Easy to Implement Ideas

[PhineasWynd 41]

What are your ideas that give the best 'Bang for Your Buck', as the saying goes? - i.e. Ideas which are easy to code in, and give a good amount of gameplay/coolness/whatever. Also, if you have an idea and don't know if it would be easy to implement, just post it and ask - no harm, no foul :)I'll go first:- Changing the 'deer running away' code to the 'villager running from zombie' vanilla code. It makes it more challenging (fun) to hunt, and they won't run in circles like they have rabies.Not sure if this should go in the suggestions - does it break the 'one suggestion per post'?

[tomcatBS 6]

Hello there!

First, I'd really like to say how great this mod is. Not only because it is just imressive, but also because it is the first computer game I can actually play with my girlfriend, and she really likes it! ;-)

 

About me, I have a german diploma in computer science, so one could say I have an eye for systems that work, and for flaws in such systems.

Into the following text I put quite some thinking and hope that it will enrich the game and/or the community.

 

Knapping:

The Idea of knapping is great, bud sadly, after having made a shovel for the 100th time it becomes a tiny bit annoying, since it has no challange in itself. So, why not replace the 5x5 canvas, by an irregular and random structured stone with the purpose of having to think about how to carve the tool heads out of it, disabling the possibility of alwas beeing able to knap every tool out of every stone, and deliberatly making some tools harder to get and others easier. Got he Idea, or shall I elaborate?

Metals:
To date there is no real reason to advance to higer tier metals. Maybe it makes sense to disable some equipment for the lower tier Metals, similar to knapping limitations.

Temperature:
Being threatened of freezing to death would add largely to the survival feeling of the game including the hazards of soaked cloth and maybe water affecting items in your inventory. Hot sun messing with your brain, making you see things or desorientating you would also be a mentionable feature of the game.

Weather:

Rain that accumulates while flowing down slopes, building currents that erode land and are able to wash away your buildings, and yourself.

Storms that could erode sand, grass uncovered dirt, break trees and destroy (or at least move) the lighter building blocks such as thatchets (roofs).

Floods that rise above the shore threatening you.

Tides would be impressive.

Lifestock:
Animals, in my opinion are putting a singularity on the food system. They procreate by themselve quite quick (at least horses and donkies), do not need to eat and provide lots of food when slaughtered. They should need to be fed, (grain or huge areas of grass) AND watered, offspring should grow more slowly. And maybe their movement destroys the ground benieth them. Meat is an expensive good after all and should be simulated like one. (Villager assistance comes in handy at this point, more on that below)

Food:
Awesome implementation of nutrition system! In my oppinion only slight adjustments are wellcome. First, having to carry around a whole shopping cart of food, just to keep up a healthy diet seems a little exzessive. preparing meals is nice, but unfortunatly useless, since you seeme not to be able to generate a balanced meal, thus neglecting most of the food categories. Second, does one really have to eat equal ammounts of meat and bread? a nutrition Pyramid wont cause much work. ;-)

Also I think you to drink to rarely and eat to frequently. At least compared to each other.

Skills:

Everyone loves a skill system! Make the ammount of oz one can carry dependink on a skill. Armor is heavy, why should everyone be able to carry one?

Same to the number of slots in your backpack (hell, why can't we craft a backpack anyway? The portable crafting table already exists.)

Make a skill for the ammount of HP you have.

Make a skill for your hunger, thirst, oxygene threshold and how much cold and sun you can endure.

 

Survival:

This is the big one. ;-) Give the game a purpose. Yes, it is a sanbox game, but the beauty of such game lies not in the abillity of being able to to whatever one wants, but of having an aim and being able to achieve it however one sees fit.

Be creative. The easiest way would be the ever increasing Zombie invasion, that comes homing down at you night after night getting bigger and bigger. give them the abillity to smash down your house and suddenly you have to replace your thatchet walls by brick ones and a good reason to build this excessively expensive Bloomery, to get swords that can fight off those heavy armored zombies that later turn up.

Make death actually painfull by respawning in a completely different and far away place, rendering all the previeus buildings virtually useless (dont forget the security question before respawning). in multiplayer friends should be able to "help you up" to prevent spawn teleportation.

Fire should be way more aggressive towards sourrounding blocks and distance. Oh wait... who else thinks of Zombies with torches? ;-)

And this is just  the first stupid thing that comes to my mind. There are way more creative people than me on this forum! ;-)

 

"Physics":
There should be a lot more cave-ins, even to the sides and dont forget the lethality. Also chances for falling blocks while walking on them (levitating edges and piles).

 

 

Now we come to the unholy topics thou shalt not write about, but I do it anyway. If you get allergic to them, don't read on.

 

Prosperctors Pick:
Works well, but in my oppinion to mathematical easy if you know what you are doing and to frustrating if you have no clue. My proposal: a) dont use a fixed distance it scans, but a ever changing one (bell curve). give it a useful tooltip, stating its abilities. The transition betwene two quantities (e.g. small and medium) should be longer. The least that could be done is printing out the full test result. If two different veins overlap, you get either on or the other result. Why not both, say there was no fals negative? And as a whip cream to the type of Rock the sample was token from could be printed out.

