EDIT:: This topic was been added to "Get Satisfaction" to increase awareness by the Mojang Development team! However, it appears that a Get Satisfaction topic already exists for this.
Let's try to keep discussion localized to a single location in this thread.
The Proposal:
What I want is more options for stairs and half-blocks. Anyone who has ever built something that wasn't cobble or wood knows what I am talking about. Stairs are great for getting from floor to floor, but when you're forced to use just one of two options, it can really mess up the appearance of your project. Did you know that stairs are great for all sorts of other stuff, too? More on that in a bit.
What we have right now is nice. I have two options for stairs, which I suppose is much better than one. However, the more I play this game, the more uses for stairs and half-stones I come up with, and I've come to the conclusion that there simply are not enough choices in materials.
The Concept:
These screenshots were taken by creating a duplicate texture pack and copy/pasting the terrain.png to show what I'm talking about. This experiment honestly changed my mind about Iron & Gold stairs - they don't quite look how I thought they might using the original textures, and I have decided that I no longer desire their inclusion as much. I will, however, leave the screenshot and poll option up. Lapis and Diamond look fantastic, but would probably not see widespread use.
Sandstone and Stone look great, so do Obsidian and Brick. Glass and Moss turned out pretty darn nice,too.
Here's how the "Bling Bling" materials turned out:
While these results are nice, the fact remains that a texture pack is not a solution, as construction will still be limited to 2 options for stairs and 1 option for half-stones. Also, manipulating the cobble and wood textures results in a rather bizarre looking minecraft world, as everything that uses the wood textures suddenly became something else (although I admit that brick fences were hilarious). I left out some proposed materials because it was tedious to go through and do this and I am lazy. I might do half-stones later, as they're to require some actual work and not just cut & paste.
The Reason:
So why am I making such a big deal out of stairs? Because they're probably the most useful construction material in the game. If you're not sure what I'm talking about, here are just a few examples of what you can do with stairs that you may not have thought of. All of these pictures are taken from my current project, which has taken over a month's worth of playtime to build on a friend's SMP server.
1. Paths
Stairs and half-stones line up perfectly for making indented pathing with guides. When inverted, raised paths are also an option, with half-steps the the sides and stairs in the center, with an alternate block as the path itself. The inability to use blocks that match the surroundings, however greatly limit the aesthetic appeal.
2. Furniture
Stairs make great benches, seats, and chairs. Half-stones make good tabletops, but the lack of diversity forces all tables to use the same surface texture.
3. Bunker-windows
These also work great underwater (or even submerged in lava) to allow the player to see outside/inside their walls without using glass. They also look fantastic at a distance, letting out just a tiny sliver of light.
4. Diagonals
Only by using stairs and half-blocks together is it possible to create smoothly-climbing diagonal stairways that do not require jumping. Unfortunately, there are no matching materials to do so with.
5. Crenelations
Placing stairs back-to-back (or front-to-front) produces a better looking crenelation for towers and castles than spaced-blocks. However, anyone wishing to do so is limited to cobble or wood, which are not the most attractive materials for construction.
6. Roofing
Stairs can give roofing a more rounded and eased-appearance, almost similar to shingles. Once again, wood and cobble options greatly limit the player's ability to use this effect.
7. Flooring
As you've seen in most of these images, I use half-stones for flooring frequently. The way they line up, giving that extra half-space of headroom, dramatically changes the atmosphere and appearance of a contained room. I currently feel that the extra headroom is worth sacrificing some diversity for, but I don't feel that I should have to make that decision in such an otherwise un-limited game.
8. Hidey-holes
Due to the Half-Block and Stair's 'passable' abilities, they are able to be placed on top of chests while still allowing the chest to be opened. As half-stones always yield at a 1:1 ratio, they are perfect for hiding chests inside of floors. On multi-player servers, this is a highly effective technique that allows players to quickly dig up a secret chest, retrieve or place their valuables, and then cover it back up quickly and discreetly, with a single block.
What I want, and what you should want, too, is an expansion on what we have to offer greater creativity in construction, without breaking or altering the 'feel' of the game.
