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Stungun

More believable plank size

9 posts in this topic

The way planks are laid out is utterly illogical, space-wise. You saw a log (which takes up a whole cube) and you get 8 planks... each of which are tiny wooden strips, 1/8x1/8x1 in dimension. This means it would take 64 planks -- 8 logs' worth -- to fill an entire block solidly. Altogether, these planks can only cover the surface of one face of the block. To make matters even stranger, when you put together 4 planks (half a log's worth), you get a whole wooden plank block!
 
Why don't we make the sawing operation a little more believable by making the returns of sawing take up the same space as the sawed block when put together? And if you want smaller pieces, just saw them again.
 
The first sawing operation would cut them down into 8 planks; each plank is half a block thick, 1/4 a block wide, and 1 full block long. (Each of these planks behaves as the current TFC planks do, and are usable in most recipes.) Therefore, eight of them could be assembled, in theory, into a full block. Or you could stretch them out to totally cover the face of 4 blocks with 1/4-block-thick paneling.
 
Not thin enough for you? Just saw it again, and you can get 8 "strips" from a single plank. Each strip is 1/8x1/8x1, just as the current planks are. 64 are needed to assemble a solid block, which is just as well because you can get 64 from a single log. I got this part of the idea from RedPower's saw mechanics (which let you cut blocks into smaller and smaller pieces progressively).
 
"But Stungun," I hear you say, "How will you now make whole Plank Blocks in such a way as to make the resources equivalent?" I understand that putting eight of them in a shapeless recipe wouldn't work well because the game might conflict with the current chest recipe, and making a specific recipe for something as generic as this would seem really silly. So how do I propose we do this?
 
Simple.
 
Select your planks, and start assembling one in the same way you would assemble a log pile or a charcoal block. Once you put 8 planks into a single block, it turns into a complete Plank Block which can be retrieved with an axe. Breaking it with a saw will remove planks, one by one, from the block, similar to how the shovel will remove layers of charcoal. (The sneak rightclick with nothing equipped will also pull planks from the block.) Note that plank blocks will NOT have a GUI; they behave like charcoal blocks in this regard.
 
This would also make building stuff a lot less frustrating, because if you don't want really thick walls (and seriously, who builds one meter thick wooden walls?) you can build quite a bit more from just a few trees. But other than basic building materials, it shouldn't upset the balance of the game at all. It won't even make early-game shelters easier since you can't make planks until you get metal ore, anyhow; by then you probably already have a basic shelter set up (made of thatch, clay, or whatever).
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You confused me. Good job, it's not that easy to achieve.

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Then let me simplify how I think it should change.

 

Planks should be changed to where, when placed, they are 4 times as wide and 2 times as thick, (or vice versa) but are still a full block long. You still get eight from sawing a log, mind you. Placing two of them side by side will completely cover over a block.

 

However, you can then saw planks to produce 8 Strips, which have the size of the planks *as they are before the change*. If you saw all the planks you get from a single log, you wind up with a total of 64 Strips.

 

The planks can still be used in all standard TFC recipes; the only functional difference is their size when placed in the world. Strips cannot be used in any recipe; their only purpose is decoration. (And decorating with strips makes a lot more sense than using a chisel for precision work, plus it's potentially a lot less strain on your metal tools; carving up a block with a chisel can put up to 512 damage on your chisel and hammer (depending on how much you carve away), whereas cutting up a log into strips only takes up 9 damage on your saw -- 1 for cutting it up into planks, and 8 more uses to cut the planks into strips.)

 

Creating a Plank Block (what you get currently from combining 4 planks in the 2x2 crafting grid) would be changed. You'll build plank blocks like you do charcoal piles, by sneak+rightclicking with planks in hand. Piling up 8 will form a full Plank Block. You can retrieve a whole plank block with an axe, or take out individual planks by either right-clicking with nothing in hand, or 'breaking' it with the saw.

 

That simple enough?

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That is not a matter of believability but of realism.

First of all, if you want to reform the wood cutting to be more accurate, then the cutting of one log should give less wood than what is needed for one planks block.

 

Even if your 1 metric cube log is of perfect quality, you need to cut to remove the bark and every saw cut will remove some wood. Assuming that the planks blocks are not hollow, it mean you would need more than one log worth of wood to make a planks block.

 

After that, it's only a question of balance. The dev think that 2 planks by log is good and a crafting recipe using 4 planks is balanced. I would say that a good change could be to give 16 plank by log and 8 plank for a block, but that is the chest recipe and it would unbalance all the other wooden objects recipes. Let's say that single plank placing is a luxury and you sometime have to pay the price for it.

