Darmo

I think most of those google pictures kind of show them 'at alert'. If you watch some youtube videos, they do seem to have a bit higher of a body posture when just chilling, but I don't think nearly as much as those pictures show. I'd probably just go for solid lines of color, parallel with the wing lines, so they read nice and sharp. I think with a lower body angle it'd work. You are right that it may justify changing the body structure a bit (though it'd definitely be more convenient if it could be made to just simply be a new texture and not a new model), as they don't seem as round as normal guineas. I'm open to suggestions if you want to play around with it, I won't have time for the next couple days probably. Sorry I didn't reply to your comment earlier Therighton. I just saw Alpha's comment and didn't look any higher. You guys commented really close together. I can agree on all those points I think, though I think the fine scale of guinea pattern would pretty much necessitate a double scale texture, where the armadillo it wasn't really necessary. I think it'll still look good, possibly since the double-scale area is the majority in the guinea, whereas in the armadillo it was a small area, so I think the few areas of normal size texture won't be overwhelming it, perhaps. In the end I think almost all small animals are going to appear fine scaled to one degree or another, just by virtue of having to be scaled down. The final test will be seeing them in game. I'd be more worried if I spent tons of time on these models, but I had some time this weekend and thought they'd both be quick to build and texture, which they were, so no big loss if they don't work.

Fair enough on the bands. I got a bit obsessed with wanting to have some variation within bands. Here's one with normal texture size. You're probably right about it being a better solution. As far as curving the body, you mean like the aardvark, with two angled body pieces? I considered having smaller boxes fore and aft of the banded section (but not angled), to give it some taper. But I've rejected such notions in animals with more taper (specifically Konlii's camel), so I couldn't justify it to myself in this case just to give a bit of taper to the body. But, here's a rough example of how it might look with more body sections: Would something like this alleviate some of your concerns? It probably does help the head-body relationship more than for most animals, given that it has no neck. As far as pixel size, it's 9 pixels tall, scaled down to correct size would be about 5 pixels, which is around a foot. Technically a couple inches over the google-given max, but pretty close. If you're talking relative to it's own proportions, I don't really see it I guess. Maybe the 3-box body helps that height impression? When you mention curving the head down more, you mean like, rotating the whole thing downward? Adding some extra angle to the nose so it's not square to the head? No prob on the break. I myself was basically absent for six months, and still don't have the spare time I used to. Life happens, and it's not like we're on salary or anything.

I like that. I'd tried the light spots, but I didn't offset them, and I thought it looked to meshy. I thought the checkerboard was a good compromise. But I like what you did there. As far as I can tell, I think they have pretty much the same pattern everywhere except the wings, so I'd say what you did there would be a good replacement for all the checkerboard. Your next challenge, Vulturine Guinea Fowl!

Chunkhunter is right. Floating items is TFC default. It's a mod that makes them lay down. First figure out the mod and make sure you have it.

problem is, as is typical for long running forums, both those suggestions were discussed in another thread. That one was "Boats & Ships". If that person had only searched for "boats" maybe this could all be in one thread. That one also received Dev commentary, so they're both good to know about.

As far as version, it seems like the devs have been tracking with vanilla more or less. It was brought up to 1.10.2 in July according to github. I haven't seen any record of a 1.11 update since then though.

Like Ciekma says, you're getting actual readings. It counts the actual blocks in a 12-block radius of you every time you use it. If you mined out the heart of the vein and it's still giving VL, it's possible there's simply a lot of diffuse ore around the boundaries of where you mined. But if you didn't go down to the next stone layer, it's also possible there's more below, or even above. It's a lot easier to tell what's going on if you do gallery mining instead of more haphazard techniques.

Ya, I noticed those position problems too once I posted the pictures side by side. I spent a lot of time playing with different angles and sizes and apparently things got off without me noticing. It'll be easy enough to fix, but I'd really like to find out if there's a possibility of getting a per-box option to have back face culling nullified before I spend more time on it. If so, I think the full boxes route will just make things easier overall. But if we can't do that, then we'll just go with your original 2d planes Alpha, as you did a good job with positioning those. So I'm going to shelve this one until we can get a ruling from Bioxx on the culling.

Finally got around to going for thinner quills. It ended up being much easier to just double the size of the texture, and simply reducing the quill parts of the texture to 1 pixel wide. I first did this for The original model (left), but then I did try to rearrange the quill boxes, and also make them actual full 6-sided boxes (right), to reduce their numbers vs the multitude of 2d planes. It also seems like the 2d planes in the original model make it harder to select other boxes sometimes. The problem with this is the backside culling makes them not show up on the 'inside'. I remembered Konlii (I think) mentioned that actual minecraft shows the backsides. After a little research, my impression is that the default is for backsides to be culled, but it's possible to cancel this behavior temporarily, to render boxes where you want the backsides shown. So my question for Bioxx is, could we get MCMC updated so that each box has a check box option to NOT cull the back faces of that particular box? It'd make the modeling end of things a lot simpler.

