Flower's Dev Diary (Week of April 29th)

[Stormweaver]

Just one small caveat: there are no wool boots, as those would be socks ;)

And what's wrong with that? Everyone should have a pair of nice, thick woollen socks when huddling around the furnace at night :p

Did I mention that I've wanted woollen 'armour' for...practically forever? Even almost suggested it once. I'd *hug* you, but the spikes hurt.

[Bynari]

Excellent. This is a feature I've wanted from vMC for a long time.

[ExpHP]

I'm glad just to have a reason to get rid of all those tiny bits of differently colored wool filling up my early game inventory.

[FlowerChild]

In addition to hunting, it also provides a reason to keep and sheer a couple of sheep early game, which is part of what I'm doing to up the value of sheers to make them more worthwhile in terms of their cost in iron.

[Sarudak]

Ah of course. From hemp. Plus it's renewable early game. Makes sense and gives people a tradeoff between rushing for the windmill and getting some better armor early game.

[FlowerChild]

Ah of course. From hemp. Plus it's renewable early game. Makes sense and gives people a tradeoff between rushing for the windmill and getting some better armor early game.

Yup, exactly. When I first implemented padding a long time ago, part of the plan was to have padded armor. Given how MC worked at the time though, there just wasn't much point, as leather armor was already useless, so I dropped the idea.

With all the changes as of late though, I went back to the concept as it's much more relevant.

[TheGatesofLogic]

So are you going to replace breeding harnesses with straight-jackets? ;)

[FlowerChild]

So are you going to replace breeding harnesses with straight-jackets? ;)

Oh yeah, three new armors ;)

Actually, I'm still debating precisely what I'm going to do with Tanned Armor, but I will be doing something with it for the next release, which is yet another reason why I decided to write some general purpose code for dealing with armor.

I definitely want a "legit" version of Tanned, as now that leather armor is actually worthwhile, having an upgraded version that doesn't automatically make you look like a gimp fits the mod perfectly. On the other hand, I don't want to lose the gimp suit as a humorous part of the mod, so I think it likely that both will exist as two different armor sets.

Not really much of a problem to solve, as all I really need is alternate recipes for the gimp suit involving stuff like an iron nugget for the zipper on the mask for example, and maybe the top middle row of leather missing on the pants, etc.

But yeah, all told, the primary focus of the next release is finalizing the mod's armors as well as additional tweaks to the early game :)

[Mr_Hosed]

I'm really looking forward to this. I've been playing about 10 hours in my new world and I've already had to restart at 3 different locations (Got lucky and refound one location or it would be 4). What's funny is it's bloody zombies busting down my doors that kills me more then anything (I refuse to game zombies with fence gates).

All that is to say I've found with the Hardcore additions that I'm dieing a good deal more and thus repeating the early game a lot. Some early armor alternatives are VERY much appreciated as I've yet to find enough cows at any one location to do more then boots.

[DaveYanakov]

I hate to ask but are you planning to make nether quartz farmable in some way or do you intend to leave it in its current "explore more nether, noob"? The aesthetic uses are amazing but are currently slightly constrained as many of the decorative forms cannot be broken back down into quartz chunks at need.

[FlowerChild]

Yeah, the wool armor definitely helps on multiple levels. I've been continuing my game with it added.

The thing I just noticed is whereas I used to go "awww...sheep" when I found them, now I go "oooo...sheep", as they fill a definite need.

Good stuff :)

[FlowerChild]

I hate to ask but are you planning to make nether quartz farmable in some way or do you intend to leave it in its current "explore more nether, noob"? The aesthetic uses are amazing but are currently slightly constrained as many of the decorative forms cannot be broken back down into quartz chunks at need.

I have no intent of doing anything like that, no.

[jecowa]

Is that a statue of E.T. in the original post?

[devak]

I will eagerly await the first spotlight video that shows Lumberjack Steve going "run forrest, RUN!"

I love how you make armors that are more unique than just a vanilla recolor.

[jecowa]

It looks like the new armor is dyeable, and it looks a bit nicer than dyed leather armor. Dyed leather is a little too bright and colorful. I'm wondering if we can craft dyed clothing with dyed wool, or if it needs to be dyed after crafting.

[xou816]

Wow, you've done a great job with the new armor's textures!
I can't stop being excited with each release of BTW :) You never cease to amaze us!

[SterlingRed]

It looks like the new armor is dyeable, and it looks a bit nicer than dyed leather armor. Dyed leather is a little too bright and colorful. I'm wondering if we can craft dyed clothing with dyed wool, or if it needs to be dyed after crafting.

