redram

@EMSparaI've had this issue before, and it was always for me caused by me trying to knap a placed surface, with a different material or no material or some other item. As long as I knap with matching stones, I don't have that problem. It's a very old bug and I think it's caused by specific graphic cards, because Tyron couldn't track it down. Generally speaking, when you do bug reports, you should really state some system specs - at the very least your operating system, and the graphics card you're using. These are very relevant details oftentimes.

Not yet no. That will presumably come when when we get a larger crucible for steel working....although for now it would be nice if you could maybe use a hammer to break it into ingots or something. Maybe it takes an entire brand new hammer of the next higher material and uses it all up?

I don't think you can pick up lava. And I would hope never will be able to.

An interim solution might be to go down into the caves and such under your base, and either fill in the voids, or spread water everywhere on the floor. I think that would keep them from spawning.

I don't think I did suggest that. Vertical shafts give the best chance to hit a deposit. It's ok to do 'poke holes' out of that vertical shaft, 5 blocks away, because you can do that as far as you can reach without having to mine 2 high. But it takes a lot more time to do poke holes. It's really not surprising that you're coming up empty in that area. All your samples are poor or worse, except gold, but that only occurs in quartz so it's special case, and even though 1% qualifies as 'high' for gold, is not very large anyway.

In the current world gen, that's not an efficient way to mine, for two reasons. Primarly, ores generate in flat discs. You're far more likely to find them using a vertical tunnel, because you'd moving perpendicular to the pad. Versus mining horizontally, where you're trying to hit it 'edge on'. Also, mining horizontally means you have to mine out twice the blocks for your tunnel, because of the height of your character. It really is far better to mine vertically, unless ladders are an issue. Also you honestly just need to find a better area. Here's an example of a super-nice propicking I got recently on chromtech. Ten samples present in one spot, very unusual. But moreover, of those 10, 4 are decent, one is very high. I got lucky and found a really deep cave system right by there, braved the locusts, and came out with 4 stacks of tin (I think it was all below Y 50, half directly by a lava pool), 1 stack of bismuth, half a stack of limonite, 1 stack of lignite, 3 stacks of copper, and 2 stacks of sulfur. The bismuth I got lucky with, but all the rest of that had decent or better results. Caving is far faster than blind mining, and caving in a rich area like that will be very rewarding. Blind mining for small deposit stuff like cassiterite and bismuth, you really really need to find a better sample. Keep in mind that if you're trying to find bronze making materials, silver and gold are locked in quartz, which itself takes a bronze or better tool to mine. So there's no point in looking for gold and silver if you don't already have bronze tools, or ore bombs. To have ore bombs without bronze you'd need to have found the bituminous coal in a loot vessel, because bituminous coal also requires bronze or better to mine.

None of those results are very good for blinding mining. Which are you going after?

chunks are 32x32, technically. And I think the wiki may misrepresent that. It's not really all that important though. The main thing to know is the probably size of the ore 'pad' you're looking for. I generally classify them as five types: Tiny (diamond, emerald), Small (cassiterite, bismuth), Medium (Limonite, Sphalerite, Copper), Large (both types of coal) and Huge (quartz). Blind mining to me works best for medium size. Smaller and it's hard to hit, larger and it's probably about as easy to find a cave. Cassiterite/bismuth are tough, and if you're in dire need, and don't want to do the caving, I'd suggest try spacing your shafts at 8-12 blocks apart.

I mean you focus in one specific block that has the highest permil in the area. (you're zero blocks away from it, in each direction, directly on it, hence 'zeroed')

What specific readings did you get, for what ores? It's important to realize that different ores have different permils that qualify as "High", "Very High", etc. So for instance if you're looking for like, copper, or coal, those are Very high at like 16permil and above or something. They occur in huge deposits. But on the other hand cassiterite and bismuth have their Very High permil at something like 4. They occur in much smaller deposits. It can be difficult to blind-mine and hit small deposits like cassiterite and bismuth. It may be easier to try to find caves in the vicinity and explore them. If you're looking for low occurance ores like cassiterite, I'd suggest making sure that you've zeroed in as much as possible. Are you taking a lot of readings to find the absolute dead center of the deposit? When blind mining for cassiterite I usually end up with samples every 8 blocks or less in the general area of the center, to find the absolute most central point of the deposit. And I'd suggest not bothering blind mining for cassiterite below 3.5 permil, unless you have no other option. I would suggest not using a 6x6 shaft. There's a lot of waste there. Realize that deposits occur in horizontal discs. You only need to find one piece of that disc, to find the rest. If you do a vertical shaft of just one block, you have effectively checked 5 columns for ore (the shaft itself, and each of the adjacent 4 columns). Your 6x6 shaft is checking 60 blocks (the 36 actual shaft blocks, and 24 exposed adjacent blocks). If you instead used those 36 shafts as individual shafts, you'd be checking 36x5 = 180 blocks. 3x as many. Moroever, if you spread those shafts out, you're checking a much larger area. I consider an average cassiterite deposit to be 8 blocks or so in diameter. So if you want to do a thorough survey for cassiterite, I'd suggest individual shafts 8 blocks apart. You'll be 3x as efficient with the pick, but you'll be even more effective than that because you'll cover a much larger area. You only need to hit 1 part of that average deposit to find it. When you do a solid 6x6 shaft, you're honestly wasting a lot of pick. And honestly you could probably go 12 or 16 apart and still have a pretty good chance. The one downside to individual shafts is that it take more ladders. You can also do like some people do, and do a spiraling staircase, no ladders required (this does use double the pick, but also explores roughly twice the blocks). Or use water (until we get drowning mechanic). Another benefit to spreading out your shafts is that you're also more likely to find hidden caverns that don't have a surface entrance, which you can then explore pick-free. Although that kind of takes nerves of steel these days due to locusts. And one other thing, whenever possible I like to mine in areas that have at least a few ores, to maximize my chance of coming up with *something*. Even if only one is high, and the others are poor. If you only have one ore sample, and it's a small ore like cassiterite, coming up empty will not be uncommon. I've found samples with up to 10 ores in one spot, 3 of them being high or better.

