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Bioxx

Torch Discussion

184 posts in this topic

If you want to discuss the new torch changes that were announced please do it here for the time being. I WILL be reading this to monitor for valid concerns.

 

I will attempt to re-explain how the change works and what we can and cannot expect to happen. Torches once placed now each have an internal timer that tracks when they were placed. After 48 hours (this is configurable, set to 0 to turn off) the torch will burn out and enter an unlit stage. The player can then right click said unlit torch with a lit torch in their hand to relight it. Alternatively, a placed lit torch can be clicked with a stick to make a new torch easily. "But Bioxx?" you may ask, "How does the lit torch in your inventory stay lit?". The same magic that lets you carry hundreds of tons of stone and other materials. Unfortunately, this magic is very unstable and affects objects differently. This is why most items cool down in your inventory.

 

There are no permanent light sources planned. At the very least, when I get to lanterns of some kind they will require a fuel source but will last quite a while. Unlike vanilla minecraft I believe that having to continually restock your resources because they get consumed over time is a good thing. Permanence is bad. 

 

"But my base is going to be overrun when I get home because there are no lights!" Wrong! Our spawn protection system which was implemented a very very long time ago prevents this exact scenario. If you are unfamiliar, the more time spent in a chunk, the more protection builds up in it and the surrounding 5x5 chunk area. This protection 100% prevents mobs from spawning in those chunks. For every hour of in game time spent in a chunk you get 8 hours of spawn protection up to a maximum of 10 months by default. After the first 24 hours of built up protection, it comes into effect. So if you've spent any length of time in your base and unless you've been gone for many months, you'll have nothing to worry about.

 

In conclusion, there are only two major things that I see changing for people going forward. Torch forests, i.e. a torch placed in a grid every 6 blocks, will become unsustainable unless the player is masochistic. Secondly, the underground is going to become quite a bit more dangerous as you'll be unable to make caves permanently safe. Torching your way to easy mode is not and has never been an acceptable mechanic. 

 

Discuss.

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more about lighting in general...

 

lanterns - which variety were you thinking of going with? oil fueled or candles?

 

either way would probably be very cool, but would require additional processing. Oil would require something like a cauldron of animal fat over a fire, that would then get poured into glass bottles. candles would be large batches of wax with wool string. If you ever decide to implement bees, it would make a pretty awesome source of food and wax. as far as animal fat goes... just get dropped as part of the normal process of killing animals?

 

[i can totally see the oil burning street lamps now]

 

i think it would be rather amusing to stick a candle/torch to a headband, but that would be a bit OP considering what you are trying to do. unless it had a chance to set you on fire and goes out when you fall in water.

 

---

 

as far as the torch idea goes, i think its a great solution to the permanent light issue.

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I am afraid that spawn protection systems is severely lacking or buggy for real protection. Despite a year or two of staying in one location, with exception of bi-daily foraging and mining travels, I regularly were accosted by hostile mobs. Don't know if it was some weird cross-chunk glitch but either way, zombies were visiting often, coming from faraway way outside my field of view in groups and once or twice I had a spider on the roof of my tower.

 

Possibly, with moving all the overground hostile creatures underground, this issue will cease to be, but till then, as long as there's a chance of spawning a hostile mob inside player's stead perimeter, lack of torches disrupts and takes far more away from the game than it provides.

 

While I am not fond of so-called torch forests either the mining/caves with how monsters spawn won't be just quite a bit more dangerous but plain unfair. Despite torches, because I didn't want to cover every surface with them I already were faced with enemies spawning in all kinds of weird places, both behind and in front of me, in nearly straight corridors. I understand that may be an issue with the vanilla spawning, but exacerbating such issues will only make the whole thing worse.

 

I don't mind hard game. I enjoy TFC and in fact, if anyone recalls some of my opinions, I hope for certain even harder challenges in the future, with new content and whatnot. Messing with torches, however, without introducing some other effective enemy deterrent quite probably won't work - if anything, I worry it'll add one more dull, repetitive task to sap enjoyment from the mod.

 

I also understand that supposedly TFC wasn't ever meant to be played merely on it's own - but I don't think that demanding of majority of players to get lanterns from some other mod if they don't want to relight everything regularly or suffer from enemies wherever they'll leave tiny place they have for a home (provided protection works for them) is a good step. In fact, it may be a step backwards. Not a challenge, but a bother.

 

We'll wait and find out - I don't want to discredit the change immediately without checking, but I thought my concerns may be of some value here. How right I may be, I guess I'll see on the next release.

