Darmo

@Salt_Water_Otter  While you're creative-mode checking, you may also want to check the second layer, to see if it's marble, just in case.  That is also flux.

@killsode  Bioxx already has a vein mechanic implemented for ore in TFC2, last we knew.  I unfortunately can't find the post (or twitter?) where he a gave a picture, but in this post he talks about what he's shooting for (it's directly after he quotes ciekma).

edit: found the picture. It's from this post.

@Xhatz  I'm hoping that Bioxx is taking a break waiting for the 1.13 release, which will have huge code implications from what I understand, removing the block id limit, and altering how block data is set up.  It makes a lot of sense for Bioxx not to do tons of work that he'll have to redo most of with the next update.  Minecon is in two weeks, with any luck they'll announce a date for 1.13 at that time.  Since 1.8 they've been doing an update every 6-8 months I think, and the last one was June iirc.  So I'm hoping for 1.13 in the Dec-Feb range, and hopefully a resurgence in activity.  Hopefully.

@killsode  This post would be a good place to start.

On 9/21/2017 at 9:38 PM, Stroam said:

I totally agree that a mine should last almost the entirety of a play. Many mines IRL have lasted multiple generations. 

I feel like this is going to fight the island-hopping nature of TFC2.   It may also require mechanics a bit too grindy and restrictive for some.  I'd actually say the game benefits more from making the player use their skill to find multiple veins of some heavily used resources, such as copper and iron in TFC1. 

On 9/12/2017 at 3:56 PM, SoodleNoodle said:

I've been away from TFC for awhile and wanted to see what's changed. But the "Recent Changes" link on the Wiki isn't showing me anything. Am I doing something wrong?

TFC1 is no longer changing.  The devs are working (slowly) on TFC2.  There is a playable version of TFC2 for download, but it's very basic right now and really is just about worldgen.  It has fire pits, and clay vessels, and very rare and scattered food, and that's about it.  The few mobs will 1-shot you, so you can't use them for food yet.   But the world gen is quite beautiful, and fun to explore in creative mode.

14 hours ago, Stroam said:

You may be right about the hushing, but players have wanted aqueducts for quite some time. Even if it's not an optimal solution, it still gives players another choice.

Well aquaducts are still a fun idea.  I definitely support them.  I just think maybe they'd be better geared toward powering machinery via water wheels.  Maybe not necessarily stone age tech - this era might be animal powered if anything - but certainly in the metal era, powering mill stones and stamp mills would be attractive options I think.  Kind of depends on how exactly they'd be powered, as to whether an actual aquaduct would be necessary, or just a canal.  For instance a water mill that just sits in a river might give X power while a wheel that has water falling on it from a height might provide power proportional to the height the water falls?  Or at least you get more power for water entering on top of the wheel, vs on the bottom?  That would make aquaducts attractive vs just putting the wheel in a stream or river.  Power could affect speed of operation, at the simplest.  If power is an actual quantity that transfers through machines, then it could determine how many machines and at what speed they would operate.

Also, on a prestige level, if some kind of fountain mechanic could be created, that might be an attractive reason to create aquaducts with cisterns perhaps.  There would be pipes from the cistern drain to the fountain, and the pipes would store the data of how high the original cistern is, and then you could place the fountain nozzle, and depending on how high the nozzle is vs the height of the cistern, you would get more or less of a tall spray of water?  I think people would enjoy that.

I think the hushing would only be efficient on large slopes if the vein actually follows the slope, and is at or very near the surface.  If it does not follow the slope you'll expose only a small portion of the vein, and if it's very deep at all, it'll be more attractive to just tunnel mine it.  Honestly the hushing thing seems like a historical precedent in search of a use, rather than a problem in search of a solution.  I just don't feel like there are any problems that it's a good attractive solution for, and I can't really think of a good problem to create to justify it either.  You'd have to drastically extend the dirt shoveling time, and I don't think that would fly.

As far as a different portal, when trying to make progress, only the east-west portals will be considered progress.  North and south portals are just the same tier, so you're not making any progress.  So even if the north/south islands are softer stone than the east or west you tried, you're still wasting a lot time on that island having to conquer it and activate it's portals, vs if you had just been able to progress east or west.  And the east/west option only works once, going from tier 0 to 1.  After you're on either of the tier 1 islands, you're committed, and now going back the other way just gets you to the same tier you were on, if you were on tier 1 and are back tracking through 0 to get to the other tier 1 side, or you're going backward if you're on tier 2.    You've either got the grind of tackling the entire island of hardened stone, or you're got the grind of having to conquer entire tier(s) of island you've already been at to get to the equivalent tier in the other direction.

