oh yeah I have a blog

SO ANYWAY I've been basically waiting angrily patiently for the Mod API for the better half of almost a year now. And I came to a conclusion- it'd be better to just make a whole new game at this point.

Design is still HEAVILY being worked on (and has been for the past, well, almost year now), but the more and more things are discussed, the more I realized I'd need to completely rip out Minecraft's code and overhaul it. It isn't worth it from that perspective.

Still, everything I've discussed and designed would be refitted towards a new game entirely- I don't plan on just throwing in the towel. It'll take time, though- but it'll be worth it.

I also might still toss out a mod with some really bare bones features to make Minecraft more enjoyable- some of the more specific ideas suggested, as well as try and work with a few existing mods to tie everything together. When the API is out, anyway.

what's a blog

WHOOP I keep forgetting to update this... ANYWAY, progress is still slow because I'm ultimately waiting for 1.4 to come around so I don't need to re-do the mod virtually every update. I've been working on random stuff here and there, but mostly I'm trying new stuff, getting frustrated, trying other new stuff, and nothing works like how I want it to because I am terrible at programming. Still, a few screenshots:

Trees are taller now. They'll be able to be broken like cacti and reeds (bottom one breaks all the ones above it), so they won't be an annoying pain in the butt. As a balancing factor, wood logs will take longer to cut.

Savannas kinda look like poo right now, but they're in nonetheless! I intend for them to be a border between forests and deserts, steppes, or plains (and probably other stuff, I need to rework the whole biome transition idea).

Speaking of transitions, it kinda looks like crap between the current plains biome ;_;. I'm probably going to split "plains" up to include a few different climates, so you have green plains, temperate plains, etc...

There's also steppes, which are nice and flat. They might seem kinda boring, but I'd like for them to stay flat and stuff. It adds variety, and besides, it's nice to have some more peaceful stuff. Anyway, whenever we get around to adding mounts (that don't look like crap), I'll likely have horses generate here. So they won't be entirely useless. I also plan to make it so that aboveground cave entrances won't exist in steppes (they'll still have caves below them, but no entrances).

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Because I don't have too much to show right now (I'll be honest, I haven't been working very hard- it's a little disheartening to know you need to do a crapton of work every single update), I figured I'd let you guys in on what's being planned. I don't intend to release anything publicly until it's at an acceptable level of gameplay, so here's a checklist of sorts of things that need to be done before any public release:

-Give weapons variable attack speed and distance.

-Have at least two new weapons in, and update the tools to at least be somewhat usable as weapons (especially hatchets).

-Overhaul mob spawning behavior. Make them despawn a farther distance away, make them require a light level of 4 or below to spawn (instead of 8), make them spawn a minimum of 16 blocks away from a light level of 5 or above (so you need big areas of darkness before they actually spawn- no more floor torches required), make them unable to spawn if there is a direct line of sight to a light source (only the source, not light itself), and make skeletons, zombies, and creepers generate underground only.

-Have at least 3 new land/cave-based aggressive mobs in the game.

-Have at least 3 new aggressive ocean mobs.

-Make zombies a threat. Have at least 2 new variations of zombies (I won't count these as "new" mobs for the "3 new land/cave-based aggressive mobs)

-Make skeletons able to break glass. Make them also able to strafe the player, and kite them on hard difficulty.

-Make slimes generate above ground, with new spawn logic to accommodate for this.

-Make damage and health values for everything the same across all difficulties.

-Have at least 5 new biomes. Preferably, have all of the necessary transitional biomes needed to make it not look like crap to go between biomes (Steppes, Savanna's, etc).

-Overhaul biome generation system, give it more random variables (like how it was prior to 1.8) for terrain generation, and then organize biome placement in a more sensible fashion (so no more tundras next to jungles, or taigas next to deserts, etc).

-Overhaul armor system- give it a weight variable, with heavier armors slowing down sprinting speed more, but also make you more resistant to knockbacks.

-Beg Divisor to let me implement Smart Moving into the mod.

-Implement at least 3 new types of stone, to spice up underground, and give them all uses so they don't annoyingly fill up your inventory

-Have at least 3 new flying mobs to the overworld

-Redo potion making, switch up some of the ingredients, put in at least 3 new potions

-Add antidote potions, which cure you of negative potion effects, and also make you resistant to them for a period of time (make milk do something else, or have it as an ingredient)

-Overhaul how blocks are broken. Increase the time it takes to break blocks (individually change each one, so it's not just a large sweeping change or a lame multiplier). Make it so that damage to blocks stay (Similar to EvilMinecraft) rather than disappearing as soon as you stop mining them. Implement tools that can repair certain types of blocks.

-Overhaul crafting. Make different forms of crafting for different things. Implement at least one minigame for a new form of crafting (doing better at the minigame rewards you more).

-Implement rocks that generate on various surfaces all over the world. Allow them to be easily picked up by hand. Allow them to be thrown for an improvised ranged weapon.

-Make sticks attainable by breaking leaf blocks and dead bush blocks.

-Make it possible to create stone tools with just rocks and sticks. At the very least, a basic stone tool for multiple purposes (similar to TerraFirmaCraft)

-Remove wooden tools.

-Redo bonus chests. Make them a special type of chest that gives out a pre-set list of basic tools and materials for every player, instead of just being a basic chest with random tools in it.

-Remove the ability to change difficulty mid-game.

-Redo liquid logic. Make it finite.

-Add ambient sounds.

