Darmo

I did actually find some clay by a lake yesterday. It was only along the edge, not in the bottom (I think maybe the lake generation 'ate' most of it). So not easy to see from the air. I only found it incidentally. But apparently it does spawn around the edges of lakes, at least. A temporary and very situational tip for finding gardens - if you use mapwriter, the grass and leaves and anything that uses a greyscale texture to 'biome-match' color shows up as shades of grey on the map. But pam's gardens (and vanilla flowers and trees and stuff) have color. So you can actually find the shady and soggy gardens on the map without too much trouble. Shady are a green pixel, soggy dark brown. breezy gardens seem to use a light colored pixel, and are pretty hard to spot amongst the grey. I haven't paid enough attention to the others to tell. But shady and soggy are pretty good. It seems like they show up once every 50 hexes-ish? Soggy often in groups of 2 or 3. very near together. So there's actually a fair amount around now. Obviously this will probably eventually be obsoleted. But for now it works.

What can we do? Africa just has all the coolest animals. Best we've got left in northern hemisphere is moose, bears, and tigers. But ya, Alpha and I discussed this one quite a bit off-boards. I think it's ready to go as given here. Always welcome other contributor commentary of course.

I don't really play survival much - just to test features basically. I'm not trying to actually 'survive' yet, though the update that increased garden spawns did make that more viable than before. If I need to survive zombies I pillar up 2 high and kill them. Skeletons I run.

Not sure what you mean by "read about mob implementation", but generally if you want to submit models for TFC2, you need to read the MCMC tutorial, and the TFC2 guidelines, In the guidelines post, it mentions you're expected to contact me regarding this. You've bypassed that part, though your post does contain more general ocean discussion. So, in the interest of saving some time, and maybe educating other budding TFC2 modelers, here's my critique: As for the general notion of sharks, I'm all for them. Tony has a point about the shark attacks possibly being overwhelming if not controlled a bit. For instance only if the player has less-than-max health (is bleeding), or is carrying any raw meat. However, considering that there is intended to be as-yet-unspecified hard-coded measures against players swimming or boating between islands, to me it would make perfect sense to have instantly aggressive sharks near the island sector boundaries. Maybe limited to 'deep ocean' sectors, and expand the shallow ocean areas a bit. I would think the black tipped shark would be a good candidate for shallow, but not necessarily instantly aggressive, while a great white or something would be an instantly aggressive boundary-guarding mob. I don't know that the game necessarily *needs* more than a couple shark mobs, but if that's your thing and you want to help, I'm not going to stop you from making more. Just realize that they may or may not ever make it in the game, if they don't have a niche to fill.

Relogging did indeed fix it to show the correct island features list, which did not include spires. However I found another island (World Seed: [1361230909105481895] | IslandMap: [1,0] | PlayerPos: [BlockPos{x=7233, y=115, z=2518}] Which did include spires in the list (along with gorges, valleys, AND canyons - made for some nice terrain). and once again, flew around and found nothing I could recognize as a spire. Relogged a couple times to make sure it was showing the right list. So, I still think some sort of biome map marker that would indicate some of the more 'unique' features would be a good idea.

type in "/pi biome name" where "name" is whatever you want the name of the map to be. It will create a png of that name in the base appdata/roaming/.minecraft directory.

I've only seen it along river banks myself, not in swamps or lakes yet. Which doesn't mean it isn't in those places, I just haven't seen it. I find that it appears maybe once every 10-15 hexes along rivers? So once along average size rivers, it seems like. More on very long ones. But I haven't made a scientific survey of it yet; ymmv.

I don't know, I don't want to have to restart knapping 10 times (or whatever) to have to find a suitable rock. It'd just be random, so you could just have two rocks, and open and close the knapping grid until you get the right shape. Either that, or a 'seed' would be stored on he player, which would dictate which rock they are getting, until they 'use up' that shape. Either way I feel like it'd be more frustrating than anything. But, what I *would* like to see is a rule that you can only knap a box that has at least one side 'exposed', either to the edge of the grid, or to a previously knapped square. This would at least force the player to start from the outside and work inward, rather than wherever they want, including inside-out. And would make knapping slightly different from the clay interface, where you can just start anywhere. And maybe if the player tries to start from the 'inside', it immediately ruins the rock. If this became a rule though, there might need to be some feedback when the player tries to knap an internal square. If it doesn't break the rock immediately, it might need to return a message like 'you must start from the edges'. And maybe a noise. Otherwise if nothing happens, the might think there's a bug. If starting from inner areas immediately ruins the rock, a similar message, to let the player know why their rock broke.

