Darmo

I think this is a good idea. But 0-1 is trivial, since a block of clay mostly yields 1-2 pieces and you need 5 to make anything. I think maybe if clay nodes spawned as normal in dry areas, but only actually placed a clay block if adjacent to a water block, that would provide a bare amount of clay, yet still keep the environs unattractive for permanent settlement. Of course, that's TFC1 thinking, and I sort of doubt even a seemingly minor thing like this will make it into TFC1 anymore. TFC2, may have an entirely different generation method. But in general I think it's a good idea to provide some minimal clay in dry areas.

To be clear then, I meant special in the effects, not the animation. I think the OP was using "martial" in the true definition - pertaining to war and military things in general. Not the pop culture sense of karate and the like. I guess to me it would be entirely relevant and appropriate for TFC2, given that it will have a focus on progression through combat pacification of islands. Why not make things a bit more interesting than hack-n-shoot?

How would this be beyond the scope of TFC2? Slowing movement based on encumbrance has already been proposed by Bioxx. Neither the OP or I were suggesting changing animations.

Ya, I think this is a good idea. It might be nice if more than just a damage bonus were at stake for weapons. Special moves of some kind perhaps. Stunning. Disarming. Extra damage. Armor skill could affect speed and swimming, and also add bonus encumbrance perhaps, to offset the armor weight (though if weight is linked to speed, it might be that only the weight bonus would be necessary). Anything to differentiate players is probably good, so that you don't just end up with everyone being master smiths.

I could see fletching affecting accuracy. I think it would be beneficial to keep the bow from being so OP early on. I think shaft weight is maybe a bit much, unless it were wood vs metal - metal being some sort of high level arrow for an super-bow for uber-monsters. But I'd say range would be better dealt with by the weapon itself (bow, longbow, composite, crossbow, etc) I'd bet money the devs will have no interest in making a different arrow item for every type of wood (in combo with every type of metal head, not to mention fletching), so sticks will probably remain the shaft of choice, I'd guess, though a straightening mini-game could be interesting. I'm not any kind of archer, but I do know leaves, and I'd think most would make pretty poor fletching, as they're mostly very fragile. Also there's no assets for leaves currently that I'm aware of. In the scope of items with current assets, I could see leather being a passable alternate. Maybe paper as well, but a paper fletched arrow is always destroyed when it hits, leaving just the metal head behind. For that matter, I think it'd be good if stone headed arrows are destroyed entirely if they hit any stone blocks, with metal ones having a decreasing chance of being destroyed as you go up in tiers. Arrows hitting higher tier armor should have a chance of being destroyed, increasing with tier disparity.

As far as furniture just for looks, I agree it'd be great, sure. Historically, based on responses to past threads, there has been a reluctance on the part of the devs to add things that are just 'for looks'. In part to keep the number of block ids down I think. I don't know if that will change with TFC2 or not, given that the nature of 1.8 seems like it's going to explode the number of ids regardless. But if the items are just for looks, I'm not sure why there'd need to be a smith-level minigame, as opposed to just a variety of crafting recipes that use normal lumber. At some point if there were enough options it might require it's own gui, due to the limits of the 3x3 grid (if we even have a 3x3 grid in TFC2). PS - I don't think you have to worry about chiseling, last we heard, it was perhaps a possbility, but very low on the priority list.

The issue is kind of what are the actual game benefits to carpentry? The amount of effort a player puts into the smithing system is clearly justified via increased durability and damage (through both tier and player skill) and some items requiring higher tier metals to make at all (mine carts, mine tracks, hoppers). You could make a system where the player can make furniture, and have it be higher quality, but what purpose will that serve? If there are merchants the player could sell them for more money. Carpentry for magic staves or wands wouldn't really be my first choice for obtaining those things, personally, but it's an option. A bed could perhaps affect hp gain on sleeping or something. Or the chance of actually sleeping the night away. Higher quality chests could have bonus slots perhaps. Or weight capacity, if they will have one. Better barrels = more capacity, or lower weight? Better support beams support farther? Most of these kind of strain the logic, but if you're going to try to make carpentry into a smith-like trade, it's going to need to have defined, very desirable benefits I think. Not just the pride of a chair having "excellent" tagged onto the front of it.

