redram

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.

24 minutes ago, WillOfStone said:

I think changing the WG too much at this point would mean remaking/rewriting a lot of existing content to fit.

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.

40 minutes ago, Erik said:

I don't think the frequency and direct detection go well with each other, as direct detection would only be useful with much rarer veins and frequency detection with much more common clusters.

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.

14 minutes ago, Stroam said:

If it's so large you can't pick it up then it needs to be handled differently than items. It could be broken down into individual items that are assembled in place. It could have a special mechanism for moving it like wooden cranes loading it onto a suitable transport mechanism such as a train or minecart. Could be a combination of things needing to be moved by mechanisms to be assembled in place. 
could also be manufactured on site with say a multiblock mold.

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. 

27 minutes ago, Stroam said:

Though if something is not meant to be picked up it shouldn't have an item form.

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.

1 hour ago, Stroam said:

• Bags act like chests in that instead of one inventory, each opens in its own window. (helps with keeping things organized)

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.

25 minutes ago, tony Liberatto said:

Now, suppose you actually have to fight a Gorilla, would you prefer a sword? Or a long lance? That you could use without having to get so close to it

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.

Nice job of covering all the current liabilities of the system @heptagonrus!  I'm not voting in the poll because I basically don't think the honey system is at all fleshed out right now.  I think we just got the basic mechanics.   My suggestions:

CONTAINERS -  I definitely agree the bowls right now are very cumbersome.  I don't get hurt near enough to actually need all the honey so I mostly harvest and immediately eat it regardless of whether or not I'm damaged.  I'm after the wax.     There should be a larger holding container for honey (and other liquids/materials).   This could be a crock, or the standard barrel.  A barrel could hold perhaps scores of bowls of honey.  Just a simple right click of a bowl on the barrel either fills or empties the bowl.  Such a concentration possibly attracts wild animals though, so keep it secure. 

CATTAILS - Agreed that cattails are a bit cumbersome to harvest, in large part because of their annoying offset, but I think that's only really an issue if they're in large masses, rather than rows.  It does seem like it'd make sense for a scythe to work on them, but that would make them a lot easier to harvest, and they're easy to move and don't even require water or fertilizer.  I kind of wonder if - if a scythe is allowed to harvest them - players should only be able to re-plant them in water.   Another fun fact: cattails don't require light.  Visit my hacienda to see my subterranean cattail farm.   Probably should be changed to require light, like crops.

HONEY USE - My impression was that the current mechanic is a stopgap.  I think honey should be an ingredient in a healing poultice, which can be made with reeds or linen, and perhaps a couple other ingredients.  Consumed on use, so none of the bowl issues as far as the portable healing useage.  Presumably honey will also eventually have use in baking and other foodstuffs.  Might also be interesting to have an option to distill the honey into sugar.  This would give maybe three sugar options - honey, sugar beets, sugarcane.  The rarer ones could give better yield.  I think it's very good for the game to have things that have multiple sources, but some are better than others.  it helps avoid the feast/famine problem (TFC flux or salt), but still gives a thrill if you find the better/easier to extract/rarer source.

LANTERNS - I remain of the personal opinion that good permanent lights should not be cheap.  Drifters on your roads; so what?  They're easy to dodge if you're just passing by.   I'm sure there'll be other light sources to come, so you'll have other options.  For SMP play, I'd leave it up to the server admins if they want to make lanterns super-cheap for road purposes.  There's a lot of ways to skin that cat.

In the recipes you give, maybe also give the output?  If they're all 1, then cob seems pretty expensive (for the stone age) at 12 sticks.  Sticks aren't near as fast to get in the stone age as they are after shears.

I think a wicker fence would be cool.  Pretty expensive for sticks again, in the stoneage, (though at least attainable) but I'd see it more as an aesthetic choice than practical.

Also a tall wicker basket chest, so they're not all short ones?

So as far as hunting goes, from a practical standpoint, and my own personal playstyle, I'm not going to use a fire for mob safety.  That requires me to carry fire components, or the tools, which is two inventory slots, and I have to maintain the fire.  Instead,  I can just carry 1 stack of cobble (as I always do anyway) and completely enclose myself and the kill.  Unless the scavengers start appearing basically immediately.  As long as cobble is as fast to take down as it is currently, it'll be easier, and cobble is also useful for caving and getting places, unlike fire components or the tools.  So I'm just kind of saying, I'm not sure it'll be the best solution.  But I guess that depends on playstyle.

