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Jiro_89
19th July 2014, 20:15
Build 79 is here Oct 05 2014 10:14 PM | Bioxx (http://terrafirmacraft.com/f/user/2-bioxx/) in Articles (http://terrafirmacraft.com/index.html/_/articles/)

This is a very long changelog and I'm sure that I've missed a lot.

Please be aware that the wiki is now outdated in many areas and will take some time to reflect all of the new changes.

Full changelog after the jump.
TFC 0.79.0 Changelog
IMPORTANT
Minecraft 1.7 is known to have very bad lighting calculations which are exacerbated by TFC’s 256 height worlds. As a result, minecraft may run very poorly with TFC installed. To fix this and many other issues with minecraft performance it is highly recommended that you use FastCraft by Player (http://forum.industrial-craft.net/index.php?page=Thread&threadID=10820) . This mod is optional and can be run by both a server or client to correct issues with vanilla code.


Rewrote barrels into a much more useful and user friendly block. Barrels now contain two tabs, one for liquid storage and one for solid storage. The liquid storage interface is very similar to the old barrel UI from 78 but now provides better information when processing items inside the barrel. Additionally, TFC barrels function as a Liquid container for any forge liquids from other mods (Hooray compatability!). The solid storage tab is only available if there is no liquid in the barrel. Similarly if the player places more than one item in the barrel, the liquid tab is disabled.



Added Large Ceramic Vessel that acts as a lower tech version of the barrel in all respects. It can only hold 5000mb of liquid which is half the capacity for the normal barrel and only has 9 slots for solid storage instead of 12. As mentioned before, the tech level is lower which means that some recipes like alcohol simply aren’t available until you have a barrel.
Added capacity for wearable objects. At this time we’ve opted to start slowly with only items that are carryable on your back. If you have an item in your inventory that has been marked as too heavy for normal carrying, you will be unable to move until the item is removed or it is placed on your back. These items will render correctly as though you are carrying it. Examples of carryable objects would be sealed barrels and anvils.
Added 2 new meal types, Sandwiches and Salads. Removed the old generic Meal and redesigned the food prep interface. Sandwiches have a higher max food weight value than other meal types and the entire thing is eaten in one use instead of increments. Additionally sandwiches give a 25% boost to filling over other food types. Salads on the other hand are your basic meal and are incredibly easy to create.
All foods now have tastes associated with them. Each player also has a specific preferred taste profile that is determined by the players name and the world seed.

When players make meals they want to get the taste profile of the meal to match the taste profile of whomever is going to consume the meal as closely as possible because this increases both the satisfaction(which makes food last longer) and the nutritional value of the meal for that player(I’m aware this isn’t realistic please don’t make threads about it).
All foods have a base taste profile which is then modified by various factors. In the case of animals, the modified taste is random(I want to expand upon this to make it more controlled in the future). When it comes to crops however, the modified taste value is directly influenced by the environment in which it is grown and can be controlled by the player (Again I want to expand upon this in the future to make it more transparent).
When making a meal, all of the tastes are added together to determine the taste of the meal. This is pretty straight forward.


Completely changed the way in which animals are tamed. Gone are the days when a few bones are enough to create a wolf army.

Instead of being tamed with a bone, wolves will only follow players
All wolves will sit if tied to a fence post and stand if tied to a player
All animals now have a familiarity value which needs to be increased
Familiarity can be increased by performing a particular action at least once a day

for wolves, this means shift-right clicking to pet them
for cows, sheep, chickens, and pigs this means feeding them grain
for bears, this means feeding them fish
for horses, this means feeding them grain, however after a certain point, the horse will no longer become familiar this way, and instead will only become familiar by riding it for an average of 30 seconds per day
for deer, this means feeding them salt


Certain familiarity levels are required to interact with animals in certain ways such as milking cows, shearing sheep, riding horses, breeding animals, and naming animals
Familiarity will decrease slightly each day if it hasn’t reached a certain level and you haven’t interacted with the animal
Familiarity has a set cap after which it can no longer be increased in adult animals. Baby animals can always increase their familiarity, and do so much faster than adults.
Baby animals retain 50% of their mother’s familiarity when born, unless she is close to maximum familiarity, in which case they will retain 90% of it


Adjusted pregnancy times for animals and the length of time for them to reach adulthood:

Bear*: gestation time: 7 months. Adult age: 60 months
Chicken/Pheasant*: Adult age: 4.14 months
Cow: gestation time: 9 months. Adult age: 36 months
Deer*: gestation time: 7 months. Adult age: 24 months
Horse: gestation time: 11.17 months. Adult age: 30 months
Pig: gestation time: 3.7 months. Adult age: 15 months
Sheep: gestation time: 5 months. Adult age: 12 months
Wolf: gestation time: 2.25 months. Adult age: 9 months


[* Animal currently can’t be bred]


Deer, bears, and wolves are now considered wild, and will despawn and respawn.
Any animal that has been roped at least once won’t despawn, in case you want to keep them around
Added name tag crafting recipe: marking, paper, string
Right-click a name tag to give it a name
Fishing has been rewritten to provide a much more rewarding experience.

Hold right click to charge the fishing rod when casting
Reel in the bobber by right clicking
When a fish bites onto the line, try to reel it in without letting the line snap


Added Prospecting and Butchering Skills.

Leveling up your prospecting skill will cause less false negatives to occur. It also has a role to play in panning for ores, causing higher tier ores to be available to find. Example: Reaching Adept level unlocks silver to be found from panning.
Butchery skill is gained when killing any animal. As this increases, more meat will drop from animals that are killed. As a result of this, the amount of meat dropped at low levels is drastically reduced. With no skill in butchery, only 1% of current amounts will drop as usable meat to simulate the players lack of knowledge about general animal anatomy.


Agriculture skill level now affects the ability to view nutrient levels of crops. You must be an Expert to get this information.
Added weather and time based fog effects where fog will close in during inclement weather or early in the mornings.
Overhauled Jungles so that they are no longer barren and just plain terrible. Ground shrubs and vines once again inhabit these regions.
Condensed support beams into a single item and totally rewrote how they are placed in the world. Horizontal beams can only be placed between two vertical beams and can not be placed individually anymore. If any horizontal block breaks, the entire beam will break causing the ceiling to lose support. The changes to rock were made to encourage the use of these blocks more.
Reduced the hardness of all raw stone blocks to allow for easier mining. Increased the rate at which raw stone collapses to make tunneling far more dangerous. Raw stone also reacts to stone being broken in a larger area to prevent certain ways to get around this mechanic. Smooth Stone and Stone Bricks have had their hardness increased greatly to make them a more defensive material.
Reduced the hardness of player placed logs to make using logs a more attractive option in building.
Updated sluice rendering. The sluice was the very first minecraft block that I ever created and its age showed. The block has received a visual overhaul even though its basic mechanics have not changed at all. In a future hotfix/build I will update it once again to show the type of wood from which it was made.
Torches now burn out after roughly 48 in game hours. They can easily be relit by right clicking them with a torch in your inventory. Additionally you can create new torches by right clicking on a placed torch with a stick. This is not as efficient as creating them in a firepit but is useful when on the move.
Rewrote how charcoal pits are created. They’ve finally reached my original vision. Firepits are no longer needed for the creation of charcoal(this was always weird right?). Instead after creating your pile of log piles and covering it over, you drop a torch on top of any logpile. After a few seconds, the torch will disappear and that logpile will mark itself for charcoal creation. It will then propagate this to all log piles that it touches. At this point it should be fully covered over lest the whole thing burn up.
Rewrote and reenabled armor stands.
Added loom for cloth creation.

Place string on the loom with right click. (16 wool yarn or 24 spider string)
hold shift-right click once full to begin to weave the threads together
once the loom stops operating, right click to remove your cloth
silk and wool can be used interchangeably to make carpets, beds and paintings


Baby zombies have been disabled. Zombie reinforcements are now correctly TFC variants instead of vanilla.
Thatch blocks are no longer a solid block. They’ve been redesigned to more correctly match their intended purpose as an early game roofing material. We feel that with the changes to the chopping speed of placed logs, this will have a positive effect on the way players interact with the world. As it was, thatch was an incredibly cheap magic block much the same way that peat used to be.
Skills now properly sync to the player upon respawning.
Added Smoke racks for smoking and drying foods. The food must first be brined in... you guessed it Brine. This is a combination of 10% Vinegar and 90% Saltwater. After a food has been brined it can be stored in a container full of vinegar to pickle the food and drastically increase its shelf life.
Added shears recipe to the anvil. This is created with two wrought iron knife blades.
Added wrought iron grill for cooking up to 6 food items at once.
Very heavy modifications to worldgen.