I'm not sure that fletching needs to be particularly complicated, but we should definitely have metal arrow heads. I would say they should not do (much) more damage though as you go up in tiers. It should be an arrowhead vs armor thing, where the tier of the arrowhead must be at least 1 greater than the armor, in order to do full damage. Otherwise it is reduced an additional amount - or stopped entirely. So for example copper arrow vs leather armor = full damage, copper vs copper 1/2 damage (in addition to general armor damage reduction), and copper vs bronze armor = 0 damage. Then, you could allow the player to make Bodkin tips which would increase the effectiveness of the arrow by 1 tier for piercing purposes, but have a base damage 50% of a broadhead. This would basically make them only useful for attacking a target with higher armor tier than you have arrowheads, since you otherwise could not harm such a target at all. Presumably there might also be magic to enchant armors, perhaps alternate armor materials, that might need to be kept related for purposes of arrow piercing. Not to mention monsters and such that probably won't wear armor, but will need to have a natural armor that simulates a certain tier.

Yep, I picked that up, and you're right that method has advantages, including possibly being easier to code I'd guess. TFC doesn't have "biomes" in the way MC does though, terms of it dictating vegetation - it basically just dictates the topography from what I understand. So a "plains" biome can have a dense forest, or no trees at all. Treeless mountains, or heavily forested ones. So to be somewhat realistic there'd need to be a check for trees nearby, if not a specific kind of tree, and/or rainfall. I thought actual blocks that spread would allow the player to sort of farm truffles - more a matter of discovering them, not taking them all, and waiting for them to multiply - as opposed to just randomly happening upon them. But the notion of having a truffle pig to help improve the chance would be a good way to allow the player to influence the chance to get them too.

Ya, this definitely would have been better in the TFC2 suggestion forum - maybe Kitty can move it there? From what we've been told of TFC2 so far, it will be much more combat focused, with progressively harder enemies. So in that context it may be a bit easier to fit in yet another ranged weapon, in a way that makes sense. The current game really has no need, as the bow is already relatively simple to make and can 1-shot zombies. The recipe would definitely need to be more than sticks. Otherwise why would anyone ever use a normal javelin? Adding leather is a step in the right direction. I'm not super-familiar with them, but aren't atlatl javelins rather smaller than a normal one? More like a large arrow? So maybe you trade better range for reduced damage? I definitely agree with Tony it would be good to make wild mobs keep a good distance away from the player - the ones that can't fight back that is >:-D But even if these things were true, the bow recipe might need to be re-thought, as it's not terribly hard to obtain currently. I did find this and this to be interesting discussions though, of relative benefits of javelin vs atlatl (vs amentum)

Definitely like the idea of more mushrooms in the game. I'd thought some about truffles too - I was thinking they could spawn as actual blocks, like ore blocks, but only under one specific tree species, determined randomly by world seed, also possibly only in combination with a certain rainfall. They would not generate in soil blocks with air above, to prevent the player from finding them easily with Waila - this would also prevent them spawning in areas with only 1 layer of dirt. They would also only spawn (after initial world gen) if there is another truffle block within a certain radius. So it would be possible for the player to dig them all up, and have no more. I didn't have any benefits though, aside from being a food (or spice if those were ever a thing). Or a magical/alchemical component. There could even be a magical variety of truffle. But in general, I think more mushrooms (real and fantastic) and uses for them would be awesome, especially if there were cave varieties as well, to bring some more variety to caves.

