Creepers exploding on impact

[FlowerChild]

This came up during Vioki and Charlie's stream today and I wanted to ask for confirmation here before I look into it:

Did Mojang change creepers to explode more quickly if they take fall damage in 1.5?

There was a death towards the end of Vioki's last LP where a creeper dropped right in front of him and almost instantly exploded that felt far more random than anything I've ever seen before, and someone mentioned the above as the cause.

Anyone know anything about this? If that's really happening, that's more than just a tad fucked, and definitely needs changing.

[Gunnerman21]

I think creepers still work "correctly" when falling, but i think its during that fall that the creeper charges up, so then when it hits the ground it's like the creeper exploded instantly. I have no clue what the code is for creeper charging, but that's my theory.

[Sinornithosaurus]

Yes, it was added during on of the later 1.4 releases

[lostone1993]

creeper page

1.4.2 12w38b New Creeper fall mechanics; Creepers will explode if they fall on the player from a certain height.

sounds like it

[FlowerChild]

1.4.2 12w38b New Creeper fall mechanics; Creepers will explode if they fall on the player from a certain height.

Sigh...that's it exactly. From the version history for 1.4.2 on the wiki:

Will start exploding when they hit the ground, with explosions being more imminent with higher falls

So, he turned them into impact-detonated bombs under certain circumstances. Lovely.

There's having to be cautious in certain situations (like underground ravines where you have to watch out for them dropping on you), which I like. Then there's just randomly dying (like being cautious and having one immediately kill you with zero time to react even if you're looking straight at it), which I most definitely don't.

Here, check this out:

http://youtu.be/4ksMToL9syA?t=12m47s

I doubt anyone could have avoided that or have seen it coming.

[Mason11987]

Here, check this out:

http://youtu.be/4ksMToL9syA?t=12m47s

I doubt anyone could have avoided that or have seen it coming.

Yeah.... so I'll be avoiding ravines until that behavior is gone. I guess when death doesn't matter, making it cheap isn't a big deal, but in BTW that's just not right.

[EpicAaron]

I learned of this behavior recently as well... In a ravine next to a pool of lava.

[Battlecat]

Yeah, that suicide bomber behavior came at the same time dinnerbone made it so mobs would path off cliffs chasing players if the fall was survivable. The suicide creepers was a terrifying bonus which has killed me a couple times.

[DreamsofFury]

I have 8 HCS bases around my world due to that lame ass mechanic, there would be more but theres nothing worse than rage quiting for days due to the fact its a total bullshit death, so I just opened to lan long enough to port back to my base. Deaths that are my fault are fine, deaths that you have no possible chance to avoid should NEVER be in games unless its a scripted event in an rpg.

[Pfilson]

I've been referring to them as Drop Creepers for a while because of this mechanic, although I thought it was just because I was failing to realize that they had dropped down in time to get away...

[FlowerChild]

I've been referring to them as Drop Creepers for a while because of this mechanic, although I thought it was just because I was failing to realize that they had dropped down in time to get away...

Yup, that was my assumption as well, which is why I didn't do anything about it. My eyes kinda went wide yesterday though when I saw what happened to Vioki, as it was both far worse than anything I've experienced myself, and the timing just didn't seem right in terms of how much time he had to get away (or lack thereof).

If someone is staring at a wall mining and a creeper drops behind them and blows up, I consider that entirely fair game. They're in a precarious position and did not take their surroundings into account, thus the death is their own damn fault, and they will (hopefully) learn not to do that again.

But if you're just walking down a corridor that appears perfectly fine, obviously paying attention, and one drops right in front of you without any chance for you to react to that information and escape, that's just hela-lame.

[FlowerChild]

You guys ever play D&D or another tabletop game with a novice GM that thinks their job is to kill the players?

It just occurred to me that's what a lot of Dinnerbone's recent changes to "increase challenge" have felt like. No concept of balance, or "challenge" as actually challenging the players to find solutions to a problem *with at least one solution*, rather, just "Hurr durr...is this thing ever going to kill you now".

