Mac Mcleod

With the whitelisting of TOPS, I thought I would make some suggestions. I wrote Harder Cheating for Minecraft which is a server protection mod. Here is what I do in my mod. On a chunk by chunk basis, when entities move, a count of chunk entities is performed. The count is only created once per tick which makes it very light server impact. If there are too many entities in the chunk, then further entities are prevented from entering the world in that chunk. If there are way too many entities in the chunk, then further non-player entities are removed from the world without drops. This suppresses breeding, breaking lots of chests, using water to push mobs into a single chunk, etc. as a way of killing servers, An optional report line of where the problem chunk is located is added. I also check for various other cheat conditions... all once per tick for performance reasons. From what I hear about the issue on TOPS, a player is sending a request to remove many blocks in a short time period. That doesn't happen in the other block game because the server doesn't trust the client. Here is how I would handle it: Attach a "blocks changed over the last 15 seconds" counter to the player. If the counter ever exceeds a set limit then report and boot them with a short temporary ban and cancel any queued block changes. Even roll back their last changes. In my experience with the game, a non-creative player cannot change more than 1 block per second so you could probably use a configurable "warn" level of 16 blocks and a "tempban" level of 32 blocks. This is very lightweight (75 counters for 75 players) and the weighty stuff only happens at the warn and tempban level. Good luck with your issue. I'm sure you will find a solution to this kind of griefing.

I could see this as a function of "open" crates. You just "dump" the contents of the bag into the top of open crate.

For hand-cut peat in northern Europe: First few days: Freshly cut sods were left lying flat to drain and begin drying. In Scotland, they might be left for several days until they were firm enough not to flop over. Next 2–4 weeks: They were stood on edge or arranged in small stacks so wind could circulate around them. Scottish sources describe roughly 3–4 weeks in this stage. Total: About 4–8 weeks was a reasonable traditional expectation in a good drying season. Historical Scottish material gives 6 weeks to 2 months for some hand-cut Highland peat. In poor, wet conditions it could take 2 months or longer. An 1832 Irish account says peat normally needed 1–2 months, and longer in wet seasons. Scotland Guides: Peat Cutting Library Ireland: On the New Mode of saving turf or peat fuel from Irish bogs.

You can smelt 16 flint in a bloomery now. 10 game minutes, reliable.

Okay, in 1.22 it's slightly higher in the sky. It still has the white stars around it and the Sulphur and Rusty companions. It could also be higher/lower based on the month or my latitude.

Just noticed the stars are different in 1.22.7 than whatever I'm running in my one player game. I'll bring up a creative game and see if I can find a set of stars on thsi version.

The Southern Falx swings through the southern sky every night. It starts at dusk at SSE, is due south at 1am, and is at SSW just before dawn. The North Star

I did a little research and historically powered mining had *large* groups of humans working. Not a one man operation to build or operate. Sluice mining was more possible for a single person. Water wheels were used for Stamp Mining which pre-crushed the ore. I do think if they were to implement powered mining, it should require multiple people to operate at anything above minimal efficiency. Constantly loading raw material, durability on the parts that has to be repaired, unloading of the finished products, disposing of the less valuable waste material, etc. I also see the potential for more efficient mining or smelting equipment powered by temporal gears.

One thing that gets me is I watch Primitive Technology and other channels literally make clay from dirt by putting it in water and letting it settle out. So there should be a mechanism involving mixing water and dirt to make small amounts of clay. Here: "The traditional method is surprisingly simple: Collect the dirt preferably soil from a place where the ground is naturally sticky when wet. Remove large debris pick out rocks, roots, leaves, etc. Mix with lots of water stir the soil thoroughly into a muddy slurry. Let it settle briefly. Heavy sand and gravel sink quickly; the very fine clay particles remain suspended much longer. Pour off the suspended muddy water into another container, leaving the heavier material behind. Let the clay settle in the second container. The clay particles eventually form a fine layer on the bottom. Pour off the clear water. Dry the clay somewhat until it reaches a kneadable consistency. Knead/wedge it to distribute the remaining moisture evenly and remove air. This is essentially levigation, and it can produce remarkably pure clay from ordinary soil."

There is a very obvious red star and a very obvious yellow star about 15 degrees above the horizon. I can't see why they would rotate the star bitmap so those may already provide stable directions

I agree pretty strongly with this. There should be broad categories of very different looking armor that basically have the same / very similar stats. But the flip side is player agency and *some* ability to make a meaningful choice. Leather for traveling is something I've seen. Gamboise armor for light caving and travel. Mixing in a piece of chain (chest or head) as you delve deeper. On the high end, I think some kind of gear powered crafted armor that reduces (but doesn't stop) stability loss would give high end players something to pursue (instead of hitting the top and then quitting as so many do). Armors with percentage reductions will be more powerful against powerful drifters(-10% of a double-headed is 5.4 damage) and not as powerful against weaker drifters (the same -10% might only stop 0.5 damage in that case).

