New Release! (BTW V3.61)

[TheAnarchitect]

Nope!

Spoiler

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[FlowerChild]

Hehe...glad you're enjoying it guys :)

Just a wee reminder though: If I don't describe how something works in the change-log (or elsewhere), then please put any direct explanations of it in spoiler tags. I usually do these things so that people can have the fun of figuring it out for themselves based on the clues given. It kinda sucks if you can't even browse the release thread without them being laid-out spread-eagle.

Also, Anarch, that reported yield is *really* low. You definitely don't have optimal pond configuration going on there. Length and girth make a big difference when redneck fishing ;)

Seriously though...I made it so that obtaining optimal yield from an automated system would be rather tricky, and would definitely require some thought.

[LaserCooled]

Having followed the mod for around 7 months...I just want to say thanks FC. You breath new life in to Minecraft with every release of BTW. I love this mod.

And Redneck Fishing (hilarious!!). This is awesome.

[FlowerChild]

Having followed the mod for around 7 months...I just want to say thanks FC. You breathe new life in to Minecraft with every release of BTW. I love this mod.

And Redneck Fishing (hilarious!!). This is awesome.

Hehe...yeah, I'm getting quite a chuckle out of it myself. I can't be certain, but I think BTW may have just become the first mod that provides for automated fishing, and the manner in which that happens is....well...very BTW :)

On the bummer side though, I'm kinda scratching my head on the whole donation thing. Thousands of downloads of the new release overnight...total donations: 0$.

Not sure if there's anything I could be doing differently to make people more aware of them or whatever, but having pumped a ton of time into a release, it becomes rather depressing when that happens.

This doesn't really apply to people here of course, as many of you guys have been extremely generous over the past few weeks. I'm more scratching my head over how to encourage donations in the long term and wondering if anyone has any ideas in that regard.

[morvelaira]

This doesn't really apply to people here of course, as many of you guys have been extremely generous over the past few weeks. I'm more scratching my head over how to encourage donations in the long term and wondering if anyone has any ideas in that regard.

Short of posing for photos as the BTW Cheerleader, I'm not really sure what I could do. Not my area of expertise, I am afraid ;)

[TheAnarchitect]

NP: Spoiler'd discussion in my own posts, and will keep that up from now on. (perhaps that's worth adding to the rules as a specific case of don't piss of Flowerchild?)

As to the donations, I've always been a big fan of ransom publishing, where you release your new content when donations hit a certain level you set. Another related way to do it is to release the content to donors first, and to non-donors a week or so later.

[FlowerChild]

As to the donations, I've always been a big fan of ransom publishing, where you release your new content when donations hit a certain level you set. Another related way to do it is to release the content to donors first, and to non-donors a week or so later.

Nah, those kind of solutions are way too heavy-handed for my taste man and the first in particular would likely alter my own development schedule, which is not something I want to do.

Anyways, I'll likely just keep on keeping-on in this regard. Was just a bit of a shock that there was absolutely zero monetary acknowledgment of the new release when I woke up this morning.

[danielngtiger]

Redneck Fishing: lol! Thaks for all your hard work FC :)

[Andellmere]

Short of posing for photos as the BTW Cheerleader, I'm not really sure what I could do. Not my area of expertise, I am afraid ;)

...There is no correct way to respond to this.
...At all.

total donations: 0$.

GRAGH! And now I feel bad for being broke!

...I'll have a job in a couple of weeks. First thing on my to do list: Donate to FC!

I truly appreciate what you do here FC. I just don't have any money to show that appreciation monetarily.

[Ulfengaard]

As to the donations, I've always been a big fan of ransom publishing, where you release your new content when donations hit a certain level you set. Another related way to do it is to release the content to donors first, and to non-donors a week or so later.

Nah, those kind of solutions are way too heavy-handed for my taste man and the first in particular would likely alter my own development schedule, which is not something I want to do.

Anyways, I'll likely just keep on keeping-on in this regard. Was just a bit of a shock that there was absolutely zero monetary acknowledgment of the new release when I woke up this morning.

Sorry, FC. You do deserve it, man. Wish I was independently wealthy. I'd fund BTW and your startup, too! :)

[FlowerChild]

Don't sweat it guys, like I said, this wasn't directed at people here and I certainly don't want people giving beyond their means.

More just my own personal brain-dump and wondering at how to reach the community at large. The mod receives a rather insane number of downloads, and obviously the people that choose to donate are only a fraction of a percent of that.

