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Micro Block Mining


tony Liberatto

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For some time now I have felt that the mining experience could be significantly improved. 
Anytime I think about changes to the game, I try to make a balance, so if any process takes longer it must at the same time be more rewarding to the player.

My idea is to make Ore blocks to be mined in a way similar to how we use a chisel on a stone block.

The player would still use a pickaxe and would have to hit the block several times, but instead of breaking the whole block, it would just chip small Micro-B locks from the Ore that would drop as items. 
The way the game works now, one block consists of 4096 Micro-Blocks, as they are 16 x 16 x 16. 
What we achieve with a system like this is that we effectively multiply the total output of a mine by 4096 without ever having to spawn that many Ore blocks.

As long as the feature is implemented in a way that makes it time-consuming to break each Micro-Block, We would allow for Mines to last for a long time, even on multiplayer servers. That would make it so it is advantageous to create permanent structures and transport methods.
 

Micro-Blocks.png

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I'm not totally against this system, but a 16 * 16 * 16 tile grid would be a bit overkill. That would be 4096 voxels, mining all of them piece by piece would be extremely time consuming. Map file size and ram usage would also be significantly higher with multiple started ore mining operations. What if someone wants to build a cellar, but there are some ores in the way? I would rather like to see either a much smaller grid size (I think 2*2*2 or 3*3*3 would be enough), some form of "staged block breaking", where can break  the block multiple times, with the texture changing to reflect the amount of ore or state of breaking (See Reasonable Realism's harder ores or stone in the new Better Than Wolves release). I think that the non-voxel variant would probably also look better, being more inline with the rest of the world.

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Was at work today thinking that no one would get the reasoning behind this idea. 
Looks like some got at least part of it.

So let answer the questions in order, as I have thought of this for quite some time.

First for Exploration. I have stated in other threads that I favour for ores to only spawn in certain rock types and that the number of rock times in the game needs to be expanded at least 3 times. Just by that exploration will be more necessary, as the player will never find all the ores needed in the same 200 block radius as is the case today. Also, ore distribution is for another thread, here we are talking about the mining mechanic and the size of ore veins. 

How big would a vein need to be to justify a permanent mining structure, one that can be shared by several players in a server? Too big I think.

So my idea is to instead of creating a giant vein or cluster ore deposit, whatever you want to call it. We will just change how much ore each block gives. To the point where each Micro-Block will yield the same amount of ore that a whole block gives today, it will, of course, cost the same for the player in terms of time and tool durability. 

Yes, I understand that once the player finds one ore vein he is set for that ore forever, but I believe this is a lot more realistic than one player exhausting several ore deposits. And as long as each ore deposit is far from another we would not lose the exploration part of the game.

What we gain by this kind of change is the possibility to expand the game in the direction of a more realistic mining process and the subsequent ore processing. 
By having an Ore deposit that is so huge in terms of output, we make possible to develop the game in terms of how the player bring the ore to the surface, even making it desirable to make and actually use minecarts, also ore crushers and washers. ore cooking and big smelters. All this metal production would by necessity be built on top or adjacent to the mine. 
 

Ohh, And before I forget @Erik This system would use as much file size and ram as any chiselled block in the game, believe me, we would still have a lot more chiselled blocks than partial mined blocks. 

Ohh, and the ore deposits would be rarer, so if someone accidentally finds an ore vein just under their house, they would be trilled. 

 

 

 

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1 hour ago, tony Liberatto said:

Ohh, And before I forget @Erik This system would use as much file size and ram as any chiselled block in the game, believe me, we would still have a lot more chiselled blocks than partial mined blocks. 

I know that they would be as memory and storage intensive as regular chiseled blocks, and that is what worries me. Thing is, that most ore blocks voxels won't be compressed as efficiently, caused by the way people will mine it. I don't know the  specifics of Tyrons voxel compression, or if it even applies for storage and memory, so I can't be a 100% sure, but if it chiseled blocks where to be uncompressed in storage, each chiseled or (started) ore block would take up twelve bits of storage. That isn't much on it's own, memory will be less of an issue, but depending of how it is saved, it may become an issue, if it were to be saved in ASCII text it would add up to twelve byte (I haven't looked into how it is saved, the theoretical minimum would be 12 bit).

But still, this isn't the main problem, the main problem is that it's too much effort for removing a single block. 4000 mining operations for removing a single block...

