Darmo

Last best info available is that portals will be an integral part of TFC2, and the primary, if not sole, means for moving between islands. If you've missed the early parts of TFC2 discussion (like, over a year ago) you might want to check out this post, which links to some of the more salient discussions, especially those in which Bioxx was involved. TFC2 is going to be very different from TFC1 in terms of world structure. At least, that's the last word we've heard.

Just FYI, because I saw you made a post back in 2013 so you've been around awhile, magic isn't the forbidden topic it apparently once was. Bioxx has encouraged discussion of the topic, and it already has several threads, including the original, and very extensive, Magic! thread. So it's fine, no need to preface the suggestion. It's also not going to break any 'current game' because as Bunsan mentioned, TFC1 is done. No longer being developed. TFC2 is being developed right now, and is still fairly early from what I can tell, so I think there's a lot of possibilities as far as integrating into the game well. Moving on, so full disclosure, I'm not a programmer. But in a nutshell, the amount of calculations sounds way too much to me. It sounds to me like it'd bog down the system in a large multiplayer environment, and I'm all about supporting that playstyle. But it even sounds like a lot for single player, to me. Beyond CPU overhead issues, the more complicated the web of calculations you make, the easier it is for the web to accidentally be broken. The harder it will be for someone to plug into or alter the system. I find it hard to imagine you can't accomplish the same basic system flavor with just simple per-chunk mana calculations, rather than per-block. I think that's how Thaumcraft does (did?) it, isn't it? The meditation thing, I'm just going to come out and say it - that is a really bad idea. Making people sit for hours doing nothing is really, really bad game design. You'd do a lot better to require some sort of 'meditation room' with certain characteristics, and the player must sit in the center, sit there for 30 seconds or so max, spend some experience and/or whatever materials, and then they're leveled. That's tolerable. And it'd serve a purpose in not allowing the player to level up just anywhere, like in the middle of a cave or dungeon. But basically nobody is going to tolerate sitting there doing nothing for such a long time as you suggest. I think finding crystals laying around as a general blanket is not a good idea. Better if they're found growing in caves, or around hot springs, and other specific places. But just finding them all over cheapens them. And better ones should be deeper underground. I think there really needs to be more incentive for people to mine deep underground, and crystals is a good way to do it. In general, these kinds of mana systems, what I don't like about them is they make this homogenized system that is kind of bland. You don't have to search for much of anything, you just absorb mana from the world. I realize there can be a lot more detail added, but just saying, those details are what interest me, personally. When you compare for instance Thaumcraft and Witchery, I think witchery is a better system. It's got this huge variety of very different things to build and make, requiring actual resources rather than a bland mana pudding. Certain aspects do incorporate a building up of mana. But the breadth of the mod just has such a large variety of mechanics, it keeps it very interesting, and to me it feels much more rich, to me. That's just my opinion though. Mechanically a mana system can work just fine. And in a large multiplayer environment, it does have the advantage of suffering less from resource depletion (I would imagine).

I think it'd be a good idea to be careful on the lava front. I'd hate to see it become an easy cop-out that lets the player avoid fueling things for most of the game. And I really think it'd be best to avoid the magma forge ala-dwarf-fortress, where you just build it over the top of the lava pool - that's kind of lame as long as surface lava is fairly common (unless it requires a very large pool). I think it'd allow it to be a more controllable part of the tech tree if it always has to be pumped to be utilized. I'd say pumping lava should be a late-game tech, that requires massive amounts of material. Basically something like a sheet of upper tier metal, and two fire bricks, per section of pipe. And maybe make it far, far, far less common to see at the surface. So that the player has to pump it up from the depths. I mean, irl you don't see lava just hanging around the surface in pools in the middle of fields. It's around volcanoes. That would give a good incentive for a rare volcano feature, which would provide easy surface lava access. That, or make 'lava' be distinct from 'magma'. Magma pools are only found at the bottom (keeping in mind that in TFC2 the 'bottom' is only something like 50 or 60 blocks down, not the 150 of TFC1), and are the only things that can be pumped. Lava can be found at surface, but is not pumpable. Or, lava blocks are actually used up. So the pump slowly over time consumes lava source blocks within it's radius. On the other hand, magma blocks are not consumed. But the pump must have a certain number of them within it's radius in order to pump them. If magma is only found at the bottom, then maybe it'd be ok to allow magma forges to be built directly over the pool. So the player can do the easy-mode magma forge, but it's at the bottom of the world and pretty darn inconvenient if the rest of the base is on the surface. But maybe that allows them to do the heavy smithing required to make the piping to bring it to the surface. And you could even bring quality of smithing into the equation. So a average quality magma pump might need 75 magma source blocks within it's effective pumping radius of 2. This would make it's draw area a 5x5x5 cube, so 125 possible total, meaning an average pump would need a large pool to be effective, while an expert pump might need only 50 source blocks to draw from. You could complicate it by making the draw area non-centered, with the pump at the bottom. So the player must find deep pools to pump from. I'd really like to see quality of smithing come out in more aspects of the game. A disadvantage to the magma pool thing is that the player early-game won't necessarily know if their base has magma beneath. It'd be disappointing to do tons of work on a base only to find there is no magma below. But perhaps as long as hot springs and surface lava are a reliable indicator of magma below, that allows the player to plan accordingly. As for power loss over distance, that seems a bit more fiddly than is necessary, to me. But if it's easy to code and low cpu overhead, why not I guess.