Also, not all mobs are going to be of a nature that they would be afraid of fire, so that mechanic should only be a thing for *animal* mobs.

Ya, making hunting and killing more of an event would probably help balance the food situation.  In the current state of the game, I much prefer meat to crops, because meat gives so much more satiation.  Of course we also used to be drowning in animals, that's getting less and less so, but wolves are still a great source of meat and I actively seek them out for that, preferring them over sheep and boar.  I do think the hunting experience could used improvement in several ways.

I think it would be a good idea if there were at least two kinds of meat: 'meat', and 'bush meat'.  Bush meat would be gotten from any animal that's not an 'intended' meat source.  So wolves for instance, would just drop bush meat.  This meat might not be as filling as normal meat.  Or, it would not be a valid ingredient in any cooking recipes (at least, none of the good ones).  Now, maybe there could even be one or two further kinds of meat.  'choice' and 'excellent' or something like that.  Those might be meats gotten from rare non-farmable animals, or, animals that have been bred to have meat above and beyond the norm.  That would depend on having a compelling food system though, with quality that matters.

Another suggestion I would make, is that the manner of killing the animal affects the meat drop.  So if you kill the animal with a sword, you get very little meat.  You tore it all to pieces and contaminated it with hair and viscera.  Similarly, a blunt weapon reduces the meat yield due to massive bruising and trauma to the muscle.   If we can get organs from animals, then the chance of getting various organs would also be reduced by these kill methods, as the organs are sliced or smashed.  Piercing weapons should be the preferred method of getting good amounts of meat.  This would encourage spear and arrow use, as opposed to right now where I just run after chickens and everything else madly hacking with my sword.  I could even see poultry having a special execution method involving a log and an axe, but maybe that's a bit much...

Eventually I feel like it'd be good if wild animals would run away from the player, so that it's not so easy to get at them with a melee weapon.  This would also encourage spear and arrow use.  I don't even use arrows currently - there's just no need.  It might be interesting if the player could make camouflage clothing for themselves, to help them get a little bit closer.  Also moving slower would help.

I had been planning to make a butchering suggestion at some point, so I won't go too much into that here, but suffice to say I would love to see corpse drops, and the player actually having to dress the animal.  I would make meat a more involved process, and if it required specialty tools, it might make the 'incidental' accumulation of meat not so easy, and raise the profile of crops for food. 

As far as fires to scare animals, it could be interesting, but I don't see it as a vital part of the hunting experience.  Predators attracted by blood makes sense, but if all you have to do is go click on some water, I guess i'm not that excited about the mechanic.  And especially in the current system it'd be more a feature than a deterrent, since the wolves will drop even more meat!  What I do like about predators attracted by blood is it might encourage domestication of animals for food, so that they could be slaughtered in a safe environment.  But I think it requires making wolf and other predator meat a third-rate food source.

To reiterate what copy said, for common and simple stuff there'd be no 'intellectual rights' issue.  The guy who made the waterskin mod for TFC did not invent the notion of a waterskin.  Any more than VS invented the notions of logs, pickaxes, or wolves.  It would not be at all problematic for VS to subsume such things (albeit with their own assets and code).   But for truly custom experiences on the level of Thaumcraft, well, that's a different matter, from a PR standpoint at least, if not legal.

I'd point out that there is always the option (and I'd say it's in fact likely) that *if* this gets implemented, it will only be in the Survival playstyle, as opposed to survive and build.  And, it needs to be easily adjustable by the player/server admin, so they can make container durability be higher or lower than 'default', or even infinite (no wear).  Players will have drastically different preferences for this kind of mechanic, and the default should appeal to the largest player base, but be adjustable.

That said, within this mechanic, from the top I don't like the slot-by-slot wear.  I want the entire bag to be available, or not.  My reason for this is that it's just a bit-by-bit annoyance to do it slot by slot.  I don't want to be constantly annoyed by repairs.  If it's all or nothing, I can still watch the durability, keep spares, swap them out when needed, and not be hassled by having to repair my bag every time I go get an inventory full of chalk.    I'd rather spend 4 leather once to get a whole new bag, than have to spend 1 leather 4 separate times to repair it.

