BTW V4.72T: Hardcore Stratification test release

[FlowerChild]

Okeley dokely. I've polished up Hardcore Stratification to the point where I believe it's ready for testing, but I'll hide it away here in the tech support section so hopefully only the most hardcore of BTW players will even notice it ;)

As I previously noted, there's a definite performance hit on chunk generation due to the approach I used, which is intended to mess with people's worlds as little as possible.

It's sufficient enough that I honestly almost threw this feature in the rubbish bin, but when I woke up this morning decided to do a play-through with it to be sure.

Well, frankly, what it does to gameplay is so fucking good, that discarding it entirely is off the table. I absolutely love how it affects gameplay in a number of ways, and there's no doubt in my mind that this is how the game should have been from the very start.

Things to note:

-This test release is client only. I don't want to risk people fucking up their servers with this thing.

-This will cause seams in existing worlds, however, they are below ground and thus not generally visible. One of the things I am interested in receiving feedback on is how you guys feel about this in your existing worlds, and whether you feel it is too drastic a change to world gen for them.

-The various kinds of stone and ores are all regular vanilla stone and ore blocks, with altered metadata values. As a result, if you remove the mod, it will all revert to regular stone and ore instead of deleting huge numbers of blocks from your world. This is why I chose to do things the way I did instead of going a much simpler (and less performance intensive) route, as these changes will not at all damage a world if the mod is ever uninstalled.

-Obviously, back up your saves, and don't become committed to any save you create with this test release, as I may continue to alter how this is all done, meaning any layers generated now may not be there in the actual release, or I may be using different blocks entirely. This REALLY is a test, and you need to accept that any play you may do with it may be lost upon release. Please keep this in mind. If you're going to use this thing, I'd recommend creating a new and disposable world with which to do so.

-As I mentioned above, there's a performance decrease to chunk generation (NOT on chunk load), and I'm particularly interested in hearing people's feedback on this. As far as I can tell it manifests as occasional stutter on chunk generate. It's definitely tolerable on my system, but I want more info on the impact it has on others before releasing this to the general public.

-Please try to take note if there's any difference in how your world generates with this release or without. Nothing other than the stone and ores themselves should change with this.

Anyways, let me know what you guys think. Like I said, I love this thing to death, but want more information from you guys before making decisions as to how to proceed further.

Download Link

Change log:

-Added Hardcore Stratification. This works by dividing the stone beneath the overworld into different layers, or "strata". These layers then require different qualities of picks in order to be able to mine them. Note that the picks required to mine various ores is not affected by this change, even though their visual appearance will match that of the surrounding stone, and they may take longer to mine at depths. In other words, the same tools as previous to this release (and the same as in vanilla) may be used to mine the various ores regardless of the strata in which they appear, so even if you descend to a depth where you can no longer mine the stone, you may still be able to mine the ores it contains. This was done to further promote caving as the mining method of choice in the early game, as well as to introduce a greater amount of variety and a number of interesting aspects into the gameplay experience that are left to the player to discover.

-Changed the hunger display to shake based on your hunger level rather than on fat level. It should only begin to shake once hunger penalties begin to kick in (at 'Peckish').

-Fixed problem with wood shovels giving you piles.

[Mason11987]

Oh.... man.

Gonna fire this up when I get home. I was really excited when I saw your post about this. I shouldn't have been surprised when I saw a version spring up this quickly.

Thanks FC!

[FlowerChild]

Well, I planned on releasing this yesterday actually, and it was done then (although I decided to add in variable hardness and explosion resistance on the different block types this morning as I did my play-through), but I became less certain about it as the day went on. Like I said, decided to do at least a partial play-through with it on a fresh world before making up my mind.

Anyways, it was so good in play, that it entirely erased any doubts I had about whether it was the right direction to head in.

[finite8]

-Fixed problem with wood shovels giving you piles.

Steve not exerting himself so much now?

[Taleric]

Let the testing begin! If this makes mining via charges late game viable I will be so happy.

EDIT: Already established worlds appear untouched. The ore contrast in the lower levels is SEXY! Yeah... going to have to do a restart. Even as legit as I play, not being able to use iron on lower level is game changer for the better.

EDIT2: Wow! So much fun :) I caved too deep and actually had to use redstone torches for lighting tackling a ravine and it's branches. All the recent changes hit home/tie in with this one. Game pacing is now thoughtful with bursts of action. Tons of value added, feels monumental like MC community should take note and join in the fun.

[Ethinolicbob]

Fucking hell dude! Another fantastic change!
I have had a bunch of ideas in my head for god knows how long.
It freaks me out a little that one-by-one you seem to be implementing mechanics for each of them.
I approve!
I haven't thanked you in a while but I want to extend the warmest thanks for the long line of brilliant features you have been implementing! It has made my MineCraft experience so much more enjoyable.
There is really only one more idea in my head that you have yet to kick in the nads but I'm pretty certain by this point that you will indeed tackle it.

