Research Bench Add-On development thread.

[weldaSB]

So sorry guys. I just did exactly what I laugh at people for doing in the suggestion forum. Sorry.

[Thalarctia]

May I make a suggestion for a description for tanned leather?

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Tanned Leather: It was hard and dirty work making it (referring to the dung), but the results seem worth it. This tanned leather hide seems sturdy enough to be used in creating some interesting and possibly powerful things for all kinds of construction, and it would seem logical for it to also make for sturdier leather armor.

Just to raise a point about this description, which I hope Six is already aware of: Any information about how an item came to be is useless - There is no way to obtain tanned leather without crafting it yourself. If you have a piece of tanned leather, you also know the recipe, as you were the one to create it in the first place.

[eternal8phoenix]

Just to raise a point about this description, which I hope Six is already aware of: Any information about how an item came to be is useless - There is no way to obtain tanned leather without crafting it yourself. If you have a piece of tanned leather, you also know the recipe, as you were the one to create it in the first place.

That depends entirely on the item. Depending on how many items Six intends to cover, backtracking could be useful. Vanilla items such as Pistons (retrievable from jungle temples), Stone Brick (from fortresses) or Nether Brick (hints for Sludge) could have back-tracking recipes. I mention it as it would ease in new users nicely.

Plus stuff like mossy cobble kinda needs a creation of story. It'd be a nuisance not to know the use of spawners.

Also useful if this goes multiplayer. If you co-op with a friend, who isn't online at the time and want to know how they made XYZ you could bang it in a table to see if there's a hint rather than wiki it.

[Rob]

I would think end game items that are obtainable in the world such as the piston and tables. Mossy cobble, cracked stone and mossy stone. could also have hints to their creation in their own description.

The only problem I foresee with the multiplayer example, is it may promote griefing to see how certain items are made. But than, that's what the whitelist is for.

[Six]

Just to raise a point about this description, which I hope Six is already aware of: Any information about how an item came to be is useless - There is no way to obtain tanned leather without crafting it yourself. If you have a piece of tanned leather, you also know the recipe, as you were the one to create it in the first place.

That depends entirely on the item. Depending on how many items Six intends to cover, backtracking could be useful. Vanilla items such as Pistons (retrievable from jungle temples), Stone Brick (from fortresses) or Nether Brick (hints for Sludge) could have back-tracking recipes. I mention it as it would ease in new users nicely.

Plus stuff like mossy cobble kinda needs a creation of story. It'd be a nuisance not to know the use of spawners.

Also useful if this goes multiplayer. If you co-op with a friend, who isn't online at the time and want to know how they made XYZ you could bang it in a table to see if there's a hint rather than wiki it.

Yeah, both of these are actually pretty valid. No need to tell you how to craft something when you need to know that info to make it, and we've been marking things on the doc which are found naturally in the game. I rather love the idea of 'reverse engineering' stuff discovered in the world, fits very well with the 'research' theme. Things like bows are a nice spot for this, and also minecarts and rails from mineshafts.

A similar thing I was considering, was to make player made Nether Brick (the brick from sludge, before crafted into the block) mention something like "It seems Nether materials can actually make a very solid building material. Exploration of the Nether to look for any structures made from this may be warranted". This would help to get past those situations where a player opens up the Nether, explores around a little and doesn't see sight of anything even remotely different. Nether forts can be hell to find sometimes, even when you know they are there. This would however require adding access to potash pre-blaze rod, but that could be done pretty simply by adding a log recipe for it in the furnace and shouldn't throw the tech tree off at all.

[logorouge]

Love the concept, especially with the BTW-esque descriptions.
Being able to send a new player into Better Than Wolves blind and say "Go forth and discover" is just priceless. :)
I wish I could contribute some descriptions but I'm afraid my experience with BTW is horribly outdated. I'll probably need to use it too when it's released!

[Panda]

May i have your block and gui textures to start support immediately?

[Kezza]

me too ;)

[EpicAaron]

Complicated Recipes like Pistons and Dispensers would be pretty hard to include in the base material descriptions, but I think I have possible solution. After discovering a few materials of the piston (like iron and redstone), a small box could appear below the main input box showing a darkened image of a piston. When clicked, a hint will appear in place of the main description. This could be done for complicated recipes like the dispensers, redstone blocks, and hopper.

EXAMPLE: When you put redstone in the bench after already putting iron into it, a darkened piston icon could show up below the main box that would give a hint like this one:

"The reactive properties of redstone could possibly be combined with other more sturdy materials such as iron and stone to create a powerful mechanism. Perhaps one could arrange it in such a way as to even push other blocks around!"

EDIT: I decided to make a basic image of what I mean. You probably shouldn't use the word "hint". Maybe Observation would fit the mod much better.

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[Six]

With accordance to the new copyright changes, I'd just like to officially request permission to carry on with this add-on.

