I'm having a little trouble figuring out what you could or couldn't code, but maybe you could work on the dialog boxes?
1. A visual box that the text goes in
Could be made of 4 corners, 1 each horizontal and vertical lines, and a central color, so the picture doesn't need to be stored as a whole picture. It should be the same size every time, though: All the way across the screen, starting about a third from the bottom and going to the bottom... though I'm not sure of the relationship to the existing GUI.
Would be nice if you could change the color in the options menu.
2. A subroutine to parse the text
Receive a line of text of unknown length. Split it at the first space back from a certain max length, and again, as necessary to get up to 4 lines of text; send any remainder to the second page of dialog after the player presses a button.
If you'd prefer not to do that, or if it ends up lagging too much, we could do the formatting ourselves. But a nice standard that can be altered as necessary (e.g., for different display settings) is always nice.
And the game should pause while you're on a dialog box. Just like how the Escape menu does it.
3. A way to add character portraits
They'd show right above the text, on the left-hand side. I think they'd be part of a larger PNG file that had all the different moods for a single character. For simplicity, assume a 4x4 sheet (16 portraits), so even if the texture pack size changes, your code won't have to change.
Alternate Assignments:
If you'd like to try designing sprites, talk with Yoshi and take up some of the crops.
Or, if you just want to code, try working out the interfaces for the different Chest-like storage units: Icebox, Oven, Counter, Dresser, Cupboard, and Shipping Bin. It would be nice to let the Icebox take only food and ingredients, and the Dresser take only clothes... maybe a Toolbox that takes only tools and seeds. But that's not a big deal right now.
Other Possibility: Figure out how to make beehives.
They should randomly spawn, at daybreak, on the trunk of a tree, if it's near a certain number of flowers (so players can try to get one by moving flowers close to a tree). Possibly it's if you put flowers in a certain pattern close to the trunk.
Problem is, we don't want too much lag from checking all the possible tree/flower relationships in the area.
Also, you get honey from right-clicking the hive, but if you do this and there's no torch just under the hive, you get a condition like being on fire, that is being swarmed with bees, and only stops if you go far enough underwater to start the breath meter. Or... I don't know what other ways you could stop it. Maybe going inside a fully enclosed area. Maybe the bees stop after a while, and if you're lucky you're not dead by then.
My YouTube channel is currently on hiatus, but I hope to get back to it at some point. Content is fairly random, but can be enjoyable, and is mostly game footage (mostly random Minecraft clips) from my nephews and me. Most popular MC vid so far is the one Vechs laughed at on Twitter!
Ah, one more thing I've forgot to mention in my previous post.
Crop levels. Are we going to have Crop levels?
PLEASE say Yes
D;
And I'm still on favour on turning crops into minerals.
I'd LOVE to play a farm focused Minecraft and not have to dig a mine for ores.
:biggrin.gif:
P.S. Kinda off topic but it is kinda Harvest Moon related.
I'm up to the point where I HAVE TO marry someone to progress the story in Rune Factory 3....
Now, who do I marry?!? Gaaah!
Just wondering, have you guys heard of the RuneCraftory mod? Its my Harvest Moon/Rune Factory like farming mod with almost the same set of ideas proposed here. I even have an optional seasons mod that splits all of the crops up. I'm currently working on a player level expansion that should be out in a few days. There are lots of great ideas in this thread which are so similar to my own. I just thought I'd share with you that a mod like this already exists.
Just wondering, have you guys heard of the RuneCraftory mod? Its my Harvest Moon/Rune Factory like farming mod with almost the same set of ideas proposed here. I even have an optional seasons mod that splits all of the crops up. I'm currently working on a player level expansion that should be out in a few days. There are lots of great ideas in this thread which are so similar to my own. I just thought I'd share with you that a mod like this already exists.
Well, bye bye this topic.
-.-;;
Btw, you took the sprites from RF3, didn't you?
Also, what's your plans on livestock?
And what can we expect to do with the crops?
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
'Squids are evil. I will eat them all. I WILL EAT THEM ALL'
- Cookies to whomever gets the reference
Ah, one more thing I've forgot to mention in my previous post.
Crop levels. Are we going to have Crop levels?
PLEASE say Yes
D;
And I'm still on favour on turning crops into minerals.
I'd LOVE to play a farm focused Minecraft and not have to dig a mine for ores.
:biggrin.gif:
P.S. Kinda off topic but it is kinda Harvest Moon related.