The Implementation:
Here are my concept formulas:
[] []
[]
== Brick Stairs
[] [] []
[] [] []
== Brick Half-Stone
[] []
[]
== Stone Stairs
(There isn't a symbol for sandstone, so pretend that's what I put here)
[] []
[]
== Sandstone Stairs
[] [] []
[] [] []
== Sandstone Half-Block
[] []
[]
== Glass Stairs
[] [] []
[] [] []
== Glass Half-Block
[] []
[]
== Obsidian Stairs
[] [] []
[] [] []
== Obsidian Half-Block
Now, because of current formulas, having a wooden half-block or smooth stone half-block cannot use the same formula as the originals. For the sake of continuity, I might suggest that the formulas for weight-plates be changed (redstone between two material blocks, perhaps?), or that alternate formulas be used for wood and stone, such as this:
[] [] []
[] [] []
[] == Wood Half-block
[] [] []
[] [] []
[] == Stone Half-block
Now, for the truly motivated, or the truly insane, 'bling' materials might be included as well.
[] []
[]
== Iron Stairs
[] [] []
[] [] []
== Iron Half-block
[] []
[]
== Gold Stairs
[] [] []
[] [] []
== Gold Half-Block
[] []
[]
== Diamond Stairs
[] [] []
[] [] []
== Diamond Half-Block
Perhaps Lapis as well, although, once again, there is no forum symbol for it. I think you get the idea, though.
These are not as important to me as the previous versions, but once again, I propose that the formulas be included to foster creative construction and create more uses for otherwise one-trick blocks. After all, what player doesn't want to build themselves a big gold throne?
The Point:
What I am proposing is not massive, nor will it take a long time to produce for someone with the proper skills. The stairs currently in place in the game do not even have their own textures - they simply use the exact same texture as their 'parent' blocks, and therefore the only actual editing required to create more would be a back-end job.
I'd also noticed that some blocks use the 'damage' bit to alter the state of the block (charcoal, colored wool) - might it be possible to utilize a similar method to create more types of stairs? Further investigation into this follows later in the thread.
Any feedback and support is appreciated, and I sincerely hope that I have helped you all to realize the versatility of the stair and half-stone blocks to further your creative habits. If you've come up with something I haven't, I'd love to see it shared here. Here's to hoping that this gets noticed by someone important!
This would be awesome. I'd love to be able to to do wooden stairs out of raw tree trunks, too (so you could have birch wood stairs for a worn beach-house kind of a vibe).
I'd like to see these, but as I always add to these threads:
[*:w2b3c0sf]Every stair block should have its inverse corbel block, for creating smoother arches (perhaps a normal stair block could auto-invert if placed with air beneath it)
[*:w2b3c0sf]Half block placement needs to be fixed so that you can insert two half blocks into a single block space without having to dig around it.
You have a 95% perfect suggestion, the only possible flaw being that the game engine currently has a limit to the number of blocks it can have, which having multiple variations of stairs and half-steps pushes. I would personally limit the suggestion to types of blocks that are actually intended as building materials (wood, glass, stone, sandstone, possibly obsidian) to mitigate this issue somewhat, but more diversity is always nice.
Yes, this has been suggested before, but usually only in passing mentions in other threads and never this well thought-out and written. Now I need to decide if I should find space for this in my sig...
Yes. This has been Suggested. Several. Billion. Times.
The search function only brought up a handful of threads when I searched "halfstone", "halfblock" or "stairs" - and most of the threads actually had very, very little to do with what I was suggesting. There were more threads about old bugs with steps than anything, and absolutely nothing recent in regard to this. Sorry I haven't been around this board forever, I just felt that this was something that could use some attention.
Yes. This has been Suggested. Several. Billion. Times.
The search function only brought up a handful of threads when I searched "halfstone", "halfblock" or "stairs" - and most of the threads actually had very, very little to do with what I was suggesting. There were more threads about old bugs with steps than anything, and absolutely nothing recent in regard to this. Sorry I haven't been around this board forever, I just felt that this was something that could use some attention.
An important skill around the forums is learning when to ignore the backseat mods. This is one of those times.
You have a 95% perfect suggestion, the only possible flaw being that the game engine currently has a limit to the number of blocks it can have, which having multiple variations of stairs and half-steps pushes. I would personally limit the suggestion to types of blocks that are actually intended as building materials (wood, glass, stone, sandstone, possibly obsidian) to mitigate this issue somewhat, but more diversity is always nice.