Overall, oceans should be smaller than in 78.
Added Lake biomes full of fresh water.
Added gravel beaches straddle rocky/hilly areas and oceans
All beaches are now relatively flat and only 1-3 blocks above sea level. They are also feature stone cliffs between them and their neighboring land biome which simulates tidal erosion. I think this is an incredibly beautiful feature. i hope you guys like it as much as I do -B


Crops now properly check for sky access as they grow. Sorry guys, no more underground farms.
Berry bushes can now only be placed on grass. They can now be left clicked to harvest them when in season. Enabled Cranberries.
Added metal trapdoors which are made by combining any metal sheet with any metal ingot. The sheet will determine the color of the door, and the ingot will determine the color of the hinges. these trap doors can be placed facing any side of a block.



State of the Mod 9/8/2014

Sep 08 2014 07:59 AM | Bioxx (http://terrafirmacraft.com/f/user/2-bioxx/) in Articles (http://terrafirmacraft.com/index.html/_/articles/)

This is going to be another long one. See what's new after the jump.
So I missed my unannounced self imposed deadline of early August kinda badly. Sometimes you know exactly what you want the finished feature to look like but when it comes down to implementing it you begin to realize that you didn't think of everything initially and it will be a lot harder than you thought. Such is the case far more often than we'd like but there's not much you can do about that besides try and power through it which doesn't always work out well. Regardless, we're committed to getting 79 out ASAP.

Dunk has been busy rewriting a lot of his old code so that I will stopping having to crack the whip at him about #dunkcode http://terrafirmacraft.com/f/public/style_emoticons/default/angry.png. As a result we have some simpler, prettier, and faster code for various dunk blocks http://terrafirmacraft.com/f/public/style_emoticons/default/biggrin.png. He's currently working on re implementing the armor stand in a way that it should cause far less problems than before.

I'm currently jumping around a lot from feature to feature tweaking things to various degrees. All the while I'm still working on all things taste, meals, and cooking. Most recently I've rewritten how food is cooked all together into a system that more closely resembles actual cooking (I'm spending way more time on cooking stuff than I ever imagined). As a result all foods now can be cooked to varying degrees. Keeping steak on the fire will start to make it char and turn black which affects the taste as it cooks more and more (But maybe you like your steak burnt to a crisp, yucky). As announced on Twitter, the type of fuel that you're cooking with will also affect the taste of food as well. Even pickling and salting have an effect. Right now my biggest issue going forward is balancing all of the taste numbers and making sure that it all works right.

On that note, recently added is the ability to pickle fruits, vegetables, and meat to extend their shelf life. The bonus from this is similar to salt, providing a 0.5 multiplier to base decay rate. This is multiplicative with salt so Pickled Salted Venison would last 50% longer than Salted Venison does in 78. Along with the pickling comes the ability to store pickled foods in a container full of vinegar to prolong shelf life and drastically reduce environmental(temperature/humidity) related decay.

That leads me to Large Vessels and Barrels. Since I first implemented Pottery many builds ago, I've always intended to add a large version of the Vessel that would operate similarly to Barrels as a storage medium that you didn't generally carry with you. Until now, I wasn't really sure how I wanted to do it. However thanks to my rewrite of the very messy barrels everything became orders of magnitude easier to accomplish. On that note, something that I thought I'd mentioned in a previous SotM but apparently failed to do is that Barrels now operate as either a solid storage medium OR liquid storage. By utilizing the Forge Liquid Dictionary our barrels can hold 10000mB and 5000mB in Large Vessels. Alternatively barrels and large vessels can hold up to 12 or 9 itemstacks respectively.

Because we don't want these to become simple inventory expanders like how small vessels are used we have started to create a system for equippable objects. There is currently no UI as the system will not be completed in 79 and will instead be expanded upon as needed. For now the only slot is for the players back and we'll continue to use the slot as seen in 78. As a result, blocks which we deem to be superheavy will require being equipped on the players back in order to move. Holding any of these items in your inventory will cause a message to appear warning that you are overburdened and you will be unable to move while it remains. With that said, I want to make sure that these mechanics remain easy to use and not more of a burden than necessary for gameplay purposes, so Empty barrels and vessels will not be considered equippable and will not overburden the player. Did I mention that these objects will render on the player's back? (http://i.imgur.com/NQ3dqn3.png)

Lest I forget, there is a very simple yet controversial change coming as well. If you don't follow me on twitter then brace yourself. Torches will now burn out and cannot be recovered after 48 hours in game. Having said this, I have to address the the very first question that everyone with a keyboard will want to ask which is, "Is there a permanent light source coming as well?". The answer is both yes and no. Currently there are no plans for a lantern in 79. There are however plans for one later on.
For far too long torches have been an easy escape from the perils of the dark. After a little while, large sections of the map turn into torch forests, and this to me has always been a major flaw with the core MC design. As a result, I want to see what happens when this escape is lost.
To compensate for the increased need for torches, I've made torch lighting 4x faster. Additionally torches can now be created by right clicking a placed torch with a stick in your hand, although this is not as efficient as making them in a firepit. Keep in mind that this torch change can be toggled in your configs.

Torches now have another very important role to play in your life as well. In B79 charcoal pits are no longer lit from the bottom via firepit but from the top instead by dropping a torch on top of a logpile. After a few seconds, the logpile with catch fire and this will propagate to all other logpiles that are touching. As a result, our charcoal code is extremely simple compared to the past (hooray less bugs!). This finally brings charcoal pits in line with my original vision when I first implemented them in Beta 1.

I'm sure that there is more that I want to put here, but for right now these seem like the most important bits. As you can see 79 is shaping up to be a monster, but hopefully a friendly one. As for a release date, I can certainly say that we are far closer than we were last month. As usual I have a release date in mind which I wont be saying publicly. Here's hoping that we can hit it this time http://terrafirmacraft.com/f/public/style_emoticons/default/smile.png

Edit: You forgot to plug our twitters! Follow us @TFC_Bioxx (http://twitter.com/TFC_Bioxx) and @TFC_Dunk (http://twitter.com/TFC_Dunk) for news, updates and images about development in progress! -Dunk


State of the Mod 8/13/2014

Aug 13 2014 12:34 AM | Bioxx (http://terrafirmacraft.com/f/user/2-bioxx/) in Articles (http://terrafirmacraft.com/index.html/_/articles/)


So it's been a month since the last state of the mod so I figure its high time for another update. I am going to try and do these each month from now on if I can remember, wish me luck!

In the past month there has been a bit of work done to polish various areas and yet there hasn't been a lot accomplished in others. The basics for the new taste stuff that was mentioned in the previous SotM has been implemented as well as some more Quality of Life stuff for us behind the scenes when it comes to food, but most of the new meal type stuff hasn't even been started.

It mostly comes down to me knowing what I want to do but not being sure how I want to present it. This includes everything from block/item art to gui layouts. As a result, some of the new meals may be delayed out of 79 entirely. It depends on what I can come up with in the near term.

As for 79 in general, it is in a pretty stable state. We've managed to close a lot of 1.7 related bugs that had been nagging at us as well as getting SMP working proper. Right now we are still on 1.7.2 but I expect to move to 1.7.10 before release which should not be a big process in all likelihood.

I know everyone is anxious to get to get their hands on 79, and I'm anxious to get it to you guys so I'll keep trying to push myself to knock out some of these features. Stay with us. We're getting there.

Source: http://terrafirmacraft.com/index.html/_/articles/state-of-the-mod-8132014-r52


State of the Mod 7/9/2014
-The latest article from Bioxx about the next update.-



Ok, so now that global celebrations for the day of my birth are over with, I've decided its about time for a State of the Mod. This will be a bit lengthy so click the article to get the full story.

My extreme bouts of laziness aside, we've actually gotten a fair amount of work completed. Thanks to Emris_Morath, while we were polishing Build 78 with the many patches, he was maintaining the 79 branch and doing an extremely large chunk of the 1.7 porting process(renaming stuff) for us. As a result, when work was permanently switched to 79 we were mostly done with the port.

As for new content in 79, I can announce that rock-specific gravel has been added finally as well as a layer of gravel throughout most of the world as part of the soil generation. Along with this comes drainage maps which ultimately just determine how much gravel there is in the soil layer vs dirt. This is important because another new map -the soil pH map- is used for crops along with the drainage (which is calculated by scanning beneath the soil for gravel which means that players can affect this). The two of these combine with other things to create a much more sophisticated crop management mechanic.

Now before I go into this next mechanic, I want to point out that any of this is subject to change as we are still in the experimentation phase with this.

