Darmo

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

I could see fletching affecting accuracy.  I think it would be beneficial to keep the bow from being so OP early on.  I think shaft weight is maybe a bit much, unless it were wood vs metal - metal being some sort of high level arrow for an super-bow for uber-monsters.  But I'd say range would be better dealt with by the weapon itself (bow, longbow, composite, crossbow, etc)

I'd bet money the devs will have no interest in making a different arrow item for every type of wood (in combo with every type of metal head, not to mention fletching), so sticks will probably remain the shaft of choice, I'd guess, though a straightening mini-game could be interesting. 

I'm not any kind of archer, but I do know leaves, and I'd think most would make pretty poor fletching, as they're mostly very fragile.   Also there's no assets for leaves currently that I'm aware of.  In the scope of items with current assets, I could see leather being a passable alternate.   Maybe paper as well, but a paper fletched arrow is always destroyed when it hits, leaving just the metal head behind.

For that matter, I think it'd be good if stone headed arrows are destroyed entirely if they hit any stone blocks, with metal ones having a decreasing chance of being destroyed as you go up in tiers.  Arrows hitting higher tier armor should have a chance of being destroyed, increasing with tier disparity.

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

PS - I don't think you have to worry about chiseling, last we heard, it was perhaps a possbility, but very low on the priority list.

The issue is kind of what are the actual game benefits to carpentry?  The amount of effort a player puts into the smithing system is clearly justified via increased durability and damage (through both tier and player skill) and some items requiring higher tier metals to make at all (mine carts, mine tracks, hoppers).

You could make a system where the player can make furniture, and have it be higher quality, but what purpose will that serve?  If there are merchants the player could sell them for more money.  Carpentry for magic staves or wands wouldn't really be my first choice for obtaining those things, personally, but it's an option.   A bed could perhaps affect hp gain on sleeping or something.  Or the chance of actually sleeping the night away.  Higher quality chests could have bonus slots perhaps.  Or weight capacity, if they will have one.  Better barrels = more capacity, or lower weight?  Better support beams support farther?  Most of these kind of strain the logic, but if you're going to try to make carpentry into a smith-like trade, it's going to need to have defined, very desirable benefits I think.  Not just the pride of a chair having "excellent" tagged onto the front of it.

I'm not sure that fletching needs to be particularly complicated, but we should definitely have metal arrow heads.  I would say they should not do (much) more damage though as you go up in tiers.  It should be an arrowhead vs armor thing, where the tier of the arrowhead must be at least 1 greater than the armor, in order to do full damage.  Otherwise it is reduced an additional amount - or stopped entirely. 

So for example copper arrow vs leather armor = full damage, copper vs copper 1/2 damage (in addition to general armor damage reduction), and copper vs bronze armor = 0 damage.   Then, you could allow the player to make Bodkin tips which would increase the effectiveness of the arrow by 1 tier for piercing purposes, but have a base damage 50% of a broadhead.  This would basically make them only useful for attacking a target with higher armor tier than you have arrowheads, since you otherwise could not harm such a target at all.

Presumably there might also be magic to enchant armors, perhaps alternate armor materials, that might need to be kept related for purposes of arrow piercing.  Not to mention monsters and such that probably won't wear armor, but will need to have a natural armor that simulates a certain tier.

Yep, I picked that up, and you're right that method has advantages, including possibly being easier to code I'd guess.  TFC doesn't have "biomes" in the way MC does though, terms of it dictating vegetation - it basically just dictates the topography from what I understand.  So a "plains" biome can have a dense forest, or no trees at all.  Treeless mountains, or heavily forested ones.  So to be somewhat realistic there'd need to be a check for trees nearby, if not a specific kind of tree, and/or rainfall. 

I thought actual blocks that spread would allow the player to sort of farm truffles - more a matter of discovering them, not taking them all, and waiting for them to multiply - as opposed to just randomly happening upon them.  But the notion of having a truffle pig to help improve the chance would be a good way to allow the player to influence the chance to get them too.

Ya, this definitely would have been better in the TFC2 suggestion forum - maybe Kitty can move it there?   From what we've been told of TFC2 so far, it will be much more combat focused, with progressively harder enemies.   So in that context it may be a bit easier to fit in yet another ranged weapon, in a way that makes sense.  The current game really has no need, as the bow is already relatively simple to make and can 1-shot zombies. 