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I have to agree on one specific note - tfc's spawn protection definitely seems inadequate when it comes to zombies. In my ssp world, I was ultimately forced to build fences with gates completely surrounding my entire property, because once the sun went down, wave after wave of zombies would come swarming in a non-stop torrent to the point that I couldn't do anything besides fight them until the sun came back up. Perhaps this is intentional, and building a fence isn't that onerous a burden, really, but while it's less ugly and, perhaps, more believable, it doesn't seem like any less of a cheat than torch forests, and in fact requires a lot less resources.

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I am afraid that spawn protection systems is severely lacking or buggy for real protection. Despite a year or two of staying in one location, with exception of bi-daily foraging and mining travels, I regularly were accosted by hostile mobs. Don't know if it was some weird cross-chunk glitch but either way, zombies were visiting often, coming from faraway way outside my field of view in groups and once or twice I had a spider on the roof of my tower.

Its very important to remember that mobs aren't static. They can and will move into your base. Spawn protection merely prevents the spawn at that location. If you build some proper walls, even spiders wont be getting in. As a matter of fact I decided to go do a test to make sure that Spawn Protection was operating as I intended and to make sure it wasn't broke like you thought. So, I skipped a few days to build up spawn protection and using the debug command "/vgsp 2" I created a platform of black wool(black means max spawn protection, it color codes itself when the command runs). I then flew far enough away to watch for mob spawns and waited. As you can see here, nothing spawned the entire night. Below me however, stuff was spawning on the beach. There was no spawn protection in the chunks where I am floating.

 

Go into the config and put your game in debug mode, then you can use the /gsp command to get a number reading of the exact number of hours of spawn protection that exist in your current chunk. You can also use the /vgsp 'radius' command to create the platform as I did to test for yourself in 78.

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I have to agree on one specific note - tfc's spawn protection definitely seems inadequate when it comes to zombies. In my ssp world, I was ultimately forced to build fences with gates completely surrounding my entire property, because once the sun went down, wave after wave of zombies would come swarming in a non-stop torrent to the point that I couldn't do anything besides fight them until the sun came back up. Perhaps this is intentional, and building a fence isn't that onerous a burden, really, but while it's less ugly and, perhaps, more believable, it doesn't seem like any less of a cheat than torch forests, and in fact requires a lot less resources.

See my above post first of all. Secondly, fences are not a cheat. If you aren't building fences or walls, you're doing it wrong. Fences were invented for a reason, to keep some things in and some things out. The resource use is an inconsequential argument at this point.

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fair points. Net result is just that spawn protection works mainly when you're away from base; when in base, it just reinforces the same thing that the natural spawn rules do already, i.e., preventing spawns within a certain radius. Perhaps I wasn't clear about it in my previous post, but if that is intended, then that's completely fine with me. It has just meant that, given my play style, influenced by years of play outside tfc, the bulk of my inner base and all of my farms have already been completely torched, thus preventing mob spawns that way, and when you're playing that way, there isn't any obvious benefit to spawn protection at all. With torches that burn out, that will change, but you can expect resistance from what I expect is a rather large subset, possibly a majority, of players who, like myself and Visitor, have never actually noticed, in the course of play, any effects of spawn protection, because we're still (ab)using torches as we would in vanilla.

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Night time should be dangerous, I like the changes.

 

If you're at home in your 'base' though, where's your bed?  Just go sleep and avoid the danger that way.

Why are you trying to do work at night?  You've got lazy having things so easy! :)

 

Zombies also got a buff to their visual distance in a recent update, so they come at you from quite far now (probably outside your spawn protected area), which I like.

Build fences!

Better still, build protection meters and make sure to build your fences just inside the chunk edges that are protected.

 

However like others I think there should be something you can craft that lasts longer, so I'll be using the ExtraFirma Lanterns until something is in.

They need metal sheets so aren't that easy to craft, although I think they should be REALLY hard to craft.

 

I was thinking that they could use Lava as their light source - hence you will need Red Steel to make the lantern and then right click Lava to fill it.

So permanent light would become a really good reason to progress all the way to Red Steel

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Lava already works as a light source, so once you have blue steel you will already have placeable infinite duration light sources without needing to make a "blue steel lantern"

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Hm good point lol, although I'd rather it was safely tucked away in a lantern :)

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Concerning the Spawn Protection, I recall seeing a maxProtectiontime somewhere in the configs when I was digging around trying to figure out what I might have messed up. Is that number a static max or a reoccurring max? IIRC the number was 40 by default so does that mean at any one given time I may only have 40 weeks? (I forget what it said exactly) or over my entire lifetime I can only have 40 (insert correct time frame?)

