Flower's Dev Diary (Week of Feb 11th)

[Ribky]

Well you deserve them. You've kept a game interesting for a lot of people, myself included, that would've been shelved long ago. In a strange way, I'm looking forward to the end of BTW's development. It will give it a feeling of completion to transform it from an ever changing living art piece to a true magnum opus. Full. Complete. Masterpiece.

So thank you good sir. I look forward to playing BTW for a long time to come.

[FlowerChild]

Booyah!

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Sure beats creeper riding pig riding chicken daisy chains ;)

[Sarudak]

Impressive! How did you swing that without using extra block Ids if you don't mind my asking? :)

[magikeh]

Booyah!
-snip-

How in the name of hell did you get the snow to stack on half slabs?!!? ... this makes me want to experement with other 'smaller than one block high' blocks!! :D Super psyched for the next release man!! <dances>

edit: Dat lighting! so smooth, so sexy

[TheGatesofLogic]

I don't understand why this would require a block ID... It seems like he probably just allowed snow to be created in the block above a slab and subsequently required it to visually (and maybe auditorally) render inside the block below it.

Fantastic job FC! :)

EDIT:also physically, so that it affects the player, almost forgot that ;)

[FlowerChild]

Impressive! How did you swing that without using extra block Ids if you don't mind my asking? :)

Snow still occupies the block above the slab, but I offset the visuals, bounding box, ray tracing vs the block, and basically everything that indicates to the player where the block actually is.

A tad hacky and convoluted in terms of being a big exception case to normal vanilla behavior, but does the job quite effectively. The end result should be totally transparent to the player.

I actually took that screenshot a couple of hours ago, but didn't want to post it until I was certain I could take care of all the hanging details like where the wire-frame appears around the box and all that good stuff. I still have a couple of very small issues to address with texturing and such, but I just got it to the point where I was 100% confident I could resolve them and wanted to share :)

[FlowerChild]

I don't understand why this would require a block ID... It seems like he probably just allowed snow to be created in the block above a slab and subsequently required it to visually (and maybe auditorally) render inside the block below it.

There's really no "just" to it man. As I describe above, it goes way beyond just being a visual offset as that would only cause it to *appear* to rest on the slab, and not cover anything related to player interaction.

[Detritus]

I can't see the pictures at the moment, but from the comments posted it sounds delicious.

[TheGatesofLogic]

Sorry if it seemed like I thought it was a simple thing. I do understand that it's quite a bit more complicated than how I stated it but I just tried to express in the simplest way what's going on without actually explaining too in depth...

Great job again! I wait impatiently for the time I see this in my world! :)

[FlowerChild]

this makes me want to experement with other 'smaller than one block high' blocks!!

Well, this is only really applicable to snow. The particular qualities of it are what makes this possible, so I wouldn't anticipate other "two block in one" applications.

It's a very specific case to handle something that has always felt particularly unnatural in MC, and which has a direct connect to HC Movement, given it was super-cheap that people could just build roads out of slabs or Siding to get around snow accumulation.

It basically serves to encourage covered roads and bridges like the one I recently posted in the trellis thread. In other words, more subtle motivation towards interesting building projects :)

[Folrig]

FC that is georgous. Furthermore, it no longer looks broken.

(Minecraft? What's Minecraft? I play Better Than Wolves.)

[Simurgh]

Im starting to think that flowerchild is not only one guy. I postulate that it must be the pseudonym that a group of freelance programming robots from the future submit their work under.

Either that or mojang are a bunch of monkeys.

Seriously dude, the features you add put mojang to shame. Frequency, quality, lack of bugs - all there. I seriously can't wait to see what you have up your sleeve for RTH when you have more freedom to pursue your own objectives.

[FlowerChild]

Another screenshot, just because I thought it was a cool little scene :)

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I do believe I have all the fringe cases worked out and snow is accumulating on all the blocks, both mod and vanilla, that it should. I've also taken care of the side-texture of dirt slabs covered in snow and grass so that they appear the same way vanilla ones do (snowy sides).

