Darmo

I guess as long as we're clear it's kind of a prestige structure, sure, sounds fun. I'm still not entirely clear on how the player accesses them after firing. A door in one of the side-walls? Probably wouldn't be able to see every part. Would have to try to make them 'pop' toward the door, like blooms do maybe? What if instead of making a little hatch, the player makes a walk door? Then they can make a room up to 3x3 in size for firing, and they can just walk in afterward? You could still have the coal chimney thing. Just have it go into a 2 high room the player can get into. Actually I guess it could be set up just like you show it, since the firing chamber is 2 high. But maybe let them expand it to the sides if they have the bricks for it. Cooking them faster would indeed be a good benefit. If you're trying to keep it GUI-less, as long as the player could just toss them in the mouth, and they'd automatically be placed, that would negate the tedium of placing. I really wish the game had more clay architectural products, like ceramic roof and floor tiles. That could really ramp up the demand for clay, and hence a large and efficient kiln. As far as graphite, I hear ya. For those that have played the game a lot, it's not that huge a hurdle. But for newbs it can be a pretty big one. Not everyone is super-proficient at propicking and mining. I'm hoping TFC2 will have mechanics that continually use up graphite, so it doesn't become worthless.

That would be pretty awesome. And have a structure in the aquaduct/river below to automatically collect them. People love that kind of thing.

Thanks for the input. Sometime when you're close to a project it's hard to be objective. Ya, the decimal boxes thing is definitely going to come in handy. I kind of wish that had been a thing on earlier models. The big cats especially could have benefited from some fine fangs.

Here is a walrus model, and very basic texture. It's a bit oversize, but not too much I think, and I thought this scale made the tusks seem correct in proportion. I did this before the advent of the newest version of MCMC with decimal capability. Idea is for the front flippers to move in a leg fashion, while the back flippers move in the same way, but horizontally rather than vertically. Texture needs a lot of work, I'm mainly looking for comments on structure. I tried to use a minimal number of boxes for the body to taper down to the tail. WalrusV2.MCModel

This topic interests me a lot. Food is kind of the foundation of survival, so it's one of the first things the player will need. In the server forum, on threads where a person must post what they are good at / what they can contribute to the server, I think that farmer is one of if not the most mentioned occupation. I *know* there's people that want to do this as their main vocation. So I'm really hoping it actually has scope to BE a vocation in TFC2. I think it's worth saying, for anyone who may not have seen it, Bioxx said here that he is leaning toward dropping the TFC1 food decay system for an Ark-like system where the food stacks in pieces, and the top piece is always decaying. So it's worth remembering that plants won't drop oz of food any more, but pieces, more like vanilla MC. So no more having to combine/split/trim food is how it's looking. So Stroam has made a very broad list of agricultural factors above. Working off the assumption that we want agriculture to be a viable and complex trade, I think it's worth focusing down on things that might be affected by skill and/or tool tier. Because I think that an important part of a true trade is having tiered advancement, and good skill bonuses. Such things might be: So kind of a summary: I think direct yield at harvest should depend on factors other than skill or tools. Skill will indirectly affect it through the player's ability to treat ailments, which will reduce yield if not kept in check. Tools might affect: harvest speed, success chance of grafting Skill might affect: chance to get seed, chance to plant normal seed, chance to identify ailments, and chance for each treatment to be successful. I feel like tools are a bit weak in uses, but if harvesting speeds dramatically improve, that and durability might make higher tier tools more attractive. As an aside, I wanted to drop this link to a suggestion I made for burlap bags to make fruit farms harder to set up. Another suggestion: using straw as mulch. A good use for all that extra straw that builds up. Helps increase health of plant, and disappears when plant is harvested, ensuring a continual use for straw. I'll also add here a couple suggestions I made in Peffern's Terrafirmapumpkins thread, don't know how many people read those mod threads: TRELLISES SPRAWLING GOURDS