The recipe would definitely need to be more than sticks.  Otherwise why would anyone ever use a normal javelin?  Adding leather is a step in the right direction.  I'm not super-familiar with them, but aren't atlatl javelins rather smaller than a normal one?  More like a large arrow?  So maybe you trade better range for reduced damage?  I definitely agree with Tony it would be good to make wild mobs keep a good distance away from the player - the ones that can't fight back that is >:-D  But even if these things were true, the bow recipe might need to be re-thought, as it's not terribly hard to obtain currently.

I did find this and this to be interesting discussions though, of relative benefits of javelin vs atlatl (vs amentum)

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

But in general, I think more mushrooms (real and fantastic) and uses for them would be awesome, especially if there were cave varieties as well, to bring some more variety to caves.

I've been trying to help out with new animal models and textures. I'm sort of meandering through the natural world creating whatever animals catch my imagination, which of course leans toward large animals right now. Irl, the tropics have the largest and most interesting animals, so a lot of them have been from there. I think it'd be great if TFC2 natively had as many animals as any mod out there! 

I build the model and make a texture - I'm no coder though, so Bioxx has to do the coding, but it doesn't take too much time, from what I'm told, so no worries about dev time being used up on 'scenery'. I guess I'm a passable texture maker, but I'm sure there's better folks out there, and I wouldn't mind collaborating with someone, if they wanted to do some textures for models, and help make TFC2 that much richer, that much faster.  If someone were interested in that, they could PM me to discuss.

As for the lapis, did you actually see it, or just get a propick reading?  If propick reading, were you near mountains?  In mountains, the mid layer is uplifted to be very close to the surface, and often it is exposed to where you can see it.  Marble can be a mid-layer rock, so you may simply be near an uplift of marble. 

As for silver, rng unfortunately.  I've had really good luck with surface gneiss before - lots of silver nuggets, seemed more common than cassiterite nuggets in it's native stones to me.  I don't know if granite and gneiss have different chances to generate silver nodes.  If you found a surface area of granite that's 1k square or more, I find it hard to believe you've not seen any silver nuggets at all though, if you've searched systematically and it's not covered in dense forest.

I do think it would be good to find a way for Borax to be more desirable than it is right now.  I'm not sure anyone cares about it.  It's only found in rock salt, and only yields 3x flux of regular flux rocks.  You'll probably use less durability on your pick, and have an easier time, just mining flux rocks, rather than searching out a borax vein and using up a bunch of pick durability breaking the rock salt to get to the flux.   I think that borax is a mineral that is 'technically' useful, but really isn't because there's easier options.  It's basically just a lifeline if you have no other flux stone around, but happen to have rock salt. 

I think it'd help if it provided some kind of bonus to items welded with it, though most tools only use 1 ingot so it wouldn't help them.   If any special smithing stuff came into the game (like pattern welding) it could be the only flux suitable for that. It could also be the only acceptable flux for the procedural metals.  Those are late enough game it shouldn't be such a problem for newbs right?

I don't know if money would even help, or be legal in this situation, but I think that if there were going to be kickstartering, the better way would be for features.  Like Kickstarter here for TFC2 magic system, and if X amounts are donated then certain features are added.  The idea being the money allows the devs to devote more time.  But that assumes they have any more free time than they already use - obviously there'd have to be a basically functional world first, on par with TFC1.  But it wouldn't surprise me if they'd get a lot more donations for specific features, vs just the generic donation buttons at the top of the forum.  It would create a certain amount of pressure though, and it wouldn't surprise me if they want to avoid that.

It could also be much simpler goals - kickstarter here for more clay building material X amount for mud bricks,  X+Y for red clay bricks, X+Y+Z for clay roof tile, etc.  There's thousands of game-worthy ideas.  But which ones do people REALLY want?   The community could effectively vote with their pocket books as to the kinds of additions they want for the game. 

In before Kitty merges this with my previous butchering suggestion.  You should really search the forums for duplicative suggestions.

That said, you touched on animal familiarity via food.  How will the player feed the animal if it runs away?  Perhaps the player has to toss 5 ounces on the ground, back off, and then the animal comes and eats this, and if the player does this 5 times (separately, not one big lump of food) then the animal will let them approach?  It could be huge grain sink.  A bit off-topic though, in the scope of butchery.