I do like the idea of different stone hardnesses, including some that are extremely tedious to do with pickaxe, as obsidian is in vanilla, because I do think it provides opportunity for techs other than pickaxe.  But I just think those kind of super-hard stones should be in areas that are optional for the player, not forced upon them.  I think you can make fire mining a good option by not allowing the player to affect raw stone at all with their hands, and perhaps having very small deposits of poor copper in exposed cliff/hillside areas, providing the player a tempting opportunity to utilize fire mining, vs running around nugget hunting or doing the pan/sluice thing. 

11 hours ago, Stroam said:

I get that getting to the next island and discovering it's a hard stone could be disappointing but it's those disappointments that makes TFC what it is. Most would be bored if there weren't disappointments. I wouldn't want the game too easy, plus I'd take a large vein in a hard rock over a small vein in any rock any day.

I mean, there's the disappointment of having an ingot melt (momentary, part of the game rules, and the player's fault really), or accidentally ruining a crucible of blue steel (flaw in game mechanic, wastes a lot of time and material, but avoidable).   But then there's the disappointment of having to spend many, many hours more of tedious work that you wouldn't have had to spend if RNG had just flipped different.  It's similar to the frustration of having no flux nearby I think (which hopefully won't be a thing in TFC2), but longer and more definite, and unavoidable.  It's not really the best kind of game mechanic.   There's a balance that could be struck perhaps.  But I think it's a fine balance. 

I honestly think it'd be better to have harder stones at lower Y levels, so the player Doesn't hit entire island-sized slow-downs.  But they know that if they go down, they will hit harder stone.  Maybe with better veins.  I think TFC1 used to have a relation between Y level and size/quality of veins.  I'm not entirely sure why they got rid of it, but on paper it seems like a good idea to me.  Risk vs reward.  Let the player choose to tackle the harder situation when they're ready, rather than making it a surprise kick to the groin.

That is an interesting option, for powder kegs to turn blocks to rubble and gravel, vs disintegrating them.  And could avoid some or all of the ore crushing problems.  You could have a disintegration radius near the blast, where the ore is turned directly to drops, and then a further zone where it is turned to blocks of rubble and gravel.  Since rubble and gravel would presumably not be crushable, that would still allow the blocks above the disintegration radius to fall, while also preventing it from crushing ore below.  And since the player would still have to do the work of mining out the remaining rubble and gravel blocks, the effective radius could perhaps be larger and still be balanced.  I like it. 

Edit: and regards streams and soil, that's well and good if source blocks dont' move soil.  But what if the player *wants* actually flowing water, for the sound and look?  And they want it in a soil setting, without gravel.  I think it unnecessarily limits that, and probably isn't really much better than just using a shovel.  Especially when veins are now long and snaking, and not circular.  There will of course be rare situations where you would have natural water perfectly made to just remove a bit of dirt and do the erosion over the deposit, but otherwise I'm having a hard time imagining it being worth going through all the aquaduct hassle, vs just shoveling away the soil.

6 hours ago, Pwnlord said:

What's my best bet? Make a wooden platform atop the leaves, put a firepit on it, and wait?

Or just build it right by the trunk.  Probably a lot easier.  I forget, do flint and steel not start fires in TFC?  That'd be even easier if so, assuming you have iron.

19 hours ago, Pwnlord said:

I'm encouraged by the screenshots from Bioxx's Twitter, but I'm terrified of the idea of islands maybe a hundred chunks across with only a single variety of ore.

Each island region is 4096 blocks north and south.  There is a certain border region that can't have land, but generally speaking your islands are I think pretty consistently well over 3k blocks in diameter, iirc.  This is known.

