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Brodiggan

Charcoal Stacks

42 posts in this topic

As of the latest build producing charcoal is problematic. Because charcoal is dropped into the world, the moment charcoal production finishes, the player has only five real-time minutes to retrieve the charcoal before it despawns. This forces the player to just sit and monitor the charcoal pit for the duration of its burn or risk losing significant resources. Previously, burning charcoal was something you usually did while engaged in other projects (working at the forge, farming, mining, etc.), but now you can't risk walking away from your pit for more than a minute or two. The option to build larger charcoal pits is nice, but I'm not sure it's worth it if the tradeoff is a huge added timesink.

Thankfully, I think there's a fairly easy way of fixing the tedium without altering too many other mechanics. Instead of ejecting the charcoal into the world, how about adding a new "Charcoal stack" block that is functionally similar to the wood stack storage blocks, but holds charcoal? During charcoal production the wood stacks could be removed (as they are now) and simply replaced with the charcoal stacks, which could then be filled with the charcoal from production.

I'm not totally sure how the code works that controls what you can and can't store in a container, but it might even be possible to just make charcoal stacks a new data value/texture applied to the current wood stack block. If so, there wouldn't even be any need to remove the wood stacks during charcoal production, just change the data value to get the new texture/behaviour, empty the stacks, and refill them with the right amount of charcoal.

EDIT: Item despawn might be 10 minutes, I'm finding conflicting information. Regardless of the time it takes, charcoal despawning is an issue.

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I've got a giant green beanbag for a head, and I endorse this post.

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Personally I don't find it much of an issue. Having to hang around my house waiting for day for the 18 hours got pretty tedious especially when most of my gameplay is not near it and if I am at home, that means I already have charcoal and am at the bloomery.

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+1

EDIT: i was about to ask what were you talking about, until i saw the changelog :P

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I would have agreed with brodiggan but i just tried making charcoal and frankly it was so fast that it's worth it to wait next to it. it litterally took less than 1 minute to get 2 stacks of charcoal.

Previously it took ages, so i'm all for keeping the new system.

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Previously it took ages, so i'm all for keeping the new system.

As far as I know that part is just a bug. I'd be really, really surprised if charcoal doesn't go back to its original burn time in the next patch or two.

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hey. guys. want some hacks? Don't cover your charcoal pit in dirt, just let the stacks burn. ;)

(this is probably going to be fixed soon btw)

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hey. guys. want some hacks? Don't cover your charcoal pit in dirt, just let the stacks burn. ;)

(this is probably going to be fixed soon btw)

Damn. A dev teach us something that deserve to be tried... and i can't ;_;

F+cking win32 ruining my computer -_-"

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If the short time it takes to convert to charcoal currently is a bug, I defiently approve of this. If this is how it's going to be and it's intentional, there's no need.

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If the short time it takes to convert to charcoal currently is a bug, I defiently approve of this. If this is how it's going to be and it's intentional, there's no need.

It's still bad game design no matter how long it takes, for the charcoal to just be thrown into the world.
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It's still bad game design no matter how long it takes, for the charcoal to just be thrown into the world.

at the moment, the hacks I was referring to means you can get charcoal in 15 seconds.
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From the Change Log for the next patch:

  • Fixed the charcoal process being left on debug settings which caused the entire process to finish too quickly.

Looks like I was right about this bit getting fixed pretty quickly. I really hope there is some consideration going on about adding a different, non-time sensitive method of outputting the charcoal (whether or not it's my idea being considered).

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I was thinking 1 charcoal block that replaces the firepit. It should have enough inventory space to hold the max yield of charcoal, but you can only remove the charcoal from it, you can't add anything to it so it's not a way to get more storage. And to keep people from just holding the charcoal there until they need it, if that would even be a problem, you could have opening the inventory eject all the charcoal like the firepit does now.

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Well, in light of the news about the timing being bugged, I absolutely agree with the charcoal stack block/pile/whatever. Short of constantly walking over to the pit and seeing if you can see smoke in there (or hear zombies in there), there's no easy way to see if the process is done or not. My current method is just to put a stack of sand on top and when it disappears, it's done. That doesn't really help though if I'm distracted for more than 5 minutes though. :unsure:

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Hm?

Why should you not be able to add Coal to them?

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I was thinking 1 charcoal block that replaces the firepit. It should have enough inventory space to hold the max yield of charcoal, but you can only remove the charcoal from it, you can't add anything to it so it's not a way to get more storage. And to keep people from just holding the charcoal there until they need it, if that would even be a problem, you could have opening the inventory eject all the charcoal like the firepit does now.

exactly my thinking.

+1

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Since it was a bug i'll keep my 0.47c until there's something done to prevent charcoal from disappearing if you're not monitoring it... call it cheating but i just don't want to deal with this kind of tedium for now.

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Well, in light of the news about the timing being bugged, I absolutely agree with the charcoal stack block/pile/whatever. Short of constantly walking over to the pit and seeing if you can see smoke in there (or hear zombies in there), there's no easy way to see if the process is done or not. My current method is just to put a stack of sand on top and when it disappears, it's done. That doesn't really help though if I'm distracted for more than 5 minutes though. :unsure:

What about the smoke not showing anymore?
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What about the smoke not showing anymore?

If it's the wrong time of day or you have a torch in the wrong spot, it can be very difficult to make out the smoke. That also assumes you're staying near your charcoal pit and checking for smoke every minute or two, which was exactly the sort of tedium I was talking about originally.

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I firmly agree that charcoal being ejected is a problem. I think a charcoal block being created, either on or in place of the fire pit, is the way to go.

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If it's the wrong time of day or you have a torch in the wrong spot, it can be very difficult to make out the smoke. That also assumes you're staying near your charcoal pit and checking for smoke every minute or two, which was exactly the sort of tedium I was talking about originally.

if you have a torch in the wrong spot, arguably you failed at building it. :)

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I was on an SMP server last night and ended up having to make like 2-3 pits before I managed to get my first yield. Really annoying. The sand idea I had didn't work at all. I must of just got lucky before when I was placing it, because it didn't fall when it was done. The only way I can do it now is set it up, light it, cover it, hit N and check the time of day, add 19 hours (I know it's 18, but I've came back at 18 before and it wasn't done), and then come back. That's assuming you don't sleep, which apparently no one in that server does. Until you get your first bit of charcoal anyway. Then you can replace some of the cover blocks with glass to see inside. Still, not a fan of the drop system.

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