The entire point of the above mechanic is to influence the next mechanic: food taste. Each and every food item will have tastes associated with it based upon the 5 flavors which the human tongue can detect which are Sweetness, Sourness, Saltiness, Bitterness, and Savoriness. Each player will have his or her own unique preferred tastes which are determined by your username and the world seed. This means that creating a meal which contains Steak, Potatoes, Cheese, and Blueberries O.o may be perfect for you but may not be for someone else because the combined flavor profile doesn't closely match their own.

But this is alright, as the worst that would happen for them is that the food wouldn't be as useful for satiating their hunger. On the flip side, the more closely that the flavor profile matches your palate than the more effective the food is at providing filling and nutrition. I see this as a psychological effect and it ranges from 80% effectiveness for bad meals up to a 130% bonus if the flavor profile is exact.

I should also point out that figuring out your own or another person's taste palate will be based off of your skill rank in cooking with each rank providing more exact information. More on Skill Ranks later.

Now we come full circle back to the crop growth mechanic change that I mentioned earlier. The various attributes of the soil such as soil type(granite/rhyolite/etc) of the topsoil that you worked with the hoe as well as the soil beneath that, the soil ph, and the drainage of the farm plot all come together to affect the resulting flavor profile of each crop in different ways. This now means that tomatoes grown in one place wont exactly match the tomatoes grown elsewhere, unless you want them to.

Because of these new features, each tomato plant harvested could potentially provide tomatoes with different flavor profiles and you would expect them to be unable to stack because of the NBTTags that are on each of these items. However what we've decided to do is when you attempt to stack a food it will convert the entire stack to the default flavor profile for the food(which may not be a bad thing) or it will keep the flavor profile as long as the profile is the same for each item entering the stack.

At this point, I've gone far more into these mechanics than I'd originally intended but that's ok since it's been a while since I've done one of these. Some of you may be thinking that this makes food incredibly complicated, and to a degree it does, but choosing to ignore all this new taste stuff is still perfectly acceptable since there is only a maximum of 20% loss in the effectiveness of food due to the new changes. This 20% is less of a penalty to me than it is a re-balancing of food in general.
The last bit that I am going to discuss in relation to food are the new meals that will be coming. More specifically Soups, Stews, Salads, Sandwiches, and Casseroles. I'm not going to be going into specifics for these as that is probably another 5 or 6 paragraphs so I'll just list some quick info:

Soups allow you to stretch your limited resources by adding a liquid base to a small amount of each ingredient thereby giving you filling but with a lack of major nutritional value.
Stews take longer to cook and must be done more delicately but use a larger amount of ingredients and less liquid to create a nourishing meal.
Salads are the easiest and fastest meal to make and will be roughly equivalent to the meals that exist already in TFC. The main problem with them will be that they decay faster than the other meals which makes them poor for traveling etc.
Sandwiches will require bread slices and a few non-grain fillers. The main bonus of sandwiches will be that they provide bonus filling, can be eaten completely in a single use(they'll probably provide around 9oz of filling before the bonus), and can potentially provide all 5 food groups of nutrition.
Casseroles will allow for the largest amount of food to be cooked at a time and can use up to 6 ingredients. But they will need to be cooked in an oven and take time to prepare.

Now I get to the promised Skill Ranks. One of the things that I really wanted to do when starting 79 is to polish some of the new UIs as they were put in place rather quickly and without much thought. Those of you who follow me on twitter (and if you don't you should) will have already seen this image pic.twitter.com/uRWj4xKnAG (http://t.co/uRWj4xKnAG). As you can see, gone are the ugly, vague numbers- now replaced with pretty skill bars and ranks. Ranks include Novice, Adept, Expert, and Master. Some (but not all) skills will be tied directly to the ranks, for example cooking will give you more informative information on the taste profiles of food. Others such as smithing will continue to work as they have, based upon a formula which uses the raw skill numbers. In these cases, the rank is still useful as it gives a pretty good idea of how much your skill is affecting the objects that you create.

Now to wrap up the rest of the new. So far, we have new sound effects for several animals as well as ambient sounds such as frogs, crickets, birds, etc. I completely rewrote the way in which barrels function so that they can be used for solid storage of items as well as compatibility for forge liquids. Kitty did quite a bit of work to add forge ore dictionary back to TFC after its incredibly long hiatus. She also added in a much requested file with extensive options for adjusting numbers in TFC that never before existed (I'm sure that server owners will be thrilled).

I'm sure that I've missed a few things and there is without a doubt more to come before all is said and done, but I wanted to reach out and let you guys know that we're still working and making progress, especially to our recent wave of new fans who may not be used to our development pace. Be sure to let us know what you think and follow us on Twitter for the occasional sneak peak! @TFC_Bioxx (https://twitter.com/TFC_Bioxx/) and @TFC_Dunk (https://twitter.com/TFC_Dunk/)

Source: state-of-the-mod-792014-r51 (http://terrafirmacraft.com/index.html/_/articles/state-of-the-mod-792014-r51)

InsaneJ
20th July 2014, 11:12
Now all we have to do is wait patiently for all the new goodies to come our way :)

Jiro_89
13th August 2014, 21:54
State of the Mod update 8/13/2014!

Jiro_89
5th October 2014, 18:38
Updated State of the Mod for 09/08/2014 edition.

Jiro_89
6th October 2014, 06:30
Updated thread to reflect the new Build 79.

DigitallyFidget
6th October 2014, 09:29
Time to build the new TFC server!

InsaneJ
6th October 2014, 10:01
Thanks to that guy slapping a DMCA on Bukkit there's no new Bukkit and MCPC+/Cauldron. Let's hope this TFC build works with the latest build of Cauldron without issues or else we'll have to whitelist the server and find creative ways to deal with grief/theft/idiots/etc.

The new build means we'll have to redo the Towny and Lockette config files in regards to containers that should be locked by those plugins. I'll try to setup a server for us to test those things on later today. Be prepared to do lots of testing and tweaking :)

Metamorfos
6th October 2014, 13:02
So the b78 server will get closed in the near future?

InsaneJ
6th October 2014, 13:15
Only if we manage to get a b79 up and running in a way we're happy with. By the looks of things TFC b79 at this point is not compatible with MCPC+/Cauldron which means we loose all of the plugin functionality. And since it looks like Cauldron is gone for good that doesn't bode well for the new server.

If we have to solve all the major issues in regards to protection and grief roll back with mods instead of plugins it'll mean we'll be left with a much more vulnerable server if we decide to open it to the public.

We could of course make it a pay-to-enter server which will keep most of the bad people out. But I doubt many people (including myself) will be happy about that.

So yeah, we'll have to do some testing and see what we can come up with.

InsaneJ
6th October 2014, 14:33
This is the current state of affairs:

TFC is incompatible with Cauldron and Cauldron is probably not going to get updated anymore.
No Cauldron means no Bukkit plugins: Towny, Prism (block logging and rollback), MCBans, tickets, moderator tools and many other plugins we've used to enhance the current server.
MyTown2 for Minecraft 1.7.10 isn't working. And even if it was it's currently a very light weight alternative to Towny.
ForgeEssentials offers some protection but it's very labor intensive for staff to set up and maintain.


In short this means that right now there is no way to run a good public TFC server for Minecraft 1.7.10 with all the protection and service we currently have on the 1.6.4 TFC server. At this point the only alternatives I see are:

Add a whitelist where players have to jump through a couple of hoops before they can get in. (Still doesn't solve the lack of features and protection)
Make the rules more flexible to allow for things like PvP, theft and grief. (Would result in chaos and a lot of complaints we'd have to ignore. This is pretty much how we never want to run servers.)
Not make the rules more flexible and have staff monitor way more then they already do. (Would result in tons of work for staff and it would probably make their lives miserable.)
Pay-to-enter to keep griefers out and discourage bad behavior. (Banned players get no refund so it would probably keep players in check. However it would be a huge barrier for most players. We wouldn't be getting 8200 unique players on the server that's for sure.)


Feel free to share your thoughts on this issue.

Commiellama2
6th October 2014, 15:52
This sounds like what happened when TFC was released on 164, except plugin stuff was being actively developed back then. I really like the way the B78 server is set up with players able to choose what and how they protect things.

Something like Towny would be really important, HappyDiggers is a happy place where people are free to play, not hiding in fear of murder and pillaging. I have almost no experience with other servers or plugins so I can't suggest anything, but maybe there's an alternative or a workaround out there somewhere, other plugins/mods we've not heard of?

Minimising staff work is important, it's not fair to make them run around checking up on everyone all the time, that's neither quick nor fun, and with less tools it's harder to prove things.