Ya, as far as each 4k square area having different forms of generation, I do think that's a good idea. Way back, Bioxx kind of suggested this might be the case, or at least that some regions would have no island and just be open ocean. Personally I think it would be great if they at least had a small island or archapeligo. Some people really like controlling an entire island. As far as help coding, Bioxx has expressed his opinion on that in the past - he doesn't seem wild about the idea. Though I don't know what qualifies as a 'pull request', being not a coder myself, and of course opinions can change. I kind of doubt if TyronX would be interested, given that he's apparently making his own game now, separate from minecraft. TFC would be direct competition with his game.

Would the sieve require anything unusual (like string)? If not, probably best to just use sticks to make a clam rake. I've never really heard of anyone using sieve to get clams. But otherwise sure, a timed right-click thing like gold pans or fire starters would be fine too. But beyond that, if you follow the github progress Bioxx recently put in support for Harvestcraft. Gardens generation is in, and I'm guessing the HC crops are as well. I'm pretty curious if this is full-on replacing all native TFC2 crops (the ones Pam's has anyway) and moreover, are all the cooking utensils, bee mechanics, etc being used? For instance HC has it's own quern, but I'd hope they'd keep the TFC1 quern. HC also has animal and fish traps, which catch any and everything from fish to eels to shrimp to clams. So the HC trap is extremely simplified, and if incorporated as-is, it would obsolete basically everything discussed here I think. So I'm really curious on the full scope of the HC implementation, as it affects a lot of mechanics and suggestion threads, depending on just how much of it is implemented.

So, my current understanding of TFC2 is that it will already encourage nomadism, due to the progressive metal island hopping. This however is probably not what you're looking for as far as larger continents (the island will be around 4k across at most). You may want to check this post I made awhile back, summarizing some of the relevant threads, with posts by the devs. Check out those threads. You'll have a much clearer picture of where TFC2 is headed - or at least, the most recent thoughts the devs have expressed publicly on these things, as long as about a year and half ago.

Ok, so I've been working with some other bodies. They all use the same texture as the previous post, so that'll have to be altered in the end. But in general: On the left, a sloped main body, with haunches for rear legs. Similar to what several of the rodents use. In the middle, arched body, no haunches. And on the right, the combo; arched body with haunches. I realized that the no-haunch look is probably better for armadillo and pangolin, with their heavy armor, whereas the aardvark looks better with haunches. I'd be ok with first or third either one. But I think you're right Alpha, that the arched back does help so I'm leaning third. Any other thoughts?

Look down the forum list a bit and you'll see a Terrafirmacraft 2 section, with three forums for various TFC2 discussion. So far Bioxx seems to be keeping TFC2 updated to minecraft's current version, so it seems likely TFC2 will be on par with vanilla. Edit: but to be clear, the current version of TFC is not being developed any further. What you get in TFC2 will be rather different from TFC1.

Finally sat down and worked up a summer female texture - Let me know what you guys think. This is the last of the four, so I also made a composite showing all four for comparison.

So in the quest to get more arctic animals, I've worked up a Ptarmigan model (The P is silent, for those wondering). They're an arctic bird, that I thought could be either the arctic equivalent of a chicken (tameable) or pheasant (wild). I should have rotated the head for the screencap - the head is actually a separate box from the neck, 4 pixels tall, so it can look around. Ptarmigan molt to change feather colors for the season, so they are white in winter, and brown-white in summer. Hopefully that's something that might be code-able, based on the month? The red bands above the eyes are a male ptarmigan feature. I'd create separate textures for the females. The summer female would be more brown overall, but the winter would be the same as the male, just minus the red bands. I used transparent textures for the tail and wings. I think it works ok for the wings, since they're only 1 pixel wide. The tail though, when viewed from the bottom is transparent. I put a 2d plane 1 pixel below the tail top surface, so that if viewed from the bottom that plane at least shows. But the feathering on the side of the tail doesn't, when view from 'inside' the tail box. With some thinning up of the legs and beak, and a new texture, this model could probably also serve as a seagull if we wanted seagulls hanging around on the beach. But, being more of an aerial bird, I figure maybe a flying model would be better for seagulls. But if you the devs would like a beach seagull, let me know and I'll either make a separate model, or (more likely) alter this one so there's some thin legs and a thin beak present at the same time, and the texture can show whichever is desired. Might be useful if any other similar shape birds ever got put in. So ya, lemme know what you all think. Ptarmigan.MCModel

So here I am being 'that guy' again. This topic has already been discussed at pretty good length, under the thread title Mechanisms and Mechanical Power. Note the title already has the words "mechanical power" in it. Same as this thread. Search function folks.

