Shiphty

I actually forgot to comment on a few things. I like the hunger mechanic and the way food works. I like the way that food rots over time. I refuse to store my food in skyscrapers as an exploit to the temperature reduction at altitudes, that would not be conducive, for me, to an immersive game play. I have a root cellar. Fortunately, the average temperature where I settled is 6 degrees. I didn't know that nothing happens when you don't eat because I have kept my character fed from the first day. It is certainly a challenge at first but it isn't nearly as difficult as some folks make it out to be. Also, the idea of just not eating... just feels lame in a survival game. I think, despite my caveat about there being no "wrong" way to play, I'm secretly and subconsciously judging people who don't eat because they can get away with it. That said; I don't think that there needs to be "harsher" penalties for not eating. Being reduced to fifty health is enough. There are always going to be those folks who don't care for immersion but will simply play the rules and win points or something. There will always be folks who exploit loopholes. If you make rules to make sure that doesn't happen, the folks who don't exploit those rules will end up getting stepped on in the process. I don't like the idea that people commit suicide as a means of recovering their nutrition levels and health, it doesn't make sense. But if you "fix" that issue so they can't do it, you punish the "honest" player who is inevitably going to die and suffer harsher consequences.

I will preface my comments with the statement that I absolutely love this mod and appreciate the work that Bioxx, Dunk, and Kitty (and anyone else involved) have done, the mod is simply brilliant. I also understand that it is a work in progress, I am led to believe that the finished product will look radically different than the current mod. I also think it bears repeating that there isn't a "correct" way to play with this mod just as there isn't a "correct" way to play minecraft. Minecraft itself is a sandbox game, it's very open. If you want to make it your personal goal to fill your world with ten cubit towers of smooth stone... no one can say you're wrong for doing so. In these conversations it seems that there is a tendency for two groups to form battle lines, both sides insisting that their style of play is the correct one. Both groups have very definite OPINIONS (that is what they are) about how the game should be played and therefore how the game should function. I have some opinions. And now I will share them. I like closure. I like to fight back the wild and the evil and gain ground. I do not like having my work undone so I can repeatedly fix it or struggle to maintain it. I don't care for the idea that torches go out. Yes, I know this pushes the envelope of believability but there are evil creatures which have the ability to suddenly appear. As long as these creatures are able to suddenly materialize, I want some technique, some thing I can build, which will permanently wall off an area from them. If creatures couldn't suddenly appear anywhere at random but had to come from outside your structures I wouldn't care so much about torches going out. I find the spawn protection generated by my presence quite insufficient for my needs. I sometimes have to leave my plantation for a year or more and it IS a plantation which spans more than a five by five chunk. Further, I do not believe the spawn protection is working properly, I've spent days laboring at my tree farm only to leave at nightfall to sleep and return the next day. After days of this activity, on my way home one night, I notice a creature spawn where I had been standing moments before. I will continue to play with infinite torches enabled. I will say that I wouldn't mind if creatures would attempt to storm your complex from without. I wouldn't mind growing hostility as time wears on. But the player, in my not so humble opinion, should be able to out-think the creatures and come up with various solutions. Speaking of various solutions; I do not care for the new cave-in mechanic. I find it a strong-arm approach. I did not update to 79.9 because it included a change which removed the player's ability to smooth stone which has more than two blocks over it. The development team, in this case, is saying "here is the ONE way which you must approach the issue of mining," rather than saying "here is a problem and here are some tools, figure it out." I don't like the approach and I don't care for its rippling affect on other parts of the game. I definitely find supports useful. I use them. I also chisel smooth stone. I find the two approaches complement one another. There isn't ONE right way to mine or tunnel. Realistically (or should I say believably?) different cultures have approached tunneling in different ways. (One really awesome way the ancients used to tunnel through solid rock was to light a fire next to it, then throw water on it and with the sudden cooling some of the rock would shatter and fall away.) There are networks of tunnels throughout Europe which were dug thousands of years ago, most of these tunnels are only wide and high enough for a person to pass, they use no supports of any kind. 2x1 tunnels are not a new invention. As things stand, I must use the prospector's pick within a relatively short range of the ore to find the vein. This means I must tunnel, not just to get to the ore, but simply tunnel to prospect. Ore tends, in my experience, to be a bit on the difficult to find end of things. All this means I'm going to be spending huge chunks of time mining through rock and many of these tunnels will never see any further use. Mining out enough space to employ supports, aside from the resources required for the supports, means at minimum, I will be mining three times as much stone per cubit (why don't we use that term when measuring in minecraft? It just seems to make sense; cube-it. Anyway...) I move forward. I don't believe this adds to my game play at all. I liked the old mechanic. I had to worry about cave-ins but if I was careful and smart I wouldn't see them much. Currently there is the option to turn down the frequency of cave-ins and I've employed it, but I haven't been able to replicate the old mechanic. Back to styles of play; I like to immerse myself in the game and see my character as a dwarven miner. In my view (and I don't believe I'm alone here) dwarves have the knack and tendency to carve their tunnels from the living rock and do not rely solely (or heavily) upon wooden supports. I incorporate this in my mining and tunneling and underground construction. I bring a chisel and hammer with me whenever I'm underground. I wish I had a picture of my old quarry. It was "just" a quarry but I made it beautiful with my chisel and you couldn't find a single ugly old wooden support anywhere in it. I worked on a subterranean city in the same direction. I used wooden supports during construction but the final product was all stone. in my current save I have a cassiterite mine. I've used wooden supports. I found the center of the vein and set a support in each of the cardinal directions of the compass. The supported area works out to be a big plus sign. As I was mining downward I used my chisel to smooth the corners incrementally until the safe area was completely square. To reiterate; I think these two techniques complement one another. I honestly don't know what the big deal is, you cannot make a chisel until you are at the tech level to make a saw (and therefore supports) and chisels used in this way go faster than saws do in making supports. These are the two major "intended" game mechanics which I work around or disable.

