Increasing the believability and satisfaction of mining

[puxapuak 232]

As seems to be the request of the community, I will state up front a short summary, though I strongly feel you should read the whole sequence if this at all interests you. The idea suggests the following:

• variable rock textures for a given rock type
• less-visible ore veins (actually the veins would often not be at all visible unless you know exactly what you're looking for)
• ore veins that vary in purity (and more dramatically in scale... smaller veins would be more common but less visible and with lower purity)
• an alternative mechanic for the ProPick;

• instead of getting a scale/proximity reading, the pro-pick produces rock shards (like from knapping)
• rock shards are random, with a variety for each rock type.
• rock shards do not have explicit names, but are descriptions of what you find
• becoming a good miner means knowing what combinations of shards suggests what kind of metal might be nearby, and at what purity

The long version

Motivation: If you want to make a good puzzle, you need to have not just false-negatives but also false-positives. To make a really good puzzle, you also make it so the player needs to gain skill in order to actually identify what success looks like.

I am writing this as a direct continuation from the discussion that began in this thread of ECC's, and stemming from this post of mine. In that thread, I expressed a critique and an inconsistency in the idea that TFC is designed as a non-RPG mining game that begins as a simulation of prehistoric conditions. I instead argued that as the mod is presented, it is more believable that the player is a contemporary person who somehow found themselves separated from civilisation on an unfamiliar world.

That is the background. This particular suggestion is aimed at making TFC more believable as a game that begins in pre-history. If we are uncivilised cave-people, we should not have a modern understanding of metallurgy, agriculture, and construction, and we sure wouldn't have a propick that is better than any technology available to us here in 2012. I am say all this not as a complaint, but as a suggestion that we can make mining more challenging, more interesting, more of a puzzle, and more satisfying while increasing the believability of pre-historicity and without impacting playability.

An alternate proposed TFC mining experience...

So you've recently arrived in your new homeland, built yourself a home using local trees or maybe a safe hill-side cave. You've got a suite of stone tools made from loose scattered stones... and you figure you're ready to take on the world of mining.

There's a nearby field with a lot of exposed rock near the base of an equally rocky mountain. At first glance the stones are uninteresting; some seemingly random variations of colour and texture. You have no metal tools, so all you can do is bang stones together and see what comes out. You grab a loose stone and start smacking it against a few rocks. It takes a while, but every so often you smash the rocks into a few good thin shards you can examine in more detail. The shards don't have "names" per se, instead they are descriptions.

You examine your stack of shards and find:

• a few whitish-pink shards; "large crystalline grains"
• a few whitish shards; "translucent smooth crystalline"
• lots of greyish-brown shards; "large translucent fragile crystals"
• a handful of reddish-brown shards; "loose fragile cubic grains"

What have you found? You have no idea, because you've never mined before. You look around and notice the dirt is a light greyish brown, and the grass doesn't grow so well. It's a fairly dry climate.

You play around with the shards using a mortar and pestle, a firepit, and a bucket of water. The some of the shards are very hard and nothing can be done to any of them. Others can be ground into powder, melted into some kind translucent substance, and one of them dissolves very rapidly in water but also melts into a hard lump.

What have you found? You still have no idea. But you've gathered a lot of evidence. You continue the process for a few weeks and inspect nearby areas as well. You start to notice that the subtle variations in the texture and colour of the rock seems to produce more of some shards and less of others. More evidence...

In playing with the shards, you've found that if you melt one of the ones the fragile ones at a high enough temperature, it turns into a reflective metal of some kind, but the amounts from the shards are very tiny. But at last, it's a clue!

You build up a profile of what rocks produce those shards the most and focus on those areas. In so doing, you gathered enough shards to fashion a rough metal pick after grinding them down and melting them in vast numbers. It's a light brittle white metal, but it's better than smashing rocks together and produces a lot more shards, giving you better numbers to pay attention to.