I wouldn't feel particularly safe or relaxed in just a whitelisted server, griefers must enjoy griefing and would happily lie and jump through hoops to prey on the weak and vulnerable.

Paying to enter... we'd probably have most of the regular players who are familiar with the server but that's going to put a lot of people off, and things would still be unprotected. It's important to have noobs so I feel a little better about my accomplishments!

Enabling thieving and pvp I suppose is an option, but there are many servers like that (not necessarily tfc) and I like how different HappyDiggers is. I played a pvp server once, I got familiar with a neighbour, quietly got to level 30 ready to enchant diamond stuff and then he just stabbed me in the back and stole everything. Didn't feel like going back. There would be a lot of hiding in underground bases without any protection and we should be out there building great things.


Another option could be to have a separate server running for B79 if it's going to play so differently and keep the B78 one going, but that probably involves money and I don't expect you to do that.

So, what protection tools are available, and what can they do?

Sverf
6th October 2014, 16:17
I know people are working on a replacement for bukkit and its plugin system written from scratch called Sponge running on Forge, but I think it will take quite a bit of time before its in any usable state.
Also Sponge's api is incompatible with bukkit's plugin API so all plugins will need to be updated to a new API. Though there are also people writing a plugin for Sponge called 'Pore' which can load bukkit plugins on Spore. Anyone still following? :)

http://www.spongepowered.org/
https://github.com/SpongePowered/SpongeAPI
http://lapis.blue/

So hope is not lost, but in what time frame we are talking about is a whole different matter.

Metamorfos
6th October 2014, 16:40
The only other plugin I know of is the Faction one and not sure if that could be tailored to fit HD or if it even works in the first place.

InsaneJ
6th October 2014, 17:05
Plugins means Bukkit. And there is not Bukkit support for Forge on Minecraft 1.7.10 which is still being actively developed. So unfortunately we can't use plugins with TFC b79.

Sponge is something that's being developed for Minecraft 1.8 so that's going to take quite a while before we can use it. Also TFC is not available for Minecraft 1.8 and I'm guessing it's going to be long time before that's out too.

As Commiellama2 pointed out. Back when we started the current server on Minecraft 1.6.4 plugins and MCPC+ were still actively being developed. Now that's not the case. The Minecraft community as far as the server-side of things is concerned is dead for Minecraft 1.7. Hopefully with 1.8 things will change, but right now it sucks to want to do a public server with mods like TFC.

DigitallyFidget
7th October 2014, 02:23
Age restricted white listing is an option. That's not to say that people won't simply lie about their age.
We could also go a little more vanilla style and look for means of very basic land protection, but disable teleporting/dynmap, and other tools in which people use to easily get around and greif. The harder it is for greifers to track, find, and reach other players who wish to play peacefully, the more effectively it detours it. Also rotating spawn location every so often, maybe weekly for the first month, we'll resolve the issue of everyone cluttering near spawn and bickering about others being too close.

Pernix_8D
7th October 2014, 07:55
I reckon we should just wait. Without the API, theres no protection plugins, and that'll mean all hell can and will break lose. Even if we REALLY want a b79 server, waiting until at least all the bugs and glitches are worked out in hotfixes and patches before updating might save the hassle of fixing a potentially game/server breaking problem (much like those corrupted chunks that kept showing up a while back... which were caused by a plugin I think, but still.)

InsaneJ
7th October 2014, 10:39
We can't disable what we do not have. For b79 there are no means with which to teleport since that is all done through the use of plugins currently on b78.

I've been submitting crash reports to the author of MyTown 2. If he manages to get that up and running and compatible with ForgeEssentials we could at least run with basic plot protection and some other stuff. Although we should then really find a way to explain to people that whomever they invite to their town has access to everything in that town. Meaning they can steal whatever they like and then just leave town. A rat maze with right/wrong answers to progress at spawn should probably do the trick.

Although we currently have no means to pre-generate a large world which would mean a lot of lag as people explore the new world. Maybe Fred could help us out in that regard. Which reminds me, I have a letter to write...

AngelToker
7th October 2014, 12:14
i have read all the comments to this thread and sadly cannot think of any suggestions.
however i am very exited to play b79 and i guess i will just start a single player world of it for now.
but i would like to offer myself as help in anyway that i can if there is any way that i can.
whatever is needed to get b79 on happy diggers would be fantastic.

fredoduquartier
7th October 2014, 13:42
I think the easyest thing to do is to keep the old one, but if we want a brand new tfc server with the latest things, there are 2possibilities: 1: have server sided mods that act kinda like plugins, 2: have proper tfc compatible mods that can be used for town protection, like kinda warded blocks.

wat i think is easyer is the option 1: I would code like a chest where you put the heads of the players you want to be able to access the chunk and interact with the stuff., and you can get the heads with a command so you can put them in the chest or use as decoration. in the second option, I would code a block you would have to craft that when placed you can put the names of the persons you want de be able to do, and you could craft personal chest like the one in ic2 but with an oldish texture thing.

if you have an idea please say it.
I will start coding this weekend or if i finished all my homeworks. ( buisy week)

DigitallyFidget
7th October 2014, 14:02
Honestly, if lag happens and people have a problem with it, they're beyond welcome to go elsewhere to an underpopulated server that may disappear in weeks that has less lag. So I really don't care one direction or another about players having a problem with lag. It's the nature of coding a game engine and server to run in java.

The issue with inviting someone to your town and them having access to everything is sort of a risk that's somewhat a "you get what you deserve" sort of deal. If you invite any random stranger you don't know, you're opening yourself to the strong risk of unknown behaviour by that person. I personally view the fault as the person who invited, not the invited thief, if something gets stolen. Already this is a big problem. Town leaders invite people, and then those people take stuff and leave or somehow greif the town. So I don't see this causing much more of a problem than what already exists.

It really falls to fault of the inviting person no matter how you look at it. This might actually encourage people to think about it before just inviting whoever asks into their town. Likewise, you might want to be a little more hesitant about jumping into a town that takes in anyone without question. There's a likely chance your stuff will get robbed by the next random invite of the 'we take anyone' leader blindly inviting a thief into the town. Still, I stand on the idea you getwhat you deserve, and if we put that sorta upfront as a rule/policy, it should reduce the amount of town member greifing garbage, since you can pretty much ignore it if someone complains about someone they wanted to invite.

I'm being a little ranty on this topic, sorry. Not exactly intended.



If I was going to set it up, I'd do it in the following manner:
Application white-list, age: 17+, minimal land protection available, just a simple tool to claim a plot of land and disallow other players from opening doors/containers or breaking things, and flat out if you get robbed and didn't protect your stuff, then that's your problem, or if you invite someone to have permissions in your area and you get robbed, again.. that's your problem, not ours.
Anyone who causes a problem and becomes banned may appeal the ban decision, publicly, and between community, mods, and admins, a decision can be made.

I've played on a server that was ran just this way. It was a great server, too. Things went very smoothly. Oh, and pvp was enabled, but don't be a troll about it.

AngelToker
7th October 2014, 17:46
playing without the towny teleport actually sounds refreshing to me however would it be possible to have to option to craft an enderchest (it would have told hold things that typical tfc chests wouldn't) that would make trading and interacting with the other players easier?

assuming my town gets working would that solve all our problems?

i really like J's idea of the maze test no one would be able to ignore the rules any longer
not that ignorance was ever an excuse.

as for pvp if we must HAVE to have it then ok
i can kill anyone i want at any time, any place, with my lava bukkit
that doesn't mean i am... but i understand there will be trolls and douchebags

smart moving will still be added, right?

Jiro_89
7th October 2014, 18:47
I've played on a server that was ran just this way. It was a great server, too. Things went very smoothly. Oh, and pvp was enabled, but don't be a troll about it.