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Erik is very correct, sitting and staring at a single block for hundreds and hundreds of picks is not going to be fun.  It would be far more reasonable to do this in quads, so you'd just have 8 picks per block.  When I'm mining block by block, I'm exploring at the same time.  Sometimes I run across other ore veins, or caves.  I greatly enjoy mining quartz in a regions with both silver and gold.  It's like this continuous christmas where each block you break has a chance to expose more.   If you're picking at a single block for 5 minutes, none of that is going to happen.  There's not going to be many surprise reveals, because you know that each block contains X hundred bits  of the same ore.  It's not going to be fun imo.   It would also greatly obviate any collapse mechanic possibility, since you'd be getting much more ore from a single area.  And how would ore bombs work in conjunction with this?  Just a single tiny thin layer of voxels at a time?   I think it's much better for the game if the player is prompted to explore more for smaller veins, possibly running across caves, ruins, and threats, rather than spend days and days on end picking at the same group of blocks.  Excavating large area feels more like progress, and players like progress.

The veins in VS are minuscule compared to the amount of stone in the world.  If veins needs to be larger to encourage 'infrastructure' I'd just as soon see the veins simply get larger.  I already dislike how their flat nature promotes vertical shafts and the ridiculous amount of ladders that takes.  Although that's about the only way I can use up all the sticks that trees drop. 

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From a technical point of view, I'm not against it. The worries about compression an all of that while is true that it would make things run a little slower and bigger, it's not by much.
From a gameplay perspective, again I'm not against it. It would actually make mining more interesting to me especially if it didn't always break the same way. For instance, small chunks might come out on a couple swings and then on the third swing, you dislodge a bigger piece. It would add that variability to keep things interesting longer.
Does it solve the issues that @tony Liberatto sees? In a way. I agree once you've found one ore deposit, finding another is no different which isn't interesting. You do it for each ore and then multiple times for each ore on top of that. I'd like to see more variability to create interest. Right now ores intersect caves so little with the exception of copper and iron that most the time I'm exploring to find the ruins or save durability on my pick.
Do I agree this is a good idea? Not unless VS commits to using these types of blocks in worldgen for landscapes such as more weathering on mountains, more gently rolling hills, twisted tree trunks that actually connect, and water that flows in to fill the voids in partial blocks. Which would require some major changes.

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@Erik  Not a coder myself, but for what I understand VS handles chiselled blocks and memory usage in a manner much more efficiently than TFC. Chiselled Blocks do not cause near as many problems.  And in this situation, we will not have as many partial blocks as is the case when they are used for decoration. No one will go around partially mining all the blocks in a mine,  they could I agree, but most people will do one at a time.

@redram If Micro-Blocks or Mini-Blocks (16 x 16 x 16 or  8 x 8 x8 ) is a question of Game balance, one that I cannot answer before trying a working system and having others also try it. Maybe I will hate the idea if it is actually done, but maybe I will love it. You don't actually know. But the point is to have the player remain in the same spot for longer, A giant ore deposit that is mined very fast and yields little ore per block makes the building of any mining structure very hard and mostly unnecessary. Even though the player will remain breaking the same block for a longer time, he will be rewarded, because every single Micro-Block that comes out of that Ore gives as much metal as the entire block does today. 

I extremely dislike Ore Bombs. As much as I know no one ever used explosives for mining purposes in the middle ages. But maybe it is a personal choice and if the Devs wanted to keep it in the game they could just limit the area of effect to one block and let the player pick up all the small pieces of ore.

We do not have a cave-in feature at this moment, no idea if it will be implemented or how, so it is hard to talk about it. 

@Stroam  This: 
 

6 hours ago, Stroam said:

Does it solve the issues that @tony Liberatto sees? In a way. I agree once you've found one ore deposit, finding another is no different which isn't interesting. You do it for each ore and then multiple times for each ore on top of that. I'd like to see more variability to create interest. Right now ores intersect caves so little with the exception of copper and iron that most the time I'm exploring to find the ruins or save durability on my pick.

1

That is exactly my point, anything that has to be repeated often is a kind of grind, even to be forced to be always looking for new ore deposits. Depending on how many more metal ore and minerals we got added to the game the player has a good list to look for, the difference is that he only needs to look for each one once.
 

For people that may think this will make the game harder, read again. It will take the same time to get the same amount of ore, just that you will be in the same place in the world. 
Maybe, for a mine that is constantly used, it will be advantageous to build minecart tracks. 

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On 6/27/2018 at 7:21 AM, tony Liberatto said:

But the point is to have the player remain in the same spot for longer, A giant ore deposit that is mined very fast and yields little ore per block makes the building of any mining structure very hard and mostly unnecessary.

 

See, you're thinking about the current ore distribution wrong.  You're thinking as if I find one iron deposit and then I have to pull up stakes and move the infrastructure hundreds of blocks.  If you propick correctly, that's not the case.  My base on the official server is where it is because it's the middle of a very rich iron region.  I could build all kinds of infrastructure in that area  and still be using it today, because of the extremely large number of iron deposits.  They're not all one continuous deposit, but they're certainly close enough to take advantage of the same machinery.  The problem is, The only way you find them is vertical shafts, which is totally the opposite of minecarts.  If I could have sunk a single shaft and then branch -mined horizontally, I would have.  But you can't find ore veins efficiently that way.

