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danagor

How SSP players should play?

79 posts in this topic

I don't see it as breaking anything in the game with how it is. Yes it takes a while, but you can do other things while you are playing, like making charcoal or working on other sources of food, as well as planting seeds you find. It will take a while for the crop to grow, a bit longer if you do it in single player, but it is by no means a game breaking mechanic. Maybe having configs would help those sort of people, the ones who don't have time for anything, but that's not how the devs are going about things.

I'm not saying you have to sit there for 30 hours or so at a time, you can always play for a couple hours, or however long you have and do other things. Even if you die of hunger, it's not a huge setback as you are probably still in the stone age, or barely scraping out of it.

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Bloodraven is continuing my point quite well. Im glad you love the game, and I love it too, but you don't have to sit and wait for farms. It's a background thing. Something that progresses while you're working on something else.

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Nah, we've pretty much stopped all development for SSP features. It's really simple to set up a local server that you can have running 24/7, so it's probably the best way to play.

Also, fellow Canadian???

(if you're not from Ontario, don't hate me for being from Toronto =P)

You're from Toronto? :o sweet! Don't hate me for being from Brampton hahaha
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Well i hear all of you i LOVE TFC i mean if they would have like shirts and caps i would have hundrends of them i belive that this mod is really awsome i don't even find vMC fun anymore is just dull for me now, and i have been playing it since direwolf made the review and that's a long shot before Agriculture was done, i played SSP because that's how i like to play because i'm a shy guy and MC for me is like a relaxing place i love to go... blah blah blah... the point i want to get here is that i like SSP, now TFC has Agriculture and i got really exited about it!!! and now with the sizes and all the new stuff i mean COME ON Bioxx ROCK BABY!!!, the thing is that crops take a little too long, and animals a little too long to reproduce since everytime i turn off my PC in a SSP world well time stops in MC...

Create a local Server and play alone is the "Solution" turn it off and on anytime while at work, etc... that makes the waiting a little bit less tedius in a way but even thou it's quite a long time to wait + i'm leaving on my pc 24/7... why not making a little tweak where we can make the crops and breeding a little less time consuming, like dificulties for it that, or maybe shorter years, etc... would be awsome both in SSP and SMP so if you are like me a shy guy you can play MC like there's no tomorrow and enjoy a delicious onion+tomato+rye salad and some nice lemons ^_^ on the weekends or if you have a lotta friends + time during the week go ahead and play SMP... That's it nothing more...

If Bioxx changes that, hell i'll be the happiest TFCrafter in this forum, and other people too, if he doesn't well i guess i'll keep playing TFC without enjoing much of the agruculture/breeding/fruits system and eat meat, fish, cactus?! whitout complaining...

So no hate, i just think a little tweak here and there won't harm anyone :) at the end of the day we love TFC

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I'm not saying you have to sit there for 30 hours or so at a time, you can always play for a couple hours, or however long you have and do other things. Even if you die of hunger, it's not a huge setback as you are probably still in the stone age, or barely scraping out of it.

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.

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Because it's not all about agriculture, you don't seem to get that. You don't need to work on growing stuff, and you can do quite well without even bothering to do animal husbandry as well, they're just small facets of the game. As I have stated and Treyflix, you can do other things as well, like mining or construction, you don't have to sit around with your thumb up your ass while your crops grow. You seem to think that you are entitled to more than how the devs run their mod and how they view minecraft should be, that's the point of mods. If you don't like it, why not learn java and work on trying to make a mod of your own that will do what you want? Perhaps TFC isn't the mod for you.

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I'll be completely honest, BloodravenD, you seem to be getting a little too hostile about this.

On a more relevant to thread note: I personally run a server and I would love to see some sort of configs that let me control various time-scales and such (perm winter ice age anyone?). I'm siding with elustran, even as someone who only plays TFC in mutli-player more control and configs is always better

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The upside is that once this mod reaches a stable zone, or moves from pre 2 to pre 3 and the base systems are done, I'm willing to bet that one or more people will create an "SSP fix" that makes SSP more playable. I know that's a long time to wait, but at least it's a silver lining in the distance.

