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

[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:

Since it's relevant to what I have to say below, let's open this with a screenshot of my "Banquet Hall" which is my test area in my main world for various aesthetic options in the mod:

Spoiler

Show

Well, it's been a very interesting week for me and the mod indeed. It started off last week with my decisions that "I just can't take it anymore" and beginning to solidify plans for making "The Return To Home" a reality. This lead me into a huge burst of creativity where I can barely keep up with my own thought process and where I'm rapidly filling up note pages with my todo list for RTH ;)

Yesterday, we of course had Dinnerbone's unexpected appearance in the MCF thread, which I think was a very good thing for reasons that I've discussed in the related thread.

And otherwise, I've been working hard "finalizing" BTW, so that I will feel comfortable beginning full-out production of RTH.

At present, that's basically entailing me going through the mod's sub-blocks and getting them into what I view as their final state, as I know how much their use in aesthetic builds means to people, and that's the kind of level of polish I want to leave the mod with. I refrained from doing all this in the past as they tend to consume blockIDs like crazy, but now that I am likely resolving the blockID problem one way or another (either in extending MC's, or moving onto a separate mod as a sequel), that is no longer the pressing issue that it used to be.

So, I'm basically wrapping that up, adding in a few more new types, and expanding and refining their functionality to provide maximum versatility in aesthetic builds. It's actually turned into a bigger job than I had expected given that my plans keep expanding as I work on them, as is rather typical for me ;)

I think that about wraps it up for where I currently am with the mod's development. In summary, I'm basically just working hard to get to the point where I feel comfortable moving on to RTH :)

[shifty]

I can't wait and see what you come up with for RTH, there is so much potential. Are you planning on PM'ing Dinnerbone to continue the conversation?

Edit: Just saw the lightning rods, they make a nice set of candles :)

[Educated_Fool]

I love your banquet hall FC, that is indeed some nice aesthetic use of those blocks.

Also, you sound way more relaxed than a couple of weeks ago, last weeks diary took quite a load of your mind didn't it? =)
Anyway, I am glad to hear you want to finish the "overworld BTW" in such a polished state. I allready know most of my time will be spent in Home, but I also won't be leaving the overworld behind completely, still have quite some builds I want to finish and all.

Thanks for the update and have fun coding ;)

[Sarudak]

I'm really interested by your comment about dirt in relation to RTH. I will be watching eagerly for any dev diaries revolving arount RTH. :D

[Battlecat]

Nice details hiding in that room! The obsidian plates are a nice touch. The aesthetic details you're adding are greatly appreciated.

I'm really glad to hear you're re-invigorated. I'm quite looking forward to seeing what you'll do completely unconstrained by vanilla limitations. But the "finished" BTW also interests me greatly. What features you plan on rounding out to get a "finished" product should be very interesting indeed.

[Rianaru]

I've always thought of this as your equivalent of the Wonka candy bar commercials. You know, the ones where they say "What will they think of next?" Except instead of taffy and chocolate, you give us flesh devouring groths and the satisfying screams of the damned as we harvest their souls and bind them to our unholy butchering tools :D

[danielngtiger]

Wow, there's some pretty neat usage of blocks in the banquet hall there, thanks for sharing. It is great that your creativity is flowing once more in connections with 'finalizing' BTW and beginning RTH. I wait excitedly for new development!

[odranoel]

forgive me if this has been better stated in another thread that i somehow missed, but im a lil confused as to your plans for the futur of BTW. i have seen you state a few times now that you intend to wrap up BTW and move on to the RTH. but iv also seen you mention that you will be maintaining BTW in the indefinite future.

iv interpreted this in a couple of ways which has lead to my current confusion. does this mean you plan to wrap up BTW in terms of features and functionality, and all future updates once its wrapped up will be simply to update to the latest version of MC?

or does it mean that once BTW is wrapped up the majority of your dev time will be spent on RTH while occasionally adding things to BTW when you feel it necessary or you have another one of your epiphany moments?

in other words im just wondering if these next few updates will be the last updates for BTW or if it just means their frequency (and priority) will be lower once RTH is out. again sorry if this has been answered or asked properly before.

either way, you have been absolutely on fire lately and release nothing but gold. i guess im just a lil frightened at the thought that it might be coming to an end. (but then again i have no idea what your plans for RTh are, so that might make BTW look like vMC in comparison) either way you have forever change my view of video games, mods, and design mentality. your been a huge influence in many ways, and i feel honored to be part of this community :)

EDIT: spelling & context

[Detritus]

Out of curiosity, will you be making candles placeable, while you're finishing mini-blocks? As far as I'm aware, it will only use one additional blockID (because there are only 16 coloured candles) and it will give us a vast amount of decorative items to use. I also don't think it would take too much time.
Anyway, just curious, as this is something I would quite like to see, and have been hoping for for some time.

