Okay I've seen a lot of threads about how beds can be improved, but here's a different idea, for multiplayer ONLY.
The more people who are on a server, the harder it is to coordinate everyone to be laying in bed exactly at the same time, right? And a lot of them are gonna be busy doing other things, like mining deep underground, where it wouldn't affect them anyway.
You see that? You're in a natural cave, deep underground, mining up diamonds and gold: Day or night doesn't matter to you, because you can only see torchlight. THEREFORE, my suggestion is: People who can't see natural sunlight shouldn't need to sleep in order for beds to work for the time skip, since it doesn't affect them anyway.
This isn't to say that if everyone's in a cave it should just always be daytime, but rather that it should be calculated, whenever someone "goes to bed", if everyone else is either already in bed OR outside of areas that would be affected by natural sunlight, it should skip to day. The people building outside still need to go inside to rest, so it's not a jarring transition for anyone.
So... In SMP if you're under enough rock, you don't need to be in a bed for time to skip? Nice idea... However, a transitional screen of some sort would still be necessary. Perhaps you could black out, perhaps with a sort of rock particle effect to make it seem like some stone fell off the roof and knocked you out.
How so? So you don't notice your watch skip? It wouldn't be nice to be running from a creeper and just suddenly black out only to wake up again with it standing right in front of you, you know.
It's not impossible. It only needs to be checked ONCE whenever someone goes to bed, not constantly or anything like that. Want a step by step? Okay.
[*:2zhmphi1]Take the area around a relevant player. Just a simple sphere will do, the same kind that digs caves. If you want to get fancy, take a general perspective from the player's view cone instead, stopping the check at any hidden surfaces. It should be limited to a relatively short area, regardless.
[*:2zhmphi1]Run a non-visual sunlight check on an area a few blocks larger than the scan to see if any of those blocks which are part of the scan would be affected by sunlight. (Even if they wouldn't be changed due to lightstone or flaming netherrack under a tree or something, the sunlight still TOUCHES it. The extra few blocks is so light can seep in from nearby blocks, naturally.)
[*:2zhmphi1]If so, stop checking there: You've found someone that's holding the game in night. Otherwise, repeat until all players have been checked.
This check can also be set on a timer so it only occurs once every five seconds or so, such that players who are going to bed near-simultaneously don't cause it to re-check players who haven't moved relatively far. Just count out the players who go to bed from the results of the previous scan.
Good Idea JTE :smile.gif: I've organised it with 17 people. But it is hard. If your deep underground, your not even cloce to wood most of the time. And it can be annoying, the pressure on the one or two people holding everyone elce up from sleeping.
How so? So you don't notice your watch skip? It wouldn't be nice to be running from a creeper and just suddenly black out only to wake up again with it standing right in front of you, you know.
So you don't notice the abrupt change in color of the distance fog.
So, Person 1 is out in the open, and it's getting dark. He stays up all night till morning, which should take about 10 minutes.
Person 2 is digging for diamond. Since he's down there, time corrects to day without him noticing in the span of 30 seconds. 10 minutes later, he surfaces.
Person 1 and 2 meet in the same place.
Person 1 is experiencing day.
Person 2 is experiencing night.
Monty does not approve.
No, basically what happens is Person 2 is underground mining and who knows what.
Person one is out in the open, it gets dark and so he goes to sleep.
So, basically what happens is /time day goes on, and now both Person 1 and Person 2 have day.
There's this thing called bukkit, that most decent servers use. And, with it, you can do this command "/time"...
There's this thing called beds, that all vanilla servers now have as an official Minecraft addition. And, it exists, because there are stupid people who would constantly spam "/time"...
Because nobody even bothered writing a simple plugin for bukkit to just have night instantly loop around to day time the moment the sun starts to set if you're gonna play like that. :smile.gif:
Now, most decent servers would not let EVERYONE have access to "/time", would they? No, it would be a war of people constantly flipping it back between day and night haphazardly or otherwise become frustrating and stupid, as well as laggy as all the blocks change their light levels repeatedly.