I'm up to the point where I HAVE TO marry someone to progress the story in Rune Factory 3....
Now, who do I marry?!? Gaaah!
Crop levels? I don't quite get that. XD Also, I'm still not in favour of turning crops into minerals. XD
Just wondering, have you guys heard of the RuneCraftory mod? Its my Harvest Moon/Rune Factory like farming mod with almost the same set of ideas proposed here. I even have an optional seasons mod that splits all of the crops up. I'm currently working on a player level expansion that should be out in a few days. There are lots of great ideas in this thread which are so similar to my own. I just thought I'd share with you that a mod like this already exists.
Hold on a second!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I didn't know there was such a mod. That's surprising. However! We're STILL going to make this. ComicRetrolution, you better not steal our ideas, if there're any that you haven't implemented. Your mod is very very very very different from what we are trying to do, so actually, you didn't need to tell us. At the most we're just gonna have two mods which have the same theme but works differently.
Thanks for your concern though. :biggrin.gif:
Well, bye bye this topic.
-.-;;
Btw, you took the sprites from RF3, didn't you?
Also, what's your plans on livestock?
And what can we expect to do with the crops?
Are you giving up so soon? The mod that we're planning to make is much more different than his, you know. Also, for crops we've already planned almost everything. Come on, he's our "opponent". XD
Treece: I don't think I've encountered crop levels yet, but I understand what you mean; it sounds like a decent avenue of exploration, at the very least.
Are we going to change the level of a recipe using item damage? From what I've read of this variable, it seems reasonable.
And I also understand what you mean about wanting a farm-focused game instead of a mine-focused one. It's always nice to give players options. If we had a craftable box that involved a diamond, you'd have to start with a mining trip (or Too Many Items), but could get the ore exchange going eventually. We could also add a "quick method" to get the box via a non-intuitive pattern that involved quick and easy mats, e.g.: a box made of dirt, around a stick. That way you wouldn't even need TMI.
I didn't know there was such a mod. That's surprising. However! We're STILL going to make this. ComicRetrolution, you better not steal our ideas...
Come on, he's our "opponent". XD
All right, calm down everyone!
Obviously I didn't find this while searching the forum, or I would've pointed out how my idea would be different (if indeed they were different). The original post doesn't include the words "Harvest Moon" (though a later reply does)... not sure if that's why I didn't spot it or not.
I'm not familiar with the later Harvest Moon games, especially the more oddly named ones, so I didn't bother to search for alternate names that might've made it to mods. (HM games I've played: the original SNES version, the PSX Back to Nature (my favorite), the PS2 Save the Homeland (didn't get far but I do own it; would play it again; dislike the low focus on crops), and the N64 version (unwieldy and my least favorite). Also I've at least tried the DS version, if I recall, though again, didn't get far (emulation problems, and I don't usually emulate newer games anyway - was testing to see if it'd be worth buying for my niece).)
Anyway. I've looked over the entire original post for RuneCraftory. I do think we overlap significantly, though I don't think it's enough to make us throw in the towel just yet. Let's stop and consider how ours are the same, and how they differ.
But please: The team making RuneCraftory is not our opponent or our enemy. At most, they should be a friendly rival. And I don't think there's any reason to get uptight about them "stealing" our ideas. They're just ideas! (You can't even copyright an idea, just the implementation of it.)
In fact, I was rather hoping we could learn a few things from how they've put their mod together. And maybe, if they'd be willing, we could borrow their seasons code, at least as a starting place for ours. (Although if they'd prefer we didn't, or if our coders would prefer to work from scratch, that's fine too.)
In reviewing their mod, some differences jump out at me:
1. Watering Can
RuneCraftory abandons the Minecraft watering method entirely (destroys natural Minecraft behavior) in favor of the Harvest Moon method.
One of the things about having to water daily is that you can't be underground for extended periods. I find that unnecessarily limiting. And although the plants do stop updating if you stray too far away, it seems like you risk losing your crop any time you aren't making it your top priority.
So I was hoping, and am still hoping, that we'll go the other way, embracing modern Minecraft agriculture. Now we've got a good reason to consider that more seriously.
Also: He updates things periodically during the day; I was hoping to stick all the crop-related updates into one spot at, say, sunrise. This'd avoid adding lag to the middle of the day, and give you a clear deadline consistent with the Harvest Moon model (I'm in bed by 5:50 AM, we're golden).