I've been trying to help out with new animal models and textures. I'm sort of meandering through the natural world creating whatever animals catch my imagination, which of course leans toward large animals right now. Irl, the tropics have the largest and most interesting animals, so a lot of them have been from there. I think it'd be great if TFC2 natively had as many animals as any mod out there! I build the model and make a texture - I'm no coder though, so Bioxx has to do the coding, but it doesn't take too much time, from what I'm told, so no worries about dev time being used up on 'scenery'. I guess I'm a passable texture maker, but I'm sure there's better folks out there, and I wouldn't mind collaborating with someone, if they wanted to do some textures for models, and help make TFC2 that much richer, that much faster. If someone were interested in that, they could PM me to discuss.

As for the lapis, did you actually see it, or just get a propick reading? If propick reading, were you near mountains? In mountains, the mid layer is uplifted to be very close to the surface, and often it is exposed to where you can see it. Marble can be a mid-layer rock, so you may simply be near an uplift of marble. As for silver, rng unfortunately. I've had really good luck with surface gneiss before - lots of silver nuggets, seemed more common than cassiterite nuggets in it's native stones to me. I don't know if granite and gneiss have different chances to generate silver nodes. If you found a surface area of granite that's 1k square or more, I find it hard to believe you've not seen any silver nuggets at all though, if you've searched systematically and it's not covered in dense forest.

I do think it would be good to find a way for Borax to be more desirable than it is right now. I'm not sure anyone cares about it. It's only found in rock salt, and only yields 3x flux of regular flux rocks. You'll probably use less durability on your pick, and have an easier time, just mining flux rocks, rather than searching out a borax vein and using up a bunch of pick durability breaking the rock salt to get to the flux. I think that borax is a mineral that is 'technically' useful, but really isn't because there's easier options. It's basically just a lifeline if you have no other flux stone around, but happen to have rock salt. I think it'd help if it provided some kind of bonus to items welded with it, though most tools only use 1 ingot so it wouldn't help them. If any special smithing stuff came into the game (like pattern welding) it could be the only flux suitable for that. It could also be the only acceptable flux for the procedural metals. Those are late enough game it shouldn't be such a problem for newbs right?

I don't know if money would even help, or be legal in this situation, but I think that if there were going to be kickstartering, the better way would be for features. Like Kickstarter here for TFC2 magic system, and if X amounts are donated then certain features are added. The idea being the money allows the devs to devote more time. But that assumes they have any more free time than they already use - obviously there'd have to be a basically functional world first, on par with TFC1. But it wouldn't surprise me if they'd get a lot more donations for specific features, vs just the generic donation buttons at the top of the forum. It would create a certain amount of pressure though, and it wouldn't surprise me if they want to avoid that. It could also be much simpler goals - kickstarter here for more clay building material X amount for mud bricks, X+Y for red clay bricks, X+Y+Z for clay roof tile, etc. There's thousands of game-worthy ideas. But which ones do people REALLY want? The community could effectively vote with their pocket books as to the kinds of additions they want for the game.

In before Kitty merges this with my previous butchering suggestion. You should really search the forums for duplicative suggestions. That said, you touched on animal familiarity via food. How will the player feed the animal if it runs away? Perhaps the player has to toss 5 ounces on the ground, back off, and then the animal comes and eats this, and if the player does this 5 times (separately, not one big lump of food) then the animal will let them approach? It could be huge grain sink. A bit off-topic though, in the scope of butchery. Also heads on the wall would be cool. But probably low priority.

Also Uncle Gus, and Bioxx correct me if I'm wrong, but I'm pretty sure that just because there's already a model of any given tree at any given size, doesn't mean there can't be more variations for that type-size. Variety is the spice of life, as they say!

Moreover, your suggestion has already been suggested in the more appropriate TFC2 suggestion forum. TFC1 is no longer going to get major additions like this.