As a progress update: I've got just a few loose ends in the descriptions to cover, but I've got 95% of them done. I managed to cram in directions through the entire tech tree, and even fit in some of the more esoteric knowledge, like the compressed travel distance in the Nether. Just wrapping up a few code things today and should be able to get a release out reasonably soon.

[FlowerChild]

I grant permission to the Research Bench Add-On team to decompile and reverse engineer Better Than Wolves solely for the purposes of developing the Research Bench Add-On, and with the understanding that such permission may be revoked at any time.

[Six]

So I've got an initial release here if people could test it to make sure that things are working as intended. I wouldn't recommend using it on any established worlds, but in theory even if the mod is removed from a world it shouldn't cause any damage and the blocks will just disappear. Either way, better to test on an install separate from any main worlds you might have.

Install just by dropping it into your client jar after installing BTW. No server mod just yet, but that will be coming once this gets tested and is working okay.
>> Download here.

[Edit] Slightly important note I forgot initially, you craft the bench with a single plank in the crafting grid. It's meant as a discoverable thing which a completely new player should eventually try.

There's still some work to be done on the descriptions themselves, but most of it is in there. Please mention if anything looks weird or incorrect though, there's bound to have been a few bits that have slipped through the cracks. Also RezDev is currently helping me proof all of these, but do mention if anything is unclear (or completely unintelligible for that matter).

Currently on the todo list:

• Make a server version and test that works.
• Finish going through and proofing the descriptions.
• Add in the specific descriptions for each arcane scroll (still not quite sure how I want to do those).
• Work out a better way to make sure the classes are loaded, as I'm currently overriding the Achievement base class to give the code a reference to my class.
• Find a better way to render the text. The basic font renderer doesn't scale well, and is too big to fit enough at full size. This is a tricky one so if anyone has any suggestions...

Oh, and for anyone wanting the basic rundown on the idea of this add-on, this is the start of the actual release thread I've been writing:

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What is it?
The research bench is intended as a way for a person unfamiliar with Minecraft or Better Than Wolves to be able to play though the entire game without consulting a wiki or forum thread. Of course, a lot of the learning is still going to come from the game killing you and learning through experience, but the bench guides the player as to what things they should be making and how to craft them.

How does it work?
It is very simple. There's no magic essences, no progress bars, just a mundane wooden bench with space to put an item on to examine it more closely. When the player puts an item on the bench, they get a short description hinting at what might be done with it. Some hints are more directed than others, and generally something wont be directed towards until you would be at a tech level to build it.

[DNoved1]

Well, while I currently am unable to test this, I do have one thing to say...

Respect.

Congratulations on finishing (for the most part) your addon. I'll be sure to try this out when I can, and will edit this post with my observations.

Edit: Very nice stuff man. I really like the descriptions, and how they suit BTW (that sense of tongue-in-cheekness :P). One thing I thought of while using it, which may not be reasonable considering the limited space, and which may already be on your todo list anyway (though not necessarily in this format) is descriptions for certain enchantments. Most enchantments are fairly reasonable to guess (such as sharpness), however a few aren't immediately obvious, such as bane of arthropods, which affects spiders as well as silverfish. I figured the description would go on the tool that contained the enchantment, but then again there obviously isn't enough room unless you make multiple pages for each enchantment.

Other than enchantments though, pure awesome! Feels really "smooth" so to speak.

[BlindEndermen]

This spoiler contains a research result. In case you want to discover it by your own, don't expand the spioler.

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"Small booties perfect for putting on Wolves. Wolves love their booties, and they unlock many skill and relationship trees for interacting with them"
Oh man, and I was hoping for advice how to put those 'booties' on my wolves feets.

[Wafflewaffle]

Six bloody cool Add-On! It makes night a lot more interesting in early game.

[Six]

Six bloody cool Add-On! It makes night a lot more interesting in early game.

Huh, never even considered that aspect. Collecting things during the day and then bringing them back to your hole in the ground to examine them.

[Six]

Okay, I think I've got a server version working now. Tested it locally, but not very robustly. The nice thing is that the server code is very basic, so most updates will only need to be installed on clients.

I also modified a few little things as follows:
- A bunch more descriptions have been proofed and modified.
- Changed the bench to be a bit more in line with BTW, in that it can't be used with a full block on top and breaks into a shaft and sawdust when broken.
- Changed the gui around slightly, to allow for slightly larger text, though I am still not 100% happy with it.

