Flower's Dev Diary (Week of November 27th)

[FlowerChild]

Personally I'd go with option 2, extending the IDs yourself, and then if the time ever comes that Mojang actually does release their own block IDs, depending on whichever one has you doing the least amount of boring coding, either make the one-time converter for switching to their format, or just rip theirs out and keep your own extended ID setup.

Considering that BTW is meant to be stand-alone anyhow, would there really be any downside to using your own extended IDs at that point rather than converting to Mojang's?

We've moved way beyond that point in the discussion man.

Again: Read the thread or don't post.

[Mason11987]

BTW guys: it's worth noting that all the sound effects at the end of that video, with the exception of the growl at the end, were all in-game with just the video itself fading to black.

I actually stepped into that device six months ago and took my first steps around a prototype version of home back then before this blockID nonsense happened and I felt it necessary to put everything on hold.

Just thought I'd point that out to highlight how very frustrating it has been for me to have to hold back on this all this time.

So Jealous. I wish we could have seen it :D.

I haven't commented here yet but I've read everything and I just want to say I'm thrilled about the prospect of new BTW content. I couldn't care less how that content shows up. I've given up my BTB world for greener pastures you've allowed us to tarnish, I'll sacrifice my current BTW build if it comes to it for the same opportunity.

Can't wait for however this turns out! Thanks for involving us in your thought process.

[Psion]

I guess you can count me in on the option #2 crowd. I can see where you're coming from on making a BTW2 so to speak, but I like the idea of continuity within the mod myself. It feels more immersive to me if we had two separate worlds, with different rules, but that we could travel freely between, than it does to have to load up a multimc file or the like. Having to do that just feels a bit jarring to the experience. plus, the idea of being able to bring things back from home to your old vanilla world (at a cost) sounds like an interesting mechanic, which probably wouldn't be something you could do if you had it as a true expansion.

And a concern i have if you separated the two as an expansion is this: FC, would you bother giving vanilla updates more than a glance if you did so, as compared to having home as a separate dimension on the same save? I know most of vanillas stuff is trash, but some things that come out have potential, and I'd hate to see you miss out on a wicked idea because you didn't bother playing vanilla updates as they came out, such as beacons and bats. Of course, this concern is probably baseless. :x

Regardless of which option you choose though, i'm sure it will be the right one. You haven't led us wrong yet, even if some features had some of us dragging our heels at first from shock. I know i was reluctant to try out hardcore buckets and beds and the like, but i've come to enjoy them to the point that i don't use vanilla water at all anymore.

Just go with whatever you think is best, because that's what your best at doing. :)

[FlowerChild]

And a concern i have if you separated the two as an expansion is this: FC, would you bother giving vanilla updates more than a glance if you did so, as compared to having home as a separate dimension on the same save? I know most of vanillas stuff is trash, but some things that come out have potential, and I'd hate to see you miss out on a wicked idea because you didn't bother playing vanilla updates as they came out, such as beacons and bats. Of course, this concern is probably baseless. :x

Seriously: no fucking way. No way, no how, never. I am absolutely done with vanilla and its development. I want nothing to do with anything further that Mojang adds to the game besides the purely technical.

I have zero confidence in them as designers, because they aren't designers. Nada...nil...none, and I in no way want the mod's ongoing development to be associated with the direction vanilla is going in, in any way, shape or form, which was the primary reason I conceived of Home in the first place.

So no, there will be absolutely zero discussion of me integrating future vanilla content into home beyond my usual telling people to fuck off :)

[muggsbud]

then will you be disabling the function that automatically asks players to update and developing at 1.4whatever forever? That probably seems like a stupid question, but i never have been able to get MCNostalgia to work properly. I haven't really NEEDed it yet, but...

[FlowerChild]

then will you be disabling the function that automatically asks players to update and developing at 1.4whatever forever?

No...that's not at all what I said.

[ignika42]

Personally I'd go with option 2, extending the IDs yourself, and then if the time ever comes that Mojang actually does release their own block IDs, depending on whichever one has you doing the least amount of boring coding, either make the one-time converter for switching to their format, or just rip theirs out and keep your own extended ID setup.

Considering that BTW is meant to be stand-alone anyhow, would there really be any downside to using your own extended IDs at that point rather than converting to Mojang's?

We've moved way beyond that point in the discussion man.

Again: Read the thread or don't post.

I did indeed read the entire thread, and still considered option 2 preferable to the splitting of the mod. Even though you've shown yourself time and time again to be an amazing designer, (understatement of the century) I just can't see "BTW 2" maintaining the same feel of contiguity as continuing to expand the existing mod would.

Either way, you've never disappointed in the past, and I'm sure whatever course of action you take, it'll end up awesome, was just throwing my $0.02 into the mix.

[MoRmEnGiL]

Actually Morm, you'll probably be surprised that I at least partially agree with you here.