[Ethinolicbob]

Once you start working on RTH will you still be receptive to hook requests for BTW?
Originally I was waiting for a combination of events before I started work. These were things like mod API, some upcoming features you had mentioned plans for and for me to happy with the concepts that I have been working on for the last few months.
Essentially this has left me in a kind of limbo as to what direction I will take: Work on it for BTW or wait to see if it could still work with RTH

[FlowerChild]

forgive me if this has been better stated in another thread that i somehow missed, but im a lil confused as to your plans for the futur of BTW. i have seen you state a few times now that you intend to wrap up BTW and move on to the RTH. but iv also seen you mention that you will be maintaining BTW in the indefinite future.

iv interpreted this in a couple of ways which has lead to my current confusion. does this mean you plan to wrap up BTW in terms of features and functionality, and all future updates once its wrapped up will be simply to update to the latest version of MC?

or does it mean that once BTW is wrapped up the majority of your dev time will be spent on RTH while occasionally adding things to BTW when you feel it necessary or you have another one of your epiphany moments?

in other words im just wondering if these next few updates will be the last updates for BTW or if it just means their frequency (and priority) will be lower once RTH is out. again sorry if this has been answered or asked properly before.

No worries, this is a fine place to ask about this.

My current plan is to do one of two things: EITHER extend blockIDs myself in BTW, and make Home a separate dimension, OR make Home a completely separate mod and sequel to BTW.

I haven't decided which yet, but what I've been doing is working on tasks that leave both options open to me and move me towards Home one way or another, which leaves me with time to continue considering it in the background as I work on other things. At present, I'm currently leaning towards the second option (separate mod and sequel), but there are various pros and cons to each approach that I want to properly mull over at length given what a significant decision it is.

And BTW, that's not an invitation for people to comment on which of those choices they prefer. That was discussed at length last week, and now it comes down to me weighing the two options against each other until I reach a final decision :)

Anyways, however I approach it, I want to "finalize" BTW in terms of wrapping up loose ends so that I can consider it a "complete" mod, and move my attention almost exclusively over to RTH.

Now, with regards to what this will mean for BTW as we know it in the future. Once I "finalize" it, I will continue to maintain it into the indefinite future, and if need be (which is probable), I will also likely continue to make modifications to vanilla and the mod to maintain its overall balance. So, I'm in no way abandoning it, however, it is very unlikely that I will continue to expand on it in terms of adding additional functionality. There may be the rare exception that pops up if I have an idea for something that is easy to implement and which suits BTW/vanilla better than it does RTH, but my standards in terms of "bang for the buck" will be much higher than what they currently are now, as I'll have to weigh the cost in potential development time towards RTH versus the benefit to BTW.

As I've said in other places before: RTH will really be its own thing independent of BTW, and I suspect each will have its own players that prefer one style over another. In other words, BTW is NOT going anywhere, and for those that prefer its style of play, there's no worry whatsoever that it will suddenly cease to exist.

After spending over a year and a half on it, and buckets full of blood, sweat, and tears, I love BTW way too much to let that happen :)

[FlowerChild]

Once you start working on RTH will you still be receptive to hook requests for BTW?
Originally I was waiting for a combination of events before I started work. These were things like mod API, some upcoming features you had mentioned plans for and for me to happy with the concepts that I have been working on for the last few months.
Essentially this has left me in a kind of limbo as to what direction I will take: Work on it for BTW or wait to see if it could still work with RTH

Similar to the above, yes, I will continue to support and add hooks for BTW, so you need not worry on that front.

Some of the work I'm doing now actually revolves around that kind of thing, and you may notice that hardly a version comes out these days without additional hooks being listed in the release notes.

So yeah man, totally go for it. It won't be an issue, and RTH will be different enough that there is zero guarantee that your ideas will apply there as well.

PLUS, much of the underlying architecture/hook work I'm doing now will make its way into RTH as well. This is one of the reasons I'm putting a lot of effort right now into refactoring code and providing hooks, as I also want a "fresh start" with RTH in terms of the overall code structure, so I want to make sure everything I might port over to it meets my current coding standards as opposed to what they were a year and a half ago. This also has the additional benefit that it makes it easier for me to port BTW from one version of MC to the next, minimizing the amount of time I have to spend doing so, which in turn gives me more time in the long run to work on RTH.

So, because of that, if you do decide later that your add-on also suits RTH, it should be a relatively easy task to migrate the code over from one to the other, as they will be using a similar underlying code structure.

[agentwiggles]

As I've said in other places before: RTH will really be its own thing independent of BTW, and I suspect each will have its own players that prefer one style over another. In other words, BTW is NOT going anywhere, and for those that prefer its style of play, there's no worry whatsoever that it will suddenly cease to exist.

After spending over a year and a half on it, and bucket fulls of blood, sweat, and tears, I love BTW way too much to let that happen :)

Very happy to see this, prior to this post I was also a little confused on the future of BTW and how RTH was going to affect that. Didn't get to chime in on the big dev diary last week, but I'll take this opportunity to add my vote of confidence in whatever you do to those of the masses. Thanks, as always, for all your hard work!

[FlowerChild]

Out of curiosity, will you be making candles placeable, while you're finishing mini-blocks? As far as I'm aware, it will only use one additional blockID (because there are only 16 coloured candles) and it will give us a vast amount of decorative items to use. I also don't think it would take too much time.
Anyway, just curious, as this is something I would quite like to see, and have been hoping for for some time.

