IMPORTANT: Upcoming changes

[FlowerChild]

Hey guys,

As I mentioned in another thread, I'm going to be making some balance changes to the way the tech-tree plays out in an upcoming release. Most of these should not affect existing builds, but there's a couple I want to announce beforehand in case they break some of your devices, so you can plan ahead for them:

-The Saw will have a much greater spin-up time before it becomes powered when first receiving mechanical power. This will likely be in the neighborhood of 2 seconds or so, but may be greater depending on how things feel when I play-test the change.

-This is the really important one when designing automated systems (such as automated Kilns): stoking fire will only work over powered Hibachis. The Hibachi will receive a substantial recipe change to justify this, but the important part to keep in mind for now is that you won't be able to stoke fires over just plain Netherrack anymore.

My apologies for any inconvenience this may cause. I'm reworking the tech-tree substantially to make the mod play out better when you first start up a new world and work your way through it. The other changes I am making (which are pretty extensive) are unlikely to affect existing builds as they are mostly recipe changes, but I just wanted to give you all a warning about the above two.

[TheHoboHunted]

Thanks for the heads up. Lookin' forward to the tweek-age. =D

[Battosay]

Thanks for infos !
May I ask the reason behind the Saw change ? Just to prevent using an Hand crank on it, so we need a "true" mechanical energy source before we can evolve in the tech tree ?

[diegokilla]

I'm actually looking forward to these changes. Some of us were just having a discussion about how hibachi's really aren't necessary until you start dealing with automation. I think the change to have only hibachi's stoke-able will be a nice step in succession up the tech-tree.

[Lighthouse]

Thank you for the notice.

[Camerinthus]

Thanks for the notice!

[Stormweaver]

This seems interesting. If battosay's hunch regarding the hand crank and saw is right, I look forward to seeing how the next release will progress up our loveable tech tree :)

...and once again, an excuse to start a new world. yay.

[FlowerChild]

Thanks for infos !
May I ask the reason behind the Saw change ? Just to prevent using an Hand crank on it, so we need a "true" mechanical energy source before we can evolve in the tech tree ?

Yup, that's the basic idea. The Saw will act as a bottle-neck in the tech-tree so that people can't hand-crank their way all the way up to Steel (which was getting kinda ridiculous IMO).

Given that there's nothing like a fly-wheel in the mod at present, at a certain point, you will require *constant and steady* mechanical power for certain mechanical blocks to function properly (like the Saw and Turntable). The change in timing is intended to make that aspect more intuitive (and also be tied into proper sound effects once I hopefully get custom sound integrated into the Forge). In turn, the output of the Saw will be required to construct certain more advanced mechanical blocks so there won't be any hand-cranking past it ;)

I'm probably going to break the age of wood into at least a couple of separate tiers which are almost distinct ages onto themselves, and restructure the instructions within my thread on the MC forums to provide people with a clearer picture of what they need to accomplish to progress through each tier to make the overall tech progression easier to understand.

[ilovekintoki]

Currently, I can avoid searching for slimeballs by taking the somewhat more tedious road of getting a windmill first. Since saws won't work with hand cranks anymore, will this mean I'll HAVE to get slimeballs to proceed on the tech tree?

[Zhil]

I'll HAVE to get slimeballs to proceed on the tech tree?

Oh god, I hope not, that'd be horrible

[FlowerChild]

I won't answer any further questions about this aspect guys. There's a number of changes in the work, and you can rest assured that I'm keeping issues like the aforementioned thing about Wind Mills in mind.

[darahalian]

I'll HAVE to get slimeballs to proceed on the tech tree?

Oh god, I hope not, that'd be horrible

It doesn't sound like Flower to require you wasting time finding a very rare material to progress in the tech-tree. He also said that he's making a lot of other changes, mainly recipe changes, so there will likely be different paths to take to get to same places.

[empath]

Currently, I can avoid searching for slimeballs by taking the somewhat more tedious road of getting a windmill first. Since saws won't work with hand cranks anymore, will this mean I'll HAVE to get slimeballs to proceed on the tech tree?

You can hand crank a bellows to get glue, no?

[darahalian]

Currently, I can avoid searching for slimeballs by taking the somewhat more tedious road of getting a windmill first. Since saws won't work with hand cranks anymore, will this mean I'll HAVE to get slimeballs to proceed on the tech tree?

You can hand crank a bellows to get glue, no?

But a bellows needs panels, and so no saw = no bellows = no glue; at least in the current system of things...

[Haidaes]

Currently, I can avoid searching for slimeballs by taking the somewhat more tedious road of getting a windmill first. Since saws won't work with hand cranks anymore, will this mean I'll HAVE to get slimeballs to proceed on the tech tree?

You can hand crank a bellows to get glue, no?

But a bellows needs panels, and so no saw = no bellows = no glue; at least in the current system of things...

Not to mention that you actually need a saw for mouldings which are required to make a windmill in the first place. So there will have to be a few recipe changes.

