Minecraft Forums

So, I'm sure many of y'all have been wondering whether or not this will ever work again.
The short of it is: yes, I figured out a way to get it to work again. I just have to 1: either learn how to use a new program or learn how to edit its files, and 2: once I'm done teaching myself that, I think I'll split the pack into 2 more versions.

The 1st version will be the closest to the strongescraft you know and love, but it will be considerably laggy, even on high-end computers.
(It may even be too laggy to be playable. If this turns out to be the case, then this version will be scrapped and the 2nd version will take its place.)

The 2nd version will be a bit different. Imagine a version of strongestcraft where almost nothing is transparent except the blocks that are supposed to be. However, one block that doesn't spawn naturally in any biome (for example, white wool) would be transparent, and players would be expected to carry a few with them, if they want to use strongestcraft's x-ray feature. The downsides are obvious (time spent acquiring the x-ray blocks, taking much longer to x-ray the same area due to having to place those blocks on the ground/walls/ceilings - just an overall drop in efficiency) but the upside is that the 2nd version, unlike the 1st, should not create any lag.

How long will it take to produce a working version of this? I have no idea. I'll post another update as soon as I figure that out. Just know that, no matter how long it takes, I am now 100% certain that I can and will make a working version of strongestcraft for minecraft 1.8.x.

Edit: hey, even more good news. This is turning out better than expected.

Another update: SC is going to look much worse after 1.8.x and will likely be difficult to adjust to.

The only way I can get it to work in 1.8.x is by completely remaking it from the ground up, one block at a time, and each block will have to be given its own special treatment and many re-edits to figure out what works best for each one, so this is going to be a pretty long process - we're talking several months here. It's just like starting all over again from scratch. Because of this, I'm going to try reaching a bare bones stopping point where I can release 1.8.x in a clunky, barely usable state (which should happen before January 1st, 2015), and after that, follow up with many smaller releases. For example, after the big, initial 1.8.x release (which may only make stone, 3 types of dirt, grass and 2 types of sand transparent in different ways), the next, smaller 1.8.x release might include transparency for all of the different types of logs and leaf blocks. After that, the next small update might include transparency for planks, and so on.

I know this is a lot of bad news, but there is good news. News that many of you have asked for, for years.
Starting from its first 1.8.x release, strongestcraft will be able to reveal diamond ore blocks that are completely encased in stone.
Have some preliminary screenshots. Please note that the only aspect of them that's set in stone right now (pun intended) are the appearance of the diamond ore blocks and the fact that you will finally, after all these years, be able to see them through solid stone, without having to download any mods - only this texture pack. Everything else you see in the following pictures is subject to change, and much of it is clearly in a non-functioning state.

Picture 1: http://puu.sh/dfXSk/1e6710d142.png At least 2 diamond ore veins visible on-screen, completely surrounded by stone - one is above and to the left of the reticle, one is below and to the right of the reticle.
Picture 2: http://puu.sh/dfYkC/bfbfb17289.png An up-close look of the small diamond ore vein on the bottom-center/right side of the previous picture, with torches attached to the now fully invisible stone blocks. Well, almost fully - if you look closely, you can see tiny, purple lines that are part of every stone block. They only show up at certain angles. At the time of writing, I'm not sure if I'm going to leave these in and change their size, leave them in and leave them exactly as they are, take them out entirely or do something else with them.
Picture 3: http://puu.sh/dfYn3/8cc4679793.png The exact same area, but with this beta version of strongestcraft turned off and only the default texture pack enabled.

Questions? Comments? Fire away.

Quote from SkywardArchitect
Perhaps I've misunderstood you, but are you saying part of the problem is differentiating between all the different kinds of stone and sand?

Cheers, and once again, thanks for all your hard work. Be sure to let me know via PM if there's something I can do to help. I'm not hugely Java-savvy but I'd be happy to do stuff like bug finding and texture design.

Sort of - the issue is that, in the new transparency system, if I make a block partly transparent and partly solid, the solid texture will always be visible through the transparent part of all blocks. While this is great for revealing diamond ore that's surrounded by solid blocks on all sides, this is bad for simply being able to look around and understand what you're looking at.

A perfect example for this is stone blocks. In the following picture, all I did with stone was give it a 1 pixel wide (at 16x resolution), 1 pixel tall and 16 pixel long line of solid pixels. This is how it appears in-game in 1.8.x, without any textures applied: http://puu.sh/dgNQw/1bf735f925.png The solid part is always visible, no matter how many blocks it's behind (unless you're looking at one that's so many hundreds of blocks away that it's too tiny for MC to register any of its pixels on your screen.)

