It's a pretty good idea and I like it, but I do see a problem with it, how are hotspots going to be added, are they going to be a new biome or are they just randomly generated with the world?
They'd be randomly generated with the world, they wouldn't be a biome of their own- hotspots generated in the ocean would result in volcanic islands, whereas hotspots generated on land would result in volcanoes whose surfaces are suited to the biome they're found in (differing kinds of trees growing on them, may or may not have snow, etc.).
Excellent idea, I'd be quite happy to see some consistency in how types of stone are handled. It would greatly simplify adding any future stone types, too.
Note: I am not suggesting actual movement being simulated.
Essentially, I'm suggesting that terrain generation start by generating tectonic plates and work its way up from there. Tectonic plates would be vast sections of the map split up during world generation. Each one would be assigned a direction in which to imitate movement- they wouldn't actually move, but the terrain would be generated as if they were. If two plates are moving away from one another, then the result on the map would be a huge ocean trench where they split. If they're colliding, then you'd get mountain ranges and subduction zones. If they're sliding against each other in opposite directions, then you'd be able to see the resulting transform boundary on the surface- earthquakes might not be feasible to implement, but it should be possible to have sections of the map look as though they've slid to the side.
A further possibility would be hotspots. These are areas where molten rock from the world's core is forced up through the plates, resulting in volcanoes. If the plate on top of the hotspot is moving, this can result in a row of dormant volcanoes, all of them at one point having been over the hotspot. In Minecraft, this would result in a single active volcano, still filled with molten lava, with several dormant volcanoes in a row behind it that now feature nothing but some veins of obsidian that used to be magma vents.
The placement of oceans and mountains would then affect biome placement, both in regards to temperature and in regards to a new variable: humidity. Areas near the ocean would invariably be humid, and the ocean would further affect temperature as a moderating force. However, the mountain ranges generated previously would serve both to block humidity from reaching inland areas and to separate air masses of different temperature, meaning that surprisingly different biomes could exist relatively close to one another as long as there was a mountain range between them. Deserts are often the result of mountains blocking moisture from the ocean from reaching inland, so it would make sense to see a similar system in Minecraft.
Credit to EternityTide for this addition: Glaciers. These would begin as thick snow deposits in mountains, which would gradually solidify into ice. They would then generate as if they were sliding down the mountain, with the terrain in front of them altered as if the glacier had previously covered that ground, but retreated; imagine boulders dropped in the middle of fields and long hills marking the edge of the glacier's influence. These could serve as a convenient starting point for small trickles of water that could eventually join together into rivers.
I was just thinking that we needed more variety in the blocks we could make from the stone variants! I'd be quite happy to see this implemented. Out of curiosity, what would you think of variant stone bricks as well, seeing as they look more stable when built into a wall than cubes stacked in a grid?
i like andesite BECAUSE it's so wildly similar, it's lovely to have.
Could you explain the appeal exactly? I don't really understand why you'd like a separate stone type for being similar to what was already there; it seems as though its main benefit could be fulfilled just as well by having variant textures for the same block.
I agree that andesite doesn't come across as distinct enough to merit being a separate stone type; I'd much prefer it if smooth stone could be crafted into cubical blocks, much like how polished andesite currently looks, and the same recipe was used with diorite, granite, and any other stone variants they might add so that we could have granite and diorite stone bricks.
The random factor is what makes it exciting and challenging. If every time I had 30 levels and wanted a silk touch pickaxe and could "just go get it", enchanting would be as valuable as dirt. Everyone everywhere would have OP gear and stacks upon stacks of diamonds they would never use because they would still have their very first pickaxe they made months ago. Saying that mob farms are exploits is pure ridiculousness. By that logic, food farms are exploits or even player traps. As far as some sort of "Hinting" mechanic, I think that would be nice, but not to just put a lore text in plain English that "You might get Efficiency on this". There should still be a random factor based "similar" to the pre-1.8 methods of current. It shouldn't be so random that it's worse than your odds in Vegas, But enchanting should not be meant for early game play. If I find 5 diamonds on my second day playing (minecraft time), I shouldn't have anywhere near enough levels to get an Efficiency V Diamond Pickaxe. The point is that how you people want it is to be "just another thing to do" and not something to progress towards and something that is handed to you with little to no chance of "getting something you don't want". You all act like only three or four enchantments are worth having and that if it's anything but those, "well I just wasted 30 levels and some diamonds". If I am traveling at night, I would much rather carry a Smite IV Bane of Arthropods IV Knockback II sword than one with Sharpness V. It would purely do me better due to the high number of Zombies, Skeletons, and Spiders that spawn. There is no such thing as a "worthless" enchantment. Some of the "crap" I have seen on the suggestions forum are worthless (who needs fortune on a Hoe?). Stop asking for stuff to be "given" to you and leave somethings to hold value in the game and make it a process to get. Think about this: when you play a game do you like the progressive nature to be short and sweet, or do you play a game for gameplay, storyline, and progression? Basically do you want everything when you first start or do you want to keep playing the game for a while because you don't have it all yet?