As for ores, based on what Bioxx has told us in the past, for one thing, the early islands WILL have the things you need to tech up.  It's not been made clear yet if the starting island is stone-age only with copper on the next island, or if you can get to copper on the spawn island.  But if you are intended to reach copper on the spawn island, from what Bioxx has said we can assume there *will* be copper.  So maybe copper spawns in the X=0 islands regardless of stone type?  Or maybe only copper-bearing stones will be found in the X=0 zone?  We don't really know for sure - at least I haven't been able to deduce it from what we've been given so far.  I don't think it's currently the latter, but he it could probably be made so relatively easily.  For a time I wondered if ores would spawn regardless of stone type, based only on X values.  But all ores I've seen so far in TFC2 have been in their 'logical' stone types.  But, I've not seen tons of ores yet in TFC2.  They seem much rarer exposed above ground, and we don't have surface nuggets yet.  So i think almost all the ore I've seen has been naturally exposed in caves.

So that might address a couple of your concerns.  I share some of your others, and have expressed similar concerns before.  I guess we'll see where things go.

Definitely would love to see more detail and progression in mining. 

I like the idea of fire mining.  But I think for that to be useful, there will have to be no drops from using your fist to break a block (unlike in current TFC1, iirc).  But the stone age options could still be varied:  1) collecting ore nuggest from the surface 2) sluicing 3) panning 4) fire mining.  That's a lot of options really, but I like that they each address a specific need.  nuggets is the easy mode but limited, panning is tedious but unlimited (except by sand/gravel availability), sluicing is automated a unlimited (again by material), and fire mining get you more ore, but for more time invested, and is also limited.  fire mining is also very opportunistic - you have to have a deposit in just the right spot - at the surface.  I presume we would have a 'clay bucket' or something, to hold the water, unless buckets would not be metal age tech in TFC2. 

I'm not so sure on the dirt erosion thing.  It would limit player ability to make picturesque flowing streams, and may be problematic with the TFC2 terrain generation, even assuming gravel (which TFC2 seems to line most creeks with) is *not* washed away.

I do think the pickaxe as the main tool in extracting ore is a bit problematic, in that you can only extend the time so long before the player just won't do it anymore.   I think this limits the time spread you can have from the lowest to highest pickaxe.  I like water source blocks obeying gravity, I'm not so sure what you mean by '5 of 8 fills in the air'?  There's only 6 sides to any given block.  If you're counting diagonal blocks, and only the horizontal  plane, that seems a bit much.  I think the way it is now where any two horizontal sides causes it to fill in is fine.  Is there a specific issue the 5/8 ratio addresses?  Aquaducts are a fun idea, I'd love to see them necessary.  But I'm not sure erosion is the best thing.  I feel like water powered machinery might be a better use.  I feel like removing dirt by shovel would need to be more difficult before going to all the water hassle would be attractive.

I do like the notion of several grades of prodcut, leading to better and better extraction.   I'm assuming there would in this scheme be, for instance, 'granite gravel', and then 'gold-bearing granite gravel'?  You'd need to have both so normal gravel can spawn in streams and stuff without being easy-mode ore.  So rubble yields maybe just 20%, gravel 40%, sand 80%, and powder 100% of the ore potential?  That seems like a decent and compelling progression.  So the player is in a hurry, they can process the rubble and gravel.  If they want to get more efficiency they break up the rubble into gravel.  The player can make animal powered grinders to automate the process perhaps.  That's your stone age maybe.   Once they're into the metals, they can make water powered stamp mills to automate it better (powered by either aquaduct, or water wheel).  They can also build some form of rolling crusher mill to very slowly turn gravel to sand, but that's the best they can do in the stone age.    When the player gets engines, they can make a plate crusher that will turn rubble directly to sand.  And have a separate grinder to turn sand to dust, again, slowly.  And then maybe some further tech that can go straight from rubble to dust.  I like that this sort of chain allow you so make the player put it together in several ways.  They can make a chain of relatively inexpensive and slow single-purpose machines, or they can make a huge investment and make the power hungry all-in-one machine.  I think players love that kind of tech progression.   It may extend the life of a mine, by causing players to only mine what they need at the time, leaving the rest for when they have better tech/automation.  But, they still might choose to just mine what they can immediately, and store the rubble till later, especially in a multiplayer setting where someone else may find the stuff.  Although, if rubble is very hard to transport, maybe not.  Also if rubble does not fit in most containers, it would make the storage of said rubble a possible issue.

The yield gradient could be extended if the refining methods also teched up a lot, and affected the yield.  So pit kilning applies a 70% yield modifier, with with further techs being 80, 90, and finally 100%.  Or the smelting tech could be differentiated in other ways too, if the desire is to keep it simple.  Rich copper at 35 units x 40% for gravel x 70% for kilning, is asking the player to do a lot of maths (and equals 9.8 units).  But it would provide a lot of tech tree options.

