The ongoing 1.3 update epic

[Miss_Kat]

Oh my. Beautiful, smooth grassy hills in our futures. I'm terrible at landscaping, but I definately want to play around with that.

[Psion]

Out of curiosity, would they just look like plain half slabs of grass in a snow biome, or are they/will they be coded to turn white/get snow covered as well?

I know other half-slabs dont get snow covered, but I'm wondering if that's the case here too.

Regardless, a very exciting feature! I've always hated having to jump up the natural landscape instead of just being able to walk over one high blocks.

[FlowerChild]

Ok guys, enough with the Q&A on the dirt slabs.

This was a fun little feature I did as a pleasant distraction from the update. It's rapidly turning into a major downer, and a reminder of why I generally don't discuss features before they are released.

[Battosay]

Well, you show new feature, without any additional info, so we get excited, we start dreaming about things, and we ask about what comes to our mind.
You know it's always like that. Seems normal to me :)
I don't understand where it's a downer to see people getting excited and asking for info about one of your idea. Just tell them to shut up if you don't want to answer ;)

[Battlecat]

Dirt slabs? That grow grass? Genius, I love it!

[Panda]

Wow the slabs are really cool! If we had grass corners we could make jump free hill navigation! That's not a suggestion just a passing thought.

Really though I think I just realized why I love the mod soo much, it's because I can really tell you love this mod, and it shows when I play it. Thank you for putting so much work and love into this flower. :) *panda bows*

[SgtChuckle]

I can just imagine, if we get dirt mouldings, and corners, and more... FC, you rock. Taking time out of the already huge task of updating to add more cool content for us?

[Calcifire3691]

I love how people have got the idea of dirt/grass corners and mouldings from nowhere
if FC were to implement that, he'd be using six block ID's, one for grass slabs (and all it's directions), one for moulding (and it's directions), and one for corners (and derpy-derpy-doo). then another three for the plain dirt ones.
(plus, in that screenshot we don't see any other than the grass half slabs)

most likely, it will be a single block ID that holds metadata for grass covered and dirt half slabs

[HaloGamefreek]

Yay... More suggestions on the update Journal!... Umm idk if thats safe right now.
And Flowerchild i can't believe the things you are doing for this mod. I cant wait for the update. You are amazing. I bow to you good sir

[FlowerChild]

Well, you show new feature, without any additional info, so we get excited, we start dreaming about things, and we ask about what comes to our mind.
You know it's always like that. Seems normal to me :)
I don't understand where it's a downer to see people getting excited and asking for info about one of your idea. Just tell them to shut up if you don't want to answer ;)

Yup, I can understand that. However, think of it like if you buy someone a gift...say a car...and you're telling them you're bringing it over for them

"Does it have leather upholstery?" they ask.

No, no it doesn't.

"Does it have 4 wheel drive?" they ask.

Nope, not that either.

"Does it fellate you when you're stopped at a traffic light?"

Sigh...no.

Maybe these kind of questions are natural, but anything put up next to increasingly unrealistic questions or expectations rapidly becomes a downer.

Anyways, I was tired, had spent a good 12 hours or so working on the mod, and just found it rather depressing that the reaction to something new I had put together was partially a focus on what it didn't do instead of what it did.

It's all good now, I just don't want to answer any additional questions about it :)

[jakerman999]

Anyways, I was tired, had spent a good 12 hours or so working on the mod, and just found it rather depressing that the reaction to something new I had put together was partially a focus on what it didn't do instead of what it did.

I think that's a matter of perspective. You're saying "Here it is!" and we go "What does it do?". Granted, we probably should have asked "What features does it have?" rather than "Will if fellate me at stoplights?" as I can perceive how that might be taken from the other side of the fence. My apologies.

[Ulfengaard]

I think what jaker is saying is that our questions are only because we are so excited. This is a really neat feature, and we're all foaming at the mouth to play with it. So, we ask questions as a surrogate way of trying it out, not as a way to drill down what it doesn't do.

In other words, thanks FC. This is awesome. Landscaping is going to be much more interesting now, and I think I'll have a new outlook on rugged, untamed terrain in the future. Double win!

[FlowerChild]

I think what jaker is saying is that our questions are only because we are so excited. This is a really neat feature, and we're all foaming at the mouth to play with it.