PvP could be handled like it is on the HappyDiggers Minecraft server, just stricter. Including the rules in that spawn maze we've been talking about would help. Essentially it could be something like, If you kill someone on purpose and you have not both publicly announced it is okay to do so, you are vulnerable to a warning/ban based on the digression of staff regardless if it was mutual on skype, teamspeak, etc.

fredoduquartier
7th October 2014, 19:12
I agree with kodekatt exept for the age limitation, it will just keep other people out without a valable pretext, that's kinda discrimination even if you get about 50% 15 years old that just wanna troll. A way to get arround it is to have to post an application where you talk about yourself, why you want to participate, what you could do for the community, and alone this will filter out about 90% of all trolls, without discriminating by age (btw, there are still people that with 18+ are still trolls and some 12 years old that are not) (also when I was younger, I souffered alot about these silly age restrictions, and that was verry demoralising)

I like jiro's idea the most since it will also filter out many trolls, but less than kodekatts one (in my opinion a bit too radical) and i could rapidly make a prism like plugin with not too much effort and (like angeltoker said with his bukkit of lava) ill make it register when someone dies because of lava or blocks placed by someone. a basic interaction restriction mod could also be done fast (and for lag's sake like kodekatt stated in a previous post that java is "laggy" (it's simply because tfc doesn't use the magic of multithreading wich could reduce lag by up to 4) ill make the mods work in a different thread)

DigitallyFidget
7th October 2014, 23:03
I'm not entirely fond of age restrictions, but I rarely play on vanilla servers that don't have one, because it does help and does make a huge difference. From an admin perspective, I'm not interested in babysitting a bunch of little kids who don't yet understand how to correctly socially interact with other people. I'd rather that if we have limited powers and tools for our admins and moderators, then we at least reduce the amount of babysitting needing to be done on the server. If we had the full range of plugins as we do on 1.6.4, then age becomes less of a problem because catching and kicking/banning those who play like anarchists is far easier.
I can go on a whole detailed explanation of why I would prefer having an age limitation, but I'm trying to keep it simple and not get into personal experiences, and differences between adult and child psychology.

fredoduquartier
8th October 2014, 02:06
I understand your concerns katt :), but I'd rather code for 20 hours straight than have the tfc server becoming age restricted. This is why i started working on the mods, they are already promising. didn't test if it needs a client tho. what i'v done: setup the base of a mod based permission core.
I will (probably tomorrow) start coding some basic prism like registration, based on the chunks, and it will be 100% tfc compatible and will register the full entity with all its contents, metadata and others. J, dont worry about disk space and processor beiong eaten up by it, ill do so you can set what is the longest time an info may be on the log and specify if you want all options or not ( default being true).

if you have a wish for a specific command that does specific stuff, just ask. :)

InsaneJ
8th October 2014, 11:40
While I really appreciate you starting to code already, you should really hold off on that for now until we've hammered out some specs first :)

I'll post some specs in the VIP section so we can continue discussion for those mods there and not detract from the b79 topic too much.

I'll assume MyTown 2 will get up and running soon-ish. Forge Essentials has a permission system we should use, no need to invent the wheel twice. I've asked the MyTown 2 author to support this and he seems willing to do so.

What I'm looking for are the following:

World border replacement with fill function. (Sorry Katt, I don't want a laggy server.)
Lockette replacement.
Basic Prism replacement.


In that order. Again, I'll post some specs in the VIP section and you can decide if you'd like to code those things for us :)

Metamorfos
8th October 2014, 19:14
I'd really love it if the teleporting gets removed or atleast greatly reduced. If no protection plugins can be implemented, I think whitelist is the way to go.

InsaneJ
8th October 2014, 19:49
If you don't like teleporting, then don't use it? Or do you object to other players having the ability to teleport? In which case I would ask: why?

We're currently working on some ideas to get some basic protection for the new server. Fred has graciously offered to code a few mods for us. There's no ETA but I expect it to take a few weeks at least before everything is ready and good to go :)

Metamorfos
8th October 2014, 22:31
If you don't like teleporting, then don't use it? Or do you object to other players having the ability to teleport? In which case I would ask: why?


I just find it a shame that people build long roads or raillines and then 2-3 people use them ... only once.

Thank you Fred for being willing to help us out.

Lyneira
9th October 2014, 11:37
To be fair, teleportation has a huge effect on the dynamics of a server. It's not possible for a single player to abstain from teleporting without being affected by the rest of the server using it, unless they choose to live a solitary life, in which case they might as well play single player and avoid the latency issues a server brings.

How teleportation shapes a server: There is little reason to build infrastructure when you can pop from anywhere in the world to any town of your choosing. If you go on a trip, being one command away from home means you never need to bring provisions for your return trip. It's also a quick way out of troublesome situations. Without teleportation, there is more reason to have full-fledged secondary bases in areas with interesting resources, to build roads and infrastructure. This makes the world more immersive because location and distance matters more.

I do understand teleportation helps with giving people enough space to explore and build in without ending up with unreasonable travel times to visit other people. You could get the good parts from both worlds by having teleportation only between several hub areas in the world and allowing large, well-run towns the opportunity to become a hub themselves, if they're not near another hub. This way you can still visit other people with a reasonable travel time, and these hubs would become prime locations for trade, a place for a second home, as well as iconic places that give the server more character. Bonus immersion points if you integrate the teleportation mechanics into a believable build like a ship in a harbor or a railway station with a large train cabin that you enter to teleport. :)

Pernix_8D
9th October 2014, 11:46
I like the idea of only having the ability to teleport to certain locations of the world. Adds something else for players to do (build roads, nice looking paths, community built teleport hubs, etc).

Of course towns would be a bit of a pain to find without coordinates. Especially when there is half a million of them, like on the current TFC server. I'm not to sure whether or not one can find the coordinates of a town on Mytown, but if not, maybe Fred and add something to one of his mods to do so? Either that, or we can ask players to list them down on a forum thread so the towns can be added to a list at the hubs?

... Maybe a poll for it is needed?

InsaneJ
9th October 2014, 12:10
I disagree with Lyneira. Just because you choose not to teleport doesn't mean you might as well play the game in single player. Having roads does not change the fact that you'll have to walk a lot. And there is literally nothing stopping you from doing so. I've seen the complaints about teleportation pop up many times now and when asking why people object it usually boils down to jealousy. The non-teleport players would rather walk large distances but feel they are somehow cheated by players who don't.

Given that there are plenty of people who voiced against having teleports, I'd say there is nothing stopping them from building their own road network together. With well over 8200 players that have visited HappyDiggers TFC it shouldn't have been that hard to get those people organized. If you look at Dynmap you'll see a couple of large road networks already. But given that there are over 1200 towns on the server it might not seem like that many towns are actually connected. However the only reason those towns exist in the first place is because people have the ability to teleport.

What I'm saying here is that you can't have it both ways. You can't have a server with a huge amount of players starting towns all over and not have the conveniences that our server offers. It just doesn't work that way. In my experience players are mostly lazy and don't want to put in more work than they absolutely have to. That in itself is a bit contrary to TFC I admit, but it's just how it works.

If we would take away most of the convenience of our current server I guarantee we'll just end up with another empty TFC server.

That leaves us pretty much with the need to find some sort of balance. Right now I think we have found a balance that works. I'm not saying it's perfect, but right now we are the most popular TFC server out there.

With the new TFC b79 we'll have to reinvent the server. I have no idea if it'll be successful or not. But I do know we'll do our best to cater to both sides of the teleport argument. One idea I had was that before we open the server to the public we could have staff and VIP members help out by laying down a large road network between server run towns. I'm thinking about maybe having 5 towns or outposts connected by roads. The road network would span several thousand blocks and include bridges and tunnels. Players could then connect their towns to that road network if they choose to.

The server run towns or outpost would have to facilitate trade. I have an idea on how to do this right, but we'd need someone to actually code it. Perhaps Fred could do that after he finishes the current projects :)

The idea is that two players go to a trade post. There they deposit whatever they agreed upon in a chest. The server mod would then ask both players if this deal is correct. Only after they both agree can they take out the item(s) the other player put into the chest but not their own. If one of the players disagrees both players can only take out the item(s) they put into the chest. This should protect players from being scammed and encourage them to trade more often.

fredoduquartier
9th October 2014, 14:45
..............

ok: I'll code everything you ask me too if I have time BUT you will have to write down the specs. I'll then code what I feel is the most fun at the moment and finsh it before starting another. ok? :) and for the tfc road system problem: maybe you could tp to towns connected to spawn with roads or rails (a path made out of stone material, you have then to flag the tp point with a sign at spawn, and in town for other tp destinations, I'll write the specs in mod section later ;)), as if you would have walked that distance, and yes, I'll do the plugin :)

Lyneira
9th October 2014, 15:07
I disagree with Lyneira. Just because you choose not to teleport doesn't mean you might as well play the game in single player. Having roads does not change the fact that you'll have to walk a lot.

That's not what I said, my point was that if you are leading a solitary life to avoid the effects of everyone else teleporting around you, you might as well play single player, because there isn't a difference between living solitary on the TFC server without teleports, or playing single player. You could also choose to deal with everyone else teleporting while you abstain from it, but I doubt there are many people who could maintain that for long.