 

Also yes Zombies got a major bump in their visual range, which is particularly troublesome for some people that are forced to use fairly limited render ranges, cause they can see you outside of your visual range.

 

Anywho, kudos to the new torch thing. I might finally have a reason to actually use more than 2 in a game. I've never really liked the idea of infinite light, and besides torches are ugly as sin. 

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Concerning the Spawn Protection, I recall seeing a maxProtectiontime somewhere in the configs when I was digging around trying to figure out what I might have messed up. Is that number a static max or a reoccurring max? IIRC the number was 40 by default so does that mean at any one given time I may only have 40 weeks? (I forget what it said exactly) or over my entire lifetime I can only have 40 (insert correct time frame?)

 

I'm really confused as to what you are asking here, but I'll try to explain how the max value works. Each time the clock ticks over an hour, the 5x5 chunk area you are standing in gets (by default) 8 hours of protection added to its timer. This timer caps out at whatever value you have set in the config. So by default you get a maximum of 10 in-game months, which comes out to be 80 in-game days using the default 96 day year length. Each day has 24 hours in it, so that means the timer can cap out at 80*24, or 1,920 in-game hours worth of protection.

 

So what does that value of 1,920 hours mean? It means that if you are standing in a chunk that already has 1,912 hours of protection in it, the spawn protection timer will add 8 hours changing the value to 1,920. If you continue to stay in that area, the value will simply stay at 1,920 instead of adding another 8 hours to it. As soon as you leave that chunk, the timer will then start counting down each hour. Let's say you leave the chunk for 4 in-game hours. That means the timer on the chunk is now sitting at 1,916. If you come back to the chunk again and the clock ticks over, instead of adding 8 hours of protection, the timer will simply add 4 hours to put it back at the maximum of 1,920.

 

If I understand your question correctly, it is NOT a static value. You could leave that chunk for the 10 in-game months depleting the spawn protection all the way back down to 0 and letting mobs spawn there, and then you can come back and if you hang out in the chunk long enough, regenerate the spawn protection timer all the way back up to 1,920 and have that chunk be protected for another 10 in-game months.

 

I hope that makes sense.

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I'm testing this out, I downloaded UnlitTorch mod - http://minecraft.curseforge.com/mc-mods/62090-unlittorch

Not the same as you're putting in, but I can set the time to 2 days and even set block ID's of what can light torches.

Torches (block id 50) relight ones that have gone out, but it doesn't remove a torch unfortunately.

 

Seems to be working though.  You make torches as normal, then when placed time starts ticking.

Picking up that torch it shows a durability bar like tools to show how much life it has left.  I like that although you can't stack them then.

Works in my hands too, showing light around me, interesting.

Rain makes them go out instantly, I like that.

 

Just thought I'd post in case anyone wanted to try something similar.

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That does indeed answer the question, not sure where I got 40 from though....oh well.

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Probably an uninformed question but if spawn protection accumulates as described, is it possible to increase the radius of chunks that get spawn protection by systematically patrolling and camping regularly in the surrounding area? Or does it work in such a way that the chunk you spend most of the time in is the designated centre of an area of spawn protection. If you move close to the border of the protected area of chunks, the adjacent chunks outside the protected area are still at zero protection?

 

I'm not sure how I would play without permanent light sources. Micromanaging torches is not really something i care about. My base would probably end up torchless. Mining might be fun with torches going extinct but that depends on how much time i spend mining. A profitable mine takes me one minecraft day and night to clear out before food and water runs out. I still welcome the change but as with other things, it would be nice to have to option to disable or tweak the feature in the config file.

 

EDIT: I just read the part about lighting sticks to make torches from a burning torch on the wall. That is superb actually. No more wasting fuel for firepits or charcoal/coal in a forge to light sticks. Nice to do it on the fly. Now you're probably thinking of making this a slow process to prevent us from spamming stacks of torches from one lit torch on the wall :D

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Probably an informed question but if spawn protection accumulates as described, is it possible to increase the radius of chunks that get spawn protection by systematically patrolling and camping regularly in the surrounding area? Or does it work in such a way that the chunk you spend most of the time in is the designated centre of an area of spawn protection. If you move close to the border of the protected area of chunks, the adjacent chunks outside the protected area are still at zero protection?