You'll probably be surprised that I'm not really surprised :P

You see, I really understand what you were trying to do, and my only problem was, this is not the minecraft I knew, but it is not something brand new either, where I can follow a totally new way of playing. You just cleared it up in this thread that this hybrid is not really what you want. So no, I'm not really all that surprised. :]

Forced HC bucket did not make sense to me, in that I rather liked to have the freedom to do my contraptions the way I want to, traditionally, or, for the fun of it, with only natural water sources. So flipping around with the option on and off felt a bit pointless. I love playing with hc bucket mentality, but it goes against vMC feeling to be forced to. This is why I think BTW development has reached a point where it almost feels complete, and you can go on and do your own thing with btw2 ;]

BTW 2 will be where the real brutality happens, where nothing is optional, and everything is always hard. I'll leave BTW 1 on the other hand to be played largely how it always has been before these hardcore changes began.

Bring it on! :D

EDIT: oh, and I really feel your frustration man, I bet it feels kinda like having invented a new clean source of energy, and not being allowed to tell a single soul, while waiting for oil and coal reserves to dry out..

[muggsbud]

then will you be disabling the function that automatically asks players to update and developing at 1.4whatever forever?

No...that's not at all what I said.

I realized that. Sorry for the confusion, i was trying to think ahead.

[FlowerChild]

You see, I really understand what you were trying to do, and my only problem was, this is not the minecraft I knew, but it is not something brand new either, where I can follow a totally new way of playing. You just cleared it up in this thread that this hybrid is not really what you want. So no, I'm not really all that surprised. :]

Yeah, this is really what has been going on, I think I just finally reached the point of verbalizing it all today, and finally decided the secrets and surprises I was trying to keep were no longer worth preserving given the massive delay that was occurring in the actual arrival of the content in question.

I think I was trying to force what I wanted to be working on, onto the existing design because I saw no other options at present and was facing so much uncertainty that I could no longer form solid plans for the future.

But it was slowly beginning to feel more unnatural to me as well, while I simultaneously plunged forward in my usual manner. Meanwhile, it was eating away at the back of my head that this is really not what I intended to have happened, and that I was actually diminishing the impact of Home when it finally arrived because many of the things it represented were slowly seeping into the vanilla world.

Bring it on! :D

That's the spirit :)

Yeah, honestly, I think this will largely be the end of all the hardcore bitching because I think starting a new mod like this, or sequel, provides a clear line of separation between the old and the new which was lacking previously. I think it will make for happier and more receptive players all around.

[FlowerChild]

I did indeed read the entire thread, and still considered option 2 preferable to the splitting of the mod. Even though you've shown yourself time and time again to be an amazing designer, (understatement of the century) I just can't see "BTW 2" maintaining the same feel of contiguity as continuing to expand the existing mod would.

Ok, look, I agree with you here. There's no question about it.

HOWEVER, in practical terms, I consider the sequel the most effective compromise between the work involved and maintaining continuity.

It doesn't erase everything that occurred before, anymore than a movie or game sequel ever does. It's a continuation of the ongoing story, that is separate, but definitely connected.

What it does is save me a huge amount of headaches in making that happen. In trade, players have to boot up a separate mod to continue the story. Yes, I realize that's not optimal, which is why I've struggled with this for so long. The thing is though, it's infinitely more practical at this point in time, and as I've made clear in this thread, I'm really at the point where I need to start moving this forward and getting the mod's development back on track for the sake of my own sanity.

[PatriotBob]

To address an itch of curiosity... If you were to consider option #1523 (Build your own game) which I think has already been axed... but if you were to...
What would be your language of choice?

[FlowerChild]

To address an itch of curiosity... If you were to consider option #1523 (Build your own game) which I think has already been axed... but if you were to...
What would be your language of choice?

C++ probably. It's what I've used most in my career, and my recent discovery that Java didn't support conditional compilation dropped by opinion of it by several notches. I've also always been rather bothered by how it obfuscates what's a pointer and what's a reference while passing parameters, and I'd much rather be explicitly specifying which is which.

If anyone wants to follow up on that line of conversation though, please create a new thread as it's way off topic.

[PatriotBob]

To address an itch of curiosity... If you were to consider option #1523 (Build your own game) which I think has already been axed... but if you were to...
What would be your language of choice?

C++ probably. It's what I've used most in my career, and my recent discovery that Java didn't support conditional compilation dropped by opinion of it by several notches.

If anyone wants to follow up on that line of conversation though, please create a new thread as it's way off topic.

Good to know. Seems to be a dying art.

[Vitreous]

Notch handing Minecraft over to Jeb and Dinnerbone seems a lot to me like a mother letting her child walk to van in the park with Candy painted on the side and then turning her back.

[SterlingRed]

BTW guys: it's worth noting that all the sound effects at the end of that video, with the exception of the growl at the end, were all in-game with just the video itself fading to black.