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I fail to see how people can cop out with dev intent on a forum full of suggestions, some of which have been implemented. Rather than discussing how such a change negatively impacts play, several people are simply trying to shout the idea down. Discuss the positives and negatives related to actual play. I assure you that dunk and Bioxx are highly aware of their intent and will either weigh in on the suggestion or ignore it as they see fit.

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The reason that many things are not controllable via config is twofold. First of all, a lot of things are just plain difficult to allow being configurable from a code standpoint because of how they may interfere with other systems. The other, and more important, reason is that I am trying to create a certain experience with TFC. Granted, exactly what this experience consists of changes every week until I have it nailed down. If I start opening up a bunch of things in a config file, I'm going to start getting flooded with bug reports about things that I can't reproduce because the player has non-default settings and neglects to tell me... No thanks. I have enough bug reports to go through tyvm.

That said, in the future when I feel that more of the game is set in stone, I'll be adding more options. But right now it is not in my interests to do so.

On the topic of SSP, I cannot develop for both SSP and SMP from a design perspective. What works in one does not always work in the other, and usually its the SSP side that ends up screwing up the SMP game. So it becomes a question of priorities. Do I design features in such a way that a single player on his own can easily do everything? Or do I attempt to design in a way that encourages communities. I choose the later.

I'm also perfectly aware that sometimes my design plans go awry and don't work as I intend. If anyone has noticed, I'm prone to rewrite entire areas repeatedly until it works to my satisfaction so keep that in mind for what its worth. the game you see today, may not be what you see tomorrow.

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Well, you're doing a fabulous job Bioxx :) sometimes I think people get carried away and think you're god and can do everything. Which is understandable considering how much you have already done!

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The reason that many things are not controllable via config is twofold. First of all, a lot of things are just plain difficult to allow being configurable from a code standpoint because of how they may interfere with other systems. The other, and more important, reason is that I am trying to create a certain experience with TFC. Granted, exactly what this experience consists of changes every week until I have it nailed down. If I start opening up a bunch of things in a config file, I'm going to start getting flooded with bug reports about things that I can't reproduce because the player has non-default settings and neglects to tell me... No thanks. I have enough bug reports to go through tyvm.

That said, in the future when I feel that more of the game is set in stone, I'll be adding more options. But right now it is not in my interests to do so.

It is good to know these kind of things, as we are no programmers, some times we do not understand the dificulties that a developer may find and just talk like it was easy to do... Besides this is the programmer's mod he decides what's good and what not for his creation.

On the topic of SSP, I cannot develop for both SSP and SMP from a design perspective. What works in one does not always work in the other, and usually its the SSP side that ends up screwing up the SMP game. So it becomes a question of priorities. Do I design features in such a way that a single player on his own can easily do everything? Or do I attempt to design in a way that encourages communities. I choose the later.

As i said before i will respect your desition, and it's not going to make this shy guy stop playing TFC, if i have to adapt i will because your mod is fun and surviving is all about adaptation anyways so that makes TFC more interesting :) i might do some new friends on the way :P

I'm also perfectly aware that sometimes my design plans go awry and don't work as I intend. If anyone has noticed, I'm prone to rewrite entire areas repeatedly until it works to my satisfaction so keep that in mind for what its worth. the game you see today, may not be what you see tomorrow.

Hey as long as you don't abandon TFC i'll be happy you're doing a great job and that's something i belive everyone reading the forums and palying your mod agrees so keep up the good work :D and thanks for taking the time to hear (err.. read :P) and respond to what we think ^_^

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I don't see it as breaking anything in the game with how it is. Yes it takes a while, but you can do other things while you are playing, like making charcoal or working on other sources of food, as well as planting seeds you find. It will take a while for the crop to grow, a bit longer if you do it in single player, but it is by no means a game breaking mechanic. Maybe having configs would help those sort of people, the ones who don't have time for anything, but that's not how the devs are going about things.

I'm not saying you have to sit there for 30 hours or so at a time, you can always play for a couple hours, or however long you have and do other things. Even if you die of hunger, it's not a huge setback as you are probably still in the stone age, or barely scraping out of it.