I'm not sure this is a bug.

Dang... I'm seriously considering map writer now. I've been wandering for nearly a whole game year and have only just found an island with fruit trees. My world seems to be mostly too dry for fruit trees but this island had 1000 rain. I found one of each tree except olive and banana. Of course I have to keep looking... how can I go home without one of each?

Thanks for the quick response. Now I can finally make vinegar! As an aside, even though my climate is too cold and I won't be making sugar cane... shouldn't I get the seeds I planted back? They disappeared when I planted them instantly.

I agree with Oswald. Finding caves while mining was cool before but now it pretty much stinks. By the time I find the cave it's all filled up with cobble. Anyone know if there's a config option to turn it back to the way it was? Edit: I found the option in the config files but I'm not sure what to reset the variables to. I liked how it was before.

In some of the posts and comments on this forum I've read it hinted or overtly stated repeatedly that TFCraft needs to be more challenging. This seems to me, a legitimate suggestion, in and of itself. However, the proposed ways that that suggestion could or should be accomplished are very often, in my view, more of a list of ways to simply drag out the game or make playing it more annoying. I don't have a quick fix or brilliant plan on how to achieve the challenge level so many of us desire. I'm merely calling attention to the fact that difficulty alone will not necessarily do the trick. While there should be challenge, there should also be accomplishment and victory over challenges. When we first start off we've got no equipment, no food, no shelter, no water, no fire... there's a lot of challenge to be had. But we can gather resources and eventually, with determination, skill, and luck, fix those problems. After we make a shelter, we have one... and we're safe in it. What I'm getting at is that dragging out old challenges or making them impossible to overcome will only make the game more tedious. Some folks seem to desire it to be impossible for you to make your home safe from hostile mobs, or establish some kind of farm where you are thriving and don't have to constantly worry about where you will acquire food. Others seem to think that it ought to take even longer to break through stone, even with a steel pick. Rather than dragging out these old (but essential) challenges, why not add new challenges? Some of this has been done... we didn't have thirst with vanilla minecraft... now we do. Others seem to be in the works, there is temperature change but we don't feel the effect on our Steve's body yet. I'm not sure what direction Bioxx and Dunk want to take TFCraft concerning tech trees but I don't think that simple wind power and water power would be out of line. We have a quern... why not a mill? Yes, I know that BTW did it first... who cares? You know who did it before BTW? Folks for hundreds of years in real life. Dungeons and Dragons had zombies... minecraft has zombies. Some ideas are just good. Why not take another page from Dwarf Fortress and employ lava power? Or use primitive mechanical power to pump water (actually I hear that is also in the works)?What about more mobs of different kinds? Not necessarily ones that will attack you but maybe ones that will try to steal your stuff (goblin thieves) or deeper rock layers with more precious minerals below... and terrible creatures? Anyhow, new challenges... that's what I suggest, rather than making old ones more annoying and insurmountable.

