Creator Appreciation Day

[BlackCat]

And so it was declared that on this wonderful march the 6th (for no real particular reason) that a holiday would be made.

That holiday was called FlowerChild Appreciation day.

For all the work he puts towards us having a (mostly) good time, and for all the great game design (though it is satisfactorily frustrating) he deserves this.

And so on what would be a shitty day (hump day) we can instead celebrate the gloriousness that is the fine mod and mod maker that we have been gifted with, thanks for all you do FC, you're my favorite offspring of a plant in human form.

But seriously man, you've done a shit load lately that I have greatly appreciated, and I really wanted to say thanks.

Thanks.

(I'm not very good with words, especially thank you's, so hopefully this will suffice)

Edit: Changed title to avoid using FC's name

[Ribky]

All hail the creator! Ph'nglui mglw'nafh FlowerChild Nether wgah'nagl fhtagn!

Thanks for years of awesome, and for more years to come. :)

[FlowerChild]

Awwww...shucks man, thank you :)

But don't forget that April 10th is rapidly approaching which is the already designated annual BTW appreciation day. The second anniversary of the mod shall soon be upon us!

[Detritus]

Awwww...shucks man, thank you :)

But don't forget that April 10th is rapidly approaching which is the already designated annual BTW appreciation day. The second anniversary of the mod shall soon be upon us!

Ermagherd. Makes me excited :D

[Foxy Boxes]

Ermagherd

Makes me cringe. But yes, I too am appreciative and excited... and whatnot. Yeah, I'm a real expert with words.

[TSA]

Happy FlowerChild Appreciation day!

thanks for all the work.
We appreciate it.

[weldaSB]

Damn you FlowerChild, you have almost had me addicted to something for over a year. =)

[agentwiggles]

Wow... can't believe it's been a year since I picked up this mod. I remember my brother telling me about the mod - I was talking to him on the phone from school and he mentioned a video he'd seen online demonstrating some of the BTW features. At the time, I had largely gotten out of playing Minecraft - I'm always busy as hell with school, so gaming hadn't been a priority for a while. Anyway, I pulled up the video and watched it.

Damn. I couldn't believe what I was seeing. This looked like the Minecraft I had always wanted. These were the kinds of features I'd hoped for since I started playing (I remember being so pissed when I had to generate a new world to find redstone...). This mod looked like something I needed to play. I'd never wanted to bother with modding MC before, but I got everything installed, read through some stuff on the wiki, and jumped in with both feet - to the mod at first, and then to the community. I had no way of knowing it at the time, but BTW was about to change my life.

That probably sounds kind of crazy, but it's true. See, I was a sophomore in college, studying Computer Engineering (basically, it's Elec. Eng. and Computer Science mixed together, if you don't know.) But in the spring of last year, I was on the tail end of a rough period. I'd failed an essential course 3 times, which meant that I wasn't eligible to take it again. Since the course was essential to my progress in the CpE major, I was removed from the major since I obviously wasn't going to be completing it. I was burnt out on my coursework, frustrated with school and money, and kinda depressed, but I'd resigned myself to the change, and decided I was going to study Psychology. I was in easy courses, which weren't challenging me or making me think and weren't really providing any of the satisfaction that I'd hoped they would, and kind of only contributed to my downward spiral. I figured that I probably wouldn't be returning to school after that spring, it just didn't really seem to make sense. That's about when I learned about BTW.

Over the next few months, I became totally re-addicted to Minecraft. It was summer, I was working a good job, and everything was going reasonably well. I played the game as much as I could, and spent almost the same amount of time reading the forum posts. My favorite things to read were the discussions about game design. In this community, I found a bunch of like-minded gamers - people who understood the delicate balancing act that goes into making a great videogame, the subtle design features on every level that create a fascinating experience. Reading FC's thoughts on this, and other posters really made me think. It reminded me of an article about Super Metroid that I'd found fascinating (here). I really started to think about game design, in whatever I played, trying to peek behind the curtain and think about why things were the way that they were.

Video games had always been a huge part of my life. I've been playing them as far back as I can remember. And to create video games... that had always been a dream of mine. But it never seemed like a practical path to focus on, it seemed like something that was so inaccessible, an industry that would be near impossible to break into. So I didn't worry about them when I started thinking about college. During that summer, working in a shop near my campus, and smoking more pot than anyone has any right to, I started thinking a lot about my old CpE major, and how I'd always liked the CS/programming aspect, and the stuff I didn't like at all was the EE stuff. After thinking long and hard, I decided to see if I could get reinstated into the College of Engineering at my school as a CS major. It wasn't easy to convince the guys in charge that I should be allowed back in, but we reached an agreement - I would take a semester of CS coursework and see how I did, and if I proved that I'd gotten my head on straight, I'd be allowed to retake my failed math course and get back into the program.

And I did, because BTW had inspired me and made me realize that I wanted to make video games. I figured that if I could learn the programming in school, I could learn the game design stuff through reading, experimentation, and paying attention to the design of my favorite games. I passed every class, with good grades in all. I'm now officially a computer science major, and, though I struggle with some motivation issues due to some mental stuff, I've been performing well. I've had do a lot of refactoring in my life to keep myself organized and productive, especially in a difficult major, and BTW helped me here too, in that I learned a lot about productivity through playing BTW.