Digging in those more productive areas for the shard you're interested in is fruitless for a while, but then eventually you find a section of rock that - even though it looks not much different than the surrounding rock - yields nothing but the shard you're interested in. Luckily by this point you've not just built a rock pick for chipping shards, but a much heavier sturdier pick that can shatter rocks much more quickly (but it's still slow at this point), and a hammer to grind them down so you can melt them in your fire pit. Your new pick - when used on this seemingly insignificantly different rock - yields big blocks of this ore you seem to have found - you only need a handful of these to equal dozens of shards.

The explanation

So all of this sounds a little different but still very familiar. There are not a lot of changes here... just the introduction of the possibility of false positives, and the addition of a particular type of variance that makes it so players must learn the basics to be a proficient miner. The clues can be more misleading, but they are also so much more meaningful because you actually have to piece together a story of your local rocks. Under different conditions the same ore may need to be tracked using different cues in the environment.

There's some other little differences I alluded to too, but they are not fundamentally that different to the chain than any of us are used to either. Most importantly, this makes mining believable as a person in a world with know prior knowledge of the task at hand. It increases the value of someone who learns the trade very well to their community. It creates room for people to specialise at hunting different metals and minerals. The player who figures out that 'those smooth brownish stones with green streaks that chip off into hard difficult-to-melt flakes and lots of greenish powdery flakes often yields thin seems of a high-purity strong brownish-white metal' - would be a player in high demand on their server...

Okay that was huge and I really need to sleep - sorry for the lack of editing and the countless grammar errors I no doubt made. I hope people find this intriguing. It would require some changes to stones (more than one texture for each type of stone) and the introduction of some new items, but there's not really any super-huge fundamental changes. Just small ones with great effect. You can also imagine a series of transitionary steps towards the end goal. It would be easy to implement this in smaller stages.

[ECC 508]

Still reading, but this is great. this is the only thread that actually has a valid stance on changing the propick. Best luck to you on getting dunk to read this as its one of the few walls around thats INTERESTING.

people, if you read this post, read the one above it. there's no TL;DR, but I will attest its got valid information in it that is a little more then just 'interesting'

[ruhl4 24]

An alternative to sluices! Hooray!

Note that dunk only really takes our suggestions when there is a downside as well so this has a great chance of success.

[ECC 508]

Not true, he rather enjoyed the blocks thread I have going

No downsides to it, just pure 'copy paste=code' work

[dunkleosteus 2,425]

I might also suggest not having a scan when you click so much as one that is attached to the stone block class, so that when an ore block is generated, it gives an ore rating to all blocks in a certain radius. This means that a) only stone blocks can be read, b ) you can't get readings from placed stone blocks and c) after you mine an ore vein, nearby rocks would still be giving samples.

[killster550 401]

dunk, do you mean samples as in, you still get small pieces or samples as in, propick gives a false-positive?

on the latter, i think the propick should give a gradation of the concentration of ore found nearby, not which ore or the size of the vein, just the probability of ore being nearby (i am DEAD for mentioning this)

[dunkleosteus 2,425]

dunk, do you mean samples as in, you still get small pieces or samples as in, propick gives a false-positive?

on the latter, i think the propick should give a gradation of the concentration of ore found nearby, not which ore or the size of the vein, just the probability of ore being nearby (i am DEAD for mentioning this)

I mean when it says "found a small sample of sphalerite"

it's caused via a method called by the ore generation. When each ore block generates, it will find every rock block in a certain radius and have an 80% chance of raising it's "ore level" by 1. This means that blocks that were within the range of more ore blocks will have a higher level. This also makes false negatives more complex because a sample size might get smaller in the wrong direction, ie a small sample could be closer than a medium one simply because the farther out ore block got more ore samples during generation.

[Treyflix 277]

Oh god, Finding ore would be near impossible... I LIKE IT! >:|

[1SDAN 38]

Very good idea. I would love to see it implemented. Maybe the rock you use to get shards could even wear away after a while and different rocks have different durabilities and chances of collecting a shard.