There's nothing magical about micro-block mining.  Tracks and minecarts do not have a range of 5 blocks.  You can get just as good of infrasctructure useage from normal size ore blocks, in larger deposits (that can be found horizontal mining) or even tentacle like deposits, or other ones.

Now, if a player doesn't like prospecting, and is just cave diving for ores, yes, they'll get less use if deposits are discreet.  In theory though, if they were octopus like they could eventually trace it back to the core.  But even if they're still discreet, well, that's a choice the player made, to just go cave diving for ore.  In that scenario, maybe it's better for them to schlep the stuff to the surface and cart it back home, where their infrastructure is.  I think it's good to give the player that choice.  There's nothing sacred about infrastructure at the mine.  The game needs to remember to be fun, not just realistic.

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I have to agree that some of your arguments make sense, but not as arguments in opposition to the idea of Micro-Blocks. They make sense in the context that we all agree that the ore spawning in the game as it is right now is not ideal. And Ttat we need a better prospecting system.

As far as making the game fun and not just realistic, I have to say that I have loads of fun building Contraptions that have any kind of movement. Mechanical power is one of the most eye catcher feature of the game for this reason. Most players just can't resist to build the Wind Mill and see it Turning around. But the same way as building a Wind Mill right now would kind of pointless, because it would not even move. Building one that has no purpose and is just some nice Decoration is not nearly as satisfactory as building something that has a use that the player will benefit from it.

My proposal for the Micro-Blocks is part of a bigger design for the whole mining and ore processing system, but I truly believed it could be implemented independently.

We definitely need a way to prospect ores horizontally and not just vertically. 

Another thing to consider is the omnipresence of copper in the world right now. The thing is so common that sometimes is almost a nuisance. 

When I talk about Ore Micro-Blocks, I am talking about more than just Iron. TFC had 12 different ore iterations, plus 12 different minerals and 5 useless that many mods found a use for.

As much as we understand that Vintage Story is a different Game and may move in a different Direction, It will add more and more ore and minerals. 
We need a logic for ore distribution there is no way to add 10 more ore and minerals to the game and keep the same spawning levels for common ores. My solution is to have ores to spawn only on specific rock types and make the deposit itself rare in the sense of how many it spawns in the world.

Rare does not necessarily mean harder to find, how easy or hard it is to find ores depends more on the prospect system than on actually how big the ore deposit is. 

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41 minutes ago, tony Liberatto said:

I have to agree that some of your arguments make sense, but not as arguments in opposition to the idea of Micro-Blocks.

The point I tried to make in the last post is that what seems to be your argument for micro-block mining - huge ore concentrations to make localized infrastructure a thing - is not a good argument.  You can already incentivize the same thing by simply having larger deposits or regular size blocks.  So, I would say that your argument for micro-blocks is weak, vs the simpler method of just enlarging deposits.

That is quite aside from the other issues raised - possible lag, boredom for the player of being in one spot forever, less likelihood of finding surprise stuff while mining.   All together I think that's a fairly good argument that micro-block mining would bring nothing to the game, at best, and would be a waste of coding effort.

I didn't even touch on the issue of stuff like cassiterite.  Basically the player is going to have to find the one single block of cassiterite in the deposit?   How about diamonds where currently you find a max of like, 12? 

As for ore limited by stone type, it's a way.  The thing I like about the current anywhere distribution is that the player can, well, find stuff anywhere, and so they need to explore and propick more.   Having stuff limited by stone type reduces the amount of exploration, which could be a good thing depending on what the devs want.    It would probably make it harder to find the various things  you want within a decent distance from your base, which is possibly bad for single player, but possibly good for the economy of a server.  Personally I already have to travel fairly far to find deposits I'm interested in mining, it seems like.    But I only like to go after Very High and densities whenever possible.

 

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8 hours ago, redram said:

  Having stuff limited by stone type reduces the amount of exploration, which could be a good thing depending on what the devs want.  

 

How does that make sense?
If I build my base on an Andesite area, and I need Cassiterite, I will have to travel and explore until I first find the correct stone type that spawns Cassiterite, ( In TFC it was Diorite, Gabbro and Granite ), When I need Silver I will have to look for Granite or Gneiss,  
The logic is that no Stone Type will ever spawn all the ores and mineral the player needs. 
For a game that wants to create incentives for exploration, the more ores and minerals we introduce in the game and spawning on different rock types, especially when we increase the number of rock types in the game, the more exploration we will have.