The vanilla-tfc anvil gui doesn't have 'notches', it's just a smooth bar. If by 'notches' you mean pixels, I don't think anyone would call that cheating; it's just using the feedback you're given, and congratulations on having the eyes of a hawk. If you're using a mod that adds actual notches to the bar for ease of counting, that's something else.

You might want to try start with bronze if at all feasible. iirc it's a little easier to work with due to higher melting point, so you have longer time in the 'workable' range. I also find it to be an amazing system that takes some real life skill, so in a larger multi-player environment your skill can set you apart from everyone else. I just wish TFC was more geared toward those kinds of environments. If github updates are any indication, TFC2 will have GUI-less smithing, which is probably the thing I would most look forward to seeing in an early release.

What makes you say that? Have you watched those videos? They had several rules, including very specific rules that no more people can raid a base than are present of the other team. So if only one enemy is in base, then only one raider can actively raid. They also had rules about no breaking of beds. These were not coded rules, but they followed these rules. It's not difficult for a group of friends/professional associates. It could work fine in a small group UHC setting. Obviously it would not work in a BadLion-like environment where it's just a constant churn of strangers.

The *armos agree, anything that might help you stay motivated. I'd definitely love to be able to see all the new terrain generation. At the same time a more thorough release might be more compelling from the standpoint of the youtube LPs it will likely generate. Playable TFC2 would be huge hype. Personally I'm happy just to see github updates again, and could easily wait for some of the basic survival stuff to be in, at least.

If you do, some things to consider Teams should be balanced based on time. They did this in season 3, at least. The idea being that you don't end up with a team filled with people with tons of time, and another team with people with very little time. Since so much of TFC is grindy, it makes a huge difference. Get an idea of who plans to xpend X,Y, or Z hours per day, and try to distribute the teams evenly based on that. I'd also suggest rules about raiding. For instance 'chest busting' was rather pernicious. You just bust open a chest to let everything inside despawn. Really unnecessary considering most chests are filled with dirt and semi-worthless stuff anyway. When a team is down, it's really just kicking them while they're down. If I were setting it up I'd forbid chest busting, and intentional leaving of items to despawn. If you don't want them to have something, you have to carry it away yourself. I'd stipulate that animal killing is allowed but you have to leave 1 animal of each gender. Blast furnaces and bloomeries are off limits if the raiding team already has them themselves. And if you're in another team's base, you're not allowed to block them off when they've respawned and have no tools. Also no touching other teams' beds. I think those rules would prevent a lot of saltiness, while still allowing good base raiding.

It has, as a matter of fact - It was done by Pakratt & et al, and they called it "Terrafirmacrack". Three seasons in 2012, 2013, and 2014. They did indeed work in teams (up to 7 per team, in season 3), and spread it over the course of a week (again, iirc). I've only fully watched the third season. It's a different dynamic from a normal UHC, with great focus on raiding bases, hiding bases, and even building base defenses. It's a large time investement for the players, and unfortunately that seems to lead to more saltiness than a normal minecraft UHC, which is much less time invested. The third season ended a bit bitterly and they didn't do one after that, to the best of my knowledge. Fun to watch though, as it's so different. I do think that it would be really good for TFC2 to have a 'UHC mode' that made for quicker gameplay in a UHC type of setting, to get it down to one day's worth of gameplay.

