The Feature Request / Suggestion Thread - LIMITED TIME ONLY

[Lockeofamber]

Hello Flowerchild!

I've been playing for years (since before the hardcore strata was implemented), but haven't posted very much. Anyways, here are some ideas I've had for sometime (some for a long time, others more recent):

1) I thought it was weird that hand-cranks are not used for much after you get a windmill up, with some notable exceptions like dragon vessels. I thought it could be cool to be able to combine one with a minecart in a way to give some progression to rail systems in the early midgame. This could be similar to the newer sailboat idea, with slower railcarts without one, and faster than current speeds with one (at the expense of food usage), but not as fast as powered rails. Possible implications:
a) Hand-crank carts could be found in abandoned mineshafts. Maybe this could be the only way to get hand-cranks as another layer of progression?
b) These hand-crank carts would be a semi-useful middle level of progression between walking and powered rails, mostly useful for manually moving bulk items in chests, but not particularly useful for anything automated at first. And regular rails are still somewhat useful for moving large amounts of stuff in chests, just more slowly.
c) It would be hilarious if villagers could be placed in these hand-crank carts and used as a semi-expensive source of labor for late game railwork automation. :-)

2) Speaking of sails, could windmills have a crafting recipe to reverse back to regular sails? Either on their own, or with an iron or better axe? Maybe with some loss (normal windmill ->3 sails)

3) As part of a possible system to automate alchemy (no ideas there unfortunately), maybe it could be possible to also automate cow milking? This would be a good way to get bottled milked instead of having to rely on buckets, making jungle spiders more manageable in the late mid game to end game. I was originally thinking being able to make bottled milk directly from buckets, but that would make this tech come much earlier. As a middle ground, maybe make it an alchemy recipe (milk bucket over empty bottles)?

4) Could Cisterns be useful for collecting rainwater? Would make rooftop alchemy more manageable, without providing actual source blocks. Or as part of an automated alchemy system?

5) I had thought lily-pads were place-able on single blocks of water, and discovered that they were place-able on blocks containing vines on water. Then I found it was possible to place them "under" a block two above the water (like a dirt bridge). Seemed tedious and a bit immersion breaking to make bridge of lily-pads this way. Could it be possible to make it so that lily-pads are only place-able on water surfaces that have either: a) a lily-pad next to it, or b) have a solid block adjacent to that water block? I feel like it would be more intuitive this way, and would still prevent the mid-ocean cheesiness.

6) no solid ideas yet, but maybe find a way to make wooden blades useful beyond making waterwheels? Mixing potions? Paddling boats (or naughty villagers)? Maybe a non-lethal knockback?

7) Now that there are more block IDs available, more options for more types of shaped blocks would be awesome. Shaped glass? Curved blocks?

I love your game design aesthetic, especially promoting progression and multi-block builds that really get the designing and motivational parts of my brain going. I've even recommended a good friend of mine who is also working in game design (but doesn't play Minecraft) to study this incredible thing you've done with Minecraft as an example of really good game design. Thank you for all of your work on this mod over the years! Hopefully these ideas can help you make an already great game even better, and keep your work on this mod fun for years to come!

-Lockeofamber

[TheGatesofLogic]

Oh! Had an idea! Villagers need a bed and a wooden paddle (blade?) in order to breed!

On a more serious note: allow anchors/pulleys to lift iron bars so we can make sweet sweet portcullises

[Gilberreke]

I just remembered this one from ages ago: a sonic screwdriver. It's a tool that when right clicked provides a redstone pulse to a block, so you can open metal doors, test your redstone, kickstart certain gates that require initial pulse, etc. Like a button-on-demand.

[Sarudak]

Also the one thing I've wanted for a very long time is some mechanism for small co-op servers to all stay together even in the early game. Something as simple as a server setting where when any person dies everyone else on the server dies (immediately or after a period of time) and is teleported to them resetting the day would work. That was I can play with beginners and actually play WITH them without having to do a bunch of cheaty admin stuff.

[Mason11987]

I was surprised that stump removers didn't give me the log I removed.

[FlowerChild]

Ok, I need some kind of system to respond to all of these :)


Will try to address key points I spot as I read through.

- fix boat bug where we die if an entity is under it

What is this one? Do you have any more details?

- fix seated baby wolfs / cats teleporting to the player when they grow up

Yeah, that's annoying. I can take a look.

Walking between windmill blades.

I can take a quick look again, but pretty sure I set it up the way it is because the MC entity collision system was entirely based on axis-aligned bounding boxes (big upright rectangular solids with width and depth aligned to the world x & y axis), and the bang for the buck on changing that for this one case was negligible at best.

