elustran

I'm glad the change has been made, and if people are messing around with config files and not reading the notes, there will always be the forums. The year-length idea is something I brought up way back when fruit trees were introduced, but only really started thinking it was essential when agriculture got overhauled. I'm looking forward to the change.

I'm super-appreciative of this change and really looking forward to some TFC the next time I get into MineCrack.

Forum drama aside and to the topic at hand: I really like building things out of logs. They're basically my favorite aesthetic block. I loved the fact that we could place logs. What should probably happen is that a separate block ID should be added that doesn't behave like a tree 'log' and instead is its own placeable block so it can respond differently to being axed.

Shit, now it's going to explode in your face and burn down your house or something, then you'll hunt me down and scream "WHY! I just wanted to play some Minecraft on a cheap laptop!"

Generally, GPU performance affects game performance more than CPU performance or system memory (unless there's a lack of it). You're fine with 6 gigs of RAM. The laptop I linked to had an nVidia 640m in it. My guess is you don't want to go lower than a 630. Minecraft will still be playable on the ones you're looking at, of course. The quad-core i7 might be nice to have.

Do you have a computer monitor at all? Basically, whenever you're buying a laptop, you're paying extra for more specialized parts and a new monitor. The main people go with desktop PCs is that hardware can more easily get reused and customized, mostly the case and monitor. I can give you a more step-by-step guide to putting together a PC, but if you've only ever used laptops and don't have a monitor or other hardware, and don't feel like investing the extra $150 for a decent monitor, you might still want to stick to a laptop. EDIT: If you're looking at Newegg, this laptop is probably okay: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16834246626 The graphics card in it meet minimum requirements for most games and passes recommended requirements for most slightly-older games. I cant speak as to the quality of the laptop.

A good place to start is : http://pcpartpicker.com/ You can really start to see pricing 'sweet spots' if you research well. Go to newegg to get user reviews. Don't splurge on your mainboard unless you think you'll want to upgrade soon, in which case try to get a newer chipset that will support upcoming features. Get a good power supply - not necessarily expensive, but one that is well rated. A good PSU should last you a while. Check Tom's Hardware for which graphics cards and CPUs are 'best for your money'. I actually think you should look at AMD more than they are - AMD chips give you more cores for the money, and Minecraft with Optifine benefits from multiple cores. In general for gaming, having a good graphics card helps, but I think for Minecraft, the CPU matters a bit more than in other games, but I haven't seen benchmarks indicating if that's really the case. Price your CPU and mobo together - mainboards for newer chips are sometimes more expensive and could make an otherwise cheap chip more expensive than an older but more powerful chip. You should probably avoid HDDs larger than 1TB - larger ones seem to fail more often. Minecraft will really benefit from having an SSD if you can fit one into your price and don't mind skimping on space. I might consider getting a 64GB SSD and a 500GB HDD for storage. If you've already got an external or older drives, just use those and save on money, but still maybe get an SSD. EDIT: I didn't even see the bit about you wanting a laptop. My only answer to that is don't buy a laptop.

I came back to this thread because I saw the poll on the blog (well, it was broken, but I saw it). Thanks for weighing in, Bioxx. It's good to know that you're thinking about these issues. I've only messed around with MCP a little bit, so I wish I could weigh in on how difficult some of these ideas would be. But you're right, everything can produce bugs, so I can see how you might want to devote your time to rolling out essential game mechanics first. Ultimately, you need to make a mod that's going to be fun for you to play and fun for you to code. I've only ever played TFC in SSP, and once in hardcore mode. Most of the time I've played multiplayer, it's been vanilla with bukkit, I tried tekkit and I've got a LAN game with a variety of mods. I can see how TFC would be fun to do in SMP, and I understand why you're wanting to focus on it, but based on my other SMP experiences, I don't think you need to sacrifice SMP play for SSP play. At this point, I think the main mechanic that distinguishes SMP from SSP is simply the scale. I think if the other essentials of the game are balanced for SSP play, its going to be balanced for SMP play - that's at least how it's been for the other Minecraft games I've played. If there's a way to adjust scale - both temporal and spatial - everybody will benefit. That said, I really do appreciate the hard work that has gone into this mod so far.

If I were playing a couple of hours at a time, it would take 15 play sessions. If I play for four hours on the weekend, that's basically two months... or about 2 months to pass 3 months of game time. You see how that's kinda awkward? Even if you're playing a bit more heavily, it's still a grating period of time. You might as well not waste time with farming, it's so slow.I'm not entirely sure what's not clear about this.