Yup, I understand that, and I'm just explaining how it winds up impacting me on the other end. I certainly didn't ban anyone for it or what have you, as I didn't really perceive you guys as really doing anything wrong (other than the MCPatcher thing, which I just thought was a rather dickish response to a new feature with "a bunch of people aren't going to use it").

I just don't want to deal with these kind of expectations right now, even if they're coming out of curiosity with no ill intent. I'm currently running a marathon with this 1.3 update thing, and as with any marathon, managing your own mental state is a crucial ingredient in making it to the end.

Anyways, as a final statement on the subject, I've taken a note to revisit the block once the update is done and take a look at both mycelium and snow. Mycelium should be a breeze, and I *think* I can pull off something reasonable for snow cover by modifying the block's volume and treating both the snow cover and the slab itself as a single block.

Making Siding/Panels/Corners out of them is right out the window though. I made them slabs for a reason, and I think it suits the material in question just fine.

[CreeperCommando]

Dude! I have for the longest time wanted dirt slabs, you made my frigging day :D (no, seriously, I've been for too long irritated on the broken-ish, non soft-ish nature)
Heck I know that if you make them they will be bug free.

Well sir you have cured probably my biggest pet peeve of vMC ever, hats off to you and have a really good day :)

[Ulfengaard]

BTW by FC: Fixing vanilla, one version at a time. :)

[Elevatator]

Hey Fc, your going to implement something Notch wanted to do in the very early development:

http://www.minecraftwiki.net/wiki/Slab#Dirt_slab
http://notch.tumblr.com/post/220243988/ ... o-it-kinda

When I checked the Wiki some days ago, I wondered why they aren´t implemented yet.

[FlowerChild]

You'll notice he mentions slow-down, so I think using them in terrain generation would result in performance issues. I suspect slabs are a small performance hit since they don't block the view of what's behind them. If you use them in terrain gen, it would result in massive numbers of them, and what was perhaps a substantial performance hit.

Having them only placeable by the player on the other hand, for use in landscaping, makes the likelihood that there will be truly obscene numbers of them much less, like with any other slab.

Also, it may have been not wanting to deal with all the border cases that have come up here (Mycelium, Snow, etc), plus the grass rendering code is a bit of a mess. I originally planned to spend maybe an hour on these things, and in the end it took me a good 4 to get them where they are now, mainly due to having to pull some voodoo with the rendering code to get the biome-specific coloring working properly without turning the whole block dung-green.

Anyways, who knows? Maybe he just didn't like the look of the terrain with them in there. It definitely gives things a different vibe, but I personally like it as it provides you with a level of detail in doing your landscaping that wasn't present before, and is particularly nice when you're running a path up a slope like in my screen-shot, and want the surrounding terrain to follow the slope as well.

[odranoel]

dude FC, seriusly, why arent you working for mojang? youd rock their socks off and get paid for it :p

*sarcasm off, back on topic*

this has become one of my fav threads to follow so far. i love seeing the incremental updates and screen shots. very satisfying in a weird way i dont really understand xD. when the update is finished i plan to make a little video slide show of the screen shots you posted, will be cool to see a short lil timelapse of the 1.3 btw update.

i find it incredible how just one guy on a computer can have such a profound impact on people all over the world. first it was notch originally making MC. now its you, doing even more incredible things. just think, that from the comfort of your own home you have inspired and brought a wide array of feelings to people all over the planet! and your impact is probably ten times greater then what we really see online. as im sure for about every ten people that play the mod religiously, only one will join the forums and actually interact.

i seriously cannot express in words how amazing and truly inspiring your work has been, and it has goten me out of a rut of depression more then once. all the pain you endure from making updates gets converted into happiness, amplified a million times, and gets unleashed apoun the world with every update.

so thank you, from me, and all the thousands of people that will probably never join, even thought BTW has become a regular part of their life.

[Mason11987]

Anyways, who knows? Maybe he just didn't like the look of the terrain with them in there. It definitely gives things a different vibe, but I personally like it as it provides you with a level of detail in doing your landscaping that wasn't present before, and is particularly nice when you're running a path up a slope like in my screen-shot, and want the surrounding terrain to follow the slope as well.

I could imagine you working on this and going "damnit I hate jumping up this grass... I KNOW!"

Cool little feature, my world has a few annoying grass hills that would benefit from some half-slabing.

[FlowerChild]

I could imagine you working on this and going "damnit I hate jumping up this grass... I KNOW!"