I give. You win Hyena. You've proven your superior ability to shovel verbiage. I find in your representation of my position you consistently ignore what I say in favor of what you imagine to be true. I also find much of what you say, suggesting that I'm an extreme case and that most players do not play the way I do... while you yourself are another extreme case. The difference between us is that my playstyle does not superimpose itself on others... no one has to build the way I do. If the changes you suggest are made it would affect everyone. You talk about the way most players play... most players I've met and most folks I've read on this forum seem to find suggestions like yours unappealing. And I also find it ridiculous that you can address the way I play personally, misrepresent the way that I play, and then when I correct you you turn and say that I'm taking the conversation too personally. Sophistry at its finest. I'm not going to check this topic any longer, you've dominated the conversation and are not being productive.

i gotta say... the idea of getting to make cheese sounds really cool

Fine, you aren't presenting a strawman, you're simply being presumptuous. What I am doing is NOT constructing an inefficient building just for show.Do I NEED a smithy the size I've made it? No. But it is far from inefficient. When you represent me you do so very poorly, I can hardly be blamed for calling it a strawman. You say what I'm doing is inefficient... you've next to no information upon which to base that assertion. I'm building a city/fortress... they are meant for multiple people. The smithy would then need to accommodate more than one person working at once. Much of the space I've mined out is meant for storage which I will actually use. I've a pantry planned which will hold probably around 800 double chests. Do I NEED 800 double chests? No. But I believe in advanced city planning. What I hate is the crammed quarters I see so often where folks are constantly finding that they've no room and needing to expand haphazardly... chests all mixed and full of all kinds of things to the point that you can't find anything. There will be store rooms for stone of each kind, there will be a place for gems, there will be a place for ores... et cetera. I do not believe it is a waste... I won't have to spend any time trying to figure out where I left something. Everything will be labeled so anyone who joins me will also find anything they need with ease. To call my build inefficient suggests that any other way besides a spartan bee-line toward red/blue steel is wasteful. This is minecraft after all... we do build don't we? It's still a sandbox game isn't it? And to suggest that TFCraft does not suit my playstyle is also presumptuous. I'm not someone who wants to play in creative or skip over challenges as you seem to believe. I enjoy overcoming challenges. Working such things as carts, wheelbarrows and whatnot into the game could be really cool. But your suggestions are not pragmatic. You aren't thinking it through. Firstly, minecarts presuppose that the individual has iron. Acquiring iron could, currently, take miles of branch mining. You're still looking at weeks of doing nothing but carrying twenty stones back and forth. Then let's say that you've got the iron... now are you going to use it up on a minecart and rail? rails are currently very expensive. You assume that I jump on a server for the first time and immediately said "okay I must build my fortress immediately." This is also not the case. Most of the folks who've worked with me have felt that I dwell on each facet of the game too long and I feel that they rush through. This is also why I build big. I could've had steel a long time ago but I've waited until I had my smithy mined out. The crucibles just sat there waiting patiently while I excavated. I do resent the insistence that big builds are inefficient and superfluous, a diversion from the game. What else is there? There is the combat aspect for what it's worth and there is advancing along the tech tree. I think it's unfortunate when folks leave aside making their home beautiful while they play just so they can keep advancing and worse when they advance just so they can have the most shiny weapons and armor, minecraft is a sandbox game... if you're not building you're missing out. You haven't presented any solutions to eliminating inventory space almost entirely. Minecarts and handcarts/horsecarts will not do it. You'd still take an aspect of tfcraft that already takes a very long time (finding ore) and multiply it exponentially. There's a great difference between the approach you seem to be taking and actually adding challenges... your goal seems to be dragging out the game... even a person who had employed and achieved all of your presented solutions would still have their game slow down to a crawl. I have thousands of cubits of 1x2 tunnels and I've yet to lay my hands on silver, gold, and nickel. If I mined up every last bit of iron that I've come across I wouldn't have enough for tracks to cover those tunnels alone. I also wouldn't get to use that iron to make any other tools. Listen, we get it... I'm sure everyone reading knows that you want limited inventory space. You've presented your reasons and some folks actually like what you have to say. I do not. I don't think it will work. I think there's a very select group of folks who even like the idea and I'd bet that a bunch of those wouldn't actually like it in practice. The purpose of this post wasn't to talk about limited inventory space but to talk about the more broad topic of challenge vs. annoyance. I say that making things take longer or more difficult does not automatically make them more fun.