Also, there shouldn't be just one perfect top suit. Just like you balance movement, healing, and movement, and armor tier now - you can balance armor (and weapons) for particular kinds of drifters. There is a reason there were so many types of polearms, swords, maces, flails, spears. They had particular strength in particular situations. Likewise, wearing certain metal armors may not be the best thing when it's -13C outside.

It's lovely but I hope you have it properly gated and perhaps even have flags for each type of armor so server operators can disable suits on an individual basis. The greeks were not in greek armor for 3 weeks and then on to full field plate. Perhaps server operators could set a year that each armor type would be available. For example, the first year could be primitive wood armor and leather armor only. Then the second game year, copper armors opens up but not copper plate mail. Then the third game year, bronze chain and copper plate become available but not bronze scale and plate yet. Maybe in the 5th year, you are up to steel chain.. the 6th year steel plate mail (steel plates attached to a leather and chain under garment) and so on through... The 10th game year, full steel field plate (not plates on a chain and leather undergarment) becomes available. You could have reasonable "rushed" default settings (year 1 to year 3 before everything is available). By turning off a bunch of armor types, a server could basically top out at 1100 technology for armor. You could also add some kind of research chain to complete to open up certain armor types.

I thought if it had an insulating face it sealed it. Interesting.

I finally undersand why it looks like it does. Because of the nickel. I always think of it as "Mithril". I think it looks so much better than steel. Just found my first one on TOPS today. 8 meteoric iron blocks. Got 4 of them. The others will make 7 meteoric iron ingots.

Meteoric iron is generally iron–nickel alloy, not steel in the conventional sense. Meteoric iron: Mostly iron (Fe) with significant nickel (Ni), commonly around 5–20% nickel, plus smaller amounts of cobalt and other elements. Steel: Iron alloyed primarily with carbon, generally up to about 2.1% carbon for ordinary steels, with other alloying elements sometimes added. Meteorites can contain extremely low carbon, so chemically those are quite different from steel. Why meteoric iron was valuable for weapons Meteoric iron excels for making tools and blades. Some iron meteorites have a distinctive crystalline structure called the Widmanstätten pattern, produced by extremely slow cooling over millions of years inside an asteroid. Ancient metalworkers who worked meteoric iron were essentially starting with a naturally occurring metal alloy that was already relatively tough and workable. They could forge it, hammer it, and cold-work it, but they couldn't harden it through the conventional carbon-steel quenching process in the same way.

Thank you for your suggestions. Holding the spacebar down causes carpal tunnel and tendonitis after a couple years. And you don't recover from them unless you just stop using the mouse and keyboard for 6 months to two years. I burned out my right hand in Everquest back in 2000-2008. If I try to mouse, I'm in immediate pain. So I mouse with the left hand. I burned out my right hand in every way for jumping between 2009 and 2020. I have balls on the sides of three finger joints where the joint became inflamed and the synovial fluid leaked. I can take a few days break to reduce the symptoms. But the constant jumping to step up as I walk across a gentle slope that would be easy and natural to walk up puts me back in pain quickly. I use a lot of voice typing. I use macros to pan.

That seems like a very odd way to put it. The first two quenchings are for most purposes always beneficial on average. Maybe a bit less when considering the miscellaneous added costs. They probably put it this way because it's an RNG and they had bad luck. (and over a population of 1000 people trying this, 50 will fail the first time and 3 will fail twice on their first time). So they've lost 3,000 or 6,000 uses of the tool before they even get their first tool. In Theory, and on average, you gain 600 uses and lose 150 uses for a net gain. That doesn't sit so well with someone whose personal experience was they lost the entire steel ingot the first three times they tried to quench something. Even worse is if they are a new user just naively quenching to cool the piece down (not even trying to improve it's stats) and they lose the entire ingot at random. The handbook could stress that you can and should let your first set of tools cool down naturally to avoid this potential loss. I have read that one person lost their first FIVE items they tried to quench their FIRST steel item. I imagine they were not thinking of the lucky person who has quenched 100 times and never lost an item yet. ---- I was also happy to hear you had put in a PR on the issue picking up items. My buddy had that last night. He was placing lanterns in a cave and when it came time to leave he could pick some lanterns up with his stack of lanterns while other lanterns he had to throw stuff on the ground to open up a slot so he could pick the lantern up (which then went into the stack of items). Is a PR a request to schedule a fix or is it the actual fix to the code that may or may not go in the next release?

The reason why is that in real life the cracks develop on edges and you can't simply reheat the piece. It can be reused, or the cracked pieces can be cut off to make a smaller tool or blade. I don't have an issue with something being hard if it's based on reality. My issue was that in reality, there is almost no loss in steel when a quenching fails. But I also have experience running games to entertain others since 1976. The current system needs tuning to be more player friendly (and making it more realistic will do that). The total loss of an entire ingot is a really bad experience for many players. Oh, by the way folks, just let your first steel tools (when you are poor) cool down naturally. Don't even quench them once. They will cool down and never crack and you have a tools and weapons with default values. This will prevent you from losing them and having to replace the materials to make another one. Then on your second batch of steel or your last couple pieces of steel from your first batch, you can experiment with faster, more durable tools and the loss will be less catastrophic.

