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Euphoric

Dynamic alloys everyone asks for ..

19 posts in this topic

We could implement dynamic alloys right now if we wanted to, the reason we haven't (and it's something that video doesn't address) is how to predict the properties of the alloys. You can have any sort of NBT data you like in an item generated any way you like, but if we can't find a system that will pop out the properties of said alloy, we can't do anything with it.

 

I did a lot of research into alloys when we were first looking into dynamic alloys, and what I found is that scientists can't predict the properties of alloys without actually making the alloys themselves experimentally. With the number of different metals in TFC, it would be very difficult to predict the properties of the alloys.

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Yes. I said it couple of times too - it's not like "tin makes it more flexible, more tungsten makes it harder". That's highly nonlinear thing, and the more components you have - the more confusing it can be.

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So, you are saying you don't want experimentation in TFC? That everything should be predictable, with Wiki entry telling how exactly do it. Then why does cooking require you to experiment to find out food properties and effects? Yes, figuring out the results might be difficult, but not impossible. It could still be possible to get rough idea what properties the alloy will have. For example in the video, he he says that mixing alloy that has both iron with sulfur will always result in brittle mess, thanks to how both react together. Those interactions too might be randomized.

Also, you could implement "experimentation" mechanics, that would allow you mix small amounts of metals so you can test alloy's properties without having to make tools out of it.

One thing to note : It is somehow weird, that TFC alloys follow strictly linear progression. Higher alloys are always better in all properties. With dynamic alloys, you could make alloy that is really fast, but has low durability. Or with high durability, but quite slow. Making alloy that is both fast and strong would be one of the goals of metal age. Maybe we can find more properties that might be part of alloys, giving it even more depth.

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That's fine and all. But.

First, it's miles more difficult to code than what you imagined. What flexible means? How should properties' peaks distribute on the gauge for every combination (bacause there ARE peaks). And I mean every combination. What if I just mix all metals in the game in the same proportion? Just for giggles? Consider that steel and wrought iron are different metals in this case.

Second, what properties do you even have for tools in minecraft? Two. Durability and item power, that's it. At least meals can have three and random potion effect for that matter.

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So, you are saying you don't want experimentation in TFC? That everything should be predictable, with Wiki entry telling how exactly do it. Then why does cooking require you to experiment to find out food properties and effects? Yes, figuring out the results might be difficult, but not impossible. It could still be possible to get rough idea what properties the alloy will have. For example in the video, he he says that mixing alloy that has both iron with sulfur will always result in brittle mess, thanks to how both react together. Those interactions too might be randomized.

Also, you could implement "experimentation" mechanics, that would allow you mix small amounts of metals so you can test alloy's properties without having to make tools out of it.

One thing to note : It is somehow weird, that TFC alloys follow strictly linear progression. Higher alloys are always better in all properties. With dynamic alloys, you could make alloy that is really fast, but has low durability. Or with high durability, but quite slow. Making alloy that is both fast and strong would be one of the goals of metal age. Maybe we can find more properties that might be part of alloys, giving it even more depth.

 

There's next to no room for ambiguity in coding. You can't just say "make it do this". Everything has to be worked out explicitly. The complexity of what you're asking is far beyond what nearly anyone could accomplish.

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and plus most alloys created and brittle I made a alloy by accident by mixing silver solder, copper and brass to gether to make a very brittle metal.  Its now worthless..... -.-

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There's next to no room for ambiguity in coding. You can't just say "make it do this". Everything has to be worked out explicitly. The complexity of what you're asking is far beyond what nearly anyone could accomplish.

 

We are not talking about code. We are talking about how the system looks to the player. Of course behind the scenes, the rules would be explicit, but they would interact in such a way, that would make predictability low, but not impossible. Also, as professional software developer, I can tell you there are many fields that are build around handling ambiguity. AI and image recognition being examples.

 

 

and plus most alloys created and brittle I made a alloy by accident by mixing silver solder, copper and brass to gether to make a very brittle metal.  Its now worthless..... -.-

 

Of course, we are not trying to be as realistic as possible. The rules could be made so that getting usable alloy would actually take multiple tries. Also, that is why I said there should be mechanics to "try" alloys with little materials, so you don't have to waste much.

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We are not talking about code. We are talking about how the system looks to the player. Of course behind the scenes, the rules would be explicit, but they would interact in such a way, that would make predictability low, but not impossible. Also, as professional software developer, I can tell you there are many fields that are build around handling ambiguity. AI and image recognition being examples.

Even if you just concerned how it looks to the player, there is severe issues in this. I expressed some of those in my previous post. And you too can experience those if you try to work out how it should work for alloying more than three metals at a time.

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For example, each metal would have default properties : durability, sharpness, hardness, efficiency, heat resistance. There is lot of space for more properties, if we can find ones. One that comes to mind is "special" property. Specific level of this property would be needed to make buckets that can move water and lava.

 

Basic would be simple weighted average of all the components. For example for alloy of 75% copper, 15% iron and 10% bismuth, it would have durability = 0.75*copper durabillity + 0.15*iron durability + 0.1 bismuth durability. But this is only basic system and would be too boring and predictable. To make things interesting rules are introduced. Each rule consists of two parts : trigger and effect.

 

Triggers can be something like :

  • Two metals are part of an alloy (no matter how much)
  • Two metals are in specific ratio (both exactly and with linear interpolation)
  • etc..

Effects would be like:

  • +/- absolute/relative value for property for whole alloy
  • +/- absolute/relative value for property for specific metal(s)
  • +/- weight for specific property of metal
  • transfer of % from one property to another one for whole alloy/specific metal(s)
  • etc..

Those are just ideas I just came up with. So I'm sure there is more if you think about it.