Reading comments in a thread is helpful. Often they have answers to your question! Like fcs posts on the first page.

I'll be honest, I usually skip leather and go straight to iron. Then again I haven't truly restarted other than dying in a world from scratch and attempted to establish myself since the iron changes. I'll definitely have to give the early amours a chance! I can even see a use for the light renewable amours like padding and cloth even late game for things like clay gathering which often requires a bit of swimming, but going nude is a little risky. Cool stuff man!

[Bynari]

With the addition of wool & padded armor, a "Hardcore Exposure" feature could be interesting. I imagine Steve must get pretty damn cold outside at night, or in the rain, or in snow biomes. I could see wool, padded or even leather armor helping to stave off hypothermia.

[FlowerChild]

With the addition of wool & padded armor, a "Hardcore Exposure" feature could be interesting. I imagine Steve must get pretty damn cold outside at night, or in the rain, or in snow biomes. I could see wool, padded or even leather armor helping to stave off hypothermia.

You'll notice the explicit "no suggestions" rule in the OP. Don't do that.

[FlowerChild]

Oi vey. I was just tracking down the issue icy spotted in his new-game vid for 4.7 (stone feeling unnaturally quick to break by hand), and it turns out this is vanilla behavior. We likely just didn't notice before because harvest rates were far less of a concern.

I've looked over the hardness values for vanilla blocks in general, and they're frankly fucked with very little logic behind their relative values. Cobble is "harder" than smoothstone for example, and stone brick is softer than both.

I think it likely I'll have to do a fairly extensive balance pass on those values now, as my recent changes have brought to the foreground yet another vanilla issue.

[Vexalor]

Spoiler

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Oi vey. I was just tracking down the issue icy spotted in his new-game vid for 4.7 (stone feeling unnaturally quick to break by hand), and it turns out this is vanilla behavior. We likely just didn't notice before because harvest rates were far less of a concern.

I've looked over the hardness values for vanilla blocks in general, and they're frankly fucked with very little logic behind their relative values. Cobble is "harder" than smoothstone for example, and stone brick is softer than both.

I think it likely I'll have to do a fairly extensive balance pass on those values now, as my recent changes have brought to the foreground yet another vanilla issue.

I hate to ask these sorts of semi-silly questions, but how extensive are the issues with block harvesting/hardness? I knew about the cobblestone-is-harder-than-all-other-types-of-stone thing from my own adventures in the code, but do these issues actually go beyond stone-related materials? I always thought that that was where most of these sorts of problems were centered.

[FlowerChild]

It's already done, so not too extensive. The main problem that I encountered was that wood-based hardness was based on the old style where you'd didn't need a tool to be effective on it, thus the hardness values were artificially inflated relative to stone.

In fact logs had a hardness value higher than smoothstone, which is basically why it felt very weird to Icy. That part was my fault in not noticing this about the wood values when I made the change to needing tools to harvest all materials at a reasonable speed.

With regards to other values though, I maybe changed a dozen of them so that they relate better to one another?

I've moved on now to trying to correct the insta-harvest bug.

[FlowerChild]

Yay! Insta-harvest has been fixed! Man, does it ever feel so much better now, like the old MC I knew and loved :)

It's amazing what these little things do to your overall sense of immersion. I'm bound to get some bitching over this one (which I suspect is why Mojang will never fix it), but it is just way way better this way.

[Vexalor]

Yay! Insta-harvest has been fixed! Man, does it ever feel so much better now, like the old MC I knew and loved :)

It's amazing what these little things do to your overall sense of immersion. I'm bound to get some bitching over this one (which I suspect is why Mojang will never fix it), but it is just way way better this way.

Thumbs up! :)

Addressing both the above quote and the thing about which I was asking before, I have always questioned Mojang's logic when choosing numeric values for things along the lines of block hardness and requirements for harvesting and so forth. It's always seemed as though they wrote the values without checking to see how they would relate to values already in the game.

Anyhow, thanks for actually fixing that. These were minor enough bugs/problems that nobody really cared in Vanilla, but, with the BTW crowd (and, more specifically, with your changes) these things were becoming increasingly noticeable.

[Detritus]

Yay! Insta-harvest has been fixed! Man, does it ever feel so much better now, like the old MC I knew and loved :)

It's amazing what these little things do to your overall sense of immersion. I'm bound to get some bitching over this one (which I suspect is why Mojang will never fix it), but it is just way way better this way.

I assume you're specifically referring to that which effects Netherrack, or is this something else entirely, which I don't know of?