[AddyBaha]

Found an oversight(I gues) you might want to fix to the next release:
Silverfish-infrcted Blocks dont use th correct texture wich makes them extremly easy to spot
since they are brighter than there surundings.

about the performance

generating the chunks when entering a new world or respawn after death took my pc about 3s
walking towards ungenarted chunks drains sometimes leads to a small stutter (less than 1s)
all in all the game runs at 30-50 fps (Windows 7(x64),4 GB RAM,2,67GHz)

P.S. I love the fact that you need at least diamond to mine the stone at that depth

[Iodinium]

Oh wow. This makes diamonds (and redstone, I guess) so much more valuable. I can definitely see the pain if you can't find a cave going to diamond depth now.
Do the lower strata's also mine slower or is that just my imagination?

Chunk loading in a creative flytest was fine and seemed the same as in 4.71, but hardcore spawning deaths result in me falling for 10 seconds or so before anything is generated.

My only gripe so far is that (unless I missed something) can't seal off anything below the first strata with smoothstone without it looking extremely obvious.
This is amazing, and definitely worth the slight decrease in gen speed.

[Stormweaver]

I had a quick mess around - chunk generation is maybe slower, but the game is still smoother than it was before.

I don't really have time to do a proper test of things, but so I at least feel a little useful:
- Silk touch appears to pick up the recoloured stone blocks and ores, but redstone picks up the original colour stone
- Placed silk-touched blocks place the original stone colour regardless
- [verify] Emerald ore isn't recoloured

I have to say, deep caves look pretty sexy now - especially with lapis and gold around. Good job sir! I can only imagine (and wait) to find out how amazing the gameplay will be.

[Elensaar]

Man, this looks amazing! :) Loving the look of it. Though emeralds and silverfish (as mentioned by AddyBaha) still use the light smoothstone texture, making them stand out something awful in the depths. The slowdown of chunk generation did hit my laptop a little bit, but not extremely so. Felt completely playable, and still smoother than vanilla. Recreated my testworld with this installed, and there were no obvious changes to world generation that I could see.

Loving it!

[savagelung]

I'm so excited FlowerChild! I've commented a few times on how much I enjoy caving, and how quickly reached a technological tier beyond the need for caving. Gone are the days of vMC where one could acquire a diamond pickaxe in less than 10 minutes! The iron changes helped, but now I can go spelunking haphazardly in a totally inappropriate lumberjack outfit with reason for a longer period of time :D

I'm also excited for how this will improve the immersion of caving. Given the stronger incentive to cave near the surface early on, players might want to use landmarks and signage to remember where they left unexplored caves. It might be time to rethink my caving strategies!

I have a strong urge to try Etho's Realistic Caving challenge.

[FlowerChild]

Yup, I knew about silverfish blocks and it's on my todo list already.

-Didn't know about emerald, and it's a little strange given the same code applies to it as the other ores. Will fix.

-Silk touch on redstone giving default color: will fix.

-Placed silk touch reverting to original color: will fix.

And yes, I really like the look of deep caves too. In addition to the gameplay changes, there's an oppressive feeling that comes over you when you're in a deep cave that I feel suits it perfectly :)

And yes, to someone's questions: the hardness of the blocks varies with depth, so a diamond tool will take less time to mine a regular stone block than one down in the depths. I mentioned that somewhere above as what I implemented on this, this morning. This applies to ores as well.

[TheGatesofLogic]

Ok, this is the best thing I have ever seen, and for one reason in particular: mining charges

It's not that mining charges weren't nice previous to this change, it's just that now they are far more worth the effort put into making them. Great update FC, I'm loving it!

[Vexalor]

-Fixed problem with wood shovels giving you piles.

I laughed pretty hard at this one, I've got to admit.


Okay, so, on topic: first, the new look of the different stone strata is actually surprisingly good, especially when the strata are next to each other in caves. I haven't noticed any issues yet that haven't already been mentioned in other posts, but this significantly affects the balance of not just the early game, but the whole game, in a positive way. You're definitely right that this feels like something that should have been in MC for a long time.

I'm planning to do some pretty extensive testing today, but it already looks awesome. There is definitely a performance hit on my system, but, though it is very much noticeable from the fps display, the game still plays pretty smoothly. Unfortunately, I don't have the benefit of testing this on an older system, since I just bought a new computer (don't know why it took me so long in the first place).

[Pfilson]

I don't have time to do an actual play through right now, but I did want to check the chunkloading, and just the look and feel running around.

Only problems that I've seen not mentioned yet is coal seems to also not get the new colors (maybe a blessing at lower depths) but also ore blocks that are behind/surrounded by the new at the lowest strata are sometimes the original stone color.. I saw this with Iron, red stone, and diamond anywhere that was behind a wall in the lowest strata even though an iron ore and red stone blocks just a few blocks away were properly colored.

Chunk loading... On the laptop (i7, SSD, 1.5Mb ram for MC), besides when spawning in a completely new area, chunk loading wasn't that bad.. I could definitely see the chunks loading in the distance, but once things were loaded I didn't have any render lag.