Your proposed crafting system could work certainly. Were you thinking of trying to hook in an actual skill for pottery? Your pottery kiln as pictured (chiseled chert for sides) requires 23 fire brick blocks. That's more than a TFC1 blast furnace. So this would be high tier tech then? Pit kilns would still be the early game go-to? Because I'm having a hard time imagining people spending graphite on this before they have a blast furnace. If the side walls are intended to be fire brick as well, that could double the number. I'm also not clear how it's better, aside from being fueled by coal. It appears you still have to tediously place each pot on a block, for a max of 12 at one time for this example? Or if you toss a stack in will it auto-place them? I'm just not seeing the worth for so much graphite. Not that graphite has any other use (currently) after you've got a blast furnace and a few crucibles. To me it'd be more worthwhile if it was an actual GUI, so I could swiftly place in many spots, direct from my inventory, rather than placing them from my hotbar. Of course, if wood is harder to obtain, per the lumber discussion thread, that may change the calculus I guess. I think the choice of clay mold may derive in part from this video where they cast a bronze sword in a clay mold. It's a legit method, though sand would probably be easier irl. But the clay molds fit into a tech tree well. Clay is low tech. Personally I'd suggest that sand casting be a high tier process, for casting machinery parts, like gears and so forth.

That's a very extreme system for sure. 1 log carried at a time. I'd be up for it, but I'd worry that making building that hard would turn people off. idk. People would basically be limited to log cabins or something like that for quite awhile. It'd be good if adobe, sod, or hide or some other stuff could also serve for early shelter, because this system sounds like it'd take quite awhile to make a house with lumber. Even a simple log cabin would be no simple matter. It would probably incentivize towning quite a bit. If one doesn't want to grind their way up through the tiers, join a town with an established sawmill. It would definitely make tree farming more beneficial, and probably incentivize railroads branching out around towns, because wood is often needed in huge quantities for really good builds. And it might create an actual market for different types of wood, even on teleport servers, assuming the player can't carry much wood on their person.

Last we'd heard the region for each island is planned to be 4096 square. I don't recall ever hearing it would be customizeable, though that'd be nice obviously. Also some regions might not have an island at all. Wish I could find it, but there's a thread that shows a few example generations. If you check out Bioxx's twitter, back in April 15 of 2015 you'll find one example. It's worth noting that tf2 chunks are hexes, not squares. As you can see there (at least at that stage) some islands appear to be fairly close to the region border in places. If that still holds true, it may happen that sometimes islands have portions that are within 100 blocks of each other, I'm guessing. We haven't really seen any examples, but I wonder if there might at times be regions that are more of an archipelago than a continent. We also have pretty good info that the islands will all exist within the same plane of existence (rather than each island being on a separate nether-like plane), so I don't see any reason you could not pre-gen worlds in a pretty normal way (but, I'm no coder).

The thing I love most about Emoniphs mods is the amazing animations he uses. Animated armor?! I didn't know that was possible! The arranging of 4 items to match a random order isn't particularly compelling, but his overall creativity of effects and animation is amazing. His processes are very original, unencumbered by preconceived notions from D&D or other systems, near as I can tell.

I thought they looked better at 2x2. More svelte, but still not overly thin.

Did some slight alterations to the model, have been mostly messing with the texture. Struggling trying to find the balance between wrinkles and smooth bloated hide. Have a V3 texture with more wrinkles, V4 texture with fewer. I'm not really sure they're much better than the old version with no wrinkles. Walruses do seem to often just have taught hide with no big wrinkles. Thoughts? WalrusV3.MCModel

Looks pretty good, I like the face pattern a lot. Did you try thinner legs, maybe 2x2? They're the same as lynx legs right now, and look rather puffy for a desert/jungle animal, imo.

That's cool, not trying to move the entire discussion. Just thought if we wanted to get deep into agriculture, I'd hate for it to be lost under a thread that doesn't even have a related title. Not saying you have to post under any of those threads either, but it does help when thoughts are collected. Very easy to lose track of threads in 8 pages of discussion. There was definitely a hand-wave on alchemy, because the system I was going for was rather complex and I was kind of hoping for dev feedback regarding whether it was even feasible/desirable for them, before I spent a ton of time trying to flesh out details. Glass blowing is an approximation, just like clay knapping or smithing in TFC1. Neither of these are really close simulations of the rl actions they represent. The more actual moves the player must do, the more skill it takes to complete. It's less moves if things are mirrored. 'here' link is fixed.