 

NPCs:
I would really love to have fellow villagers you have to care for (eg feed and shelter) and possibli giving them task to do (eg feeding animals, mining/lumbering designated areas).

This would be my personal holy grail. But definitly not an easy task, so I might elaborate on it another day. Only so much. Caring for a whole village would add largely to the survival aspect, escpecially with the invading zombie hordes in mind. Hey, they could actually help you fight! ;-)

 

Farming:

I just learned in a response that Manure appeares to be offensive these days. I cannot immagine why would that be, but since it is not wantet I will drop the matter, even though it would enrich the largely neglected area of farming.

 

I hope there has been one or two thinks you like. I am very interested in your oppinion on these matters.

 

So long,

 tomcatBS

[Euphoric 48]

Knapping:

You are supposed to use metal for tools. Even copper shovel lasts many times longer than stone one.

 

Metals:

I agree that advancing to better metals can be tedious.

 

Temperature:

Implemented in next version.

 

Weather:

Impossible to implement.

 

They procreate by themselve quite quick (at least horses and donkies)

Oh. That might be a bug. It should take 8 in-game months for pregnant animal to give birth and at least one more of that for it to grow up.

 

Make a skill for the ammount of HP you have.

Make a skill for your hunger, thirst

Thats what XP is for right now.

 

Give the game a purpose. 

The thing is when you beat that purpose once, then there is no point to play it again. Sandbox games are build on mechanisms people can play around with and not goal to achieve. You are supposed to set your own goal.

 

easy if you know what you are doing and to frustrating if you have no clue.

Which is basically whole game of Minecraft and TFC. You can't play MC or TFC without a Wiki and bunch of guides or lets-plays that teach you the basics.

 

NPCs:

Bioxx is against any humanoid NPC.

[Kittychanley 1,002]

Knapping: That would just be an exercise in frustration and tedium. Look at it this way, if a player needs to make an axe head, they're just going to keep opening and closing the knapping interface until they find one that is big enough to make an axe head, wasting rocks. It doesn't add anything to the gameplay.

 

Metals: There is already incentive to progress through the metal tiers. First, if you ever want to move water source blocks or lava, you'll have to progress up to the highest tier metals. Secondly, with each increase of tier, the tools have more durability and work faster, armor has more durability, and does a better job of protecting you against damage. When trying to terraform an area to build for example, a steel shovel is A LOT nicer than a stone one, because not only does it dig faster, but you don't have to stop and make a new shovel every few minutes.

 

Temperature: A body temperature has been in the works for a while now. It was originally planned to be released with build 78, but was pushed back so that a release could be put out sooner.

 

Weather: The Minecraft weather engine is pretty crappy. Unless we completely rewrite that from scratch, suggestions like these aren't really possible.

 

Livestock: Horses breeding on their own was actually a bug, and is solved in the current latest version (78.17). Other than chickens, all animals require player interaction in order to breed, and not all animals can even be bred (e.g. Pheasants and Deer). Even though chickens don't need player interaction to breed, this is balanced by the fact that it is nearly impossible to find a chicken unless you do a specific expedition near the equator to hunt for them. They only spawn in jungles, and jungles are usually ~8K blocks away from where the average original spawn point is. Manure falls into the category of "do not suggest" so I stopped reading after that point for this section, and the devs will do the same.

 

Food: 4 out of the 5 possible categories seems like a pretty balanced diet to me. The categories account for equal amounts of health for simplicity. Making players eat more of a specific food really adds nothing new to the gameplay, and just makes the current system more complicated. The rate at which hunger and thirst bars depletes is still in the process of being balanced. This mod is in beta, just because there is a feature, doesn't mean that it's finalized.

 

Skills: The vanilla level system of XP that Minecraft uses has already be re-purposed in TFC to affect health, hunger and thirst. The more levels you have, the larger your max HP, stomach capacity and thirst meter.

 

Survival: TFC is a survival mod, not an RPG. Magical fantasy creatures such as zombies are actually planned to be moved underground. The goal of this game is the same as vanilla, to tech up the tree, and build awesome stuff. If you want more goals, you can always create ones for yourself (like building a castle, or playing a save without ever eating meat, etc).

 

Physics: If you want more cave ins, you can edit the config file to make them happen more often.

 

I stopped reading your post after that point because it goes into things that are not to be suggested on these forums. I can guarantee that both Bioxx and Dunk will do the exact same, so you really shouldn't even bother with the effort of typing up these things.

[corki99 23]

NPCs:I would really love to have fellow villagers you have to care for (eg feed and shelter) and possibli giving them task to do (eg feeding animals, mining/lumbering designated areas).