Also, like Milo, I have certain areas of inventory I put certain things, and I'd rather not have that messed with every trip or two.

Instantly dropping items from inventory (whether 1 slot at a time or the entire) is bad.  If it happens in dangerous combat or parkour, you're just going to tick off the player.  I'd much rather see the slot(s) greyed out, the player can take the item(s) out, but not place new ones in.  This lets the player determine when to deal with the issue.

As far as durability damage, I lean towards item-moving, but movement based would work too, or even damage.  I think for item-moving, it's per individual item, not stack.  That avoids the quantity question.

Overburdening I don't like.  I don't like summed weight limits in general (whole 'nother topic), and this relies on that.   I also am not particularly interested in 'load shifting'.  Another annoyance for me.  The good thing about this method would be that weight capacity would be another container stat that could be altered by skilled craft, and altered at a very fine scale.

I guess when Tyron said "I would make river water infinitely extendable with aqueduct blocks crafted from planks." I assumed he meant that water in aquaducts would not power water wheels.  Only naturally occurring....fast water?....blocks?   The aquaducts would be just kind of cosmetic?  I mean, wood isn't exactly a high tier item.  You've got a copper saw you've got wood.   I guess water wheels themselves aren't exactly high tier though.

The thing is, as far as crops go, it's not hard to find water to put them near. I think you can barely go 100 blocks on flat non-desert land without having water.  Moreover, a logical aquaduct requires higher water source, to go downward.  I wouldn't call that common in VS.  Now there have been specific cases in-game where I've wanted to redirect water to cool off a magma lake.  Water physics is kind of wonky though, and the very short natural drop rate makes it fairly impractical.  So I could see using aquaducts for that.  But otherwise I'm not sure what practical use they'd have in the current system.

FWIW I'd vote with Tony for not allowing source blocks to be moved, except with pumps.

4 hours ago, Tyron said:

You would not be able to spawn multiple water wheel powering rivulets from lakes or multiply them from existing ones.

I take it then, that water buckets will not work the way they do in the future?  We won't have any way to move water source blocks?  As a mechanic it's definitely fine to allow a single rivulet to work, but it'd be much more picturesque it there were a wider river.  Also in order to encourage these kinds of rivulets maybe allow water to flow further?  I think right now it only goes 5 squares, which is not very many at all.  Even minecraft allowed 7 didn't it?  Would 10 be outrageous?

Ya, it's definitely not realistic.  But as always, there's so many other aspects of the game that aren't either.  But I can guarantee players would love it.

But don't discount more mundane loot.  Right now there's a dungeon with a lot of firewood. I'm always happy to find that dungeon as it saves me a bunch of work.  I feel like VS is a very fuel-intensive game, so finding fuel also feels very good to me.

Useful behaviors aside from attack?  

- Flush - can command the wolf to hunt up game from thin air.  If successful a rabbit or pheasant or even boar, maybe deer, appears nearby.

- fetch - they'll go and grab items in areas the player doesn't want to go, going through 1-high openings so the player doesn't have to.

- guard - They stay in place and attack animals or mobs that come close.  Useful in guarding crops.

- truffle - If truffles were ever a thing, the dog could got indicate an area in a certain radius where truffles are (if pigs became trainable they'd be much better at it, having a larger radius)

- herd - Targets a group of animals.  causes them to follow the wolf, who is presumably following the player.  Obviously this is the reverse of how it should be, but for code purposes I would assume easier.

I think a tamable wolf mob would be much better if it also included the ability to get specific breeds of dog.  It could operate off a simple recessive gene scenario (with maybe 1 in 10 wolves carrying a breed gene), so the player has to do a bit of breeding to successfully get a recessive gene to manifest.  It could have 'tech trees' of breeds, so wolves would only carry the genes for certain near-wolf breeds (husky, german shepherd, whatever) but those sub-breeds, once created, would have a chance to have a different sub-breed gene.  Some breeds would be better at some tasks, and also better at swimming, or faster, or do more damage.  Some would be better at nothing, just 'for the hell of it' breeds (bulldog, pug, chihuahua).  I could see such breeds being very valuable on SMP servers, purely as prestige/rp mobs.