles equipping items. However, I think layers make sense for clothing and ESPECIALLY armour. And this could still be done, I think, nicely with what you suggest. For an example of what I mean, check this post out. And I still think encumbrance as CDDA handles it could introduce a way of differentiating fitted/well-made vs. non-fitted/poorly made items and stuff like that could be another useful and believable way of balancing things in the game. Thinking on it some more, I would be for a combination of both what you suggest and what CDDA does. But, CDDA does have some elements of the system you suggest, Darmo, since there are some things that have hard limits that behave like having a fixed number of slots. For example, you can't have more than one or two rigid helmets on your head at the same time, depending on their size.
  7. Encumberance Inventory system

    Has anyone here played Cataclysm: Dark Days Ahead? That game has, in my opinion, among the best inventory systems of any game, and I think it could very well possibly work for TFC. How CDDA's inventory system works is similar to some of what I have read in this thread. There are five main parameters to worry about: Item Volume -> Applies to all items, and is in arbitrary units, except with regard to liquids... which have to be in containers to be in your inventory anyway Item Weight -> Applies to all items and is measured in real-life units, and affects movement as it approaches or exceeds the character's weight capacity Encumbrance -> Only matters for items that are worn, including containers like backpacks, pouches, and similar. This affects movement speed, attack rolls, and the like Storage -> Only matters for items that are containers, and is the volume an that item, when equipped, allows you to carry, and/or when placed somewhere can store Weight capacity -> the max weight you can carry without suffering penalties. This is determined by the player's strength attribute. So, if you are a naked character, you can only carry what is in your hands, which can be any volume. As you put on equipment with storage, you can carry a certain volume. As you equip more and more equipment with storage you will be able to carry more and more volume, BUT you will also become more encumbered, which means you start to get penalties. Also, there is a hard limit on how many pieces of equipment (clothing or armour or whatever) of a certain type you can equip on a given body part, and encumbrance only applies to the body part it is equipped on. For example, if you wear just one backpack which goes on the torso, it will hardly encumber you and therefore has an modest effect on things like attack and movement, if at all. But if you decide to wear two backpacks, you will be able to carry much more, but your torso becomes much more encumbered which gives you penalties to actions involving the torso. And if you try to wear three or four backpacks (I think), the game won't let you. However, if you, instead of two backpacks, equip a backpack on your torso, and pouches on your thighs which combined have the same carrying carrying capacity as two backpacks, you will not be as encumbered since you spread out the encumbrance. And in all cases, the more mass you carry, the more it can affect movement speed and attack rolls and stuff. I hope this makes sense. If it doesn't check it out for yourself. It really is quite simple and intuitive though getting used to CDDA's interface and other aspects of gameplay is very difficult. Some other cool things that this system helps with is balancing armour and other wearable items. For example, some armours may protect more, but have more encumbrance if poorly made. Anyway, I think if this were implemented in TFC, it could even be simplified a bit. Perhaps the encumbrance feature could just be applied to the whole body and not be body-part specific. And perhaps when the player has no containers equipped, the player can carry only a hot-bar's worth of items. I think it is an elegant solution that many more games ought to implement.
  8. Tall Worlds Mod

    Ah, I see. I do think you are right; perception IS everything here.
  9. Tall Worlds Mod

    The point of the mod is not to make 16 million meter tall worlds or anything like that. 16 million blocks is just a red herring. The point is to make the game handle world generation in a more robust way that can, among potentially many other things, allow for increased build heights. With how chunks are handled now, it is not possible to get much higher in max build height without significantly hurting performance. Cubic chunks allows the possibility to expand beyond the current build height without affecting performance at all, if not improving performance, whether it be 1000 meters or 16 million meters. In addition to increasing build heights, it can make modding and simulating certain things much easier/possible, especially any sort of features that are altitude dependent, or that would benefit from having the world divided up into cubes instead of the tall chunks we have now. For example, say you want to make a mod that allows for biome variation vertically in addition to horizontally. The current way of handling chunks makes that rather tricky, whereas cubic chunks can allow for simply taking the current biome generation methods and applying a vertical component. There are other examples of where cubic chunks would be helpful as well, but I would recommend looking through the Tall Worlds and related posts.
  10. Tall Worlds Mod