It's possible Notch might have put something in since I implemented that for the ender dragon though (I think it's segmented), so I'll at least do a quick check on that. But still, collision resolution (pushing stuff with the wind mill, what happens when that stuff is pushed into other stuff, etc.) might still make it more trouble than it is worth, even if that were true.

I've considered visually extending strings or ropes between the blades before to make the collision area more obvious, but never liked the look of that very much.

I mulled it over the past few days and the only suggestion I have is lowering the chance of finding gold in desert temples.

Hmmm... that might be an extreme bit of luck on your part, or bad luck on my part, as with my own world gold has been a major limiting factor in expanding my transport rails.

I'll take a note to look at the numbers though.

I've always thought that a sound muffler like block would be useful in these cases.

Charley! Good to hear from you man :)

Yeah, I've been considering something not quite along the lines of what you're saying, but similar in effect, for awhile now. Unfortunately, the MC sound system is pretty bare bones, and not really up to stuff like this.

I might have an idea of how I can wiggle around this, so I'll take another look.

2) Speaking of sails, could windmills have a crafting recipe to reverse back to regular sails?

That's an incredibly reasonable request. I'll add that right away.

5) I had thought lily-pads were place-able on single blocks of water,

Lily pads aren't supposed to be placeable at all. Are you playing a recent version, or are you reporting a bug?

Also the one thing I've wanted for a very long time is some mechanism for small co-op servers to all stay together even in the early game. Something as simple as a server setting where when any person dies everyone else on the server dies (immediately or after a period of time) and is teleported to them resetting the day would work. That was I can play with beginners and actually play WITH them without having to do a bunch of cheaty admin stuff.

How about this: an option that if a player dies, for 24 hours other player that die will go to the same respawn location. Rather than a timer, this will require players to kill themselves to make use of the feature, which sets my tentacles all a flutter.

I hate options, I don't really support MP, and I hope this won't start a bunch of requests for either of those things, but I hear you.

I was surprised that stump removers didn't give me the log I removed.

The idea is that it chemically dissolves the stump, like a really real world chemical stump remover, albeit much much faster.

[TheGatesofLogic]

lily pads are currently placeable on the sides of blocks over water, didn't know that was a bug.

[FlowerChild]

lily pads are currently placeable on the sides of blocks over water, didn't know that was a bug.

Doh! Yeah, that's a bug. Will fix.

[Marasambala]

Are cobblestone fences intended to be available early game, since moving wood fences post-saw ?

[Katalliaan]

The ability to rename things, like in a vMC dead weight.

Why? Seriously. I've never understood that feature or the desire for it.

The only thing I can see it being useful for is labeling chests - one of the 1.5 snapshots made it so that custom-named chests will retain that name as their container label when you place them down.

[FlowerChild]

The only thing I can see it being useful for is labeling chests - one of the 1.5 snapshots made it so that custom-named chests will retain that name as their container label when you place them down.

That requires you to open them to see the label, no? Not really as useful as just placing an external sign.

Are cobblestone fences intended to be available early game, since moving wood fences post-saw ?

Yeah, that's an entirely fair question. Not quite as spoitable first night as planks, do to the value of cobble mind you. Will think on it further.

[FlowerChild]

Aesthetically, backporting the log ends would make me very happy (ie, birch and spruce logs look like they have birch and spruce wood inside them, rather than oak).

Returning back here a second: I was just testing some stuff out in the most recent vanilla MC, including the above.

Can you give me some idea as to what this does for you? I'm comparing old and new side by side, and the most I can work up is a 'meh'. I actually find the new tree-type specific textures a bit cheesy looking.

[Psion]

as far as aesthetic blocks go, i do like the look of the terracotta from recent minecraft versions. they give a nice "tile floor" look.

some eastern aesthetics like paper walls would be nice too, or tatami mats and bamboo blocks.

as far as storage blocks go, i would personally like to see one for wheat (for thatch roofs, hay bales, etc) and coal/charcoal.

[kazerima]

During my time at work today, I came up with a large integrated system concept to address some of the things people requested and put them all together in a neat little package. I know you prefer to work things out on your own instead of having people send you full on engineered concepts, but I'd like your feedback on it all the same.

Spoiler

Show

Better Than Walking: A proposed flight system and means of extending Lapis while expanding upon less used areas and systems in the game.

I. Hardcore Lashing
• Use rope + glue to create a Lash, that can bind two entities together.
• Bind sheep together to create Airsheeps.

