Platforms destroy *very* quickly

[tomiain]

To promote their use as scaffolding over netherrack or dirt; thus making advanced/big buildings (particularly featuring sidings etc.) more aesthetically pleasing during construction, without losing the speed boost of more easily destroyed materials. This would also provide a practical reason to amass the fairly large amount of resources required to construct a significant number of platforms.

I believe that this suits the new sub-block placement limitations (and thank you for that!-no longer do the walls of my hall feel paper thin) that will see scaffolds an increasingly common part of builds.

If however you have grown fond of the quick-and-dirty style of building, my apologies for wasting your time!

Tom

[magikeh]

.. So to clarify the suggestion is to decrease the time it takes to break the platform block?

[tomiain]

That's right, yes.

[FlowerChild]

Well, there are two elements to using dirt as scaffolding: that it's easy to destroy, and it's cheap.

Scaffold blocks get dropped from heights never to be reclaimed, into lava, etc. I do not think an expensive version would be favored just because it may look better.

Also, I do not think changing a mod block already used in many builds, and even used to build gates for castles, to be easily trashed, would be the right way to go.

Having said all that, wasn't there a scaffold mod way back in the day that added blocks similar looking to platforms, that also behaved kinda like sand in that they could be removed from the bottom (although I think the whole stack just went at once)? Is that mod still around?

I might not be opposed to adding a block of a similar nature, maybe even allowing them to be climbed like ladders in the process, if people felt that it was really something they could benefit from.

However, I don't think now is the time for people to be making that call. I think many are reflexively reacting to the loss of convenience in right click rotation and thus complaining about something that is likely not as big an issue as they perceive. I'd much rather wait until people get habituated to doing things the new way before making any such decisions.

EDIT: One thing to say for the ladder idea is that it would resolve a problem in SMP where you tend to get "bumped off" dirt towers while destroying them under laggy conditions. The ladder thing would allow you to climb back down to the bottom of the stack and then deconstruct it from below.

EDIT 2: And one additional advantage I could add to a mod scaffold block that would get around the "dropping into lava" thing, is potentially being able to right-click on the block to quickly deconstruct it and automatically add it to your inventory, which provides both the advantage of not requiring a tool to do it quickly, and avoids the usual loss associated with destroying dirt scaffolds.

[The great randomo]

Afaik, the scaffold was, and is, a part of IC2. It behaves exactly as you describe :P

[FlowerChild]

Afaik, the scaffold was, and is, a part of IC2. It behaves exactly as you describe :P

Well, there you go :)

[SterlingRed]

EDIT: One thing to say for the ladder idea is that it would resolve a problem in SMP where you tend to get "bumped off" dirt towers while destroying them under laggy conditions. The ladder thing would allow you to climb back down to the bottom of the stack and then deconstruct it from below.

Yep this resulted in one death on the official server for me. I'd love to be able to climb back down a stack. As far as scaffolding for placing stuff, I have always preferred dirt to place siding over rotating it and I feel as if I wouldn't really care to have something that does the same thing just prettier. I'd probably just keep using dirt. Unless there was an easy way to remove said scaffolding. I find myself building dirt towers just to remove one piece or dirt or two I missed.

[FlowerChild]

Yep this resulted in one death on the official server for me. I'd love to be able to climb back down a stack. As far as scaffolding for placing stuff, I have always preferred dirt to place siding over rotating it and I feel as if I wouldn't really care to have something that does the same thing just prettier. I'd probably just keep using dirt. Unless there was an easy way to remove said scaffolding. I find myself building dirt towers just to remove one piece or dirt or two I missed.

Yeah, I do exactly the same thing, which is why my edits above are looking more at how to try and approach this as resolving a number of existing issues with "towering up" at the same time.

I'm not too keen on doing this kind of thing if it's already a prominent feature of IC2 already though, for obvious reasons.

[Gdnite]

Perhaps to make the difference between a BTW version and IC2 version of scaffolding is that BTW has rope, perhaps that's how you climb up and down.