-Put in a basic form of tutorial or introduction. Don't force it, but let it give enough information for the player to know the basics and enjoy the game.

-Redo hunger system. Make it no longer kill the player, but instead debuff them as the player gets hungrier (slower movement, slower mining, etc).

-Figure out how to generate blocks past 127. Up the sea level (thus, average ground level), expand caves (organize into layers), and make mountains (also rename extremehills to mountains) generate much higher.

-And other stuff I probably forgot to add here.


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Basically, you won't see a release for a while, even after 1.4 is released- because we'd rather put all those things in FIRST than just have a bunch of random mashed together content every once in awhile. However, I figure it'd be nice for people to know what exactly it is we plan to do for an initial release- and as you can see, there's a lot of work ahead of us. Keeping in mind, I'm not exactly a programmer, and getting people who are willing and able to work with me isn't the easiest task. Still, I'd rather take time than just push out weekly updates with terrible content.

Some things to note while I'm doing this

Modding in Minecraft right now means that my changes aren't entirely permanent- because of this, most of the features are things that are essentially tests to see how to do them.

Because of this, I might need to change up a lot of stuff, and manually re-add any time there's a new version.

Currently, I'm waiting for 1.3- I'm pretty sure it's going to be out very soon, so I'd rather not do anything more only to have to transplant that much more. Once it's out, I'll waste spend more of my time blindly trying random shit out in the hopes it does something coding things.

In the meantime, I'm getting people to (hopefully) help with the development- both in ideas, and in actual coding. Any help I can get is appreciated. If you're interested in helping (as in, actually have a talent, not just "ill help test") and are willing to work with an asshole, feel free to PM me on the Minecraft forums (Insurrection). Alternatively, e-mail me at PurveyorOfMods (@gmail).

Speaking of the Minecraft forums, while it's a cesspool, I do have a thread posted up there: http://www.minecraftforum.net/topic/1281524-survival-can-and-should-be-improved-part-2-electric-boogaloo/

It outlines the problems with the game's main mode (Survival), and offers various ideas (as well as discussion, and what have you).

If you have some in-depth ideas, feel free to PM me on the forums, e-mail me, or post in that thread. At worst, I won't respond- I'll likely still read it, though, so yeah.

Captain's log, stardate: Some period of time when it's obscenely hot outside

So, hey, I made a blog for this stuff. If you're wondering why exactly this is here, TL;DR /v/ said I should make a blog for various Minecraft mod ideas (and/or progress on a mod). So I did.

That being said, I've made some progress in the last week on the mod- it's not much, but here's the current changelog/feature list:

1: Zombies move about as fast as the player now. This means you can't avoid them just by walking away.

2: Mobs won't spawn above ground nearly as much. They can still spawn under trees and the like, but you're usually safe in plains, deserts, and so on. Right now, this makes things a little easy, but I plan to make mobs a lot harder (and smart) over all, so it's more of a precursor to that than an individual feature.

3: Creepers don't spawn above ground at all (they need to be under a height level of 60 to spawn- considering the sea level is around 63, they'll only really spawn underground).

4: Zombies won't burn in the daylight. Another precursor, since I plan to make zombies less of the generic melee mob, and more of an actual threat to deal with.

5: Zombies can break down doors even in normal mode (as they always should have...)

6: Slimes will generate above ground now. They can technically generate anywhere aboveground, but it's still about as infrequent as it was in vanilla (so they're not everywhere at all times). They should be more frequently found in swamps, but not entirely sure of this.

7: Iron Golems can attack slimes now.

8: Endermen give 10 experience instead of just 5.

9: Ghasts give 12 experience.

10: Trees (specifically, oak and birch) are now taller- they're usually 6-8 blocks high on average rather than 4-5.

11: Changed up the coding for pond/lake/whatever generation- they shouldn't generate in deserts at all anymore. There's still pools of water in other biomes, but they're not EVERYWHERE like they used to be.

12: Added tall trees biome. Basically the same as forest, but has a higher tree density, and the trees are much taller (obviously). It's still just oak and birch trees.

13: Trees will fall similar to cacti now (removing the bottom one removes all the ones above it). I still need to copy the existing logs with the same code, but without this bit, and then make trees drop this "copied log" (so the player-acquired ones can be placed anywhere like they normally are)

14: Added mud blocks, which generate in swamps as small pools (think clay, only not always near water). They're similar to web blocks in that they slow you down and you sink into them (you can move faster horizontally, though). Unlike webs, you can suffocate if you fall too deep into them.

Currently, you can't rapidly hit jump to jump out of them like I intend (Think Oil Ocean Zone from Sonic 2), but hopefully I can fix this soon.

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That's about it as of writing this. I'm still working on things and tweaking them, but do understand I'm completely new to modding Minecraft (and pretty new to coding in general). A lot of my changes are the result of trial-and-error across many hours (I am not a clever man), so progress will likely be very slow. Especially for the more unique/abstract ideas.

Also, some of those changes might seem lame/unnecessary/etc, but a lot of them are for more of a purpose than just "hey lets do it just because we can!". For example, mobs won't generate aboveground as much because I intend to make them all more difficult (not artificially so, mind you).

Believe it or not, I actually have a plan for how the mod will play out, and plan to at least stick to it (if not add more things than what's planned). Still, I just figured I'd blog my progress, so I can be told what a faggot I am for doing something so stupid. I mean, so I can get valid criticism from objective, thoughtful individuals.