Also heads on the wall would be cool.  But probably low priority.

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

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

If I might use an analogy, the 'old' pre-1.8 system was smart - like legos.  You could use your 512 lego blocks to build any type of 8x8x8 block you wanted, and place it.   The new system is 'dumb'.  Each 8x8x8 block is carved from wood, like a child's alphabet block.  The dumb game just quickly grabs one and plops it down.   No assembly required.  Faster loading, but requires a lot of storage.

The number of variations is incredible. According to a quick google,  the volume of our sun is 1.4x10²⁷ cubic meters.  I believe Kitty's number is 1.3x10¹⁵⁴?   (Full disclosure, I'm bad at maths)  So...if each variation were a RL cubic meter, you'd have to have a number of blocks ready to go, roughly 6x the volume of our sun.  If I'm doing this right...

Ah, so in your gridded example, maybe you can only remove any individual box if it has at least two sides 'exposed'.   That would mean you'd have to start from the corners, and would prevent people from starting on edges, or in the middle.  That's cool, and I like how it would sort of trend towards an octagon or diamond shape if there were flaws in all corners.

As for the pointers, I see your point.  I was trying to make it into something that required some real skill, like blacksmithing does.  Blacksmithing requires an irl ability to multitask and balance a lot of 'coals in the fire', as it were, and also a lot of logic.   I was going for something that required good hand-eye coordination and logic and timing.  But there's definitely nothing wrong with the single matches at a time.  It could still respond well to skill, equipment, and the other stuff.

One of the interesting notions to me, is the idea of there actually being people with different professions on multiplayer servers.   Right now there's only one real profession.  Nothing else is remotely so time consuming or skill demanding as smithing (well, .  In my mind I was ultimately seeing a player economy line with smiths/miners' prospecting skill affecting the number of flaws in the raw gem ore, which they trade to a gemologist, who refines it and sells it to a magician.  The idea being that the smith, gemologist, and magician don't really have the time to master all these skills individually.   Unlikely, I know, but it's fun to think about.

As for uses, any magic implications are definitely up in the air.  I wasn't thinking so much of them being an individual spell component, but that you might for instance use them to make a wand.  And the carat weight of the gem might dictate how many charges, while the quality of the gem could influence the power of the spell, with a minimum quality to use the gem at all in magic.  Maybe Excellent or above in the examples I gave.  So one gem would provide multiple spells, rather than requiring a gem for each spell.

Gems also might be used in alchemy possibly, in a crushed form.  Assuming alchemy is ever a thing of course.

Beyond those, if there's traders and/or boats that charge for passage in the game, then the player would theoretically just be selling/trading the gems in order to buy goods or passage to other islands.  There's not really any game mechanic that would force the player the hoard them.  It would actually be interesting if boat captains only accepted gems as payment.  Then the player would either make their own, or buy gems from a gem merchant.  If a player wants to hoard gems they can, but I think systems could be designed such that it's not required.

Preforming could using a 10x10 knapping interface where a series of flaws are randomly dispersed around the stone. Only tiles along the edges could be removed. Therefore, to remove a flaw half way into the stone, a large portion from 1 connected area must be worked away to reach it.

So like, if they remove any given box with a flaw, they have to remove all the other boxes either in that row or that column, and they have to start at the outsides?  That's probably a lot easier to code that what I'd been thinking, but still maintains the idea of letting player's code-skill help them out.  I like it.

P4. Stop the various sliders at the appropriate times

Ah, see I'd been thinking stop the various sliders all at once, trying to get them all aligned as closely as possible with one button click.  Which could be very difficult, and why lots of slurry would be need for more than a few pointers.  Stopping them one at a time would be easier, but I guess if there's multiple sliders it would still increase the time it takes, and you could add more pointers overall without making it insane difficult.  I do think it'd be better if there were two moving points to match at any given time, as opposed to just one moving point and a stationary target.  Maybe save the more difficult all-moving matchup for magic crafting or something...

Practically speaking this could lead to zillions of unstackable, unique items, which becomes a storage nightmare.... To keep it simple ingame I think keeping/expanding the stackable discreet quality system that exists in TCF1 would be a much more practical approach.

I guess I don't see it as a big problem.  That kind of already happens with smithing tool heads.  You go from being able to cast 8 bronze pickaxe heads and carry them in a single vessel slot, to having each one turn out different due to the durability bonus from smithing, so then you need two entire vessels to carry those 8 steel heads, at least until you've maxed your skill maybe (I've never maxed my toolsmithing skill so I'm not sure).