I had a bunch of projects going, and so it became natural to start some organizational systems. I keep a to-do list of projects, often with some notes on each. Sometimes projects get a detailed writeup in their own file. I learned about planning out a list of things to accomplish in a session of play. I learned about effective ways to get myself to do recurring, boring tasks like harvesting manual farms. I learned that it was better to just START the huge mob-trap project instead of just wasting time thinking about it and being overwhelmed by its complexity. And when I found the same inspiration, created by BTW, in my schoolwork, just like I had before in my MC world, it became a lot easier to apply that stuff to my real life.

So Better Than Wolves, and FlowerChild, literally changed my life. FlowerChild, I hope you take the time to at least skim this, even though I know it's a long and rambly wall of text, because I want you to know the enormous impact that your work has had on my life. I went from "total burnout" to "only half a burnout who's trying really hard" (an improvement that I want to continue making) because what you dedicate your spare time to, for free, inspired me to work my ass off to try to be able to do what you do. To many people, BTW will only ever be "an awesome Minecraft mod" and that's great - since that's likely exactly what you're going for. But for me, BTW is something more, much more than I can describe in a post of even this prodigious length.

tl;dr - You have my sincerest thanks for the impact of your work on your life. I'll be following your work as far as it goes, and supporting you all the way, and maybe someday I'll make something you'll want to play!

[FlowerChild]

Wow man, thanks for telling that story. I did indeed read the whole thing, and it means a lot to me to know my work has had that kind of positive influence on someone :)

[Wafflewaffle]

All hail to Cthulhu favorite son! The optimizer of wild canines! May your tentacles never shrink and your humor never dry!!

Armed with BanHammer one hand, MojangAxe in the other you have made our gaming experiences something to remember. For that I toste to you sir! Cheers!

[MrPlatypus]

Thanks a lot FlowerChild. The fact that you are willing to put so much hard work into something for the enjoyment of others is truly a testimony to you as a person. I'm glad that I get to be a part of such a great community that shares an interest in something that I love, and I owe that to you.

[kilgore trout]

Registered just to say that I must agree with the sentiment. This mod kicks ass. Without it, I would definitely be past my MC faze. Thanks for keeping it up for so long. Also, thanks for not really giving a shit about what the majority of the people want. That hardheaded approach might give you some flack, but it certainly makes for a mod that gives the player a cohesive experience.

Heaps of appreciation to you, and may you stay forever young.

toodeloo!

[mazer246]

Two years you say? Wow, I remember the first day this mod was released, I remember reading through EVERY post on the MCF thread until about the 100th page or so... mostly to see what idiotic things were being posted by users and FCs responses. I also remember how I stumbled upon this mod: Back then, vMC was a very boring experience for me, and I always required mods to keep it interesting. But even mods failed to keep it challenging and exciting for me. When 1.3 was released with wolves, I was disappointed. I went to the forums to search for a mod to make the wolves something more than what they were and stumbled across this mod because it had "wolves" in the title. Was kinda disappointed how it didn't do anything to wolves but I installed it anyway since most of the changes made sense. My real admiration came later when mechanical power was introduced, this mod has never left my MC installation since. So thank you FlowerChild, for the 2 years of enjoyment and many more to come.

[haphazardnuke]

Wait a tick. Two years? Wasn't the first anniversary just ... a few ... months... damn, time has flown by. Since we're all reminiscing, I tried to remember when I found the mod. I can't. I know it was over a year ago! xD
I, too, read through part of the MCF thread. I think I eventually got up past the 500s, but then I found out about the forums. It's nicer here, certainly.
you know, I think it really says something that I can't remember when I first installed this mod. BTW has just always been part of Minecraft for me. There's no going back to vanilla. I've tried *other* mods, and while I was impressed with certain ones (quarries and such come to mind), they just never felt as well-constructed, as well-planned as BTW does. All my friends think I'm crazy for preferring bulky, water-and-redstone machinery over 'black-boxes' and other wizardry, but they just haven't tried it yet ^_^ I may make a small server for them with some pre-made structures to show off the cool stuff one can make with this mod.
To paraphrase everyone else; you've done some amazing things here, FC. You are a spiky, tentacled inspiration to us all.

[The Lord of Brick]

All hail to Cthulhu favorite son! The optimizer of wild canines! May your tentacles never shrink and your humor never dry!!

Armed with BanHammer one hand, MojangAxe in the other you have made our gaming experiences something to remember. For that I toste to you sir! Cheers!

Ahem, I believe you mean the Mojaxe.

[dawnraider]

Man, it's been a long time since I started playing BTW. I remember bellows first being added (i joined on v2.80), and the game has changed a lot since then. I remember the first steps towards a tech tree. 2.9x I think. I at first hated the changes since it made me actually have to progress instead of just doing what I wanted, but look how it ended up. FC, you brought fun back to a game that I would have lost interest in long ago. So thank you for bringing a bit of fun into my otherwise dull and stressful life.