Tsuarok

Crap. So I'll need Red Steel for that. Hah.

 

Thanks.

you can also embed some structure in the water to gather the snow and release water on it, if you really want them earlier.

As amazing as translation software is... there's room for improvement.

The source code for TFC is here.  While it is open-source, you may want to talk to Bioxx before ripping his terrain generation code out and using it in your mod.  Preferably with a human translator.

I was afraid of that.  Thanks for the reply though!

If you play single player, you could use an NBT editor to change the detailed block texture to that of snow.  I use the NBT editor filter in MCEdit.  Of course, the snow wouldn't actually be snow, so it would never melt...

I am fairly sure that chiseling any decent amount of blocks leads to them being quite demanding on the system, if you mean detailing. Kind of the same problem with 'reinforcing' structure with number of planks. Making even a regular house, yet alone a castle would be a nightmare for some players, optifine and other such things included. Not to mention the fact that it does seem more like workaround for unnecessary limitation (which wasn't even planned as far as I know, just side effect of changes for the sake of mining) rather than a way to fix it.Still, nice of you to share ideas. Though I hope for someone to point out what would be the issue with above idea as i really don't see much problem - also 'work-required-wise' - with just adding copy of cobblestone that'd be using current cobblestone crafting recipe and would work like how it did before.

Stylistically, castles tend to be made of the bricks rather than cobble.  But really, the chiseling is optional; you can build without it.  And even if you want the assurance of a chiseled block, you need only chisel a few key blocks to stabilize the whole structure.  

I wouldn't be sad if they added a non-gravity cobble, but I actually do enjoy the challenge of building with gravity.  And there's nothing one can't build with the current cobble.

So, I'd mentioned this idea in another thread, but it seems applicable here as well, so...

How about animal trails that spawn during terrain generation.  They'd be made from permadirt, would prevent leaves from spawning above them, and would attract certain animals, such as rabbits, deer, etc.  Placing a trap along one would have some chance of catching one of these animals, or you could try following it to go hunting directly.

I know deer trails are pretty easy to come by in New England, and other animals tend to use these trails for their easy passage.

Are you sure we can't build houses out of cobble?

 

I vote for the mortared cobble due to this

:Cobblestone architecture refers to the use of cobblestones embedded in mortar as method for erecting walls on houses and commercial buildings.

But you can build that in TFC as it is.  Just like with real building, you just need to use scaffolding.  Thatch cheaply and easily fills this role.  If you're really worried about later collapse, just hit the cobble up with a chisel (if you'd like, think of it as fine tuning the supporting rocks, which is fairly realistic).  Yes, it's more time consuming, but who builds castles out of cobble?  In real life, you have to put these things together with care, or they will collapse on you.

My town Sherton at this server (you can see it yourself)

Wow, Tenterro, as always with your builds, I'm amazed.  Just stunning.

I hate to feed the offtopic beast, but just use thatch as scaffolding and cobblestone works fine in most situations, especially since historically multiple floors were rare, and when used, tended to either be made of wood or used support beams, which we already have.  Finishing the house with some nice plank moldings gives it a nice look while maintaining stability during additions/repairs.

In short, building with cobblestone is hard, but not impossible.  Just like RL. 

Is this still moving forward?

You're amazing!

I know that you're not really updating this anymore, but the food requirement pretty much kills off domesticated animals during the winter.  Any chance you could have them eat thatch?

I love the idea of having stained glass. But glass panels should be molded not blow.

So while the new blowing glass interface system sounds cool I don't want to have to use it for my simple glass panels or blocks.

I think  in the old times glass for windows was molded.

Maybe we can have 2 different molds one for glass blocks and one for glass panels.

For game-play purposes mixing dye with sand before melting should give the color of the glass unless we can have 16 different color metals to add to the sand.

For cups and bottles is where blowing comes in action. 

Historically, a blob of glass was spun very quickly to create a circular pane, which was then cut into it's square shape.

So, now that Dunk's out in the working world, will we get to help with his work?

So, I have some personal experience with glassblowing, the more traditional, non-pyrex way. As a starting point I'll just describe the RL process, and then add some thoughts on how it could be translated to TFC.

So, first, you take a whole bunch of starting material (for TFC, sand is fine), and heat it up in a crucible.  You dip your blowpipe into the molten glass, and, using a wet cloth, you shape it with your hands.  When it cools down too much, you stick it back in the furnace to reheat it.  If it is to be a vessel, you blow through the tube to create the hollow.  If you want colors, you dab it in colored powders and then reheat it to integrate the colors.  If working on a larger piece, you need to gather the glass on the blowpipe in stages, allowing each stage to cool slightly before adding more.  After you've achieved the shape and color that you want, you allow it to cool just enough to be solid, then score the glass near the blowpipe with a file and sort of knock it off.  It then needs to go into a kiln for a few hours to slowly bring the temperature down, because if allowed to cool too quickly, it will shatter.

There are other tools and tricks to get shapes or effects that you want, but that is more or less it.

So, how to implement something like this in TFC?

I'd suggest, heat up the sand in a crucible, ready when white hot.  Place your blowpipe (tuyere maybe?) in the output slot to affix the glass to the end.  Removing the tuyere opens up the glassblowing interface, where you have anvil-like recipes for various products, with slots for dyes (like the flux slot).  Work should need to be fairly fast, because the working temperature range is pretty narrow.  

If it cools down a bit too much, place it in a lit forge to bring the temperature back up and reset the work you've done (not realistic, but easier to code I think).  If allowed to cool a lot, the work is lost.  It could either disappear, or leave something that could be put back in the crucible. (no need to worry about dyes, IRL these get burned off in the crucibles).  