I also certainly wasn't arguing for a server where people have to spend hours running around (roads or not) just to visit a friend on the other side of the server, make a trade and then come back home. I was offering the idea of hub-based teleportation as an alternative where visiting other players can be made convenient without enabling instant gratification teleports from anywhere in the wild to any town you please. The degree of convenience could be finely tuned based on how close together you allow hubs to be. It's a tried-and-true method of connecting different parts of the world together in MMOs like World of Warcraft. (See the ships traveling between major cities or flight paths letting you travel from specific points in the world to others) If needed it could be further supplemented with a /home command on a 15 minute cooldown, for example.

In the end, it's of course up to you what kind of server you'd like to have. Towny teleports as-is are undeniably the least amount of work for the people running the server. You're probably also right that having the most convenience attracts attracts the greatest amount of players to the server. It does lead me to wonder how long the average player stays active on the server though.


With the new TFC b79 we'll have to reinvent the server. I have no idea if it'll be successful or not. But I do know we'll do our best to cater to both sides of the teleport argument. One idea I had was that before we open the server to the public we could have staff and VIP members help out by laying down a large road network between server run towns. I'm thinking about maybe having 5 towns or outposts connected by roads. The road network would span several thousand blocks and include bridges and tunnels. Players could then connect their towns to that road network if they choose to.

The server run towns or outpost would have to facilitate trade. I have an idea on how to do this right, but we'd need someone to actually code it. Perhaps Fred could do that after he finishes the current projects

Having some premade server towns facilitating trade and connected by roads sounds good either way. :)

And a last idea I had: What if you could set towny's teleport command to only work from within any town? People would be free to teleport from any town to any other, but it wouldn't be a get out of jail free card in the wild. Also, no additional work for server admins and mods.

InsaneJ
9th October 2014, 15:37
That's not what I said, my point was that if you are leading a solitary life to avoid the effects of everyone else teleporting around you, you might as well play single player, because there isn't a difference between living solitary on the TFC server without teleports, or playing single player. You could also choose to deal with everyone else teleporting while you abstain from it, but I doubt there are many people who could maintain that for long.
What are those effects? That other players progress faster because they can trade more easily and teleport home if they come under zombie attack? Because other then that I really can't think of any effect it might have on a non-teleporting player. And even that isn't really having an effect on the way they play the game. Nobody is forcing them to do anything. But like you said, I doubt many players will abstain from teleporting even if they'd rather not. And I think it's because most people are jealous of others in some form or another. Which is kinda silly. You can play whichever way you prefer and with whomever you prefer. Why care what other people do? But that's just me :)

As for your suggestion regarding Towny and teleport cool downs. I've seen a few people make suggesting regarding plugins. So I'll repeat this again: there is absolutely zero plugin functionality available for TFC b79. Zero, zip, nada. Everything we have on the current server that affects gameplay outside of TFC or Forge mods is not available for TFC b79. And I mean everything.


Setting yourself AFK.
Showing currency balance.
Setting, deleting, teleporting to homes.
Ignoring people in chat.
Checking server lag.
Listing currently online players.
Sending/reading mail.
/me in chat.
motd and checking it after you joined.
/rules.
/spawn.
All the Towny commands.
Locking chests, doors and TFC containers with Lockette.
The teleport portals near spawn.
User groups.
Prism logging, roll back, lookups.
Tickets.
Towny including chat channels.
Staff becoming invisible.
Staff being able to open/edit player's inventories.
Staff being able to fly.
MCBans, keeping known bad players out, banning for all our servers with a single ban.
Stats.
Worldborder and pre-generated chunks
Teleportation of offline players
WorldEdit.
The announcer.
Reserving slots for VIP and staff when the server is full.
And probably a few I'm forgetting right now.


None of that is available for TFC b79 currently. Fred is working on a WorldBorder and Lockette replacement. Then hopefully he'll be able to get basic block logging and lookup to work. Maybe by that time MyTown 2 and ForgeEssentials will be up and running as well in a way that we can use for our server. But even if that all goes well, we'll end up with a server that has less functionality then the one we currently have.

Any suggestions made will have to work within those limitations. So if anyone has any good or easy to implement(code) ideas please share :)

I don't know yet if the teleport cooldown can be configured in ForgeEssentials. We'll have to do some digging through config files and command help to find that out. The documentation for ForgeEssentials seems a bit incomplete at the moment.

InsaneJ
9th October 2014, 16:57
Ok scrap all that. I'm an idiot :B

The Cauldron author said he'd quit. His website was down. Everything pointed in the direction that he would never be updating Cauldron again. And then today I find out he's released a bps update for an earlier build. Kind of like Spigot is doing. Basically it's a file with which you can patch an earlier version of Cauldron.

I've begun testing this new Cauldron version with TFC and a couple of plugins. If this new Cauldron holds up then as far as ideas go we have a lot more flexibility using Bukkit plugins.

Jiro_89
9th October 2014, 18:50
It does lead me to wonder how long the average player stays active on the server though.


Currently the trend is:
Average player that joins a town, does some casual digging, plays in spurts like weekends or several days in a row - 1 Month.

Above average players that play almost daily and do more work, may join a town or start their own, get more involved in the community -2 Months.

Hard core players will play daily for weeks at a time straight with the occasional few days off. Generally they gather most things themselves, run towns, are integrated into the community, and build/do large scale things -3 Months


These times are fairly accurate, I've observed this trend the entire time I've played the TFC server both Pre-Mod and current, it's still holding true.

Lyneira
9th October 2014, 18:51
What are those effects? That other players progress faster because they can trade more easily and teleport home if they come under zombie attack? Because other then that I really can't think of any effect it might have on a non-teleporting player. And even that isn't really having an effect on the way they play the game. Nobody is forcing them to do anything. But like you said, I doubt many players will abstain from teleporting even if they'd rather not. And I think it's because most people are jealous of others in some form or another. Which is kinda silly. You can play whichever way you prefer and with whomever you prefer. Why care what other people do? But that's just me :)

Jealousy can be a factor if someone wishes to play without teleportation but sees everyone around them taking advantage. But the initial motivator would be because it's a breach of immersion. One moment you're here, type a command and you're there. Players around you can appear and disappear on a whim. When you get in trouble surrounded by zombies and skeletons, it feels all the more awesome when you manage to survive the encounter, because there was no magic command there to save you at the first sign of trouble. (or just before dying) :)

In general, I realize my viewpoint is a minority one, and it's one that has grown only after many iterations of various modpacks in Minecraft. The larger modded minecraft community is used to having convenient teleportation and flying powers as standard in most modpacks, and convenient teleportation is/was the standard on many public bukkit servers. Even a game like World of Warcraft, which used to require you to physically travel to a dungeon to join up with your party, has for a long time now offered convenience in the form of an instant teleport to your party's dungeon, and back to your previous location in the overworld after you're done. That convenience (and the convenience of flying mounts almost everywhere) was just so nice to have. But the world seemed so small that I've never felt as immersed in World of Warcraft in those times as I did in the earlier years. But that is just my 2 cents from experience with past games and Minecraft modpacks. :)

Lyneira
9th October 2014, 18:59
Before someone misinterprets me, I figure I should add that I don't really have a personal stake in what the TFC server ends up using for transportation, as I have't played TFC in a while. (although I may play on it in the future if I like where the devs have gone with it) I was just trying to provoke some meaningful discussion on what the server could or should be like in the future, especially now that it is at a point where a significant change is possible.

Jiro_89
9th October 2014, 18:59
In regards to all the teleportation talk:

I've spent a great deal of time on TFC and I got to know many different people at many different levels, I still am meeting new people actually. I spent a fair amount of time in a set of talks with the major town leaders of the time and people who I thought really enjoyed what TFC had to offer. I came up with the idea of a set of 4 towns under one nation in the post-update release run by a few people who I thought could handle it and myself. The idea was it would be a completely isolated continent and nobody would be allowed to use teleporting except to travel to a sort of "Nation-Hub" outside of the continent that would have a check point either allowing the teleporter access or not by use of lockette or some other means.

The rules would be in the form of a written contract on the forums that you may not teleport any time except to spawn or the nation hub or forfeit membership. This was fairly appealing to me at the time and I know I had at least 20 some members signed up to join after the update. Many of them haven't been around for a month or more, which is expected. If there are enough people that want this sort of thing I can re-activate my plans and make it more official now that the next TFC has cauldron hope.

fredoduquartier
9th October 2014, 19:12
I posted a description of a possible plugin, (if mods want to put the post here I agree), that describes a possible plugin that has a legit tp system that does (or not) require a small ammount of materials before being able to make it. I think this plugin would be the ideal solution to that dilemma.