1b. Potential Caveat: Summer Sun
If the sun in Summer could dry up water in some fashion, you'd have to be on your toes only during a small portion of the year (1/3 or less of the normal growing season, not counting winter). You'd still have that HM "gotta be careful of the water" feeling, but only for a short time each year, and you could even ignore that part of the year and still get crops.
I can see many potential problems with a sun that kills water, though:
a. Kills the oceans!
Answer: If water is near enough other water, or more than 1 or 2 deep, it doesn't dry up.
b. Kills indoor fountains/basins/swimming pools!
Answer: If there's a block above the water, even a glass block, it's fine. Also, it doesn't mess with 2x2 infinite springs.
c. Kills water slides and waterfalls!
Answer: If the water flows down more than 1 block, it doesn't dry up.
d. Slowly destroys straight-line infinite systems!
Answer: Could have it so that a block directly next to an infinite source doesn't dry up. Or perhaps the slow drying up is the behavior we want, in which case it's easy to put half-blocks above the water or just make 2x2 springs.
2. Seeds from Grass, Randomly
This one I don't favor. I like either random plant spawns or a specific way to buy the seeds. I can buy random seeds from grass for wheat, which is in fact a type of grass, but not for, say, yams (sweet potatoes - I like the name change he gave 'em, and we should go with that too), which are a root.
Although, I might be willing to buy it this way: You find random roots while digging, random above-ground seeds while messing with grass... and some small set of the plants grow wild (corn, strawberries, and onions, for example). That cuts down on weird clutter in the world, for one. And the wild-growing plants might differ by biome, I could see that.
3. Mature Crops Don't Always Drop Seeds
Again, we're going for a renewable system where you never run out once you've got 'em going (unless you harvest them too early, or let them die in the season shift). This is consistent with Minecraft's current parameters regarding wheat: You always get enough to continue.
4. Seasons Are Very Short
They've got the same length of seasons as the Seasons mod, and I dislike it strongly. One of the things about Harvest Moon is that it's a very laid-back game, and you have the same behavior from day to day - "chores" as it were - and change pace only now and again. A 7-day season sounds hectic and turns me off.
However, it's got me thinking.
What say we split the year into eight mini-seasons, each 8 days long? So a full regular season (2 mini-seasons) would be 16 days (plenty for crops, if we adjust the Back to Nature growth times accordingly... and/or make crops that last multiple seasons), and you could have two different types of behavior (e.g., a rainy season, but it wouldn't be the entire season long)?
We could even go for two 15-day mini-seasons, or three 8-day or 10-day mini-seasons, though those seem less numerically enjoyable.
For example:
1. Frozen World: The end of winter, quiet weather but the world is snow and ice.
2. Spring Thaw: The snow and ice slowly go away. Perhaps more rain than usual, but in short showers. Could we turn the sound down for a gentler rain?
3. New Growth: Baby animals have a higher spawn than usual. More flowers appear (not too many though). If we've managed to make trees lose their foliage during the winter, this is when it grows back. Also, some shrubs or bushes would be nice.
4. Summer Storms: Lots of rain that lasts a long time and turns the sky dark. Most often, or possibly every time, it's a thunderstorm. Wish we could arrange for flash floods. Would also like to see the rain give warning - "Comes on fast, won't last, but see it coming, go a-running" is the way I learned it.
5. Summer Heat: This is the time that dries up water. And if we had any reason to make the sun hurt you, this would be it. Perhaps you'd have to do temperature management of some sort.
6. Autumn Heat: Still pretty hot, and the leaves are turning colors. Plants grow fast and harvests are abundant.
7. Nut Gathering: The trees are dropping acorns (and other nuts perhaps), the squirrels are busy stockpiling, the other wild animals are heading off to sleep... and the trees are losing foliage, if we could arrange that.
8. Winter Storms: Lots of snow flurries. It piles up in cold biomes and at least covers the ground in other places (though perhaps a couple biomes, e.g. the desert and/or beach, would avoid this). Water turns to ice (except in the hotter biomes). Animals stay in shelter.
So... something like that. It'd be easier to code a progression of weather/plant/animal behavior in small chunks like this. I think.
5. FishCraftory
Holy mackerel, that's a lot of fish.
I was thinking we'd get to fish eventually (they're in the recipe list!), but I don't think we need to go anything like this far.
Let's pick, say, four different fish of three sizes each, and four special fish you could catch. That's 16 units instead of over 50. Even with a cooked version each, we've only 32 (28 if you can't cook the special fish).
