Better Than Wolves Forum

I have a proposal that I would like to get everyone's opinion on. In between sessions of BTW I have been doing research about travel in the Roman Empire. The two pursuits have brought me to a place where I think it would be neat to create measures of distance that evoke terminology such as league, furlong and acre ( along with the more Roman stadia) that are more BTW specific. Personally, I like the idea of co-opting some of the older terms and repurposing them, but some of you may have more creative ideas. Here are some suggestion of distances that we could name.

*** Concrete names for people to give feedback on***
8 Blocks = 1 Cubit

8 blocks of water flow specifically = 1 Flow of Flow-length

64 blocks = 1 Stack or 1 Chain ( i think stack is already a unit of volume we should incorporate that. but what should the unit of distance be called?)

27 stacks (or full player inventory without hotbar) = 1 Gross

The distance walked in 1 daylight cycle (2048 blocks) = 1 League

4 blocks, or the distance of 1 gear box and the three axles. This gives us terminology to discuss mechanical power systems.

possible terms involving hardcore buoyancy

7 blocks or the distance that water will flow. I believe this is is also the distance from a torch to a space dark enough for a mob to spawn.

15 blocks or the limit of redstone power

24 blocks or the distance from player to the nearest possible spawn.

The length between 2 stakes on a max stack of string (64 blocks) This gives a name to the only official measurement tool in the game.

128 blocks (2 of the above) or the distance from a player to the farthest spawn the spawning terms being useful in discussing mob traps.

The distance that can be walked in a straight line from dawn to noon, or dawn to dusk (I haven't measured this yet)

Anyway, I would love to hear feedback. Let me know if any the measurements need correcting and if you have ideas for names of these distances or ideas for other units of measure that would be useful.


[Edit - Added suggestions to keep them in 1 place]

64 blocks a as a "stack" and 16 blocks as a "chunk-length" seem fairly appropriate measurements using base mechanics.
The important thing is that a unit of measurement be easy to measure and has practical value in its use. An acre originally referred to the amount of land a single man could harvest or plow in a single day, before it became standardized. The use of feet has been especially difficult to get rid of in the United States since it brings to mind an easy reference to compare with existing objects. While you could choose to measure something in "kazerimugs" which is the length of a mug of tea, the inconsistency in the defined length and the need to compare with an object not always on hand make it unlikely to be adopted.

Yeah, I understand the arbitrary nature of these kinds of names. And that is a little bit of what i'm going for I think it would be fun to have a language that BTW players use to describe common measurements. I know each block is a scale meter, but that does not have much practical application since nothing in minecraft is on a base 10 system. And I guess that is the point. I happen to prefer metric over imperial in the real world because everything is base 10, but in minecraft most things are based on 8. But I'm not looking for uniformity as much as I am an organic set of terminology based on how we all play versus a consistent numerical standard. For me the feel of BTW is a place that needs to be discovered and worked out. I think having these kind of words will help with that feeling. Ultimately it is arbitrary and many people will not find it fun, but for anyone that does find it fun, let me know what you think.

I've heard that the distance of six inches is called adequate. I think she was talking about one of the "pixels" on an unmodded Minecraft block.

jackatthekilns wrote: 7 blocks or the distance that water will flow. I believe this is is also the distance from a torch to a space dark enough for a mob to spawn.

15 blocks or the limit of redstone power

Maybe include the "source" block for both of these measurements to make it 8 and 16? That way we can keep everything at multiples of 8.

jackatthekilns wrote: The length between 2 stakes on a max stack of string (64 blocks) This gives a name to the only official measurement tool in the game.

128 blocks (2 of the above) or the distance from a player to the farthest spawn the spawning terms being useful in discussing mob traps.

Say we call 64m a "stack", so these would be one stack and two stacks, respectively. Eight ________ to a stack.

jackatthekilns wrote: The distance that can be walked in a straight line from dawn to noon, or dawn to dusk (I haven't measured this yet)

It's similar to how a league used to be defined, so maybe just reuse that name?

Vanilla walking speed is 4.3 m/s. BTW walking speed varies according to terrain. Let's just use vanilla speed for simplicity.

Dawn to dusk is about 12 in game hours, or 600 real time seconds. Assuming a walking speed of roughly 4 m/s, that's 2400m from dawn to dusk, or 37.5 stacks. Maybe round this down to 32 stacks to keep our base-8 system. 32 stacks (2048m) to a "league".

Alternatively use the actual vanilla walking speed of 4.3m/s, that 2580m. 40 stacks is 2560m, so make 40 stacks a "league".

I prefer the first one, because then we can say minecarts on powered rails travel exactly two leagues from dawn to dusk, or four leagues / day. Also, rounding down the distance makes it more useful in game, as it's rarely possible to travel in a line nonstop.

If someone has calculated the numbers for HC movement, it would be interesting to calculate those in terms of leagues as well.

TLDR:

________ = 8 blocks (need a name for this)
stack = 64 blocks
league = 2048 blocks

8 ________ to a stack. 32 stacks to a league.