This would be my personal holy grail. But definitly not an easy task, so I might elaborate on it another day. Only so much. Caring for a whole village would add largely to the survival aspect, escpecially with the invading zombie hordes in mind. Hey, they could actually help you fight! ;-)

 

 

 

The Developers said they would never add NPCs

[PhineasWynd 41]

 Wow, that is a lot of ideas Let's have a look in terms of 'ease of implementation' vs 'amount of stuff it adds'. This is all my opinion as an amateur coder, so I may be wrong... But anyway, let's dive in

 

~What he said~

 

 

Knapping:

I think this wouldn't be hard to do at all, just some random generation. However, I don't think it would really add anything - it would just make knapping more tedious, which is the opposite of the whole purpose of your idea! 

Metals:
This will also be very easy to do, just remove some recipes. But as Kitty said, there are some things which you can only do at the highest tiers. Maybe there should be more, but this isn't the place to talk about that, as it is not easy at all to create more game content.

Temperature:
Kitty said this is in the works, so I'm excited for it! But, not easy to code, hence why it hasn't been added yet.

Weather:

This would be really awesome, but I think it would be time consuming to code in.

Livestock: I like this!
Livestock needing food and water is a good idea, it adds challenge to keeping animals - build large enough pens that they won't eat all the grass and die, and have water troughs or a water source in there. This would not be too hard to do coding wise, I think.

Food:

A food pyramid would be easy to do, but what would it add? Also, the body doesn't NEED to eat in the food pyramid, it's just recommended by nutritionists (and changes around every so often).

 

Sorry if you think I'm shooting down your ideas, but the thread is for simple ideas that add a reasonable amount of challenge/content to the game.

[AllenWL 186]

I have lots of ideas, but near 99% are not that simple, so I'll skip those, and.....

 

A throwing rock made my knapping all corners, does crushing damage, and can be thrown.

 

wooden buckets burn up and light you on fire if right-clicked on lava.

 

Jugs, wooden buckets, and bottles can be filled from water 'flow' blocks.

 

A way to find out where each and every chuck starts and ends, because gold panning can get annoying otherwise as you try to find a chunk that has not been overworked.

 

When animals wander into berry bushes that hurts them(black berries, raspberries, etc), they get back out instead of staying in there until they die.(lost a sheep that way while in the stone age).

 

Jute is more common.

 

Zombies attack livestock

 

Livestock eat crops(block)

[PhineasWynd 41]

 

Throwing Rock

 

Nice! A stone age weapon for skeletons, good idea Could have a sling as well, made from leather to improve range.

 

 

wooden buckets burn up and light you on fire if right-clicked on lava.

 

 

Simple, but why?

 

 

Fill things from water 'flow' blocks

 

Cool idea, simple. Gives a reason to build water channels that bring water flow. +1

 

 

Zombies attack livestock

 

Interesting. This could be really cool, adding the mechanic that you need to protect your animals. However, it would need to be balanced so that all the livestock don't just die in the wild before you can get to them.

 

 

Livestock eat crops

 

Also interesting. Would require you to protect your crops, maybe with a scarecrow. It would also need to be balanced so that wild crops don't get eaten before you get there.

[_syh 7]

A way to find out where each and every chuck starts and ends, because gold panning can get annoying otherwise as you try to find a chunk that has not been overworked.

 

Press F3, at the end of the X and Z lines there's something that looks like "(#)". The number inside of the parentheses can be used to tell if you enter a different chunk (or find out the borders of chunks). Look at both the (#)s on the X and Z lines, say they're (15) (15) and you move to (0) (15),  you'll have entered a different chunk.

 

Whenever one of the numbers goes from 0 to 15 or 15 to 0, you'll be in a different chunk, so watch either the X or Z's (#) and when it switches from 0 to 15 or 15 to 0, you can begin gold panning in that chunk. It doesn't have to be (0) (15) for you to be in a new chunk, it could be (0) (12) for example. This might take some getting used to on your side, but it should do the trick. To find the border, you'd mark (0) (0) and (15) (15) with blocks, then just make a square like: http://i.imgur.com/FMxmgtV.jpg (I was running low on blocks so I improvised, excuse the WiP house  ).

 

I hope this isn't against the rules of posting numbers since it's not really a part of the mod but instead a part of the debug screen. If it is against this rules, feel free to edit it out, or tell me to and I will. If you haven't seen it yet AllenWL, and they have edited it out, feel free to PM me and I'll tell you about it via PM.

[AllenWL 186]

Simple, but why?

Um... so we can have new players attempt to pick up lava then run around screaming? *shrugs*

Just an idea that popped into my head.

 

 

Interesting. This could be really cool, adding the mechanic that you need to protect your animals. However, it would need to be balanced so that all the livestock don't just die in the wild before you can get to them.

Make them run way from zombies like villagers? I know villagers can run from zombies for days as long as they don't get cornered.

Some animals can also fight back or something.

 

 

Also interesting. Would require you to protect your crops, maybe with a scarecrow. It would also need to be balanced so that wild crops don't get eaten before you get there.

Well, crops in unloaded chunks would be safe, but.... what if they ate grass as well, and if they get 'full' they don't eat for a long time also, make them look for the closest plant to eat?