Was this the question? I want to grow crops so I can experiment with agriculture in a reasonable timeframe. 30-60 hours is a pretty reasonable amount of time to dedicate to single playthrough, but in that timeframe, I would only be able to experience a single harvest or two. To compound that, I wouldn't get to experience the changes to ranching and animal breeding. The purpose of this game is to struggle, survive, thrive, create, right? Well, the metallurgy part of the game isn't the sole part of the sandbox that forms TFC. Maybe it could be fun to play a hunter and just travel around, but I would personally much rather homestead and look over my herds of cattle, verdant vegetable garden, and rolling fields of grain. If that's not possible, I'm not as interested.Now, my understanding of your point, and others who are saying similar things is that you can play the game without agriculture? Also, you say that part of your experience of TFC is informed by your experience with farming, so you're more accustomed to waiting for your crops to grow? I would like to ask too, are you playing this game in SSP at all? Are you playing on a server every day or every other day? Do you ever go for several days without playing? If you only play every several days, do you have shared crops with people on the SMP server you play on, or do you just let your crops wither or leave your crops fallow for a year or something? There's no need for us to be tense about this problem. The goal should ultimately be a game we all like playing, and I think that's quite possible. I don't think any suggestion to fix the agricultural problem is going to affect the players for whom the game is already balanced, but it will really help the rest of us.

I really would like you to understand where I'm coming from here. I understand that you might be defensive since I'm criticizing a mod that you apparently really like. The irony is that I really like TFC too, and that's why I'm so disappointed that this part of the game is broken. How would you feel if you got really excited about a part of the game, only to find out it didn't work? See, that's how I'm feeling - I was excited to see a shiny new TFC, only to discover that I just plain didn't have time to farm so that could never be a part of the game for me. 'I'm done wasting my time' is exactly how I've been feeling about agriculture in TFC. Sure, some people don't have a problem with it, but can you agree that it sucks when a change to a game breaks it for some people?Yes, there are alternative ways of playing, but can you understand that *this facet* of the game has been broken? It's not due to impatience. It's due to the simple fact that I can't afford to dedicate 30 hours to just waiting for my crops to grow. I simply have better things to do than that. The people who have been able to make it work are doing so via workarounds, like leaving their game on or by logging out and checking on their crops the next day. But that's just it - they're workarounds for a flaw in a core game mechanic. What's great is that the way to fix this is a pretty simple configuration option that would be able to make the game better for everyone while not impeding SMP players who like checking in daily. It would certainly help some SMP players too. It's no surprise the development of this hasn't been easy. TFC is basically a complete rewrite of vMC mechanics, and overall the job has been fabulous - I really want the devs to know that their work is appreciated. I also really don't want other people to play this mod and get turned off by it. I started playing way before the agricultural changes, and I don't want new players to get turned off by a single flawed mechanic in an otherwise interesting take on Minecraftian survival.

It's not a question of just taking a bit longer - at this point, it takes so long it might as well not be a part of the game.This is a problem with a core game mechanic that just happens to affect SSP more than SMP because SMP presents some inherent workarounds to the issue.

So, you either don't care about farming and just fish/hunt, or you have copious amounts of time to play video games. That's great for you. SMP people who don't mind checking daily are going to be okay too. It doesn't work for the rest of us.I think the sunshine and rain bits are great. I think the nutrition bit is great. The *only* problem I have is that a year takes too long to pass. Part of the purpose of playing a game and not taking up gardening as a hobby instead is that you get to do things that you can't otherwise easily do in real life. Time is a factor of gameplay. It's not a question of adaptation, it's a question of alienating a large portion of your potential audience. And the fix is simple: variable year length. That's it, and *everybody* is happy.

Saying that 'that stuff over there works, suck it up' doesn't mitigate that part of the game is broken.SMP players have to log out, wait a day or so, and log back in to check their crops. It takes 30 hours for a 90-day growing season to pass. Unless you're on vacation or unemployed, you might not even make it through a growing season before the mod updates enough you need to start a new world. The only other option is to play SMP and check the server daily, which isn't compatible with weekend players. The times just don't add up. Maybe it's kinda interesting as an experiment to subject people too, but it's unplayable.

It would be odd to make SSP play work more like SMP play. At the moment, logging out and logging back in a day later is basically a crutch to make the agricultural side of the game playable, because it is otherwise not playable. I can see how it might work for some people, but it's a bit odd in a mod that's about trying to reconcile game balance with verisimilitude. I've said this before, but the better option would be to add a config option that lets people (including server admins) change season lengths to something more playable.