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EnTro

Ore generation changes

15 posts in this topic

This is just a quick post with a few ideas for the new ore and mineral generation system. If this has been discussed/suggested before, let me know, didn't find it in a quick search query.

 

Random ore spawn heights: just stating the obvious, I know :). Removes y=60 as the place to be and adds skill to finding ores. Would make cave exploring worthwhile again.

 

Use surface height as a reference for the depth to determine which ores can spawn: this allows ores to spawn deep inside mountains, and would open the option to mine horizontally into a mountain, instead of digging straight down.

 

Some ores spawn more in a certain region: certain regions (like 250x250 blocks) have a specific higher deposition of a certain metal (deposited by some geological process). So there are iron/copper/gold rich regions. In such a region you can find several veins/clusters instead of an isolated single one, possibly including some of the rich ores that exist in creative. The single isolated clusters and veins still exist like they do now. Sluicing could help locating these regions by finding occasional rich ores of that type.

 

This is intended to work different from the current biome system, as in those regions the ore density is much higher and localized than in the rest of the biome. This shouldn't affect SSP much, as most veins are generally large enough to last a long time anyway. In SMP it would promote exploring and actual proper iron/copper mines to be set up as an alternative to random hole-digging.

 

 

What do you think of these ideas?

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I fully agree with your ideas. Ore generation is central to TFC and should be the first thing to be optimised. However, the ore generation code (borrowed, may I add) has been ignored for too long and I really hope this will be addressed in the next beta version of TFC. 

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Build 78 has already implemented your first two suggestions. As for the third, rich ore is currently a random drop when mining an ore block. Whenever you mine an ore block, there is a percentage chance of it dropping rich, regular or poor ore. Just because one block drops rich ore, it doesn't mean the other nearby blocks will drop it too.

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Build 78 has already implemented your first two suggestions. As for the third, rich ore is currently a random drop when mining an ore block. Whenever you mine an ore block, there is a percentage chance of it dropping rich, regular or poor ore. Just because one block drops rich ore, it doesn't mean the other nearby blocks will drop it too.

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Does the percentage change based on some variable ? If not it's useless no ?

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It's not useless without the percentage changing based on a variable. Since it's a random chance, after a very large number of blocks have been mined a pattern may start to show statistically, but the fact that sometimes when you mine a block you're going to get ore that yields less metal and sometimes you'll get one that yields more metal results in a variety of metal amounts attainable from mining out a single vein.

 

Since the chance of each drop is independent of past results, theoretically the random number generator could hate your guts and an entire vein could drop only poor ore. Or the opposite could happen and you could get only rich ore. Is it probable that either of these scenarios are going to happen? No, but it is possible. Most likely though, you'll end up with a few pieces of each type.

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Also, iron ores should be able to spawn on surface (sigh, Ive found pieces of limonite in my backyard), malachite is another surface ore, and its not really rare. But minerals that could be down and not in surface could be sulphur, saltpeter, garnierite, galena, bismuth, tetrahedrite platinum, pitchblende, cinnabar, silver and other ores (that were not known in ancient times).

There is surface gold and surface iron, and if you dont want to change this because of altering difficulty, make those spawns rare. Also, rocks like claystone, dolomite, limestone, marble and some other sedimentary or metamorphic rocks should not spawn deep in the earth. Those rocks are formed via erosion, so they should be likelier to spawn in surface, and igneous rocks could still spawn in surface, but they should spawn more in the depth. As Dunk said on another post, I agree that igneous rocks could spawn in the surface of mountains. Metamorphic rocks could be likelier to spawn in y 120 to y 60, although they could still spawn in surface or deeper, and sedimentary rocks should spawn exclusively in surface until y 100, and sedimentary rocks should be likelier to spawn near water bodies.

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Since the chance of each drop is independent of past results, theoretically the random number generator could hate your guts and an entire vein could drop only poor ore. Or the opposite could happen and you could get only rich ore. Is it probable that either of these scenarios are going to happen? No, but it is possible. Most likely though, you'll end up with a few pieces of each type.

 

I've mined infinite copper veins and found nothing more than regular ore...

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Thanks for the support Terex!

 

Build 78 has already implemented your first two suggestions. As for the third, rich ore is currently a random drop when mining an ore block. Whenever you mine an ore block, there is a percentage chance of it dropping rich, regular or poor ore. Just because one block drops rich ore, it doesn't mean the other nearby blocks will drop it too.

 

Cool that the first two are already implemented :).

For the random drop of rich, regular and poor ore, I tend to agree with SionoiS that it will effectively not change the amount of metal you get, as stochastic statistics tends to average out processes like this rather quickly. For example if you gather 10 ores of sizes 10/25/40 for poor/regular/rich with equal chances you end up with 250 ± 38.8 ore units (25 ± 3.88 per ore). For 100 ores this becomes 2500 ± 122 ore units (25 ± 1.22).

Having different ore sizes can make alloy mixing a bit more tricky and involve more of the players skill. I like that :). That and equal sized ores are not very believable.

In addition to that I think the regions more rich in a certain ore, like I described in the first post, would add some interesting aspects to especially SMP.

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Thanks for the support Terex!

 

 

Cool that the first two are already implemented :).

For the random drop of rich, regular and poor ore, I tend to agree with SionoiS that it will effectively not change the amount of metal you get, as stochastic statistics tends to average out processes like this rather quickly. For example if you gather 10 ores of sizes 10/25/40 for poor/regular/rich with equal chances you end up with 250 ± 38.8 ore units (25 ± 3.88 per ore). For 100 ores this becomes 2500 ± 122 ore units (25 ± 1.22).

Having different ore sizes can make alloy mixing a bit more tricky and involve more of the players skill. I like that :). That and equal sized ores are not very believable.

In addition to that I think the regions more rich in a certain ore, like I described in the first post, would add some interesting aspects to especially SMP.

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If % of spawning ore of different size could be change according to some variables it would be very interesting.

 

Like EnTro said region could be more rich in some ore.

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I like the third idea. It will make all reigons deficient in something and encourage trading.

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What is the chance of Rich/Poor ore spawning in Vanilla TFC? But every ore in TFC except Tetrahedrite I think was known of by the 1500s, including Pitchblende. Also Marble is made by the Heat of lava and there is a Dolomite Marble.

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Ah, nice. I'm looking forward to B78.

 

I wonder if anything will change regarding ore body concentrations, as in how widely spaced apart will ore bodies be? Could they be in a random distribution or will there be clusters of ore bodies?

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I like the third idea. It will make all reigons deficient in something and encourage trading.

/

I agree. if TFC lacks something, it's the invective to trade.

having certain ores in certain places can also encourage players to build multiple outposts and rail yards and travel a lot more, 'claim' more land, etc

Of course, this can also encourage wars over metal-rich lands...

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hey kitty!I've played my last map on tfc all to the higher tier metals, all I've mined was regular ore, I do believe we have a bug here...

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hey kitty!I've played my last map on tfc all to the higher tier metals, all I've mined was regular ore, I do believe we have a bug here...

 

What build was your last map on? I know that we had to make changes to the bloomery and blast furnace because there were complaints that it wasn't recognizing the poor/rich ore, so at least for iron ores, they do exist and players have obtained them through minning.

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