HiddenSage

As a perennial lurker who picked "whenever you feel like it," I contest your claim that those of us who picked the option "don't care" when an update is released. Programming is as much a creative endeavour as a scientific one, and demanding a regularity of schedule is like as not to decrease the content quality. What I WANT is very specific: for the mod to be awesome when it's done, and for updates that are released to work (and also be awesome). That may take a while. Quality is worth a wait. Plus, Bioxx and Dunk are volunteers, and I dislike imposing scheduling demands on people who create awesome material and then let me have a copy of said material for free. Worst-case scenarios are the devs being lazy and not updating a lot. And as someone who struggles to find motivation for something as small as being a GM for a DnD campaign, I lack both the right to talk and the willingness to object.

Trapdoors do not count as solid blocks for purposes of determining rainfall. The forge thinks it is being rained on, and will keep self-extinguishing (and maybe not start? I'm not sure on that part, tbh). The trick is an L-shaped chimney. Build a tube around your forge going up 2-3 blocks, and then leave an opening on the side of it, not the top. Rain only falls down in Minecraft physics, but the forge's needed opening can be on a side instead of the top.

Re: water sources I've always found is simplest to just build a house that hangs slightly over the water to begin with. Water source that doubles as secret back entrance to the estate (mobs don't swim down, so it's safe), plus I get to set up awesome bay windows on the ocean/riverside. Then there was that one time I started near a river in a high hills biome. Build my estate hanging between the cliffs, and the exit involved diving into the river. Really wish I had gotten screenshots of that, since the world corrupted. Re: agriculture _Frank has it right with favoring lots of small fields near a coastline (flatten the coast out and let the grass regrow before tilling for maximum effect). I'd also advise finding as many crop types as possible, just to experiment with meal creation. Find some things that are good for high-value meals (or meals with good effects), and then specialize down to those. Makes sure you need a lot less food to get by.

Going to point out that believability!=realism here. If Bioxxx decides there's a viable purpose to having magic in this game, magic will be in this game. It not, then not. As it stands, it does seem like it would be convenient for gems to be placable/usable SOMEHOW. My favorite idea has been what Your Majesty said: make them placable microblocks. Only placable inside of chiseled stone (that is, use the gem to replace a piece of a block you tapped out with the chisel). Coloration and size would vary slightly based on the grade of the gemstone: chipped would have a crack on the screen, and the 'exquisite ones' would maybe be a 2x2 instead of 1x1 piece. This would open up a ton of options in sculpture work, if we could embed gems in our stonemasonry. The only downside is that it would probably take a crap-ton of work to code the ability for two different block/item id's to exist inside of one space. Ohh, and the gems would almost definitely be irretrievable once placed, just as chiseled stone blocks are now.

You try too hard at flame-baiting. That said, your ideas are actually good, though ore distribution (polar versus uniform) should be a toggleable option on world creation. You may not like loners, but turning TFC into a multiplayer-only server (which this would definitely do without the toggle), is going to alienate a lot of people. My Minecraft experience has been most positively informed by SMP (especially the Civcraft server: if I ever get around to learning Java, I'm converting all its mods to work in TFC and perfecting multiplayer Minecraft forever), but the singleplayer option exists for a reason. Sometimes people want to be left alone to build stuff and explore without having to deal with griefers and/or idiots.

I have to take the side of those who favor having some variant of this mod exist. Just because, as was pointed out in a different thread, you currently need copper or bronze to be able to craft leather (since planks for barrels need the saw). And that's strange, because if you have copper you can make copper armor... which is better than leather. Presently speaking, the removal of pre-metallic plank crafting makes leather-working a completely obsolete game mechanic (unless you just want to make books for decoration). Which is a pity, IMO. Leather armor was a big first step for me in B76. That said, the idea of making simple "crude planks" instead of the regular ones does strike me as a better balance. Wedge+hammer+log produces one crude plank. Crude planks have a different skin, and can ONLY be used to craft buckets and barrels (to enable leatherworking). Rough planks are not a placable item, and don't enable other plank recipes such as plank blocks and doors. So those who want it can still get pre-copper leather back now, but there's also still a LOT of advantage to getting that first saw (every other plank recipe, the 3:1 crafting ratio on planks, and of course crafting tables themselves unlock a ton of things). IMO, it's a fairly balanced move, compared to both where B77 is and where B76 used to be.

See, I have the exact opposite mindset. Red/Blue is so expensive that I don't want to have to spend a fortune on it on things like shovels. Even when I do HAVE access to it, I rarely even use plain steel scythes, because it's a good way to burn up excess bronze (IMO) to use on scythes, shovels, and axes. I use red/blue steel for prospector's picks and saws, since once you've made a blue steel propick, you'll never have to make another. Ever.

The rocks question one is a case where we're pretty readily admitting that believability goes out the window if we follow it. My rule of thumb is simple: leave it as is, no regen. Joining an established server means having to walk a bit more to get tools, or finding a generous veteran. Not a huge problem unless the server has been running for a VERY long time. If it has, you hopefully have the playerbase to support newbies with gift-rocks.