So I'll try and compile a list of some threads about trades here. This will only included stuff from since I joined the forums, so there may well be more in the distant past. There's also going to be stuff I forgot about. I think that a suggestion thread for farming would probably be more appropriate for detailed discussion of that skill. Here is The Trades thread, which sort of covered some broad-brush topics (this is a thread I was looking for earlier in our discussions about trades). Major classes/professions: Main Magic Thread, Alchemy thread, Martial Skills thread. Here I'm defining "profession" as something that incorporates combat elements to allow it to progress and conquer islands Trades: Butchering, Gem Cutting (lapidary), Glass Blowing, Animal Breeding, pottery, beekeeping, and wood cutting. Cooking has threads here (Bioxx started) and here. I'm defining "trade" as a skill that does not involve being aggressive in order to advance up the island tiers, but has enough complexity to possibly have it's own skill. Smithing has a variety of threads. Metal Tiers is a major one started by Bioxx. Smithing Depth and Smithing Bonus Based on Player Skill , case hardening, pattern welding, and metal casting, are a few others. There's been tons really. I don't think there's been a dedicated agriculture thread since I showed up, but I touch on the subject here, In this post I sort of derail from the taste thread a bit, to touch on ways to make agriculture harder. Also here is a post by Bioxx about Believable, which I actually had not seen till now. Somewhat old, but maybe still a good window into his thinking. If anyone know of other good threads on trades, or even good derailings about them, let me know and I'll add them to the compendium. This is what I could find quickly, and/or remember personally.

With regards to that, I believe the devs have said before that the intended target for the game is small groups. Like several friends on a server. I'd consider small group play to be similar to towns on large servers though. So somewhat related in terms of balancing, perhaps. I would assume the devs will make the mod innately possible for single player play - no mod reliance. But, I don't know. Regarding the teleport thing, I wouldn't say it 'killed' the server. But it had far fewer players than the one that had teleports. I think the teleports mostly helped in terms of gathering the specific materials they wanted for their building, without a lot of travel (they had a dynmap). I know it helped me in that regard. Also a lot easier to find the metals you want if you can read stone types on a dynmap. It just makes gameplay faster, so you can spend more time doing active things, as opposed to traveling. It's basically more newb friendly. And newbs do need a place to play too. In the end, for me it was nice to not travel as much, as it allowed me to focus more on building. And as a builder, frankly, I want people to see the things I build (and hopefully enjoy them). The teleport server quite simply had a larger audience, and they were much more likely to actually make it to my town. On the other hand, teleports help to destroy economy because anyone can just pop to whatever area they want to get materials. That's a server issue though, that TFC can't really help. What they could help is centering the economy more on players and the things they can do, and how they fit into a group dynamic. Ways to make niches for people in a group might be through enforced divisions (classes, limited point skill webs), or perhaps via pure overwhelming amount of work - make so many tasks that take so much time, that it's difficult for one person to perform them all (though those people will always exist). Or a mixture (decaying skills). I don't know that I'd necessarily try to make building more difficult. I do agree that minecraft is fundamentally a building game, and don't think it enhances it to make basic building difficult. It's already difficult enough if you try to do something big. I wouldn't mind certain features being difficult though. Lanterns, mechanisms for drawbridges, that sort of thing. And if mobs gain the ability to attack structures, there will need to be countermeasures that could have degrees of difficulty. But just building a house in town should not be limited to anyone, or difficult, imo.

Ya, Bioxx quite often made it clear that some of the ideas are still malleable. Things could always change. But we haven't heard anything to that effect really, as far as I know. If you want to discuss the nature of the game objective, you may want to post in one of those other threads - we've kind of started to derail from the magic thread here.

here's a post I made in April, which is a sort of compendium of links to even older posts where Bioxx has touched on some of the broad-brush plans. I haven't gone and re-read every one of those links, but I think they'll cover most of the stuff that gave me the impression of TFC2 being very combat-oriented.

Lookin good!