TFC had a config option about how Ore Deposits would spawn, one of the options was about the Density of the ores. That was one of the evilest things in the game. I completely and utterly hate scattered veins.
I do not mind go exploring the world until I find the correct stone type that the ore spawn, Having to triangulate the ore position is a lot of work, but when I finally find the Deposit, I want to be done with it. I hated how scattered veins worked that you would find one block, break and do not see anything else, then you had to break everything around trying to find a second block.
It looks like the way you propose for ore deposits to work is more or less like that but a bit farther. 
When I talk about Micro-Blocks, I am not talking about dividing the number of blocks in the existing veins and spawning the result. 
I still believe in big veins, the only difference is that those veins would not get mined out so easily. 
Following my idea, you have to do more exploration, not less.  I see people talking on the forum and discord about how they travelled thousands of blocks, but that was not in search of ore. Most of the times, it was because an update introduced some feature dependant on spawning new chunks.   

Bottom Line, 
Huge Ore Deposits, that would take many players a long time to exhaust.
Increase the number of Rock Types.

Increase the number of Ores and Minerals.
Make those ores and minerals only spawn on certain rock types.

The result, Exploration increased tenfold.
The result, not the grind of having to look for the same ore again and again.
 

 

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4 hours ago, tony Liberatto said:

How does that make sense?

Currently if I want cassiterite I have to search every stone biome, because it can occur in any.  If it only occurs in certain ones, then I don't even have to look the the non-occurring ones.  This reduces the amount of exploration necessary.  Which is a good thing for players that are perhaps a bit overwhelmed by the everywhere possibility, or those who just don't have the time, or whatever.  I reduces the exploration necessary *for a given ore*.  I'm not saying it reduces it for the game overall, and I'm not saying it's necessarily bad in this context.  It allows the player to take things step by step.  I need copper.  It occurs here, here, and here.   Now I need bronze ingredients, they occur in these stone biomes.  Now iron.   Less overwhelming for some.

5 hours ago, tony Liberatto said:

It looks like the way you propose for ore deposits to work is more or less like that but a bit farther.

I'm pretty open to a lot of ore options.  I'm fine with TFC-like, I'm fine with scattered smaller deposits similar to now (but preferably not flat), I'd also be fine with snakey or octopus-like deposits.  I'm just really not a huge fan of the flat discs we have now.  But the stone part of the world is vast enough you can easily accomodate these things in it without going to micro-blocks.

I'm also kind of agnostic about ore being stone specific.  Like I said, there's advantages to each.  Ore everywhere means players don't have to scavenge the planet for those few biomes that have the rare ore they want, but ore in specific biomes means the player can focus their search more.  But I think it's bad to have situations such as TFC had where some stone types were just really terrible, having basically copper and nothing else of particular use. That should be avoided because it makes great swathes of the world useless.  Even then though, I found that I settled in sedimentary biomes, because in the end iron was by far the most needed material in the game.  You only needed one vein of garnierite, graphite, or silver, and you were pretty much set for life.  But iron was in constant need.    I will also say this, I'd guess that if a player has to travel 10k blocks to find rare ore, they'd rather that 12k be in a circuitous route around their base, so that once they find the ore it's not so terribly far away.   Vs. having to travel 12k blocks in a line, to find the special stone biome they need, and now any time they want that ore they have to travel 12k blocks.  That gets old fast.  I think a greater localized search area is probably more desirable for many than an extremely remote but focused search area.

 

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Looks like we are making progress. Micro Blocks per si will not reduce exploration, but you think rock type dependant ore spawning may make you have to explore too far.

Things to consider:

  1. You can have rock types in layers, so 3 rock types in the same place.
  2. Crossing areas, that mean is possible for the player to find a 4 surface crossing place with up to 12 rock types.
  3. How far you have to travel to find different rock types depends on how big the world gen makes them. A Dev, or even config option.
  4. What ores spawn on what rock types are another world gen and also config option. In TFC if you wanted you could have all the ores spawning on the same rock type. ( By Config ).
  5. Another point, I sometimes also do that, but biomes are not the same as rock type. You can and should have multiple rock types in the same biome area. ( Biomes are defined as an area with a specific climate and vegetation.

 
I would like for the player to have a shift on the mindset, instead of thinking about ore veins or ore deposits, I want the player to think about ore Mines. Mines would be a permanent place, with huge ore deposits, so big that they will last for the life of a world, even if in a multiplayer. 

Most of the aspects of a change like that would need to be carefully balanced, towards gameplay.

 

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1 hour ago, tony Liberatto said:

but you think rock type dependant ore spawning may make you have to explore too far.

As far as ore distribution goes, for me personally in the current setup probably it would be annoying, but I do recognize the game is not designed for me personally and have acknowledged repeatedly that there are other mindsets, and each strategy will appeal to a different mindset.  It's a matter of who the devs want to appeal to.  One might argue they should first and foremost appeal to themselves, so that they enjoy their own game.  I'll adapt to whatever, but I'm tossing out thoughts on the effects different strategies might have on different types of players.  But as far as microblock ore, I don't think that will add anything to the game for any type of player.

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