Smaller feedback and ideas

[UmbraCreations]

Hello everybody!

Chris again. This time i have some smaller ideas and suggestions with more practical usage.

 

World Edit Tools:

I have already posted a thread on how confusing the usage of we in VS could be as rotation and copy-pasting seems quite random on first sight.

Now there is already a very helpful tool to, at least make it easier to mark a certain area (/we g(direction) value) , but what i didn't think about could have made it even more easier.

WE had many different default items set as certain "tools". The most important was the wooden axe as it was just a simple tool to mark areas with. Left - Rightclick for the different points and there we go -  easy.

 

 

 

Blocks that could be helpful for building stuff:

Darker wooden planks -  Contrast is one of the most important things a builder can use to make his creations more interesting and better looking. I know there are darker blocks ingame but i wish there would be a darker version for wood as well. Planks, stairs and slabs. As you can use contrast for not only the colours but also for the material in usage. When i build a wall with stone as front layer, i sometimes dislike to put a darker kind of stone as background. As in most medieval-fantasy styles the most natural combination would be stone-wood, but there are no dark wooden blocks available. The variations of logs are fine.

 

Iron bars - Iron bars or whatever metal you want it to be, were always an item i used for decoration. But most importantly it can be put into windows to replace the chunky glass blocks or of course if you are intending to build a prison or dungeon, iron bars are very usefull.

 

Glowing blocks -  Yes i know theres a mod already made including some glowing blocks, but i am just posting it here as this is a list for things i'd like to have ingame.

It might not be too obvious but many builders used glowstone or redstonelamps for lightning purposes. As there are no such blocks i think it would be nice to have a certain "glowing block" in the creative inventory. A builder who loves to put a lot of love into details, won't place torches or lanterns just randomly on a wall to make it brighter. But a builder could hide glowing blocks behind semi transparent ones or just build big street lanterns or other things to bring some light into his projects.

 

Things that could be added not only for building puposes but just because i think it would be cool:

 

Crates - open crates as decorative item. Put it down and then, maybe you could put in food and other certain stuff.

I've always hated to build marketplaces in MC. All you could do was placing chests, melons and pumpkins, and cakes to make it look like things are being traded there. But it just never looked like a real market somehow. This way you could put out crates visible on the individual marketstands -  well that would change it all.

Of course, there aren't many things to put in right now. And ingot and log piles are already helpful on that matter, but i think it is something i didn't see yet and it could be a helpful decorative option. Not only for marketplaces but also for everybodys home. Not too modern and not too fantasy based.

 

Just a box - something like a smaller chest. Not as amazing as the crate idea, but why not put it in this post?   Mostly meant as decorative block as even if it would be usable it should have a less amount of slots than a chest. So why not build chests? Well that does finish the thought. Would be cool as decorative block though.

 

Plates and bowls -  now this is a funny idea for the future as i can not imagine that this could have any value at all right now. But this is just a funny idea. At some point people always wanted to decorate their tables they build in their homes. It just looks empty after a while. Put a chest on top of it? Nah! :-/ Carpets? ok alright. But it still never looks like a dining table. But of you put some plates on it with some meat or other food on top of the plates - you see where i am going with this. It's of course not important but i can imagine something like this in the later states of the game as it is so basic and simple as a thought but mc never thought it would be cool so why bother.

 

Usable furniture - Again not necessary but still very basic and still somehow interesting. Chair, bench, table (you can put items on top), all kinds of shelfs (usable of course), etc..

I know we should make this game more basic and focus on the story and the realistic survival but again this is just a thought of mine. I know there are plenty of mc mods adding a lot of these things and all of it including the other suggestions on the list above are just thoughts that are very subjective as i hate interior desing.

I just don't have the patience to put chest, bookshelfs, furnace, crafting table in 10 million different ways into a room and say; hey now that looks good. I have already seen saraty's post on interior design and i understand that it is possible to make it look good anyways, but i don't have the patience and time for that. Knowing i need the same time i needed to actually build the damn city just to put some interior design into it is frustrating. :-)

 

Ships - Also a thought for the future. How could it be done? Well i imagine a hard crafting recipe in multiple steps. First you have to put together the fabric for the sail. Then put it into an actuall sail. Then the ship itself. Multiple parts of the ship that had to be crafted first and then put together. Once sail and main part of the ship are done they also have to be put together and here we go. You have a ship item in your hands and you just have to put it into water and it works! Now that's easier said than done i know but as i said just a few ideas for the future.