"Given"?
I specifically said that being able to select your enchantments should be something that you earn, not something available right from the start. I'm all for progression; that's actually my complaint right now- I can't feel like I'm really progressing. I can gradually work my way toward the incredibly powerful enchantment that I want, which is great, but something feels wrong when I'm doing so by essentially playing a lottery repeatedly and using books to stock up all the results I want to keep. The randomness of the system paradoxically leaves it repetitive and dull.
As I've said, the random system makes me feel like enchanting is some mysterious process that I don't understand. This is a problem not because it interferes with the type of results I get, but because I want to be able to study magic, and work hard at it in a way where I know what I'm doing. Thaumcraft, which you mentioned, is an excellent example of this; you have to research what you want to build, and by the time you're able to build it you've earned that ability. I'd feel much more satisfied if the challenge from making a magic sword came from tracking down ancient temples to assemble the lost knowledge of how to forge it instead of from enchanting a book, seeing it's not the one I was after, pack it away to use later, repeat ad nauseum.
I've long held that the randomized enchanting system we have now really ought to be restricted to early attempts at enchanting; it makes you feel like a bumbling magical apprentice who doesn't know what he's doing. That's fine, when you're first starting enchanting. But it doesn't make any sense to stay there, nor does it make sense to never seem to make genuine mistakes- you just get a somewhat useless enchantment at worst. I think the system would be improved greatly if you could eventually learn how to select the enchantment you wanted, and hopefully eventually learn some more advanced magic, and if messing around with mystic forces you didn't understand was more likely to explode in your face, hopefully in an educational way.
I support, myself; even though I try to give my worlds fairly unique names I still can find myself forgetting which ones are modded and which aren't, or if they're dependent on mods that haven't been updated.
It might be a good idea to implement some sort of system that can allow surprisingly different biomes to exist a short distance from another in a realistic way. Mountain ranges, for instance, often result in very different terrain on each side because they're tall enough to block rain from reaching the other side.
I would take the current enchanting system and make it more unpredictable, with severe chances of horrible side effects like explosions, the sudden appearance of several cacodemons, and walking broomsticks that flood your base. Then, I'd add a significantly more predictable and robust magic system that you could actually study and make use of predictably, and make it so that you could learn the language used in enchantments and thus pick what enchantments you wanted instead of stringing magic words together and hoping you didn't end up as a pair of smoking pointy boots. There'd still be chances of horrible things from the Dungeon Dimensions entering the world as a result of a botched ritual, but it would be in accordance with logical principles, so that you could trace what you did wrong and avoid it in the future.
I'm fine with the current magic system making me feel like a bumbling apprentice, but I'd like to be able to progress past it.
I am sorely disappointed in the smaller oceans. Yes, they were too big, and yes, they were boring. Now, though, they're too small and still just as boring. A number of the ocean-related features that I most would have liked to see implemented are now impossible because the oceans are now horrendously impractical for long-distance transport. It's actually proven enough of a sore point for me that the time I spend playing Minecraft has been pretty reduced until Forge gets updated and I can fix the ocean generation via mods.
That being said, were it not for the ocean issue I would have been thrilled about this update. I like the new biomes and the idea of a system for arranging them by temperature, and while a lot of people have been complaining that the flowers are useless I like seeing a bit more variety dotting the terrain. I'd say it's a stretch to call amplified unplayable, as well; it's true that it's much harder to travel by land on it but it also offers potential for some interesting constructions.
Could you please be more specific as to which item is unpleasant, I might be able to adjust it.
I've tried to keep the poly's on my models as low as I can while still looking how I envisioned them.