[embirrim]

Good release FC. The fishing aspect caught me off guard, unexpected and challenging!
Pity about the Nether sludge, I am sorry I was so agressive in the suggestion post. However, since you have plans regarding nether sludge to clay later on I will trust your judgement is correct, and better than mine as I have no idea where you're going with this idea.
Good to see you're keeping an eye on the BTB bugs.

I have a question regarding soul sand planters; why would it be advantageous for water problems to be eliminated? I understand it is a perfectly justified change, since the less base-class modifications you make the better, but I cannot see why you'd want to have water running over them. Is there anything you can automate without being in the Nether?

I don't have an active BTW world, there are so many releases since my 1.2.3 BTB that I will have so much new stuff to automate when I switch it'll be amazing.

As to the donations, I've always been a big fan of ransom publishing, where you release your new content when donations hit a certain level you set. Another related way to do it is to release the content to donors first, and to non-donors a week or so later.

I'm actually 100% against this. Not in general, but to BTW specifically. Given FC's philosophy, and having seen his major concerns with donations in interviews, I really hope this doesn't go forward. I am ok with any type of publicity, encouragement, or anything really that makes people donate. I have donated, but I'm sure there are more active people in this community, and that provide more to the community than I do, and probably are in a position where donations are not an option. Having "premium-membership" seems... wrong.

Regarding setting a level... I think that would be something you would do if you had ad.fly, not donations. giving people the option to thank the creator is, imo, a much better way to thank him. I am sure everyone gets more enjoyment from being paid for doing something than being paid to do it. It forces creativity, which is never good.
However I'm not in FC's position. So this is a bit of a useless rant.

EDIT: Well that was really useless. FC, can you explain why you don't consider using ad.fly?

[Eriottosan]

Spoilered my discussions. Sorry about that, FC. I had thought that perhaps we should have started a thread to talk about it, as I had forgotten the joys of spoilers!

As far as donations go, I know this is a little bit superficial and perhaps silly, but maybe over at MCF, move the donation button higher?
I'm only saying this because I'm assuming that the bulk of downloads come from there.

Looking at the thread, if we assume that the majority of downloaders there have downloaded it before, then if they go to the thread because they see there's been an update, this is all they need to see:

Spoiler

Show

As they can see from the breakdown of what the update includes, and that it doesn't include any new blocks they need to get to terms with, and that it doesn't change the way it is installed, perhaps they aren't scrolling down any further and hence not seeing anything about the download.

So I know it may seem like a silly thing, and you don't want to seem too pushy for donations, but maybe move it up a bit? I know it doesn't explain $0, but it might help a little?

[Sarudak]

Anyways, I'll likely just keep on keeping-on in this regard. Was just a bit of a shock that there was absolutely zero monetary acknowledgment of the new release when I woke up this morning.

The way I see it the people who are most likely to donate in the future are the ones who already have. But the flip side is that they already have. Having not had donations for a long time and then suddenly opening the doors you had a rush of donations from all the pent up enthusiasm. However that means most people inclined to donate have already done so recently with the amount they felt they could give. The only reason I can see someone right now giving at a new release is if they did not know about the donation arrangement previously. And if they didn't know about the donations opening up previously they're probably not the people who check for updates every night. Just my two cents.

[TheAnarchitect]

It's a good point. Make sure the button comes before the break.

[Eriottosan]

The way I see it the people who are most likely to donate in the future are the ones who already have. But the flip side is that they already have. Having not had donations for a long time and then suddenly opening the doors you had a rush of donations from all the pent up enthusiasm. However that means most people inclined to donate have already done so recently with the amount they felt they could give. The only reason I can see someone right now giving at a new release is if they did not know about the donation arrangement previously. And if they didn't know about the donations opening up previously they're probably not the people who check for updates every night. Just my two cents.

I think that's true for the people over here, Sarudak, as we had all the lead up with "I'm not sure if I want to do it" and then "PayPal are making it difficult" threads. But the people who don't come to this thread must make up the majority of the downloads as this is such a close knit and small community - we can't be causing thousands of downloads, our record number online is 100-and-something! And the people over at MCF didn't have the lead up. And regardless, FC is right to expect *something*.

I'm glad you agree, Anarchitect - I was hesitant to post it, thinking I might get laughed off the thread, but I thought "people are superficial, maybe it's worth mentioning".

Personally, I have been setting aside odd bits of change in a "4.0 appreciation fund" as my second donation (as I am but a poor student), just so you know FC. I know it wasn't directed at us, but just thought that fact might lift your spirits a little :).