Seeing talk of gems with relation to magic in another thread, I thought I might make this suggestion, which has actually been on my mind since I started playing, but was a suggestion without a purpose. In making this suggestion, the dev effort only really makes sense if gems have a use of some kind - possibly in a magic system. If there's no use for gems, it's not worthwhile. That said: Players should not find gems the way they are now - faceted and beautiful. They should be 'in the rough'. It should be up to the player to make make them flawed, normal, flawless, or exquisite. I think gems of a given type - ruby, amethyst, whatever - found in mining should all have the same graphic, and rather than a descriptor or quality, they get a carat weight, similar to how food has a weight. They could also have perhaps subtle hidden flaws, which, if gemology makes it into the game, could only be detected by a skilled gemologist, similar to how the as you get better at cooking you can better tell how good your sandwich is. There could also be within each gem type different colors - also known only to a trained gemologist (albeit at lower levels than flaw detection). irl, certain colors of a given type of gem are more valuable than others. I think that gem value irl mostly depends on weight, flaws, color, and quality of faceting. This would of course require some new tools, mainly a "flat lap" - the tool used to facet gems. This could be as simple as coating a quorn wheel with diamonds (use for kimberlite!) putting it in the quorn with the gem, hitting the wheel, and hoping something good comes out. It would of course be awesome if it had it's own "professional" gui like metal smithing does. In any case, the finished gem will have a new lower carat weight (the better the gemologist, the less weight is lost), varying quality of cut, and if the gemologist has a high enough skill, maybe some of the original flaws are removed. Now given that we don't even know what shape magic might take in TFC2, and I can't think of any other use for gems, I may be premature with this suggestion. But I wanted to put it out there. Nice finished gems *could* be made harder to get, if that served the purpose of game progression and/or multiplayer.

If I might use an analogy, the 'old' pre-1.8 system was smart - like legos. You could use your 512 lego blocks to build any type of 8x8x8 block you wanted, and place it. The new system is 'dumb'. Each 8x8x8 block is carved from wood, like a child's alphabet block. The dumb game just quickly grabs one and plops it down. No assembly required. Faster loading, but requires a lot of storage. The number of variations is incredible. According to a quick google, the volume of our sun is 1.4x1027 cubic meters. I believe Kitty's number is 1.3x10154? (Full disclosure, I'm bad at maths) So...if each variation were a RL cubic meter, you'd have to have a number of blocks ready to go, roughly 6x the volume of our sun. If I'm doing this right...

Ah, so in your gridded example, maybe you can only remove any individual box if it has at least two sides 'exposed'. That would mean you'd have to start from the corners, and would prevent people from starting on edges, or in the middle. That's cool, and I like how it would sort of trend towards an octagon or diamond shape if there were flaws in all corners. As for the pointers, I see your point. I was trying to make it into something that required some real skill, like blacksmithing does. Blacksmithing requires an irl ability to multitask and balance a lot of 'coals in the fire', as it were, and also a lot of logic. I was going for something that required good hand-eye coordination and logic and timing. But there's definitely nothing wrong with the single matches at a time. It could still respond well to skill, equipment, and the other stuff. One of the interesting notions to me, is the idea of there actually being people with different professions on multiplayer servers. Right now there's only one real profession. Nothing else is remotely so time consuming or skill demanding as smithing (well, . In my mind I was ultimately seeing a player economy line with smiths/miners' prospecting skill affecting the number of flaws in the raw gem ore, which they trade to a gemologist, who refines it and sells it to a magician. The idea being that the smith, gemologist, and magician don't really have the time to master all these skills individually. Unlikely, I know, but it's fun to think about. As for uses, any magic implications are definitely up in the air. I wasn't thinking so much of them being an individual spell component, but that you might for instance use them to make a wand. And the carat weight of the gem might dictate how many charges, while the quality of the gem could influence the power of the spell, with a minimum quality to use the gem at all in magic. Maybe Excellent or above in the examples I gave. So one gem would provide multiple spells, rather than requiring a gem for each spell. Gems also might be used in alchemy possibly, in a crushed form. Assuming alchemy is ever a thing of course. Beyond those, if there's traders and/or boats that charge for passage in the game, then the player would theoretically just be selling/trading the gems in order to buy goods or passage to other islands. There's not really any game mechanic that would force the player the hoard them. It would actually be interesting if boat captains only accepted gems as payment. Then the player would either make their own, or buy gems from a gem merchant. If a player wants to hoard gems they can, but I think systems could be designed such that it's not required.