Anyways, I do believe that one is done, and everything is working the way I'd like :)

EDIT: Actually, I may as well just show you guys a screen of the dirt slabs so you can see what I mean:

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[warmist]

I don't like when the code limitations leak into the game (e.g. block ids, etc...) but you FC seem to find ways around stuff in awesome ways. Never thought that this bug would be fixed. Great job!

[FlowerChild]

I don't like when the code limitations leak into the game (e.g. block ids, etc...) but you FC seem to find ways around stuff in awesome ways. Never thought that this bug would be fixed. Great job!

Well, it wasn't really a bug as much as a a rather natural restriction on two objects not occupying the same space :)

And I'd say games are based on code limitations and finding clever ways to do things despite them. Constraints...creativity...yada yada.

[warmist]

<...>
And I'd say games are based on code limitations and finding clever ways to do things despite them. Constraints...creativity...yada yada.

Well of course you can't do what you can't (e.g. real water simulation with Navier-Stokes because it would lag the he hell out of the PC). I meant that some experiences are jarring and sometimes it has no in game or game design explanation (why should snow stick to one blocks but not others?) Similar thing with chunks. You need to know about how the game works to know that things that are far away from you stop working. You could argue that this is just a thing that you learn as explore the game and learn how things work (including crafting, water physics, animal breeding,...) and just accept it as a quirk of that world, but I don't know maybe it's just me knowing how it works behind the curtains breaks a little immersion.

Also it's a shame that you can't experience BTW like we do. Experimenting and exploring each update to find what secrets did you include ;)

[Battosay]

So simple, yet so brilliant ! I love it :)

[Zhil]

Oh wow, did not see that coming. Good one, loving it :)

[Skwirral]

February's over, and so is BtW!

I opened a drink to celebrate, not going to lie.

[Sarudak]

I don't know that I would say over. Maybe completed but the legacy of BTW will last for years. I agree with your sentiment of excitement for RTH though. I'm excited to see a flowerchild original!

[FlowerChild]

February's over, and so is BtW!

I opened a drink to celebrate, not going to lie.

Not quite :)

As I mentioned over in the vanilla news thread, with the amount of stuff I have left that I want to get done, and with 1.5 coming out sometime in the next couple of weeks, I've decided to delay the end of BTW by a bit (not sure how much yet...likely between 2 weeks and a month).

I was stressing myself out trying to meet my own deadline, and that was resulting in things becoming decidedly non-fun. I was also noticing myself starting to rush things which was resulting in more dangling loose ends than I'd like at a time when I'm trying to polish BTW up so I can consider it "finished".

So yeah, I've decided to slow down a bit, allow myself to enjoy the process, and take the time to make sure I do things right. I'm getting closer with each passing day, but I think trying to impose too much structure on what was always a rather organic process was getting counter-productive.

I guess it was just making it feel too much like a job. Normally, when I wake up on a day I've decided to devote to BTW, I look over my todo list and work on whatever catches my fancy at the time. I find this boosts my productivity overall as I'm usually particularly into whatever it is that I'm working on. The past little while it's been more along the lines of "ok, I have to work on this today as my next task in meeting my deadline", and yeah, that's much more akin to when I used to work in the industry.

Anyways, all that to say it will be a little while longer, but we're getting there. I really do need to try to reign in me adding new features, as it is obvious that me doing stuff like Hardcore Movement, then wanting to add a new block type, and then wanting to revamp how snow works to suit it, is not the way for me to get this done ;)

[Folrig]

You're add...adding a new block type?

[MoRmEnGiL]

Heh, when I saw that self imposed deadline, I knew it would come down to this.

Turning your hobby into a job was always a pet peeve of mine, heh.

I hope 1.5 goes easy on you, especially with 1.5.x shenanigans. :]

[darahalian]

You're add...adding a new block type?

He did add packed earth. I'm assuming that is what was being referred to.

[FlowerChild]

You're add...adding a new block type?

I was referring to Packed Earth. Just making a statement on how me adding an apparently simple feature like Hardcore Movement tends to escalate with time.