Well, the monocle and the amulet in the most recent screenshot look very detailed compared to the player model, and the scarecrows have a number of angles that look out of place. It's not exactly a question of how high the detail is on the models, though; it's that anything other than right angles tend to look odd because of how rare they are in vanilla. The witch hat is a good example of how non-rectangular shapes best can be adapted to Minecraft graphics.
I don't mean to be rude, but a lot of the models in the screenshots you've been posting recently have shown things with models that look really jarring compared to Minecraft's blocky aesthetic. It's not that there's anything wrong with then intrinsically, but it creates a pretty unpleasant effect when they're looked at next to Minecraft's rectangular landscape.
I personally feel the large oceans are annoying, too much walking the perimeter/swimming to get to my next destination.
However, everyone is saying "add content, do this, do that" I want to see a list of appropriate ideas THAT WOULD ACTUALLY WORK and mesh well with the current gameplay and attitude of Mojang and Minecraft to make the larger oceans work.
Note: Ocean in survival, theres:
A: No land to stop and rest
B: limited attachment to build unless you're near the shore or can reach the bottom
and C: Little to no resources available to you
EDIT: And don't say "I want a pirate ship!" and then post your comment. Explain how it would work and why it fits in Minecraft.
Seeing as the chief complaint about the old oceans was that they were boring and too time consuming to cross, it would make sense for any updates to be focused on making them enjoyable to cross and cutting down on excessive time. To that end: Sailboats, wind, and means to tell when you were getting close to land. A sailboat would be an upgraded boat which would function by adjusting your sail based on the direction of your boat and the direction of the wind, which itself might be determined by the layout of biomes temperature-wise. A sailboat's speed would on average be considerably faster than an ordinary boat, plus making use of the wind would provide something of a mini-game to keep you entertained.
Seagulls would only be found within a certain distance from land, letting you know when you were getting close to it, whereas albatrosses would fly across the ocean between two points on two separate landmasses, meaning that if you saw an albatross flying out from a beach or across the ocean while sailing, you could follow it and be sure of finding land.
Building off the idea of different temperatures affecting wind, there ought to be different biomes within the ocean based on temperature. The sea near cold biomes like taiga could have icebergs generated in the water and penguins and seals swimming around, whereas warmer areas might have things like coral reefs. That way, there'd be some varying scenery to keep you from getting bored, as well as new opportunities to add biome-specific resources.
A lot of people have been suggesting some kind of aggressive ocean mob to break the tedium of ocean travel, but I'm not quite sure how well that would work. Though it could make ocean travel more interesting, it could also be very frustrating to spend a lot of time traveling great distances only to die and know that all your items have just sank to the bottom of the ocean. Perhaps limiting them to certain areas would be wise, so that you could make the choice of whether to travel through dangerous waters for the sake of time or play it safe and go around the parts of the map marked "Here Be Monsters".
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They'd be randomly generated with the world, they wouldn't be a biome of their own- hotspots generated in the ocean would result in volcanic islands, whereas hotspots generated on land would result in volcanoes whose surfaces are suited to the biome they're found in (differing kinds of trees growing on them, may or may not have snow, etc.).
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3
Essentially, I'm suggesting that terrain generation start by generating tectonic plates and work its way up from there. Tectonic plates would be vast sections of the map split up during world generation. Each one would be assigned a direction in which to imitate movement- they wouldn't actually move, but the terrain would be generated as if they were. If two plates are moving away from one another, then the result on the map would be a huge ocean trench where they split. If they're colliding, then you'd get mountain ranges and subduction zones. If they're sliding against each other in opposite directions, then you'd be able to see the resulting transform boundary on the surface- earthquakes might not be feasible to implement, but it should be possible to have sections of the map look as though they've slid to the side.
A further possibility would be hotspots. These are areas where molten rock from the world's core is forced up through the plates, resulting in volcanoes. If the plate on top of the hotspot is moving, this can result in a row of dormant volcanoes, all of them at one point having been over the hotspot. In Minecraft, this would result in a single active volcano, still filled with molten lava, with several dormant volcanoes in a row behind it that now feature nothing but some veins of obsidian that used to be magma vents.