Maybe one would punch rock with a stone for a second and it does the "punch a tree with fists and then it breaks without breaking" thing. It would then have a low chance of dropping a shard. So people could sell these "better stones."

[killster550 401]

one does realize people are complaining about the difficulty of finding ores NOW... dont even fanthom the amount of rage that will happen if it becomes this much harder

[1SDAN 38]

one does realize people are complaining about the difficulty of finding ores NOW... dont even fanthom the amount of rage that will happen if it becomes this much harder

Personally, I think it'll become easier.

[puxapuak 232]

Great to see the positive support for this idea so far :)/>

I might also suggest not having a scan when you click so much as one that is attached to the stone block class, so that when an ore block is generated, it gives an ore rating to all blocks in a certain radius. This means that a) only stone blocks can be read, b ) you can't get readings from placed stone blocks and c) after you mine an ore vein, nearby rocks would still be giving samples.

Yeah I think this would have a good effect with this different mechanic and presentation of information when gathering samples. Shards can only be chipped from natural stone, and all natural stone types are always producing shards of some range depending on the environment their in each strike of a pro-pick. That is, the proximity to an actual vein is already not the information you are accessing with the pro pick - you're always getting false positives for everything that could possibly spawn in the that rock and that environment.

I think having veins be thinner and not immediately visible and with varying textures of each rock type helps obfuscate that in a more fluid way too. That is, the underlying mechanic of the pro pick would still be an area scan, but it's not actually scanning for ore blocks at all! - ore blocks really are just another of the varieties of that rock type.

Ug I fear I am not making sense so I will make a diagram to explain this. *takes to GIMP for a bit....*

So this is pretty hastily done, but say you're in an environment with two families of rock. Two families, but a variety of different visible versions of them - three basalts and two limestones. Each type has some particular ores and minerals that it is theoretically possible to find in them. It doesn't mean you *will* find them, but it's at least possible. So when you take your pro pick and start hitting some of these rocks, you'll gather a collection of a lot of different shards / properties (would be more than what I've listed, I stripped it down for simplicity). The shards themselves would normally have the texture of the particular rock family and subtype they were chipped from, but not always (especially with conglomerates).

Now unbeknownst to you, the only vein in the area is actually Ore 2, and it occurs in a thin layer threading through an area where Basalts B and C are interspersed with each other. Even when you stumble across this though, you might not know it because all you see is a bunch of Basalt B and C rocks, and you're only getting the small number of shards at once. You'd have to pick around a bit even to notice that almost every sample is of the one shard type that corresponds to Ore 2 in Basalts. This is further complicated by the fact that Mineral B also appears in both basalts, so you will find plenty of those shards too even though there is no vein of it.

But the key is that the mechanic of the propick doesn't actually know the vein's location either. So let's say you smack a Basalt C. You will randomly obtain any of the shards listed under Basalt C, but the scan has a look around and also sees the other 5 rocks in the area. It makes a quick calculation, and shards that appear more frequently in the TOTAL list of all possible shards will be a little more likely to show up. This is a SUBTLE weighting though. (See what I did there?)

So the system actually already accounts for what you're talking about then (though I didn't really clarify it in the OP). It never actually considers whether an ore vein is nearby, it only has to look at what rocks and possible shards are around. Once the ore vein is mined out, all of the other rocks that weren't removed still provide the exact same profile overall. All of this without actually encoding any more into block meta data or coming up with some kludge to force minecraft to store information that it doesn't like to store. What it's really doing is designing veins at creation time as emergent properties of the rocks, rather than explicit rocks.

[dunkleosteus 2,425]

Having different yields per vein would make a lot of non stacking ore...

[puxapuak 232]

Having different yields per vein would make a lot of non stacking ore...