I'm not sure wide variations in hardness of general stone types is a good idea, considering the current scheme of entire island being one stone type.  It makes for a rather disappointing moment when you reach you next island and find it's all granite and very difficult to mine.    I think it would make much more sense if certain desireable minerals were present only in extra-hard stone.  This might require some rearrangement of the stone types though.  So your general island stone is pick mineable, but you run across a vein of emeralds or rubies, and they're in obsidian, which is extra-hard.  I like this especially in the context of making explosives more useful.   I guess a lot depends on how faithful TFC2 intends to be to reality.  Or if it's feasible to have the islands be generally of sedimentary or metamorphic nature, but having igneous extrusions or small regions, which can contain more valuable ores.

One of the problems I always had with powder barrel mining in TFC1 was that to do it best you had to find the bottom of the vein and work up. Otherwise you were wasting ore via all the cobblestone that was generated falling and squashing ore blocks beneath.  It was also disappointing that powder kegs didn't work exactly as stated.  Near as I could tell, you got more radius if you mined out the immediate area around the powder barrel.  Even centering a barrel in a 5x5 area though, I think I never got more than a 16 or 20 block diameter chamber.  Certainly never anywhere near the 40 blocks claimed by the wiki.  And I tried it in all 3 stone types, with the exact same results.  I think if powder barrels are to be more attractive, it would be useful to change ore crushing mechanics - for instance only cobblestone/rubble blocks will crush ore blocks.  Gravel and sand will not.  And then powder kegs could be made to yield only gravel, thereby avoiding ore crushing.

The snakelike veins, I think we've already got.  I'm hoping this makes minecarts more useful.  But that will depend on how easy it is to carry ore/rubble/etc on one's person, vs in conveyances.

1 hour ago, KingOfAssasins said:

 Is here some command? or something like this to be able to die on hunger?

As I understand it, this is as intended.  You lose nutrition faster when you are starving, the idea being that eventually you end up with so few hitpoints due to nutrient deficiency that you are easy for mobs to kill.  But you don't actually die from hunger itself.  It used to work that way.  I presume they decided it wasn't a 'fun' mechanic.

So the bedrock holes can't be fixed?  My impression was that Bioxx was aware of them, but simply wasn't going to bother fixing them because the plan was to forbid access to those areas.

Transport between boats could be instantaneous, which is the shortest you can get.  Personally I'm fine with having indestructible ships or caravans or whatever.  I'd trade it for more free-form exploration and especially more varied island design any day.

From what I've seen of the island generation thus far, most of these islands are maybe 100-300 blocks apart at their close points.  Hardly what I'd call 'vast'.  That's a far cry from the endless ocean wastes of TFC1.  It's nothing as far as MC boat travel is concerned.

My other concern about the current portal situation is that you may end up with the player getting teched up, but possibly not finding the portal yet.  And now they're ready to move on to the next island, east or west but can't find it.  That could be frustrating if they just want to continue advancing, and not move parallel north-south.  These portals are sometimes hidden under trees.  If nothing else their structure could stand to be made larger so that they have a good chance of not being hidden by trees.  Ships on the other hand, being in open water, would always be very visible.

The easier mob transport via portal is a good point.  Ships would be harder to accomplish that with.  In the scope of a 'classic' ship design anyway.

If there's grand plans for the paths dimension that's great.   But kind of my two main points here are that 1) TFC2 progress is slow, and the portals and paths dimensions seem prone to bugs and just generally seem like another huge code time sink. And 2) the paths dimensions seems to be necessitating some very same-ey island design, and the very rigid nature of ocean travel.  The ocean travel thing is already a concern of several people I think.  Imo, it wouldn't be the worst thing in the world to cut loose the paths idea for now, leave ocean travel open, work on the more important nuts and bolts stuff, and maybe revisit paths later when the game is more playable.  Perhaps after playtesting combat to see if it is a sufficient advancement brake on its own. 