I actually stepped into that device six months ago and took my first steps around a prototype version of home back then before this blockID nonsense happened and I felt it necessary to put everything on hold.

Just thought I'd point that out to highlight how very frustrating it has been for me to have to hold back on this all this time.

Fuck man! I totally thought you were just playing those game sound effects straight from the files rather than from ingame!

I don't think we can even imagine how frustrating it's been for you then, now that i understand how truly close you were. My sympathies man, and thanks for sticking with it! More than a few mod authors would have just tossed in the towel entirely given a situation like that.

[Sarudak]

So I was under the impression that Home would basically be Minecraft minus the stuff you don't like made more hardcore plus a kind of survival phase but still containing all the BTW goodness that we already had (like mechanical power, pottery, etc) albeit possibly provided to us in different ways (will we have the nether?). So it's not really a total conversion but more of a reimagining or re-expression of minecraft + better than wolves. But now I'm wondering if that's true or you're intending BTW:RTH to be more starting from scratch completely?

[Azdoine]

I guess my only real concern is that BTW and RTH might split into separate splinter communities. Will they coexist in the same forum?

[FlowerChild]

So I was under the impression that Home would basically be Minecraft minus the stuff you don't like made more hardcore plus a kind of survival phase but still containing all the BTW goodness that we already had (like mechanical power, pottery, etc) albeit possibly provided to us in different ways (will we have the nether?). So it's not really a total conversion but more of a reimagining or re-expression of minecraft + better than wolves. But now I'm wondering if that's true or you're intending BTW:RTH to be more starting from scratch completely?

I think I summed it up best in the following post, which I'll quote here:

Spoiler

Show

I really need a macro for that one :)

[Sarudak]

When you send me a song that says keep on knocking it only serves to encourage me... But I think that's because you really actually enjoy this...

[FlowerChild]

When you send me a song that says keep on knocking it only serves to encourage me... But I think that's because you really actually enjoy this...

Oh, I don't expect you to stop, hence "come back tomorrow night and try it again" :)

[Sarudak]

I'm gonna go with my initial assumption then since I'm usually right... ;)

[Six]

Wow, epic thread explosion here, and it has really covered a lot of ground. I can feel your frustration of having been promised these block IDs 6 months ago and it really gives a whole new perspective on how the mod has developed since then.

The 'sequel' idea does sound like the best solution proposed, managing to cover all the key things and being much less work than some of the other options. It would be nice to have the transition in-game like originally intended, but this would end up with mostly the same feel, just a little bit of a discontinuity. I guess it'll be like BTW is the tutorial, then Home is the actual game :)

[Graphite]

Why would you need new block IDs for home dirt/sand/ect.? Is there not a way that you could use vMC dirt/sand/ect for Home but change the rules they follow?

I am very ignorant when it comes to coding, but I don't understand why this is not an option. If it is possible, it would cut down on the number of block IDs that you would need to use.

You know, when I started reading this thread I had the same thought and I can't say I've seen any response to this option. If the overworld and home are two completely separate worlds, then couldn't it "reboot" the entire block-list whenever you swap worlds. It'd give you a fresh 255 blocks to work with that aren't affected by any new blocks in vanilla. The internal and save-format would stay the same, though you would lose the ability to move blocks from one world to the other (though even then, if need be, you could register the same block under two ids, one for each world, and convert any items in your inventory as you pass through the portal).

Edit: I was eating breakfast when I realised this might be a major issue on servers, as they may have to have both worlds running at the same time. Not sure how viable this option is in that case, but it's worth a thought atleast, I think.

[FlowerChild]

I don't think vMC lends itself to that kind of hot-swapping of blockIDs. I suspect it would complicate the code unnecessarily, which is what I'm trying to get away from. I tend to apply the KISS principal in pretty much everything I do code wise. I'm not one for overly complicated theoretical style solutions to this kind of thing, as I know from experience that they bite you in the ass down the road.

As to why I don't use modified vanilla version of blocks, again...that leads to massive amounts of base class modifications and an ongoing maintenance nightmare. Plus I'm stuck adapting to any changes that Mojang makes to the code for the blocks.

The whole idea of this kind of "fresh start" with Home is to get away from that kind of thing: complete freedom to do what I please with the game without in becoming exceedingly difficult to maintain in the future and without being tied to anything Mojang does...up to a point...low level engine modifications like the upcoming rendering changes are still going to force changes of course.

But again, that's not the kind of thing I like to discuss. I've obviously put a lot of thought into the technical details behind this and am probably more aware of how the MC code-base works than almost anyone outside of Mojang, with a very few exceptions. As such, I generally ask that when people less knowledgeable of the code-base hear me say something is a bad idea from a technical standpoint, they accept that I have my reasons for it and move on to more constructive conversation.