Urian wrote:Is there a viable way to build a pigman farm in vMC? BTW does a lot to facilitate nether pigmen farms (limit the spawning to only netherrack and netherbrick plus having nether groth to further reduce the possible spawning placed) but wouldn't it in vMC require you to replace an enormous are of the nether with half slabs? If so, then I can understand having a way to make a pigman farm in the overworld (even though I doubt that's the reason for it given Mojang's stance on mob farms)
Sorry for the delay in responding to this. I first read it just before bed last night and wanted to sober up before responding. Now with a couple of cups of coffee in me, I think I'm ready to give it a go :)
I'm not entirely certain how effective vMC overworld pigmen farms will be. I think we're looking at two issues there, one being collecting the obsidian. That would obviously be extremely time consuming using vanilla picks. You can probably save a lot of time by pouring into a mould, much like you can do with a single portal, however this is still going to obviously be an epic undertaking.
BUT, I think we definitely can't discount the amount of determination people can exhibit in that regard. I've seen people build huge towers out of obs in SMP before, so I'm pretty sure there will be at least some who do this.
Then there's resource collection, but that largely comes down to punching mobs to death in the current standard vanilla fashion, or just standing in a water-stream afk like used to be the norm (if you don't care about the XP).
But I think this ties into a larger subject with regards to the mod and MC which is why I want to wait before responding:
The way I'm currently seeing things, especially after seeing the news about zombies and such wearing all kinds of armor in the game, is that Mojang's current design goal is to provide complete flexibility in terms of player action. What I mean by this, is that I think they're heading towards making it so that whatever action a player prefers to engage in, they will reach the same end-point.
So, for example, if you prefer farming, you can trade with villagers to get your equipment. If you prefer mining, you can mine for the resources to make it. If you prefer combat, you can kill mobs for it.
So, whichever way you go, eventually you'll wind up with full diamond gear.
Now, this isn't necessarily a bad design direction, but it's not one that I personally agree with. I personally favor diversity in player action, and a player being encouraged to explore all the various aspects of the game to get to the "end". You can see this preference in many of my own design decisions where I'll focus on different aspects at any given time, and based on which I think need more fleshing out. I don't think any one of these individual activities is a worthwhile gameplay experience on its own, but when combined, they make for something truly interesting (basically the MC we've all come to know and love).
Basically, I like the idea of players planting some crops, going to do some mining while they wait for them to grow, fighting off some mobs while mining, etc. A lot of times I think MC is most interesting when the player is engaged in multi-tasking and has many different simultaneous objectives. This is probably one of the reasons I've always objected to bone-meal in MC, as to me, farming has always added an interesting element of multi-tasking into the game given it's a long-term background activity, whereas with bone-meal, it really becomes a one-off start to finish in a few minutes kinda thing.
So yeah, back to the original point: I really don't know if these farms will be effective in vMC, but if I had to hazard a guess, I'd say they will be. I'm pretty certain people will find effective ways of doing this, and we'll see videos about them on Youtube soon enough. BUT, I also think that's becoming less and less relevant to me, as I'm becoming more certain that my design direction, and Mojang's, are going in very different directions with very different goals.
I don't think anyone here would argue that BTW should start adopting the homogenous design ideology that seems to be becoming part of vMC. I think users of this mod have a great deal of appreciation for diversity of activities, specialized devices for particular jobs, and that kind of thing. In this particular case, I think that's basically why I'm wanting to make this change: it's taking a big step towards homogenizing the Nether and the Overworld by making one of the primary reasons for constructing a base in the Nether available elsewhere.
And one last point: while I don't think Mojang plans for mob-traps or automation, I *do* think the players that make these kinds of requests do, and try to sneak them in using other justifications. Like, in this case, I doubt Mojang was thinking about pig-man farms, but if someone asked them for this feature, they probably were.
Another example is with ice. I doubt Mojang even considered its use in item transport when making it accessible with silk touch. They were probably just thinking in terms of pretty ice castles and such. However, you can be fairly certain the bulk of people asking for this very much wanted it for item transport.
So what you wind up with are features being added based on player requests for features to help in automation, while Mojang is not balancing the features for the intended use. That's kinda alarming when you think about it, and I hope people can understand that I think *someone* needs to be looking at those aspects, especially when dealing with a mod that largely focuses on these kind of things.
