Starting out simple, make destroying a mob spawner drop a placeable but empty version of it. This block could be used as decoration, but the main purpose would be capturing animals: right clicking on a neutral mob while holding a mob spawner would "capture" the animal inside.
Having captured an animal in the block, placing it would give you a mob spawner with a slowly rotating image of the mob inside it. Right clicking the spawner would use the single "charge" it contains (becoming empty again) and release a mob of the same type/color as was captured - however, this newly spawned animal would be *permanent* and no longer despawn. If the mob spawner is left in place, the mob will only wander a small radius round it, staying close by, but if you break the block to pick it up again the mob would begin it's default wandering behavior.
Capturing a tamed wolf in one of these cages will cause whichever player releases the wolf to be recognized as it's new owner, allowing the trading of tamed wolves on SMP.
This simple addition above would do many things. Players could finally keep persistent livestock in their farms by collecting them and releasing them in an enclosure, any current and future neutral mob (I even include spiders as a more "dangerous" option) could be kept as a pet by just leaving the mob spawner in place after releasing them so they don't wander away - or you could not release them and keep them in their "cage", if actual fish are added to the ocean then a mob spawner could transport it to your fish tank (squids will work for now), if rare versions of animals are added then SMP servers could have players opening exotic pet shops with mob spawners containing animals on display (the cage is extra)...and so on.
The issue of possibly having many permanent animals wandering the wilderness, especially on SMP, could be solved with wild wolves - broaden their diet so they may decide to attack any neutral mob, including giant spiders - or by just making mobs that would normally be hostile to a player also be hostile to a player's "permanent" livestock. This would mean if your pet and/or herd of cattle runs off into the woods...better go find it quick. And if things like Skeletons and Creepers are hostile to them, it would also mean needing to either defend your flock at night or herd them into some sort of barn for protection
The Stick
Now that you have your permanent animals, you need a way to manage them. So I propose the one truly new item this idea needs...the Staff.
Crafting the staff would be done in the same fashion as crafting sticks, but using full wood blocks instead of plank blocks.
And you have the stick's big brother. This staff could be used as a very low damage weapon (allowing basic defense with only a 2x2 crafting space) but right clicking would be a non-damaging strike that only knocks creatures backwards, allowing it to be used to direct animals in specific directions without hurting them. And it's a nicer way to get that wool from your sheep.
Now, the staff is pretty useful as it is, but it still would not help make moving large groups of animals (for those without huge collections of mob spawners) that much easier.
So this brings us to using the staff to put our new wolf friends to work herding our flocks. If you have any tamed wolves actively following you, and you right click with the staff on a neutral mob (the non-damaging attack), then that mob will be "tagged" by one of your wolves. From that point, until you make the wolf stop by telling it to sit, if the tagged neutral mob gets more than a set distance from you then that wolf will run after it, move to the opposite side of it from you, and begin barking at the mob - at which point it would begin fleeing away from it / in your direction. With a big pack of wolves, and several friends on SMP with the same, we could have huge cattle drives on their way to market in the city.
This feature would also be usable on non-permanent mobs (meaning ones who haven't been captured in a mob spawner already) so if you spot an animal you want while wandering and you don't have a mob spawner BUT you do have some wolves with you, it would still be possible to get that animal by herding it back to base where you can grab a mob spawner to make it permanent.
Don't think you need a new stick item. Just use the one we have.
Well yea, ya don't NEED it. But someone herding sheep with a staff just seems more thematically pleasing than someone herding them with a tiny stick...and it's actually even more costly to make than a stick =P
I kind of like the staff, but there could be much more intuitive ways to domesticate animals for your other idea.
Eh, I don't find it that big of a leap to go from "Mobs coming out of the spawner" to "Collecting an empty spawner" to "Trying to put mobs in the spawner" but that's just me.
My main issue with most other ideas I've seen trying to make mobs permanent is they tend to be focused mainly on farm animals, requiring things like fenced in enclosures or special feed blocks to make the animals permanent. With this option I can get that enclosure full of pigs, while being flexible enough to allow uses such as pets. It also allows for transporting creatures, like when your wolf wanders into a ravine and can't climb out...
How? The staff is what allows the use of wolves in herding, so how would you simply use the wolves instead of an item? In a way that isn't annoying and easily triggered by accident anyway...
You could just dye a sheep any color you want, capture it, release it, sheer it, and repeat. It's too easy to quikly get a large amount of wool. If the mobs health recovered each time it was released and the player had to wait some time for a sheep to regrow wool I would support it.
The staff seems kind of pointless, unless it lets you control pigs while riding them.
You could just dye a sheep any color you want, capture it, release it, sheer it, and repeat. It's too easy to quikly get a large amount of wool. If the mobs health recovered each time it was released and the player had to wait some time for a sheep to regrow wool I would support it.
The staff seems kind of pointless, unless it lets you control pigs while riding them.