It does seem that going without Minecraft Forge is by this point an impossibility, but at least we can keep the fishing pretty simple :smile.gif:
Though, for the purposes of the special fish: In Back to Nature, getting a special fish meant you had to have met an achievement of some sort first (for most of them). We could use that behavior: If you don't have X achievement, you can't get Y fish. Pretty simple check, really. Although it'd be nice to keep the fishing achievements secret until you actually catch the secret fish.
Summary
RuneCraftory, and its associated mods, is similar to but not entirely overlapping what we hope to do. We should be able to get along :smile.gif:
Their food sprites look awesome. I hope we do as well as they have. We don't have the same crops list, but I like the change of "Sweet Potatoes" to "Yams," I'd love to have "Daikon" in our game, I'd like to have "Red Cabbage" as a possibility and "White Cabbage" sounds pretty cool too... and "Pink Turnip" sounds better than a regular turnip for some reason (even though I don't like pink).
I do like that nothing destroys crops by walking on them. Good choice.
And... oh, patterns! I'd slightly alter the recipes for the Sickle and Watering Can... not because we want to be different (I'd actually advise them to use these patterns as well), but because they seem a little more intuitive. The Sickle, for example, is curved, hence:
Or of course the reverse, if that's pretty easy to code (it works with the Axe and Hoe).
Alt, non-reversible:
The Watering Can pattern currently doesn't look like a container, and doesn't have a spout. Using Minecraft-native materials, how about a two-step pattern?
Wooden Bucket, with handle on top (so it doesn't overlap with Bowl recipe... alternative is to make it taller):
Alt:
You should be able to move around Water and Milk, but not Lava, using this bucket. Then... no icon for buckets? :sad.gif:
The Chest is of course the Wooden Bucket. The handle in the back makes the handle on the top redundant (not so if we use the taller bucket)... not sure which to leave out. And the Bamboo/Sugarcane makes a Spout. (It's also one more use for the abundant but nearly useless Bamboo/Sugarcane.)
And... that's my thoughts at present. I hope we can learn from them and not have too much friction between our groups :smile.gif:
My YouTube channel is currently on hiatus, but I hope to get back to it at some point. Content is fairly random, but can be enjoyable, and is mostly game footage (mostly random Minecraft clips) from my nephews and me. Most popular MC vid so far is the one Vechs laughed at on Twitter!
Unfortunately, it's not updated, and he says not to update it. It's possible if we asked he'd let us use one of his squirrels, or a couple of them, in our mod. I'm not sure how open he would be to such a request, but it's worth a shot. After we've got a working mod, of course.
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My YouTube channel is currently on hiatus, but I hope to get back to it at some point. Content is fairly random, but can be enjoyable, and is mostly game footage (mostly random Minecraft clips) from my nephews and me. Most popular MC vid so far is the one Vechs laughed at on Twitter!
Hey, Kilyle, I'm interested in how the mod would end up like! May I give a suggestion?
I think you could make the whole mod as one of the modes of minecraft (Survival/Creative/Hardcore/Harvest Moon), making the whole thing easier to deal with.
But please: The team making RuneCraftory is not our opponent or our enemy. At most, they should be a friendly rival. And I don't think there's any reason to get uptight about them "stealing" our ideas. They're just ideas! (You can't even copyright an idea, just the implementation of it.)
I didn't mean it that way XD
Anyways, We're just gonna have fun doing this. As I've mentioned, our ideas are different than the RuneCraftory group in a way, and thus, we'll definitely continue doing it. Also, I agree with your ideas. They're amazing ones.
Also, like what rabbitaly said above, we could make the mod use a new mode totally. The survival mode and others will contain our mod items and blocks, but it will not work exactly like the harvest moon mode, in terms of the mechanics.
Also, like what rabbitaly said above, we could make the mod use a new mode totally. The survival mode and others will contain our mod items and blocks, but it will not work exactly like the harvest moon mode, in terms of the mechanics.
Yeah, that is what I mean to say, just couldn't find the words. The harvest moon mode would have all the stuff in the mod, the towns and all that, while the survival and other modes will not have the towns, although the blocks and stuff can be cheated with TooManyItems and other similar mods.
Also: He updates things periodically during the day; I was hoping to stick all the crop-related updates into one spot at, say, sunrise. This'd avoid adding lag to the middle of the day, and give you a clear deadline consistent with the Harvest Moon model (I'm in bed by 5:50 AM, we're golden).
Hey speaking of the time, I have another suggestion.