II. Airsheeps
• A bunch of sheep bound together creates a raft made of animals. Due to entity collision, the player shouldn't end up falling when there's a bunch of them put together.
• The float speed of an Airsheep is determined based on the number of Normal Sheep and Better Sheep.
• Normal Sheep weigh the Airsheep down, adding ballast. Can be converted to Better Sheep with soul urns mid-flight.
• Better Sheep add lift to the Airsheep. Can remove lift by shearing them.
• Sheep dying mid-flight from enemy attacks can be a serious hazard that causes the lift/ballast levels to change rapidly. Players should be encouraged to dye their normal sheep and Better Sheep different colors for quick re-balancing.
• Steering is accomplished by holding up a sail, much like boats, and otherwise slowly floats in place.

III. Whale Hunting
• The air is incredibly thin in higher elevations, above cloud level the player suffocates as if underwater. Respiration functions as normal, with soulforged steel pressure suits becoming necessary for extended periods spent above cloud level. Items and non-player entities are unaffected to preserve current builds.
• Also above cloud level are giant flying whale-creatures that are extremely powerful. They are barely visible as dark menacing shapes from the ground.
• To hunt sky-whales, Airsheep are preferred, as they move too quickly for towers to be a preferred method of reaching and catching up to them.
• When killed, sky-whales drop a material that can be combined with Lapis to effectively double the player's supply, much like nethercoal does for coal.
• Flying Squid/Hats as companion mobs in the sky as well, that keep high elevation airspace from being completely empty/safe aside from the sky-whales. They should drop some appropriate material for another mechanic.

Chief benefits of this proposal are as follows:
• Use of flight and flying mobs makes use of previously unused airspace that players rarely interact with and adds new systems for players to enjoy.
• Allows a renewable means of extending Lapis supplies while ensuring actual Lapis still remains the limiting factor in producing Lapis based blocks.
• Deep Ocean often has very poor visibility, meaning the necessity of soulforged pressure suits is pretty limited at present to those truly dedicated to making underwater bases that have little practical use. By requiring their use for extended post-cloud exposure, not only are pressure suits now a necessity of certain builds.
• The player is now encouraged to build wide instead of tall whenever possible, encouraging use of horizontal transport systems such as screw pumps and minecarts.
• Provides a soft-gating mechanism for build height based on their available respiration enchantment level and player skill.
• Maintains consistency with the Better Than Wolves style and flavor, incorporating previously mentioned "flying sheep" designs.
• Limits on time spent above cloud level encourages use of ladders/platforms as time-saving mechanisms for ascending/descending without taking damage from either falling or suffocation.
• Use of Airsheeps allow for movement on the raft while the raft itself moves, and floats above the terrain. This makes it ideal for mapping large areas, migrating small groups of mobs, or trying to shoot down ghasts in the Nether.
• Remains relatively risky compared to walking/boating, as flying squid/whales and ground-based skeletons can destroy the sheep holding everything up no matter how much armor the player is wearing.

[EtherealWrath]

Last time I played through, I craved the need for a few more aesthetic options (a fair few have already cropped up in this thread)

Bone bars
Blaze bars
Placing individual bones and using them as candle holders
I was also thinking about sticking a torch in a zombie head/skeleton skull(/player skull) to make a lantern.

Being able to use the saw in combination with the turntable (as a lathe) might be fun to play about with. (guess it'll make a few fancier looking wooden building blocks).

Edit
Also splash potions; I've avoided using them because Steve throws like a girl and your likely end up getting hit by your own poison.
(comparing the range to a thrown soul urn)

[FlowerChild]

The thread is beginning to drag me down a bit guys. I'd ask that folks try to reserve it for the things they really want / need and which seem at least vaguely feasible so I don't feel obliged to shut it down.

During my time at work today, I came up with a large integrated system concept to address some of the things people requested and put them all together in a neat little package. I know you prefer to work things out on your own instead of having people send you full on engineered concepts, but I'd like your feedback on it all the same.

Hehe... well, considering you've just invented a massive system that would likely take dozens of hours to implement all for the sake of producing some more lapis, I'll assume you're joking :)

I've always been fond of the idea of tying ropes to the sky-sheep though. I assume you grabbed that from one of our previous chats.

[erikdk321]

In addition to more cosmetic blocks and bug fixes, I would like to see an improvement to animal AI.

To make efficient use of cows, you need a lot of grass, but enclosing them in a fence causes them to 'build up' near the edges of the range. I suspect this has to do with the AI checking for blocks outside the range to walk towards and then being blocked by the fence. Rather than encouraging the building of immersive and challenging (because you have to clear a large area with torches) large scale ranges, hardcore grass encourages the building of boring holes - even well into the mid to late game.

EDIT: Just to clarify why the build up of animals near the edges is a problem for practical reasons: It's inefficient in terms of space and usage of grass.

[Rob]

I feel regular minecarts are too powerful which is a reason the furnace cart is out shined. The system needs progression similar to other technologies. Which would require some nerfs I'd imagine.

