Better Than Wolves Forum

Version 4.89112 of Better Than Wolves is ready for download!

Download Link

This release contains the following changes:

-Added functionality to flint & steel for it to only have a chance of starting a fire each time its used, and to scare animals in the vicinity with each attempt. This is both for immersion and to prevent exploits involving using it as a rather cheap (both in terms of cost & usage) weapon. Also added a more satisfying sound for when it successfully starts a fire.

-Added a couple of sounds to witches in an attempt to make them cooler. It didn't work.

-Added recipe to melt down Redstone Latches in the Crucible.

-Changed the Bellows to be able to blow items through blocks like pressure plates, and ones that can't be collided with (like torches).

-Changed Gear Boxes and Pulleys to drop a couple of gold nuggets when they break due to overpowering, and to not drop redstone dust (it is lost in the breakage) to adjust for the Redstone Latch being a part of their recipe now.

-Changed Bellows to drop a number of Straps instead of whole pieces of Tanned Leather when they break, as they were dropping more leather than was used in constructing them with the high efficiency cut leather recipe. It also makes some sense that smaller pieces of leather would be all you could salvage.

-Changed animals to no longer be able to initially spawn embedded in blocks during world generation. This should primarily affect animals spawning buried in leaves and unable to move, and should be particularly noticeable in jungles (although this affects animals in all biomes to a lesser degree as well). Obviously, this won't affect animals already spawned into the world, so you may still see embedded animals in old chunks. In combination with some of the below changes, this should make jungle biomes significantly more difficult to survive in as they were way too easy before.

-Changed (increased) the movement penalty associated with moving on leaf blocks to represent the difficulties of moving through dense foliage. This should both make jungles more difficult to navigate, and further encourage clearing paths through them rather than just jumping onto leaves.

-Changed the smaller animals (chickens, pigs, and ocelots) to not be affected by movement modifiers due to terrain and vegetation, making catching them in dense brush much more difficult.

-Changed jungle biomes to not spawn the larger animals (cows and sheep) given the difficulty such animals would have navigating and grazing in such an environment, and given they didn't particularly suit the character of the biome.

-Changed a small thing about mob behavior in jungles. Nothing to worry about. It's all good. Honest.

-Fixed snowmen being inconsistent in their ability to place snow on slabs and other partial blocks (tall grass etc.), and not being able to place snow in front of Detector Blocks or Lens beams.

-Fixed problem with not being able to place blocks while swimming in lava.

Enjoy! :)

-------------

If you'd like to say thanks for this release and help contribute to the further development of Better Than Wolves, please consider making a donation:

... 4.89112?? O.o my FC this numbering system is getting wonky.. or is it some sort of code?... Hmmmm...

"Welcome to the jungle... It gets worse here everyday" had to quote that :P

awesome stuff FC! :)

destineternel wrote:"Welcome to the jungle... It gets worse here everyday" had to quote that :P

Oh, nice. I didn't even think of that song. I would have played it while uploading if I had :)

My list of loose ends is getting very short indeed now ;)

I believe i'm starting to see the pattern... @.@ *goes and gets the drill ready*

I still haven't even updated my server to the last release. Thanks for all the goodies!

Wow. These numbers are getting bit crazy.
Anyways, awesome release! Jungles were already fairly scary, this'll make 'em even better. I also love the flint and steel changes (though I haven't been able to try stuff out, it sounds awesome) and I can't wait to see what the secret change is! Something I also realized is that this will make burning down jungles a lot harder, incentivizing manual clearing and actually carving a specific path.

EDIT: I just realized what he's doing! He's going full out Fibonacci on us!

I was surprised recently how easy surviving in a jungle was. My ability to hang out in one for many days and nights then go out 40 blocks and pick up a pair of each animal did feel too easy. Thanks again for making a change to the game to feel right even though I couldn't enforce it on my self.

Also. what is going on with the version numbers! Now I have to go searching for number patterns all day, thanks FC. :)

I wonder what devilish/awesome stuff FC is saving for 4.9...

FlowerChild wrote: -Changed a small thing about mob behavior in jungles. Nothing to worry about. It's all good. Honest.

Great. I'm waiting for something like creepers spawning in leaf blocks or something... wonderful.

I love jungle biomes, but have always had a hard time getting food. (Apparently opposite to every else)
I just like the green and the scenery. But I always have to "import" my live stock from nearby biomes fairly early on.

4.89112... Must solve this for next digit...

Loving the leaf changes, I hate those mobs in leaves.

PatriotBob wrote:4.89112... Must solve this for next digit...

Fibonacci?

Gilberreke wrote:Loving the leaf changes, I hate those mobs in leaves.

Yeah, it's really weird. When I took a look at it, it turns out that animals were performing zero collision tests on blocks during world gen, which is why this kind of thing was resulting.

Now, my only concern is that might have been for performance reasons, so if anyone experiences increased stutter on world gen, I'd be interested to hear it.

-Added a couple of sounds to witches in an attempt to make them cooler. It didn't work.

-Changed a small thing about mob behavior in jungles. Nothing to worry about. It's all good. Honest.

-Fixed problem with not being able to place blocks while swimming in lava. Enjoy!

I am immediately obsessed by this release, but i'm not sure that last one was a problem so much. anyway great job FC! :]

Peter_364 wrote: I am immediately obsessed by this release, but i'm not sure that last one was a problem so much. anyway great job FC! :]

Well, it's not like I go swimming in lava very often, so I had never noticed this, but in Vioki and Carlie's stream the other night, Vioki fell into some lava while under the effect of a fire resistance potion, and it did get rather odd when he couldn't place blocks to get out :)

The witch sounds LOL! Pretty eerie, like if Guillermo del Toro did a movie with witches in a dark forest that is how they would sound, unseen.