The finished work would need to be run through a kiln.  Preferably, we'd have the more permanent advanced kiln to do this in, but if not, for the purpose of the game, the pit kiln would be fine.  Just place them in like pottery and go.  If you wait too long to light it, it disappears.

For stained glass, I'd suggest we break colored glass panes and create our masterpieces with lead in a 16x16 grid (different colors would have lead between, while the same colors would not).

-Tsuarok

Either I'm high, or this thread belongs in the Discussion forumMods?

Well, I think the OP meant it to be suggestions for other players.  But yeah, discussion would still likely be better.

If people don't want their buildings to have that block then they simply don't use it, simple as that. I don't understand why you are so objective towards a little more variety... no one is forcing you to use a block you don't want to.

To be clear, I wouldn't object to them adding it; I just think that niche blocks like this might be more style specific than they'd like.  Also, these blocks look much better at higher resolutions and when paired with CTM, both of which are the purview of resource packs. 

To be effective the block itself would need the texture. Some people might just say make a resource pack and paint a block to look like that but TFC is meant for SMP and ideally buildings look good regardless of texture packs.

I get that, but resource packs tend to be a bit more specific.  The block we're looking at in this thread is for a really narrow building style -- tudor.  While beautiful and cool, it's feel is very period specific, and not necessarily what everyone will want for their minecraft experience.  Thus, imo, this type of thing is best relegated to resource packs.

I'd been considering texturing clay blocks and/or adobe blocks (from extrafirma) with this pattern for my RP.

I do like the idea of the learn-for-life method, but it does fall back on reliance on out-of-game knowledge. As it stands now, you can see everything you can do with a piece of metal by looking at the plans. It complicates things when you have to know them before you start playing.

That's a really good point -- pausing the game to look up something on the wiki isn't a challenge.  It breaks immersion.  Honestly, I'd like to see you guys go farther in this direction, with the clay and leather interfaces.  Maybe just have a list of pictures that you need to copy over or something.  (...preferably something a bit more inspired than my idea...)

Something that may be fun would be animal runs, or trails, that appear on world gen and are made of permadirt.  Animals would tend toward walking along them, and they might be good spots to set up traps, if they're ever implemented.

One more thought:

This kind of goes beyond the scope of the thread, but you'd mentioned progression, and it got me thinking.  I was reading a thread a while back about the possibility of adding machines to TFC, and one of the suggested structures was a lumber mill.  Right now, of course, a lumber mill would be a bit pointless, because it's so easy to make planks.  My suggestion adds a bit of tedium to the process, which would be bad, unless there was a way around it.  

So I'd suggest that a lumber mill would be a multi-block structure that made full plank blocks from logs without the intervening steps, and without nails/pegs.  It and similar machines (regular mill, water/wind mill to run the machines, etc.) would be large buildings, perhaps made out of pressurized wood (requiring 9 blocks/block), so making you lumber mill first would pay off in the long run.  And allow true progression, without removing difficulty.  Because while your increased production would make certain earlier tasks rather trivial, you'd need the increased production to reasonably make the other machines.

Okay guys, I'm off tomorrow, so this is the final release until probably the beginning of September.  I'd hoped to have more done by now, but I haven't had as much time as I'd like to work on this, so...

Anyway, this week is pretty light on the updates.  Onions have been added in, as has an assortment of ores.  I'd added a smoke animation a while back that I'd put into the 256x pack, but forgot to place in the others, so they've got it now.

And, that's about it.

If you have any problems with the pack, please let me know; I'll be checking in periodically.  I won't be able to change anything myself, but I could help walk you through what needs to be changed.  Otherwise, it will still be nice to know for when I get back.

Have a nice summer, get outside a bit.

-Tsuarok

When approaching a solution such as this, which could be interesting, it's important to make sure it doesn't become tedious or feel pointless.

 

The first constraint means it can't be difficult to get a hold of the materials or to produce the items, and that it doesn't greatly affect the way players play.

 

Secondly, there should probably be some sort of progression, with advantages to increasing tiers.

 

 

What I would suggest is adding a tool belt. Various items like pegs or nails could be added to the tool belt in a separate window. Any crafting recipes or construction that required those items would grab them out of the belt automatically, without bothering the player about it. The second part is where I come up a bit short. I'm not sure what the advantages of pegs or nails to begin with might be (or what better versions of them might do), but I feel it's a direction to point the discussion in.

I like that; it would prevent clogging up the inventory too much.

hmm... it if weren't for spawn protection, I'd suggest that the tiered nails provide an increased blast resistance.  But I've never had a house blown up in TFC, not by creepers nor by TFC's relatively mature player base, I don't see the benefit as worth much.  But it might be nice on some servers, or with certain config settings.

I agree that the way current mechanics works is both testing suspension of disbelief and not overly realistic but in all honesty, I'd rather have it left as it is. It's the kind of simplification that makes the game actually more enjoyable. Suggested content, while it'd make the whole deal more realistic (that's where it's believability would stem from) would be also bothersome - just additional step requiring implementation of new crafting recipe and items, increasing length of time of producing otherwise common - at least post-prehistoric phase - material.I doubt I'd enjoy much such feature.

Fair enough.  I just sort of felt like it would add a bit more to the "advanced" construction materials.  But tedium isn't fun, and fun is definitely more important than believably. 

I'd say make a type of cobblestone that won't fall down, can be made the same way as bricks, but instead of these; stones. It will look the same as cobble. It's a believable way of using a very pretty (and used) building material. And it's a shame we had it taken away from us.

Yes, I think there's a thread about that.