Bees and apiculture have been suggested several times (here being perhaps the most recent and thorough). It can be tied into a lot of products and mechanical game benefits, so that one probably has the best chance. As for bugs for bug-collecting's sake, I'm going to guess most people (me included) would say that's good for a mod, but not really core TFC2. I mean I like it, I'm a collector at heart, and I want there to be dinosaur/monster fossils to collect and reconstruct the skeletons of, but similarly it just won't contribute anything to any core mechanics. I'd rather see stuff that contributes to core game mechanics.

Have you read, understood, and followed all of the rules listed in large text at the top of the suggestions forum?(Yes/No): YES So, in light of the recent discussions regarding encumbrance and how that could advance a more fully realized world, I thought it might be worth discussing how progression of lumber making might work within that context. I considered adding this in the log chopping thread, but I think that is more concerned about how lumber works in the early game, and the notion of getting lumber before saws. I guess what I'm wondering is, if people are wiling to trade lumber convenience, for a an actual tech tree in wood processing? Right now you get a copper saw, it's kind of the same result progression-wise as a blue steel saw. They both make lumber just as fast. The blue has more durability, but even a copper saw lasts a long time. Hand Saw Tiers & Lumber I think much of this has to do with the use of the grid to get lumber. It's instant. If lumber creation were moved to block-breaking instead of the grid, it could be gradated over the tech tree. This could be done by requiring a cut log (as opposed to natural logs, which trees are composed of, and which it is my understanding are a different block from cut logs) to be placed horizontally. Then the player used a saw on it in a block-breaking fashion. So here a copper saw can be made to take longer. By having some fair amount of time difference between logs, the game could incentivize higher tier metal saws somewhat. But, can it be made that higher tier metals yield more lumber per log? It would be an even more significant incentive if copper saw yielded, say, 2 lumber per log, bronze 4, iron 6, steel+ 8. The time difference is more logical though. If variable yield on block breaking is not possible, perhaps higher tier tools will break multiple logs at once, like felling a tree, but governed by tier. So copper breaks just one, bronze 2 logs, iron 3, etc. But the logs have to all be touching in a line, end to end. Sawmills Then, there is the notion of a sawmill. Maybe it's not necessary, if we have tiered lumber yield from handsaws. But, if TFC is ever to have power and mechanisms and that fun stuff in the game, I think it'll need to have things like Sawmills. Either "knock and drop" style if looking to stay 14th century, or circular if willing to stretch things a bit (or both, with circular going faster?) One benefit of a sawmill could be in quantity. They could be the top of current tfc 1 production - meaning they convert 1 log to 8 lumber, while handsaws maybe max out at 4 or 6. Or they could be above and beyond current production levels, producing more than 8 lumber from one log - presumably varying by tier of blade. Perhaps sawmill blades start at steel though, and move up. No low-tech mill blades. The other benefit could be time. It could be done the easy hopper way - the player tosses logs into the mill (or hopper above the mill), which automatically cuts them over time, outputs them into a chest. And bonus if a minecart can be made to dump the logs directly into the hopper. Or a bit more fidelity to rl could re required, with the player lining them up in log-fashion in front of a blade, and having the saw blade move to cut them. If logs are extra-heavy, it could be made to incentivize sawing of the logs on site, rather than transporting them back home. Though that may be a bit hard to balance with tiered progression. In the current game, if a plank block weighs 1 stone, then the log would have to weigh 3 stone to make it at all advantageous to saw on site. If 4 plank blocks per log can be gotten via sawmill, logs would have to weigh even more to incentivize sawing on site. The early game use of logs would have to be kept in mind of course. If logs weighed 3 stone each, that would be 48 stone per stack. 4 stacks would leave 64 stone for other items. But really a starting player should be able to get by with 1 stack of logs anyway. There's also the possibility of an unintended effect of stone and bricks becoming easier to get than plank blocks, which may not be desirable. Plank blocks are used a ton in many buildings, so I'm sure many people wouldn't love this. But, I think it plays into the notion of a better realized world, so I thought it was worth discussing.