Yes, this has been suggested before, but usually only in passing mentions in other threads and never this well thought-out and written. Now I need to decide if I should find space for this in my sig...
Actually, the item and block limit can be extend as many mods have done. But I do agree we don't need one half step and stairs of every material. Maybe just wood, stone, brick, and cobble.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Quote from mjcabooseblu »
Muncher is right, listen to him, he can cure the blind and make paraplegics walk.
You have a 95% perfect suggestion, the only possible flaw being that the game engine currently has a limit to the number of blocks it can have, which having multiple variations of stairs and half-steps pushes.
While this is true, I couldn't help but notice the section on 'colored wool' while reading the wiki. The article I'm talking about demonstrates how the game's engine can refer to multiple types of block with a single ID, by using additional metadata to define the block fully. So, if multiple textures of wool can be crafted from items with different ID's and metadata (dyes, wool) and result in a block that shares a single ID number, then why not stairs?
You have a 95% perfect suggestion, the only possible flaw being that the game engine currently has a limit to the number of blocks it can have, which having multiple variations of stairs and half-steps pushes. I would personally limit the suggestion to types of blocks that are actually intended as building materials (wood, glass, stone, sandstone, possibly obsidian) to mitigate this issue somewhat, but more diversity is always nice.
Yes, this has been suggested before, but usually only in passing mentions in other threads and never this well thought-out and written. Now I need to decide if I should find space for this in my sig...
Actually, the item and block limit can be extend as many mods have done. But I do agree we don't need one half step and stairs of every material. Maybe just wood, stone, brick, and cobble.
I'd love to see glass and obsidian thrown in there, personally. The ability to make sloped roofs for my greenhouses and glass archways would be great. Obsidian I'd put there just for completion, since it is a building material (even if a lesser used one from its difficulty to obtain). Though, the only thing I personally would likely end up using obsidian stairs for is to make the tops of my portals rounded.
But I do agree we don't need one half step and stairs of every material. Maybe just wood, stone, brick, and cobble.
Well, if you put it that way, we don't need to be playing Minecraft at all now, do we? The difference is between what we need and what we want, and I, personally, very much want a wide variety of stairs and half-blocks to choose from.
You have a 95% perfect suggestion, the only possible flaw being that the game engine currently has a limit to the number of blocks it can have, which having multiple variations of stairs and half-steps pushes.
While this is true, I couldn't help but notice the section on 'colored wool' while reading the wiki. The article I'm talking about demonstrates how the game's engine can refer to multiple types of block with a single ID, by using additional metadata to define the block fully. So, if multiple textures of wool can be crafted from items with different ID's and metadata (dyes, wool) and result in a block that shares a single ID number, then why not stairs?
The problem with this is that, if you made all stairs and half blocks the same block, they would all behave the same with regards to flammability and destructibility. Glass stairs should not be just as easy to break as obsidian, nor should wood stairs be flame retardant.
But I do agree we don't need one half step and stairs of every material. Maybe just wood, stone, brick, and cobble.
Well, if you put it that way, we don't need to be playing Minecraft at all now, do we? The difference is between what we need and what we want, and I, personally, very much want a wide variety of stairs and half-blocks to choose from.
Well some would not make any sense. Like perhaps, dirt steps. Dirt houses are allready ugly and almost not on builds out of them, so dirt steps are not necessary. Or mossy cobble steps. I think we should select 5-6 most used materials and only make the new steps out of them.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Quote from mjcabooseblu »
Muncher is right, listen to him, he can cure the blind and make paraplegics walk.
This would be awesome. I'd love to be able to to do wooden stairs out of raw tree trunks, too (so you could have birch wood stairs for a worn beach-house kind of a vibe).
It would be nice, but as other members have stated, having a stair and half-step equivalent for every single block is going a bit overboard with the idea. 50 to 90 new blocks is quite a bit much to ask, especially when most would not see widespread use. 5 to 9 new blocks is a more reasonable request.
Quote from Kyudos »
I'd like to see these, but as I always add to these threads:
[*:z8ai38cf]Every stair block should have its inverse corbel block, for creating smoother arches (perhaps a normal stair block could auto-invert if placed with air beneath it)
[*:z8ai38cf]Half block placement needs to be fixed so that you can insert two half blocks into a single block space without having to dig around it.