1) Not sure how we'd go about it without making basic smithing nearly impossible. If it takes too much work to get a good pickaxe, even getting your first ore deposit will become impossible. 2) YES. Enchantments aren't coming back to TFC, last I heard, but customizable hilts and armor with gemstones should be a thing for sake of aesthetics. Or maybe even have the gems BE the enchanting system, if we put magic back. You enchant while placing the gem, and the gem is actually the source of the effect. Different stones can carry different effects, and the class of gem determines its potency. Decrease gem-spawning a bit to balance it, and this could be a fun twist on the vanilla system. 3). That's a big goal of the mod already, actually. It's mitigated somewhat by SSP considerations, but the goal is in fact to encourage civilization. What I'd love to see (or do, if I knew Java well enough to) is create a sub-mod of TFC that turns down crop yields a bit, makes leatherworking more difficult, etc. Have the mod for SMP servers to force teamwork, but disable it for SSP to be playable alone.

So, I was discussing a few interesting Minecraft mechanics with an RL friend earlier, and we stumbled into discussions of ice, mainly the use of ice roads in vanilla as VERY fast transportation. We both play a mix of vanilla and TFC still (vanilla for sake of a few SMP servers with a great community, and his computer protests a LOT at TFC's higher performance requirements), and he made a suggestion I wanted to share here. IRL, many people used swing saws to carve ice blocks out of frozen lakes, both for use in ice houses, and for use in sculpture (actually, it's still done today for the latter purpose). The gist of the suggestion is just that: add the ability for saws to collect ice blocks. It'd have to be a slower break time than ice typically is, say something similar to the length of time wood blocks take to break now. But once done, you could collect and place ice blocks in the world, and possibly even carve them with a chisel (similar to stone) for creating ice sculptures. For the sake of believability, though, Ice would have to have a risk of melting, even if it's player-placed. This is actually already handled by the TFC engine, of course, in that ice blocks have a chance to turn back into water whenever the temperature is above freezing. For blocks placed in the world, just ensuring the system does not differentiate between player-placed and natural ice balances this ability. It would be possible to place ice blocks, but if you wanted to do this for, say, long-term ice sculptures as decorations, you would have to build WELL above the cold line, in environments that crops cannot grow in as easily. It's a minor reward for settling TFC's arctic circle, but I think that it would be an interesting option to explore. And of course, there have been suggestions before about creating an "icebox" for food storage before, with food having a risk of going bad if left in warm air for too long. Collectible iceblocks could be placed in a chest to alter its temperature, or maybe placed in the world as a means of "chilling" a certain area, before melting and being replaced. I'm already dreaming of having a migratory settlement pattern, with a "summer base" in the south for growing crops in, decorated in flowers and wood and green life, and a "winter base" in the far north with permanent freezers built for cold storage of food, and ice sculptures for decorations. Go south in the summer to farm, north in the winter to store food and mine. It would a be a fun, if challenging, way to play.

Remembered reading this, and brought the quot over to prove it's not just me. I've had the same problem (leaves not despawning) with every tree type I'm harvesting in my SSP world (hickory, willlow, sycamore, aspen, white elm, and oak). It's easy to fix in-game-- break one leaf after you chop the logs down, and the rest despawn due to no adjacent log block to hold them up-- but it looks like the line of code that triggers leaf despawn after tree-chopping has stopped working.

In addition to that, I'm pretty sure the vanilla spider mob is currently considered close enough to "realistic" (it's just a regular spider with a few too many growth hormones, after all) to be left above ground. It's the creepers and undead that are too fantasy-oriented to stay overland.

No idea on your first question. The chain-reaction break of tree blocks is a bit finnicky sometimes. I've had it happen where I'll be hacking at one tree, and then the tree next to it comes down too. However, log blocks placed by the player do not have the chain-reaction break of trees. Each one has to be cut down individually when they're player-placed. It actually makes logs a really good choice of building material in TFC multiplayer, as wood blocks are fairly slow to cut even with a decent axe, and impossible without it. Griefer-resistance 101.

This quote needs to be more noticed. The lighting changes are there so that LIGHTING can be more realistic. Perpetual light sources from throwing a stick in a fire lacks believability. The reason it's a problem that turns into "pointless button-clicking" is because of the equally-unbelievable link between mob spawns and light levels. If it didn't affect your base's safety to leave the storeroom dark when you weren't in it, would you really bother keeping the lights on all the time? Maybe a few would for a while because of overly-ingrained habits of light=safe from vanilla, but most of us would just stop worrying about it, and find ways to keep most or all rooms lit be exterior lighting. So, as turtle says in that quote: as soon as mob spawns are decoupled from light levels, the torch change goes from bad idea to good. At present it's bad, but that's because the perpetual torch is compensating for bigger flaws in Minecraft's design.

This guy wins the internet. Seriously, this is a beautiful proposal. Adds a distinction between the two weapon types, makes both far more interesting, then jacks up the price in time and metals to make for balance. I love it. I want it. DUNK. READ THIS THREAD.