Usually in minecraft, we do not actually have any idea what is the exact time of the day, so you could make a gui or similar stuff that would show the exact time when you hold out the clock. Also, add the clock to the starting set of items, or else we would not be able to keep track of time.
Hey speaking of the time, I have another suggestion.
Usually in minecraft, we do not actually have any idea what is the exact time of the day, so you could make a gui or similar stuff that would show the exact time when you hold out the clock. Also, add the clock to the starting set of items, or else we would not be able to keep track of time.
We'll just have a gui on the screen to show the time, so that there isn't any problem when the player "Q"'s the clock, dropping it.
By the way, OP, you should REALLY play the recent Harvest Moon titles.
It has evolved A LOT from the N64 days.
Try Sunshine Islands and Bazaar/Tale of Two Towns. Just for its first month or so.
And then definitely try RuneFactory 3 (which the RuneCraftory is based upon).
That way, we'd be more in sync and you'll realise what the modern Harvest Moon games are like.
Trust me, if you've been playing SNES to N64 versions, though favouring Mineral Town (which is pretty understandable) you are not quite up to date.
By the way, please don't take any of that as an offense. Last thing I want is to start a quarrel between two Harvest Moo fans :biggrin.gif:
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
'Squids are evil. I will eat them all. I WILL EAT THEM ALL'
- Cookies to whomever gets the reference
Oh, and I think you're right about the pumpkin/melon thing. We'll have to design our own, and/or uproot and redesign the existing unit.
I'm having a little trouble figuring out what you could or couldn't code, but maybe you could work on the dialog boxes?
1. A visual box that the text goes in
Could be made of 4 corners, 1 each horizontal and vertical lines, and a central color, so the picture doesn't need to be stored as a whole picture. It should be the same size every time, though: All the way across the screen, starting about a third from the bottom and going to the bottom... though I'm not sure of the relationship to the existing GUI.
Would be nice if you could change the color in the options menu.
2. A subroutine to parse the text
Receive a line of text of unknown length. Split it at the first space back from a certain max length, and again, as necessary to get up to 4 lines of text; send any remainder to the second page of dialog after the player presses a button.
If you'd prefer not to do that, or if it ends up lagging too much, we could do the formatting ourselves. But a nice standard that can be altered as necessary (e.g., for different display settings) is always nice.
And the game should pause while you're on a dialog box. Just like how the Escape menu does it.
3. A way to add character portraits
They'd show right above the text, on the left-hand side. I think they'd be part of a larger PNG file that had all the different moods for a single character. For simplicity, assume a 4x4 sheet (16 portraits), so even if the texture pack size changes, your code won't have to change.
Alternate Assignments:
If you'd like to try designing sprites, talk with Yoshi and take up some of the crops.
Or, if you just want to code, try working out the interfaces for the different Chest-like storage units: Icebox, Oven, Counter, Dresser, Cupboard, and Shipping Bin. It would be nice to let the Icebox take only food and ingredients, and the Dresser take only clothes... maybe a Toolbox that takes only tools and seeds. But that's not a big deal right now.
Other Possibility: Figure out how to make beehives.
They should randomly spawn, at daybreak, on the trunk of a tree, if it's near a certain number of flowers (so players can try to get one by moving flowers close to a tree). Possibly it's if you put flowers in a certain pattern close to the trunk.
Problem is, we don't want too much lag from checking all the possible tree/flower relationships in the area.
Also, you get honey from right-clicking the hive, but if you do this and there's no torch just under the hive, you get a condition like being on fire, that is being swarmed with bees, and only stops if you go far enough underwater to start the breath meter. Or... I don't know what other ways you could stop it. Maybe going inside a fully enclosed area. Maybe the bees stop after a while, and if you're lucky you're not dead by then.
A buzz sound would be a nice addition :smile.gif:
My YouTube channel is currently on hiatus, but I hope to get back to it at some point. Content is fairly random, but can be enjoyable, and is mostly game footage (mostly random Minecraft clips) from my nephews and me. Most popular MC vid so far is the one Vechs laughed at on Twitter!
There's a reason why I've spoiler-ed everything up XD
Support my mod!
Well, Kilyle has written so many huge posts of ideas, you could just take up any and try to work on them.
Support my mod!
Crop levels. Are we going to have Crop levels?
PLEASE say Yes
D;
And I'm still on favour on turning crops into minerals.
I'd LOVE to play a farm focused Minecraft and not have to dig a mine for ores.