Glad ya like it Falcon.  I will say, there was a portion of the original thread that I think was lost when the post above yours was merged in, or during the forum switch or something.  As I recall it was Kitty or Bioxx explaining that minecraft doesn't provide the capability for a block to drop different drops based on the tool used.  They can only say "I'm broken, now I drop this!".   So my suggestion in that regard became more problematic.  I never responded to that issue, maybe I'll do that now:

So I'm not entirely sure how the new model system works exactly, but my impression is it's a bit more flexible than was initially thought in the chiseling discussion.  Apparently you can combine models together to a certain degree?  Idk.  But proceeding off that assumption, a way I thought to get around the block-drop conundrum was to have each specific tool change the 'slice' of meat to a new slice.  So there would be a 'meat' slice (default), and a 'bone' slice, and a 'tendon' slice, for example.  If the player wants to get a higher bone yield they right click with the bone-getting tool, and chance that slice to a bone slice.  Then that slice drops more bones.  Perhaps arrange it so each slice can only be changed once (so it requires a little thought), and perhaps also limit the number of bone/tendon slices a given haunch can yield.   That seems like it might work around the block-drop limitation?

It gets more complicated with more 'dissection-ey' stuff.   If a mob drops four haunches, even if you limit each haunch to one 'eye' slice for instance, the player could still theoretically get up to four eyes from one animal.  In such case you might have to limit mobs to dropping only two haunches (but you could still get two hearts or livers?).  Or you'd have to start making separate parts.   Haunches, rib cages, and heads - each limited on what slices they can produce.  That starts to kind of require several generic models of these things, or many animal-specific models.  Perhaps specialty items are only obtainable at the corpse stage? I would absolutely be down for making those models though.

Still a lot of issues at that level of detail, but maybe we'll be lucky to even get the first level of detail.  I'm hoping the current hiatus is kind of due to maybe waiting for 1.13 and the big changes with metadata and block ids?  Which if past patterns are followed might be in December?

On 8/7/2017 at 4:27 AM, Keen_Falcon said:

 But i don't like the idea of portal system....

Not sure why you phrased it with a 'but'.  I don't really like the portal system either.  So I think we're in agreement, though maybe for different reasons. 

The portal system as I understand it was basically brought in as a hard enforcer of island progression - the player had to defeat an island boss to get a key(s?) to activate the portals.  The boss being presumably very hard to beat without tiering up your weapons and armor.  But I think this could probably be tolerably enforced simply by having the armor-and-weapon-using mobs of successive islands equipped with better gear.  It's true that minecraft mobs are dumb, and a player could probably kill high-tier mobs while under-geared, if they really put in the effort and want to do it.  But it'll be more difficult - my alternate weapons and armor suggestion would specifically help address the issue.  In my original suggestion there, a weapon 1 tier below the armor would do 25% of it's damage.  So even if the player is dancing around the mobs, they're using 4x the durability of their weapon just based on number of hits, nevermind if gear takes more damage opposing higher tier metals. 

The really abusive part of minecraft is missiles, which mobs are usually ill equipped to handle.  But if taking on higher tier armor with inferior missiles, the player is going to be spending TONS of resources and time making all those arrows (metal arrow heads would NEED to be a thing in this system).  Combined with forbidding block placement before an area is conquered, I just really think the game can be balanced to mostly enforce/strongly encourage the metal tier progression without the hard enforcement of portals and boat forbiddance. 

The boat issue can be strongly discourage simply by strong ocean mobs hanging around the sector borders, or deep ocean chunks, I think.   I don't think it would be worth the player risking getting killed at sea and losing their gear, vs simply following the intended tiering pattern and being safer.  Or, as you say, have the option of purchasing passage on a ship.  The cost being perhaps 4-5x the metal amount required for a full kit of gear.  So the player can gear up and boat themselves at X cost, or pay for passage at 5X cost.  Maybe they can even build boat with hulls plated in the metal of the island tier, and that metal makes the boat immune to the specific mobs that are meant to prevent boating across sectors easily.   The nice thing about ship transport, it seems to me that it could simply be out in the ocean (but inside the border mob ring - player boats to shore in a normal little boat) and so not near as touchy about how and where it appears.  And no paths dimensions (well, at first maybe) so that avoids fiddling with that for awhile.   Just seems to me like it'd save some effort on Bioxx's part, and give players more flexibility, if they want a free-ocean-and-boating world.

36 minutes ago, LegendGamer said:

Do you need such an addon? Are you willing to support development financially? Waiting for your answers!