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.

[Battlecat]

I'm sure there's quite a few challenges ahead in deciding what to triage and what to push off to home. I'd love to ask about more details regarding specific resources that you hinted would be provided in Home but every attempt I've made to phrase the question feels like nagging or something.

Suffice to say that if you've got the candles on your list, I'm sure you've already given consideration to the other BTW features I'm curious about and I'll find out in due time. :-)

[SterlingRed]

I'm really interested by your comment about dirt in relation to RTH. I will be watching eagerly for any dev diaries revolving arount RTH. :D

Glad I'm not the only one scratching my head over that.

Im actually pleasantly surprised to see a dev diary this week. I didn't expect one, not sure why. That screenshot is making me itch to play with aesthetics again. My previous worlds builds were based around appearance, which often led to a lot of rework in order to fit the technical bits inside the pretty bits. This time around I've favored function over appearance so much so that everything looks like an exploded mess of gearboxes and Redstone. Time to start laying out building dimensions to accommodate my builds and provide space for some aesthetic features!

[odranoel]

As I've said in other places before: RTH will really be its own thing independent of BTW, and I suspect each will have its own players that prefer one style over another. In other words, BTW is NOT going anywhere, and for those that prefer its style of play, there's no worry whatsoever that it will suddenly cease to exist.

After spending over a year and a half on it, and buckets full of blood, sweat, and tears, I love BTW way too much to let that happen :)

i cant tell you how awesome it is to hear that :) BTW is not just another game to me. its become the only game i play, and to be quite honest, probably the only game i will be playing for many many years to come. as you said your self in another thread, for you, MC is an incredibly amazing and unique game that has no parallel in terms of underlying design and concept. however its not being fully realize to its true potential. (hence the creation of BTW)

however for many of us, we feel the same way with one slight difference. btw IS mc for us, and im sure im not the only one who sees you as a kind of, notch 2.0 if you will. notch gave us the "skeleton" for an incredible game, and you have ever since been filling that skeleton with all the organs, blood, and brains that it needs to become alive! not a trivial task at all :)

[Stormweaver]

I can see it now. Long, netherrack tables, obsidian dinner plates, candles on top of lightning rods...Every home/castle/dirt shack I make from now on is going to be getting a dining room as standard :p

I hate to bring it up because it's kind of a technical question, but has any more thought gone into the whole 8-bit metadata thingy? The comments about dirt make me hope they're linked. And if they're not...well, I'd like not to waste time daydreaming of trees with actual canopies, or a dozen different levels of grassiness on my grass.

[FlowerChild]

I hate to bring it up because it's kind of a technical question, but has any more thought gone into the whole 8-bit metadata thingy? The comments about dirt make me hope they're linked. And if they're not...well, I'd like not to waste time daydreaming of trees with actual canopies, or a dozen different levels of grassiness on my grass.

I've yet to make a final decision on it, as it will be dependent on tests that I will run once BTW is finalized and I'm ready to start full production on RTH.

It is however, one of the reasons I'm currently favoring the idea of making this a separate mod rather than just a dimension, as it's made me realize that it'll offer me far more flexibility in terms of messing with the internals of how MC works, without having to worry about breaking BTW's functionality in the process or destroying people's builds/worlds.

[johnt]

Any thoughts on terrain generation changes for RTH?

[FlowerChild]

Any thoughts on terrain generation changes for RTH?

Yes.

[Ethinolicbob]

So yeah man, totally go for it. It won't be an issue, and RTH will be different enough that there is zero guarantee that your ideas will apply there as well.

Awesome cheers.
In regards to some of the upcoming features you have mentioned plans for, would it be bothersome to PM you to ask if you are going to work on a specific couple? (I want to keep most of the details of what I am working on to myself as much as possible)

[FlowerChild]

Awesome cheers.
In regards to some of the upcoming features you have mentioned plans for, would it be bothersome to PM you to ask if you are going to work on a specific couple? (I want to keep most of the details of what I am working on to myself as much as possible)

Errrr...ok. Try to keep it brief and succinct though :)

[Wafflewaffle]

Any thoughts on terrain generation changes for RTH?

Yes.

Thats the most exciting one word answer i got all week!

[FlowerChild]

I'm really interested by your comment about dirt in relation to RTH. I will be watching eagerly for any dev diaries revolving arount RTH. :D

"I hear you knocking, and I'll give you a small clue" :)

What I'll do is describe the underlying issue I'm attempting to address:

One of the underlying problems with MC, that you may have noticed yourself, is that various materials are pretty much functionally equivalent. Whether you build out of dirt, wood, or stone, it all amounts to pretty much the same thing (fire aside). The three little pigs would be ashamed ;)

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).

I think most mods that attempt to address this issue have tried to do so this through modifications to mob behavior, whereas from my standpoint, I want to instead address the underlying issue that's responsible for it at the core. As I've said many times before, complex AI is really not what MC needs.

Anyways, that should give you an idea why basic materials such as dirt are so important to me and why I will be devoting so much time to them. To me, they represent the foundation upon which everything else in the mod will be built (literally and figuratively), and as a result, I want to make sure to spend the time to get it just right.