Flower's Dev Diary (Week of December 3rd)

[FlowerChild]

As a follow-up to my above post about dirt above, I just want to say one thing because I think people may be severely underestimating the scope of what I'm planning here:

In many ways, I'm not just planning a sequel to BTW with RTH. I'm planning what could be described as an unofficial sequel to Minecraft :)

In other words, if you have a question along the lines of "will you be changing foo?", the answer is most probably "yes".

[Sarudak]

Basically you want the choice between building an earthen wall or a wooden wall or a stone wall to have practical consequences rather than just aesthetic ones?

[FlowerChild]

Basically you want the choice between building an earthen wall or a wooden wall or a stone wall to have practical consequences rather than just aesthetic ones?

Precisely. After thinking long and hard about some of MC's design issues, I think my current catch-phrase for the early development of RTH is "materials matter" :)

[CreeperCommando]

Now, this becomes a major problem if you're aiming towards aggressive mob behavior that will attack structures as opposed to just players (I don't think it's any secret that has been a long term goal of mine for a very long time now). It also makes creating or finding shelter a trivial process when IMO, it should be a major problem for the player (at least initially).

That is the most exciting part yet for me, well most of the RTH is nerve tingling if only because of letting your creative juices flowing. A real defence sandbox gaming mechanic, designed from the ground up by you? Call me a Higgs boson but I'll be way too easily detected around the RTH mod when it comes out ;D

[-J-]

Best of luck with the new project. It's funny how more and more things continuously pop on my waiting list. As if Californication, Boardwalk Empire and the new Fallout game weren't enough... Just take your time with this one and trust your own judgement and I reckon the majority will be satisfied. Even though I am getting a bit antsy to see what you'll be serving us in the future.

[Detritus]

Yup, it's on my todo list, along with more options for their usage than you're probably hoping for ;)

The reason I didn't do it before BTW, is that my plans for candles require two blockIDs (one for lit, one for unlit). However, those long-term plans are part of what I'm triaging from the design of BTW in favor of moving over to Home, so only the lit state is required now, for the one blockID you mention.

Okay, cool.
I knew pretty much why you hadn't done it in the past, because you had more important things to fill the IDs with, but now it doesn't really matter, and so you can implement them. I just wanted to know whether they were in your plans still for BTW, because I think it would be a shame for them to never become a useful block. (useful meaning functional or aesthetic)

[FlowerChild]

Okay, cool.
I knew pretty much why you hadn't done it in the past, because you had more important things to fill the IDs with, but now it doesn't really matter, and so you can implement them. I just wanted to know whether they were in your plans still for BTW, because I think it would be a shame for them to never become a useful block. (useful meaning functional or aesthetic)

Well...it does still matter. If I use too many more, I'll likely be fucking over add-on authors, as they too need wiggle-room for their own blocks as well.

So, I don't want to take this too far either. At present, there's about 40 block IDs left between vMC and BTW. To give you an idea though, Mojang used around 10 block IDs with 1.4 alone.

What this means, is that things will be getting pretty tight indeed in the block ID department if Mojang doesn't extend it within the next couple of releases of MC.

[Detritus]

Okay, cool.
I knew pretty much why you hadn't done it in the past, because you had more important things to fill the IDs with, but now it doesn't really matter, and so you can implement them. I just wanted to know whether they were in your plans still for BTW, because I think it would be a shame for them to never become a useful block. (useful meaning functional or aesthetic)

Well...it does still matter. If I use too many more, I'll likely be fucking over add-on authors, as they too need wiggle-room for their own blocks as well.

So, I don't want to take this too far either. At present, there's about 40 block IDs left between vMC and BTW. To give you an idea though, Mojang used around 10 block IDs with 1.4 alone.

What this means, is that things will be getting pretty tight indeed in the block ID department if Mojang doesn't extend it within the next couple of releases of MC.

Mmm, yeah. I had been sort of thinking about that, and so i guess you can't go completely mental. You would have been using these IDs yourself anyway, as you worked on the rest of the mod, so we're still probably gaining some. Anyway, I see your points.

[Wafflewaffle]

Mojang used around 10 block IDs with 1.4 alone.

Ow you just made me very scared for the redstone update. If they used 10 IDs in 1.4, adding new redstone devices and a new ore... these are dark times ideed.

Does RTH mean that you will have "all" the IDs available in the game now to fiddle with or you still need the extended ones?

[FlowerChild]

Does RTH mean that you will have "all" the IDs available in the game now to fiddle with or you still need the extended ones?

Please take the time to look for your own answers. This was ground already extensively covered in last week's dev diary, and I'd prefer this thread not become bogged down going over that same material.

