#multiblock

[leah2eroes]

i have a problem. i really enjoy playing grind-y, heavily gated progression based tech modpacks in minecraft. until i dont anymore. i will just suddenly lose all interest in progressing despite how much i do genuinely enjoy the gameplay loop (which tbqh is gratifying in a very specific way and somehow works for me). i can and will sink dozens of hours into gaining more and more progress with the only real goal being "make more progress", and it works for me until inexplicably i dont want to boot up the game again. stupid brain

[redstoneflux]

After having built a (soon to) beautifully looking water delivery pipeline, I have decided to rescind almost all criticism of Create

[nyxitycatboy]

so far my opinion on starbound is that some of the game's verbs, like the way that combat functions with 2handed weapons with special effects on rightclick and 1handed things you get two of and how shields work and also the matter maniplator breaks block and placement mechnics feel way better than (atleast similarly earlygame) terraria, but the actual nouns kinda suck >w> randomly generated weaponry kinda feels, bad fur some reason i don't quite have the words to describe right nyow, and nyot a fan of the thing you use to upgrade the primary mining tool being tied to exploration rather than progression, also maybe im just missing some obvious hotkeys but it doesn't, have the option to alter the "breaking area" any finer between its upgraded maximum and 1 from what i can tell and nyou can't Nyot be breaking liquids once having that upgraded?

[narendur]

Wait what combat damage with multiple blockers is assigned by the attacker now?!? Fuuuuck dammit. I will say probably more intuitive, esp for players migrating from Hearthstone, but holding back blockers is already usually a worse play than attacking most of the time anyway and this just swings it even farther that way.

https://magic.wizards.com/en/news/feature/foundations-mechanics#damageassignment

I think the new combat change is a very good one, and anyways I think the times ordering the blockers for me has mattered has been very little. It’s much more intuitive.

It’s why we changed it.

[iamjapanese]

Yu Chengyou（于承佑 Chinese, b.1953）

Snowy Mountains and Blue Lake Multiblocks Woodcut 81.5cm x 60cm via

[duskmourn-survival-guide]

Survival tip #162: Did you hear about the damage assignment rules change? Yeah the attacker doesn't have to assign lethal damage before moving on to the next blocker. You can leave them all alive. So multiblocking is way more safe. Multiblock me. I don't have a trick I promise. <3

[rlyehtaxidermist]

since my last playthrough they added the ability to rotate multiblocks

[inventors-fair]

Tough Acts to Follow: Set-Name Runners-up! ~

Our runners-up this week are @grornt, @isitaristocrats, and @misterstingyjack!

@grornt — Cyclonic Philosopher

"I'm gonna cast Cyclonic..." And the whole room utters a collective groan until, surprise! It's just card advantage. I mean, nobody's gonna say no to that, uh... Who's that ghostly spirit nerd from Foundations—Spectral Sailor, that's the lad. Love that card! Tapping to draw a card and also not having flash is kinda the downside, but this thing can do it for up to just U instead of having to do 3U every turn. Boomjams! It's always great to have a card that can chip in early damage and also always great to have a nerd that can draw you spells and whose ability becomes that much less cumbersome in the late game when you have the mana to play all your cards to further reduce the cost.

In general, I wonder what the whole Tempest would look like. Would it just be activated abilities that are reduced through the number of spells? What would that look like on spells, then? Feels a bit odd at times to want to cast spells in order to cast more spells, but as someone who does like to cast spells I'm not wholly against it, I suppose. Perhaps there could be a card that... Ooh, something like a Fireball effect but you can get an extra target for every spell you've cast. Y'know? Tempest and Storm do have similar names, similar enough for me to get some devilish schemes going... Yeah, no, in all seriousness, I'm curious what you had fully planned out for this ability.

