Flower's Dev Diary (Week Of March 18th)

[FlowerChild]

Boom.

Well, not exactly what I was thinking. It's rare I give hints about this stuff, but I will provide a relevant question in this case:

Where did the monsters come from?

[Equitis1024]

I also really love how they fit into the mod's back story. If you put some thought into it, the implications are actually rather cool if I do say so myself.

Oh that's intriguing! I really like how BTW manages to hint at backstory through things like this, the endermen mechanics, and the "too troubled to rest" message.

Anyway, from a game balance perspective, the nerf of villages is great. I started a new world the other day to experience all the changes to the early game, and was very disappointed when I quickly found a village and obtained all three crops. This fix should solve that nicely.

[xou816]

Tested on my main world's seed, worked very fine!
The seed I use features a village near the spawn, which is now an abandoned village.
I also have a Desert Temple not too far, and it was fine as well :)
My main world was not harmed as well :)

tl;dr: no bugs found!

EDIT: have not tested newly generated chunks yet

[Shengji]

No problems here! Did what I said I would do in the other thread with 10 worlds, not one hiccup in the world gen. Villages work as they should, love the little touches in the abandoned village! All quiet on the western front!

[Simurgh]

Tried it out with five previously played in world seeds. No problems with world gen that I can see, everything looks the same of regenerating the maps and on expanding to generate new chunks. I'll test it out some more later today when I get a chance.

Where did the monsters come from?

Without going too off topic - I always read a bit into that splash message "Ever consider that the monsters may be the good guys?"

[ion]

no terrain generation changed at all in my testing trip. lamps in dessert villages still have the midair torches, cuz are made with smooth sandstone.
i also found a way to exploit the abandoned villages to have a bigger chance to find good villages using hardcore spawn mechanics

[Mud]

Nice to see the Blacksmith chest is also removed from the Abandoned Village. The busted out windows in the church are a nice touch too. I'm also glad to see the idea of altering the crops available in each village wasn't completely dismissed.

Very excited for this release.

[MrPlatypus]

-Changed desert temples in one other subtle way that I'll leave to the player to discover ;)

I will be entering the next desert temple I find like a bomb technician.

[OldMarriedDude]

Trial update looks great. Obsidian in the Desert temple was a great idea. Cant seem to find any other changes in the temple though. Will look more carefully. The abandoned villages not having water in the gardens was a pretty nifty twist. I kind of expected to find there were just no villagers. Curious tho, is there a reason the village wells have water in them? Seems that the well being dry could be an indication as to why the village was abandoned.

[JakeZKAM]

Just tried it out with a couple seeds, feels great now ;) and as a side note that small change to desert temples.... OMG so much hate/love right now because of that XD

[FlowerChild]

Thanks for all the feedback guys! It is very much appreciated, and I am glad to hear everything seems to be going off without a hitch. That's good news indeed :)

lamps in dessert villages still have the midair torches, cuz are made with smooth sandstone.

Doh! Thanks for pointing that out.

i also found a way to exploit the abandoned villages to have a bigger chance to find good villages using hardcore spawn mechanics

Have you actually tried that, or is it just a theory? I took that possibility into account when making these changes and took steps to not make it a viable strategy.

Further tweaking may be required there if the above is practical.

[FlowerChild]

lamps in dessert villages still have the midair torches

Turns out this one was a little trickier than that and could apply to regular villages as well, based on the "orientation" of the lamp post relative to the rest of the village.

Anyways, fixed that up for the next release :)

[Wafflewaffle]

Not sure if i should ask this here but...

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Should "Church" be windowless? Cuz all buildings have windows but it.

[FlowerChild]

Yes.

[ion]

my test of 20 worlds got me the following results:
there is no terrain modification at all apart for some one block waterfalls or some trees that aren't in the same place.
even if you start the map in 4.58 and then continue in this prerelease, the terrain is exactly the same. so overall i didn't found any issues at all. pyramid temples work fine, tables in villages also. wheat villages spawn frequently, if you are able to find them. also carrots and wheat or potatoes and wheat villages work fine.
the only bugs are those that i have posted above.