Jiro_89
9th October 2014, 19:25
about the plugin in tfc that will make everybody happy:

With the plugin:

-people will have to build tp gates (portals) or roads between towns to be able to tp there
-using portals will cost 1 money for every 100 blocks teleported (they are built out of stone bricks for tier 0 see portals for ther tiers)
-using roads require a complete network but is free (it has to be made out of stone material)
-you may build a railroad too, it will be like a road network


potals:
tier 0: like vanilla portals but out of stone brick (max 1 destination) (cost 1 per 100 blocks (first 500 blocks free))
tier 1: like vanilla portals but out of fire brick blocks (max 3 destinations) (cost 1 per 150 blocks(first 750 blocks free))
tier 2: a tier 1 covered in tier 1 metal sheets (max 5 destinations) (cost 1 per 200 blocks (first 1000 blocks free))
tier 3: a tier 1 covered in tier 2 metal sheets (max 7 destinations) (cost 1 per 250 blocks (first 1250 blocks free))
tier 4: a tier 1 covered in tier 3 metal sheets (max 9 destinations) (cost 1 per 300 blocks (first 1500 blocks free))
tier 5: a tier 1 covered in tier 4 metal sheets (max 11 destinations) (cost 1 per 350 blocks (first 1750 blocks free))
tier 6: a tier 1 covered in tier 5 metal sheets (max 13 destinations) (cost 1 per 400 blocks (first 2000 blocks free))
tier 7: a tier 1 covered in tier 6 metal sheets (max 15 destinations) (cost 1 per 450 blocks (first 2250 blocks free))(upgradable)

upgrades:
a portal can be upgraded with:
a chest containing gems on top, all gems doonly add things, flawless being the most powerful, and diamonds increase all stats.

please give your opinion :)

a destination is a link between two portals, so if you have one destination, you can only have one portal linking to yours that is the same as your portal is linked to.


For everyone's reference to Fred's post.


I think it's pretty neat. It certainly keeps up with convenience for a fair price. I am curious what you think the money would be though? Currency on TFC is disabled so I'd imagine it'd be something along the lines of selling certain blocks for a ratio of money.

Unfortunately, now that we have the cauldron help on TFC again with the potential to have the same level of convenience as the current TFC server I'd suggest not overriding the teleporting system. The current teleport system, like J mentioned, is tried and true. It works, and has worked for some time. An Idea like this, which I really do think is sweet, would have no competition to the current tp mechanics. In this case I'd say don't fix it unless it's broken.

If people don't want to TP they can always opt out of using it, nothing is stopping them. And as I previously posted, those folks could even form a community to make the game more enjoyable rather then be tempted to tp by the rest of the community.

InsaneJ
9th October 2014, 19:25
The rules would be in the form of a written contract on the forums that you may not teleport any time except to spawn or the nation hub or forfeit membership. This was fairly appealing to me at the time and I know I had at least 20 some members signed up to join after the update. Many of them haven't been around for a month or more, which is expected. If there are enough people that want this sort of thing I can re-activate my plans and make it more official now that the next TFC has cauldron hope.
We could easily enforce this by putting all those players into a single "hardcore TFC" group which wouldn't have access to teleport commands and perhaps other commands-of-convenience.

As for Fred's plugin idea. In a nutshell it boils down to having a teleport network where you must build something in order to connect to it. When a town has gained access to the teleport network all the members of that town may teleport to towns that have also gained access to the network.

Think of it as towns having to build a stargate before they can instantly travel to other worlds :) Of course it wouldn't be a stargate because clearly that doesn't fit the theme of TFC.
http://happydiggers.net/attachment.php?attachmentid=1253&stc=1

Perhaps something like Thor's hammer? If anyone remembers that episode ;)
It's a stone pillar that can teleport people.
http://happydiggers.net/attachment.php?attachmentid=1254&stc=1

fredoduquartier
9th October 2014, 19:40
oh, nice, the idea of a tp post is great. as for the plugin it will replace the tp mechanics of towny. 1 money would be 1/10 of the money required for claiming a chunk, and when a user teleports it uses a part of his pool of remaining points (that are not used for chunks) 1 point regens in 10 minutes

this is an idea (the plugin too) if you want some part a bit different it is discussable :)

Commiellama2
9th October 2014, 21:06
Teleportation is a very useful tool, especially in TFC where long distance travel is important, and even more so online where you have to get away from barren spawn lands if you want to find crops (or even rocks).

I do feel that it takes some immersion out of the game, and if teleportation is available then I will use it, I'm not quite that hardcore. I had also thought of the hub idea, where you can't teleport straight to your destination, but at least get close and cover the rest on foot. This adds excitement of danger along the remaining journey, and motivation to build roads, which benefits the server.

Making portals that require material investment fit in nicely with TFC, you put some effort in and you get the reward of a teleportation service, so it doesn't feel like a bit of a cheat. Adding a cost/fuel to teleportation will also make players appreciate teleporting more, and may motivate players to travel on foot more, or bother with horses.

I took HD inspiration to my LAN server and added some command blocks that did /tp @p {coords} so I could travel between docks, I felt I'd earned the privilege by travelling there in the first place and setting up a building. It didn't save me dying, just removed the tedium of long and buggy boat rides.

I'm not trying to change anyone's mind, just expressing my opinion and commenting on ideas that I like :)

It sounds like progress is being made with tp/plugins anyway, but thinking of teleport fuel or networks made me think of Heroes of Might and Magic, which had coloured teleporters. Perhaps a mod could be made where if you put an item frame on a portal with a gem in it, the type of gem indicates the network that this teleporter is on, like the ruby network or emerald network. Gems could also be used as fuel, little ones to travel smaller distances and bigger ones to get you further. You accumulate gems through playing(mining) kind of like XP in vanilla, could be an idea?

Chances are all that could be obsolete if plugins become an option, but even bad suggestions can trigger debate and lead onto something better.

Jiro_89
9th October 2014, 23:33
We could easily enforce this by putting all those players into a single "hardcore TFC" group which wouldn't have access to teleport commands and perhaps other commands-of-convenience.


That would be amazing. If I can get enough people involved in the project again (10+) I will take you up on that offer.

DigitallyFidget
10th October 2014, 01:57
I actually brought up the mentioning of removing teleporting for the sake of less work for moderators/admins. There's always issues with people teleporting to a town and then building right next to it, or teleporting into a town, going into their mine, and reaching unprotected area to take their resources, rather than building their own mine.

Without teleportation, the effort of travelling to another town and causing them problems becomes less worthwhile for players if they have to make that effort. Since you can't survive long without shelter from spawn, moving the spawn regularly is needed, to keep players from overpopulating and fighting over land around the spawn point.


That's my perspective of it, which isn't the perspective of playing, it's in dealing with support tickets, greifing complaints, and other player problems.



Yes, there's "secure your spawn" and everything else. That's honestly annoying and a burden. Setting a home and being able to teleport via /home is enough teleporting power IMO.

Pernix_8D
10th October 2014, 08:07
I suppose with Towny and MyTown you can choose to not set a spawn point, but I'm pretty sure that means the owners/residents can't teleport there either. Of course that would be completely negated by said owners/residents if they set their home there.

fredoduquartier
10th October 2014, 08:33
with a plugin ( or mod) you could easely white list the teleporters so only the ones that are allowed to use it can use it , so no need for silly tp traps or prisons anymore.

DigitallyFidget
10th October 2014, 11:08
Fredo.. that would actually be an incredibly useful design that would really take care of all the problems I mentioned, while still keeping/allowing the whole teleporting system.

fredoduquartier
10th October 2014, 13:29
I start working on it then :)

InsaneJ
10th October 2014, 16:14
Wait. First get a SRS before you start coding. You may try to build something that already exists :)

If I read the Towny perms correctly I can already prevent players from teleporting to towns that are not their own.

towny.town.* : User has access to all .town permission nodes.

towny.town.resident : User is able to join a town.
towny.town.spawn.* : Grants all Spawn travel nodes

towny.town.spawn.town : Ability to spawn to your own town.
towny.town.spawn.nation : Ability to spawn to other towns in your nation.
towny.town.spawn.ally : Ability to spawn to towns in nations allied with yours.
towny.town.spawn.public : Ability to spawn to unaffilated public towns.
towny.town.spawn.outpost : Ability to spawn to your own town’s outposts. This is a child node of towny.town.spawn.town and must be negated if you do not want players to teleport to their outposts (ex in Groupmanager: – -towny.town.spawn.outpost)



If I disable towny.town.spawn.public for all players then they can only teleport to their own town or to towns they have allied themselves with. If we do that then that leaves the server run outposts for them to teleport to and continue their journey from.