Oh I think I wasn't clear there. I didn't actually mean the ore itself (item) would be changed at all. It would be pretty much identical to what it is now.

[ECC 508]

'Having different yields per vein would make a lot of non stacking ore...'

inventory management. two words, so much depth comes from them

[puxapuak 232]

Ug I think I was still unclear about the ore. Let me try that again.

I think it was my talk of purity that threw the wrench in things? Purity would just be something about the block containing the ore. It determines the quantity of ore that would drop, so maybe you'd normally get 1 ore item, but weak veins (like surface stuff) would only contain a nugget instead because they have experienced more weathering and grinding. Particularly high purity veins might very from 1 ore to an ore + a nugget, or even more.

Alternatively, you get rid of the ore vs nugget distinction and have everything be a nugget, and then it's even easier because you just have everything drop varying numbers of nuggets.

[renadi 258]

Yeah, I think that's the best way, simulates purity with absolutely no increase in the perceived inventory annoyance.

[Guest Blue_Beluga]

I think the most fun part of TFCraft that you won't find in Vanilla is skill. You need skill to farm. You need skill to smith. But up until now prospecting, the most important part of mining requires little skill besides a lot of patience and or luck. I for one would be very pleased if something like this were implemented.

As well as the whole 'unknown rocks' thing, the looking for ore bit I like quite like. Ore veins could be much bigger but a bit less straightforward a they are now. Let me explain with a annotated drawing,

http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/685/tfcoredisplacement.png/

Ore could also be slightly random. A circle of the ore where you would expect small ore (or amount of or) may yield more than expected. Same goes for big ores. You may not get that much ore from it. Bit more simple than some other ideas brought up, but felt it had to be mentioned.

[LordOfWolves 514]

imageshack.us/photo/my-images/685/tfcoredisplacement.png

Underground nuggets? What are they? Never found one? Can someone explain? And why am I writing so many questions?

[Just_Another_Guy_:) 1,066]

Underground nuggets? What are they? Never found one? Can someone explain? And why am I writing so many questions?

Wolf, read the thread... ._. he's refering to nuggets found, if this is implemented, around the vein. They don't exist right now... to my knowledge.

[LordOfWolves 514]

Wolf, read the thread... ._. he's refering to nuggets found, if this is implemented, around the vein. They don't exist right now... to my knowledge.

Ok...*Wolf reads* Ohh...awesome...oh my... ... ...Good! A good suggestion, but I still don't understand why only these nuggets, there should be more.

[Just_Another_Guy_:) 1,066]

Simplicity sake.

[renadi 258]

makes inventory easier to manage, instead of getting 1 low quality iron, 3 medium low, 2 medium, you get 1(modifier x1)+6(modifier x2)+6(modifier x3) = 7 nuggets

so in one inventory slot you simulate having 3 different quality levels

Edit: or if we're talking about the picture itself, well, it's not fully detailed! lol

[puxapuak 232]

I am blown away by the support for this idea. I'm really glad to see so many people like it. Every time I log on the number of people liking the OP seems to rise... 19 people so far. Amazing.

Ok...*Wolf reads* Ohh...awesome...oh my... ... ...Good! A good suggestion, but I still don't understand why only these nuggets, there should be more.

It doesn't have to be nuggets per se... you can call it just plain "ore". The point is that we are presently distinguishing between the two, but there isn't really something underlying this linguistic distinction. The difference between a nugget and ore is only size, and we can account for size in better ways.

[Guest Blue_Beluga]

Sorry if I didn't explain that picture properly. The nuggets would be practically useless. They would contain such a small trace/amount of the said metal that unless you had stacks of them, they wouldn't be practical to use. It is better to look at the 'nuggets' as 'clues' Upon finding a nugget on the surface you'd know an ore vein may be close, and finding one further underground would mean an ore vein is practically inbound.

I guess another image is required,

http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/259/tfcnuggetdisplacement.png/