    Hello everyone. Might as well necro this thread just in case! So, since the last post of this thread, there has been some considerable progress made on Tall Worlds. A functional prototype is out, and it certainly proves that cubic chunks can work in Minecraft without much more resources. HOWEVER, it is still incredibly buggy and many of the game's features do not work with the mod as is. These issues are massive and are not trivial to fix. To quote the mod's creator, Cuchaz: Number 3 is absolutely never going to happen. Ever. There is no incentive for Mojang to implement a feature that will not really bring in anyone new, and that will mainly serve to just satisfy a small insignificant fraction of the fanbase. Currently Cuchaz is trying to see if #2 is feasible. He has a poll going on in the Tall Worlds thread in minecraftforum.net to see if people would be willing to consider donating a small amount of money every month to support at least a part-time endeavor to complete the mod or get it in such a state that the community would be more likely to complete it. Also, though this mod may never be compatible with Forge, the Mod Loader it is built for (M3L) is built to use as much of the Forge API as possible and is meant to make it possible for Forge mods to be compatible with this mod loader without too many fundamental changes. So, if this mod is ever completed, it might actually be a possibility to get this to work with the TFC we all know and love. So, please feel free to check the post out and vote one way or another in the poll. It would be amazing to see this actually happen!!!
  11. Clothing

    I would love for there to be the threat of death through freezing and overheating. Clothes would lose much of their point, at least as far as survival in the wilderness is concerned (which this game is trying to simulate somewhat), if these threats were taken out. To address the issue of dying in the first day to exposure, I can see two possible solutions: 1. Always spawn in a tropical/temperate zone in a mild season 2. Always spawn with the bare minimum clothing needed to survive the initial conditions in which the player spawns (which might be giving the player too much) Some sort of difficulty options could of course modify this!
  12. Clothing

    On the topic of bark used for fabric... as well as the development of woven textile fabrics for use in clothing... There is certainly precedent for tree bark. There are numerous cultures that cultivated the barks of various trees, processing them in different ways to make soft fabrics capable of being stitched together to make garments. In fact, a recent bronze age find in England (http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-cambridgeshire-35280290) found fabric made from lime bark. It is possible to harvest the bark, ret it, and get soft fibrous material from it that can be made into all sorts of things. There are other examples as well! Also, the use of dyed and woven flax fabric textiles likely preceded agriculture by around 20,000 years. I can't seem to link to the Science Mag article about it... Anyway, the use of plant-based woven and dyed fibers are likely within the purview of ancient hunter gatherer cultures!
  13. Handling your wood, Carpentry and logging.

    I like this suggestion, as well. I think that to differentiate between saw and axe, one could make the axe yield less planks than the saw. The logic behind this would be that with the axe (which could serve as an abstraction of using a wedge... though axes can be used to make planks from logs!), the ability to make a good, relatively even plank would be dependent on the presence/absence of knots and irregularities in the log more so than making planks using a saw. Saws can saw through irregularities while axes/wedges/whatever cannot split through irregularities. I hope that makes sense.So, in game terms, perhaps we could have the really really old TFC1 idea of an axe making less planks from a log than a saw. The saw would represent a large leap in efficiency of plank making. IRL it was much more complicated than that... but whatever!ALSO to differentiate the saw from the axe, perhaps the saw should be able to make slabs from stone.Anyway... this is a tricky topic, since in reality there is a lot of redundancy between tools in terms of what they can do. In fact, there is really nothing a saw can do that other tools can't, at least with regards to wood.
  14. [TFC 0.79.27] Technofirma Mod Pack

    http://terrafirmacraft.com/f/topic/8509-gases/ Check this out! Would this be a good fit in your pack?
  15. Sleepy animals

    Adorbs. Also, if animals become more useful at some point for things like hauling and guard duty, i could see this being important for more nuanced gameplay.
  16. [TFC 0.79.27] Technofirma Mod Pack

    Have you ever considered adding Glenn's Gases mod to this pack? ;P It is a rather amazing mod. Unfortunately it does not have a version optimized for TFC.
  17. More Dangerous Minning

    The creator of the awesome Technofirmacraft add-on pack got Enviromine to work with TFC! Though there is more to that Enviromine mod than just the ventilation stuff, though. It also has this campy "sanity" mechanic that I think is dumb... Also, I don't think there is any cross-compatibility with Enviromine and Glenn's Gases.
  18. More Dangerous Minning