As long as gems have a use, they wouldn't necessarily build up into an insane number.   There could also be a specialized gem storage cabinet that only accepts gems, but has as many or more slots as a double chest, while only taking one block.   And a portable gem case that has as many slots as a single chest (with some stack limits).  Both would not accept rough gems.  Maybe they accept preformed ones, maybe not.

If simple descriptors were the order of the day, I'd suggest not using ones that are specific to a flaw, like cracked or chipped.   Just a more generalized gradation using words like inferior, poor, average, beautiful, excellent, gorgeous, exquisite, flawless.

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

Since I made this topic, discussion has happened that makes it it seem like merchants will be a thing in TFC2.  So it seems like perhaps gems may be useable as money more or less.  So that's hopeful for gem useage.

We've also learned that ore veins will have a new behavior, more like actual veins.  I think this might make for a good argument for gems to be actual blocks, rather than random appearances.  They could appear in association with ores, as many RL gems do.  This would allow them to appear in small pockets, and the player would still be able to find them as long as they are adjacent to, or at least within propick range, of an ore vein, because it seems like veins might mostly be continuous now, rather than scattered all over the stone.  

This might help low tier metal veins remain of interest throughout the game.   As an example, if the player knows a certain gem is associated with copper, they may be more inclined to search through a copper vein, even if they have no great need of the copper itself.  From the perspective of limiting block numbers, it might be good if a specific gem is associated with a given ore IN COMBINATION with a given rock type.  So a certain gem only forms adjacent to iron that is in chalk or claystone.  That way there doesn't need to be 8 different textures for that one gem ore block.  Just the two that are in the associated stones.

LAPIDARY MECHANICS

As for actual mechanics, I think we could possibly have a 2-step process - and here I'd love to hear from Sayreg or anyone else who has actual experience.   But for the first step, maybe the player is trying to remove flaws from the rough stone.   I *think* that gemstones are cut with chisels, to come up with a rough shape for lapping?  Or maybe in the past anyway, before diamond saws?   So the player could have a workbench for this that has a slot for hammer and chisel.  And certain harder gemstones may require higher tier chisels, and/or remove more durability from lower tier chisels.  Perhaps a gemologist loup could be required - made of a piece of leather, a tuyere of any metal, and a piece of glass (properly polished glass if glassworking ever comes in)

STEP 1 - rough gem

The first actual minigame would be a simple rectangular gem face, and depending on the gemologist level of the player, certain flaws will show up.  Chief among these would be:

FISSURES - these would show up as lines across the entire surface.  Some are obvious at no skill, others only with some basic skill

GRAIN LINES - as fissures, but requires higher level skill to see, some only show up at top level

CARBONS - single pixel specs, lower levels see them

Crystal needle inclusions - a line of a few pixels - medium level skill to see

Crystal Inclusions - single pixels, requires higher level skill

Knots - a small cluster of pixels - visible with no to low skill

Clouds - a small cluster of pixels - visible at low to medium skill

So the player at low level can see some flaws, but there may be others that only a higher skil gemologist can see.  The player must make cuts to try and remove the flaws from the rough gem (we need a name for this intermediate step - cabochon isn't technically correct, but I'm not sure what other term would fit between the rough gem, and the finished gem, so for this post I'll refer to this intermediate step as a 'cab').    So, based on player skill, they get a cabochon of a certain weight.  ALSO, they may introduce further flaws, such as scratches, cavities, or cleavage.

So, the first step is all about the player's in-game skill, and what it lets them see, having a good enough chisel, and using up some of the durability.

STEP 2 - Faceting

For faceting, I like Sayreg's idea of a marker in motion, because a flat lap is in constant motion.   However, a single moving pointer seems a bit too simple.  I think a more complex system might be justified.

As a first optional step, the player choose a pattern for the cut.  Maybe there's several different ones, and which affect the value (and maybe other functions?).  Now, depending on which pattern they choose, it gets more difficult.  The basic game is two moving pointers (perhaps moving in a circle, like a flat lap?) that the player tries to "finish" by hitting the button when they line up.  And as Sayreg suggested, the closer the alignment, the better the result.  The higher the player skill, the more leeway for matching.   But there's more!