The devs have ceased development of TFC1, as they are developing TFC2.  They don't even do minor bug fixes anymore for TFC1.   I'm not one of them, but I can tell you that the answer to your questions is almost certainly no.  Especially the 'financial' question, considering TFC of both versions are free.

As I understand it, one of the major benefits of the island system is that it allows the use of discreet climatic zones, rather than a temperature gradient system.  The temperature gradient system was the thing that created the hard line of acacia forests near the equator.  I really like having climatic zones, because it allows a lot of interesting variation from island to island - even east-west - that wasn't possible in TFC1.  So ya, I think the island system is worth it.  The islands are usually pretty big, so it's not like it feels confining.  My only wish is to ditch the portal system, since it seems to have necessitated the islands all being rather same-ey in order to accommodate portal placement.  I really enjoyed the islands of earlier versions, where there were large internal lakes and such.  That doesn't seem to occur anymore.

Eh, nothing special about my technique in general.  I basically clear-mine level by level, leaving a 2-thick floor between.  I cherry pick the ores from this floor, and replace them with cobblestone to leave a smooth supported ceiling on the 'bottom' of the floor, and a smooth walking surface on the 'top' of the floor.   In between I mine alternating blocks to maximize raw stone gain (and naturally reduces pick usage a bit, since raw blocks pop off without the pick).   Easy to navigate, no dangerous drops, no jumping.  I like to keep it simple.  I'm not generally that concerned about time, and pick durability doesn't really concern me much, unless I'm at the very, very start, with my first copper or bronze pick - but then, I enjoy smithing and usually have 2-3 spare pick heads in a vessel on me at all times.  I just take it one 5x5 bay at a time, and stop going in a given direction when I get less than X ores per bay.  X varying depending on the ore in question and the richness, and how into mining I am at the time.  After I 'finish' a level, I wall off around the ladder shaft, and leave a door, so that when the level goes dark I don't have to worry about mobs jumping me on my way up/down. 

Interesting method.  I'm always curious to see how others mine as well.  You definitely fall on the organized side of things.  After you've got your framework set up, do you just sort of 'swiss cheese' mine the ores, or do you mine in organized levels?  It seems like you're setting up for swiss cheese, but your screenshots look like you've got some level organization going on.

Ok, I've made a few basic tiles: 

They are basket weave 1 and 2, dark bond left, dark bond right, herring, and soldier.  I think they're pretty versatile, as seen in the below image.  The soldiers as half slabs make good window sills and lintels, or on a stair block, good stairs or corbels. 

Herringbone and basket are mostly paving patterns, but you can sometimes find herringbone patterns in old structures, as infill.  IRL it's normally diagonal with relation to the framing, simply because it looks better that way.  The one on the right also has some basket weave.  Basket weave and Herringbone irl are not structurally strong, so they're ok infilling around structure like this, but you wouldn't have built an entire wall out of these patterns, back in the day. 

Here are I used only the left and right dark bond patterns to make 3 different larger wall patterns:

Due to our small tile size and even brick layout per tile, we'd probably be limited mostly to left and right diagonals, and then horizontal stripes, at least within standard running bond pattern.  Which is a lot of tiles to make anyway, even for just a couple bond colors.   Other bond patterns would bring other possibilities. 

I like that a lot.  I feel like he looks a lot more agile now.  I did notice the neck is clipping through the ears a bit, and maybe the head being default level or down a bit, rather than 10d up, might look better, in terms of default positioning.    I think the rear legs might look a bit better if the middle piece were more centered under the haunch.   Also the tail will need to be modified to address z-fighting.   Other than that I think it's looking good - powerful and dangerous!

1 hour ago, kurzninja said:

I've thrown down 4 rocks, 4 hay, and 4 sticks, and held down right click on them all with a firestarter.

I think it's supposed to be logs, not sticks?  Been awhile since i made one....

1 hour ago, kurzninja said:

Also, I've only ever found food once. I

They do seem fairly rare.  I seem to mostly find soggy ones but that's probably because I hang around rivers and lakes a lot.  The others do exist.  It's not really possible to survive right now, so don't sweat it.  It'd probably be more feasible if animals didn't 1-shot you.  It'd be really nice if there were more 'foraging' options available right now.  It could be awhile before we can hunt animals, as I'd imagine Bioxx still needs to finish animal behavior, then finish the combat code, possibly hunting mechanics, then implement different meats (maybe....butchering?) etc, etc.  There's still a lot of basic game building blocks out there yet to be done I think, before we really get the 'fun' stuff.