[TheAnarchitect]

Also, sticky the donation button here, because many of us don't even go to the MCF forums anymore.

[FlowerChild]

Oh, in answer to an earlier question: producing self-planting trees from player corpses or whatever would require a base-class change. One of the reason I made the change I did was that it eliminates one through creating a custom entity item when bloodwood leaves are destroyed. I can do this because the code for bloodwood leaves is my own. The code for spawning items from corpses (or under other circumstances) is not.

I discovered while implementing Redneck Fishing that creating custom item entities is actually rather easy to do (I had to do them to make the fish float, and after I realized how easy it was, I decided to apply it to bloodwood as well), but it can only be done under very specific circumstances if you don't want to base-class mod.

I have a question regarding soul sand planters; why would it be advantageous for water problems to be eliminated? I understand it is a perfectly justified change, since the less base-class modifications you make the better, but I cannot see why you'd want to have water running over them. Is there anything you can automate without being in the Nether?

There's no immediate advantage that I know of to giving the soul-sand planters a standard bounding box (like, nothing you can automate now because of it). I did it for the sake of consistency and because it opens up such possibilities in the future. The non-standard box was also no longer required, allowing me to trim out that code.

EDIT: Well that was really useless. FC, can you explain why you don't consider using ad.fly?

Well, I don't want to turn this into an overall revenue thread, but for several reasons:

a) I hate internet ads.
b) To me, using the mod to promote random products I know nothing about is full-out "corporate whore" behavior. To me, it's a completely different thing from accepting voluntary contributions.
c) The revenue you can expect to get from ad-fly is seriously trivial and is unlikely to total over the course of a month what a single decent donation is likely to bring in.
d) I think it serves to discourage donations as people figure your revenue is coming from elsewhere, and it also serves to annoy them.
e) It encourages questionable behavior like splitting your mod into 5 different downloads, because that behavior becomes "correct" given the business model involved, and if you've ever been through that kind of download process as a player, it seriously sucks ass. When I was actively developing BTB, there were occasions where knowing I had to go through it actually caused me to procrastinate about updating the mod.
f) It promotes mod development where more downloads = more money, which will inevitably compromise design integrity...especially of this mod. This feeds back into possibly decreasing donations as I'd then potentially be catering to the kind of players that don't make them (i.e. kids).

I'm not against other people using it if they see fit, but it's definitely not for me, and for the kind of mod I'm making, I think it would actually serve to decrease revenue overall.

So yeah, absolutely not going to happen :)

[Sarudak]

I personally would never donate to someone who makes me use an adfly link.

[MoRmEnGiL]

Have you considered ad-flying your download links? I know it might feel a little dirty to you, but what the heck, it might not be much but it is money.

I also think awareness is a key thing here, I'm sure most people who use BtW are not even aware of the donations being open.

On the update now, given that everything you do has a good dose of black humour, I cannot wait to try redneck fishing :]

However this:

-Fixed problem with the Block Dispenser ejecting entities (arrows, eggs, etc.) in such a way that they skipped over the first block they would normally travel through.

just broke my minecart system :P

No sweat though, I'll find a way to fix it, I thought it only did this with minecarts, didn't know it was a bug so I designed around it :P

[RaustBlackDragon]

I personally would never donate to someone who makes me use an adfly link.

Eh, I use adfly because it lets me know the numbers of downloads I'm getting, the money means very very little to me. And I still leave the option to use the direct link.

[FlowerChild]

I personally would never donate to someone who makes me use an adfly link.

Same here.

[Sarudak]

Eh, I use adfly because it lets me know the numbers of downloads I'm getting, the money means very very little to me. And I still leave the option to use the direct link.

Well if you have a direct link then you're not making me use adfly.

EDIT: THis is getting very off topic. Perhaps a new thread would be appropriate to reduce chatter on the release thread.

[FlowerChild]

EDIT: THis is getting very off topic. Perhaps a new thread would be appropriate to reduce chatter on the release thread.

Yeah, agreed. If someone has a particular suggestion as to how to increase my donation exposure, feel free to create a new thread. Let's bring this one back on topic, as now we're even getting into things like adfly revenue on *other* mods which is definitely *way* off topic.

[TheAnarchitect]

However this:

-Fixed problem with the Block Dispenser ejecting entities (arrows, eggs, etc.) in such a way that they skipped over the first block they would normally travel through.

just broke my minecart system :P

I too thought that having the BD put the minecart in the second block was intentional: It allowed me to grab the minecart from one track and put in on another track.