 

Higher difficulty patterns and more valuable gem material add more pointers and/or increase the speed!   So instead of matching up two, you're trying to match up 3, 4, or even more!  This would quickly become very difficult.  However, the player has options:

 

-Higher skill could reduce the number and speed of pointers possibly. 

-Also the material of the lap might play a major factor - a copper lap wears out fast and has many rings to match, a diamond lap lasts a very long time, and reduces the rings. 

- The player can use various abrasive slurries to decrease the speed of the rings.  This could be a good use for currently unused materials, or to maintain some useage for low tier metals.  These speed reductions are only temporary though as the slurry wears off, so the player must act fast.   Each time slurry is added removes a small amount of carat from the finished stone, wears down the lap a bit, and has a chance to add a scratch flaw to the finished product, so the incentive is to use as little slurry as possible.

 

In general, I think that pointer speed should be mostly a function of slurry, with number of rings a function of mostly equipment, and the 'hit area' a function mostly of the game skill. 

The end result would be a minigame that is possibly even more difficult to master than smithing, and maintains some of the urgency via slurry use, and yet it is not just smithing with different button names.

In this way, player with RL skill could get acceptable results from low grade equipment, on medium grade stones.  But low skill and low equipment should be able to keep high value stones out of reach, because the player will have to use huge amounts of slurry to slow the low tier flat lap enough to facet their 10-moving-pointer diamond in a fancy pattern.  There's honestly enough factors, this system is almost limitless in terms of gradating it for skill, materials, tools, etc.   It could be a powerful addition to the magic system, if magic is largely based off gems and crystals.

Allowing the player to skip islands and go around willy nilly are just not in the cards for how I see the game playing out. The loss of control that boats create makes it a lot harder for me to balance all of the parts.

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

As far as bugginess, aren't there new boats for MC 1.9?  Does anyone know if they're any better than the current ones in terms of mechanics?

Just to add a couple other thoughts; bad temperament/aggression doesn't necessarily have to mean toward the player - which if we're being honest would be only an annoyance in many cases, not a true danger.  The aggression could be toward other animals as well. 

So especially aggressive males will attack any other same-species male they see, and other animals in general sometimes.   Aggressive females become extremely aggressive towards other species when they have just given birth.  Moreover, aggressive animals could attack and destroy wooden fences and gates, requiring stone walls or other means to pen them in.  So then even an aggressive pig becomes  a problem because it might kill other pigs, or destroy fences letting other animals roam free.

Also, bad temperament could mean the animal is very hard to rope.  It sometimes seems like this is the case already, as some animals seem to take several tries for the rope to stick.  Though this could be my janky mouse.   But it would be another way to reflect bad temperament in a way other than attacking the player.

Thought I'd post this link to a TFC LP where the guy muses about the crafting system of TFC vs Ark & others.  Always interesting to hear candid opinions.   Skip to about 3:50 to hear his musings over crafting.

Thanks for those clarifications Kitty & Bioxx.  So, if exotic left and right click functions are to be avoided, the tool could be used in a right-click instant fashion still?  You toss planks onto the barrel jig, right click the jig, jig looks for nearby crafting table, finds the planks floating on it and changes to a jig block with partial barrel.   Toss hardware on top of partially-complete-barrel-block, right click on block with tool, jig looks for nearby crafting table, finds hardware floating on top, pops out a finished barrel and returns the block to empty jig form?  No tier benefits to tool, but could still subtract durability I guess.  On the user-friendly level, I kind of feel like this is not any more confusing then some of the other process blocks.  If they understand a bloomery they should understand this.

Or maybe Miner's setup is simpler from a coding perspective, since it could apply to many kinds of items within a group (if not all items)?   I like very much that is has the processing arrow and could (hopefully) incorporate tool tier into the time to complete the item.  So rather than instantly sawing up a log stack, or completing an entire plank stack, it could take some time per unit?   It still limits the amount of materials in the recipe to the grid unfortunately.   I feel like most of the other stuff is a bit superfluous (and potentially rather confusing to a newb), unless variable efficiency ore refining is going to be a thing.   