15 minutes ago, KronoNomikon said:

OK, so I redid it, but not with the extra joint on the back leg. 

Ok, so now in the context of your most recent post.   It's good, I still think the leg section above the paws could be thinner front to back.  At the same time, a texture might change my mind.  If he looks shaggy enough maybe the thick legs read as fur.   But my instinct is thinner.  I do like the back legs Stroam did, so I'd suggest going that route.   The front legs I'm ok with.  Like I mentioned preceding this post, columnar front legs are a good option I think.  I would however try to keep the shoulder box so that only the top corner sticks out of the chest, and not any of the other 3 corners.  I still think the paws look too fat.

I'm having a little trouble reading the head-neck-jaw area from those pics, a model would help.  Jaw might be a little long.  I think cheek puffs could be great, and they could fill in some of that area behind the jaw so you could shorten the jaw.  This is an area where we can take artistic license vs conventional portrayals.  I don' know if transparent cheeks would be the best route, this guy is a lot bigger than an ocelot - might be too insubstantial.  Might want to make it a solid block, with some slant to it, so that it doesn't read as too massive, maybe.  There's a lot of options there.  But make sure he doesn't have the derpy eyes.

OK, so I wrote up all of the following and was just about to post it right before you posted your most recent post.  So read all this without the context of your latest post.  I'll start a separate reply for that.

My main problem with the more 'real' legs is that they very likely are not going to be animated to move properly.  They'll just rotate where they join the body.  So you end up with a leg that looks all primed and ready to move, but it's just a solid wooden piece, and to me that's disappointing.  It also doesn't match well with the 'norm' in minecraft, of peg legs.  But for monsters, I'm trying to be more open to more detail.  Especially large ones.  What Stroam did there, is only 1 more box than the legs the 'normal' big cats have, and without the paw it's the same number as most of our current ungulates.  It's really just got the one angled piece in the middle, which is the same as elk and moose.  So the rear legs especially are really pretty close to our current norm.  The front legs have the extra shoulder box, but in this context that was kind of a 'special feature'.  The front legs are bending the opposite of the way they do irl though, which is jarring.   I'm much more comfortable with those back legs than the front, basically.

But, in both the front and rear what I like is that the haunch boxes are square with the body, and the paw and lower leg are square with the ground.  The mid-legs bridge the gap from the slanted body to the flat ground.  I feel like it's not as jarring as when the body is orthogonal to the ground, and there's a bunch of leg sections all at different angles, orthogonal to neither the ground nor the body.  The unfortunate thing is the front legs, the haunch by being square to the body is setting up the wrong bending mechanic.   I opened the model to play around with the front legs a bit, and I think the only way to make them work is either have them be a straight column, or have the haunch bend backwards, in which case the rest should probably be a column.  It breaks the orthogonal haunch relationship to the body, but as long as the rest is orthogonal, I think it could work.

All that said, I like what you did originally Krono (just maybe leg proportions a bit different).  I like that it matches better with the 'normal animals' we've already got.  And prehistoric animals are kind of a bridge between 'normal' animals, and monsters.   At the same time, I'm trying to be open for monsters to be more complex.  And so as a bridge creature, again, I'm also willing to entertain more complex legs.  If you would like to do the more complex legs, I'd say go for it.  Just try to limit them to one non-orthogonal piece.  And I should say, just to be clear for future monsters, I'll probably never be ok with things like using boxes just to try to make a slant between two other boxes.  But more boxes for more discreet structure or detail, I think is worth looking at.

I do kind of like the shoulder feature, so if I were suggesting, I'd probably say go for the shoulders. 

In terms of paws, regular big cat paws appear more square than long, I think, and more flat than tall. And ya, my understanding is that vanilla wolves, when their eyes turn red, that's a different texture.  And sheep shearing also just swaps textures.  The sheared version still has the wool box, it's just got no texture so it's invisible.  Same principle.  You could even have two jaws, one closed for 'normal mode' and one open for angry.  Just one or the other will be invisible at any given time.  My concern with claws is whether they'd look better as a simple vertical plane, or a fractional box.  I'm guessing fractional box, so that they're visible from the front.