 

Graphics, shader - I know there are many things planned and it just doesn't have the priority but as i said, just for the future. I think once my map is finished and i take on other projects i think making videos of it is unavoidable. The small castle and that one house i built are by far not enough to put in the effort of creating a cinematic. People might not see how much work it  is to make one of my videos but let's say it like this. 9-17 hours for a 2-3 minute video. Of course not on one day. That makes it even worse as it will probably take almost a week to produce a video. Adding the fact that i'm not used to the cinematic tools in VS yet.

There are many things i can do and actually do in most of my videos but there are also things that look awesome that was mainly part of the epic shader i was using.

Godrays are good start but one of the more obvious ones is shadow itself. Right now VS has a wonderful smooth shadow option and everything looks alright especially if you just play survival but i think it for later cinematics in mabye 6 months or so, it would nice to have epic shadows on the map. Of course just as an option.

Another option i like to talk about is the way water looks like. Many shaders give it an awesome look some only a little bit reflectivity and of course the movement of the water changes. Now that's just unimportant. But it has to have a more epic look to it in my opinion. It is another thing i can not eddit into my videos.

If the colour of the trees is not appealing? - Just change it with colour correction. Contrast not high enough? - put a filter on! Ambient bloom not enough? - No problem as long as shadows and sunlight exist! Just highlight the brighter parts of the picture. Backround blur? - Sure! And if you want to work with highlights or "layers of importance" not a problem! Work with layers and masks to blur out the thing you want and make the viewer focus on the things you think he should! But all of that cannot make up for shadows, good lightning, reflectivity and the looks of water. (at least not with my skillset)

 

 

Thanks for reading this!

 

Greetings from Germany,

 

~Chris

 

[Saraty]

Hey there, thank You for the ideas!
I will try to draw graphics for dark wood, iron bars and block which glows (lets see if I find an idea of how to reuse it later in survival).

As for wood there is thankfully quite a bit of lovely choices available! From left to right: Black Mesquite (Prosopis nigra), Camel thorn (Vachellia erioloba) and Ebony (Diospyros crassiflora) look promising in contrast You are looking for. Ebony, however, is almost black.

    

I personally like Camel thorn the best. Its a very elegant hardwood tree which grows in hot sandy areas and can reach up to 17 meters. The tree is also protected, which means it could be rare in survival so that its beautiful color and other benefits are being valued. What do You say?

Crates as a decorative storage block sounds like an awesome idea. Will get to it as soon as I can. Not sure about plates, but bowels are already planned. Maybe You already know, but food in survival will be something You can mix and see an actual combination of chosen ingredients. So if You put together fish, rice and carrots, You will receive an item bowl of exactly fish rice and carrots!

Here is few examples I made while ago:

However, as a model, the bowl wont be the same awesome looking (food-wise) when placed on the table. Since it has to be proportionally small, I am very limited in pixels I can assign for actual food inside. Nevertheless it will serve its decorative purpose well!

Usable furniture: There is certainly going to be a table. In survival mode,the surface of it is planned to become "crafting table" for making meals. Detail -wise the model will be kept rather simple and blocky due to our general rule keeping all models as little detailed as we can. Most likely there wont be chair and bench since half slabs do the trick. Drawers / cupboards and small boxes as storage might be added at later point in game!

Ships: oh yes, definitely planned later on. I find multiple steps of building a very appealing idea! 

[UmbraCreations]

Thank you very much!

Yes of course it's beautiful! The glowing block doesn't make very much sense in a world like this so i don't think there is a need to put it into practical use in survival. Normal players will prefer a torch or lantern over whatever hard procedure to get this block anyways. I think it should be ok for it to be just a creative block.

Those bowls are amazing! Good job!

Glad you like the ship idea! :-)

[Tyron]

Regarding Shaders i fully agree with you, they should be added some day. I would probably think of it once I would able to pay a second skilled programmer for it (or once a lot of essential features are done)

Regarding worldedit - did you ever use MCEdit? There you make selections using your mouse directly - perhaps that would be an even better solution?