[Gabecraft1234]

The balance for populated village distance seems good. I have found that if you make a fully zoomed out map at spawn with spawn being on the edge of said map you must fully cross the map before populated villages occur. (1 fully zoomed out map ~ 2000 blocks)

[FlowerChild]

Seems that the well being dry could be an indication as to why the village was abandoned.

Damn, I meant to respond to this one this morning, but got distracted.

What you're saying above would make sense if that was the reason why they were abandoned, but it's not ;)

I put a lot of thought into the specific aspects of abandoned villages to make sure they support the back-story for the mod. All is (or at least should be if I didn't screw up) as intended ;)

my test of 20 worlds got me the following results:
there is no terrain modification at all apart for some one block waterfalls or some trees that aren't in the same place.
even if you start the map in 4.58 and then continue in this prerelease, the terrain is exactly the same. so overall i didn't found any issues at all. pyramid temples work fine, tables in villages also. wheat villages spawn frequently, if you are able to find them. also carrots and wheat or potatoes and wheat villages work fine.
the only bugs are those that i have posted above.

Good news! Thanks for that man.

Hmmm...although the trees and water falls do at least make me wonder. Anyone know if those show up in the same places in different instances of the same vanilla seed? If not, it may be a cause for concern.

Also, the bugs you're referring to are the lamp post thing (already fixed) and the exploit with HC Spawn (working on it), correct?

[MrLemon]

I'm confused, if zombies come from villages (which seems to be what your implying?) how do they come out of darkness (and therefore mob traps) or is that just another 'source' of zombies?

[Shengji]

Hmmm...although the trees and water falls do at least make me wonder. Anyone know if those show up in the same places in different instances of the same vanilla seed? If not, it may be a cause for concern.

I did check specific known trees in a few of my test worlds, they were all there exactly down to the last branch and leaf block, but that was a sample size of maybe only 5. Similar with waterfalls, the ones I noticed were present and correct, but it was a small sample size!

[FlowerChild]

I'm confused, if zombies come from villages (which seems to be what your implying?) how do they come out of darkness (and therefore mob traps) or is that just another 'source' of zombies?

Errrr...no, that's not what I'm implying :)

I suspect we should probably leave further discussion of this topic to a relevant back-story theory thread. I'm zipping it on providing any more clues ;)

[FlowerChild]

I did check specific known trees in a few of my test worlds, they were all there exactly down to the last branch and leaf block, but that was a sample size of maybe only 5. Similar with waterfalls, the ones I noticed were present and correct, but it was a small sample size!

Hmmm...ok, thanks for the verification. If ion noticed something amiss though, I'd love to hear the specifics of that, and potentially even take a look at the relevant save game.

[xou816]

I'm not home at the moment so I cannot check, but while testing the release I took this screenshot:

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I'm not sure if this stairs bug happens in vanilla as well... I'll check when I'm back home!

Nevermind. Sorry for the trouble caused!

[FlowerChild]

Yeah, it does. It's a vanilla thing.

[DaveYanakov]

Ion was referring to suicide at spawn resulting in hardcore spawn placing the player outside the radius of devestated villages resulting in a higher chance of finding a good village straight off. The general response on IRC is that if someone wanted to go to that much trouble to cheat past the early game, it's not worth the effort to tell them no.

I've tried a few different seeds with both 4.62 and this public release and it all seems to be identical aside from the intended changes. Right down to all the same blocks of suspended sand in the deserts.

[SterlingRed]

I intended checking out the post vanilla gen changes you've made, but minecraft had different things in mind. I installed the patch and loaded up an existing world. I've explored in and out of old and new terrain gen areas to try to create seams, none exist. Then I started to head out to find new villages and pyramids and instead, spent 30 minutes crossing an ocean which I'm still in. So I figured while I was in the ocean, I'd do some fps checks while boating at full speed between 62 and 63T. No differences, performance looks good. (logic there was there could be a performance hit if your post processing terrain gen as its loading quickly).

One thing has occurred to me though that I was going to create the specific circumstances to test but ran out of time this evening. What happens if a player loads this on an existing world in which only half a village is generated currently?