 

I still welcome the change but as with other things, it would be nice to have to option to disable or tweak the feature in the config file.

 

Config for tweaking/disabling the new torch mechanic was already added. Did you even read Bioxx's post? "After 48 hours (this is configurable, set to 0 to turn off) the torch will burn out and enter an unlit stage. "

 

Holy misunderstanding of how spawn protection works. Has anybody here even read the wiki page on it?

 

http://wiki.terrafirmacraft.com/Protection_Meter

 

Here's an even more simplified version with pictures so hopefully you guys will understand. We will start out in assuming that each chunk has a timer of 0, instead of the starting timer of -24. We shall also assume default config values.

 

Player is standing in the red chunk. The clock ticks over from 5AM to 6AM. The red chunk, and all of the blue chunks get 8 hours of spawn protection added to their timer. The red and blue chunks represent the 5x5 area centered on the chunk the player is standing in. 

 

Posted Image

 

Spawn Protection

  • Red: 8 Hours
  • Blue: 8 Hours
  • White: 0 Hours

 

Player is standing in the red chunk. The clock ticks over from 6AM to 7AM. The red chunk, and all of the blue chunks get 8 hours of spawn protection added to their timer. The red and blue chunks now have spawn protection for 16 hours.

 

Posted Image

 

Spawn Protection

  • Red: (8+8) = 16 Hours
  • Blue: (8+8) = 16 Hours
  • White: 0 Hours

 

Player moves from the red chunk over to the yellow chunk. The clock ticks over from 7AM to 8AM. The new 5x5 area centered on the chunk the player is standing in is the red chunk, the yellow chunk, the green chunk, and the blue chunks. The purple chunks represent the chunks that used to be part of the 5x5 area, but are not anymore because the player moved. Because red, yellow, green and blue are within the 5x5 area, they get 8 hours of spawn protection added to their timer. Because purple is not within the area, it's timer decreases by the 1 hour that has passed.

 

Posted Image

 

Spawn Protection

  • Red: (16+8) = 24 Hours
  • Blue: (16+8) = 24 Hours
  • Yellow: (16+8) = 24 Hours
  • Green: (0+8) = 8 Hours
  • Purple: (16-1) = 15 Hours
  • White: 0 Hours

 

 

This pattern continues as the player travels around the map and the clock keeps ticking over hours. Each time the hour changes, if the chunk is part of the 5x5 around the player, it gets 8 hours added. If the chunk is not part of the 5x5, one hour of the timer ticks down.

 

When the timer hits 0 in any chunk, mobs can spawn there.

 

Edit: If you are still confused and/or colorblind, please speak up and will make the pictures again using numbers instead of color representations.

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Holy misunderstanding of how spawn protection works. Has anybody here even read the wiki page on it?

 

To be fair, that particular page is difficult to stumble upon unless you know exactly what you are looking for. Or at least I had difficulty finding it via anything except searching for it directly.

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To be fair, that particular page is difficult to stumble upon unless you know exactly what you are looking for. Or at least I had difficulty finding it via anything except searching for it directly.

 

You should always be using the search function as a primary way of finding things. I have added in so that searching for "Spawn Protection" will also bring you to that page. So now even just starting to type S-P-A-W or P-R-O-T into the search box will list that page.

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Since a suggestion thread was created before this I'll just take my central argument from there and repost for Bioxx to have a look at.

 

"My main concern is that adding a time limit to torches REQUIRES the simultaneous addition of a permanent light source such as the lantern. Otherwise we end up with a repeat of what happened when food decay was added but without a decent variety of ways to preserve it. Think of all the complaint threads that were made about food decay... We are looking at a repeat of this unless the new torch code is kept out of 79 until lanterns are developed and the two can be implemented "

 

"It's better to wait and release a complete system than to huridly push out half the mechanic and have months of confusion based on an incomplete and broken aspect of game play."

 

I suggest a system similar to xtrafirmacraft with 3 tiers of light sources to allow for progression-based game play. I agree that resource acquirement and expenditure should remain a major focus and forever-lights are a no-go. I'll explain my vision for each type of light source...