[Thorium-232]

...I think people may be severely underestimating the scope of what I'm planning here:

In many ways, I'm not just planning a sequel to BTW with RTH. I'm planning what could be described as an unofficial sequel to Minecraft :)

Goosebumps at that line man, seriously.

[Kazuya Mishima]

The idea of materials having an impact on the strength of defense is something i've always wanted in minecraft and it sounds great.

I always wondered though from a design perspective how free-form building games like minecraft or Terraria could handle siege events and when i played Terraria i began to feel that siege events always caused a cognitive dissonance or discomfort due to the fact that the total freedom of building itself resulted in a sense becoming a level designer and not actually playing the game of survival.
Even if i didn't place dirt behind the door, an exploit, there is the issue of having multiple entries into your base that may make base defense harder but effectively be vestigial features of your home and unnecessary. Yet if you want to experience bloodmoon you would have to deliberately produce vulnerabilities in your base design. Actively planning to put in weak points was something that caused me to feel like I was no longer playing a game but designing the game or orchestrating my own destruction rather than trying to survive.

Isn’t another of MC’s problems that building itself is really not building? I always wondered if what was missing from free-form building games was actually the building itself. In minecraft we don’t actually build at all, we engage in 3d painting and there is really no strategy or rules involved of a non-aesthetic nature involved with building. To build an effective wall you simply shoot blocks against other blocks and they just miraculously stick to each other with no reasoning; point , click , stick. Adhesion, mortar, joints, vertical support, horizontal support, bracers, these things aren't accounted for. Building in minecraft isn’t building but three-dimensional painting.

Redstone always felt more enjoyable than sticking blocks together(building) because there was some logic or methodology that had to be obeyed to ensure a signal was propagated. There really is no methodology to making an effective spider proof house other than hollow something out or surround some empty space.

The only real time I felt threatened in MC on my first night was with a mod that made building very difficult and I just could not get a an adequate shelter up the first night and had to build into the side of a L shaped cliff using the terrain to provide 2 walls of defense while I struggled to get the others up.
So I’m wondering if you will be addressing building itself which at the present for pretty much every survival/building game is itself rather softcore. However maybe this was you’re your intent with SFS after all and the exceedingly long pick up times.

[FlowerChild]

Ok guys, just an FYI that I won't be answering any further questions on the nature of Home in this thread. I've already given you a lot to speculate about, and if you'd like to discuss it amongst yourself, I'd ask you to take it to another thread.

[EpicAaron]

I don't think I have ever been this excited for an MC update! Thanks for everything.

[Shengji]

Wow, I've just come up to speed with all of this - exciting times!!

I love the idea of material mattering, and for home to be a challenge! The idea that at first, every encounter will be a nerve-wrenching heart pounding experience leading to a time when you "farm" said encounter (and please forgive my imagination, I am very excited) seems to be the experience levelling in games was supposed to provide, except your levelling is driven by your own engineering and redstone ingenuity!

I am one of these constant game restarters, I love the vulnerable early game. Does anyone remember Alpha Centauri, when the planet was out to fuck you up and the more you pushed further into the game, the more it hated you. Even the supposed transcendence ending felt more to me like you hacked into it and forced it to accept your presence, not the co-operation Dierdre imagined it was. God I restarted that game so many times, that moment when it was just you vs the planet was sublime, as soon as you got established and your major threat came from the other factions, while I still loved the game, it just wasn't as memorable!

I'm drunkenly rambling now, so I'll sign off with a great big thumbs up in support for FC!

[xou816]

Back on the topic of the Dev Diary itself, it seems that there is a new type of table in the picture, the obsidian one (to me it can't be a pressure plate). However I believed that only tables of the same type would "connect". Anyway, it's always a nice thing to have new aesthetic blocks. Maybe you'll add chairs then, although you seem to prefer using stairs.

A small thing though; you said you were wrapping up Better than Wolves before starting working on RTH, does it mean that you'll finish up by adding only aesthetic blocks, or will you add new blocks either? Meaning mechanical ones, or at least non aesthetic one? I say that because some time earlier you mentioned an awesome idea, simple yet "awesome as earlier BTW blocks" or something like that. Anyway, nice work as always!

[Sarudak]

I'm fairly certain those are obsidian pressure plates on a netherbrick table...

[finite8]

Ok guys, just an FYI that I won't be answering any further questions on the nature of Home in this thread. I've already given you a lot to speculate about, and if you'd like to discuss it amongst yourself, I'd ask you to take it to another thread.