Half a ________ is a gear box + three axles.
Water (including source) flows one ________.
Redstone (including source) goes two ________.
Nearest possible spawn is three ________ away.
Max length between stakes = 1 stack.
Two stacks to furthest possible spawn.
Walk one league from dawn to dusk.
Travel four leagues / day in a minecart, or 32 leagues / day in a minecart in the Nether.

Perhaps a unit of 8 squares can be referred to as a cubit?
The term's mostly fallen out of use in the real world, but it makes for a nice pun on both the cubical shape of blocks and the fact 8 is a bit (2 states) to the third power.

I like cubit

These are some really good ideas. I like league and cubit a lot. Sargunster, thank you so much for doing the math for the league that was exactly what I was looking for. I'm not completely sold on stack. I think it makes sense, but it feels out of place with league and cubit to me. What does everyone else think? For league I agree it should be 32 of whatever 64 blocks is called. ( I think my problem with stack is it feels like more like a unit of volume rather than distance, if that makes sense)

I would like to offer up the term "chain" for 64 blocks long. It is an old imperial measurement and is 22 yards long, so it is not equivalent which is OK. This evokes the max distance between 2 stakes to me.

For the distance that water will flow, I'd like to propose simply calling that seven block distance a "flow" or "flow-length". It's simple and it evokes what it's measuring. As for buoyancy I'm not sure what the term should be but I think it should be a value ranging from 1-7 indicating how far down the flow an item will go before it enters a hopper.

I like "stack" for 64, though I understand the reluctance with respect to volume. Perhaps "slot," referencing an inventory slot of 64? I'm not aware of any building materials that stack to <64.

What traction can be gained from the term "gross"? Realworld, it refers to a dozen-dozen (144) but here perhaps we can use it to refer specifically to a full mono-chest of something? This unit would scale for stack size (such as food) and a small chest would have a capacity of exactly half a gross. This would be a useful unit of measure with respect to inventory space, especially when transferring large quantities of items between base locations. A player inventory can transport exactly one gross of materials, not including the hotbar and any equipped armor. Thus, stripping the hotbar down to bare essentials -- perhaps a primary weapon, a stack of food, and one or two other situationally determined must-equip items -- could slightly increase inventory capacity so as to reduce round trips. Of course, it's also worth considering leaving one or more item slots intentionally blank so as to be able to pick up loot-of-opportunity while en route. I always equip shears for extra oysters, for example -- and it's a guaranteed-safe method of dispatching them, especially when heavily laden while relocating stored materials, because one unlucky hiss could cost an entire half a gross or more, and if I stockpiled that much of it to begin with, that presumes that it has at least SOME value to keep (and therefore worth preventing its loss while in transit.)

I think stack as a unit of volume is already in use and I don't think we need to alter that. I am just not sure about using stack as a unit of distance, especially since stack in BTW can be both 64, 16, or 8 depending on the item. I like the idea of a gross for a full 27 slots of space. I think that is a useful term that gives the impression of how much you have in relation to how many trips it would take to transport the material. This is the kind of organic unit of measure that I was looking for.

As for the flow measurement, I think I agree with sargunster that we should include the source block to make it 8 and I think cubit can still cover that, although I will add "flow" to the OP for further feedback. That does leave the issue of buoyancy, which is trickier.

If you don't mind borrowing from other cultures, a Li is about a third of a mile, but was originally meant to refer to the length of a village. If you take the average size of a village from minecraft wiki, 32 blocks, then 64 blocks would be 2 Li. Alternatively, 64 blocks could be taken as a Li since it's the largest meaningful measurement when constructing buildings.

The problem I have with including the source block in the measurement is that if your water stream is going to go down multiple levels and you're waiting until the water can go no further before dropping it down a level then you might get some confusing math. For instance, if you include the source block within the measurement, making a "flow" a length of eight blocks, then the final piece of the upper flow is overlapping with the beginning bit of the lower flow, resulting in a measure of fifteen blocks, not sixteen.

Inatun wrote:The problem I have with including the source block in the measurement is that if your water stream is going to go down multiple levels and you're waiting until the water can go no further before dropping it down a level then you might get some confusing math. For instance, if you include the source block within the measurement, making a "flow" a length of eight blocks, then the final piece of the upper flow is overlapping with the beginning bit of the lower flow, resulting in a measure of fifteen blocks, not sixteen.

I would like to point out at this point that the flow of water is defined in the code as 8 blocks. There's no distinction in the code between source blocks and non-source blocks. This makes sense, Minecraft has a very tight RAM scheme to fit all the voxels in, so everything in the game is strict powers of 2 (8, 16, 64, etc).

Gilberreke wrote: I would like to point out at this point that the flow of water is defined in the code as 8 blocks. There's no distinction in the code between source blocks and non-source blocks.

It's been a long time since this has come up, but please don't get into code discussions about the mod and/or vanilla Minecraft. It inevitably leads to a lot of uninformed back and forth for nothing, especially when false statements are made, like the above.

jackatthekilns wrote:I like the idea of a gross for a full 27 slots of space. I think that is a useful term that gives the impression of how much you have in relation to how many trips it would take to transport the material. This is the kind of organic unit of measure that I was looking for.

For the record, I was thinking that a full inventory is a half-gross, which is the same as a half-chest. A full chest would mean a full gross, or two trips. I can see how a gross would mean one trip, however.