:biggrin.gif:
P.S. Kinda off topic but it is kinda Harvest Moon related.
I'm up to the point where I HAVE TO marry someone to progress the story in Rune Factory 3....
Now, who do I marry?!? Gaaah!
- Cookies to whomever gets the reference
Alright, I'll get started on a few later.
Well, bye bye this topic.
-.-;;
Btw, you took the sprites from RF3, didn't you?
Also, what's your plans on livestock?
And what can we expect to do with the crops?
- Cookies to whomever gets the reference
Crop levels? I don't quite get that. XD Also, I'm still not in favour of turning crops into minerals. XD
Hold on a second!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I didn't know there was such a mod. That's surprising. However! We're STILL going to make this. ComicRetrolution, you better not steal our ideas, if there're any that you haven't implemented. Your mod is very very very very different from what we are trying to do, so actually, you didn't need to tell us. At the most we're just gonna have two mods which have the same theme but works differently.
Thanks for your concern though. :biggrin.gif:
Are you giving up so soon? The mod that we're planning to make is much more different than his, you know. Also, for crops we've already planned almost everything. Come on, he's our "opponent". XD
Support my mod!
Er...crop levels as in Level 1 Turnip, level 2 turnip, etc etc. They affect cooking a lot y'know....
Also, I'm still in this project but, eh, just show me what you've got.
- Cookies to whomever gets the reference
Ah you meant that. Ok.
Support my mod!
Are we going to change the level of a recipe using item damage? From what I've read of this variable, it seems reasonable.
And I also understand what you mean about wanting a farm-focused game instead of a mine-focused one. It's always nice to give players options. If we had a craftable box that involved a diamond, you'd have to start with a mining trip (or Too Many Items), but could get the ore exchange going eventually. We could also add a "quick method" to get the box via a non-intuitive pattern that involved quick and easy mats, e.g.: a box made of dirt, around a stick. That way you wouldn't even need TMI.
All right, calm down everyone!
Obviously I didn't find this while searching the forum, or I would've pointed out how my idea would be different (if indeed they were different). The original post doesn't include the words "Harvest Moon" (though a later reply does)... not sure if that's why I didn't spot it or not.
I'm not familiar with the later Harvest Moon games, especially the more oddly named ones, so I didn't bother to search for alternate names that might've made it to mods. (HM games I've played: the original SNES version, the PSX Back to Nature (my favorite), the PS2 Save the Homeland (didn't get far but I do own it; would play it again; dislike the low focus on crops), and the N64 version (unwieldy and my least favorite). Also I've at least tried the DS version, if I recall, though again, didn't get far (emulation problems, and I don't usually emulate newer games anyway - was testing to see if it'd be worth buying for my niece).)
Anyway. I've looked over the entire original post for RuneCraftory. I do think we overlap significantly, though I don't think it's enough to make us throw in the towel just yet. Let's stop and consider how ours are the same, and how they differ.
But please: The team making RuneCraftory is not our opponent or our enemy. At most, they should be a friendly rival. And I don't think there's any reason to get uptight about them "stealing" our ideas. They're just ideas! (You can't even copyright an idea, just the implementation of it.)
In fact, I was rather hoping we could learn a few things from how they've put their mod together. And maybe, if they'd be willing, we could borrow their seasons code, at least as a starting place for ours. (Although if they'd prefer we didn't, or if our coders would prefer to work from scratch, that's fine too.)
In reviewing their mod, some differences jump out at me:
1. Watering Can
RuneCraftory abandons the Minecraft watering method entirely (destroys natural Minecraft behavior) in favor of the Harvest Moon method.
One of the things about having to water daily is that you can't be underground for extended periods. I find that unnecessarily limiting. And although the plants do stop updating if you stray too far away, it seems like you risk losing your crop any time you aren't making it your top priority.
So I was hoping, and am still hoping, that we'll go the other way, embracing modern Minecraft agriculture. Now we've got a good reason to consider that more seriously.
Also: He updates things periodically during the day; I was hoping to stick all the crop-related updates into one spot at, say, sunrise. This'd avoid adding lag to the middle of the day, and give you a clear deadline consistent with the Harvest Moon model (I'm in bed by 5:50 AM, we're golden).
1b. Potential Caveat: Summer Sun
If the sun in Summer could dry up water in some fashion, you'd have to be on your toes only during a small portion of the year (1/3 or less of the normal growing season, not counting winter). You'd still have that HM "gotta be careful of the water" feeling, but only for a short time each year, and you could even ignore that part of the year and still get crops.