    Though obviously it seems like this suggestion will fall upon modders to make a reality... Well, having played with Enviromine, it doesn't make things all that tedious nor does it make things impossible. It isn't like you have to make ventilation shafts every few blocks with that mod. It depends on implementation. AND if somehow realistic ventilation physics were simulated, even extremely simply, then you would only need one ventilation shaft and a layout of the mine that ensures airflow... which isn't the most easy thing in the world... which means some people might find it fun!!! Having actual ventilation physics... now that is probably not at all easy to implement in this game without taxing the CPU to oblivion.Also, assuming some sort of reasonable ventilation physics, ventilation wouldn't be much of an issue if mining in a cave system since caves communicate with the surface quite a bit.And there is a significant part of the community that feels mining is WAY too easy. Use a Davy Safety Lamp! Though it is an invention of the Industrial Revolution, it is not something beyond Medieval technology.Also, canaries wouldn't be necessary. Though this would be difficult to implement in any case, a torch or lamp could be used as it was in real life to test the air flowing from up ahead in a prospective mining area. If it is snuffed out or burns a different color or burns more brightly, then something likely unhealthy is up ahead.
  19. More Dangerous Minning

    Wow. Thanks Kittychanley! That mod really seems to fit the bill and appears to be absolutely brilliant! Doesn't seem to have much in the way of ventilation in terms of oxygen/CO2, though I need to try this mod out for myself. If it doesn't, most of Glenn's Gases' features plus the ventilation aspect of Environmine would almost completely satisfy the OP. Holy crap! <3
  20. More Dangerous Minning

    Historic mines did have ventilation issues which were sometimes cleverly addressed. I for one love this suggestion in principle. There is a mod that attempts to simulate this very simply: Enviromine. It doesnt do too bad a job of indicating air quality and how it changes. However, I have yet to really delve into it... Also, I dont see this suggestion as necessarily making mining obscenely difficult. It just requires some more planning. For example, you could go deeper into a mine and realize that breathing would become more difficult, so you dig further and then dig a ventilation shaft up to the surface or someplace with quality air and you have a solution. And i think it would make things much more interesting. I need to look into this again, but if i remember correctly, what is the solid limiting factor in depth of mining is temperature IRL. And i dont think minecraft even comes close to the kinds of depths where that is an issue. Ventilation is a factor, too, but it isnt a problem that cant be solved with readily available technology. Also, a BIG limitation to RL mining in medieval and earlier periods was water removal, which we really dont have to worry about in this game due to limitations in water physics. If it wasnt for water, mines would have gone a lot deeper a lot earlier in history, certainly to depths achievable in this game (which i think were achieved regardless). I dont see methane and explosive gases being an issue if we go for realism that much. It would happen fairly predictably, no, since it would only occur near certain kinds of mineral deposits like coal and stuff? Also, torches would still be useful in mines. You dont need much oxygen to get useful light. And enviromine does a good job of simulating the effects of having a fire underground or any enclosed spaces on air quality. That said, to make the ventilation stuff more realsitic than enviromine would require some frequent and numerous calculations to determine air quality of a given air block or chunk of blocks to go on that miiiight drain cpu resources considerably. The math isnt what would be necessarily complex i dont think... The issue would be determining when and where to do calculations and the sheer number of them and how often to update them. I just remember the same stuff being talked about in the Dwarf Fortress forums, and it is something determined to be taxing on computer resources at least for that game. I wish i was at my compy... I can describe the issue further. It isnt impossible, though! And i think this is something cubic chunks would greatly facilitate... I will think on it.
  21. Tree mechanics

    Check out the longhouses made by native Americans in the pacific northwest. No saws needed to make smooth finished planks. Saws make it easier, but you can do without. Also, these were made with stone tools. No metal needed. Also, requiring metal ANYTHING for carpentry is hardly realistic nor, in my opinion, believable. What does metal do in a wooden construction that wood conceivably couldnt? There are all-wood barrels, doors, complete buildings, etc..
  22. Tree mechanics

    Chisels can be used to carve a bow. I have seen examples of this. You can even use an axe, as well as a knife or adze (as you mentioned) for the job. I mean, what is an axe or an adze but a chisel on a handle? Really, all you need to make a bow after you get the log split into a stave is a knife.
  23. Tree mechanics