Hehe...pretty much. I was laying out the path down the hill from my house to the new area where I have the Kiln and the pit dug for my Crucible (which is what I'll be working on next...almost at Steel....woot!), and got annoyed that the cobble slabs I was using to go down the slope weren't flush with the terrain.

I know it's something I've been annoyed by in the past, but this was the first time I had the follow-up "well, why don't you do something about it?" thought ;)

[TheRedAfro]

Really liking this thread. Speaking for myself only, it's interesting to see some of the process(es) that go into making this mod what it is today. I was away from the forum for the weekend and to see additional responses just put a grin on my face. Keep up the great work on what has become and continues to be my favorite mod, hands down.

Seeing the picture(s), I have never set my lamps like that and popped into my test world with a 'Huh' when I was able to do the same. Yeah, it's the lil things. Putting torches on posts, sure. Never even thought about lightblocks (or redlamps for that) being set up like that. As stated, it's the lil things. Not that I'm not noticing the recent events.

Back in my hermit hole. Things to do, things to do.....

[DreamsofFury]

Moved from indiana to montana, have had no net.
For 4 months I have been MC deprived to the point I bought a flash drive to download minecraft to it and move it to the laptop at home, the day of 1.3 apparently and I didnt notice.....
Bored already of vMC and get net hoping you updated, disappointed you didnt yet but seeing the progress you made wiped that away :D
Cant wait, and now that I have net (albeit slow net) I'm gonna download this asap when it does come out.

Already planing things into my current vMC world that incorporate different aspects of the updates I missed.....shoot...I already have a kiln area setup cause I didnt feel right without one :P


Thanks FC for making this game enjoyable for me. But for now I need to go setup my future hemp farm.

[Mr_Hosed]

Welcome my new fellow Montanan!

Back on topic, I personally am enjoying the information about the code changes caused by the 1.3 update. I implore FC to ignore the jokers turning this into another suggestion forum and keep posting those tech snippits :)

[FlowerChild]

I think you guys know the drill by now :)

Spoiler

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Not much visual change today as I was working more on the internals, but, on that note:

For add-on modders:

Spoiler

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As I mentioned I was planning to do earlier today, I created an interface for handling custom Tile Entity data. It's pretty straight forward. Just implement:

FCITileEntityDataPacketHandler

Then, you'll need something similar to the following code in your Tile Entity class:

Code: Select all

    @Override
    public Packet getAuxillaryInfoPacket()
    {
        NBTTagCompound nbttagcompound = new NBTTagCompound();
        
        nbttagcompound.setShort( "f", m_sFilterType );
        nbttagcompound.setShort( "s", m_sStorageSlotsOccupied );
        
        return new Packet132TileEntityData( xCoord, yCoord, zCoord, 1, nbttagcompound );
    }
    
    //************* FCITileEntityDataPacketHandler ************//
    
    @Override
    public void readNBTFromPacket( NBTTagCompound nbttagcompound )
    {
        m_sFilterType = nbttagcompound.getShort( "f" );
        m_sStorageSlotsOccupied = nbttagcompound.getShort( "s" );     
        
        // force a visual update for the block since the above variables affect it
        
        worldObj.markBlocksDirty( xCoord, yCoord, zCoord, xCoord, yCoord, zCoord );        
    }    

The first function is an override of one in the base tile entity class that specifies the packet structure on the server. The second is an implementation of my interface, that lets you read in that data on the client without further base-class mods.

Finally, you'll need to call markBlockNeedsUpdate() whenever you want to communicate the variables in question, as I do here:

Code: Select all

    @Override
    public void onInventoryChanged()
    {
    	super.onInventoryChanged();
    	
		m_bForceValidateOnUpdate = true;
		
    	if ( worldObj != null )
    	{
	        if ( ValidateInventoryStateVariables() )
	        {
		        worldObj.markBlockNeedsUpdate( xCoord, yCoord, zCoord );
	        }
    	}
    }

In this case, I detect whenever my relevant variables change state, and mark the block for update, which causes the above packet to be sent. Note that I use short variables in the example above to cut down on the amount of data sent, but you can send anything that you normally can put into an NBT.

And that's it. Not too painful at all :)

[Force21]

It looks like you've built a soul urn bottler, and you're working on the crucible.

I also see we've got the same design for containing those pesky "animals". ;)

But whats with the massive upgrade on your reed farms? Need a few elevators?