I have limited experience in the SMP area - only TFC, and only 2 servers. Ghost towns happen, and that's probably mostly a result of player's lives or choice of games changing. Some degree of that is unavoidable. My impression is that two things hinder towning in current TFC: - Lack of a trade economy due to food and most materials be almost never needed and not particularly hard to get. - Lack of identity in a town. In terms of economy, what I most often see being used as currency is charcoal, iron, sequoia saplings, and occasionally wood types that aren't easy to find purely due to where town spawns are. Most stuff is barely needed, so it's not necessary to find much. The result of the lack of economy is the second problem, lack of identity for town members. Usually you have one person who is the master smith and is responsible for all the smithing due to the bonuses they impart. Sometimes there's a miner, sometimes a farmer. Miners are hit or miss because they don't *really* like it so it's too grindy for them and they quit, or on the other hand they're very competitive and love stacking up ingots in the town vault for bragging rights vs other town - this type will hang around as long as other town members are active. Farmers generally don't stay too long. Usually gone after they have 50+ barrels of pickled stuff that just rots because food is not hard to get, or after they've exhausted the alcohol lols. The mayor of the town is of course the most motivated usually, and is usually the head builder. So basically you have two major roles in a town: mayor, and smith. Everyone else is effectively second-class. The problem I see is that because smithing is the only truly skilled trade, smiths feel a strong sense of community identity, because everyone depends on them for good gear. Nobody else is really needed that badly. It's nice to have someone making sandwiches, but not hard to do that one's self. There's basically no need for leather or wool, so a dedicated animal person also isn't needed. Jute is precious early game, useless once you have animals. So I think people drift off because they don't have a clear role in the town. I think the number one thing TFC2 could do to foster towning is to arrange the game in such a way that distinct roles are either enforced, or highly desirable because of the time required. Difficulty of survival might help, but this is kind of a double edge sword. I've played on a 'hardcore' server that differed only from the regular in that there was no teleporting, and your town was not protected from mob spawns. That server was basically a ghost server. I suspect travel had the most to do with it. I enjoyed the increased difficulty, but at the same time I play SMP to actually see people. And I think most people don't like grindy travel. There would be a risk, I think, that if survival were too hard, it might decrease the player base a lot as they migrate to easier servers. Granted, people who like easy are usually more casual and don't stay long anyway. But again, SMP is to see people, not sit and mutter to the tumbleweeds about how hardcore I am. In any case, I think it'd be fairly easy to scale some aspects of survivability: Increase mob hps or speed, food rots faster, crops die, ores have less per nugget, etc. That stuff I think is fairly easy to tweak for server admins. The issues of fostering an economy and distinct game roles in a town context, those would need to be more 'baked in' I think.

I've actually made that argument myself in other places, but the totality of the info that we have up to this points indicates that TFC2 is going to be heavily combat oriented. So I've been trying to suggest within that context, rather than roll the boulder uphill. Which isn't to say there's no room for non-combat stuff, there definitely is. But it seems that combat is going to be inescapable in single player, unless the player wants to spend the game in the stone age. SMP could have people specializing in non-combat roles, avoiding combat entirley, as long as they have combat oriented allies to advance up the tech tree with. At least that how it seems to me so far.

True, that'd be a more logical hook (and one we're more likely to have). Though if you're also going to have sweating lower body temperature, you'd have to make sure you don't get in a feedback loop where the player gets warm enough to sweat, then sweating cools them below the sweating temp, but then they get warm enough to sweat, etc. Which is why in my page 2 detailed example I was basing sweating off the ambient temperature, rather than body temperature. I'm sure it could be dealt with another way though.

I don't recall Bioxx expressing a desire one way or another on the African lynx. I believe I'd suggested a separate model would be good due to their appearing to have longer (less fluffy) bodies and legs (it could also work for an ocelot). But if you just wanted to do a skin for this model it'd probably suffice. Changes look good to me.

That was my concern as well. How do you balance a non-magic path against anything outside combat magic? It does have potential to get extremely complex if true balance is desired. Personally I'd rather see magic encompass all manner of spells and enchantments, and not be limited to just combat stuff. I feel like the role of magic would be diminished if it's basically just an equivalent to a mundane path. I guess I prefer the classic D&D paradigm of the warrior being the tank, while the mage is the glass cannon. In video games, I'm used to your warrior type being the easiest to play - most reliable with fewest details to manage - while magic users are more complex and fragile, but ultimately more interesting. I don't think it's a bad thing. And in SMP, I think it'd be good for them to each have weaknesses that the other can reinforce, to encourage cooperation. Perhaps have ultimate crafting recipes that can only be completed with the help of each other.