You have really sent your fan base into a buzz with this RTH stuff, more recently with the little teasers you have provided. I don't think we (the community) are going to be able to stop thinking, talking, dreaming and begging about it until you have released it. I'm actually more interested in the lore you have dreamed up with it all, rather than what content you are going to add.

It's like a good Sticky wine. All you need is one wiff, and it is all you can think about until you have drunk it all, and even then you will pine for the next bottle.

[FlowerChild]

You have really sent your fan base into a buzz with this RTH stuff, more recently with the little teasers you have provided. I don't think we (the community) are going to be able to stop thinking, talking, dreaming and begging about it until you have released it.

Hehe...yes, I understand that, and even encourage it. However I just ask that you guys for the most part leave me out of it, and speculate amongst yourselves :)

I follow these dev-diary threads religiously, and there's a sense that all posts within them are directed specifically at me, so given that, it rapidly gets tiresome if I'm constantly being grilled for information about stuff I don't want to talk about yet ;)

I say that because some time earlier you mentioned an awesome idea, simple yet "awesome as earlier BTW blocks" or something like that. Anyway, nice work as always!

That particularly awesome idea will be reserved for Home ;)

It's the kind of thing that's significant enough, that I'd like to design a whole system around, and make sure that the other systems in the mod are designed to take it into account from the get go.

[CycloneSP]

Oho! Wow FC, I'll say, I'm rather impressed. I really like how you've taken the recent events in stride and turned what could be potentially ruinous for most modders and turn it into a brilliant idea/motivation to continue doing what you do best. So to that, I say 'cheers and good job.'


As for your teaser pic, I seem to be rather dull when it comes to observation. Is this pic merely showcasing your latest work with the 'hard point' thing you mentioned earlier?


Also what is your opinion concerning gravity affected blocks? As of now, vanilla only has sand and gravel(sigh, I guess I have to include dead weight), and BTW gives us pumpkins and melons. Do you see any value in increasing the number of gravity affected blocks? Or is it one of those things that doesn't give enough 'bang for the buck?'

[FlowerChild]

Also what is your opinion concerning gravity affected blocks? As of now, vanilla only has sand and gravel(sigh, I guess I have to include dead weight), and BTW gives us pumpkins and melons. Do you see any value in increasing the number of gravity affected blocks? Or is it one of those things that doesn't give enough 'bang for the buck?'

I think it is something that should be done with extreme care. I did it just for melons, and much to my surprise, people's melon castles were collapsing.

Thus, I think that doing it to other blocks is a huge risk to existing builds. I also don't think the game would really benefit from it. In the case of melons, it leads to a unique automation mechanic that made it worth while, but I don't think you'll find that to be the case with many other block types.

[Detritus]

I'm actually more interested in the lore you have dreamed up with it all, rather than what content you are going to add.

I'm in a very similar boat to you there, I love the different possibilities for lore that are opened up by the RTH, as you may have noticed from the two threads I have posted most recently. I'm a writer by nature, and so I find the lore to be the most delicious part of a game like this. I also love how so far, it's all just speculation, and none of it is official until FC implements something. While each time he adds something that ties into the lore it closes some doors, it opens several others.

So I'm going to turn this post around and make it another 'Thank you' to FC. Thank you FC, for making your mod a dream for fantasy nerds and writers alike. I love to speculate about things, and you've given me the perfect opportunity, without releasing any new content. (Except in the form of news.)

[Six]

I think it is something that should be done with extreme care. I did it just for melons, and much to my surprise, people's melon castles were collapsing.

It was actually the reverse for me. I'd planned to make a melon castle for a while, but never got around to it as it really was no different than a stone castle, just retextured. Now I guess it's similar to a sand castle, but there are not nearly as common as normal stone castles and if anything the added constraint inspired creativity.

[xou816]

I'm fairly certain those are obsidian pressure plates on a netherbrick table...

Didn't think of this. Nor did I see. I guess this the one reason why I wear glasses... =p

I say that because some time earlier you mentioned an awesome idea, simple yet "awesome as earlier BTW blocks" or something like that. Anyway, nice work as always!

That particularly awesome idea will be reserved for Home ;)

It's the kind of thing that's significant enough, that I'd like to design a whole system around, and make sure that the other systems in the mod are designed to take it into account from the get go.

Cool then. I'm even more hungry for RTH than before! :)

[Gears]

You never cease to intrigue me, FlowerChild. Really looking forward to seeing what's to come.

It's a damn shame Mojäng never finished the extended block IDs change. Hell, even the Forge has that system fully functioning. If I recall, the vanilla code lacks the change in the anvil format, although fixing that has a high chance of fucking saves over.