A couple concerns. One, what happens with plants in the area? 24 logs take up a pretty large area even if they're allowed to all be adjacent. will plants in he area be obliterated? popped off as drops? I'd have to lose flowers and stuff to logging, even if it is realistic. Second, what about cases where a tree is on a cliff, or in a swamp? In a swamp, if the logs are allowed to place down in water, you risk obliterating lot of water source blocks (unless void states are a thing). They could of course 'float' above I suppose. On a cliff, you'd probably end up with a lot of logs hanging in the air strangely Id imagine, or losing sections in the cliff face, or falling upward. Unless it can be coded to only position them downslope, and maybe they can pile on top of each other? Sounds complicated and error prone to me, but idk. What if the log made debris piles, and the dropped objects didn't automatically place, but when placed by the player were the described 3-5 long blocks. Then they'd 'flow' downhill in item piles, and the player would have to 'dig' them up, and place them. And the rules would only allow them to be placed on flat areas with room for them. They'd be so heavy the player would be immobilized, and have to either immediately put them in a conveyance, or on the ground. Seems like that would avoid a lot of complication in code-placing the logs, popping off tons of plants, and obliterating tons of water source blocks.

Wouldn't fermentation be better handled via large vessels and barrels? And while storing potatoes in piles might be fine in terms of realism, it complicates the code and most importantly, shortcuts any kind of prep-work required on the player's behalf. I think it's better for gameplay to require the player to do at least a little work to preserve their food, regardless of what's 'realistic' for a certain type.

Was down in the tropics and found a 'desert' island that had no sand at all. It appeared low moisture in color, but had large kapoks in abundance. The biome map shows rivers and lakes everywhere. I wasn't sure if this was as intended, or what. The big kapoks just seem kind of not-desert-y to me. I expected kapoks to be limited to higher moisture areas. On a separate note, I was flying around this island looking for the 'spires' feature to find the re-written spires generation, but I never saw anything I would recognize as a spire (though by no means did I cover every inch of the map). Are spires an extremely localized feature now? It would probably be useful if a little bit more detail could be added to the biome map, maybe in the form of dots in the center of the hexes. Maybe white for 'man-made' (like dungeons), and black for 'natural'. Just those two for now, to keep things simple. Then I could have looked at the biome map, looked for black dots in the middle of some hexes, and went and took a peek. Maybe spires, maybe the small crater. But it'd still help me find the features faster that just randomly flying around the island. Dungeons could even be whole-hex colored, like the portals. They're rare enough they wouldn't really obscure the underlying biomes. But I would assume that some geographic features may be wide-spread enough to obscure the biomes excessively.

Not sure the black side-of-muzzle pixel on the bottom, two pixels away from the end is necessary. I think the two directly adjacent are plenty. But otherwise ya, I like it.

Interesting ideas. My question on your idea @Stroam would be how do you handle the turning into piles? By that I mean, is there like, a 5 or 10 second delay between something being thrown on the grown, and turning into a pile? 1 minute? I'd assume to get the savings on ticks you'd want it sooner rather than later. If mobs and players can break the piles, you presumably don't want them instantly turning back into piles again. You'd need to give time for the player/mob to move through or do whatever, ya? I like the compost idea, and it'd be great if the organic piles generated miasm....stench, or something, which would maybe accelerate the player's hunger drain, or make them unable to eat for 12 hours, or something like that. That would basically incentivize the player to make organic garbage pits, so they could toss the food down inside, without being exposed to the stench. As for blocking paths, I'm not sure how it's better than just using actual cobble blocks or whatever. If the debris pile takes longer than a cobble or brick block to break, the player will probably just go around the pile through the normal blocks. On bricks specifically, I don't think making it be like ingot piles is really necessary, vs the work it would likely take. I'd say just one large unchanging block, just like log piles. But, I do hope that log and all other piles do not float in air this time, but instead behave like ingot piles did in TFC1, collapsing if they have no base support. And Btw you might as well add a haybale block for straw. I'd go on about specialized containers (vault for ingots, bins/wagons for ore) but that might be a bit off topic.