I know how currency works. Your last line undermines your argument. "this example I just did don't work really well in minecraft as everyone has an equal opportunities" This is the issue which submarines your idea; these people can all just go out and get whatever they need. Also... these people would all be better off accepting ingots in trade rather than coins... say you can make 100 coins out of an ingot... so you start with an ingot... gather the fuel to melt the ingot... use up clay to make a mold... take the time to make the coins... you just spent time and resources changing an ingot from a useful form into a less useful form. Why not just trade with the ingot?

I am not "model building" any more than someone who makes a log cabin. The structure I'm building is functional. The chamber I've mined out is going to be a smithy, it will contain twenty forges and four smelteries plus rooms for storage and whatnot. I am using bronze tools. I could be using steel tools but I've an aversion to setting up a makeshift forge/smeltery out doors... I want my first steel making experience to be conducive to focusing solely on the task at hand. It took a month or two to get to where I am because I'm on my fourth server... the first one closed down, at the second one the owner started just freely spawning whatever he pleased for himself and anyone who was nice to him... the third one had so many technical difficulties that my progress was all eventually erased and I had to start from scratch... further... each time I start over I have to gather all the resources I want to begin with and find an ideal site... which is no mean feat. All this takes time. Additionally... there were other tunnels dug which I haven't mentioned... some service tunnels... others are mining tunnels from whence I derive my metal. As I understand it steel isn't much faster than bronze so your argument about substandard tools doesn't seem to carry much weight but instead completely ignores the fact that having to stop mining every twenty blocks and then go to the surface to dump my rocks would exponentially multiply the time it takes to do any mining at all. Honestly, this argument is more like a dodge and seems to me dishonest. Did you really need all this explained to you? Let's talk about storage and leave off the ridiculous amount of time you want to add to mining... log piles contain 16 logs... but let's assume you want a rock pile to be able to hold 32 rocks. I've over twenty five double chests full of rocks from excavating that chamber alone. Each double chest holds 45 stacks of 64 rocks. I'm doing all of this without actually referring to the exact number of chests... but let's just say i've got 72,000 rocks. That's 2,250 piles of rocks. For a single chamber. Honestly... I don't have the energy to address the rest of what you said. You built strawman arguments. "all we're here to do is build model dwarven cities" is not something I said. You are dishonest in your representation of my position on multiple counts. Firstly, I didn't say "all we're here to do is" anything at all, I never used that phrase or suggested it. Secondly, it isn't a "model" and I'm not sure why you'd employ that term unless you're insinuating that I want to build things that look pretty but serve no actual in game purpose, which isn't the case and is presumptuous.I've made some valid points about your suggestion for limited inventory space. It would definitely eliminate large builds. But let's set aside large builds. It would also completely hinder most folks from mining productively at all. How many miles of tunnels do we all have in our branch mining shafts? I can't imagine even mining a 2x1 for 800 cubits if I have to go back and dump rocks every time I have twenty. It'd be faster to nap through them without making anything (another loophole) then eventually be traversing 800 plus cubits to dump and then 800 back to mine for more. Folks would never get past bronze. It's a bad idea.