That way, the eating should be slow, and also they would mostly just eat grass as that would probably be closer to them.

That way, only the crops near your base with no grass around it would be in big danger from wayward farm animals.

 

Press F3, at the end of the X and Z lines there's something that looks like "(#)". The number inside of the parentheses can be used to tell if you enter a different chunk (or find out the borders of chunks). Look at both the (#)s on the X and Z lines, say they're (15) (15) and you move to (0) (15),  you'll have entered a different chunk.

 

Whenever one of the numbers goes from 0 to 15 or 15 to 0, you'll be in a different chunk, so watch either the X or Z's (#) and when it switches from 0 to 15 or 15 to 0, you can begin gold panning in that chunk. It doesn't have to be (0) (15) for you to be in a new chunk, it could be (0) (12) for example. This might take some getting used to on your side, but it should do the trick. To find the border, you'd mark (0) (0) and (15) (15) with blocks, then just make a square like: http://i.imgur.com/FMxmgtV.jpg (I was running low on blocks so I improvised, excuse the WiP house  ).

 

I hope this isn't against the rules of posting numbers since it's not really a part of the mod but instead a part of the debug screen. If it is against this rules, feel free to edit it out, or tell me to and I will. If you haven't seen it yet AllenWL, and they have edited it out, feel free to PM me and I'll tell you about it via PM.

saw it, thanks!

[Kittychanley 1,002]

A lot of minimap mods also have chunk grid overlays available on them. I know for a fact that Zan's/Voxel Map does.

[Atharsea 13]

I would really like something to do with that inevitable single rock that doesn't have a matching type to be knapped with, and can't be put down.  There isn't a great way to store rock collections, especially before you have chests (which don't feel like a good place to store them), and I hate the idea of just letting something despawn. I think you can make arrows out of them, but that isn't usefull until you can mange to get enough string, and is less likely to be doable while traveling. I'd like a rockpile to store them in, the ability to knap it with a different type of rock on your hotbar and/or the ability to throw it at mobs like a snowball to discourage them while you retreat. 

[AllenWL 186]

Ah, I see. don't use minimaps because it feels quite off to me.

 

Which really makes exploring a pain, especially over waters and in forests....

But I get by(mostly by using up a ton of stone hoes in making a 'road')

[mdtexeira 18]

re: food...I would love to see it broken down into fat, carbs, protein, vitamins, and minerals.  There's absolutely no reason for a dairy category, and no I am not a vegan.  Ultimately the body needs fat, carbohydrates (well, it doesn't necessarily NEED carbs unless energy expenditure is high and short bursts), and protein, vitamins and minerals.  Not dairy specifically, or fruit, or vegetables.  Sesame seeds are a great example of a food that provides a near perfect balance of fat, carbs and protein.  Heck, I'd be down to help come up with a profile of each currently available food to implement such a system.  Obviously, including individual vitamins is excessive, as would be distinguishing between types of fat, or complete and incomplete proteins.  Still, every time my character eats cheese, I'm annoyed that I don't get a boost to protein.  Cheese is about 20% protein.  Moreover, getting the numbers for these foods would be incredibly easy, since google has a nutritional profile for most foods online.  In a way it would make it harder on the player since eating a food would increase the various bars by different amounts for each food eaten...cheese would increase fat most, then protein, then vitamins, then minerals (mostly salt) and finally almost no carbs.  Meanwhile bread would increase carbs primarily, then protein, then vitamins, then fat, and finally almost no vitamins.  

 

Anyway, I'm not sure how difficult the change would be in coding, but the information is incredibly easy to get if one merely looks at the 'per 100 gram' nutritional profiles of foods online.  Considering that the game currently includes protein anyway (a word/concept that is less than 200 years old), this isn't really outside the realm of the game.  Especially considering that the concept of 'fat' as in oil is much older.

 

Also...if we ever get a way to refine fat from animal carcasses or vegetable sources, I'd love soap, and some reason to need to make and use it (such as an increasing probability of taking a speed+health debuff over time since the last time bathing). 

[csiler2 3]

 

A throwing rock

 

Nice! A stone age weapon for skeletons, good idea Could have a sling as well, made from leather to improve range.

 

We already have a stone-age weapon for skeletons. It's called a hammer. 

 

re: food...I would love to see it broken down into fat, carbs, protein, vitamins, and minerals. 

 

You obviously didn't bother reading Kitty's post or other posts relating to food.

 

 

Food: 4 out of the 5 possible categories seems like a pretty balanced diet to me. The categories account for equal amounts of health for simplicity. Making players eat more of a specific food really adds nothing new to the gameplay, and just makes the current system more complicated. The rate at which hunger and thirst bars depletes is still in the process of being balanced. This mod is in beta, just because there is a feature, doesn't mean that it's finalized.