As far as a more workshop-like environment, having all that functionality in one block probably won't help that aspect, unless it's a matter of the crafting bench just checking for various scenic workshop blocks around it.   If the crafting bench weighs a ton, and is somewhat difficult to craft, that may at least encourage it to be used in a specific area, rather than just being carried around like a toolbox.  If hardware had a specific container all it's own, and was also heavy to discourage it being carried around by the player on trips, it might encourage the player to have a hardware bin in the shop, near their bench and tools and so forth.  You could do things like require the player to soak the lumber in a barrel (encouraging a barrel to be in the shop) before tossing it in the jig.  But then you have a new item (soaked lumber). 

In the context of a bench gui with processing arrow, looking around it, it could add a slightly different dimension if processing some things could go *faster* if certain tool blocks are near the bench.  So you'd only HAVE to have a handsaw or whatever tool to produce a thing, but if you have a sawmill, drill press, planer, etc, it goes faster.  Maybe rather than requiring inter-block checking, which I don't know if that's simple,  these adjacent speed-enhancing tools could be activated in some way (powered?), and then provide an area of effect 'enchantment' bonus to speed of doing things?  Area of effects from blocks are a standard mechanic right?

PS as an aside, I'd suggest that specialized slots - for instance the hammer and flux slots of an anvil (but also tool slots if this revised grid has them) - have a grey silhouette of the thing that goes there.  I've watched some LPs where people get really confused by those slots, trying to put ingots and all kinds of stuff in them.  It might help a bit if there was a visual clue.  Just a thought.

Edit: The barrel making suggestion above is NOT simple. Anything which requires scanning a block to make sure that a certain valid shape is found is usually more difficult to make work than you would think.

Is this referring to Tony's barrel making, or mine?  You say a 'valid shape' so I'm assuming Tony's.  Does that mean that assemblages like the forge, bloomery, and BF are also not simple to code and should be avoided?  Are you talking more about certain valid shapes within a single block space, like a lumber assemblage?  Or you're talking more about simple for the player to understand?

Loose Item Processors

What about the case I suggested of a block that looks for certain items in certain quantities tossed on top of it? Does having no GUI keep coding significantly simpler?  Is that base block looking for loose items on top simple enough?  It seems like a lot of other mods use it, so I thought it might be familiar to players of regular mc.   I tried to keep it to one step because I wasn't sure we wanted to draw out barrel making too much, given it's provides some basic items for other trades, inventory organizing, etc.   I tried to keep it to basically one intermediate step.  It could easily be expanded on though.

Can Left-click output different items from same block?

Also, though I've used it in a few suggestions, I've never seen it clarified:  the left-click-block-breaking process, can that be made to output different items from a single source block, depending on the tool and/or tier of tool used to break it?  Or is it a pretty binary system where you break this block, you get this item, no matter how or with what you break it?  I need to stop suggesting it if that's not even a (simple to code) possibility.

Can right click simulate time and tier factors of left click?

If the above left click stuff is not a possibility, can the right-click be used to bring in the time/material factor?  It seems like right clicking is more versatile, and can even have it's own sounds where left button function all uses the same thumping no matter the tool.  I'm thinking here of the firestarter, how it has its own sound.  It'd be cool for saws and hammers to have their own sounds.  It seems like right button functions could *approximate* time based on randomness, like how the firestarter can be fast or long, depending on what I assume is a randomness (though whether the code is on the firestarter, or the block, I don't know). 

 

But would it be a simple and useful thing, to make the right click function, instead of using a random number, have a some sort of 'timer' that fills up and then executes, to approximate tool tier time?  If the firestarter checks for success every 1/2 second or whatever, could a saw for instance, increment a number on itself when being used continually on a block, and once that number reaches a certain point it turns the block into whatever and resets its timer to 0?  So that could in a way bring some time factor into right-clicking of tools?  And it could play an actual appropriate tool sound while doing it?  

 

So in my earlier examples, the rough chest might use a hammer to finish it, and a copper hammer will finish slower than a steel one, but they will both make hammering sounds while processing?   The barrel could use a saw to finish, and make saw sounds?   Even if a defined timer isn't possible, could the different tool tiers have different randomness factors?  So all tiers can complete it virtually instantly, but on a long average, a better tier will complete more jobs faster than a lower tier?  is This idea 'simple' enough to be useful?

I apologize for getting a little off topic here with process questions, but I feel like for me at least, I could make better honed suggestions with a little clarification on some of these mechanics above, and if multi-block assemblages like forge, bloomery, bf, are to be avoided.