I like the idea Rainbow mentions of a durability debuff as an alternative to complete failure. It looks like they intend to eventually add oil quenching which lowers the risk of a crack. MkMoos, I researched quench cracking in real life and it usually ruins the piece but does not destroy material. You can cut away the cracked part (which happens often on edges) or you can use the ruined piece in a new worked. So simply changing the status to "ruined piece" that could then be chiseled down to bits or remelted in a bloomery would be closer to real life. Cracks from quenching on edges are a random challenge faced even by highly skilled blacksmiths. Optimal durability quenching is +37%. Anything past their results in a net loss. The critical point of failure is the 5% complete loss of the ingot for new players just breaking into steel when it is still precious to them and making it took them hours of real life. It's completely unrealistic (the piece should be ruined, not the steel lost). A middle ground (especially one that matches real life experience of real blacksmiths) would be less unlikely to lose new customers. Snap... in real life blacksmiths do not have entire steel items shatter to unrecoverable dust. The piece is simply ruined. You did leave out... Go out and chop down more trees, turn them into firewood, wait 20 minutes while more burns into charcoal, retrieve the charcoal (another 5 minutes of digging). If they allow resmelting steel bits, it's going to require a 1500 degree heat and that means bloomeries which means fireclay. Critically, new players won't quit if quenching is easier. There is a difference between "uncompromising" and "both unrealistic AND unfair that regularly drives players to fury and logging off." And a work item without enough steel bits to make the item can only be used for larger pieces (pretty much just steel plates only). You might be able to make it into a steel knife instead. If a falx requires 16 bits to make and it shatters to 14 bits, there is no way to make a falx from it- you just have 14 bits of steel that you could use in a steel plate, a spear, a knife. For context, this is my fifth play thru, I've done the steel route many times and I've made a couple dozen quenched items now. I have not rage quit over the a loss but I was able to upgrade 7 items before my first loss. I haven't lost a 2nd piece yet.

No, I'm not talking about moving the water. Just fill your bucket and you can fill a block shaped hole with water. It's just not considered a source block. It requires almost no work. All you have to do is flag water placed by a bucket as a "non-source" water block. Right now you can 1) place a source block. 2) place a block of water but it drains in about 1 second and won't act as a water source block for water source blocks next to it. I'm saying 2) place a block of water that will last a configurable time (from 3 game days up to "forever") which does not count as a water source block. It's much lighter processing than a single square of crops.

Actually I'm thinking, "Water placed with a bucket does not count as a source block". It's the smallest change. No load on the server. CPU's are very powerful tho so you could have.... Bucket water in a dirt, gravel, or sand hole vanishes after say 48 or 72 game hours. This is a scheduled event that only runs when loaded so it would be very light weight. We do this with every crop block now. Likewise bucket water in a stone or clay hole might last a month. When it rains, you could fill holes and half holes with "bucket water" which would vanish at the scheduled time. ---- I do like the idea that water source blocks would eventually fill a reservoir but that actually can take a lot of cpu depending on how you code it. So if you dig a trench from a lake, instead of just flowing in a distance 7 blocks, it would slowly fill the trench.

Somewhere between returning 1 steel bit and returning 20 steel bits is a more realistic loss that isn't so unpleasant. I'm sure you don't see it as game breaking if you got 3 bits back. And I imagine even new players would be less traumatized if they got 19 bits back. I think 17 would be a good number. You still lose the time and the charcoal/coal invested. That's a huge penalty. Time is the ultimate commodity. I think this is an area where a compromise can be found that is okay with most people (including the devs). I agree any auto-step option should be client side optional setting. It is autostepup and not autojump. Of course, players can autostepup 1/2 block up, and Elks autostep up to 2 blocks up. Regarding the crafting tool placement. I suggested this after looking at them and in most of the 'fixed' recipes there is no problem with moving the hammer / chisel / saw to a standard location. The current location is random and arbitrary from some fixed recipe set up years ago. Carcasses and coffin lids being broken is a holdover from old code. It's probably just an item property since you can place the carcasses. Picking up items. You have 88 <- these four "o" items can be picked up with a stack of the same item in my selected hotslot. O <- this same exact "o" item can't be picked up except with an empty hand. I'll look into the crafting to set the slab facing. I'm doing very short runs of a half dozen window panes in a greenhouse as well as stone slabs between them. Thanks for the suggestion.

What is the benefit you get from having a tool with 450 more uses at the cost of losing a tool with 3000 to 3500 uses? I'm trying to understand where you are coming from.

A switch that lets you (in single player) or server operators make it so you can move water with buckets but can't create water source blocks with them. Right now, there is a switch where you can't move water but that just makes the water vanish when placed. Even tho I use it, it bothers me that I can literally use one bucket of water to fill a 100x300x1 hole full of water, effectively creating a lake from a bucket. So I hope someday there is a switch that will turn that behavior off. Say a 3rd option on the current water behavior switch. It's the most significant unrealistic thing inherited from mine-craft.