Credinus

I can certainly sympathize with his reasons (see my post here where I mentioned similar thoughts once TFC2 was announced: http://terrafirmacra...4044#entry54044 ). I've stopped running my TFC server and only hop on single player now and then just to marvel at the scenery (which is quite enjoyable). I'm still fairly active in making suggestions over in the TFC2 forums because I sincerely hope that TFC2 can address the harsh progression drop-off we currently have in TFC1, since there is so much potential with the mod and what the mod does have is incredibly unique and creative. It concerns me that the driving focus behind TFC2 is all about "survival" though, since a frustratingly difficult experience isn't my cup of tea. A shame to see his TFC series end like it did; I've seen every episode and it was his Let's Play that made me try the mod out in the first place. Hopefully the ending serves as a nudge to Bioxx on what's really missing in TFC while he works on TFC2.

It seems like English probably isn't his/her primary language, I wouldn't jump to attacking their grammar so fast. As far as he/she is saying, I completely agree. The stone "wall" blocks can be emulated using a chisel on just one stone brick block with the detail mode, so I really see no reason for the recipe that requires six blocks to only produce one "wall" block.

Dunk - now that we have mortar, any chance you could add the ability to cook up clay bricks and use them in the same recipe with mortar to make clay brick blocks for fancy structures?

The new changes look pretty neat. One question and one suggestion, though... The question: How does chisel life for making bricks in the new method compare to the old? Can we expect to get roughly the same amount of completed brick blocks per chisel (since the ratio of stone to brick block is now 1.25:1 instead of 1:1) or are single bricks going to be using up the same amount of chisel life as brick blocks do currently (meaning that you'd only getting a measly 20% of the amount of completed brick blocks per chisel after the change)? And the suggestion: I like process for making mortar, but I'm afraid that, especially in later stages, the amount of available sand may become a big issue. Based on the video, 1 block of sand will make 16 stone brick blocks. The problem is that in the later stages of the game, a lot of people like to convert their structures to stone brick (and I like to make a workshop out of stone bricks as soon as I have access to a chisel), and I've played on several seeds where it was a chore to come across any meaningful amount of sand when I'm ready add glass for fanciness (and it doesn't help that sand to glass is 1:1 so there'd be a lot of glass shortage from this as well). So, with that taken into account, how about adding a "cement mixer" made of steel plates and powered with redstone that could produce mortar at a better ratio? This would help out in the late game, when you want to take a break from searching for metals to advance through the ages and start building cool stuff. Looking forward to seeing what else you've got in store for B76; I'm hoping that chisel usage from smoothing stone and metal armor revampage made it in for sure!

It seems that there is a good bit more randomization with the ore generation than I thought. I ran a few more test generations of the seed, and a couple of them had the surface ore whilst some of them did not. I guess it's a just a matter of luck getting the surface ore to spawn there. However, as Ludgar mentioned, there's also a pretty vast cave system under that area as well, which I have been slowly mining sphalerite, cassiterite, and hematite from on the server, much of which were visible on the walls of the cave system (visible being used loosely here with sphalerite, the stealthy bugger of an ore).

It sounds to me that you're looking more for mods that go well with TFC thematically, not necessarily if they're compatible or not. Am I guessing right there? If so, there's a few that come to mind. Obviously, the medical mod was made more or less with TFC in mind from the get-go, and you mentioned that in the OP. You also mentioned smart moving, which is definitely a good fit. I would say that Ropes Plus, minus the elemental arrows, would fit nicely into the the TFC theme. Some of Xie's mods would fit, I'd think. I should probably get around to decompiling Ropes Plus sometime and get some rope functionality added to my TFC server, now that I think about it.

I would love to see a revamped repair system for the armor as well. For instance, instead of the vanilla style of plopping two damaged pieces of the same type in the crafting grid to repair (actually, I haven't tested to see if that works on TFC metal armor or not, just assuming it does), make it so that you can bang a new sheet/double sheet of metal onto damaged armor to restore, say, 25% of the durability. That's be pretty awesome.

Sure thing! Welcome to TFC and good luck out there! Also, don't trust pigs. They will invade your home at any chance they get.

I've read/heard multiple sources suggesting that metal armor will be changed due to them being in a bit of an unsatisfactory place. I'd certainly welcome the change, given how many resources a suit of metal armor uses up compared to how quickly they break (and for that matter, how comparatively little protection they provide). I made a little test arena with a single skeleton to test various metal armors against it to get an idea of how good or bad the armor is, at least for tier 0 metal. Obviously, tier 0 metal shouldn't be expected to perform significantly better than leather, but overall it still isn't worth the resources. I counted how many arrows it took to destroy the set of armor, but I'm not going to post it since I know that sort of information isn't something the devs want being broadcasted; suffice to say, though, that full set of zinc armor would definitely not last very long in a cave crawl (though it would last longer than leather armor, at least). However, it didn't seem to reduce damage by much more than leather armor, if at all (hard to tell without seeing actual numbers and assuming that total armor durability has an effect on the protection value). Simply not good enough for 22 ingots (not to mention all the running back and forth making all the sheets and unfinished pieces). So, my question to the devs.. If you guys aren't 100% satisfied with metal armor and plan to make changes, which of these do you think needs the most attention? -Durability of metal armor -Protection rating of metal armor -Amount of resources required to make metal armor For me, I feel that durability is the area that really needs changed. I like the amount of work and resources required to put together the metal armor, and I don't feel that they really need to make you a walking shield of damage absorption; for me, I think they just need to reduce damage by roughly the same amount of leather armor, but last a whole heck of a lot longer (even tier 0 metal ought to last as long as maybe 4ish sets of leather armor).