It actually does have waypoints but you have to type in commands to use them. So they still need work. But if you find the post in the News section for the maps update, somewhere in there Tyron gives instructions for using waypoints.

I would have put improved map as second priority, but there were too many other good things in large bunches. I too am surprised at the strong support for world gen. That's only going to get worse the longer that can gets kicked down the road. It's going to need to change at some point.

Those rocks aren't 'naturally' glowing (or maybe I should say, 'innately'). They're being hit with specific wavelengths of ultraviolet light, which causes them to fluoresce. Without those specific wavelengths, and the occlusion of all visible light, you would not see anything unusual. Now of course the game can do whatever it wants, but from a realism standpoint this wouldn't make sense unless the player can make light sources that give off only UV light. Now it does so happen that the filters they use to let through only specific UV wavelengths are made of a very expensive quartz glass (as I understand it). And I would absolutely be first in line for the player to be able to collect minerals and make a fluorescing mineral display room. Some day.

As it stands currently, the frequency prospecting is needed to figure out if you're even in the right vicinity to find the ore you want. Because VS does not tie ores to rock type like TFC did. It allows you do do so with enough precision that you can fairly easily zero in on large deposit ores like iron and coal. Much harder for small deposits like tin and bismuth, and therein is the major problem. Direct indicating could be useful even within the current setup, in that once you're in a decent area, you could go around prospecting with a direct indicating tool, to actually find the ore. You could do a shaft/tunnel, direct indicating as you go, and have a much better chance than currently. This is because currently a vertical shaft only tells you 5 blocks at each cross section. The shaft, plus the four adjacent. A 6 block radius would tell you 169 blocks cross section (13x13). This is nearly a %3,400 improvement. Yet still only 1/4 what TFC propicking tells, in cross-sectional terms (1/8 of TFC in volumetric terms). If you have no frequency detection method in the current setup, then you're limited to blindly tunneling and prospecting, which would be hugely, hugely inefficient, or propicking caves and the surface - also inefficient give how rare ores zones are currently. So, within the current general ore scenario, even if ores have a great vertical component, both frequency and direct indication would be useful. I think that even if deposits turned into big spaghetti monsters, it would still be good to have frequency, because the world is just so vast. I've done blanket surface propicking in TFC. It's very time consuming - 4x as much so if the search radius is only 1/2 that of TFC. I'm pretty sure that right now you cannot dig 'anywhere' and have a 70% chance of hitting useful ores. If you include quartz, salt, and sulfur in 'useful ores', then maybe. As for copper, I'm pretty sure the plan is to reduce it eventually - I'm pretty sure it was said somewhere that it's only as common as it is for these early testing phases. There's no reason to tie the prospecting method to the ore vein generation. They don't have any direct necessary links. I'd propose more like: 1 - "What do you think of the current method of propicking (frequency detection) in VS? A) No good, throw it out and do something else (for instance TFC-like direct indication). B) It's good, but not enough on its own. Keep it but add other propicking methods. C) Its great, no other methods needed. I don't think anyone will pick C though. 2 - "How would you like to see ore veins work in VS? A) They're great as they are (flat discs of fairly small size relative to TFC) no change. B) size and distribution like now, but more forms (clouds, snakes, tentacles) C) rarer larger distributed clouds, similar to TFC (easier to hit from both above and the side) D) huge long snaking veins E) smaller tentacle-like veins leading to a dense core. F) Varied forms either randomly or based on ore type (kind of like Reasonable Realism mod for MC). Etc etc.