Inverted stairs would be great for decoration, and I have found myself wishing for them as well, but let's try not to make this too complicated. Upside-down stairs would require that the object carry twice as much metadata as it already does, before the other modifications I am proposing. I believe that only 16bits are available per block, so an implementation of these measures could be too much to attempt without creating unique block ID's for the alternates.
I'm with you 110% on the half-block placement, though. Had more than my fair share of annoyances with that.
Quote from qlmmb2086 »
The problem with this is that, if you made all stairs and half blocks the same block, they would all behave the same with regards to flammability and destructibility. Glass stairs should not be just as easy to break as obsidian, nor should wood stairs be flame retardant.
This is a good point, however let's not forget that the break-times for stairs as they currently are also draw little-to-no similarity to their source materials, nor do they drop at a 1:1 ratio. The flammability is the only real issue, but once again, if these stairs can be implemented how I think they might, then perhaps they might be concatenated onto the cobble stairs only to avoid that problem.
Quote from muncher21 »
Well some would not make any sense. Like perhaps, dirt steps. Dirt houses are allready ugly and almost not on builds out of them, so dirt steps are not necessary. Or mossy cobble steps. I think we should select 5-6 most used materials and only make the new steps out of them.
...which is exactly what I suggested in the original post. Glad to see we agree, then.
+ + + + = 5 that I strongly feel should be included.
+ + + Lapis = 4 "bling" types that I suggested might be included as well, but are not as important to the overall concept.
Inverted stairs would be great for decoration, and I have found myself wishing for them as well, but let's try not to make this too complicated. Upside-down stairs would require that the object carry twice as much metadata as it already does, before the other modifications I am proposing. I believe that only 16bits are available per block, so an implementation of these measures could be too much to attempt without creating unique block ID's for the alternates.
Twice as much meta-data? I don't see it. A generic stair block needs meta data for orientation and material (skin) - a flag for inverted or not-inverted would only be one extra bit. Perhaps the damage bit could be used for material selection (isn't that how wool works?)
Twice as much meta-data? I don't see it. A generic stair block needs meta data for orientation and material (skin) - a flag for inverted or not-inverted would only be one extra bit. Perhaps the damage bit could be used for material selection (isn't that how wool works?)
Not quite right. The wood and cobble stairs each have a unique ID associated with them, so they are not using a single bit to determine the skin. Wooden stairs are blockID 53 (35 in hexidecimal), and Cobblestone stairs are blockID 67 (43 in hexidecimal). This is what allows for wooden stairs to catch fire, too - the block has completely separate behavior, despite similar functionality.
I was being hasty, and "twice the metadata" was the wrong wording, and I apologize for incorrect terminology. Here's how it breaks down:
It currently functions as:
* 0x0: Ascending south
* 0x1: Ascending north
* 0x2: Ascending west
* 0x3: Ascending east
The 'direction' is the stair IS the damage bit, so they're already using 4 bits of 16. Remember, the data is stored in hex, so it's not as simple as adding a 5th bit to determine vertical orientation, because that would negate the 1-4 value for north, south, east, and west. So to have vertically mirrored steps, you'd have to do this:
* 0x4: Flipped south
* 0x5: Flipped north
* 0x6: Flipped west
* 0x7: Flipped east
The problem is that this conflicts with the concept I proposed of using the additional hex values for alternate materials. What I proposed was this:
* 0x0: Cobble, Ascending south
* 0x1: Cobble, Ascending north
* 0x2: Cobble, Ascending west
* 0x3: Cobble, Ascending east
* 0x4: Stone, Ascending south
* 0x5: Stone, Ascending north
* 0x6: Stone, Ascending west
* 0x7: Stone, Ascending east
* 0x8: Brick, Ascending south
* 0x9: Brick, Ascending north
* 0xA: Brick, Ascending west
* 0xB: Brick, Ascending east
* 0xC: Sandstone, Ascending south
* 0xD: Sandstone, Ascending north
* 0xE: Sandstone, Ascending west
* 0xF: Sandstone, Ascending east
I understand that not everyone is familiar with hexidecimal and don't intend to sound pretentious, but now do you see the issue? To have both at once, each blockID would only be able to share 2 material types rather than 4, thus doubling the amount of blockID's necessary to contain all the data.