[redram]

So I just had some small feedbacks and suggestions from my recent playing of the game (currently 1.4.3.2) , and thought I'd drop them in this appropriately named thread. 

- The night is really long.  And drifters are pretty annoying.  Stone weapons being as weak as they are, it really doesn't pay to use them on drifters, you'll burn through them pretty fast given how many drifters show up every night.  I might suggest allowing the player to reduce the spawning of drifters somehow.  Either through simply spending time in an area, or perhaps by being able to build some sort of totem from something drifters drop.  This totem once placed would be unable to be moved, so the player can't take it around with them.  It'd basically be for the player to use in their home area.  It would decay over time, so the player couldn't easily stockpile them for use during trips.   It just gets a bit annoying sometimes, wanting to work around home, and having to spend several hours in the morning killing accumulated drifters before you can even go work.

- It would be really nice to have a bed to sleep away the night.  I don't know if 'sleeping away the night' is ever an intended mechanic, but it'd be really nice to have, as another way to avoid the morning drifter hoard.  A proper bed might be bottom row planks, middle row leather, top row cloth?   A primitive bed could be a leather hammock formed from 5 leather in a U shape, plus a twine each at the top left and right corners?  I could be strunge between two surfaces, between 2 and 4 spaces apart (3 and 4 spaces shows some rope on the end(s) to connect to the wall)

- It would be nice to have other things to do with leather besides a pack, as leather kind of accumulates too.  There could be leather armor of course, perhaps a tool belt which extends the main item slots bar by 2 slots?  I suppose these things are planned already and I'm just impatient.

I was just starting to pour my first copper tools and ran into another graphical glitch, so I haven't gotten into the metal age yet.  But these were some thoughts I had that I wanted to get out there.

[Saraty]

2 hours ago, redram said:

It just gets a bit annoying sometimes, wanting to work around home, and having to spend several hours in the morning killing accumulated drifters before you can even go work.

I agree. They are seriously annoying in especially in mornings when you want to do something nearby base. For my dad, who is less agile then I am, they are a real nightmare. When he forgets to run and simply tries to walk away from them, the drifters line up in row and follow him everywhere. I keep asking Tyron to let them despawn in day, but he doesn't want to.  Maybe after he reads more complains (then my own nagging lol), he will do something about it! 
 

2 hours ago, redram said:

It would be really nice to have a bed to sleep away the night. 

Yes, bed will probably come soon! We already have 2 types - one built from dry hay and another one from planks and linen cloth (but not in survival yet).  So far we intended to let player sleep not more then 4 hours, because we would like to encourage gameplay in both; day and night. Especially, if hand held torches are now available.

2 hours ago, redram said:

It would be nice to have other things to do with leather besides a pack, as leather kind of accumulates too.

Yes, unfortunately it's very limited atm. I hope that within few month, that's gonna change! Maybe sooner. We didn't do armor yet, because I suggested to improve hostile mob and animal AI before that. You might have noticed, that it's very easy to circumvent and trick the mobs so having an armor would not add too much to a gameplay in current situation, other then getting rid of the leather. Tool belt, however, is an excellent idea!

 

2 hours ago, redram said:

I was just starting to pour my first copper tools and ran into another graphical glitch, so I haven't gotten into the metal age yet.

Which mold did not work? Was it anvil?

[redram]

8 hours ago, Saraty said:

Which mold did not work? Was it anvil?

It wasn't so much that it didn't work, as my hud got messed up.  I described in the the other thread I've been posting at in the support forum.  Though, I guess now that I think about it, the anvil was the last mold I was pouring into.  I only had 300 units of metal, so first I did a pickaxe, and then poured the rest in the anvil mold, thinking I'd finish it later.  Is that maybe the problem?  That I didn't finish the mold pour?

[Saraty]

11 hours ago, redram said:

It wasn't so much that it didn't work, as my hud got messed up.  I described in the the other thread I've been posting at in the support forum.  Though, I guess now that I think about it, the anvil was the last mold I was pouring into.  I only had 300 units of metal, so first I did a pickaxe, and then poured the rest in the anvil mold, thinking I'd finish it later.  Is that maybe the problem?  That I didn't finish the mold pour?

As far as I know, anvil was not working properly and was left there with other molds by mistake. Today Tyron will do bugfix release, so it will be removed from the game temporary. You can still craft an anvil with 7 ingots like it used to be.