Taleric wrote:The witch sounds LOL! Pretty eerie, like if Guillermo del Toro did a movie with witches in a dark forest that is how they would sound, unseen.

See...I was trying, I really was. I had a whole other feature associated with witches which would have given them a more prominent role in the game, and was working on the sounds trying to make them a bit cooler before realizing how inherently lame they are. I then ripped out the other feature, deciding to just leave the sounds I had in as is, since I had put the work in on them anyways. I was actually going to do some more work on their sounds but called it quits there, having already admitted defeat.

I really never spent that much time with them before, and thus never realized how bad they actually are. In the end I just couldn't bring myself to make something that crappy a larger part of the game.

FlowerChild wrote:

Taleric wrote:The witch sounds LOL! Pretty eerie, like if Guillermo del Toro did a movie with witches in a dark forest that is how they would sound, unseen.

See...I was trying, I really was. I had a whole other feature associated with witches which would have given them a more prominent role in the game, and was working on the sounds trying to make them a bit cooler before realizing how inherently lame they are. I then ripped out the other feature, deciding to just leave the sounds I had in as is, since I had put the work in on them anyways. I was actually going to do some more work on their sounds but called it quits there, having already admitted defeat.

I really never spent that much time with them before, and thus never realized how bad they actually are. In the end I just couldn't bring myself to make something that crappy a larger part of the game.

I've actually never seen a witch, so I appreciate that you didn't spend that much extra effort on them.

Mason11987 wrote: I've actually never seen a witch, so I appreciate that you didn't spend that much extra effort on them.

I've never seen a witch in survival, I've seen all kinds of witch huts etc but I've never seen the woman herself and it is irritating.

FlowerChild wrote: Now, my only concern is that might have been for performance reasons, so if anyone experiences increased stutter on world gen, I'd be interested to hear it.

Just wanted to mention that I just optimized the aforementioned code for the next release to be on the safe side, so no need to report such issues if you encounter them.

I think it may actually be faster than the vanilla version now, as I cleaned up the surrounding code while I was at it.

How is it that there is still low hanging optimizations like that to be done in a game as mature as Minecraft? And how is that FC can add basically all of these extra blocks and thing in like 5 minutes but it takes Mojang months to turn these updates out? It's not as if any of their releases are well thought out (or really ever stable). How are we in this situation where one guy is able to put out like 10x the content all of it much more stable, more optimized, and better thought out than anything Mojang is capable of adding. I don't want to accuse Mojang of sucking unjustly but can someone genuinely explain this? Are they just lazy? I mean it's not even like Mojang is that small of a team anymore. Am I missing something? I just don't understand....

Dude, I do have a retarded amount of experience with programming games (about 15 years professional, 30 total). It's not necessarily a statement of Mojang sucking, and it would be rather sad if all that experience of mine didn't add up to anything. In fact, it's exceptionally rare to meet a game developer with my experience level both because I started making games when such things were really in their infancy (thirty years ago video games were only starting to be a thing), and because most developers my age have moved on to more lucrative or less demanding professions at some point or another. Having a family and making games for example is a total nightmare to manage and it's largely a young person's game as a result. As a person that doesn't have much interest in such things, it's allowed me to hang in there far longer than most.

They are not designers, and I state that very plainly as a matter of fact because they've got zero experience in that field. However, there's no need to diss people on the programming front just because they don't have a lifetime of experience with it. You may notice that despite my experience level it's exceptionally rare for me to critique the code itself, and I'd even say I'm probably one of the modders that complains about it the least, probably largely due to my experience level and having worked with a ton of different code bases in the past of varying levels of quality. I usually just focus on what needs to be done rather than lamenting what the code-base could have been if it was done differently.

In terms of optimization: pretty much every piece of code in existence could be optimized in one way or another. That there is still room in a code base to do so is thus largely a given.

Alright, I did try to say I wasn't trying to diss them unnecessarily. The explanation was exactly what I was looking for. So basically it's not that Mojang is 10x times slower than one human being, it's that your 10x faster than any human being should be :P yes, that's a joke and probably an exaggeration. But I think we can all agree that we respect you a huge ammount :)

Guess you've just spoiled us all rotten.... Thanks though, haha :)

FlowerChild wrote:-Changed a small thing about mob behavior in jungles. Nothing to worry about. It's all good. Honest.

Just discovered this one. Probably not worth a spoiler thread but I really enjoy changes that make me think "of course, that makes so much sense."

Thanks, I think.. :)

Ozziie wrote:Just discovered this one. Probably not worth a spoiler thread but I really enjoy changes that make me think "of course, that makes so much sense."

Thanks, I think.. :)

Thanks man. I've been rather surprised that no one has mentioned it up until now as I think it rather dramatically changes the play experience in jungles.

I'd actually love to see a spoiler thread on it, as I'm really curious as to the impact it has on people's play. It might be a small change, but it actually represents some rather large implications with regards to how you need to build bases in and around jungles, for reasons that might not be immediately apparent. Similar to my previous changes to wolves, it basically changes the design constraints on building based on biome.

Honestly, I had been pondering creating a whole new mob to do precisely what that change does for maybe the last month or so, before realizing I could just do it with a slight change to the existing mob behavior with much less effort.

FlowerChild wrote: I'd actually love to see a spoiler thread on it, as I'm really curious as to the impact it has on people's play.

Impact on play? How about steer the hell clear of jungles!?

I feel like there is more to it than I've found based on what you've said, though. I'll get a spoiler thread up if I discover anything else.