The other issue was that modifying the metadata for the wooden stairs to add the other proposed steps would cause those concatenated onto the blockID for wood to also be flammable, which would be incongruous with the materials they are constructed of. It leaves the concept with little choice but to create at least 1 new blockID to function properly with 8 choices of normal-facing stairs, and 3 new blockID's to have upside-down versions as well.
Fortunately, the half-stone does not currently utilize the 'damage' bit, so in theory we could have 16 full variations of half-stone tiles with their current functionality, or less and have them stackable on each other. Of course, by sharing an ID, they would all have identical durability and would mine in the exact same amount of time. To make it differentiate, they would also require unique blockID's.
Good idea. It's been suggested already, as others have said, but it's still a good idea. The 2by2 pack includes more halfsteps for things like iron, diamond, and even Coal, but with material in a 2x2 box. It doesn't have sandstone or glass or anything like that. And no stairs.
Raw wood for birch steps?
OH YEAH
It would be even cooler knowing that someone has collected enough logs to make steps out of them, particualy considering we have only one kind of sapling.
Would be nice, but unfortunately, this would also be impossible without dramatically changing the way the game handles information. You see, currently, Birch, Pine, and Maple(I guess?) are all under 1 block ID, which means that the only actual difference is the appearance. The crafting CANNOT differentiate between them, because the crafting system only recognizes blockID's and not the associated metadata. This is why all of the wood types yield the same planks, why charcoal can be used in place of coal, and why any color of wool can be used for paintings.
Changing the blockID's on the types of wood would be unnecessary and would require the addition of multiple redundant crafting recipes for each type so that the planks derived from the alternate sources would either be stackable, OR it would have to be modified in such a way as to create new types of planks, sticks, and other related wood products from them. So you see, that's just not how the game works, my friend.
You did, however, raise another question I had not thought of, that being "What would new stairs/steps drop?" I'm honestly not sure how this would be handled - currently stairs drop a single block of the item they were crafted from, incurring a loss of 5 blocks of either wood or cobble... and using the associated ID's would cause stairs constructed of alternate materials to ALSO drop wood/cobble... so to avoid this issue, perhaps new blockID's for each type of stair would have to be crated, which on one side would make implementing the upside-down stairs easier, but on the other side, would spam up the blockID list.
Or, perhaps, stairs could just drop themselves with the associated metadata still attached, like the alternate tree logs do. I kinda prefer this solution, as it can be very frustrating when you make a mistake in placement or decide to tear down an entire staircase, only to somehow end up with much less resources than you began with. So there are 2 ways to alleviate that issue, but both of them require some tweaking of the current game mechanics.
What is the damage value stored as though? A 16 bit signed integer? (I thought so, from observations of InvEdit and the like) In which case, you have a more than enough values to make a bitmask:
00000000 00000000
Bit number
0: Ascending south
1: Ascending north
2: Ascending west
3: Ascending east
4: Cobble
5: Stone
6: Brick
7: Sandstone
(8: Dirt)
(9: Iron)
(10: Gold)
(11: Diamond)
(12: Snow)
13: Inverted
Also I would keep the current two block IDs - one for flammable stairs (wood (of different kinds?), wool, leaves?) and one for inflammable ones.
The idea would be to try an 'genericise' the current blocks so they could be of any material.
My original topic...
Let's try to keep discussion localized to a single location in this thread.
What we have right now is nice. I have two options for stairs, which I suppose is much better than one. However, the more I play this game, the more uses for stairs and half-stones I come up with, and I've come to the conclusion that there simply are not enough choices in materials.
Sandstone and Stone look great, so do Obsidian and Brick. Glass and Moss turned out pretty darn nice,too.
Here's how the "Bling Bling" materials turned out:
While these results are nice, the fact remains that a texture pack is not a solution, as construction will still be limited to 2 options for stairs and 1 option for half-stones. Also, manipulating the cobble and wood textures results in a rather bizarre looking minecraft world, as everything that uses the wood textures suddenly became something else
(although I admit that brick fences were hilarious). I left out some proposed materials because it was tedious to go through and do this and I am lazy. I might do half-stones later, as they're to require some actual work and not just cut & paste.1. Paths
Stairs and half-stones line up perfectly for making indented pathing with guides. When inverted, raised paths are also an option, with half-steps the the sides and stairs in the center, with an alternate block as the path itself. The inability to use blocks that match the surroundings, however greatly limit the aesthetic appeal.