RNG = Random Number Generator. Luck, in other words. You should probably know that the devs are not going to change any of this for TFC1. They're basically only fixing major bugs now. Whatever efforts they are making are focused on TFC2. You may be interested in this thread, where I suggested that flux and salt be ores, rather than stone types. Within that suggestion context, I think it would definitely be worth considering that flux and maybe salt appear in all stone types. But that they simply be rarer in some than others.

There already is a donate link. It's one of the large icons in the green menu bar at the top of these forums. Second from the right. If you mean a more specific form of donation, along the lines of kickstarter, it's been suggested a few times. It seems like in general the devs want to avoid donations that put pressure on them. Personally I think it'd be a useful indicator of what features are actually a priority for people (i.e. they are willing to pay for). But, as Kitty says in that link, a lot of people, when they donate, they then feel entitled. And that's a headache for the devs.

Correct, it is mentioned somewhere in there that fruit trees do not count as 'natural logs'. As for the thread, it's super-old anyway.

Short answer, every area has a list of 3 tree types that naturally spawn there, regardless of if any trees are present or not. So simply removing all the trees does nothing to prevent it. However, saplings will not spawn within a certain distance (8 blocks x-z, and -3 to +5 y, I think?) of *natural* wood blocks. This is as opposed to player-placed logs, which are different. They also won't spawn where grass is present, or in squares with no access to light. So you have a few options - plant trees that you want. These trees (specifically, the trunks) will prevent saplings from spawning within 8 blocks - dig a 2-deep hole. Plant a tree. When it grows, chop it down from the block above the bottom of the trunk, leaving the bottom-most trunk piece in place. Bury that trunk block underground. Saplings should not spawn within 8 blocks of it, because they check up to 3 blocks below ground for existing *naturally spawned* tree trunks. It is important to emphasize that when you chop a tree down, the logs you get are not natural. They will not have the same effect. This method takes a lot of time and planning, but is the most effective if you want a lot of open grassland. - Plant flowers and grass (with shears, you can plant short grass if you don't like tall). They will prevent saplings from spawning. - Replace the dirt with gravel, sand, or other paving. Saplings will not spawn on non-dirt. Some past discussions: One of my very first posts as a new player, was to argue for more restrictive spawning (I feel your pain) Another thread dealing a bit with saplings There's other good threads out there I know, but I could not find them in a quick search.

Just fyi, it's a waste of material to use so much black steel. Black steel should always be the bare minimum, if one cares about efficiency. In general, baring unusual scarcities, it's best to do everything possible to minimize any material that uses iron. Especially for red steel. At best, you'll use 5x as much iron per single ingot of colored steel, as you will the next-most used material, copper. So economizing iron helps in the long run.

So I made a quick guinea fowl. It's intended to be a sub-tropical to tropical chicken. Irl the male and female are hard to visually distinguish as they both have wattles and combs - their cries are the more sure-fire way. But that's not practical for TFC, so I gave the males 2 pixels of cheek wattles, the females not. The texture is double size so I could make the plumage pattern. I grouped the non-plumage areas so those areas have a normal-looking texture scale, but it'll still need to be scaled down to about 60% or so of this size. GuineaFowl2xTex.MCModel

So I was trying out some textures based on Alpha's idea. The double-scale texture works well I think, as expected. I did some normal scale ones also, based on the same pattern. On the body I think it actually works better than I'd thought it would, but the wings kind of cause problems imho. I tried a couple different wing patterns at normal scale. I got kind of lazy and just overwrote the texture three times, so I don't have separate textures to offer for in-modeler examination. But based on the picture below, any thoughts?