Ignore the spoiler if you'd rather take that feedback and come to your own conclusions. This idea will kinda break existing builds. They will need minor tweaking at the very least. I don't know how you could revamp a system to add progression without breaking builds though.

Spoiler

Show

Cart Links
A new item crafted with iron nuggets used to stick carts together. Now carts can be pulled as well as pushed. (Idea by Rockoutwill :D)

Powered Carts
0. Regular Cart - Can be 'pushed' by the player while sitting in it, moves at run speed? Not effected by any special rails, treats them as regular rails.
1. Furnace - Isn't effected by powered rails, early tech speed boost. Same speed(maybe less) as a Mechanical cart but requires fuel.
2. Mechanical - Created like the furnace cart, but crafted with a gear box. It 'winds up' on special gearbox rails (new crafted item). Cart slows down at a set distance, needing to pass over a new gearbox rail to repower, similar to how powered rails work now. 1/2 speed(maybe more) of a redstone cart.
3. Redstone - Created like a furnace cart, but crafted with a redstone repeater(or some other redstone item). It requires all rails to be powered to keep the speed up. Unpowered rails will stop it, as they do now. Regular rails make the cart quickly loose speed. (Twice as fast as the Mechanical Cart.)

Rails
1. Mechanical Rails - Used to power up Mechanical Carts.
2. Powered Rails - Possibly allow regular rails to be crafted into powered.. or just leave us to melt down and reforge at a loss of iron.

[kazerima]

Hehe... well, considering you've just invented a massive system that would likely take dozens of hours to implement all for the sake of producing some more lapis, I'll assume you're joking :)

I've always been fond of the idea of tying ropes to the sky-sheep though. I assume you grabbed that from one of our previous chats.

Borrowed it from an older thread a couple years ago actually, which formed the cornerstone of the whole idea trying to think of what implementing it would entail and how to make it a valuable part of the game rather than a silly side feature like pig riding.
I realized there wasn't much purpose to flight as-is right now without discouraging players from building rail networks for personal transport, and tried to engineer a system that would reward the use of flight as a mechanic without stepping on other systems' toes. Maybe bolster some systems the other people mentioned along the way and add some gating mechanism to stop players from trying to go at it too early. The lapis extension was less the design focus so much as a play incentive to make use of the system in a meaningful way, and the air mobs to fill an otherwise empty sky that had no real reason to fly in nor danger when traveling that way.

Even though I designed it more seriously as an exercise in system design, I'm still glad you got a good chuckle out of it. Thinking back, it is pretty ridiculous and I have no idea whether such an entity binding system that tracks them all for lift/drag while keeping them independent is even possible in MC's engine, or is worth the bang-for-buck necessary to allow player flight. In the end, the point is less to "make a system for flower" and more provide inspiration for later ideas, but generally this is why I hold back from coming up with suggestions for their own sake :)

[William the tuba]

Can you give me some idea as to what this does for you? I'm comparing old and new side by side, and the most I can work up is a 'meh'. I actually find the new tree-type specific textures a bit cheesy looking.

Not sure if I explained what I wanted very well:


I find it immersion breaking, mostly. I'd go so far to say the one on the left doesn't look like a tree, but a collection of flat quads, but with the correct texture I can believe the bark has thickness and that it's actually a birch tree.

[Sarudak]

Oooo... Make all crops only able to grow in sunlight or under light blocks. I just realized this is not the case even though I always do all my farming on the surface, because it seems silly to me otherwise, but open air farms (or having to build greenhouses for protection just makes so much more sense.

[Rob]

Also, glass stairs and slabs. I don't need all the other micro blocks, just the basics.

[EtherealWrath]

A few pieces of stained glass would be very nice.
red/yellow/blue, from redstone/glowstone/lapis in the crucible
orange/green/purple and cyan/magenta.

(limiting it to mineral dyes hopefully prevents it from being just another 16 wool variants)

[abculatter_2]

A few pieces of stained glass would be very nice.
red/yellow/blue, from redstone/glowstone/lapis in the crucible
orange/green/purple and cyan/magenta.

(limiting it to mineral dyes hopefully prevents it from being just another 16 wool variants)

Colored lamps!
That project their color into lenses!

[chaoticneutral]

A few pieces of stained glass would be very nice.
red/yellow/blue, from redstone/glowstone/lapis in the crucible
orange/green/purple and cyan/magenta.

I thought about this in the past, it would be cool if we used metal nuggets plus other reagents to stain glass; like gold for red, iron for green, or iron plus brimstone for yellow. Blue would be tricky though since the game doesn't have cobalt or copper, but maybe redstone is copper oxide? [Just a silly idea, don't consider it as a suggestion.]