[tomiain]

Firstly, thanks for the quick and considerate reply. Your potential options are, for me, tantalising (well, not so much the option of switching to IC2, but I'm sure you understand that! ;) ) and obviously superior to my suggested bodge-job, but I bow down to your better judgement when it comes to whether or not the time worth implementing them would be well spent.

Again, thanks for giving the suggestion a fair consideration; if anything should come of it in due course then I'll certainly be an early adopter, but for now -as you say- I'll be getting used to the existing system.

[FlowerChild]

Perhaps to make the difference between a BTW version and IC2 version of scaffolding is that BTW has rope, perhaps that's how you climb up and down.

We're having a nice design discussion here man. Please don't ruin that by making recipe suggestions.

And honestly, I'm not going to design something simply to differentiate it from another mod "just because". That's rather lame.

[Thorium-232]

EDIT: One thing to say for the ladder idea is that it would resolve a problem in SMP where you tend to get "bumped off" dirt towers while destroying them under laggy conditions. The ladder thing would allow you to climb back down to the bottom of the stack and then deconstruct it from below.

EDIT 2: And one additional advantage I could add to a mod scaffold block that would get around the "dropping into lava" thing, is potentially being able to right-click on the block to quickly deconstruct it and automatically add it to your inventory, which provides both the advantage of not requiring a tool to do it quickly, and avoids the usual loss associated with destroying dirt scaffolds.

Honestly both of these would be incredible. From my time spent browsing through the build threads I get the feeling that I'm not the average BTW builder. I've never had just an above-ground town with a building per machine. I tend to take over mountains and build huge sweeping structures out of them (my main base in my last world was actually constructed on a floating island), and I fall building them. A lot. Having a fast-collapsible, climbable scaffolding that I can just carry a stack or two of everywhere I go would be a godsend, and being able to right-click-tear-down instead of watching missed bricks plummet 100m to the ground would be... damn.

[SterlingRed]

EDIT 2: And one additional advantage I could add to a mod scaffold block that would get around the "dropping into lava" thing, is potentially being able to right-click on the block to quickly deconstruct it and automatically add it to your inventory, which provides both the advantage of not requiring a tool to do it quickly, and avoids the usual loss associated with destroying dirt scaffolds.

I think it would be a wee bit tricky to make something automatically add to your inventory feel natural within the btw and minecraft environment. Other than that I don't really have much else to say about it as I'm sure you're mulling it over and you'll figure it out one way or another :)

[Rianaru]

I think it would be a wee bit tricky to make something automatically add to your inventory feel natural within the btw and minecraft environment. Other than that I don't really have much else to say about it as I'm sure you're mulling it over and you'll figure it out one way or another :)

I think that's one of the very few things that I'd personally be willing to break game immersion for. Scaffolding in general and the adding to inventory thing in particular were fantastic when I've used them in other mods, and if FC were to do something about scaffolding in the game, I would be really excited to see what happens :)

[FlowerChild]

I think it would be a wee bit tricky to make something automatically add to your inventory feel natural within the btw and minecraft environment. Other than that I don't really have much else to say about it as I'm sure you're mulling it over and you'll figure it out one way or another :)

I hear you, but I think I could easily do it in such a way that the blocks are drawn towards you on breaking (kinda like XP orbs), rather than just automatically being added to the inv.

Given that, I don't think it would clash very much at all, as it would still look like the block is moving towards you in the regular manner. Heck, regular items do this anyways to begin with, so all it might take is increasing the range of that effect slightly for this particular block. Combined with arm motion and such, I think it would give the impression that you're picking it up as you deconstruct it.

[Utterbob]

I might not be opposed to adding a block of a similar nature, maybe even allowing them to be climbed like ladders in the process, if people felt that it was really something they could benefit from.

However, I don't think now is the time for people to be making that call. I think many are reflexively reacting to the loss of convenience in right click rotation and thus complaining about something that is likely not as big an issue as they perceive. I'd much rather wait until people get habituated to doing things the new way before making any such decisions.

To me, this would be an immensely useful feature regardless of the change to right-click rotation. In fact I haven't installed that update as yet so I am only really considering how this might have impacted past builds. I've had a lot of deaths to dirt scaffolding on SMP servers (and more than a few on SP too!) and to be honest, using dirt feels like a cheap 'workaround' kind of solution anyway but there really isn't an alternative given how MC works fundamentally.