Did some refinements using the 3-box body. Darkened the dark bands, and added some noise. Tried the head higher, but didn't think it looked right. Ended up with too much below. Considered sloping the body forward slightly, to give better continuity with head, but didn't really think it was that much different. Feel free to play with it though, see what you think. Armadillo3BoxBody.MCModel

Armadillo. Used double-scale texture so I could fit in the bands at a decent scale. Head is a bit higher than natural, but I thought it looked better with the boxy body. Even at this size, it'll need scale down to 50-60%. Snout also felt like it needed a nose or something, but they don't really have noses in the normal dog or bear way. I tried adding a single 1 pixel cube with various alignments, but they kind of seemed unnecessary, idk. Also, the ears will actually be hollow in the end. I left them solid for now because otherwise they look weird. Let me know any thoughts. Armadillo.MCModel

I was trying to be diplomatic. If you want to mince words, my first instinct was to call that criticism myopic. All that can be said for certain is that it was never finished, and what was finished has shortcomings as far as encouraging multiplayer between strangers. The devs have said before that their intended focus was small groups (as opposed to large multiplayer servers of strangers). That indicates to me that was their eventual intent - a small group is still social. What that might have entailed, only they can say. In the end, that's all the past. My point was that you were saying 'look at existing TFC1 servers their base is small' and then using that as a reason that TFC2 is not about multiplayer. TFC2 could be more, and the devs have strenuously emphasized that it's a different game. So why shackle it to TFC1's situation and surmised goals? Ya, it'll probably always be niche relative to vanilla and the huge arena servers. I'm not sure what that has to do with anything.

Just a nit-pick, it's 9 islands. 1 row of tropical, and then 4 above and four below of sub-tropical, temperate, sub-arctic, and arctic. I think that's unfair. It's a bit like Thomas Watson or Ken Olson saying computers don't need to improve beyond government use because the market for them is so small. TFC1 was never finished, and if taken in isolation was very poor from a multiplayer game design perspective. It had one big achievement path - smithing - and that was it, and anyone could do it. Everyone was the same, so why would you need others? This is the reason I continually agitate for TFC2 to be better designed from a multiplayer perspective. I think it would attract a larger multiplayer audience if it was better designed for multiplayer. You look at the Happydiggers server, there's hundreds of people that have been on that server and successfully made a town. The problem is they don't stick around. Unless you're a ambitious builder or organizer, or a mining fanatic, there's no reason to once you hit red/blue steel. There's nothing else to keep you. I would argue that in fact the audience that continually power their interest in the game via single player is the small audience, and if a larger and more enduring audience is desired, better multiplayer design is the best way to go. But I don't know if the devs even remotely care about that. But imho the game can appeal to socializers at the same time as explorers and achievers, with ease, if designed correctly.

I don't see them as mutually exclusive. It could be necessary to research a given spell, but then you also have to find the right materials to build the thing to cast said spell. I think you're right about necessity of progression; I assume that magic would have an island-progression element as well. If it didn't, you'd risk breaking progression via magic. If there's a lot of damaging spells, and the player could just find everything for the most powerful spells in the first column of islands, they could easy-mode their way through the first tiers. So for an everyman strategy, there's a few scenarios I could forsee. On the one hand, there's a good amount of damaging spells, that progress through the islands, not unlike weapons. In this scenario one would kind of want a good balance, so that the spells are roughly as attractive as the weapons. If they're not well balanced, a clear superior will emerge, and the other branch will get neglected This is undesirable. Another strategy; magic is made more about effects and unusual stuff, less about damage. Then there's not a need for a fine damage balance. The magic side is buffs, debuffs, summoning, utility. Damage is still mainly handled by weapons (and their enchantments). And then a third way, it could be island-dependent. So the denizens of some islands might be magic-resistant (fey, undead, demons, etc) while other islands might be inhabited by mobs resistant to weapon damage, but weak to magic (giants, ogres, orcs). Then the player might be forced to change strategies depending on the island's inhabitants. That or they look for an island with their preferred type of enemy. Here again, balance between weapons and damaging magic would be less crucial. They might be a bit unbalanced, but if certain mobs take 50% damage from one or the other, a slight unbalance won't be a big deal. I would contrast those scenarios, with more restrictive strategies. For instance an everyman research scenario. Here it may be that anyone can use magic just fine at any time, but there is a steep research gate, that requires a lot of research grind on the player's part. Some players just won't want to do it, so they stick with weapons. The ones that do the research would have magic as well. One could justify damaging magic being slightly better, in theory, due to the work required to get it. But at the same time the others may feel left out if they can't hack magic, but some players get magic AND weapons. And that's undesirable imho. Then there's a divided path strategy, where the player is forced or strongly encouraged to choose. This could occur with or without research. But idea being, either the player is code-required to choose a path (via skill web, or enforced skill oppositions) or a mechanic is brought in whereby skills degrade over time, and it's just kind of very difficult to impossible for the player to maintain them all at high-functioning levels. These strategies need some balance between the paths, but since they're divided to some degree, the balance doesn't have to be as tight, I think. I've said a lot about those in other threads, so probably no need to re-hash them in detail here. Honestly the innate strategy is, I would imagine, the easiest to code, and the easiest to balance. It's the default mode of minecraft and every vanilla magic mod. I imagine it's how things will end up for TFC most likely. Which is why I try to present as many arguments as I can for the validity of more divided strategies.