Another workaround is destroying all of the refuse with a cactus or lava. And again, the only way to prevent this is the removal of sprites entirely.

I think it is also worth pointing out that there are ways of getting around limited inventory space. I don't mean making back packs or employing mules. I mean, if a person doesn't want to haul tons and tons of stone little bit by little bit... why pick it up? The only people who'll play by your rules in that case will be the folks who want to build with the stone. But the gamers... the ones who seem to make it their goal to get to Red/Blue steel as quickly as possible and don't bother building anything they don't absolutely have to in order to achieve that end... they're just going to leave trails of sprites everywhere and really slow down the servers. I'm reminded of how on some servers you had folks digging up whole deserts and leaving the sand just to level their digging skill and get diamonds. It killed the server's ram with a quickness. Of course, to deal with this you could decide that if someone broke a block they had to have it in their inventory... you could do away with sprites completely. But then, if I was mining over a lava pit there wouldn't be a chance that any of my precious ore would fall... I'd be guaranteed to keep all of it. You're not going to achieve what you want to with limited inventory space. You'll be kneecapping the builders but the gamers won't even notice, it'll be a blip on their radar.

It seems like folks in your camp (if I may make a generalization) either desire to make TFCraft a mod which insists that the player always be fighting for survival and never thriving... or are at least assuming (if not desiring/insisting) that we're all playing on servers with other folks. Being able to cart forty five stacks of thirty two rocks out of my mine at a time is like not having to read how the hero wiped his butt for the millionth time in a fantasy novel... it's assumed. It does feel good to overcome tedium... I'd say it also feels good not to have to overcome tedium. I mean, that's not a real selling point of a game "overcome tedium!" And not having to store all that rubble in real space also works along the same lines. I'm currently mining/building/excavating/sculpting a dwarven city. I'm doing it by myself. Seeing as TFCraft is such a unique mod there are already comparatively few minecrafters who play. There are even less who would come both with the desire to help me in my task and the willingness to labor to my specifications. I've spent at least a month on this project and am nearly finished excavating (but not building) the first chamber. The change you suggest would increase the length of time on my project so exponentially that I would never get it done before the next update when worlds on servers will start being reset. The type of TFCraft you desire fits an overly specific niche. I'm not lazy and I'm not afraid of tedium. It's likely that I've more endurance to it than you do (as though that can be boasted about.) The chamber I've been excavating has taken days of real time. It's 41x41 with a ceiling about 20 cubits from the floor. The ceiling had to be carefully constructed out of smoothed stone before I could really begin to mine out the rest. If I had to cart out 12 rocks at a time... let alone find a place for them all... I think I'd just give up on TFC altogether. Your ideas almost preclude any major builds altogether excepting that you find not one but ten or twenty folks who're willing and able to spend hours a day performing very extremely tedious labor to the exclusion of all else. This discussion honestly reminds me of the coin discussion and the discussion on forced labor roles (id est; you are a wood cutter, you are not allowed to acquire metal, you trade wood to the miner and he gives you metal in return) in that it's an idea that you think is neat which you could practice on your own (you could easily limit how much of anything you carry) but you want to insist that everyone else play that way too. I don't think the idea adds to the game.