 

So, if we had rule as "If iron and bismuth are in 3:2 ratio, then alloy has +10% durability and -10% efficiency". So the alloy above would have higher durability but lower efficiency.

Those rules could either be hard-coded or randomized based on seed.

 

Also, there could be hard-coded alloys like bronze, brass, etc..

 

But one thing came to my mind when I was thinking about this : I really don't like linear progression of alloys in TFC. It would be best if alloys had different properties, even when they are not dynamic. So you would use one alloy for pick, one alloy for armor, one alloy for weapons, etc..

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Basic would be simple weighted average of all the components. For example for alloy of 75% copper, 15% iron and 10% bismuth, it would have durability = 0.75*copper durabillity + 0.15*iron durability + 0.1 bismuth durability. But this is only basic system and would be too boring and predictable. To make things interesting rules are introduced. Each rule consists of two parts : trigger and effect.

And that would be exactly where you are wrong. Because for the mix of two metals the melting temperature graph alone looks something like this (I'm sorry it's in Russian, that's just quicker to find for me. Also, this isn't the exactly accurate graph, for the metall alloy it should be two straight lines, as far as I understand.).

Posted Image

This would be how you determine if bucket will melt, when you try to move lava, or not, for example. (Note that no combination has higher melting point than one of the pure elements of compound (element B in this case).)

Now imagine this if you have more than one element for alloy.

And you should also note that something like brittleness has far more complex graph dependencies than melting point, and the weighted average rule applies only to the weight of the alloy pretty much.

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Well, that would be true if TFC was realistic simulation of real world. But we are talking about game here. Don't try to think too hard about things. There is no need to go that far for it to be believable.

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If we are talking about a game here, there would be no such things as sharpness, hardness, flexibility and weight there been spoken of - because unless you leave almost meaningless in actual metallurgy durability and item power, the metal's properies should obey the rules they actually do in life to be believable. I'm not asking devs to use actual numbers, see, - I'm not unreasonable. Just the rules themselves.

Heat capacity and melting point aren't so meaningless, so they don't have to go away, but they do should obey the graph I posted here. And actually, when I think about this, heat capacity should be another property that can use weighted average system, although it wouldn't be completely accurate.

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Can't much say I like this idea.

 

Compared to reality = 100% wrong.  Now I know this game isn't meant to match "reality", however, this would required "reinventing" metallurgy.   Copper+tin then, does not = bronze.

There's a whole field of Materials Science because there are no simple formulas for such mixing.    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Materials_science#Metal_alloys

 

Also:

"That everything should be predictable"  -- Humans can't predict (real) alloys, therefore anything resembling (real) alloys would be unprogrammable*.  Ironically (Hah - Iron) if you do give it a formula, it becomes predictable.

 

If you want to invent some entirely new  (non-existent) metals and do dynamic mixing it with that, I might support it.

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I'm an Inorganic Chemist,  their are formulas for making alloys.  Real Alloys are predictable, we don't just throw some Fe with some Ti and then hope for a great alloy.  The ratios are based on how the metals will react.  

 

But about TFC the set formulas are good because it's a game.  Don't want it to be predictable, then don't use the wiki.  I've been playing TFC for 6 months or so.  I have no clue how to get some of the metals.  The TFC metallurgy has a believable feel I like the way it is.    

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I'm an Inorganic Chemist,  their are formulas for making alloys.  Real Alloys are predictable, we don't just throw some Fe with some Ti and then hope for a great alloy.  The ratios are based on how the metals will react.  

 

But about TFC the set formulas are good because it's a game.  Don't want it to be predictable, then don't use the wiki.  I've been playing TFC for 6 months or so.  I have no clue how to get some of the metals.  The TFC metallurgy has a believable feel I like the way it is.    

 

~~

I don't think I was fully clear.   By "not predictable", I mean that it takes a lot of research and testing to find out the attributes of an alloy in any percentage.   And then you end up with  a complex ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phase_diagram#Binary_phase_diagrams ) result, typically not linear formulas.   When dealing with new substances, until it's plotted out, the properties aren't known (I'm sure much interpolation and extrapolation is used).   And, yes fully repeatable (now predictable).

 

 

I'm also quite happy with how the current formulas are done in TFC - Not overly chaotic, but still fully believable.

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My takeaway from the video was the User Interface. Or lack of one, I really enjoyed how you could just interact with the world without a GUI poping up, all of the time..

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I hate saying this, esspetialy whit my minimal understanding of code but:1. alloys are predictable

I'm an Inorganic Chemist,  their are formulas for making alloys.  Real Alloys are predictable, we don't just throw some Fe with some Ti and then hope for a great alloy.  The ratios are based on how the metals will react.   But about TFC the set formulas are good because it's a game.  Don't want it to be predictable, then don't use the wiki.  I've been playing TFC for 6 months or so.  I have no clue how to get some of the metals.  The TFC metallurgy has a believable feel I like the way it is.

2. predictable things are governed by ruels3. Ruels are math4. Math is computers5. So computing alloy mechanics should be possibleOkay maybe not but i still want to be a tfc chemist and mix alloys to my pleasure.
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Wow, this is quite a thread necro.

 

Determining the physical properties (Hardness, toughness, ductility, yield strength, Young's modulus, heat capacity, melting point, corrosion and electrochemical properties, etc) of real-life alloys is hard enough. Translating those physical properties to a game in a way that makes for interesting gameplay is not trivial either. Without careful design considerations, dynamic alloys could actually end up giving the player fewer meaningful decisions to make. Balancing a completely dynamic set of metals would be nightmarish. The current state of metals in TFC might be unpleasantly static, but at least it's a balanced progression.

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