[Zhil]

You guys ever play D&D or another tabletop game with a novice GM that thinks their job is to kill the players?

It just occurred to me that's what a lot of Dinnerbone's recent changes to "increase challenge" have felt like. No concept of balance, or "challenge" as actually challenging the players to find solutions to a problem *with at least one solution*, rather, just "Hurr durr...is this thing ever going to kill you now".

It's something I gave a lot of thought before. Comes down to predictability as I mentioned in the feedback thread. Completely unpredictable behavior is boring in games. Mark Rosewater (MtG designer) made a good point about it in his randomness column.

1) Randomness keeps stuff interesting (drawing from the library)
2) It still needs to predictable (IE, with a balanced deck, over time, you'll usually draw 2 land in an opening hand)
3) It's fun to give players control over the random aspect (use cards to re-order the top X cards of your library)

In Minecraft that would mean:

1) Cave generation. Each cave is different, holes for creepers will be anywhere
2) Give creepers predictable behavior, by letting players respond
3) In Minecraft 3 almost always comes down to being able to manipulate the world. You have tons of ways by either placing or breaking blocks to change the random aspect of caves. Building a quick wall, torch strategies, digging through a part, etc.

If they just become death bombs, you'll just randomly die from time to time, which is not predictable. If you give that split second of time, it becomes a predictable threat you can prepare for.

[FlowerChild]

"Fixed" for next release.

Turns out creepers could explode in a quarter of a second (as opposed to the usual second and a half) if they fell from sufficient height.

<face palm>

[Zhil]

"Fixed" for next release.

Turns out creepers could explode in a quarter of a second (as opposed to the usual second and a half) if it fell from sufficient height.

<face palm>

Thanks, that's a good change :)

[FlowerChild]

Thanks, that's a good change :)

Yeah, I feel bad now though as people were complaining about random creeper explosions in the past and unaware of the timer change, I basically told them to suck it down.

Anyways, my apologies for not recognizing this issue sooner and not taking those complaints more seriously. It was only when I saw it in action myself (I must have been very lucky in my own play to not have this kind of thing happen to me before) that I realized something really was off here.

[Zhil]

Anyways, my apologies for not recognizing this issue sooner and not taking those complaints more seriously. It was only when I saw it in action myself (I must have been very lucky in my own play to not have this kind of thing happen to me before) that I realized something really was off here.

Well, I still say it's partly their fault too. I always look at the ceiling for holes and I rarely get attacked by creepers from above as a result. I hadn't really noticed the behavior either, so that might be it.

[FlowerChild]

Well, I still say it's partly their fault too. I always look at the ceiling for holes and I rarely get attacked by creepers from above as a result. I hadn't really noticed the behavior either, so that might be it.

Oh yes, which is why my response got muddled. There were two different factors at play: the mobs dropping on your from height, which yes, you can avoid by being cautious most of the time, and which was the part of this I was responding to. Then there was the timer decrease, which I did not know about and which made this excessively random in certain scenarios. Again, if you watch that Vioki death (if you follow the link I gave with the time set and just watch that bit, it won't spoil anything for you), there's just no possible way out of that scenario, and I can't see any precautions he might have taken helping to prevent it.

When I'm balancing stuff like this, I generally try to do it incrementally to hit the sweet spot. Dinnerbone apparently just went whole hog and simultaneously implemented two different things that affect the same kind of scenarios, with the timer adjustment pushing it into la-la land.

EDIT: After watching the segment over and over I'd estimate Vioki's creeper took about a second to explode. I'm pretty sure with the extra half second he would have gotten away based on his movements at the time.

[Zhil]

Oh yeah, I agree, that was a devious one.

[Rich131]

Man the very same thing happened to me earlier today. I just put it down to lag that it exploded in no more than half a second. I'm going to be examining vMC's changelogs an awful lot more closely after that. Fair play to you for fixing it FC, I feel that you are being forced to spend more time repairing damages caused by updates these days than you've ever had to before!