I mean, wikipedia and other webpages seem to cite 105ad as the invention of "paper". It wasn't widespread, sure, but it existed. Papyrus mabye 4000 years before that. Parchment/vellum, who knows? one account gives an important point when the egyptions refused to sell papyrus to another country, and so then that country started using animal skins. Which are heavy and not convenient to make scrolls, so apparently they invented books. Kind of interesting. Though I'd imagine that animal hides were the first easily portable thing ever written on, even before papyrus. Personally I don't really care 'when' things were invented as much as how. We're going to have minecarts in the game, quite possibly steam engines if railcraft gets implemented. It's moving to a fantasy setting, and fantasy commonly mashes together a lot of disparate technologies. papyrus and parchment/vellum were both relatively easily obtainable by primitive people and methods. Paper from rags and other fibers less easily, but still doesn't take that much tech - I think mainly takes good sieves, which requires wire. But making paper from wood, like straight up wood - not specific bark layers - my understanding is it requires some pretty hefty chemicals to separate the wood fibers. Like, industrial-scale. So to me it sets up a logical progression of papyrus/parchment --> fiber paper --> wood paper. Not based on time per se, but based on the tech necessary. papyrus/parchment just prepping easily available stone-age stuff, fiber paper needs wire, but could be copper wire, and wood pulp paper should require iron/steel age presses, and maybe significant chemicals. But the question is still, after all this time, is it justified? TFC1 had barely any uses for paper, much less actually useful uses. Just blueprints, as I understand it (never used them). So question is, not only what uses will paper have in TFC2, and will it be enough to justify a more drawn-out process, but will it be enough to have *tiers* of paper production? Some ideas: DECORATIVE - Paper Lanterns (candle center, 3 planks bottom, 2 paper sides, 1 string top middle), Paper Screens (Placed like doors - 5 paper in cross shape, planks in corners), Paper sliding doors (paper screen with row of planks top and bottom) PRACTICAL (non-book) - Blueprints, paper maps, contracts (if we ever get npcs and the ability to hire them), nautical charts, for...reasons? WRITING/MAGIC - scrolls (papyrus or parchment), books (parchment or rag paper), tomes (paper). Aside from the above, I'm kind of struggling to find good uses for paper.

Oh weird, I was thinking that little spot half way up the back legs was just because it was a preliminary texture, but I see they actually have that apparently. So just some minor texture suggestions, it seems like if you look up close at photos of Roe Deer faces, the nose is typically flanked by white spots on the bottom right and left. So I'd suggest making those pixels white(ish). And then, I feel like overall it's rather smooth. I wonder if it could do with a bit more noise? It wouldn't be much; taken as a whole they do appear fairly smooth. Just a thought. And then, the lower jaw, as it is, it 'diverges' from the upper snout, getting further away as it moves outward. I think some slight adjustments to the angle and position would give it a slight narrowing taper, and I think it makes it more 'deer-like'. It's funny, the diverging jaw to me actually makes it look more 'masculine', so it'd be funny if the male had the diverging jaw, and the female the tapering, but that's not really worth having two separate models. I just thought it was interesting how such a small detail can change perceptions like that. Or at least mine anyway.

Too me the angled back legs without haunches above looks weird. Irl that angled piece of leg starts below the body. I'd go with the original orientation, personally.

Looks good. I'd suggest maybe shortening the leg top sections upward 2 or 3 pixels, and lengthening the lower sections to match. Also the 'antler base' needs to be transparent in the fawn version i think.

My understanding is that using straight up wood is a rather modern, industrial process. So maybe wood processing isn't achievable till iron/steel tech level?

