The ongoing 1.3 update epic

[Aeslynn Winterfell]

While I'm a bit of a lurker, I just wanted to pop by and say thank you FC for all your continuing hard work. I'm really glad you're making a thread like this as it really illuminates the struggle you go through. It makes me really appreciate both the challenges you face and all the hard work you've done. Keep up the good work! :D

[FlowerChild]

While I'm a bit of a lurker, I just wanted to pop by and say thank you FC for all your continuing hard work. I'm really glad you're making a thread like this as it really illuminates the struggle you go through. It makes me really appreciate both the challenges you face and all the hard work you've done. Keep up the good work! :D

Thanks man! Yeah, this thread has been doing me a world of good in maintaining my own motivation, and in making me feel appreciated for the work I'm putting into this.

I think it's made me aware that it's really not apparent to others just how much time and effort I put into the mod in general, and there's really no reason it should be.

I think I'm definitely going to try to do more of this in the future, as I think it's both good for the community, and good for me as well. In the early days of the mod, I used to discuss what I was working on a lot more, but I think I shut down a bit in that regard as the size of the mod's fan-base grew larger and I started to feel more and more public pressure. I think silence about a lot of things seemed like the easiest solution at the time, but I don't think it was the best one.

Anyways, I'm currently toying with the idea of setting up a dev-diary sub-forum or something like that. I'll think about it a bit more once this update process is completed, but yeah, I'm considering ways in which to make this a more regular thing. The tricky part is going to be balancing that with the ongoing theme of keeping some things secret, as I do think teasing and surprising people has definitely become a "thing" with the mod that I don't want to lose entirely.

[Force21]

Anyways, I'm currently toying with the idea of setting up a dev-diary sub-forum or something like that.

You know what this reminds me of? Notch in his early days of minecraft, back in 2009 when infdev and alpha were going on. He used his "Word of Notch" a lot and that's what people really liked. It's also what got me motivated to buying minecraft, cause everyone got an update almost every day on how this awesome game is coming along.

All in all, I think thats a great idea FC. Keep up the good work!

[Hotshot]

I do think teasing and surprising people has definitely become a "thing" with the mod that I don't want to lose entirely.

Trolls never die =P Even the ones inside you... =D

Dev diary does sound fun, I have enjoyed being able to see your way of doing things (even though its a world I know nothing about, but hey I'm rooting for you anyway =P). If its helping motivate you then thats great too, if you want to test it out without creating a subforum I hear there is space going in the suggestion subforum ;D

[STrRedWolf]

Dev diary does sound fun, I have enjoyed being able to see your way of doing things (even though its a world I know nothing about, but hey I'm rooting for you anyway =P). If its helping motivate you then thats great too, if you want to test it out without creating a subforum I hear there is space going in the suggestion subforum ;D

The suggestion subforum is a Bad Idea(tm) given how badly that forum churns out good suggestions*. But I'm for a dev journal.

[small]* Yes, I only had one for the handfull I've sent in.[/small]

[mrrps]

Hello, new here, longtime listener and first time caller, and I just wanted to say that while I have no idea what's going on here (I wish I'd taken that coding class now...) I am awed and astounded by the amount of progress you've made, Mr. FC, and wish you the bestest of luck with the rest of it. Now I'm going to go hide before I do something wrong and am fed to the Nethergrowth.

[morvelaira]

Now I'm going to go hide before I do something wrong and am fed to the Nethergrowth.

Too late. It's Nether GROTH. ;) Welcome to the community, man.

[Horizon]

@Cyclone Yes I read 8-bit theater. It was gloriously awesome.
Anyways, thank you for keeping up the dev diary thing, FC, it is awesome.

[mrrps]

Too late. It's Nether GROTH. ;) Welcome to the community, man.

Ah of course, but do please forgive the wee noob for she is small and not very tasty.

I am going to quash my urge to fangirl because eeeee thank you Miss Morvy I very much enjoy your videos eeeeee and instead say thank you. And now I am going to stop because this is not the place for this, my apologies.

[DocHussey]

*squees just a little bit so everyone else can stop holding it in*

Sorry, should have done that earlier. ;)

thanks morv! I didn't want to step on your toes ;)

*On-topic: it's hard to imagine that 1.3 screwed things so up that it makes the infdev to Alpha update look minor by comparison…

**EDIT-I'm an idiot…

[FlowerChild]

Guys, please take the off-topic elsewhere. Tagging a single sentence related to the thread onto an off-topic post isn't fooling any, except maybe yourself.

[FlowerChild]

Ah, ok...scratch what I said earlier about this: the ideas are beginning to flow due to this playthrough I'm doing.

I've actually had a number that I've noted down for latter development, but I just came up with one that I don't mind sharing.

I'm going to give chickens a little love :)

The basis of the idea is to get rid of hardboiled eggs. Instead, when you (or a dispenser) throw an egg and it cracks open to potentially hatch a baby, if you don't get a baby, you'll instead get a raw egg that pops out. If you cook a raw egg in a Stewing Pot, you get a poached egg, which is the equivalent in terms of being a food item as the hardboiled egg currently is.

I'll be using raw eggs for additional things down the road (that part I won't spoil ;) ), but for now I think this change will make chickens more interesting for a variety of reasons.