The placement of oceans and mountains would then affect biome placement, both in regards to temperature and in regards to a new variable: humidity. Areas near the ocean would invariably be humid, and the ocean would further affect temperature as a moderating force. However, the mountain ranges generated previously would serve both to block humidity from reaching inland areas and to separate air masses of different temperature, meaning that surprisingly different biomes could exist relatively close to one another as long as there was a mountain range between them. Deserts are often the result of mountains blocking moisture from the ocean from reaching inland, so it would make sense to see a similar system in Minecraft.
Credit to EternityTide for this addition: Glaciers. These would begin as thick snow deposits in mountains, which would gradually solidify into ice. They would then generate as if they were sliding down the mountain, with the terrain in front of them altered as if the glacier had previously covered that ground, but retreated; imagine boulders dropped in the middle of fields and long hills marking the edge of the glacier's influence. These could serve as a convenient starting point for small trickles of water that could eventually join together into rivers.
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0
Could you explain the appeal exactly? I don't really understand why you'd like a separate stone type for being similar to what was already there; it seems as though its main benefit could be fulfilled just as well by having variant textures for the same block.
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0
"Given"?
I specifically said that being able to select your enchantments should be something that you earn, not something available right from the start. I'm all for progression; that's actually my complaint right now- I can't feel like I'm really progressing. I can gradually work my way toward the incredibly powerful enchantment that I want, which is great, but something feels wrong when I'm doing so by essentially playing a lottery repeatedly and using books to stock up all the results I want to keep. The randomness of the system paradoxically leaves it repetitive and dull.
As I've said, the random system makes me feel like enchanting is some mysterious process that I don't understand. This is a problem not because it interferes with the type of results I get, but because I want to be able to study magic, and work hard at it in a way where I know what I'm doing. Thaumcraft, which you mentioned, is an excellent example of this; you have to research what you want to build, and by the time you're able to build it you've earned that ability. I'd feel much more satisfied if the challenge from making a magic sword came from tracking down ancient temples to assemble the lost knowledge of how to forge it instead of from enchanting a book, seeing it's not the one I was after, pack it away to use later, repeat ad nauseum.
0
0
1
0
I'm fine with the current magic system making me feel like a bumbling apprentice, but I'd like to be able to progress past it.
0
That being said, were it not for the ocean issue I would have been thrilled about this update. I like the new biomes and the idea of a system for arranging them by temperature, and while a lot of people have been complaining that the flowers are useless I like seeing a bit more variety dotting the terrain. I'd say it's a stretch to call amplified unplayable, as well; it's true that it's much harder to travel by land on it but it also offers potential for some interesting constructions.
0
Well, the monocle and the amulet in the most recent screenshot look very detailed compared to the player model, and the scarecrows have a number of angles that look out of place. It's not exactly a question of how high the detail is on the models, though; it's that anything other than right angles tend to look odd because of how rare they are in vanilla. The witch hat is a good example of how non-rectangular shapes best can be adapted to Minecraft graphics.
0
0
Seeing as the chief complaint about the old oceans was that they were boring and too time consuming to cross, it would make sense for any updates to be focused on making them enjoyable to cross and cutting down on excessive time. To that end: Sailboats, wind, and means to tell when you were getting close to land. A sailboat would be an upgraded boat which would function by adjusting your sail based on the direction of your boat and the direction of the wind, which itself might be determined by the layout of biomes temperature-wise. A sailboat's speed would on average be considerably faster than an ordinary boat, plus making use of the wind would provide something of a mini-game to keep you entertained.
Seagulls would only be found within a certain distance from land, letting you know when you were getting close to it, whereas albatrosses would fly across the ocean between two points on two separate landmasses, meaning that if you saw an albatross flying out from a beach or across the ocean while sailing, you could follow it and be sure of finding land.
Building off the idea of different temperatures affecting wind, there ought to be different biomes within the ocean based on temperature. The sea near cold biomes like taiga could have icebergs generated in the water and penguins and seals swimming around, whereas warmer areas might have things like coral reefs. That way, there'd be some varying scenery to keep you from getting bored, as well as new opportunities to add biome-specific resources.
A lot of people have been suggesting some kind of aggressive ocean mob to break the tedium of ocean travel, but I'm not quite sure how well that would work. Though it could make ocean travel more interesting, it could also be very frustrating to spend a lot of time traveling great distances only to die and know that all your items have just sank to the bottom of the ocean. Perhaps limiting them to certain areas would be wise, so that you could make the choice of whether to travel through dangerous waters for the sake of time or play it safe and go around the parts of the map marked "Here Be Monsters".