Yes, obviously things go faster with more people doing them. In most cases speed = ease. TFC has a few systems that transcend that equation currently - the smithing system being the main one, and the support mechanic being the another. The smithing system, some people just don't think like that, and so they don't do well with it, and hence don't like it. The support system is mainly a problem of world gen, and people misunderstanding how the cave-in mechanic actually works. That and they're lazy. Then there's propicking - some people, again, just have a hard time understanding how that works. Everything else about the game is just varying degrees of time sinks. Charcoal making and mining are two of the largest ones. They can be very grindy and some people just don't like doing those particular grinds. But they're not difficult. The entire game is basically a time sink, so who's to say where the correct amount of time for any task is? You'd have dozens of answers for any given task. My own opinion, is that people like discovering or achieving things. This gives those sudden thrills that make a game addicting, and also makes the player value the things. That's why I think a research based magic system could enhance the multiplayer game a lot, but also provide another layer of discovery and surprise for single player, if done correctly. And, if done correctly, it could be made adjustable such that those who don't like it can put it in easy-mode and not be overly bothered with it, while others could keep the difficulty of it, if they want to bring a bit more value to magic skills. If the system is just easy-mode, and nothing else, then the latter case isn't even possible.

In the past Bioxx has said he's open to the notion of npcs, and it seems reasonable to assume that villages and other set pieces could be a thing as well. Just fyi. As for whether or not they might ever reach Millenaire complexity, your guess is good as mine. I'd guess it would be low priority, at best.

Ah, I see. Well that's definitely an option. And it'd probably be the easiest to set up, since balance wouldn't be as important an aspect, and any research or skill web coding would not be required. I don't know that it's clear that TFC2 is being designed as a 'multiplayer addon'. The devs have in the past said that they were designing TFC1 for small group play, but I don't know if we ever saw that executed or not - it never was finished after all. But I'd argue that if any one player can do everything in the game with relative ease, then it's fundamentally a single player game. So for me, I'm still kind of wondering if TFC2 will be designed for multiplayer or not. Because it's not clear to me yet.

I'm curious, by 'innate' system, do you mean something like a skill web? So the player gets skill points that they use to unlock a spell or item, and now they know it? Presumably they would still need to expend materials to make said item or cast said spell? Or kind of simple achievement system? To me there's a strategic question to answer first, as to whether the devs see magic as a sort of add-on to smithing, that anyone can use? Or if they like the idea of a distinct path for magic users, that discourages players from pursuing both? This has significant implications for the design of the system. It could be argued that if magic is an 'everyman' skill, it's easier to make it research and time intensive. Because then it's optional. The player can always just follow the tried and true weapons and armor to advance. I would say this might be the most wide-open scenario in terms of system mechanics, and could even have a sort of mix-and-match feel, like how witchery has different elements that aren't necessarily totally intertwined. On the other hand, if magic is a distinct path, then it could be argued that the method of gaining magic needs to be on par with smithing in terms of time and effort. That is unless magic is meant to be considered a 'hard mode' that just takes more time, but with greater rewards in the end. Even in a distinct path scenario, I think that both innate and research are valid methods. Research could be made as hard or as easy as desired. The Thaumcraft research method isn't particularly time-consuming. Then there's my suggested research method in the other thread, which can be a bit more time intensive. But even that can be adjusted to make it easy. So ya, to me that's the most important initial question: everyman, or distinct path? The rest is just details, imho.