The other big change is that I've created a way for other add-ons to add descriptions for their own custom blocks and items. This is detailed a bit more in the spoiler below:

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Something like this will need to go in your PostInitialize() method:

Code: Select all

try {
    Class researchBench = Class.forName("SixModResearchBenchAddOn");
    Method addDescription = researchBench.getMethod("addResearchDescription", new Class[]{String.class, String.class});
    try {
		addDescription.invoke(researchBench, "<KEY>", "<DESCRIPTION>");
		// Where <KEY> is of the form "ID#Metadata", (i.e. "5#3" for jungle planks) 
		// and <DESCRIPTION> is the description you want the item to have. 
		// Try to keep the description under 300 characters or so.
	} catch (Exception e) {
		// Catch any of the myriad of exceptions invoke can throw
		e.printStackTrace();
	}	
} catch (ClassNotFoundException e) {
    // Research Bench not loaded, so just chill
} catch (NoSuchMethodException e) {
	// Somehow there is no method.. shouldn't happen
	e.printStackTrace();
} catch (SecurityException e) {
	// getMethod threw a security exception?
	e.printStackTrace();
}

I think that should work, but I've not tested it myself yet. Will try to get someone to do so in IRC tomorrow.
Any questions, just ask.

Download the release here, contains both the client and server versions:
==>> DOWNLOAD

[pgelinas]

I just installed this add-on and I must say very well done. I'm going through all the thing I currently own just for the fun of it and the description are awesome. I've had a good laugh here and there ,particularly the shaft, that was hilarious.

BUT, I also have to report a mistake on the wooden pressure plate: it has the description of a stone pressure plate. I don't have a stone pressure plate to see if they simply have been inverted though.

Thanks a lot for this, I think I'm going to lure some of my friends to play the mod with this. I have a question about something you say in your release note:

generally something wont be directed towards until you would be at a tech level to build it.

How do you determine "tech level"? Is it that I need to craft certain things with the add-on installed? Or just that a particular BTW item might give clue to the next item to advance in tech?

[dawnraider]

I believe it is more along the lines of only hinting at things like that from items that you can only get if you are at the higher tech needed to get the items, like not hinting at melting metal in a crucible until you have pottery going.

[Six]

I believe it is more along the lines of only hinting at things like that from items that you can only get if you are at the higher tech needed to get the items, like not hinting at melting metal in a crucible until you have pottery going.

Yeah, it's pretty much this. It's generally the last item you acquire in a recipe (in normal tech progression) which direct towards it, for example the clock is the thing which mentions the turntable, because by the time you get a clock, you should have access to everything else used in making it.

BUT, I also have to report a mistake on the wooden pressure plate: it has the description of a stone pressure plate. I don't have a stone pressure plate to see if they simply have been inverted though.

Awesome, thanks for that catch. It'll be fixed for the next release. And I'd be really interested to hear how your friends go with using it, the real test will be with people who have never played BTW.

[pgelinas]

I'm still trying to figure how I will present them BTW: do I drop them in the world, tell them to get punching wood and have fun (that's a bit sadistic, they'll die LOTS), or do I guide them to safety for the first day then tell them to discover the world? For some reason, dropping them on their own and watching them struggle is tempting... but not very productive if I want them to play -_-

[Epsilon]

Hey,
personaly I realy love this Add-On. Thus I wondered how it is implemented.
Don't get me wrong on this one, I have never modded Minecraft or something else; just have some experience with Python (e.g. did my own minesweeper).
What I am wondering about is the way the 'description data' is stored. In terms of updating the Add-On and adding possible support for other Add-Ons I have one suggestion.

Redesign the way the 'description data' is handeled.
Store all this Data in a simpel 'txt' file ( maybe named 'Research Bench Descritions [Version number]') placed somewhere in the minecraft folder. The data inside could be stored this way:
[Block/Item ID]:"[Descripion]"[Enter]
e.g.:
[...]
03:"A humbel dirt block. Very common in the world and often found with grass on it. Multiple dirt could be shaped into very useful slabs, or compacted into a better material for roadbuilding"
04[...]
[...]

Pro:
As the data is stored much simpler one can easily add missing descriptions; other Add-Ons can deliver a txt file you simply ctrl+a ctrl+c ctrl+v into the original on.
The Add-Ons descriptions can be patched without 'installing' anything. Just replace the txt file.

Contra:
Anyone can simply read all the descriptions; and with the help of minecraftwiki know which block it refers to.

Aditional things that could be done to prevent problems or add further functionality.
-Save a hash of the original 'description data' file somewhere else. This way it's easy to detect if there have been made any canges to the file. (This could possibly negate the 'Pro arguments')
-Save the file serverside. In case the Player is playing on a server all data is obtained from the server. This would allow servers some control and prevent problems with 'changed' cliend files.

This is just what went trough my mind when I first had a look on the Add-On just as it was released. Now, after observing the forum for a while and having thought this several times I felt brave enough to make it poublic.
Anyway go on with this fenomenal work and don't get confused because by people like me, something thinking they can do it better ;)

[dawnraider]

Ummm.... Major necro, not to mention that this add on is already available for download a few threads down. Also, unless you know what you're taking about, which you openly stated that you don't, (and even then it its highly frowned upon unless specifically asked), don't post coding advice.