The game goes for believability, not accuracy. When you're picking out food, do you select your meals based on accurate readings of their fat, carb, protein, mineral, and vitamin content? I don't. When I'm trying to eat a balanced diet (I won't lie, I like junk food). I generally follow a food pyramid which breaks things down into food groups and not by rankings of balanced chemicals. This is exactly what TFC's food system mimics in its simplified form. IMO, Dairy takes the place of sugars and sweets in TFC. You don't need it to achieve 'full health', so having access to it can be considered a luxury, just like sugar was a commodity of the upper class until the mass production of sugar in modern culture.Am I the only one that thinks this thread should be moved to 'Suggestions' and split up into separate issues per item?

[AllenWL 186]

We already have a stone-age weapon for skeletons. It's called a hammer.

There is a reason I said throwing rock and not just rock.

It's called a ranged weapon

[csiler2 3]

There is a reason I said throwing rock and not just rock.

It's called a ranged weapon

We have one of those too. It's called a javelin. It may not do a lot, but it is a ranged stone-age weapon.

[tomcatBS 6]

The very first thing to say would be: "I very much appreciate and admire everyone who sacrifices his time to read through the upcoming wall of text!" ;-)

The second thing is: I litterally put hours of work in each single post. Please be so kind and do not affront me with crude comments.

 

Wow, I did not immagine that this post would start this big of a response! ;-)

I really appreciate your oppinions, excpecially the more elaborated ones, but I can not loose the feeling that some people have just been in a bashing mood, without giving much theaught to the matter theirselfes. ;-)

 

I will try to respond as detailed as possible (now, after being done and only 3 hours later I am somewhat regretting that descision *g*):

 

Knapping:

"That would just be an exercise in frustration and tedium. Look at it this way, if a player needs to make an axe head, they're just going to keep opening and closing the knapping interface until they find one that is big enough to make an axe head, wasting rocks. It doesn't add anything to the gameplay."

 

I mostly aggree with you, but I cannot follow your deducted decline. Prospecting is also an exercise in frustration, but still wanted (that system I second). And I cannot see why the stoic reproduction of the same pattern is less tedious than having at least one second to think about waht to do. And the argument of wasting recources... come on, rocks? really?

But I will give one thing more to think about. If you do throw away unsuited rocks (oh wait, wouldn't you du that in RL as well?) than one could say that it is a mild form of cheeting. So what, no harm done. Dont waste your time thinking about cheeting bores if no harme is done by it. Think about the people that would actually like solving a puzzle (IF there are any, which I do not know) to get there things (like in smithing! or does anyone say: "smithing is stupid, you could just look up the button combination, there is no skill involved"?)

Don't get me wrong, I do not want anyone to be pushed in "my" direction, I am just used to logical discussions with propper outcomes. (comes with the age) ;-)

 

"A throwing rock made my knapping all corners, does crushing damage, and can be thrown."

 

I thaught about that too. There could be balancing problems, but personally it drives me crazy, not being to able to do the most ovious thing with them. ;-)

 

Just out of curiosity: Why can't Rocks be put back on the ground?

 

Metals: 

"There is already incentive to progress through the metal tiers. First, if you ever want to move water source blocks or lava, you'll have to progress up to the highest tier metals. Secondly, with each increase of tier, the tools have more durability and work faster, armor has more durability, and does a better job of protecting you against damage. When trying to terraform an area to build for example, a steel shovel is A LOT nicer than a stone one, because not only does it dig faster, but you don't have to stop and make a new shovel every few minutes."

 

I do not want to create the impression that I don't like what you did on the metal system. I am pretty shure that there is a lot more to come and we are just looking at the framework. But to date there is no sensible reason to advance to higher tiers. even the bronze anvil is questionable. Why? For what, speed? Then you would have to calculate into your steel shovel the time it took to get to all the anvils, the bloomery, the blast furnace, finding the graphite... no way that is paying off. Unless you want to move continents. And yes, the buckets. Up to now I do not know about any need for moving lava, and as far as water goes... looking at the required time, settling near a water source is way more time efficient (and you will propably have done it already since you need to feed yourself through the years until you got steel).

Leather and copper armor does the job pretty well, and with a health diet there is no threat to date, that could force me to invest in more protection.

Again, don't get my wrong. I like to explore through the tiers to see what you programmed, it is great! Once, but not twice. Not just for the waterbucket....

 

Weather: 

"The Minecraft weather engine is pretty crappy. Unless we completely rewrite that from scratch, suggestions like these aren't really possible."

 

I understand that, I really do. ;-) But I have given some thinking to this matter and think I have found some quick and easy solutions to implement interesing effects (remember my profession *g*). If actually interested, we might discuss this another place.

 

Livestock: 

"Horses breeding on their own was actually a bug, and is solved in the current latest version (78.17). Other than chickens, all animals require player interaction in order to breed, and not all animals can even be bred (e.g. Pheasants and Deer). Even though chickens don't need player interaction to breed, this is balanced by the fact that it is nearly impossible to find a chicken unless you do a specific expedition near the equator to hunt for them. They only spawn in jungles, and jungles are usually ~8K blocks away from where the average original spawn point is. Manure falls into the category of "do not suggest" so I stopped reading after that point for this section, and the devs will do the same."