Well I would prefer the animals being captured to come out the same - hopefully sheep being sheered would be included in that. I'd rather wool growing back be a result of sheep eating grass like it used to be, not just by popping them in and out of a mob spawner or the current way of just killing them so new sheep spawn. And having health regenerate every time you put a mob in a cage would seem overpowered...it would make feeding your animals to heal them a waste of food unless you just don't have a cage with you.
And the staff is basically a new tool, designed for herding rather than mining/farming. Sure the function could be applied to some other random item...but having a tool dedicated to interacting with animals the way other tools are dedicated to interacting with blocks doesn't seem too bad, plus with the current recipe you get a basic weapon without the need of a crafting table.
As for controlling pigs while riding them...I'm not a fan of it. Firstly because Notch once said he was going to keep them uncontrollable even if he adds in other controllable animals, and second because it would screw with my pig-polo games if people could actually decide where to go...=P
But in limited cases this system could still allow controlling pigs...imagine a race where maybe 5 people are sitting in a starting pen on their pigs, while another player with 5 wolves sets one to "herd" each pig and then moves to the far end of the track. Gate opens, wolves start herding the pigs towards their master, and you can see who wins.
I think this is a great idea, it's simple and elegant, and would greatly improve the feel of houses and so on.
However i think staves should be crafted like this, to fit the overall schemes of making tools, thus emphasizing its position as a new tool:
Could very well be done that way...but having to use a crafting table to get what is basically just a bigger branch from a tree feels wrong to me =/
As for controlling pigs while riding them...I'm not a fan of it. Firstly because Notch once said he was going to keep them uncontrollable even if he adds in other controllable animals, and second because it would screw with my pig-polo games if people could actually decide where to go...=P
But in limited cases this system could still allow controlling pigs...imagine a race where maybe 5 people are sitting in a starting pen on their pigs, while another player with 5 wolves sets one to "herd" each pig and then moves to the far end of the track. Gate opens, wolves start herding the pigs towards their master, and you can see who wins.
Build an arena, put wooden pressure plates surrounded by fences at either end (or just one in the middle), then connect the plate to a redstone torch, have everybody mount up...and then see who can toss whatever item you chose as a "ball" onto the pressure plate to activate the torch and score a point.
The pigs being in control increase the challenge by a good bit
how about you make it out of sticks but you have to shape it in the spape of a staff like start on the left side and put all 3 then one on top middle one on top right and one on middle right to make u like a staff.
Build an arena, put wooden pressure plates surrounded by fences at either end (or just one in the middle), then connect the plate to a redstone torch, have everybody mount up...and then see who can toss whatever item you chose as a "ball" onto the pressure plate to activate the torch and score a point.
The pigs being in control increase the challenge by a good bit
Can you give me the ip for this server? This sounds awesome!
Now also on GetSatisfaction: http://getsatisfaction.com/mojang/topic ... al_kingdom
The Mob Spawner
Starting out simple, make destroying a mob spawner drop a placeable but empty version of it. This block could be used as decoration, but the main purpose would be capturing animals: right clicking on a neutral mob while holding a mob spawner would "capture" the animal inside.
Having captured an animal in the block, placing it would give you a mob spawner with a slowly rotating image of the mob inside it. Right clicking the spawner would use the single "charge" it contains (becoming empty again) and release a mob of the same type/color as was captured - however, this newly spawned animal would be *permanent* and no longer despawn. If the mob spawner is left in place, the mob will only wander a small radius round it, staying close by, but if you break the block to pick it up again the mob would begin it's default wandering behavior.
Capturing a tamed wolf in one of these cages will cause whichever player releases the wolf to be recognized as it's new owner, allowing the trading of tamed wolves on SMP.
This simple addition above would do many things. Players could finally keep persistent livestock in their farms by collecting them and releasing them in an enclosure, any current and future neutral mob (I even include spiders as a more "dangerous" option) could be kept as a pet by just leaving the mob spawner in place after releasing them so they don't wander away - or you could not release them and keep them in their "cage", if actual fish are added to the ocean then a mob spawner could transport it to your fish tank (squids will work for now), if rare versions of animals are added then SMP servers could have players opening exotic pet shops with mob spawners containing animals on display (the cage is extra)...and so on.
The issue of possibly having many permanent animals wandering the wilderness, especially on SMP, could be solved with wild wolves - broaden their diet so they may decide to attack any neutral mob, including giant spiders - or by just making mobs that would normally be hostile to a player also be hostile to a player's "permanent" livestock. This would mean if your pet and/or herd of cattle runs off into the woods...better go find it quick. And if things like Skeletons and Creepers are hostile to them, it would also mean needing to either defend your flock at night or herd them into some sort of barn for protection
The Stick
Now that you have your permanent animals, you need a way to manage them. So I propose the one truly new item this idea needs...the Staff.
Crafting the staff would be done in the same fashion as crafting sticks, but using full wood blocks instead of plank blocks.
And you have the stick's big brother. This staff could be used as a very low damage weapon (allowing basic defense with only a 2x2 crafting space) but right clicking would be a non-damaging strike that only knocks creatures backwards, allowing it to be used to direct animals in specific directions without hurting them. And it's a nicer way to get that wool from your sheep.