Farms are already super-easy. And I don't see how the well as described so far would make it easier. It's not creating water source blocks, to the best of my understanding.

The problem with that would be that the intent is apparently to allow players to build in places without ready water. So if you find that excellently generated place to build, but there's no 'water vein' there, then the mod has failed at it's purpose. For the stated goal, I think Peffern's idea of a universal water table is better. Personally, I don't think it's probably necessary to get too complicated. I don't see a lot of point in making it fancy and realistic just to have water, which is a basic thing. The water level proposal in the OP sounds fine to me, and refill rate I'd probably make random, or uniform, due to the deep and mid rocks being rather homogenous. If the water were part of a tech ladder, it'd be a different story. But if it's just to let you live in an otherwise dry area, and in my opinion, that's not a balance issue. The issue of providing water to mines is minor in my opinion, as it's not that hard to bring barrel fulls of water to a mine, or just have an open barrel that accumulates rain. If the rain barrel mechanic weren't present, it would be a different matter, and this would probably be worthwhile for mine water in certain situations. Putting it behind the metal tool tech gate is probably sufficient, and adding the time sink of firing some clay would definitely be enough of a cost, I'd say.

I'm not a hydrologist or anything. Hopefully ok if I still contribute some thoughts. I think that aquifers mostly occur in porous stones (sandstone, limestone, conglomerate) or underground layers of non-stone material like sand or gravel. Offhand this is a bit problematic for TFC in that sedimentary stones - the rl best ones - only occur on the top layer. So your very best aquifers, if true to life, would always be in the top, easy to reach layer. I guess insofar as sedimentary layers aren't the most desireable starting top layer (due to lack of copper), maybe that kind of would balance easy aquifers. In terms of the non-sedimentary stones we do have, I'd think slate and maybe marble would be the best candidates for aquifers. Even then, you'd then never have an aquifer at the bottom level. So I'd suggest maybe not worrying too much about rl best stones maybe. Either make the stones that are otherwise unattractive (Diorite, Slate, Rhyolite, Phyllite) Have the best properties. Just so they have something more going for them. Two of those stones can occur at any later, and two middle or upper. So they'd have a good distribution. In terms of capacity, I'd suggest making it depend on more than just a deep hole in the stone. That's easy and costs nothing. What if you made a new block - clay drain tile - and the player had to line the well with this. That brings some actual work and expense to the hole itself, rather than it just being a hole dug down into the rock. If the player wants more capacity, they have to put in a little work. Clay tile laid above the water table has no effect on capacity. In terms of thoughts on balance, I find myself wondering if there is an intent for these wells aside from getting water in deserts? Because water really isn't all that hard to come by in TFC generally speaking, especially once one has barrels. And deserts are very rare and not fun to be in, quite aside from water issues. So if they're mostly a sort of novelty structure, I'm not sure there's really anything to balance? The only real thing I can think of is having a well inside a mine, so you don't have to leave to get water. That would be kind of nice. Though a barrel at the bottom of a ladder to the surface will serve the same purpose.

Looks like I missed responding to this back when I was first starting my move in July, sorry about that! It looks good to me.

Here's a revised aardvark, scaled down and simplified. It was indeed tempting to make the body arched, but I'd really like to save that look for armadillos and pangolins. Any comments? Aardvark_v6.MCModel

From what I understand, they have different working temperatures. Sand being higher. In the modern context, I think the borax is also easier and cheaper to get perhaps, vs clean filtered silica sand.

Something that bothers me about TFC1 is the salt and flux situation. They're resources that either you have absolutely none of, or you've found the stone type and have what amounts to an unlimited supply. The only cost is time to collect the stones, and the occasional stone hammer. So it's feast or famine, nothing in between. I gather that TFC2 has fewer stone types that TFC1. But if there's still room left for rearranging, I'm suggesting that salt and flux(borax) become ores rather than stones (and the current TFC1 flux stones become not useable as flux in and of themselves). So you actually have to search for salt and flux and mine them, even once you've found the stone type they spawn in. I think for salt it'll be very believable. I've never heard of an entire expansive stone type made of salt anyway. It's way too soluble in water. Now flux on the other hand, irl I gather that you can indeed just use pretty much straight limestone? Even as such, I think the game mechanics would benefit from having to find an ore. If nothing else, maybe make the salt and flux stone be veins within other stone types, kind of like clay. Or at least require that the player bake the flux stone, so that there is some fuel and time cost involved in the making of flux.

My understanding is so, yes, though I've not done extensive research. It seems like basically you bake it to drive out all the moisture, so that when you apply it to the metal you don't have the absorbed moisture forming steam and causing 'boiling' problems. But beyond that, it's a relatively simple process that the player could have access to in early game, either via fire pit or pit kiln, depending on how fuel/time intensive one wants it to be. I just kind of extended the idea to sand, even though it's not necessarily a rl thing for sand.