 

Thanks to this comment, I realised that I, apart from thinking so, did not have the .17 version, but the .16 one. I will immediatly correct that. ;-) Also I want to apologize for mentioning the "m" word. It must hav slipped my reading of the "do not suggest" section. (otherwise I would have put it in the rebellious part :-P ) Maybe someone could send me a message, explaining to me why that toppic is offensive? (My mother was luckily not offended by it when I was 2 month old). But please not here, this is no trolling attempt.

 

"I like this! Livestock needing food and water is a good idea, it adds challenge to keeping animals - build large enough pens that they won't eat all the grass and die, and have water troughs or a water source in there. This would not be too hard to do coding wise, I think."

 

Hey, who would have thaught this, there is actually someone who likes at least one of my suggestions! ;-)

 

 

Food:

"4 out of the 5 possible categories seems like a pretty balanced diet to me. The categories account for equal amounts of health for simplicity. Making players eat more of a specific food really adds nothing new to the gameplay, and just makes the current system more complicated."

 

The kernel of the brute was the case of being forced to carry around 5 slots of food, because the the meals are intrinsic unballanced. you eat 10oz of one thing and 2oz of another, virtually negelecting 2 food categories. As far as difficulty goes, just make the visual bars at a different length and everything is ok. Im not saying it is a nessessarry change! I am just saying that the argument does not work. And i meat was aktually as hard to come by as it should be, the change would make a big difference and sense. Why is it that people out of reflex agree to have metal tiers, but refuse to accept that it could be applied to food as well? 14 bars of copper for an anvil and 32 bars of bronze for a bloomery is ok, but working your ass off on the fields to feed the cow to get precious Milk or even meat is, what were the arguments... tedious? Really? People, let me tell you a secret: The whole game is "tedious" (in a good way)! If you want everything immediatly with a single click, go creative mode. So what is the point of "wasting" ones time by waiting for something to happen, e.g. a block to break, if not for the creation of a system that makes you appreaciate things for their value? I can't think of any (except for mocking people, but I do not think that is the case in here *g*).

Why am I getting so worked up on this matter? Maybe because I am trying to be a vegetarian out of reason, but continually fail at this attempt... ;-)

 

"The rate at which hunger and thirst bars depletes is still in the process of being balanced. This mod is in beta, just because there is a feature, doesn't mean that it's finalized."

 

Of cause, no need to justify yourself. BTW: for a betatester it is equally difficult to descide what kind of information to report is useful and what not. ;-)

 

"I generally follow a food pyramid which breaks things down into food groups and not by rankings of balanced chemicals."

 

Thanks for proving my point on the Pyramid.

[tomcatBS 6]

Skills:

"The vanilla level system of XP that Minecraft uses has already be re-purposed in TFC to affect health, hunger and thirst. The more levels you have, the larger your max HP, stomach capacity and thirst meter."

 

That is known to me. I tried to point out, that people like to spend skill points by their own. And that at least I would like some more areas of effekt.

 

Survival:

"TFC is a survival mod, not an RPG. Magical fantasy creatures such as zombies are actually planned to be moved underground."

 

I llike that to happen.

 

"If you want more goals, you can always create ones for yourself (like building a castle, or playing a save without ever eating meat, etc)."

 

Pardon me, but that sound rather weak. Why are we teching through the many levels of weapons and armor again? To feel like 6yo boys, jumping around the garden, pretending to fight off imaginary opponents? could be fun, who knows... Sure was in the days ;-) But the wooden sword did the job pretty well, no need to go for steel for that task! Speaking of.... I remember "borrowing" my fathers catana for said purpose got me in quite some trouble! ;-)

 

Physics: 

"If you want more cave ins, you can edit the config file to make them happen more often."

 

That I will try right after I finish this article, so the lord ever wants this to happen....

But I also ment the type of cave-ins. Let me explain: When you pile dirt up it falles to the sides. BUT if i dig straight down, the sides do not collapse. It is a pity. Does everyone get what I mean?

 

Organization:

"Am I the only one that thinks this thread should be moved to 'Suggestions' and split up into separate issues per item?"

 

I second that. If people are actually interested in the continuation of some of these topics, please say so in your comments and I will start new topics and reorganize the existing Information.

 

Naughty Stuff:

"I stopped reading your post after that point because it goes into things that are not to be suggested on these forums. I can guarantee that both Bioxx and Dunk will do the exact same, so you really shouldn't even bother with the effort of typing up these things."

 

I do not expect anything else. ;-) But since it is writen that e.g. NPCs are not implementet as long as there is no good reason, I understand that as an encouragement to discuss Ideas amongs the commons and once a good reason emeges from these discussions it can be reported to the authoreties for further evaluations.

Please correct me if I am wrong!

As far es KI goes, I got the impression that it is just to hard to implement, but I just read over the sticky and realised that i was wrong. Sorry for that.

 

@mdtexeira

Your post I like so much, it has to get it own section.;-) You remind me of my collage time when I was working the weekends as a trainer in a health-club. It is scary how little people know about about their bodies, the cra( they eat and what it does to the former. It litterally kept me up at night!