2. Furniture
Stairs make great benches, seats, and chairs. Half-stones make good tabletops, but the lack of diversity forces all tables to use the same surface texture.
3. Bunker-windows
These also work great underwater (or even submerged in lava) to allow the player to see outside/inside their walls without using glass. They also look fantastic at a distance, letting out just a tiny sliver of light.
4. Diagonals
Only by using stairs and half-blocks together is it possible to create smoothly-climbing diagonal stairways that do not require jumping. Unfortunately, there are no matching materials to do so with.
5. Crenelations
Placing stairs back-to-back (or front-to-front) produces a better looking crenelation for towers and castles than spaced-blocks. However, anyone wishing to do so is limited to cobble or wood, which are not the most attractive materials for construction.
6. Roofing
Stairs can give roofing a more rounded and eased-appearance, almost similar to shingles. Once again, wood and cobble options greatly limit the player's ability to use this effect.
7. Flooring
As you've seen in most of these images, I use half-stones for flooring frequently. The way they line up, giving that extra half-space of headroom, dramatically changes the atmosphere and appearance of a contained room. I currently feel that the extra headroom is worth sacrificing some diversity for, but I don't feel that I should have to make that decision in such an otherwise un-limited game.
8. Hidey-holes
Due to the Half-Block and Stair's 'passable' abilities, they are able to be placed on top of chests while still allowing the chest to be opened. As half-stones always yield at a 1:1 ratio, they are perfect for hiding chests inside of floors. On multi-player servers, this is a highly effective technique that allows players to quickly dig up a secret chest, retrieve or place their valuables, and then cover it back up quickly and discreetly, with a single block.
What I want, and what you should want, too, is an expansion on what we have to offer greater creativity in construction, without breaking or altering the 'feel' of the game.
[] []
[]
== Brick Stairs
[] [] []
[] [] []
== Brick Half-Stone
[] []
[]
== Stone Stairs
(There isn't a symbol for sandstone, so pretend that's what I put here)
[] []
[]
== Sandstone Stairs
[] [] []
[] [] []
== Sandstone Half-Block
[] []
[]
== Glass Stairs
[] [] []
[] [] []
== Glass Half-Block
[] []
[]
== Obsidian Stairs
[] [] []
[] [] []
== Obsidian Half-Block
Now, because of current formulas, having a wooden half-block or smooth stone half-block cannot use the same formula as the originals. For the sake of continuity, I might suggest that the formulas for weight-plates be changed (redstone between two material blocks, perhaps?), or that alternate formulas be used for wood and stone, such as this:
[] [] []
[] [] []
[] == Wood Half-block
[] [] []
[] [] []
[] == Stone Half-block
Now, for the truly motivated, or the truly insane, 'bling' materials might be included as well.
[] []
[]
== Iron Stairs
[] [] []
[] [] []
== Iron Half-block
[] []
[]
== Gold Stairs
[] [] []
[] [] []
== Gold Half-Block
[] []
[]
== Diamond Stairs
[] [] []
[] [] []
== Diamond Half-Block
Perhaps Lapis as well, although, once again, there is no forum symbol for it. I think you get the idea, though.
These are not as important to me as the previous versions, but once again, I propose that the formulas be included to foster creative construction and create more uses for otherwise one-trick blocks. After all, what player doesn't want to build themselves a big gold throne?
I'd also noticed that some blocks use the 'damage' bit to alter the state of the block (charcoal, colored wool) - might it be possible to utilize a similar method to create more types of stairs? Further investigation into this follows later in the thread.
Any feedback and support is appreciated, and I sincerely hope that I have helped you all to realize the versatility of the stair and half-stone blocks to further your creative habits. If you've come up with something I haven't, I'd love to see it shared here. Here's to hoping that this gets noticed by someone important!
[*:w2b3c0sf]Every stair block should have its inverse corbel block, for creating smoother arches (perhaps a normal stair block could auto-invert if placed with air beneath it)
[*:w2b3c0sf]Half block placement needs to be fixed so that you can insert two half blocks into a single block space without having to dig around it.
