FlowerChild's Dev Diary (Week of September 17th)

[FlowerChild]

Another week, another round of feature development :)

As always, rules for this thread:

-DO NOT post suggestions.
-DO NOT critique unreleased features. Wait until you've had a chance to try them before passing judgement.

With that out of the way:

Here's a screenshot of what I've been working on in game as of late. Note that this one is in my main world, not on the SMP test-server a maintaining a proper villager population over there proved "problematic" :)

Spoiler

Show

Right now I'm largely engaged in yet another round of tweaks and small features designed to better integrate the mod with the changes in vMC 1.3. Pretty much the standard process where Mojang releases new features, and I either adapt those in the mod to fit better with them, or change the vanilla functionality to fit better with the mod, or just so that it makes more sense overall.

I'm also continuing with the ongoing process of optimizing the mod code for SMP. My last round of changes seem to have helped a lot of people out, so I'm thinking that I'm getting towards the final leg of this process. Optimization is not something that is ever really complete, but you run into a point of diminishing returns where increasing amounts of work are required for ever smaller improvements, so it largely comes down to a judgement call as to when to call it "done". I'm sure I'll always be optimizing small things here and there along the way mind you.

So unfortunately, nothing really exciting for me to hint at or report at the moment. I'm very much looking forward to getting all these small things out of the way over the next couple of weeks and returning back to my work on "Phase 1". Hopefully that will give me a good solid month or so to work on new content before Mojang throws the next monkey-wrench into things ;)

[DaveYanakov]

Nice villager farm. Almost looks like a trading post.

[Graphite]

Glad to see I'm not the only one who wants his villager farm to look like ordinary housing instead of some overly door-y villager singularity. Really should get to work on building one soon, though it would be on multiplayer. I'm assuming it's more the other players that are a menace to the villagers as the world itself?

Interesting rope houses, btw. A symbol for their eternal servitude to you? :P (eternal or until they hit the saws, whichever comes first)

[FlowerChild]

That's wicker actually (hence all the reeds in the background) :)

Yeah, I agree with you 100% on housing that looks like housing. The central "apartment complex" is my concession to the way the mechanics work to have a large number of doors in a manner that doesn't look ridiculous.

It's really sad that Mojang designed the housing mechanic in such a way that it basically encourages exploits instead of building a proper village. There's a certain "sim city" aspect to building up a village that could have been a heck of a lot of fun if players weren't encouraged to spoil it for themselves.

Anyways, I may take a look at what qualifies as a "house" in the future so that it encourages more reasonable construction, but for now I'm looking at the mechanics of villager trading to both encourage it and give it an actual ongoing use (because building villages is cool...that part of the system is a potential winner) and to also nerf it in certain areas so that using it doesn't become game-breaking.

So yeah, all that to say, "Hardcore Trade" is on my todo list ;)

[morvelaira]

All hail the inexorable march towards Phase 1! Quail, for the return of the Device! Prepare, o minions, and don thy tinfoil hats!

;)

[Sarudak]

Oooo this sounds really cool. I remember reading the wiki on villagers and how to build up a village and what qualifies as a house and it just led me to a big sigh. A plan for encouraging building and nurturing realistic looking villages sounds really awesome!

[walker_boh_65]

All hail the inexorable march towards Phase 1! Quail, for the return of the Device! Prepare, o minions, and don thy tinfoil hats!

;)

Nice one Morv. :)

[Extreme Boyheat]

It would certainly help against that infinite villager breeding bug. Can't say how many have infested underground areas in my world. :/

[FlowerChild]

It would certainly help against that infinite villager breeding bug. Can't say how many have infested underground areas in my world. :/

I assume that bug relies on the player using a lot of doors underground correct?

[Last_Jedi_Standing]

It would certainly help against that infinite villager breeding bug. Can't say how many have infested underground areas in my world. :/

You should get Flan's Mod or SDK's guns, grab a minigun or flamethrower, and spend a couple of hours having an epic quest to rid your world of the infestation.

[Sarudak]

You should get Flan's Mod or SDK's guns, grab a minigun or flamethrower, and spend a couple of hours having an epic quest to rid your world of the infestation.

I'm sure FC would appreciate it if you refrained from bringing up other mods in his dev diary thread.

[Sandrew]

It would certainly help against that infinite villager breeding bug. Can't say how many have infested underground areas in my world. :/

I assume that bug relies on the player using a lot of doors underground correct?

I believe he is reffering to a bug where villagers would breed uncontrollably if they were trying to occupy a house they couldn't reach. I once had a village with less than twenty houses (and doors) yet hundreds of villagers that kept multiplying. It was horrifying.

[PatriotBob]

All hail the inexorable march towards Phase 1! Quail, for the return of the Device! Prepare, o minions, and don thy tinfoil hats!

;)

*Prepares newly acquired foil hat and awaits the soon coming squee.*

[Nerdasaurus_Rex]

I assume that bug relies on the player using a lot of doors underground correct?

Not sure if I'm allowed to post here, but I inadvertently found this bug after I stumbled into a village on the joint between 3 canyons. After closing in the canyons, I couldn't understand why the villagers weren't repopulating. After opening up the canyons, I saw swarms of villagers under there. Not sure why. maybe they are spawning underground?
Sorry if this isn't allowed for some reason, just my 2 cents. :D

[Extreme Boyheat]

It would certainly help against that infinite villager breeding bug. Can't say how many have infested underground areas in my world. :/

I assume that bug relies on the player using a lot of doors underground correct?

I believe he is reffering to a bug where villagers would breed uncontrollably if they were trying to occupy a house they couldn't reach. I once had a village with less than twenty houses (and doors) yet hundreds of villagers that kept multiplying. It was horrifying.

Yeah that's the one.

[Thorium-232]

Here's a screenshot of what I've been working on in game as of late. Note that this one is in my main world, not on the SMP test-server a maintaining a proper villager population over there proved "problematic" :)

As a former employee of a sustainable landscape architecture firm, I absolutely love your sod roofing.

[DaveYanakov]

I somehow built one of those infinite villager things once and used saws to keep the population in check since I didn't know what was causing it. It worked just fine until the sheer quantities of orbs built up to the point where MC crashed if I tried to open the save. I would not be at all sad if that particular villager mechanic suffered some sort of tragic accident.

[TexasRed]

Thousands of generations of incest......
I mean...
What?

[morvelaira]

Hey Guys! FlowerChild was just in the IRC and he linked this song. He said, "big hints in that song about BTW... listen closely"



He just added this one as a second hint as well.

[Sarudak]

I don't believe his song hints anymore. I think he just does it to screw with us...

[Panda]

I don't believe his song hints anymore. I think he just does it to screw with us...

agreed

[TexasRed]

I don't believe his song hints anymore. I think he just does it to screw with us...

It's just so meaningless that it circles around to deep, then back to being nonsense. Sort of like the angels egg dub.

[kazerima]

I don't believe his song hints anymore. I think he just does it to screw with us...

Because of BTW, the English language will never be safe again.

[The Phoenixian]

Eh, meaningless or not speculation is still enjoyable.

Graceland:
Pilgrimage/Migration to a holy land/new home
Instinctively drawn to a place by a power or purpose that cannot be explained.
Lost and at the mercy of the whims of fate?

Spanish train:
Evil comes to take away the souls of the innocent
Two beings, a protector and an predator, which fight and the predator always wins because he always cheats and outwits the protector.

[The_Ender_lord]

I'm thinking theres gonna be some mincart related thing in the next update.