But all in all I love the look of having the strata, its a nice way to tell how deep you are. And I've always been a fan of caving more than strip mining. Although, finding diamonds without digging around lava has always been rare for me.. So.. I'd say diamonds are definitely going to be a HAZZA moment again..

And there is a the hope of this leading to different shades of stone building options tickling the back of my brains...

Edits: wandered around more in the lowest strata...

[FlowerChild]

Only problems that I've seen not mentioned yet is coal seems to also not get the new colors (maybe a blessing at lower depths) but also ore blocks that are behind/surrounded by the new strata's are reverted to the original stone color.. I saw this with Iron and red stone that was behind a wall in the lowest strata even though an iron ore block just a few blocks away was properly colored.

I don't think anyone has mentioned it because it's not happening :)

Is this a totally clean install with no other mods installed, not using MCPatcher, no texture pack? Freshly generated world that wouldn't have old colored blocks scattered about from old terrain gen?

[FlowerChild]

BTW: In particular, I could see connected textures fucking up right good, and probably in the manner you describe if the texture pack doesn't support the multiple ore textures per ore block that the mod now has.

[Pfilson]

Only problems that I've seen not mentioned yet is coal seems to also not get the new colors (maybe a blessing at lower depths) but also ore blocks that are behind/surrounded by the new strata's are reverted to the original stone color.. I saw this with Iron and red stone that was behind a wall in the lowest strata even though an iron ore block just a few blocks away was properly colored.

I don't think anyone has mentioned it because it's not happening :)

Is this a totally clean install with no other mods installed, not using MCPatcher, no texture pack?

I made sure to refresh MC, manually added Mod loader and BTW, and new world with default TP.. I had gamemode 1 on to explore faster.. so theoretical wankery? I wouldn't think that would affect world gen though.. I can post a screenshot..

Edit: also I"m on LWJGL 2.9.0

[FlowerChild]

I made sure to refresh MC, manually added Mod loader and BTW, and new world with default TP.. I had gamemode 1 on to explore faster.. so theoretical wankery? I wouldn't think that would affect world gen though.. I can post a screenshot..

No, that's not necessary.

Not sure what to say. Unless someone else report similar issues, and no one so far (myself included) is running into this, I'll assume it's an install specific issue. Like the thing you described with coal not being textured properly *at all* just doesn't fit with the current functionality.

[darahalian]

Man, this is really cool. I love how there is a progression to bedrock now, instead of suddenly running into a layer of unbreakable material out of the blue. The different layers really give you the feeling that you are delving deep underground. Redstone looks really cool in the dark stone, and so do diamonds and lapis. Coal is pretty hard to see, but that doesn't seem like too much of a problem. The only thing that seems kind of out of place is that mining dark stone gives you light cobble, and I guess gravel also kind of clashes with the darker stone, but I don't know.
I wonder how feasible it would be to make a script or use MCEdit to stratify the stone in existing worlds...

I didn't see any ores with the wrong texture, at least in my quick exploration in creative.

Anyway, I really have to thank you for coming up with this; it's pure genius.

[Pfilson]

Wiped everything but my saves and re-installed (instead of just deleting the jar).. old world still had the issue, but created a new world and have not been able to replicate it. Must have missed something the first time, sorry.

[FlowerChild]

Ok, put together a 2nd test version.

Stuff changed since last release:

-Fixed problem with silk touch on redstone ore not giving you a block of the same color of strata from which it came.

-Fixed problem with emerald ore not being colored for strata (note: this will not correct blocks generated in the previous test, only newly generated ones).

-Fixed problem with strata colored blocks reverting to their default color when placed (affected both silk touched blocks, and blocks like iron ore that are harvested directly into block form).

-Fixed bug that caused Hardcore Fishing to almost always act like it was day time.

Known issues not yet resolved:

-Silverfish blocks still always appear in the default stone color. This is a bit trickier to resolve, and I want to think about it a bit more, which is why I left it out of the initial release as well.

I've updated the link in the OP to the new version, so you can just redownload from there.

[FlowerChild]

Wiped everything but my saves and re-installed (instead of just deleting the jar).. old world still had the issue, but created a new world and have not been able to replicate it. Must have missed something the first time, sorry.

Yeah, something must have borked in the install the first time, as it sounds like the metadata values for those blocks weren't being set, in which case the original world wouldn't have its blocks fixed, because they don't know they were generated at depth.

If it's working right with the new world, then all is good.

[DaveYanakov]

Do you have any tips for finding diamonds? It seems like the nether has just been shoved way the hell up the tech tree with the elimination of iron effectiveness in the diamond layer. I made serious investments into two different cave networks and came up empty as I was unable to get through the ultradense stone.

Is the intent here to encourage players to seek out ruined temples for our initial nether portals?

[Taleric]

Will have to see if a lava pool can spawn deep enough to make a portal the hard way :)
Probably just find diamond in the quest anyways. I just survived my first deep trip to only turn up red stone and that was enough excitement to last a while :)