Personally I would prefer it to be expensive, whatever the recipe you decide on, so the choice between dirt and the convenience of what you have suggested (right-click deconstruct, ladder, etc) is still a relevant decision and/or the choice to invest in it will affect available materials heavily if you want the scaffolding early. I have nothing against convenience items as long as I have to work for it!

[dawnraider]

Doesn't rope act this way already, though?

[FlowerChild]

Doesn't rope act this way already, though?

Kinda sorta, but not really :)

If you mean on the collection, the behavior is associated with the anchor rather than the rope itself. Plus, with rope being a very small block visually, I don't think it feels out of place.

If you're talking about functionality, then rope provides a means of climbing down somewhere, climbing back out, then collecting from the above. This is the exact opposite of a lot of construction scenarios where you start at the bottom, want to climb up, back down, and destroy the tower.

[DaveYanakov]

The scaffolding you were thinking of was actually Deepsniper's design, FC. I believe his were also climbable like ladders, which simplified towering. He's mostly dropped out of MC but I still see him around and will talk to him about maybe doing a final update for a finished BTW. Last version his original mod worked with was 1.8.7 if memory serves.

[The great randomo]

Some form of scaffolding for cement would be very welcome. It's really tricky to get it to fully expand horizontally in mid air.

[Sarudak]

I would love a feature like this.

[Gilberreke]

I've actually, in the past, included IC2 (which I'm not fond of at all) in my jar, just for the scaffolding and the crops.

You play MC for the first time, you grab some blocks and pillar. Pillaring is the MC equivalent of rocket jumping. Emerging behavior from running around in a block world. You'd assume that more mods would actually realize that and provide useful ways to interact with the world, but apart from some genius inventions in certain mods (BTW rope, IC2 scaffolding, drop-damage negating padding blocks in a few mods), not much has happened.

I think the main things I want to do in MC are:

Go up a sheer wall, and come back down (ladders are perfect for this)
Jump down a big drop (I use water pools for this)
Pillar up (IC2-style scaffoldings are climbable blocks that can be added and destroyed from the bottom block)
Go down (ropes)

I'm not suggesting anything, just saying that everyone who ever played MC instinctively tries to pillar up, jumps down cliffs into ponds and such. There's rules to how we move in MC and I love mods that are able to expand on it. That's actually the only part of the original Aether mod I really loved. It added drop-damage negating blocks (no more drop ponds!), blocks that made you quicker (roads!) and chocobos (flying, without creative mode). It really did change the way you interacted with the MC world.

Notice how successful Hardcore Movement was, which is just horizontal movement, while this is vertical.

[DaveYanakov]

Come to think of it, having a block that drops all connected scaffolding when one block of it is destroyed would be a perfect complement to the new sub block placement rules. Build your scaffolding out of something more expensive than dirt, bonus is that you can climb on it and knock it down fast when everything is in place. There would need to be a radial limit to avoid crashing servers if someone builds a kilometer long scaffold without thinking and then tries to destroy it. killing the server. Otherwise it seems like a simple solution to the problem.

[Benanov]

Come to think of it, having a block that drops all connected scaffolding when one block of it is destroyed would be a perfect complement to the new sub block placement rules. Build your scaffolding out of something more expensive than dirt, bonus is that you can climb on it and knock it down fast when everything is in place. There would need to be a radial limit to avoid crashing servers if someone builds a kilometer long scaffold without thinking and then tries to destroy it. killing the server. Otherwise it seems like a simple solution to the problem.

The radial limit would be a rather difficult thing to implement properly. I see a lot of DOS-the-server potential in that suggestion.

[DaveYanakov]

By radial I was thinking more along the lines of sending the 'break now' signal out to a distance of 16 or so along connected scaffold blocks. Even if you built a solid sphere with a 16 meter radius, that should be manageable and would still be a heck of a lot faster than digging out 32 meters of dirt, even if you do have to break a scaffold block more than once.

Might be a solid add-on project.