Do you suppose I should only ever play on a server when there's an admin around to /time to day whenever someone's too busy to go to sleep? Is that really the best solution to you? Personally, I'm a miner, and a fighter, and I don't care what time of day it is. So everyone goes to bed and starts spamming "Zzzz..." in the chat to let everyone ELSE know that they're "not the one holding the game in night". It gets stupid and redundant.
But I have no complaints of the people. This isn't a whining thread. This is a reasonable suggestion of something that happens autonomously, nothing to be offered a popular third party workaround.
Quote from Naithal »
So you don't notice the abrupt change in color of the distance fog.
I wasn't aware that the distance fog underground changed color as well, usually I can't see that far due to darkness and walls... But yes, I suppose you're right, there could be some noticeable change after all.
The more people who are on a server, the harder it is to coordinate everyone to be laying in bed exactly at the same time, right? And a lot of them are gonna be busy doing other things, like mining deep underground, where it wouldn't affect them anyway.
You see that? You're in a natural cave, deep underground, mining up diamonds and gold: Day or night doesn't matter to you, because you can only see torchlight. THEREFORE, my suggestion is: People who can't see natural sunlight shouldn't need to sleep in order for beds to work for the time skip, since it doesn't affect them anyway.
This isn't to say that if everyone's in a cave it should just always be daytime, but rather that it should be calculated, whenever someone "goes to bed", if everyone else is either already in bed OR outside of areas that would be affected by natural sunlight, it should skip to day. The people building outside still need to go inside to rest, so it's not a jarring transition for anyone.
The caveman's secret weapon
[*:2zhmphi1]Take the area around a relevant player. Just a simple sphere will do, the same kind that digs caves. If you want to get fancy, take a general perspective from the player's view cone instead, stopping the check at any hidden surfaces. It should be limited to a relatively short area, regardless.
[*:2zhmphi1]Run a non-visual sunlight check on an area a few blocks larger than the scan to see if any of those blocks which are part of the scan would be affected by sunlight. (Even if they wouldn't be changed due to lightstone or flaming netherrack under a tree or something, the sunlight still TOUCHES it. The extra few blocks is so light can seep in from nearby blocks, naturally.)
[*:2zhmphi1]If so, stop checking there: You've found someone that's holding the game in night. Otherwise, repeat until all players have been checked.
This check can also be set on a timer so it only occurs once every five seconds or so, such that players who are going to bed near-simultaneously don't cause it to re-check players who haven't moved relatively far. Just count out the players who go to bed from the results of the previous scan.
So you don't notice the abrupt change in color of the distance fog.
The caveman's secret weapon
No, basically what happens is Person 2 is underground mining and who knows what.
Person one is out in the open, it gets dark and so he goes to sleep.
So, basically what happens is /time day goes on, and now both Person 1 and Person 2 have day.
Yay for simplicity.
OH GOD LOOK OUT IT'S A SLUUUUT
There's this thing called beds, that all vanilla servers now have as an official Minecraft addition. And, it exists, because there are stupid people who would constantly spam "/time"...
Because nobody even bothered writing a simple plugin for bukkit to just have night instantly loop around to day time the moment the sun starts to set if you're gonna play like that. :smile.gif:
Now, most decent servers would not let EVERYONE have access to "/time", would they? No, it would be a war of people constantly flipping it back between day and night haphazardly or otherwise become frustrating and stupid, as well as laggy as all the blocks change their light levels repeatedly.
Do you suppose I should only ever play on a server when there's an admin around to /time to day whenever someone's too busy to go to sleep? Is that really the best solution to you? Personally, I'm a miner, and a fighter, and I don't care what time of day it is. So everyone goes to bed and starts spamming "Zzzz..." in the chat to let everyone ELSE know that they're "not the one holding the game in night". It gets stupid and redundant.
But I have no complaints of the people. This isn't a whining thread. This is a reasonable suggestion of something that happens autonomously, nothing to be offered a popular third party workaround.
I wasn't aware that the distance fog underground changed color as well, usually I can't see that far due to darkness and walls... But yes, I suppose you're right, there could be some noticeable change after all.