There is a large difference between metal touching (much less piercing) the skin, and metal outside a layer of padding. Here's a discussion by actual modern-day wearers of armor. And another from the same forum, though seems to have more historical opinion, less first-hand experience than the previous. They make good points about plate armor cutting the wind as opposed to mail which lets the wind right through. Also the matter of sweat soaking the underlayers during exertion, and then being a liability when not active in the cold. I rather doubt the devs intend to simulate sweating during exertion (though if fatigue came into the game, it'd be an easy hook for sweating). Also importance of wearing a cloak or other layers outside the armor. I'd imagine that historically you put on your armor the day of combat, maybe right before, did the heavy exertion of combat, and then if you were the winner you immediately dressed down and got by a fire to dry out. As opposed to video games where players don't really want to have to deal with such fine points in most cases, I'd guess. A single post elsewhere also pointed out that for the most part campaigns and combat in the field during winter were avoided for logistical reasons in the days of armor (though they were sometimes caught out). Sieges would have gone through winters, but involved shelter for both sides. So historically war during really freezing conditions was avoided. In the end it's a fine point. I do think that fur armor/clothing should provide more warmth than metal armor. And so in extreme conditions the player will indeed be better off in fur. I simply think it's a matter of the plate adding less warmth than the fur. Not amplifying the cold. But the sweating point does provide an argument for it. I'll have to take your word on the code stuff. I still think it'd be better to have clothes separate, so they can be an item that wears out and needs replacing, in order to give the player incentive to farm leather, wool, and other materials involved. The current version of TFC has a very unbalanced internal economy, in which leather and wool play almost no part. I think it would benefit the game greatly for the player to have actual ongoing need of these materials, and clothes that wear out is a way to do it. I don't think that four or five extra wearable slots is going to overly tax players. I don't really see why it would be taxing from a code perspective either - I'm not qualified to judge that, but Bioxx already added a back slot. How much harder could four other slots be? Tons of mods do it. You probably wouldn't actually need head slot for clothing, unless people were going to craft and wear hoods. The head armor slot could suffice for anything worn on the head.

I think most all the major stuff is covered really. But a few other typical Euro-American candidates: peas, spinach, broccoli, eggplant, zucchini, radishes, beets, okra, cucumbers, asparagus, artichoke, brussel sprouts. Prickly pear cactus and pineapple for the more exotic side. I don't know if it's within the scope of your mod, but I always thought it odd that wild tomatoes and beans grow with a stake in the ground by them! I think it'd be interesting if there were both wild and staked versions of some crops. The wild ones would just be on the ground, but the player could make trellises of sticks for vines like tomatoes, peas, beans and cucumbers. This would increase the yield. Something like a 3x3 grid of sticks makes a trellis (something to do with all those sticks!) Player places trellis in a garden spot, then plants seed on the same spot. It would be neat if the wild recumbant versions would generate an additional 'child' block adjacent to the original 'parent' block. This would also make trellises more space efficient. I don't know how feasible that is. Another related thought is for gourds and melons to have a central parent plant, and surround themselves with vines. IRL these plants take up huge amounts of garden real estate. Basically the idea might be to plant the plant, and at it matures, it checks for clear spaces around itself, and if it finds one, produces vines on that spot. It could be a defined pattern (eventually fills a 5x5 grid centered on the 'parent' plant) or could be somewhat random (produces up to 25 vine blocks as far as 3 blocks from the parent plant, Each time searching for an existing vine or parent plant adjacent, before placing the new one). Then at the appropriate stage, a random number of the vine blocks flowers and fruits. Not all do. Might be pretty darn complicated. But would be more representative of how plants like watermelon and pumpkin actually grow, and the fact that they take up TONS of garden space. Just some thoughts! I've not the time right now, but down the road I could probably help with graphics if that would be helpful.