You misunderstand me. I'm not saying "I don't want coins to be implemented in the game!" What I'm saying is that if coins were implemented in the game I wouldn't accept them for trade, they'd be useless to me. As it's been said at least twice, if the coins are made out of useless metals like lead... I wouldn't want them. If they were made out of useful metals like iron it'd be more of a hassle for me to take the coins and melt them down into an ingot... I mean... that's silly... "Hey, I have an ingot and you need one? First let me use up coal to melt my ingot and break it into little pieces to give to you so that you can then melt all those little pieces and make an ingot out of it." If there were two people who wanted to trade with me and one offered me an iron ingot while the other offered me an iron ingot's worth of coins... I would always take the iron ingot because it means much less work for me. If i were going to take the coins I'd charge more for my trouble. I understand your desire to have an economy. I suspect that you also have a desire for folks to have to depend on one another and trade... one person produces metal goods, another produces crops, still another produces lumber... that's neat when it happens. But these ideas, as you've presented them, have gaping holes in them and folks are telling you what they are.We're telling you that your money idea doesn't work as you've presented it. You might get a handful of folks trading with your coins but most folks will recognize that the coins are less valuable than the metal they're made of and want ingots... or else want more coins for their trouble. The only people who'll use the coins will be folks who haven't figured that out or else the rare individual who uses them just because they think it's a fun idea. The trouble you've got to get over is that there is no advantage to folks like me. Why in the world would I want your coins? I'm sorry, I don't even have any suggestions. You're not talking to a big ol' meanie who hates everything. I'm actually initially inclined to want coinage and specializations too. However, I honestly can't see a way to make coins useful. If there were NPCs that might change things. Or if there was some sort of governmental structure in place.

I would say that TFC isn't the best choice for the audience you describe yourself to be in. At a guess the type of folks who, like you, would want to mine a single block before having to go find a place for it, is a very, very "elite" crowd. I imagine if you took a poll most of the folks who play would describe themselves as being outside of this particular group.

This, I like. However, I don't completely agree with the point on monotony. In vanilla minecraft and any other mod I've played, I have always made big projects. Lot's of digging, mining... monotonous occupations to be sure. That hasn't bothered me. My point was, and is, that folks are craving challenge and it seems like a lot of the ideas which they come up with are to make things we currently do more difficult, rather than adding challenges that are actually new. I may as well play vanilla and force myself to only use a wooden pick... that'd be more difficult too. But it wouldn't be more fun.

I disagree with the idea that the inventory space should be reduced further. Is it unrealistic? Yes. But consider mining with a "realistic" inventory space. How many trips out of your mine do you want to make just to make a 1x2 tunnel? Further, that rock you mined up should have to contain the same space in the real world shouldn't it? It shouldn't fit in a chest... it should occupy a huge mound right outside your mine entrance. With the amount of mining that most of us... possibly all of us... do this inventory reduction would simply add tedium to the game. If you don't think so I have a suggestion; go to your mine and mine ONE piece of rock... then cart it to the entrance and go back and mine ONE more piece of rock. Continue to mine in this way for an hour. Fun huh? You want realism? I've a more realistic idea than limited inventory space... go to your local hardware store and buy yourself a pick axe... no go find a quarry (or dig your own if you have the land) and mine up some stone. There ya go. That's fun. Realism does not always equate to fun. I believe I read it somewhere on this forum that Bioxx and Dunk aren't going for "realism" so much as believability. It's a game... it's a fantasy... we suspend disbelief. edit: If we're going to have limited inventory space and move in this direction then we may as well also ask Dunk to remove the Single Player button from the menu screen... TFCraft is definitely more catered toward multiplay but changes like this one would make the single player experience an exercise in frustration.

:harumph!: (every good debate needs at least a handful of harumphs)

Angel and Koljan, I owe you an apology. I was wrong to speak so generically.

And if you want my frank opinion, the folks pushing for a reset are the ones who didn't contribute anything tangible to the server. Those are the kind of folks I think the server could do without. If you spent hours/days/weeks carving a work of art you wouldn't cast it aside so easily. But you didn't. You rode someone else's coat tails, leeched their resources and then stole what they worked hard for. Your opinion is less than worthless in my view.

yeah, there are more than just six people who play. also, i spent actual weeks on that fortress... if it's gone, fine but i'm not really interested in starting over. i'm just saying how i feel. i'm not arguing or trying to get anyone to do anything. if my fortress is gone then i'm gonna go find something else to do.

If we reset the map I think I may be taking an indefinite break. I put a lot of work into that fortress and starting over just to fight hordes of zombies with tons of lag sounds like it'd be more trouble than it's worth.

I vote no. My reason is the one of real-life practicality... servers get bogged down when folks fight zombies with their current a.i. If there's an added incentive folks will lag servers more killing zombies. Until zombies are fixed I'd say that they shouldn't drop anything.