I can see many potential problems with a sun that kills water, though:
a. Kills the oceans!
Answer: If water is near enough other water, or more than 1 or 2 deep, it doesn't dry up.
b. Kills indoor fountains/basins/swimming pools!
Answer: If there's a block above the water, even a glass block, it's fine. Also, it doesn't mess with 2x2 infinite springs.
c. Kills water slides and waterfalls!
Answer: If the water flows down more than 1 block, it doesn't dry up.
d. Slowly destroys straight-line infinite systems!
Answer: Could have it so that a block directly next to an infinite source doesn't dry up. Or perhaps the slow drying up is the behavior we want, in which case it's easy to put half-blocks above the water or just make 2x2 springs.
2. Seeds from Grass, Randomly
This one I don't favor. I like either random plant spawns or a specific way to buy the seeds. I can buy random seeds from grass for wheat, which is in fact a type of grass, but not for, say, yams (sweet potatoes - I like the name change he gave 'em, and we should go with that too), which are a root.
Although, I might be willing to buy it this way: You find random roots while digging, random above-ground seeds while messing with grass... and some small set of the plants grow wild (corn, strawberries, and onions, for example). That cuts down on weird clutter in the world, for one. And the wild-growing plants might differ by biome, I could see that.
3. Mature Crops Don't Always Drop Seeds
Again, we're going for a renewable system where you never run out once you've got 'em going (unless you harvest them too early, or let them die in the season shift). This is consistent with Minecraft's current parameters regarding wheat: You always get enough to continue.
4. Seasons Are Very Short
They've got the same length of seasons as the Seasons mod, and I dislike it strongly. One of the things about Harvest Moon is that it's a very laid-back game, and you have the same behavior from day to day - "chores" as it were - and change pace only now and again. A 7-day season sounds hectic and turns me off.
However, it's got me thinking.
What say we split the year into eight mini-seasons, each 8 days long? So a full regular season (2 mini-seasons) would be 16 days (plenty for crops, if we adjust the Back to Nature growth times accordingly... and/or make crops that last multiple seasons), and you could have two different types of behavior (e.g., a rainy season, but it wouldn't be the entire season long)?
We could even go for two 15-day mini-seasons, or three 8-day or 10-day mini-seasons, though those seem less numerically enjoyable.
For example:
1. Frozen World: The end of winter, quiet weather but the world is snow and ice.
2. Spring Thaw: The snow and ice slowly go away. Perhaps more rain than usual, but in short showers. Could we turn the sound down for a gentler rain?
3. New Growth: Baby animals have a higher spawn than usual. More flowers appear (not too many though). If we've managed to make trees lose their foliage during the winter, this is when it grows back. Also, some shrubs or bushes would be nice.
4. Summer Storms: Lots of rain that lasts a long time and turns the sky dark. Most often, or possibly every time, it's a thunderstorm. Wish we could arrange for flash floods. Would also like to see the rain give warning - "Comes on fast, won't last, but see it coming, go a-running" is the way I learned it.
5. Summer Heat: This is the time that dries up water. And if we had any reason to make the sun hurt you, this would be it. Perhaps you'd have to do temperature management of some sort.
6. Autumn Heat: Still pretty hot, and the leaves are turning colors. Plants grow fast and harvests are abundant.
7. Nut Gathering: The trees are dropping acorns (and other nuts perhaps), the squirrels are busy stockpiling, the other wild animals are heading off to sleep... and the trees are losing foliage, if we could arrange that.
8. Winter Storms: Lots of snow flurries. It piles up in cold biomes and at least covers the ground in other places (though perhaps a couple biomes, e.g. the desert and/or beach, would avoid this). Water turns to ice (except in the hotter biomes). Animals stay in shelter.
So... something like that. It'd be easier to code a progression of weather/plant/animal behavior in small chunks like this. I think.
5. FishCraftory
Holy mackerel, that's a lot of fish.
I was thinking we'd get to fish eventually (they're in the recipe list!), but I don't think we need to go anything like this far.
Let's pick, say, four different fish of three sizes each, and four special fish you could catch. That's 16 units instead of over 50. Even with a cooked version each, we've only 32 (28 if you can't cook the special fish).
It does seem that going without Minecraft Forge is by this point an impossibility, but at least we can keep the fishing pretty simple :smile.gif:
Though, for the purposes of the special fish: In Back to Nature, getting a special fish meant you had to have met an achievement of some sort first (for most of them). We could use that behavior: If you don't have X achievement, you can't get Y fish. Pretty simple check, really. Although it'd be nice to keep the fishing achievements secret until you actually catch the secret fish.
