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?

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).

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).

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):

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.

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.

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.

Are those numbers from the IRC or another source from Bioxx?That does seem rather low if that is what the new sea level is going to be; underground cave systems and such aside, that would also mean that ocean depths will have to be dropped significantly, which would be a shame. I can live without underground cave systems, and for all I know, they could still be there even if in the form of systems built into mountains, but I actually really enjoy the ocean depths TFC currently offers; it makes the ocean feel a lot more intense.

Agreed 100% here. Obviously, revised terrain generation is just the starting point of the rewrite and hopefully debugging all of the existing features will be easier now that they aren't being tacked on after the fact and instead worked into the code from the beginning (I assume at least). But beyond that, what the mod really needs is more depth in various processes. It starts to feel repetitive using essentially the same technology/processes you used in the stone age and tier 0 metal age all the way through endgame. You should really be able to approach things differently as you get access to better materials. As an example, think back to when you were able to make your first metal tools (likely a pickaxe, prospecting pick, and chisel)... It felt like a whole new game, as now you could bust through stone, build forges and bloomeries, and just generally feel awesome. The problem is that that's pretty much it, from there the only new and exciting things to happen are being able to make a few things with wrought iron and being able to make water spring/lava buckets at endgame. There's definitely room for improvement in other areas the quoted poster mentioned (brewing, tailoring, etc.), but even before that, I think that there's a lot of room for improvement on just dealing with metalworking. Things like blast furnaces and tempering come to mind immediately. So yeah, that's my hopes for TFC2... I'm really hoping that the game continues to provide fresh, exciting experiences through all the ages. I also know it's a lot of work to make a total conversion mod as detailed as TFC with just 1-2 coders, though, so my hat is certainly off to them for everything so far and I certainly don't begrudge them for going at a pace that some of those bigger modding groups would scoff at.

Hey, been busy for the last couple of days, just getting around to reading the latest replies. I'm holding off on doing anything with the dyeing for now until I get a more solid wool-working mechanic in place. After doing a good bit of research over the weekend, I felt that the kind of weaving loom that would be most accessible in TFC would be a back-strap loom (video of one being used in the links below). The general process I have in mind of going from sheep to usable wool would be: 1) Collect "fleece" from sheep; like with wool currently, more can be obtained with shears than killing 2) Scouring (cleaning the fleece) would be done using a clay boiling pot, which I've narrowed down to using sticks and water and starting with a torch 3) Build a wool picker (separates coarse fibers out of the wool) with wood blocks and sticks, which cleaned fleece can be used on to make rough wool 4) Build a spindle with a wood block and a stick, and then rough wool can be combined with the spindle to make spools of yarn 5) Build a back-strap loom with strings and sticks, which is used to slowly weave yarn into wool (plain blocks would be vanilla, in TFC it'd be wool fabric that could be used as the foundation for the uses Dunk mentioned) The only part I am a bit unsatisfied with in the process is the construction of the picker. In pretty much every article I've found on it, pickers are made with metal picks. That would be fine for vanilla, but I'm not certain I would want to wait all the way to having metal before I can have a bed in TFC. Perhaps a good compromise here would be adding some sort of makeshift bedding that's made with sticks and whatnot that could be used to set spawn points, but not sleep (since setting the spawn point is what I care more about early on than being able to sleep the nights away). Anyway, that's sort of the process flow I'm working out right now. Here's a few links to some of the articles/videos I used for research for any interested: Back-strap Loom: youtube.com/watch?v=66tYpOoHYXg Scouring Fleece: http://cricklewoodfarm.com/blog/?p=268 Overall Process: http://mylittlesheep...eparingWool.htm Picking/Carding Wool: http://www.woolery.c...-Carder-d11.htm [Edit] Removed direct link to youtube video, as I couldn't get it to not be tagged as media and show the video in-post.

@WildFire: I agree with your suggestions. Ideally, that's sort of the end goal I wanted to strive for, where there's different types of fabric (adding cotton and hemp crops in addition to wool) that all have their owns means of processing into usable pieces. I wanted to start off simple, though, adding only a handful of new blocks and items. The reason for that is that there's still a lot of room for TFC to grow, so I wanted to as few block/item IDs as I could get away with without diminishing the feel too much. Over time, that's ultimately where I want it to end up. On the dyeing pot question, since I want to work with vanilla items that are available in TFC, I opted for not processing them further; processing further with things like mortar and pestle or tree bark scraping would be something I'd like to see if it is integrated with TFC to make use of TFC's tools and resources instead. As far as the mechanics of it go, admittedly, I have no idea how to code a dynamic interface like TFC's bloomeries and such so I limited myself to what I know can I pull off. @Biodigious: My response to WildFire covers my approach on the sheep drops; as far as the slabs and such, I will include a slab-style block in addition to the normal one (only because I know a lot of people like to use the full blocks to make things like decorative wall art). I've been doing a good bit of research on various cultures' methods for producing fabric throughout history in the process to base the methods and recipes off of. Reiterating what I said about limiting the number of new blocks/items, I'll be trying to add as little as possible in the initial release. As time goes on and we get closer to a more complete launch of TFC (or if the devs decide to absorb this project into TFC to go with their own approaches on it), things will get more in-depth.