I have a farm on my first world where I planted some crops before the end of the first day. Everything I've been doing has been in the same general area as my little farm, so as far as I'm aware, it's never been "unloaded." And I have yet to see any of the crops reach the second stage of growth, despite having spent a week of play sessions playing on that world.

I don't mind in the sense that crops aren't necessary for food - meat pinata cows are fine - but what if I wanted to start breeding animals? I'd need some crops for that. And even a full real-life week's worth of 1-3 hour play sessions hasn't even gotten me to the second stage of growth, and as far as I'm aware, the area they're in is just fine (good rainfall, low EVT, moderate temperatures, etc.)

I actually like that things like growing crops and breeding animals takes a while - it makes sense. It's just that I can agree with eulstran that it doesn't feel very comfortable for SSP. But Bioxx has said he's developing for SMP, so if that means I've gotta find a server if I want to experience everything... I guess it's time to hunt for a server.

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I have a farm on my first world where I planted some crops before the end of the first day. Everything I've been doing has been in the same general area as my little farm, so as far as I'm aware, it's never been "unloaded." And I have yet to see any of the crops reach the second stage of growth, despite having spent a week of play sessions playing on that world.

I don't mind in the sense that crops aren't necessary for food - meat pinata cows are fine - but what if I wanted to start breeding animals? I'd need some crops for that. And even a full real-life week's worth of 1-3 hour play sessions hasn't even gotten me to the second stage of growth, and as far as I'm aware, the area they're in is just fine (good rainfall, low EVT, moderate temperatures, etc.)

I actually like that things like growing crops and breeding animals takes a while - it makes sense. It's just that I can agree with eulstran that it doesn't feel very comfortable for SSP. But Bioxx has said he's developing for SMP, so if that means I've gotta find a server if I want to experience everything... I guess it's time to hunt for a server.

Hmm, that is pretty bad. I've honestly never really put much time into TFC, tested a few things either in creative or just started up a world with a latest build, then there is a new version of TFC so I end up starting over again. Balancing that, on top of several other games, as well as running a guild on a wow private server, you can see I don't put much time into minecraft.

I agreed that configs would be nice, but I can also see as how it's still a WIP, the mod needs a stable config so if there are bugs, they can be reproduced and fixed. I am sad that there isn't some sort of middle ground between SSP and SMP...

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On the topic of SSP, I cannot develop for both SSP and SMP from a design perspective. What works in one does not always work in the other, and usually its the SSP side that ends up screwing up the SMP game. So it becomes a question of priorities. Do I design features in such a way that a single player on his own can easily do everything? Or do I attempt to design in a way that encourages communities. I choose the later.

It seems to me there are two problems here:

  • In SMP world time passes when you're not playing, so the game state will advance a lot more than your actual play time.
  • There's a lot to do and in SSP only one person to do it all.
I wouldn't worry about #2 for now - I don't expect that makes SSP unplayable and I think this could be addressed in the future through NPCs.

For #1, have you considered automatically advancing the game state by the amount of real-world time which has passed when the game starts up? It might be tricky, but it would make SSP work just like SMP in this regard and probably solve a whole bunch of issues in the long term.

Other possibilities include adjusting the hunger rate so food lasts much longer and making hunting+gathering a viable survival strategy (need wild plants and naturally respawning animals). These might muck with SMP balance, but I do think the latter would be very cool in its own right.

I haven't actually played TFC though, so take my opinion with a grain of salt. I've been watching lots of Crysyn's and Mead's videos, but the SSP issues definitely give me pause (since that's what I'd be using).

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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.

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Wow i'm amazed of the poll results ATM 44% of solo players + 8% or Hardcore Solo players that's 52% of the people playing TFC!!! That's a lot more than i thought it would be O.o

I wonder what Bioxx is going to do next after thous results... the blood thickens :P

what do you people say that will happen? growth times decreased, breed time drecreased, calendar time speeds up?