So like, if they remove any given box with a flaw, they have to remove all the other boxes either in that row or that column, and they have to start at the outsides? That's probably a lot easier to code that what I'd been thinking, but still maintains the idea of letting player's code-skill help them out. I like it. Ah, see I'd been thinking stop the various sliders all at once, trying to get them all aligned as closely as possible with one button click. Which could be very difficult, and why lots of slurry would be need for more than a few pointers. Stopping them one at a time would be easier, but I guess if there's multiple sliders it would still increase the time it takes, and you could add more pointers overall without making it insane difficult. I do think it'd be better if there were two moving points to match at any given time, as opposed to just one moving point and a stationary target. Maybe save the more difficult all-moving matchup for magic crafting or something... I guess I don't see it as a big problem. That kind of already happens with smithing tool heads. You go from being able to cast 8 bronze pickaxe heads and carry them in a single vessel slot, to having each one turn out different due to the durability bonus from smithing, so then you need two entire vessels to carry those 8 steel heads, at least until you've maxed your skill maybe (I've never maxed my toolsmithing skill so I'm not sure). As long as gems have a use, they wouldn't necessarily build up into an insane number. There could also be a specialized gem storage cabinet that only accepts gems, but has as many or more slots as a double chest, while only taking one block. And a portable gem case that has as many slots as a single chest (with some stack limits). Both would not accept rough gems. Maybe they accept preformed ones, maybe not. If simple descriptors were the order of the day, I'd suggest not using ones that are specific to a flaw, like cracked or chipped. Just a more generalized gradation using words like inferior, poor, average, beautiful, excellent, gorgeous, exquisite, flawless.

A volcano could also be dotted with fumeroles, which could emit poisonous/corrosive gases. I know there is no desire on the devs' part to try to simulate the fluid dynamics of moving gases, but what if there were simply a point, and all blocks within a certain radius were just permanently a non-air gaseous block? Passable, but having bad effects on the player? Would give whole new use for charcoal (filters) and a variety of other stuff, not to mention magic.