When you wrote about the cheese I really had to smirk. ;-) Every time I eat off the wedge and see that protein bar not moving, I want to bang my head on the table.

But sadly we have no chance that your concept gets implemented. As much as I would love to have it, even I would advice against it, even though educationally extremely valuable. People would just say "what is that implementation good for?". Who knows, I still do not know what the steel shovel is good for, but it exists anyway. I am not mocking anyone here. I see it every day in my kids that I am trying to understand why they have to brush their teeth. They don't do it because it is healthy, but because I make it fun. And since healthy TFC diet isn't even RL healthy, lets just make it fun! ;-)

 

I am having a hard time letting this and similar topics drop. TFC basicly makes everything more complicated (some things even overly), but it es ok if the complication at some point involves a pickaxe. If the complication involves a Hoe it sucks, sadly...

 

I say it again, I love this game, because my girlfriend loves it. I have to catch animals so she can care for them, she plants flowers all over the place, she wants to makes meals for all of us and so on. But sadly that are se areas were all mods lacking the most... :-(

 

Originally I intended to post another load of suggestions at the bottom of this text, but I fear that the threat would implode under the pressure of so much different topics. So if anyone is interested I will make another threat.

 

Ok now, I am really proude of everyone who made it to this point! But no break for you yet. The world wants your thoughts in these matters! ;-)

 

Yours sincerely,

 tomcat

 

PS: I am pretty done now, please don't kill me for typing errors. ;-)

[Treyflix 277]

Ok first off I should say that I feel like Tomcat is getting the butt here. Some of his suggestions are (no offense bud) undoable or impractical, but one or two of then are quite good. I also feel like you are making the fatal mistake almost all people who suggest things do Tomcat, you're getting attached to your suggestions. Whenever you submit a suggestion, you are saying "ok here is something I put a fair amount of time and effort into, tell me everything that is flawed about it!" It's natural to feel like no one is listening but untrue. Allow me to put it in perspective to you. I have 750 some posts, most of which are longish. I have read *almost* every single topic in the discussion section and most of the suggestions. There is a few others who have done similar so we have developed a very efficient method of dealing with these suggestions, finding the pros and cons and determining wether or not it is worthwhile with as little personal bias as possible. Basically the outcome is very very very few suggestions ever make it past infancy and even fewer make it into the game. That's just a fact. So do not feel like we are bashing you, many of us are friendly and I personally consider it my job on these forums to be as friendly as possible .Regarding your actual ideas, I think the nutrition and livestock bits have the best chance of survival so to speak. I support them personally, and think them well thought out enough that I really have nothing to add other than this;Kitty there is a reason to "complicate" the nutrition system. TFC is very good at having acurate facts in it and you can clearly tell when it is sacrificing realism for game play. Through this I have actually learned a lot about IRL. And if I wasn't such a geology geek I'd have learned a shit ton in that department. As Tomcat said nutrition (and animal husbandry IMO) is very misunderstood by many people and it is probably the second biggest problem in modern sociatity. Would it not be worth it to simple add different stats and change a few values? It looks simple to add and if it just made ONE person think differently about the food they put in their body it'd be worth it. I know that sounds ridiculous but you'd be surprised what affects people through attrition. Even video games.Besides this:

re: food...I would love to see it broken down into fat, carbs, protein, vitamins, and minerals. There's absolutely no reason for a dairy category, and no I am not a vegan. Ultimately the body needs fat, carbohydrates (well, it doesn't necessarily NEED carbs unless energy expenditure is high and short bursts), and protein, vitamins and minerals. Not dairy specifically, or fruit, or vegetables. Sesame seeds are a great example of a food that provides a near perfect balance of fat, carbs and protein. Heck, I'd be down to help come up with a profile of each currently available food to implement such a system. Obviously, including individual vitamins is excessive, as would be distinguishing between types of fat, or complete and incomplete proteins. Still, every time my character eats cheese, I'm annoyed that I don't get a boost to protein. Cheese is about 20% protein. Moreover, getting the numbers for these foods would be incredibly easy, since google has a nutritional profile for most foods online. In a way it would make it harder on the player since eating a food would increase the various bars by different amounts for each food eaten...cheese would increase fat most, then protein, then vitamins, then minerals (mostly salt) and finally almost no carbs. Meanwhile bread would increase carbs primarily, then protein, then vitamins, then fat, and finally almost no vitamins. Anyway, I'm not sure how difficult the change would be in coding, but the information is incredibly easy to get if one merely looks at the 'per 100 gram' nutritional profiles of foods online. Considering that the game currently includes protein anyway (a word/concept that is less than 200 years old), this isn't really outside the realm of the game. Especially considering that the concept of 'fat' as in oil is much older.Also...if we ever get a way to refine fat from animal carcasses or vegetable sources, I'd love soap, and some reason to need to make and use it (such as an increasing probability of taking a speed+health debuff over time since the last time bathing).

is pure bloody genius. In fact I would strongly suggest mdtexeira repost this in it's own thread in the suggestions section so I can support it. If not I will personally.