 

1) Torch

functions exactly as you have mentioned, although if more lasting light sources are also available the burn-time could be scaled down to compliment the alternative light options. (does not require metal-age)

 

2) Tallow Candle

craft string+ bowl = tallow candle (empty) can be placed and renders similar to a rock on the ground

animal fat is obtained from scraped hides and can be made via a heating mechanic and then collected into glass vials or bowls (does not require metal-age)

right clicking a full vial or bowl of tallow on a placed tallow candle will empty the vial/bowl and fill the candle which can then be lit (lasts longer than torch, right click to extinguish, possibly track fuel usage for re-lighting without the need to always re-fuel)

 

3) Brass Lantern

requires several stages of working on the anvil, then craft with a jute fiber for the wick (irl, adjusting the wick allows more flame so the brightness can be changed, I feel this would be a nice addition to game play)

can accept tallow (or olive oil if that's added which would be awesome) -it would need to track fuel usage

once lit, right clicking would cycle through 6 different light levels (3, 6, 9, 12, 15, 0) -brighter lighting would consume fuel faster, a lantern on lowest setting could last 2-3 weeks and on brightest perhaps 4-6 days until re-fueling is needed

 

In conclusion

I think adding lanterns by themselves isn't needed because torches currently last forever. I think adding burnt out torches by themselves is a mistake because it imposes a serious limit on players without the possibility to improve the situation with extra effort. The best way to proceed would be to implement a complete and complimentary system. It wouldn't need quite this level of detail to be effective, this is just my idea of an ideal TFC lighting system.

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I know it's getting off topic here, but I have one last question about the spawn protection: does the protection accumulate while sleeping as well?

So if you sleep from dusk till dawn, would you get the about 12*8 hours protection while sleeping in the center chunk?

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I know it's getting off topic here, but I have one last question about the spawn protection: does the protection accumulate while sleeping as well?So if you sleep from dusk till dawn, would you get the about 12*8 hours protection while sleeping in the center chunk?

 

From my interpretation of a quick glance at the code: Yes. You get the same protection from sleeping that you would have gotten if you were awake and in that chunk.

 

However, I'm not 100% on that, so I'll need to double check with Bioxx to confirm.

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Thanks for the detailed explanation Kitty, but such flak...

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My main concern is on how this change will affect areas where the player does not spend most of their time.  It's pretty normal to have mines that are well outside the player's main base, and these mine locations will not have any spawn protection when the player returns to collect more ore.  It wouldn't be reasonable to expect players to completely finish mining out every vein the first time they find them, nor would it be reasonable to expect them to return every two days to refresh the torches.  Without a long-term light source available, the player will have to deal with clearing out creatures almost every time return to the mine.

 

There's also the issue with general visibility.  If you go out exploring for more than two days, that means your established base will be completely dark when you return.  It's not unusual to reach my base at night after going out exploring, and the lit-up area is extremely helpful in getting back to safety while avoiding the creatures appearing outside the spawn-protected area.  While it can be said that traveling only by day is a solution to this problem, this would mean that half of our time would be spent hiding in a hole, or always having a bed with you (which would be a problem if you don't have any sheep nearby).

 

With the matter of caves, the large, sprawling caves common in TFC are challenging enough to light up the first time around.  Without a way to visibly mark off where I've already been (and unlit torches in the darkness would be useless for this purpose), I would probably just avoid caving entirely.

 

All that said, it's good that this can be changed or turned off in the configuration.  I've never changed the config files before, as I personally prefer going with the default and experiencing the challenge intended by the author, but in this case it might be necessary to keep this particular feature from overwhelming my ability to enjoy everything else in this mod.

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Thanks for the detailed explanation Kitty, but such flak...

 

I apologize if I come off as harsh. The fact of the matter is that spawn protection has been a massive part of TFC since it was added back in Beta v2 Build 52 so its frustrating when people still don't understand how it works even though there has been an explanation of it sitting in the changelog since then.

 

 

There's also the issue with general visibility.  If you go out exploring for more than two days, that means your established base will be completely dark when you return.  It's not unusual to reach my base at night after going out exploring, and the lit-up area is extremely helpful in getting back to safety while avoiding the creatures appearing outside the spawn-protected area.

 

You could always strategically place some Jack-O-Lanterns around/on-top of your base to use as a permanent light source to use as somewhat of a "homing beacon."

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@Dahnlor, For returning to caves, I can see Signs becoming more important maybe, since as you say relighting a whole cave network will be time consuming and tricky.

Better to sign the way so next time you just follow and light that one path.

If there's a lot of ore, other paths could even be blocked off.

Or maybe a faster route to the surface should be constructed.

 

Many solutions I can see :)

 

I like the jack-o-lanterns being permanent, since they are limited in supply anyway!

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