    And maybe... the harder the tree is to harvest as well? For example, ironwoods are extremely rough on tools, but they are wonderfully strong woods. Then again... there already seems to be vehement opposition about different strengths for different woods, and I fail to see any non-contentious application of wood strength as a game mechanic other than perhaps your bow idea.Overall I think if there were different uses for different woods in other aspects of the game (including making bows and perhaps producing other wood-related products that were extremely important to some aspect of gameplay), then maybe wood strength aspect of this suggestion could conceivably find a way in as a potential balancing mechanism. But I am not sure I see this happening, at least not in vanilla TFC.
  24. Ok... so maybe I exaggerated about its fantastic-ness. But I NEVER said it was the most intuitive thing or that it was perfect or that it was even fun. And I want to take back that it is exactly how forging should be represented... BUT! It is a LARGE step in the right direction compared to just having new arbitrary recipes in a crafting grid. What I mean by it being a fantastic example of what I think is good is that all the information you need to do stuff is in there. You can figure out the rules of how the anvil mechanics work without external stuff, at least in theory, by simple observation and giving ideas a try. What to do to improve it or discussing its merits is beyond the scope of this thread. And I understand that crafting is part of the game, that this is a mod, etc. And you give fantastic answers as to why we must keep the crafting grid. Regardless, none of the things that are an issue here likely necessitate a fundamental rewrite of something core to the game to address. But they may require expansions on core mechanics and the mechanics you devs so nicely added.
  25. Knapping, leather, and clay... I actually like the general concept, if not the execution. It is the crafting grid I really have a problem with since often times the recipes are not something intuitive. And the anvil mechanics are a FANTASTIC example of the kind of stuff I am talking about that I think is good. Everything about forging you can figure out without anything external to the game. Some may find aspects of it gimmicky, but if there is going to be a way to represent forging in a videogame, that is exactly the way to do it. Pit Kilns I agree you could discover them on your own... but... argh! I have a suggestion in the works, but more of a suggestion for an add-on or completely separate mod that would tie together ALL heat sources with a universal or near-universal interface so that any kind of smelter, furnace, kiln or fire could be built with the same mechanics but behave differently in an emergent way by virtue of how you put them together in the world. Which opens up a world of possibilities for emergent crafting and stuff and being able to discover on one's own how to master fire in a straight-forward way... much like how one can with forging if they are patient with it... but that is for another topic. Anyway, the pit kiln is something I do like in principle. Fire pits are exactly the opposite. Though even a kindergartener would have in their head that wood or sticks ought to be used to make a fire in the game, there is absolutely nothing intuitive about how you put them together to make a fire. The first instinct of the player is to either try to make something in the crafting grid (which with sticks will likely yield a fire starter... that is an example of a good recipe and independent discovery!) or to try to right-click with sticks on the ground. The second instinct is to shift-right-click. None of these work... but how does one make the leap to use "q" to drop the sticks on the ground when that is normally just used for discarding stuff to pick them up later? And then one needs to figure out to put not 1 or 2 but 3 sticks on the ground while standing just far enough away not to pick them up. Then you might figure out that you need to use a fire starter at that point. At least it took me looking things up in the wiki to figure that out and I am a veteran Minecraft player. As for barrels... those have a darned good crafting recipe that you don't really even need to look up. Putting lumber in a U shape in the grid makes sense and would conceivably be one of the first recipes a person would try to make a container of some sort. I agree they have done well to have sensible patterns, or at least patterns that are as sensible as possible. And some of the recipes are absolutely fine! I just question whether or not the crafting grid should even be kept as a game mechanic if so many of the recipes need to be looked up and are not intuitive. Why not just have it like Terraria at that point where once you have the stuff needed to make something, the option to make it appears? In any case, I much prefer things like how we have knapping and clay and leather and stuff! To me, that is what the crafting grid should have been! You are completely right. And I should have acknowledged that in my previous post! Sorry... Well... the order is not necessarily historically accurate. I mean, it is in general. But development of iron working did NOT necessarily depend on bronze or copper working, period. There are people who developed iron smelting technology without ever having been exposed to copper smelting. But that isn't important... What is definitely not accurate or realistic are the reasons for this order. And I would be fine with this if the reasons were at least believable and not arbitrary. With the information the game (not some 3rd party mod or wiki) conveys to you about bronze, there is nothing that suggests that bronze is required for making a bloomery. And there is nothing in the game (again, not some 3rd party mod or wiki) that suggests that a bloomery is required for making iron. And there is nothing in the game that suggests iron is necessary for making a blast furnace or that a blast furnace is necessary for making steel. The only reasons we seem to have copper and bronze here is for flavor and some sense of "realism". But I think that if having things in for these reasons requires misinformation... might as well just make something up instead. I suggest having iron as the tier 1 metal, since one could just jump into smelting iron IRL anyway and in this way, we maintain some semblance of realism, believability, AND keep the desired tier-based progression (which I still think is sort of lame since it is arbitrary as it is now for reasons I indicated in the previous paragraph). Ultimately, though, the reason I think this is better is a matter of taste... And at this point I think I am just whining anymore. And I will re-iterate, I love this game and all that the devs are doing!