Now, the staff is pretty useful as it is, but it still would not help make moving large groups of animals (for those without huge collections of mob spawners) that much easier.
So this brings us to using the staff to put our new wolf friends to work herding our flocks. If you have any tamed wolves actively following you, and you right click with the staff on a neutral mob (the non-damaging attack), then that mob will be "tagged" by one of your wolves. From that point, until you make the wolf stop by telling it to sit, if the tagged neutral mob gets more than a set distance from you then that wolf will run after it, move to the opposite side of it from you, and begin barking at the mob - at which point it would begin fleeing away from it / in your direction. With a big pack of wolves, and several friends on SMP with the same, we could have huge cattle drives on their way to market in the city.
This feature would also be usable on non-permanent mobs (meaning ones who haven't been captured in a mob spawner already) so if you spot an animal you want while wandering and you don't have a mob spawner BUT you do have some wolves with you, it would still be possible to get that animal by herding it back to base where you can grab a mob spawner to make it permanent.
There...I don't think I got too crazy...
Using a Mob Spawner and a Stick to Master the Animal Kingdom
Well yea, ya don't NEED it. But someone herding sheep with a staff just seems more thematically pleasing than someone herding them with a tiny stick...and it's actually even more costly to make than a stick =P
Using a Mob Spawner and a Stick to Master the Animal Kingdom
Yup, same color animal out as got put in. This way if any other rare mobs besides pink sheep get added in, you can keep that specific one.
Using a Mob Spawner and a Stick to Master the Animal Kingdom
Eh, I don't find it that big of a leap to go from "Mobs coming out of the spawner" to "Collecting an empty spawner" to "Trying to put mobs in the spawner" but that's just me.
My main issue with most other ideas I've seen trying to make mobs permanent is they tend to be focused mainly on farm animals, requiring things like fenced in enclosures or special feed blocks to make the animals permanent. With this option I can get that enclosure full of pigs, while being flexible enough to allow uses such as pets. It also allows for transporting creatures, like when your wolf wanders into a ravine and can't climb out...
Using a Mob Spawner and a Stick to Master the Animal Kingdom
Woo, finally got a vote
And having the number of cages you have limted by the number of dungeons you've beaten seems like some decent balance to me =P
Using a Mob Spawner and a Stick to Master the Animal Kingdom
How? The staff is what allows the use of wolves in herding, so how would you simply use the wolves instead of an item? In a way that isn't annoying and easily triggered by accident anyway...
Using a Mob Spawner and a Stick to Master the Animal Kingdom
Using a Mob Spawner and a Stick to Master the Animal Kingdom
The staff seems kind of pointless, unless it lets you control pigs while riding them.
Incompetence is a plague. I am the cure.
For all your wolf suggestion needs, I present the WOLF MEGATHREAD!
Stories: A Miner's Chronicle, The Lost Chronicle [Entries 32-2, 33-1, and 33-2 out!]
Well I would prefer the animals being captured to come out the same - hopefully sheep being sheered would be included in that. I'd rather wool growing back be a result of sheep eating grass like it used to be, not just by popping them in and out of a mob spawner or the current way of just killing them so new sheep spawn. And having health regenerate every time you put a mob in a cage would seem overpowered...it would make feeding your animals to heal them a waste of food unless you just don't have a cage with you.
And the staff is basically a new tool, designed for herding rather than mining/farming. Sure the function could be applied to some other random item...but having a tool dedicated to interacting with animals the way other tools are dedicated to interacting with blocks doesn't seem too bad, plus with the current recipe you get a basic weapon without the need of a crafting table.
Using a Mob Spawner and a Stick to Master the Animal Kingdom
But in limited cases this system could still allow controlling pigs...imagine a race where maybe 5 people are sitting in a starting pen on their pigs, while another player with 5 wolves sets one to "herd" each pig and then moves to the far end of the track. Gate opens, wolves start herding the pigs towards their master, and you can see who wins.
Just a thought
Using a Mob Spawner and a Stick to Master the Animal Kingdom
Could very well be done that way...but having to use a crafting table to get what is basically just a bigger branch from a tree feels wrong to me =/
Using a Mob Spawner and a Stick to Master the Animal Kingdom
...Pig polo?
Incompetence is a plague. I am the cure.
For all your wolf suggestion needs, I present the WOLF MEGATHREAD!
Stories: A Miner's Chronicle, The Lost Chronicle [Entries 32-2, 33-1, and 33-2 out!]
Build an arena, put wooden pressure plates surrounded by fences at either end (or just one in the middle), then connect the plate to a redstone torch, have everybody mount up...and then see who can toss whatever item you chose as a "ball" onto the pressure plate to activate the torch and score a point.
The pigs being in control increase the challenge by a good bit
Using a Mob Spawner and a Stick to Master the Animal Kingdom
Can you give me the ip for this server? This sounds awesome!