Darmo

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.

On 3/8/2017 at 4:04 AM, ciekma said:

Much to many rules. It wont work even if only trusted friends are playing.

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.

On 3/6/2017 at 5:24 AM, DankNStein said:

Has this ever been done? ...Like, a UHC in Terrafirmacraft...

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.

1 hour ago, Cavelurker said:

2. What is "RNG",

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.

7 hours ago, holyass said:

If they set up a donate link then i will gladly give money to help speed or even make it slowly grind ahead.

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 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

1 hour ago, Stroam said:

It's an observation on how little socializing beyond a few people is on minecraft. I don't think it has an inherent fairness.

I was trying to be diplomatic.  If you want to mince words, my first instinct was to call that criticism myopic.

1 hour ago, Stroam said:

Doesn't this just strengthen the point that it's not really designed for people who want to socialize?

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? 

1 hour ago, Stroam said:

I totally agree, but I think it's still niche.

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. 

11 hours ago, Stroam said:

Now there are 5 islands North to south that don't get any harder.

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.

11 hours ago, Stroam said:

 Even going through the public servers they generally aren't that big. So again not TFC 2's audience.

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.

2 hours ago, chepelink said:

I do agree with you on this. People like discovery and achievement. The thing is that magic research is not the only way to achieve this; the island progression is another way. ... how much research can you put into magic (and other things for that mater) that does not break the main goal? Is innate a better approach to not padding the game too much?

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.

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!

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

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

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.