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I'd rather not speculate. The numbers surprised me, as well, considering the reactions which have bubbled up toward SSP-geared ideas from the general public (not Bioxx or dunk). However, regardless of any poll, I think that Bioxx should and will continue to do his thing. After all, it's his creative juice powering this thing. Whatever he decides to do with the info will be jus' fine with me.
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  • Solo (43%, 124 Votes)
  • SMP 2-5 People (34%, 98 Votes)
  • SMP 5-10 People (9%, 27 Votes)
  • Solo, Hardcore (7%, 21 Votes)
  • SMP 10+ (7%, 18 Votes)
EHM!

Now lets add the question "SMP because Crops and breeding take too much freakin time".

As I've heard, SMP people miss their harvest seasons alot of times, so why would it matter for SMP players if the seasons were shorter?

Last time I checked a year was 80hours, 80hours is what usally takes to finish a good game.

It does not matter if you are "oh so" devoted to terrafirma by playing hours on end, the majority playes SOLO.

All Bioxx needs to do to please the majority of his fans is to lower the year duration to 40/60 hours (having an option to to this would take too much time to make).

And lower the rate of things growing/breeding which COULD be an option since there is only object envolved and not biomes etc.

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look i've been playing alot since my new rig got ready (well almost still wating for the new processor) and i realized that food its not a problem so in my opinion we should stop complaining about year duration and crops taking to long to grow! as i can trust in hunting animals to give me food and in truth i've never ram out of stakes or porkchops after 4 ~ 5 cows or pigs so i think crops and fruit trees are designed to be a (very) late game resource when game start to get scarce!

so guys i think bioxx did this (crops taking a looooonnnngggg time to grow i mean) on purpose and we can expect changes in the hunting mecanics with the butchery update that maybe make things a little more dificult (and by dificult i mean complex and that is a good thing).

so just my 2 cents and i hope i have not over reacted...

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Look, guys. I'll say it again:

If you believe the change would negatively impact gameplay in some way, then say so. Share how, and provide concrete examples if you can. Too many times, I see people say 'no' or even shout down an idea without indicating how it would harm the mod or their gameplay.

We're here to hash out the particulars of suggested features and determine how they will affect the game. It's not up to us to simply stamp 'denied' on a suggestion. That's Bioxx and dunk's realm.

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Wow i'm amazed of the poll results ATM 44% of solo players + 8% or Hardcore Solo players that's 52% of the people playing TFC!!! That's a lot more than i thought it would be O.o

The numbers surprised me, as well, considering the reactions which have bubbled up toward SSP-geared ideas from the general public.

Because there are no such things as the silent majority or the vocal minority.

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I still don't think Bioxx should change his vision of SMP TerraFirmaCraft just because it seems like most people play solo right now. Find out why people are avoiding SMP and do something to fix those issues.

To start, doing something to make stealing/griefing more difficult if not impossible would probably help.

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EDIT: I've edited this several times now because I forgot which thread I was in. The editor is not saving my changes, and I don't feel like writing them again. In short, I think that survivalists like myself feel the experience is cheapened by relying on others. Also, I would like to enjoy the entire mod, not just the pieces which happen to work with SSP. Not that everyone should play the way I do. That's just what I'm looking for in the mod.

Oh, and I agree with the Griefing/Thiefing thing you mentioned. While it isn't quite realistic to have such restrictions on player behavior, I can't see myself investing a lot of time and achievement while hoping that some random idiot doesn't happen by and burn it all down.

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I still don't think Bioxx should change his vision of SMP TerraFirmaCraft just because it seems like most people play solo right now. Find out why people are avoiding SMP and do something to fix those issues.

To start, doing something to make stealing/griefing more difficult if not impossible would probably help.

We play solo because we just want to play solo, no other players just lonely steve exploring a world by himself. A friend of mine started a server for the sole reason to be able to grow stuff.

Bioxx may not realize but he created a mod that people use as a substitute for Minecraft.

My 2 cents (or wait.. My 30$ that I donated) is that he makes the game playable for solo players before he focuses on "kingdoms".

Edit:

The only solution I see is that "kingdoms" works as a expansion that has longer years (in another thread created, SMP people wanted even longer years because the right seasons pass by to quickly when the server is running 24/7) while the core game has shorter years (last time I made a calc. A year was 80 hours).

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