That's fine, but I'm sure Bioxx can just remove it, if he hasn't already. Or rather, make it's spawn conditions impossible to achieve. An infinite paper tree certainly doesn't add anything to gameplay, I'd say.

And don't forget vellum! I'm hoping books (and paper in general) are eventually an important thing - and with magic, I'd assume they would be. I think it'd be great to have several avenues to get paper (and other finished products for that matter) in which there's basically an easy way, and then a couple harder ways. For paper, the easy mode could be papyrus plants (or reeds, I guess, if the desire is to still use that resource that is already there) found only in sub-tropical and tropical swamps. Production could be as simple as soaking in a barrel, getting a pile of pulp for each plant, and forming them to paper via a 2x2 pattern resulting in 4 pieces of paper. A more true-to-life process involving presses would be great, but reed/papyrus should still be 'easy mode', obtainable in the stone age. Medium might involve regular cattails. you'd soak the cattails in a container, then grind it in a quern (making this metal age only). The yield would be low, maybe 1 in 4 ground cattails actually produces useable pulp. Then, when you combine the pulp in a 2x2, you get 1 or 2 paper, rather than 4 as with papyrus (or if wanting to use only 1 pulp item id, then maybe the quern yield is even lower; 6 or 8 to 1). The thing is cattails, while not renewable (presumably) would be vastly more common. So that would need to be accounted for. Maybe add a drying and pressing step, just to compensate for the great abundance of cattails. And the other alternate could be vellum. It could basically be an extension of the leather making process, involving perhaps 3 more rounds of soaking in limewater, scraping, and soaking in water, with the texture getting lighter each time until it is eventually an off-white for the final product. So if you don't have papyrus, and don't want to denude you waterways of scenic cattails, then you go the vellum route - more use for leather! As given it's a stone age method, but could be modified to be metal age if desired. I think it'd be fine stone age though, since it uses animals.

I don't know how complicated it would be, but it might also be useful if someone could create a mod that simply added a tutorial book to the player's inventory when they spawn? It could briefly explain the new/different features. Which at this point I think basically amounts to firepits and pit kilns. Maybe even a section that briefly explains the general idea behind TFC2 (island hopping progression, island limited metal tiers). I know zilch about modding but if someone provided me a template for such a thing, I might be able to muddle through, and then keep it updated as TFC2 progresses...

It still remains to be seen if Bioxx still likes the idea of the tier vs tier weapon and armor system (and if it's practical code-wise), but if so that system could provide some pretty steep differences. I do like the idea of item wear affecting things. In my example tier-vs-tier numbers I used 25% jumps between tier differences, so I could see where relative weapon/armor durability could alter that another 10% or something. So normally equal tiers is 50% damage, but if the armor is 100%, and the weapon 60%, that's a 40% difference, so maybe a further 4%-ish penalty to weapon damage. On the other hand if the armor were more damaged than the weapon by 50%, it might be a 5% bonus to weapon damage. Or the penalties/bonuses could be even more, and even overwhelm tier differences. So normally a weapon 2 tiers higher might do 100% damage against armor, but maybe if the weapon is 90% damaged and the armor only 10% damage, the 80% difference x (.5% x percent difference) = 40% damage reduction. Which would nearly put it down to as if the weapon were the same tier as the armor. I would be fine with being able to repair armor with appropriate material, depending on how it's crafted. Here I touched on a system that brings more pieces into the equation. So you might not craft your armor as a single piece, but as several pieces, and those pieces could be combined with smithing, or combined in the crafting grid. In that scenario there would exist generic armor plates, chain mail pieces, and leather plates. It might be that you could carry those pieces and use them to field-repair your armor. But there could be limits. Each piece of armor can only be repaired 5 times. If there's different kinds of armor, each could require a certain type of piece. Leather leather plates, chain chain sections, and plate armor, armor plates naturally. If we only have one metal armor progression (like in TFC1 - basically plate armor) then maybe different parts can only be applied so many times. Leather once, chain twice, and plate twice. Each application improves the durability 10%. After that it's an assemblage of patches and you can't repair that piece anymore. That would allow some flexibility in the field. You could even differentiate field repaired vs anvil repaired. So you're in the middle of a dungeon and need a repair, you just put the armor in the grid with the repair piece, and combine, you get one bonus. But if you do the repair at an anvil, you get double the repair amount. So 5/10 if you only want best case scenario to be 50% at anvil, 25% in the field, or 10/20, if you want the player to be able to 100% repair the armor if they use an anvil, but only 50% in the field. now the player has to choose between help now, but overall reduction in the maximum working life of the armor, or risk waiting to repair back at base to stretch their 'armor dollar' the furthest. Or, hope that the dungeon they're raiding has a blacksmith room. I think it could be a fun addition to the game, that sets up a couple choices for the player; field repair vs risk waiting for anvil repair, carry spare leather, chain, and plate for field repair, or save the inventory space. Armor pieces like these could also be loot in fortresses and dungeons (or even rotten/rusty versions that only repair half of normal). For that matter, smithing quality could give a small bonus to the repair amounts for a given piece, so another hook for smithing skill.