Yes, this has been suggested before, but usually only in passing mentions in other threads and never this well thought-out and written. Now I need to decide if I should find space for this in my sig...
The search function only brought up a handful of threads when I searched "halfstone", "halfblock" or "stairs" - and most of the threads actually had very, very little to do with what I was suggesting. There were more threads about old bugs with steps than anything, and absolutely nothing recent in regard to this. Sorry I haven't been around this board forever, I just felt that this was something that could use some attention.
An important skill around the forums is learning when to ignore the backseat mods. This is one of those times.
Actually, the item and block limit can be extend as many mods have done. But I do agree we don't need one half step and stairs of every material. Maybe just wood, stone, brick, and cobble.
While this is true, I couldn't help but notice the section on 'colored wool' while reading the wiki.
The article I'm talking about demonstrates how the game's engine can refer to multiple types of block with a single ID, by using additional metadata to define the block fully. So, if multiple textures of wool can be crafted from items with different ID's and metadata (dyes, wool) and result in a block that shares a single ID number, then why not stairs?
I'd love to see glass and obsidian thrown in there, personally. The ability to make sloped roofs for my greenhouses and glass archways would be great. Obsidian I'd put there just for completion, since it is a building material (even if a lesser used one from its difficulty to obtain). Though, the only thing I personally would likely end up using obsidian stairs for is to make the tops of my portals rounded.
Well, if you put it that way, we don't need to be playing Minecraft at all now, do we? The difference is between what we need and what we want, and I, personally, very much want a wide variety of stairs and half-blocks to choose from.
The problem with this is that, if you made all stairs and half blocks the same block, they would all behave the same with regards to flammability and destructibility. Glass stairs should not be just as easy to break as obsidian, nor should wood stairs be flame retardant.
Well some would not make any sense. Like perhaps, dirt steps. Dirt houses are allready ugly and almost not on builds out of them, so dirt steps are not necessary. Or mossy cobble steps. I think we should select 5-6 most used materials and only make the new steps out of them.
It would be nice, but as other members have stated, having a stair and half-step equivalent for every single block is going a bit overboard with the idea. 50 to 90 new blocks is quite a bit much to ask, especially when most would not see widespread use. 5 to 9 new blocks is a more reasonable request.
Inverted stairs would be great for decoration, and I have found myself wishing for them as well, but let's try not to make this too complicated. Upside-down stairs would require that the object carry twice as much metadata as it already does, before the other modifications I am proposing. I believe that only 16bits are available per block, so an implementation of these measures could be too much to attempt without creating unique block ID's for the alternates.
I'm with you 110% on the half-block placement, though. Had more than my fair share of annoyances with that.
This is a good point, however let's not forget that the break-times for stairs as they currently are also draw little-to-no similarity to their source materials, nor do they drop at a 1:1 ratio. The flammability is the only real issue, but once again, if these stairs can be implemented how I think they might, then perhaps they might be concatenated onto the cobble stairs only to avoid that problem.
...which is exactly what I suggested in the original post. Glad to see we agree, then.
+ + + + = 5 that I strongly feel should be included.
+ + + Lapis = 4 "bling" types that I suggested might be included as well, but are not as important to the overall concept.
Twice as much meta-data? I don't see it. A generic stair block needs meta data for orientation and material (skin) - a flag for inverted or not-inverted would only be one extra bit. Perhaps the damage bit could be used for material selection (isn't that how wool works?)
Not quite right. The wood and cobble stairs each have a unique ID associated with them, so they are not using a single bit to determine the skin. Wooden stairs are blockID 53 (35 in hexidecimal), and Cobblestone stairs are blockID 67 (43 in hexidecimal). This is what allows for wooden stairs to catch fire, too - the block has completely separate behavior, despite similar functionality.