First, it makes farming them a tad more complicated as you'll wind up with these raw egg items in your hatchery, which will likely need to be sorted from the other drops. Secondly, it makes using a single chicken sitting on a Stewing Pot as a perpetual source of hard boiled eggs a tad more complicated, as you either need to rig a despenser to crack the eggs for you over the pot, or you have to manually do it yourself. And lastly, it further complicates automation in forcing you to deal with the chickens running around when they do successfully hatch.

Anyways, that's the idea. I'll probably hold off to a latter release to do this, but if I have a moment where I just feel like doing something fun (this should be trivial for me to implement) it might even make its way into the update.

[Eriottosan]

Ahh that egg thing is actually amazing, FC! I love it! I can't wait to see what the future uses for them are!

Hrm, I really like the idea of having a more permanent view into your modding progress, but at the same time, I feel that the mystery surrounding the mod's upcoming features is part of the joy of the mod and this community.For instance, I (personally) would not want any greater insight than what we have had already into The Device(tm), as the way you have presented it so far has given us hours of fun in trying to figure out where, how, when and *why* to build it. Perhaps if it were only for "little" things in the mod, as opposed to the large bits? But again, that's a fine line. Just my thoughts on the matter.

Keep up the good work, as always I'm really enjoying following this thread!

[DIG_down]

Chicken love, better than human love.

[Kazuya Mishima]

The change or nerf to chickens with respect to tallow was a great call. Up until that i didn't feel compelled to make a cow or pig farm at all. I knew you'de get back to chickens eventually and the changes will enhance automation. Thanks for sharing future plans FC.

[FlowerChild]

Eh, it's just a small thing, but sometimes small changes like that can add up to more fun for the player, and the cumulative effect of all of them will hopefully one day leave a mess in their pants.

[FlowerChild]

Well, I managed to get over my hangover and get a few solid hours in on the update this evening:

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It's a subtle visual change, but it's a very significant one on my end :)

[morvelaira]

Well, I managed to get over my hangover and get a few solid hours in on the update this evening:

Spoiler

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It's a subtle visual change, but it's a very significant one on my end :)

*whines* I don't see it!

[Kreyesh]

FC, just wanted to finally speak up again and say how amazing the work you are doing is. I have been watching 4+ different independent game developing guys lately and i gotta say, they work at a fraction of the speed you do and its their job. They get paid to do it and are already selling it as an alpha, yet you are 5 times as fast to update and patch as they are. You my friend, need to start selling something. I would buy it immediately.

[bmanfoley]

Well, I managed to get over my hangover and get a few solid hours in on the update this evening:

Spoiler

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It's a subtle visual change, but it's a very significant one on my end :)

Would it happen to be the hopper running in the background :)?

[Battlecat]

*Chicken Changes*

I quite like the idea, adds a level of complexity and a reason for more complex chicken factory. Sounds like fun, I'm going to have to re-think the farm I've been planning.

I believe that might just be a hopper I see working on the left side of the windmill tower in the image. If so, very cool to see that feature up and running!

[FlowerChild]

Would it happen to be the hopper running in the background :)?

Indeed it would be! In fact, there are now three of them in my base, although there are only 2 visible in the screenshot. The other is sitting on top of my auto-mill in the stone brick structure attached to the left of my wind-mill :)

This was a very significant step for me actually, as I believe the Hopper was the hardest block to port over in this entire update (including the blocks I have left to do).

The tricky part of it is that the client isn't aware of the inventory of blocks unless the player has a gui open, as that would be a whole lot of data to be sending to the client when it really isn't needed.

However, the Hopper has a couple of important visual aspects to it that are dependent on that inventory, namely the filters and the gravely indication of contents that are displayed on the block itself. I couldn't use block metadata for this though, as the Hopper's 4 bits are already loaded to the gills, and beyond that, there were way more than 16 potential states (the maximum contained in 4 bits) I had to account for anyways. In other words, I basically needed to send specific data contained within a Tile Entity from server to client, which is not something I have had to resort to elsewhere.

So, what it required was for me to write some custom message handlers between the client and server to send only the bare-bones amount of information needed to update that visual state.

Anyways, it wasn't that rough in the end once I figured out how to do that (a lot of the time involved in this update process is just figuring out how things work rather than writing code), and I do believe that's the last major mystery that I need to solve to get the rest of the blocks up and running.

So yeah, even smoother sailing ahead from this point forward :)

[kazerima]

Should be nice to see how the changes to eggs works out, I've yet to really find a reason to make a chicken farm since my cows produce all the leather/glue and beef/tallow I need. I've never had any problems with nerfs as long as they were made to bring things in balance or brought new functionality to the table and this one sounds like both.

[FlowerChild]

Well, I was going to call it a night after getting the Hopper done, but for some reason I decided to just keep going. It's really starting to roll fast now, so I guess that's further motivating me :)

This one shouldn't be too hard to spot:

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No point in me being secretive there :)

Hibachi, Bellows, Turntable, and Stoked Fire all updated and working properly.

[Tekei]

Wow! Great job there FC. Im really impressed by how you manage to make things look so easy ;)
Keep up the good work!