That leaves the idea of having to build some kind of structure before players are allowed to teleport to their town and use the /sethome /home commands. Do we have consensus on this idea? Do we want to let players build something before they can use any teleport commands other then /warp (for server towns). I'll start a poll on this and see if we can get a bit of input there. People who are active on the TFC server, please invite other players there to vote.

The /town spawn command is build into Towny, the /home command is part of essentials. Fred, is it possible to override commands from other plugins with a plugin of your own? If it's at all possible I'd like to keep the command structure similar to what we have on the current server as to keep the learning curve as low as we can.

Pernix_8D
10th October 2014, 16:23
What do you mean by a structure? Do you mean a building that the player can teleport to (that's built at a town with the given permission of the mayor), or were you meaning something similar to a monolisk or stargate (or something to act like the Jetpack quest on the MC server)?

InsaneJ
10th October 2014, 16:26
You should really watch StarGate SG-1 :)

I was thinking about building Thor's Hammer:
http://happydiggers.net/attachment.php?attachmentid=1255&stc=1

It's a monolith structure made out of somewhat expensive materials. The exact materials and the structure need to be determined.

Please vote in this thread (http://happydiggers.net/showthread.php?1628-TFC-server-teleport).

Pernix_8D
10th October 2014, 16:34
Ah, awesome. :D

As for building materials, any type of polished stone and a currently undecided number of tier 1 (which is the bronzes/rose gold) ingots sounds within the boundaries of what you've said. Bronzes are usually fairly easy to get to if you put in the time, which means most towns would have access to the alloy within maybe a week.

InsaneJ
10th October 2014, 17:09
Sounds good. Maybe you, Jiro and KodeKatt (or any combination of you and other people) could come up with a design?

Something else. Right now Towny plots are 1 chunk in size, meaning 16x16 blocks. This means most players will have to build their houses in the confines of this size. I've always thought these were a little small. But on the other hand people really did make the most of them the way they are now.

Should we keep the plot size at 16x16 or increase them to maybe 20x20 or even larger? I think having slightly larger plots would make for towns that feel less crowded or huddled together if you know what I mean.

Please let me know what you guys think.

fredoduquartier
10th October 2014, 17:34
OK, for command overrides, i cannot make a plugin that overrides commands (in my knowledge), but i can easely modify any comand af any plugin and make two plugins work in symbiosis.

as for the structure i thaught you use a 3x3 base with a chest in the middle for upgrade gems, and arround use stone material. if you use fire brick it gives x2 multiplier (if the structure is completely made out of it) it will then be upgraded with a pyramid like shape (image below is a tier 0 tp station)
http://happydiggers.net/attachment.php?attachmentid=1258&stc=1

and then you would need to upgrade it up to level
http://happydiggers.net/attachment.php?attachmentid=1259&stc=1
(minimum of the max tier, can be blue steel too, all blocks are firebricks and the inside is hollow, so perfect for charcoal pits :) )
http://happydiggers.net/attachment.php?attachmentid=1260&stc=1
(with some deoration)

these are design samples, just to show a sample, give your opinion :)

Pernix_8D
10th October 2014, 17:45
What would the upgrades be for? These are only for giving the ability town teleporting and /home set from what I've read.

fredoduquartier
10th October 2014, 17:53
well it could be interesting or gameplay to have to build road and or these tp gates, the upgrades would be conections to other gates and range for free travel. roads being free if they connect 2 tp gates together, like railways. so tier 0 has 1 connection and 500 blocks free tp range and 1 tp point for every additionnal 50 blocks. these stats getting betterwith the levels. I think gems would be the ideal as tp currency since they are not verry useful.

Jiro_89
10th October 2014, 19:11
I was also under the impression the "Thor's Hammer" idea was simply to activate Town teleporting/home teleporting.

The upgrade style, while also appealing, in the current state is way too expensive. Each one of those red steel plates is 2 red steel ingots. End game colored steel takes quite a lot of time to reach, let alone make vast quantities of it. At the current state you have your pyramid it would cost around 652 red steel ingots.

InsaneJ
10th October 2014, 19:22
We're keeping it simple. Thor's Hammer only activates the ability to teleport for the members of a town. Nothing more.

But we do need some other designs I think. I'm not a big fan of the Aztec style ziggurat.

Commiellama2
10th October 2014, 19:53
You mentioned needing to build Thor's Hammer before accessing the /sethome commands, I'm thinking each player should be limited to just one sethome so that they can save progress before they die, in the event of long distance travel in barren lands, or players who join in winter. Then they can starve to death, resume from their last sethome and continue. Players could then get 3 sethomes once they've build Thor's Hammer.

Another point, if Thor's hammer becomes the spawn point, it should check for air blocks at the top of the pyramid before teleporting, and that should eliminate suffocation spawnpoints.

fredoduquartier
10th October 2014, 20:53
nice idea, it would then actually spawn the player on the first 2 blocks that have air it finds on a place heigher than the tp point, so people could easely hide it :) and I think mabe add an item, that when used tps you to the set spawn (crafted with a gem) once used it gets destroyed that would be kinda cool :)

AngelToker
11th October 2014, 04:10
fred i love the idea but i had to vote for Thor's hammer because the "Aztec style ziggurat" is, as jiro said, way to expensive.
and you know i have complained about fearing traveling to others towns because of spawn death traps (its happened to me a few times)
also all that rare firebrick material could be emptied from the server faster than you think leaving none for the players who join several months from now.

how (if it gets implemented) is Thor's hammer going to work? as in is it going to be a mutiblock structure or a crafted block?
and if its going to be a new "block" then who is planning on designing it (i have rudimentary experience with minecraft block design)

DigitallyFidget
11th October 2014, 20:54
Honestly, I think simply making a protection meter is enough. I don't see any reason to make it something complicated for players to have to explain to one another on the server. Not everyone is going to use the forums, and the protection meter uses some stone, glass, and a gem. Craftable rather early in the game.

tremen2
12th October 2014, 10:35
Not everyone is going to use the forums, and the protection meter uses some stone, glass, and a gem. Craftable rather early in the game.if that is your concern we could have a sample thor hammer close to spawn for people to copy...

fredoduquartier
12th October 2014, 11:05
actually the zigguat thing was just a desing proposition fo thors hammer, and it wouldn't be expensive since the upgrades would be really usefull only until you got to level 2, or 3 after that it's only a question of prestige and tier 3 is only tier 2 metal ( bronze) and you could tp right away with tier 0 in exchange for some gems, tier 0 needing only some stone and a protection meter.

InsaneJ
12th October 2014, 11:07
I don't think it'll be an issue. We'll make sure to tell people how to build one in the introduction maze that every player has to go through when they join the server. Also we'll be handing out Hammer of Thor books which Pernix is going to write although I should probably have asked him if he would be willing to write such a book before posting that he's going to do it but I'm hoping it'll be fine ;)

Also the Hammer should be a simple structure. Once it's build inside any town plot, all the members that are part of that town gain access to the appropriate towny permission to teleport to other towns. The trick is that the mod needs to figure out how to only allow teleports to other towns with a Hammer and not just any town.

tremen2
12th October 2014, 11:12
which Pernix is going to write although I should probably have asked him if he would be willing to write such a book before posting that he's going to do it but I'm hoping it'll be fine ;)

:/

InsaneJ
12th October 2014, 11:21
:/
hm?

You do know that Pernix is the world renowned author of the "Book o Jetpacks" read by hundreds on the HappyDigges MC server? We can't have him resting on his laurels just yet. He needs to further explore the full depth and artistry of Minecraft book writing :)

tremen2
12th October 2014, 11:37
hm?

You do know that Pernix is the world renowned author of the "Book o Jetpacks" read by hundreds on the HappyDigges MC server? We can't have him resting on his laurels just yet. He needs to further explore the full depth and artistry of Minecraft book writing :)

yes, and i have enjoyed such beautiful work, though forcing such an artist to write yet another great opus is, at the very least, a bit excessive... :pig:

InsaneJ
12th October 2014, 11:46
When you come of age you will understand young grasshopper.
http://happydiggers.net/attachment.php?attachmentid=1273&stc=1

tremen2
12th October 2014, 11:53
When you come of age you will understand young grasshopper.

http://happydiggers.net/attachment.php?attachmentid=1274&stc=1


just saying. if young grasshopper works too much this is what happens. :p

DOM
12th October 2014, 15:52
NEI for TerraFirmaCraft!

Get the last version from the guys website, it seems to work well.

http://terrafirmacraft.com/f/topic/6733-171079-terrafirmacraft-nei-plugin/

ringxworld
26th October 2014, 01:57
Cant wait for the server to be ready to play