[csiler2 3]

Ok first off I should say that I feel like Tomcat is getting the butt here. Some of his suggestions are (no offense bud) undoable or impractical, but one or two of then are quite good.I also feel like you are making the fatal mistake almost all people who suggest things do Tomcat, you're getting attached to your suggestions. Whenever you submit a suggestion, you are saying "ok here is something I put a fair amount of time and effort into, tell me everything that is flawed about it!" It's natural to feel like no one is listening but untrue. Allow me to put it in perspective to you. I have 750 some posts, most of which are longish. I have read *almost* every single topic in the discussion section and most of the suggestions. There is a few others who have done similar so we have developed a very efficient method of dealing with these suggestions, finding the pros and cons and determining wether or not it is worthwhile with as little personal bias as possible.Basically the outcome is very very very few suggestions ever make it past infancy and even fewer make it into the game. That's just a fact. So do not feel like we are bashing you, many of us are friendly and I personally consider it my job on these forums to be as friendly as possible .Regarding your actual ideas, I think the nutrition and livestock bits have the best chance of survival so to speak. I support them personally, and think them well thought out enough that I really have nothing to add other than this;Kitty there is a reason to "complicate" the nutrition system. TFC is very good at having acurate facts in it and you can clearly tell when it is sacrificing realism for game play. Through this I have actually learned a lot about IRL. And if I wasn't such a geology geek I'd have learned a shit ton in that department. As Tomcat said nutrition (and animal husbandry IMO) is very misunderstood by many people and it is probably the second biggest problem in modern sociatity. Would it not be worth it to simple add different stats and change a few values? It looks simple to add and if it just made ONE person think differently about the food they put in their body it'd be worth it. I know that sounds ridiculous but you'd be surprised what affects people through attrition. Even video games.Besides this:

is pure bloody genius. In fact I would strongly suggest mdtexeira repost this in it's own thread in the suggestions section so I can support it. If not I will personally.

 

I generally concur. Tomcat, you should do a quick search in the suggestions forum and add your ideas to conversations about these topics and/or create new topics with your ideas as per the thread rules. You never know who will support the ideas.I believe that the devs are working on changing livestock around, but it might not be a bad idea to require some kind of trough that needs to be replenished occasionally in animal pens. You should definitely post your ideas on livestock changes into the suggestions area.As for the nutrition thing, while medically the idea of basing it off protein, carbs, fats, minerals, and vitamins is sound, that's not how our ancestors traditionally decided their dietary intake. It would also seriously complicate the coding since the devs would have to go from a simple meta-tag for each food item, identifying it as fruit, veggie, grain, meat, or dairy, would need five tags to approximate the new values AND the player would need to secure access to a much wider base of food, deduce the values of each nutritional amount (which needs modern technology) and consume the appropriate amounts to keep their new values balanced.To me, that just doesn't fit the flavor of how diets were originally established or how TFC has been implemented. General knowledge of nutrition based on chemical composition is a relatively new concept, just look at the wikipedia entry on nutrition

[jacob4408 8]

Naughty Stuff:

But since it is writen that e.g. NPCs are not implementet as long as there is no good reason, I understand that as an encouragement to discuss Ideas amongs the commons and once a good reason emeges from these discussions it can be reported to the authoreties for further evaluations.

Please correct me if I am wrong!

 

 

Actually, it was stated by the Devs that no reason ever could ever possibly ever be worthy of ever implementing NPCs....ever.

 

Quote from Bioxx in the thread at the top of the Suggestions forum entitled Do No Post the Following Suggestions:

 

NPCs

There are plenty of things that NPCs could be used for in TFC but none of your reasons are good enough for me to want to have to add NPCs to the equation on top of everything else. Whats that? Your idea IS good enough? No its not.

 

http://terrafirmacraft.com/f/topic/16-do-not-post-the-following-suggestions/

[tomcatBS 6]

@jacob4408

Thanks für the scolding, but why did you not quote the 5th line where I already appologize for my mistake?

 

@Treyflix

I am glad that we might have found something to work on. ;-)

[dutchraptor 20]

I like a lot of your idea tomcat. I actually think the variable stone idea is awesome, and the ideas on livestock too.

 

Though reading over your first post you seem awfully negatively inclined towards thatch

It's actually a very powerful building material, in terms of insulation and wind resistance. A good thatched roof can easily last 20+ years and is an ideal alternative to slate or wood.

Just thought I'd let you know that

 

I agree with the others that your ideas deserve their own thread. Particularly throwing rocks, I think it could work nicely to keep mobs at bay (not to hurt them, but to make that after a few rocks they back off and wait from a distance.

[tomcatBS 6]

I do not know how much time I can invest the naext days so I will preview with catchwords some of the promised ideas, becasuse theese are really easy to implement.

 

- mine gas

- groundwater seeping into mines (an actual mining problem)

- ink maps (probaply already postet, but please? *g*)