Since I made this topic, discussion has happened that makes it it seem like merchants will be a thing in TFC2. So it seems like perhaps gems may be useable as money more or less. So that's hopeful for gem useage. We've also learned that ore veins will have a new behavior, more like actual veins. I think this might make for a good argument for gems to be actual blocks, rather than random appearances. They could appear in association with ores, as many RL gems do. This would allow them to appear in small pockets, and the player would still be able to find them as long as they are adjacent to, or at least within propick range, of an ore vein, because it seems like veins might mostly be continuous now, rather than scattered all over the stone. This might help low tier metal veins remain of interest throughout the game. As an example, if the player knows a certain gem is associated with copper, they may be more inclined to search through a copper vein, even if they have no great need of the copper itself. From the perspective of limiting block numbers, it might be good if a specific gem is associated with a given ore IN COMBINATION with a given rock type. So a certain gem only forms adjacent to iron that is in chalk or claystone. That way there doesn't need to be 8 different textures for that one gem ore block. Just the two that are in the associated stones. LAPIDARY MECHANICS As for actual mechanics, I think we could possibly have a 2-step process - and here I'd love to hear from Sayreg or anyone else who has actual experience. But for the first step, maybe the player is trying to remove flaws from the rough stone. I *think* that gemstones are cut with chisels, to come up with a rough shape for lapping? Or maybe in the past anyway, before diamond saws? So the player could have a workbench for this that has a slot for hammer and chisel. And certain harder gemstones may require higher tier chisels, and/or remove more durability from lower tier chisels. Perhaps a gemologist loup could be required - made of a piece of leather, a tuyere of any metal, and a piece of glass (properly polished glass if glassworking ever comes in) STEP 1 - rough gem The first actual minigame would be a simple rectangular gem face, and depending on the gemologist level of the player, certain flaws will show up. Chief among these would be: FISSURES - these would show up as lines across the entire surface. Some are obvious at no skill, others only with some basic skill GRAIN LINES - as fissures, but requires higher level skill to see, some only show up at top level CARBONS - single pixel specs, lower levels see them Crystal needle inclusions - a line of a few pixels - medium level skill to see Crystal Inclusions - single pixels, requires higher level skill Knots - a small cluster of pixels - visible with no to low skill Clouds - a small cluster of pixels - visible at low to medium skill So the player at low level can see some flaws, but there may be others that only a higher skil gemologist can see. The player must make cuts to try and remove the flaws from the rough gem (we need a name for this intermediate step - cabochon isn't technically correct, but I'm not sure what other term would fit between the rough gem, and the finished gem, so for this post I'll refer to this intermediate step as a 'cab'). So, based on player skill, they get a cabochon of a certain weight. ALSO, they may introduce further flaws, such as scratches, cavities, or cleavage. So, the first step is all about the player's in-game skill, and what it lets them see, having a good enough chisel, and using up some of the durability. STEP 2 - Faceting For faceting, I like Sayreg's idea of a marker in motion, because a flat lap is in constant motion. However, a single moving pointer seems a bit too simple. I think a more complex system might be justified. As a first optional step, the player choose a pattern for the cut. Maybe there's several different ones, and which affect the value (and maybe other functions?). Now, depending on which pattern they choose, it gets more difficult. The basic game is two moving pointers (perhaps moving in a circle, like a flat lap?) that the player tries to "finish" by hitting the button when they line up. And as Sayreg suggested, the closer the alignment, the better the result. The higher the player skill, the more leeway for matching. But there's more! Higher difficulty patterns and more valuable gem material add more pointers and/or increase the speed! So instead of matching up two, you're trying to match up 3, 4, or even more! This would quickly become very difficult. However, the player has options: -Higher skill could reduce the number and speed of pointers possibly. -Also the material of the lap might play a major factor - a copper lap wears out fast and has many rings to match, a diamond lap lasts a very long time, and reduces the rings. - The player can use various abrasive slurries to decrease the speed of the rings. This could be a good use for currently unused materials, or to maintain some useage for low tier metals. These speed reductions are only temporary though as the slurry wears off, so the player must act fast. Each time slurry is added removes a small amount of carat from the finished stone, wears down the lap a bit, and has a chance to add a scratch flaw to the finished product, so the incentive is to use as little slurry as possible. In general, I think that pointer speed should be mostly a function of slurry, with number of rings a function of mostly equipment, and the 'hit area' a function mostly of the game skill. The end result would be a minigame that is possibly even more difficult to master than smithing, and maintains some of the urgency via slurry use, and yet it is not just smithing with different button names. In this way, player with RL skill could get acceptable results from low grade equipment, on medium grade stones. But low skill and low equipment should be able to keep high value stones out of reach, because the player will have to use huge amounts of slurry to slow the low tier flat lap enough to facet their 10-moving-pointer diamond in a fancy pattern. There's honestly enough factors, this system is almost limitless in terms of gradating it for skill, materials, tools, etc. It could be a powerful addition to the magic system, if magic is largely based off gems and crystals.

That kinds of begs the question, what about swimming? Will there be a way to prevent the player from swimming between islands? Terrible player-1-shotting sea monsters? Boundary weather effects to drown them? Granted a player probably isn't going to wholesale swim past an entire 4k block island, but they could theoretically run the beach and hop into the ocean on the other side, replenishing fresh water along the way. If monsters/weather or some such were used to keep the player from boating between major islands, perhaps the boat could be kept for travel on inland lakes or along beaches? If there is a chance for small sub-islands around the major ones, it might be nice for the player to have some kind of boat option. Even if it were greatly slowed. As far as bugginess, aren't there new boats for MC 1.9? Does anyone know if they're any better than the current ones in terms of mechanics?