dunkleosteus

I guess I should get around to posting this. I've been doing a youtube series to help explain the different features of the mod as I play through them. If you guys wanna check them out, I post daily episode at 6 pm EST. Here's the first episode, I hope it helps

I don't want to add carts if they're going to be too powerful, and if they can go anywhere I just don't see the point- things like this need advantages and disadvantages. It can't just be good all around. To elaborate, TFC is composed of obstacles and challenges that sort of make the player weave their way around and towards their goals. Each new challenge offers a chance for players to come up with new and interesting ways of overcoming them, and I think horse carts that can go anywhere over anything become a shortcut around and over these obstacles without posing any challenges themselves. I like the "I have to do Z because I need Y to do X" mindset. I want players to have to adapt to each new technology and ability.

in previous threads I've stated that if carts make it into TFC, they will only be useful on roads with chiseled slopes. Wheels have trouble with cliffs, soils and grasses. There's a reason rome built stone roads all over their empire- it's because horse carts and chariots have a heck of a time trudging through mud and sand.

Now that you've mentioned it, and after some research on my part, I agree that the mouse wheel is ideal for controlling the boom. As for the gaff, I think it would be best to automate it. It would be nice to be able to render such changes in the sail, but having it controlled by the player is a bit much. I think in the end, the movement of the boat will be controlled by the rudder, with the D key turning the boat to the left and the A key turning it to the right. The mouse wheel will be used to control the boom's rope, although how that would specifically attach to the boom and the boat is something I'm a little lost on. Scrolling up would let out more rope and scrolling down would haul in rope. The sail itself will attempt to swing with the wind in the correct direction, it will be the player's choice as to how far they will allow the sail to go, thereby controlling the speed of the boat. After some thought, I wonder if W and S can be used for gaff control? It's my understanding that they can adjust how much of the sail is exposed to the wind. That if the peak lanyard is pulled and the throat lanyard is relaxed, the gaff itself would be brought parallel to the mast and the boom brought upwards, in a way folding the sail. Giving a sail a larger or smaller surface area might be helpful for controlling the speed of the boat. If you wanted more control, a small sail might put an absolute limit on the speed of the craft regardless of wind position and sail orientation, to help players maneuver in smaller spaces or closer to a dock or shore. I think one of the advantages of the gaff rig is that the boom is permanently at an angle relative to the deck, away from the heads of the crew. As mentioned before, the boat will have 2 spaces in it besides the player operating it. The spaces could have blocks (a chest or barrel perhaps) or an entity, like a player or animal. Whether or not a swinging boom would hit players in these locations is a good question, but one I don't have an answer to right now. This is the closest diagram I can find to what I'd like to have

Wheels can't handle 1 m ledges very well. The diameter of the wheel probably wouldn't exceed 1 m, so I think they'd have quite a time rolling up vertical wall. Dog sleds are probably out of the question, but horse carts aren't completely farfetched

Thank you for the input I like the idea of inverting the rudder controls. About the boom however, I'm reluctant to assign a key like the mouse wheel to the boom. wasd cannot be used when steering as you must stay in the same place, but it's conceivable that one might want to be able to scroll between items while sailing (if for example you're preparing to use an item, such as a sword to defend yourself). If my memory is correct, you'd be holding a rope attached to the boom in order to maintain the angle against the wind to pull the boat. More or less rope would have to be let out to compensate for changes in boat direction relative to the wind. I wonder if you think w and s could be used as originally stated to pull or give slack to the rope on the boom. EDIT: I've done a bit of research and I think I want to use a gaff-rig on the sail boat. It seems to be pretty good for single-sailed small boats, but I've run into some difficulties finding information about how each rope is used to control the shape and position of the sail. Are the throat and peak halyards that important, or can we sort of automate them? Where do the ropes attach and where do you manipulate them?

if anything, we would add sandstone as a rock type.

If you read the canoes thread, you will see that Bioxx and I have agreed that canoes are a great way to integrate water travel into TFC, and I discussed the later possibility, feasibility, and implications of small sail boats. For a quick recap: canoes are manually powered, steered and propelled by paddling. Canoes could possibly hold two players or just one. Sailboats are just hypothetical, more of a thought experiment than anything else. Sail boats would probably be 4-5 blocks long and have ~3 blocks of space with in them, two of which could contain a block of some sort, such as a chest or barrel, or if left empty, an entity like a player or animal. The last space in the boat would be reserved for the operator to handle the rudder.

"Cuneiform characters were imprinted on a wet clay tablet with astylusoften made ofreed(reed pen). Once written upon, many tablets were dried in the sun or air, remaining fragile. Later, these unfired clay tablets could be soaked in water and recycled into new clean tablets. Other tablets, once written, were fired inkilns(or inadvertently, when buildings were burnt down by accident or during conflict) making them hard and durable." All things considered, I think making them permanent is probably best. The other option would be to completely erase the tablet if you want to correct a mistake. As for the first bit, I meant in terms of code! The book code is a mess, and I don't like trying to work with it.

The problem with this is that books are damn-awful to try to mess with, they're so finicky. I also agree that books are currently easy enough to get that this isn't really helpful. However, it could be made useful i guess. IRL books were very difficult to get for a long time because the materials were expensive. I remember a prof saying that a bible in the middle ages would have taken something like 50 cows worth of leather to make all the pages. Many people were lucky to get their hands on a single cow, let alone 50 of them. Obviously, (I don't want to scare anyone here) we can't make players slaughter 50 cows to make books. For starters, that's many, many more cows than you could reasonably find, and secondly, books aren't THAT important. If storing and recording information was more interesting / useful, I can understand why they might warrant a crafting change. As for clay tablets, I can see them as an early game alternative to books. A tablet would have a single "page" worth of text space, but wouldn't allow you to erase what you'd entered. They'd have to be fired to "finish" them. Possibly include an impetus to fire them, maybe raw clay tablets would eventually get damaged? Anyway, once you have your fired clay tablet, you can reference it as much as you like. Another interesting feature would be to allow them to be placed via right-click to function as a sign. You'd be able to get them before wooden signs and they'd have more text on them, but the smaller surface area and font would mean the words would probably be pretty cramped. Additionally, you wouldn't be able to edit them as you can with a sign. Just a thought. Discuss if you like.

possibly

Where did you download the mod from? This website?

As a player I could see the fun in this. As someone who would have to try to code this... x_x

This is age related. Somehow, the in-game date is before the birthdate of these animals. Have you adjusted the in-game time in any way? Have you changed the time of day in any way, shape, or form? Any way of doing this without using TFC's overwritten "time set" or "time add" commands will cause a problem. If you need it to be day or night, use "time set day" or "time set night". These will set the time to the NEXT day, whereas by default it would set it to the FIRST day.