I support this. I was never enamored with the procedural thing, for reasons outlined previously. I do think it'd be worthwhile though, to still have some 'fantasy level' metals. Mithril and Adamantium are, I think, pretty universal to those who are into fantasy, and meteoric iron is pretty well known to older school D&D folks I think. Orichalcum is a bit obscure perhaps, but it's historical. It allows for a few different methods too. Meteoric could be randomly scattered on the surface in small quantities in boulder-like clumps (except in island with the 'crater' feature, there might be extra-large clumps!). Mithril could be buried down deep at 'diamond level'. Orichalcum could generate only under large bodies of water, or even just the ocean, hence being only really obtainable via a lot of branch mining under the ocean, or use of water breath/moving magic. And adamantium might also be buried at 'diamond level', but also only appear near lava or hot springs or other thermally active 'biomes'. Any or all could be extra-tough, strongly encouraging the player to use alternate mining methods such as gunpowder or magic, and extra heavy necessitating minecart action. They could either be metals in and of themselves, or addons that enhance physical properties and/or enchantments power/max level of steel. And each could require their own processes and recipes either way. I think fantasy metals would be great to add value to some of the oddly non-valuable metals of TFC1. Gold and platinum for instance. And since these metals would be replacing black/red/blue steel, silver and garnierite will need new 'homes'. Basically a few fantasy metals would allow there to be use for the useless, and continued use for low-tier metals like zinc, bismuth, and cassiterite. And they don't even all have to be actual ingredients of the new fantasy metals. Some could be use to make quenching baths (that might be a good use for lead and the bronze additives). They'd get used up in the process of making, but not be an actual part of the final result. Some could be post-process. Powdered and sintered to the surface, for instance. I think having new processes for these metals, that aren't beholden to real-life processes (and so avoiding people coming in and nit-picking over how a process isn't 'realistic') is a great opportunity for fun, and use of mechanical power. It might be interesting if the metals affected the magic that can be added to the tool/weapon. So steel can only accept low tier magics, mithril next, orichalcum higher yet, and adamantine accepting the highest tier enchantments. Or they might just each have their own properties. mithril enhances cold and illusion magic, orichalcum electric and summoning, and adamantine fire and transmutation. Meteoric iron can be added in small quantities (5-10%?) to other metals to enhance damage and durability, but if made into it's own metal (90% MI) it can enhance magic with changes speed and weight. Maybe even all four could have admixture properties, and then primary properties. So addmixtures of mithril reduce item weight, meteoric iron movements speed (armor) or swing speed (weapon), orichalcum durability, and adamantium damage in weapons and durability in armor. There could be three 'tiers' of magic accepting weapons and armor. Steel would be the lowest tier(s), steel with fantasy admixtures one or two tiers higher, and the pure fantasy metals the highest. There's just so many options for ways to handle it all! In summary, I think it's a good idea to ditch the procedural thing, but I still think it'd be good to add a defined amount of fantasy metals, to keep metallurgy important. At least the historical/established fantasy ones, since people are familiar with them. But even totally new ones if use can be devised for them.