The obvious solution is to make stone blocks fully invisible, right? But that makes cave outlines completely invisible, too. On top of that, what about the times when a person is walking through a cave or on the surface of some biome with stone as the surface block, the ground all around them is invisible and they walk around thinking that everything's fine, but the next thing they know, they've suddenly fallen to their death in a crevasse they couldn't see? "Damned if you do; damned if you don't" problems like these for each and every individual block in minecraft is one of the reasons why this is going to take me so long to come up with a stable version of SC for 1.8.x that's comparable to how good it was before 1.8.x.

Thanks; I don't think anyone can help me with this, but I appreciate the offer!

Quote from echonite
Blocks that are NOT marked as "transparent", IE things other then leaves, stairs, glass, etc, can no longer accept transparency in their textures. The transparent parts will be made solid. So traditional Xray packs no longer work.

Leaves are no longer transparent in the way you're thinking of. They now fall under the same rules as dirt, stone, etc., at least from what several hours of testing (and simply trying to use the old transparent textures for leaves in 1.8.x) have shown me.

For awhile, I agreed with what you said, because I had no evidence to the contrary. Now, however, 3 of my last 4 screenshots prove that that isn't true, and traditional xray packs can and will continue to work, if their authors are willing to remake their texture packs (or "borrow" the textures I make). I just have to remake mine from the ground up in a new format with new, special considerations for each block; that's all.

Quote from echonite»

Leaves Are a little special. They need to be able to switch back and forth for the fast and fancy setting. Now that leaves use a single texture for both rather then swapping between two.

This proves that textures alone do not work. The game fills in the transparant portion every time on blocks that are not considered "transparent".
32x texture - http://i.imgur.com/ZH0RTWk.png
16x texture - http://i.imgur.com/p39h0D6.png

In order to get the same effect, you have to edit the model to make a physical hole in the blocks rather then the texture. Which I guess is a slight improvement, as it means an xray pack could work with literally any texture pack...


Edit: Proof of concept using a single model file. Not refined to highlight ores and whatnot, but point stands. Works with any texture pack.
http://i.imgur.com/xvickX6.png

Edit2: A little more refinement, showing diamond and coal ores fully visible. It doesnt work with ALL texture packs, like my own personal pack, as it includes other custom models for randomization, but for basic packs tha don't rely much on custom models, it will work.
http://i.imgur.com/QY02Ox4.png

Huh. What program are you using to cut out a roughly 14x14 square in the middle of those stone blocks? I just paid about $13 for a minecraft model editing program, but it doesn't seem to have an option to create a face, then cut out a part of it. (It looks like someone can help me after all, and that person is you. I guess by creating 6 faces, then cutting holes into all 6 of them as models, that gets rid of the repeating effect in my screenshots, too? The one where, for example, every single stone block within render distance is rendered.)

Edit: to give you an idea of what I'm looking at, here's this: http://puu.sh/dip2k/dd1ba3e697.png The bottom-right corner is how it appears in the program I'm using. Once it's in-game, however, stone blocks look like this: http://puu.sh/dipGa/ecccdbd2fa.png

Edit2: also, what did you do with your stone.png? Do you only have 1 stone.png in your models > block folder, do you only have 1 stone.png in your textures > blocks folder, do you have both of them, or do you have neither of them?

Edit3: just figured out something that might have been holding me back - if I export a model that uses more than 1 element, minecraft automatically replaces the model with the textures of that block. For example, if I make a stone model with 2 or more elements in it, then in-game, I wind up with a solid black square surrounded by a gray outline for all stone blocks.

What on Earth... I gotta be honest with ya: I've never even heard of cube_all, cube_mirrored and their _old variants. This changes things. If you still remember: how did you learn about these four files?

Looks like I've got several more hours of experimenting to do, but now I'm probably on the right track, and it's all thanks to you. Thank you VERY much!

Thanks, and yep, you're right; I just found those files, as well as a few other cube_ files, in the 1.8 jar. I should've looked there more closely.

Haha - I agree that they're inferior to xray mods. And thanks again! I sent you a PM about this to get into some of the technical details.

Quote from IronGolem001»

Help! When I got the teture pack, the stone is all black?!?!?! Why it isn't transparent? I hope its an error and it must be fixed! Thanks

It's a feature­­™ of minecraft 1.8+.

I'll submit a preliminary fix soon - probably on Sunday.