[Yushatak]

Yay, rebalance in the exact area(s) I sensed problems! :D

I didn't think of changing the saw to address them - this will be interesting. I can't wait to see how you rearrange and change this. :3

[Stormweaver]

Hmm...out of curiosity, did a bit of testing. Constant mechanical power with hand cranks is possible, by placing 2 adjacent to the thing that needs cranking. click one, wait a second, click the other, and then click each as they reset - the block they power never loses power.

It's a touch irritating to have to do, but it's worth mentioning now as it could (possibly, FC may already know) be used to side-step the plans he has for the saw.

[Urian]

To those complaining/commenting about what these changes will mean for when you can byikd things; remenber that there will be recipe changes as well.

On a related note. Is the change that netherrack won't be able to stoke fire connected to a hibachi recipe change that will make it a part of (instead of "apart from") the age of wood? I'm guessing so since at the moment the hibachi can be built with only vMC materials (and the netherrack is the most difficult to obtain) and thus making it a requirement for a stoked fire won't have much affect.

Um, rambling - I'll stop now. I will blame all typos and/or logical errors on beer and vodka.

[FlowerChild]

To those complaining/commenting about what these changes will mean for when you can byikd things; remenber that there will be recipe changes as well.

On a related note. Is the change that netherrack won't be able to stoke fire connected to a hibachi recipe change that will make it a part of (instead of "apart from") the age of wood? I'm guessing so since at the moment the hibachi can be built with only vMC materials (and the netherrack is the most difficult to obtain) and thus making it a requirement for a stoked fire won't have much affect.

Um, rambling - I'll stop now. I will blame all typos and/or logical errors on beer and vodka.

Hehehe...yeah, the Hibachi will become a fully integrated part of the tech-tree with all this. I've got some additional interesting soul-torturing ideas planned ;)

[FlowerChild]

Oh, and I should probably mention that the next release will also be the one that includes the restructuring of the mod's textures to use the Forge system of infinite indices.

As a result, existing texture packs will cease to function until they make the change.

I'm in the middle of the conversion right now, but while it's a huge pain in the ass, I think you guys will immediately see that's it's a huge step-forward for the mod as it's allowing me to do a lot of things with the graphics that really weren't practical before (like...a LOT more custom textures).

Anyways, my apologies yet again for the inconvenience that represents.

[Lighthouse]

As a result, existing texture packs will cease to function until they make the change.

I am having hard time understand this. Do you mean that if I use your mod using Forge system, I won't be able to use custom texture pack at all? Or do you mean that textures from custom packs won't be automatically applied to some of BTW-only blocks? Can you please clarify further?

[Battosay]

Oh, and I should probably mention that the next release will also be the one that includes the restructuring of the mod's textures to use the Forge system of infinite indices.

Anyways, my apologies yet again for the inconvenience that represents.

Nice ! Could you send me, or even better post it here, the new BTWterrain.png once you have it completed ?
This way the textures pack could be updated before the next release :)

As a result, existing texture packs will cease to function until they make the change.

I am having hard time understand this. Do you mean that if I use your mod using Forge system, I won't be able to use custom texture pack at all? Or do you mean that textures from custom packs won't be automatically applied to some of BTW-only blocks? Can you please clarify further?

It means that instead of having an individual .png for every BTW textures, they'll all be included in a single BTWterrain.png, just like for the vanilla textures. So the textures pack for BTW will have to adapt to that little change. That's less than 1 hour of work to make the change, so it won't be long.

[Rasuth]

As fas as I understood the new system, all BTW related textures go into an extra file. Editing this should be no harder than editing the current terrain.png plus all the texture files in the btwmodtex folder in the minecraft.jar.

Actually, coming to think of it, this should make the distribution of texturepacks for BTW much easier once the textures have been copied to the new texture file for BTW.

Damn it, ninja'd.

[Haidaes]

Anyways, my apologies yet again for the inconvenience that represents.

Np, everything for shiny new toys :D.

[FlowerChild]

Nice ! Could you send me, or even better post it here, the new BTWterrain.png once you have it completed ?
This way the textures pack could be updated before the next release :)

Hmmmm...let me think about this one. I will likely have some new features built into the next release too, and that would likely give some of them away, not to mention that if I send out the textures early, it'll kinda screw you guys up if I need to add additional ones before release.

It means that instead of having an individual .png for every BTW textures, they'll all be included in a single BTWterrain.png, just like for the vanilla textures. So the textures pack for BTW will have to adapt to that little change. That's less than 1 hour of work to make the change, so it won't be long.

Yup, exactly. It's just a pain in the ass for me to do because I also have to change all the code to use the corresponding textures at the same time and test each individual block to make sure it's being retextured properly. Plus, as I mentioned, I'm making many visual changes along the way to take advantage of the new freedom this affords me in assigning custom graphics to different blocks.

To give you an example, the Hemp no longer shares the growth-stages of wheat in the version I have running now ;)