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Yes!

14 (93.3%)

No!

1 (6.7%)

Total Members Voted: 14

Voting closed: December 25, 2012, 01:15:00 pm

[frostshotgg]

Speaking of radiation, for those who don't know, the new nuclear reactors always produce depleted uranium as a byproduct. One of the products of sticking depleted uranium into a thermal centrifuge is plutonium, which can be made into RTG Fuel. If you put that in a Radioisotopic Thermoelectric Generator, it'll make free EU forever and ever. The formula for power generated is 2^(n-1) where n is the number of RTG fuels in there. A full RTG makes 16 eu/t forever and ever. If you have a nuclear reactor running, that's a great byproduct, because hey, free, renewable power!

[forsaken1111]

I've been doing preliminary work on the magecraft server setup and wanted to get some feedback on an idea I had.

I discussed this with someone else and they described it as a 'sort of ingame ARG' which I suppose fits. The idea is to 'unlock' mods over time as a sort of progression. We would probably start the game out playing vanilla minecraft with no mods at all beyond forge and client tweaks like NEI/minimaps. For minor mods I will set certain milestones. For major mods the milestones will be larger. An example of a small milestone may be simply to collect a certain number of materials and build a 'research lab' dedicated towards a certain mod. I still need to work out the details obviously, and everything is subject to change.

As an example though, to unlock the Ender Storage mod you may need to collect blaze rods and ender pearls and construct a decorative obsidian altar to sacrifice them upon. Unlocking Twilight Forest may require the construction of a beacon pyramid of a certain size and material. Bibliocraft may just require you to build a nice looking library and scriptorium.

Whatever it is, it won't be super grindy. It is intended as a way to give the server worldwide progression and common goals beyond "Go off to remote corner, build house solo" which is what all of these servers seem to devolve into. I'd really rather have a town with interesting structures built by the community than have scattered player houses and people who never meet up to do things. In fact a large part of these 'requirements' would be up to the community, I'm not interested in dictating terms and forcing timesinks (i.e. "Bring me 10 wolf tails. Good.. now bring me 12 wolf tails! Hahaha.") Some of these builds may come with rewards for the people involved, like a free enderchest for those who first unlock it or whatever.

Its also a way to kill some time until the two core magic mods (Ars Magica 2 and Thaumcraft 3.1/4) come out. And don't worry, I've verified that both of those mods will have retroactive world generation so that won't be a problem.

Obviously some mods would need to be enabled from the beginning, such as anything that adds worldgen and can't do so retroactively. For these mods I'd likely just have a recipe blocker in place or use some other method of disabling them until they are 'unlocked' or possibly I won't bother locking them. We'll see, I've been jotting down notes but really I want to gauge interest in this to determine if its even something I should pursue. These servers are for you guys to have fun on after all, so if you're not interested we can skip that stuff and just add everything in.

[Elephant Parade]

Ooh, this looks interesting.

[frostshotgg]

If you want people to build anything decorative, you're going to need to start with microblocks in for sure.

But so long as the requirements aren't too much of a pain in the ass for those of us that suck at being decorative, I'd love that.

[forsaken1111]

If you want people to build anything decorative, you're going to need to start with microblocks in for sure.

But so long as the requirements aren't too much of a pain in the ass for those of us that suck at being decorative, I'd love that.

Forge Multipart and Carpenter Blocks were both going to be 'on' by default. Will that do?

And don't worry, I'm one of those who 'suck at being decorative'. This is me kicking myself in the ass to make something nice looking rather than cubes and systems and machines. And even the worst of my 'requirements' to unlock a mod wouldn't be as bad as gregtech requirements for simple shit like 'build a generator' so I wouldn't worry too much about that. For example, I was thinking that unlocking the Twilight Forest might require the building of a cool nature themed portal room to build the portal in, rather than just digging a 2x2 puddle and tossing in a diamond. Unlocking Ars Magica or Thaumcraft however may require killing the Wither and/or Ender Dragon to 'release magic back into the world' and then placing the dragon egg on a platform along with some boss trophies from the Twilight Forest or something. We'll work it out.

[alway]

 I don't really think that will work. It will simply result in everyone wandering off, as per usual, then returning to some central location to complete whatever prereqs there are for the mods they really care about, before heading off and doing business as usual.

Quite frankly, I think the only way to achieve a cohesive center of everything is to literally place build restrictions on everywhere else. Outside of the very basics like a crafting table, dirt, sand, cobble, and other blocks which are used in exploring, just block all things off. No furnaces, no chests, ect. Have the designated 'town' area start out quite small; just a little plot of land (possibly z-level restrictions to keep it above ground?). Only about the size of the small spawn-hut on the current map. 1 chunk at most. Then, in addition to unlocking mods, the goals unlock additional land area. This could either be a N@W style chunk-claiming system (probably a bad idea, as different people will have different ideas for expanding), or better yet, a simple "+x blocks expansion in all directions." So at the start, it may be a 10x10x40 volume, expanding out and up as the server progresses. IMO, preferably up faster than out, as I believe that will lead to more interesting architectural feel; a super-high-density Kowloon Walled City is more interesting than a sprawling suburbia of cobble crapshacks.