I'm bumping this thread to ask a question of the TFC community and, more specifically, the developers... I am currently working on a mod for personal use along the lines of this suggestion which, in its released incarnation, will be one that is fully compatible with TFC but only uses Vanilla items. It won't modify any base classes (although it will use Forge code to replace existing recipes if I can get it to work right) and won't contain or overwrite any TFC functionality, with one exception listed below. The idea behind the mod will be to make wool and dyes something that take a lot more preparation to fit the theme of TFC. I'd love to expand the color options as well, but I don't foresee that being something I can do without modifying core classes, which I don't want to do in order to maintain compatibility. Here is a basic rundown of what the mod's functions are: 1) Create a spinning wheel that will work much like TFC's quern to spin string into wool; the conversion rate would be 8 string to make 1 wool, and the spinning wheel will have a moving part that takes damage and will need to be replaced over time (again based around TFC's quern) 2) Change sheep drops, both from kills and shearing, to be string instead of wool * This is the one exception I mentioned, as it would be changing the functionality of sheep kills and shears. 3) Make standard wool blocks unable to be dyed with the standard recipe 4) Create a custom dyeing pot with a furnace-like GUI, which will be crafted using clay (current model will be hardened by leaving out in the sun like Millenaire's mud bricks) and fueled with sticks + water, and will have slots for dye ingredients along with the desired amount of string. Over a period of 12 Minecraft hours, assuming a valid GUI recipe was put in, the sticks and water will be used up to turn the string into dyed string (and thus spinning dyed string into wool will create the colored wool) Now for my question to the TFC community: Is this something you would all be interested in having? I am designing the mod specifically to fit the theme of TFC, while maintaining total compatibility with vanilla and not interfering with TFC itself (since it is still in beta after all). I'm a huge fan of TFC's approach to the game, making it lean a little more towards realism without going to the extreme, and making finished products require more time and effort to make than simply plopping a couple items into the crafting interface. As I mentioned, this mod is being built for personal use right now, but if the TFC community is interested in it, I can put it up for you guys to download once it's all finished up. And my question to the TFC developers: My vision for this mod is to ultimately make use of various TFC mechanics, but I am respecting Bioxx's wishes to not directly mod TFC or use its components since it's still very much in developmental beta. Here are the specific TFC mechanics I'd love to make use of: -Change dyeing pot mechanics to "start" by using a TFC firestarter -Incorporate various TFC items into the recipes, such as lemons for acidic fixing solutions and knives for cutting plant petals So, with that in mind, would you (the developers) be interested in incorporating this into a future build of TFC or into the work-in-progress TFC2 once I have everything working and bug tested? I would be more than happy to provide the source code to you, even a modified version of the source code with the foundation of the changes to make it use TFC mechanics so all you'd have to do is pretty much fill in the correct ItemIDs and add a block of code to the right click function of the firestarter.

I double-checked and it doesn't look like PlayerAPI shares any class files with Optifine, but I have been using the multicore option for chunk loading. Given that you have experienced crashes from that option and the fact that my problem does seem to stem from chunk loading/generation, I'm going to give it a go this evening using the standard chunk loading. I'll give it an hour or two to make sure and will post whether or not that fixed the problem, thanks for the suggestion.

Hey all, I've got a problem that I've been unable to resolve. I am running into intermittent crashes being caused by a null pointer exception, which is assumably happening on specific chunk generations when I load them for the first time. The crash itself I don't mind, as they don't happen entirely often and I have no problems once I restart the client; however, I am worried that the cause of the crash may also be generating ores improperly. I've linked a pastebin below with the class files referenced in the crash log; I am assuming that the cause is either from having an incorrect version of something or installing in an incorrect order. Here is everything I've got, along with the order I installed them: Minecraft 1.4.6 - clean jar file and .minecraft folder to start with Forge 6.5.0.486 - added to jar first Optifine 1.4.6_HD_U_A3 - added after Forge PlayerAPI - 1.4.6 version 1.3 - added after Optifine Matmos version R21 - Added files to their appropriate folder (no jar file modifications) TFC Build 75 - Added to mods folder (no jar file modifications) And here is the pastebin link: http://pastebin.com/pVSExZnP As you can see in the crash log there, the error appears to be originating from the ore vein generation procedures from TFC. I dug through the mods installed and noticed that most of the core class files referenced have modified versions in both Forge and Optifine, which makes me think that one of those two is the problem. I'm assuming that 6.5.0.486 is still the correct version of Forge to use, but I have not been able to find any references to what version of Optifine is most compatible and since some of the class files in the NPE log are included in Optifine, it's most likely that. Anyone have any ideas on how I can fix this issue, or at the very least, which version of Optifine I should be using with the current TFC build? [edit] As far as I can tell, Waveshaper's suggestion to not use the multi-core chunk loading option in Optifine appears to have fixed the problem. Thanks for the help.

I wonder if it's the edition of Optifine I'm using. I went with the oldest 1.4.6 version of the ultra edition when I set everything up, but now that I'm thinking about it, the ultra edition has those chunk loading optimization features. Since my problem seems to be prompted by chunk generation, I bet that's the problem is (since I am assuming that the referenced core class files deal with chunk loading and the ultra edition likely overwrites the Forge ones). I'll give the standard Optifine edition a try later and see if that fixes the issue; anyone else have any ideas on it?