I was being hasty, and "twice the metadata" was the wrong wording, and I apologize for incorrect terminology. Here's how it breaks down:
It currently functions as:
* 0x0: Ascending south
* 0x1: Ascending north
* 0x2: Ascending west
* 0x3: Ascending east
The 'direction' is the stair IS the damage bit, so they're already using 4 bits of 16. Remember, the data is stored in hex, so it's not as simple as adding a 5th bit to determine vertical orientation, because that would negate the 1-4 value for north, south, east, and west. So to have vertically mirrored steps, you'd have to do this:
* 0x4: Flipped south
* 0x5: Flipped north
* 0x6: Flipped west
* 0x7: Flipped east
The problem is that this conflicts with the concept I proposed of using the additional hex values for alternate materials. What I proposed was this:
* 0x0: Cobble, Ascending south
* 0x1: Cobble, Ascending north
* 0x2: Cobble, Ascending west
* 0x3: Cobble, Ascending east
* 0x4: Stone, Ascending south
* 0x5: Stone, Ascending north
* 0x6: Stone, Ascending west
* 0x7: Stone, Ascending east
* 0x8: Brick, Ascending south
* 0x9: Brick, Ascending north
* 0xA: Brick, Ascending west
* 0xB: Brick, Ascending east
* 0xC: Sandstone, Ascending south
* 0xD: Sandstone, Ascending north
* 0xE: Sandstone, Ascending west
* 0xF: Sandstone, Ascending east
I understand that not everyone is familiar with hexidecimal and don't intend to sound pretentious, but now do you see the issue? To have both at once, each blockID would only be able to share 2 material types rather than 4, thus doubling the amount of blockID's necessary to contain all the data.
The other issue was that modifying the metadata for the wooden stairs to add the other proposed steps would cause those concatenated onto the blockID for wood to also be flammable, which would be incongruous with the materials they are constructed of. It leaves the concept with little choice but to create at least 1 new blockID to function properly with 8 choices of normal-facing stairs, and 3 new blockID's to have upside-down versions as well.
Fortunately, the half-stone does not currently utilize the 'damage' bit, so in theory we could have 16 full variations of half-stone tiles with their current functionality, or less and have them stackable on each other. Of course, by sharing an ID, they would all have identical durability and would mine in the exact same amount of time. To make it differentiate, they would also require unique blockID's.
Raw wood for birch steps?
OH YEAH
It would be even cooler knowing that someone has collected enough logs to make steps out of them, particualy considering we have only one kind of sapling.
~Unit#phntk#1
Would be nice, but unfortunately, this would also be impossible without dramatically changing the way the game handles information. You see, currently, Birch, Pine, and Maple(I guess?) are all under 1 block ID, which means that the only actual difference is the appearance. The crafting CANNOT differentiate between them, because the crafting system only recognizes blockID's and not the associated metadata. This is why all of the wood types yield the same planks, why charcoal can be used in place of coal, and why any color of wool can be used for paintings.
Changing the blockID's on the types of wood would be unnecessary and would require the addition of multiple redundant crafting recipes for each type so that the planks derived from the alternate sources would either be stackable, OR it would have to be modified in such a way as to create new types of planks, sticks, and other related wood products from them. So you see, that's just not how the game works, my friend.
You did, however, raise another question I had not thought of, that being "What would new stairs/steps drop?" I'm honestly not sure how this would be handled - currently stairs drop a single block of the item they were crafted from, incurring a loss of 5 blocks of either wood or cobble... and using the associated ID's would cause stairs constructed of alternate materials to ALSO drop wood/cobble... so to avoid this issue, perhaps new blockID's for each type of stair would have to be crated, which on one side would make implementing the upside-down stairs easier, but on the other side, would spam up the blockID list.
Or, perhaps, stairs could just drop themselves with the associated metadata still attached, like the alternate tree logs do. I kinda prefer this solution, as it can be very frustrating when you make a mistake in placement or decide to tear down an entire staircase, only to somehow end up with much less resources than you began with. So there are 2 ways to alleviate that issue, but both of them require some tweaking of the current game mechanics.
00000000 00000000
Bit number
0: Ascending south
1: Ascending north
2: Ascending west
3: Ascending east
4: Cobble
5: Stone
6: Brick
7: Sandstone
(8: Dirt)
(9: Iron)
(10: Gold)
(11: Diamond)
(12: Snow)
13: Inverted
Also I would keep the current two block IDs - one for flammable stairs (wood (of different kinds?), wool, leaves?) and one for inflammable ones.
The idea would be to try an 'genericise' the current blocks so they could be of any material.