Though the main problem which will come up if we are successful at keeping everyone settled in one place: FPS drop. The place you and bread set up lags all to hell and back as it is; if people were told they had to live near that, I believe many, if not most, would quit before long. Measures absolutely must be taken to prevent the excessive FPS drop created by certain mod blocks in order for this to succeed. Fluids, pipes, energy networks, smelteries; all those would have to be exceedingly carefully done, or forgone entirely, lest the map be entirely unplayable for people.

[forsaken1111]

Keep in mind that this magecraft server won't have fluids and energy systems, and will be limited in automation to things like golems and hoppers. The lag shouldn't be all that bad honestly. I understand what you're saying though.

There are two ways to approach that.

1. I could simply use the honor system. Tell people "You must build within these confines. Period. You may not place blocks beyond something simple like dirt/cobble to make a bridge outside of the area. I'd expand that area as we go obviously but would be trusting people to color within the lines.

2. Use a mechanic, either forge or bukkit based, to limit what you can build. Towny can do that, as can some of the faction systems for bukkit. I think there is a forge based mod for that as well. I believe there is also a mod that simply places hard limits on how far out you can travel. I'll research it a bit.

[Ultimuh]

This sounds very interesting.
But getting enough materials for nice things will take time.
And the question is where to take the materials from, as not to damage the environment too much.

[forsaken1111]

This sounds very interesting.
But getting enough materials for nice things will take time.
And the question is where to take the materials from, as not to damage the environment too much.

Nobody said you couldn't travel out into the world to mine, just that we'll build and live in a single area.

[Ultimuh]

This sounds very interesting.
But getting enough materials for nice things will take time.
And the question is where to take the materials from, as not to damage the environment too much.

Nobody said you couldn't travel out into the world to mine, just that we'll build and live in a single area.

Ah but that's not as hard, is it?

[forsaken1111]

This sounds very interesting.
But getting enough materials for nice things will take time.
And the question is where to take the materials from, as not to damage the environment too much.

Nobody said you couldn't travel out into the world to mine, just that we'll build and live in a single area.

Ah but that's not as hard, is it?

The intent here isn't to make everything harder, just to have community goals and cooperation rather than the usual "Server starts, everyone run 1000 blocks in different directions and tech up alone!"

[Ultimuh]

This sounds very interesting.
But getting enough materials for nice things will take time.
And the question is where to take the materials from, as not to damage the environment too much.

Nobody said you couldn't travel out into the world to mine, just that we'll build and live in a single area.

Ah but that's not as hard, is it?

The intent here isn't to make everything harder, just to have community goals and cooperation rather than the usual "Server starts, everyone run 1000 blocks in different directions and tech up alone!"

Well I work pretty well in groups, as long as orders are clear and people are willing to cooperate.

[EvilTwin]

The idea sounds nice.

The Blood and Industry server keeps "Read timed out"-ing me by the way, but I had to go to bed anyway

[Mephisto]

I always thought a modded version of the old civilization scenario could be pretty fun.

I don't know if you've heard of it or not - when you start out, you can only use wooden tools, build wooden structures, etc. You can use buckets and collect items from dungeons, but not craft anything with them.

Once you reach a certain stored amount of food, wood, and cobble, you upgrade to stone tools, can begin building stone buildings, and must build a few of several town structures from a big list. At this point, you can begin caving, but only if you have a leather helmet, and even then only down to a certain depth. Higher quality head armor allows deeper expeditions. You have to be sure to "brace" your mine walls a la mineshafts and so on.

This repeats until we've got an awesome, organic city-state or we get bored.

[forsaken1111]

The idea sounds nice.

The Blood and Industry server keeps "Read timed out"-ing me by the way, but I had to go to bed anyway

I'll take a look at the server in the morning.

I always thought a modded version of the old civilization scenario could be pretty fun.

I don't know if you've heard of it or not - when you start out, you can only use wooden tools, build wooden structures, etc. You can use buckets and collect items from dungeons, but not craft anything with them.

Once you reach a certain stored amount of food, wood, and cobble, you upgrade to stone tools, can begin building stone buildings, and must build a few of several town structures from a big list. At this point, you can begin caving, but only if you have a leather helmet, and even then only down to a certain depth. Higher quality head armor allows deeper expeditions. You have to be sure to "brace" your mine walls a la mineshafts and so on.

This repeats until we've got an awesome, organic city-state or we get bored.

Sounds interesting. Have a link handy? I'll look into it.

Also I've been playing with two mods which work well together. One is called Dynamic Lights which lets items emit light when worn, held, or tossed on the ground. Using this you can walk around in a cave holding a torch. The other adds 'hardcore darkness' which sets darkness to an actual zero level when there is no light, making caves fucking terrifying when I tried it. The plus side is you can walk around with a light source, or wear something that emits light. Still, being shot from the darkness by unseen skeletons while battling a spider is epic and terrible, especially when that spider is an infernal mob which keeps slowing you.