Summary
RuneCraftory, and its associated mods, is similar to but not entirely overlapping what we hope to do. We should be able to get along :smile.gif:
Their food sprites look awesome. I hope we do as well as they have. We don't have the same crops list, but I like the change of "Sweet Potatoes" to "Yams," I'd love to have "Daikon" in our game, I'd like to have "Red Cabbage" as a possibility and "White Cabbage" sounds pretty cool too... and "Pink Turnip" sounds better than a regular turnip for some reason (even though I don't like pink).
I do like that nothing destroys crops by walking on them. Good choice.
And... oh, patterns! I'd slightly alter the recipes for the Sickle and Watering Can... not because we want to be different (I'd actually advise them to use these patterns as well), but because they seem a little more intuitive. The Sickle, for example, is curved, hence:
Or of course the reverse, if that's pretty easy to code (it works with the Axe and Hoe).
Alt, non-reversible:
The Watering Can pattern currently doesn't look like a container, and doesn't have a spout. Using Minecraft-native materials, how about a two-step pattern?
Wooden Bucket, with handle on top (so it doesn't overlap with Bowl recipe... alternative is to make it taller):
Alt:
You should be able to move around Water and Milk, but not Lava, using this bucket. Then... no icon for buckets? :sad.gif:
The Chest is of course the Wooden Bucket. The handle in the back makes the handle on the top redundant (not so if we use the taller bucket)... not sure which to leave out. And the Bamboo/Sugarcane makes a Spout. (It's also one more use for the abundant but nearly useless Bamboo/Sugarcane.)
And... that's my thoughts at present. I hope we can learn from them and not have too much friction between our groups :smile.gif:
My YouTube channel is currently on hiatus, but I hope to get back to it at some point. Content is fairly random, but can be enjoyable, and is mostly game footage (mostly random Minecraft clips) from my nephews and me. Most popular MC vid so far is the one Vechs laughed at on Twitter!
Unfortunately, it's not updated, and he says not to update it. It's possible if we asked he'd let us use one of his squirrels, or a couple of them, in our mod. I'm not sure how open he would be to such a request, but it's worth a shot. After we've got a working mod, of course.
My YouTube channel is currently on hiatus, but I hope to get back to it at some point. Content is fairly random, but can be enjoyable, and is mostly game footage (mostly random Minecraft clips) from my nephews and me. Most popular MC vid so far is the one Vechs laughed at on Twitter!
I think you could make the whole mod as one of the modes of minecraft (Survival/Creative/Hardcore/Harvest Moon), making the whole thing easier to deal with.
I didn't mean it that way XD
Anyways, We're just gonna have fun doing this. As I've mentioned, our ideas are different than the RuneCraftory group in a way, and thus, we'll definitely continue doing it. Also, I agree with your ideas. They're amazing ones.
Also, like what rabbitaly said above, we could make the mod use a new mode totally. The survival mode and others will contain our mod items and blocks, but it will not work exactly like the harvest moon mode, in terms of the mechanics.
Support my mod!
Yeah, that is what I mean to say, just couldn't find the words. The harvest moon mode would have all the stuff in the mod, the towns and all that, while the survival and other modes will not have the towns, although the blocks and stuff can be cheated with TooManyItems and other similar mods.
Hey speaking of the time, I have another suggestion.
Usually in minecraft, we do not actually have any idea what is the exact time of the day, so you could make a gui or similar stuff that would show the exact time when you hold out the clock. Also, add the clock to the starting set of items, or else we would not be able to keep track of time.
We'll just have a gui on the screen to show the time, so that there isn't any problem when the player "Q"'s the clock, dropping it.
Support my mod!
That should work too, so scrape the clock idea
It has evolved A LOT from the N64 days.
Try Sunshine Islands and Bazaar/Tale of Two Towns. Just for its first month or so.
And then definitely try RuneFactory 3 (which the RuneCraftory is based upon).
That way, we'd be more in sync and you'll realise what the modern Harvest Moon games are like.
Trust me, if you've been playing SNES to N64 versions, though favouring Mineral Town (which is pretty understandable) you are not quite up to date.
By the way, please don't take any of that as an offense. Last thing I want is to start a quarrel between two Harvest Moo fans :biggrin.gif:
- Cookies to whomever gets the reference