 

However, I would like to have a way to remove a misplaced plank.

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I quite like your suggestion, Stungun, I think though that sticks should be the ones placed like "strips", this way you can make small stick huts and frames. Maybe thatch should be gravity affected unless it has another block underneath, such as a stick (as a frame). If the block underneath were a solid block it wouldn't allow you to use the thatch as a roof (because you can't walk inside a solid block), however, considering that Steve isn't a full 2 blocks high, there would still be room to walk under a thatch roof held up by sticks. 

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There's one issue I see. And that's the fact that you would only be able to place planks down on a limited number of planes. If a plank is wider than it is thick, then how does the game know whether you want to build a floor or a horizontal wall piece? Should the 'wide' axis of the plank be flat or going up? (------ or ====)

I suppose you could use the Mode function to change the axis, maybe.

 

A simpler method would to make planks 2x2 instead of 1x1, so you only need 16 to fill a cube. Then make it so you can saw them down further into 4 1x1 planks, call them something else, and don't allow them to be used for crafting.

 

That would mean 1 log would do you for two tiles of wall or flooring one 2x2 plank thick. And you are essentially getting exactly one half of a log's volume worth of planks (instead of the current 1/8th volume). I think that's reasonable.

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I understand that cutting up the log will use up some of the wood that is there, but it's a lot to consider when thinking of building items from planks.

 

Imagine that the planks in TFC are the same as IRL. Can you build a cube or a box with just 4 planks? It requires 6 planes (sides) to be a fully closed object. We use 4 planks and even considering each as a separate side at most we have 4 "walls" for the box without the bottom and covering.  The recipe for even the crafting table would require at least 5 planks (even without the bottom and just the hollow inside). So what with the wooden blocks?

 

Separate matter is the materials you get from sawing the log. You get 8 planks, which can be converted into 2 blocks of wood or 1/8th of a full block if placed separately. To make it more believable you would have to (in my opinion):

1. Sawing at one direction at a time you get 4 wooden sheets. These would be 1 block length, 1/8th block width and 1 block height. Can be placed like normal planks but only in a full block, not able to place half in one and the rest in the other. Only used in some recipes (would be more practical to create a boat, crafting table and additional new items). To craft a full wooden block would require 8 wooden sheets (2 sheets in each of the 4 crafting slots or just using up 4 sheets in one crafting slot). Why? Sawing the log cuts off the bark, etc. so you lose up to half the log in the result.

2. Sawing at the other direction 1 wodden sheet would create 8 wooden planks. These would be 1/8th block length, 1/8th block width and 1 block height so just like the current planks. Such planks one would use to craft items where sheets shouldn't be used (fences, tool holders, etc.). This would rule out the sticks use a bit, but i would consider the difference between a stick fence and a wooden plank fence.

 

Posted Image compared to: Posted Image

 

 

Other option would be to differentiate between the quality of tools when using a stick or a wooden plank for building of it, as its more sturdy, not bent in some strange places, etc.

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The trouble with minecraft and logs and planks is that not every length of wood is created equally.

 

I live in a heavily wooded area where most of the trees are no more than 60 years old. The biggest, oldest trees, the ones that might seem ideal for logging and turning into things like planks or poles, well, aren't, because they weren't cut down when logging was more common in my area due to various defects, most notably that their trunk does not rise perpendicular to the ground; for instance when they were young they may have had their top damaged or cut off and so the trunk forks, or the tree sorta winds and bends upward, or the wood is knotted, and so the number of planks which can be cut from the log are less than one that is both tall and straight.

 

Sure, you have the same volume of wood in a "good" tree and a "defective" tree, but in the defective tree, if you attempt to saw it, you may be compromising the resulting planks in structural integrity (and aesthetic quality, unless you're talking about warty looking birdseye maple or whatever) because you aren't cutting along the grain as you might in a tree ideal for logging.

 

So, the problem is less getting what seems like a smaller amount of plank strips from a single log even when initial processing like the removal of bark is taken into account, so much as real life restrictions on the quantity of wood gotten from a tree of a particular size.

 

tl;dr, I think its more or less fair that that one log yields 8 planks despite the fact planks in game are less than 1/8 the size of a log block. An improvement, I might suggest, would be getting more planks from certain tree types, and less from others. A more extreme solution could be to implement the generation of various quality logs of each tree type to represent the usability (as far as planks go) of that log (but not having an effect on charcoal production as far as that tree type is concerned).

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Planks appear as they do in-game because they are easy to render and because we feel it gives the player the most options when designing something with the planks.

 

However, the size of a log is irrelevant. In a log pile, 16 logs take up the same amount of space as 1 log block does.

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