I don't think mixing prospecting and ore generation really helps the poll. They're kind of separate issues, or could be. Changing ore generation might make prospecting not so bad, for instance. To the first question, I'd answer both should be improved, which I think they will be. There's been discussion of other methods of prospecting. I think it's a little short-sighted to treat things as if the propick is the only tool that we'll ever have. To the second question I'd answer larger veins, but not for infrastructure purposes - I don't think it will help that. I think it would improve the chances of people finding exposed ores in caves, which should ease some of the bronze issues people have been having. I'd also like to see ores have more verticality to them, so that horizontal exploration tunnels can be used, rather than vertical shafts, which the current flat disc form encourages. If horizontal tunnels can be encouraged, that would set up a scenario where mine carts could become useful, with some other changes. It's harder to make minecarts useful when vertical shafts are the preferred exploratory method. Question 3 was the only one I could answer straight, but it won't let me submit just 1 answer. I like the current frequency mechanic, and I'd love it if the entire system could be arranged such that it stays in some way. But I realize there's a strong likelihood that too many people dislike it. But, frequency and direct indication are *not* mutually exclusive. In fact, your suggested range of 6 blocks for direct indication would still require some kind of frequency most likely, as that's a very short range of detection. I actually think they could complement each other very well. Expecting players to just use direct detection is a recipe for TFC's one-dimensional system, where surface ores get exploited, but nothing else because it's all too deep to be detected. Unless veins were extremely scattered.

Heh, I actually just made a separate post about block and tackles for moving heavy items. Which I think is a good idea regardless of the inventory system used.

In order to be picked up, it first must be created and placed, unless it's naturally occurring but that's a very limited set of items. Then the question would be, are any crafted items going to be heavy enough to not be moved? I would propose yes. If so, then they have to have an item form. Unless they are 'in-world' crafted in place, which is an option certainly, though of course the most code-costly option, in terms of having to make such a process for each item.

Not a huge fan of this. I think I'd prefer to see everything I'm carrying at once. In your weight vs energy system Stroam, does the player ever get autmoatically immobilized by too much weight? Or Beyond a certain point it drains energy so fast you effectively can only move 1 block or something?

As far as differentiating containers, I think each slot should impart a different color to the background of the inventory slots it applies to. This would make it very simple to tell which container goes with which slots. I do agree that having four backpacks is ridiculous, it should be just 1 backpack allowed imo. But I have no problem with the four slots being where they are. But these things don't require an overhaul to accomplish. I guess I'm unclear what the 'action slots' are accomplishing as well. Is it really entirely un-moddable now? Even minecraft can have adjustments made to the inventory by mods...

I'm unclear what problem this proposal is solving. And yes, I get you're trying to make the inventory 'moddable', but what problem is *that* solving? What do we get from this system we can't get from the current? Giving mods the ability to expand the inventory beyond the current max?

Back from long vacation. So my late responses: - In game maps. Seriously. No seriously. People will miss these if they are not present. - Finalized prospecting. Personally I like it how it is, but in any case it needs to be 'finalized' before release. It's too huge a part of the game to go switching it about wholesale after release. - More content. Again, I really thing it should have at least a sketch of all the major TFC stuff. leather working, armor, basic cooking, more detailed farming, quern, animal domestication, fishing, etc. Also steel tech at least. Possibly also a better handle on how weapons are expected to balance, and how bows play into it all. Ideally a detailed hunting mechanic, if such is the plan. Also seasons and an accompanying nerf to berry bushes, and getting healing in it's final form. Don't release the game with the food and healing in their current stopgap state. - Some basic server protections for SMP play (both protecting the server, and claiming and protecting player property), plus whatever backend stuff. I don't know that stuff. Nice-to-haves: at least 1 mountable animal, some basic mechanical stuff (wooden cogs to power querns, at least). Also SMP prism of some kind, as Tony suggested.

Actually a gorilla could conceivably at least grab your spear, and then you're screwed. Not so easy for a sword. Boars can't grab, but VS is pretty unlikely to have the kind of mechanics that make spears preferable for boar, namely the ability to impale and keep at bay. Boar spears have a characteristic crossbar that is specifically made for boar hunting, so the boar doesn't run up your spear and gore you anyway. If VS ever is to have more realistic hunting, animals need to be faster than the player, and in that scenario if spears don't keep at bay, you're going to get gored anyway (except with your shield, which probably shouldn't work with spears). I think it could be argued that impaling weapons would do less damage against mechanical creatures, as they have no organs to pierce. An axe or blunt weapon would be best probably. But regardless of all that, if the sword were removed, you'd just have an endless stream of newbs asking 'hey guys why don't you have a sword'? It's a fantasy staple, and I think you can have it in the game and still make other weapons preferable for certain situations, so they all have a place.

I hear the concern, and definitely think hunting with a sword should be next to impossible, and even when done against aggressive predators should ruin the hide and meat, but hunting is far from the only hostile activity in the game, as Balduranne points out. Who's to say there won't be actively hostile human(oid)s down the road?

Maybe mention that you can't change the order of the blocks in the list, or change their parent/child relationship. So it's worthwhile to consider that organization carefully so you get it right the first time.

I don't know if this is general knowledge or what but I found this page explaining the several types of water wheels interesting. Probably only the overshot and undershot are really all that would be needed in VS context. Maybe vertical spindle type if the cog elbows were high maintenance/wear items, or if vertically falling water were more rare, and streams were a thing. Overshot wheels having more power seems like a good use for aqueducts, assuming the player can't move source blocks.