There are a number of things that can cause this. Here's the most likely culprits in your situation: -Ingot is not at a workable temperature; in general, especially with those low tier metals, the ingot's temperature needs to be close to liquid to be workable (just heat it back up on a campfire, and you can a ceramic mold for it to drop into in case it overheats back into liquid form) -Anvil bugginess; sometimes you just need to pull everything off and put it back on, hammer included, for it to recognize everything

Very nice finds there. I've also noticed a ridiculous amount of clay deposits along all the river, and there's a bounty of ravines. I also found a cool underground river somewhere around -370, -5600 or somewhere along those lines.

Below is the seed I've been using for my server. If you head a couple hundred blocks from where you spawn, you'll find a ravine bordering a river with surface ore in it, which can be easily accessed by making a waterfall. There is also plenty of surface ore in the area to make a pickaxe to start digging out the ore. A couple things to note: On our server, the exposed vein was copper and the forest surrounding it was willow trees. I did two quick test worlds using the seed in single player; both times, the forest was birch instead of willow, and one time the ore was copper while the other time the ore was either cas or bis (didn't mine it to verify which). So you may have to do a couple world gens to get copper if that is what you are going for, so that you can practically skip tier 0 metal and jump straight to tier 1. It's a great seed if you want to hurry up and start working with metal. There's also plains in the area that stretch for days, a few jungles southeast and southwest, and I found another ravine with exposed ore about a day and a half's walk to the south. The seed is -1904030227297648720 And here is a screenshot of the ravine with its exposed ore (copper in this one), along with the coordinates (I believe you start at around -90, -4700):

I think that rather than adding a background research mechanic, just updating the smithing process to be more both more advanced (more buttons and requirements, for instanced) and more randomized (like the way cooked meals are randomized based on the seed). Having to spend some time (and hammers) experimenting and reheating the metal in order to get the desired result would be a better mechanic than a research one; I'm also more in favor of player skill/knowledge over character skill/knowledge.

Let's take the bow suggestion one step further and make some suggestions for revamping the way arrows work. I think fletching arrows would be an excellent addition to the game. As such, I'm going to provide some TFC-specific ideas for going about it, based mostly on the information from this article: http://sagittaria-handcrafts.com/en/handcrafts/making-of-arrows/ First and foremost, I think vanilla arrows would need to go out the window entirely (and have skeletons no longer drop arrows). Fletched arrows should have a more involved process and they should be mostly retrievable (more on this later down); their damage should also be dependent on the resource used. Now onto the suggestions, separated by stone versus metal arrow heads after shafts: Shafts: The first element to fletchery is obviously going to be the shaft of the arrow. Ideally, the ability to make heavy and soft shafts from different wood types would be the way to go, but I think that a revamped woodworking system would need to be put in place before this (wood planing and such for all matter of goods). For now, we'll just go with something simple and basic that would be easy to code in to get things started. Basically, just use a knife with a stick, uses up some uses of the knife, and the stick becomes a "notched arrow shaft." Fletched Feathers: Similar to shafts, a basic building block for all arrows. Like with shafts, just use a knife on a feather to create 4 "fletched feathers" and have the final arrow recipe only call for three, that way one feather is worth 1.25 arrows' worth of fletched feathers. Stone Arrow Heads: This one is pretty easy: just add a new knapping recipe to make an arrow head. Done. Metal Arrow Heads: Again, pretty easy. Just add a new plan for "metal arrow head" and go about forging as normal. However, I would make the recipe call for using a sheet of metal, and make one sheet of metal create 4 metal arrow heads. Putting it all together: The final crafting recipe would look be an arrow head, a notched arrow shaft, and 3 fletched feathers, creating a "primitive arrow" (stone arrow head) or a "[insert metal name] arrow." Using the arrows: Now, as I mentioned before, arrows made this way should be fairly retrievable, which I'll explain in more detail in a moment. As far as damage scaling goes, I think that primitive arrows should be fairly weak, tier 0 metal arrows should be about on par with current arrows, and tier 1 metal arrows should be about on scale with javelins; from there onward, they just get better. As far as making them retrievable, I think that when an arrow connects with an entity and does damage, it should have roughly these chances for each component to be recovered: -5% chance entire arrow is recovered, and if the entire arrow isn't recovered, then... -75-95% chance the arrow head is recovered, based on material -50% x3 chances for fletched feather to be recovered -10% chance for notched arrow shaft to be recovered I think by doing this, you can make arrows a lot more fun to play with, and while they'd be significantly better weapons than previously, you'll likely be more conservative with using them since the supply for them is much more finite than before (no more farming skellie bones for 'em!).

Also, check this thread: http://terrafirmacraft.com/f/topic/3247-solved-null-pointer-exception/ I was having this issue as well, and it seemed to have been caused by using the multi-core chunk loading option in Optifine for me. I played a few hours of single player using default chunk loading and didn't run into the crash anymore, though I'm playing on my SMP server now so I keep the multi-core option on.