@isitaristocrats — Huntmaster Baloth

Some folks might've noticed a few repeats in the names that people chose this week, and hey, that's all well and good and we'll be getting to those in due time. This card, though! It's a freaky and awesome one and I kept coming back to it because it just felt so awesome. There's something we call a "winmore" effect kinda pejoratively at times, but I've never felt that it's that bad to have an effect that demands to be answered. Sometimes it's a real pain, but if you don't deal with these things, then you're gonna be in for a bad time. You can still multiblock a Huntmaster Baloth here, y'know? That card advantage is pretty awesome. I also like the idea of Alpha creatures wanting to swing in and offer trades just to ensure that your opponent's Alpha has to answer out of fear that you'll swing right back.

Is this intended to be only on attack triggers? Probably not, because I can see various "enters" effects that would work well with it, perhaps even death triggers, even various static abilities if the stack doesn't get too messed up. The definition of 'alpha' to be both 'first' and 'apex' is one of the coolest things about the word to me, for real. I'm a huge fan of how this works and I'm curious to see what you had in mind for how the rest of Alpha as an ability word would shake out. Perhaps it's more of a limited "answer me or else" thing, but hey, that's how green gets ahead of the pack!

@misterstingyjack — Caterwauling Cohort

I really wasn't sold on this card, and then I stopped being a stick in the mud and realized that yeah, it's a funny ability that you can roll with in a number of awesome combinations. Battlebonding can ensure that there are creature splashed into other decks with types/subtypes mattering, a kind of mechanical glue for limited that offers options. What if you have Rogues in both Goblins and Faeries, and then you have a faerie that can battlebond with Rogues to add an evasive option to your fliers? Like, c'mon, that's such a cool thing that works with the flavor and world of Lorwyn so much. I have the sinking suspicion that Lorwyn, when we return, is going to play more like Bloomburrow than not (and don't get me started on my BLB limited opinions), but man, I just wish there could be cards like this that make the whole thing work.

For this particular card, having the opponent sacrifice stuff can be ridiculously powerful; frankly, I'd even add a +1/+1 counter instead of just giving the boost until end of turn. Or maybe a boost and trample, I dunno, something a smidge more powerful than what you have here, but it doesn't have to be too crazy. I like the idea of these denizens battlebonding with various elementals around Lorwyn, maybe even with a cycle that specifically bonds with Elementals to give the Elementals a chance to shine outside of their prismatic aspects. Changeling would certainly help with that, and I have the feeling that we're gonna see Changeling come back to Lorwyn, but all the same. I may not have liked the weird specificities that you presented here initially, but the more I think about it, the more I'm actually really impressed with the inherent argument.

If you're reading this, I'm deep in the weeds at work this week, so commentary will be done when I can get it done. Things are much wilder than I want them to be, so apologies in advance, but thank you all for your entries!

@abelzumi

[sleepingdragoninn]

Inventory Tabs: tabbifying minecraft!

We didn't make Inventory Tabs! This is one of our 'loveletters' - rewrites of unmaintained mods with opinionated improvements.

Inventory Tabs is a client-side mod that lets you click tab buttons to swap between the screens available around you - crafting stations, storage, donkeys, you name it.

Our rewrite uses sleight of hand and networking trickery to get the job done seamlessly - including keeping the item on your cursor nice and steady even while changing tabs.

It's also built from the ground up to be fully config-driven for modpacks - automatically detect tabs, remove bad ones, and manually assign a few extras - all from a toml file! Plus, fancier screens like multiblocks can have tabs registered through the API.

[mothtowers]

i picked up modded mc again to try a current version modpack (atm 10) and everything is so different it almost made me quit and just accept the passage of time. but then i spent like an hour building multiblock alchemical contraptions and smiling at the sincerity of there being a double rainbow reference so everything is still all right

[fortressnebula]

welding torch! helps you create multiblocks, eventually those tanks will connect up and function as one.

[flightyquinn]

I can't recall if I've talked about this before, but a while back, I had a thought. It started as just an appreciation for what a certain Minecraft datapack was doing with regards to keeping its in-game guide cryptic, and then evolved from there into a full-blown Concept™

Specifically, I found myself thinking about the kinds of Lovecraft-inspired horror that I typically like, and how that might translate into Minecraft. There were two things in particular that stuck with me. First, the idea of the unwitting fool - the protagonist who doesn't realize what they're getting into until it's too late. The other was horror that unfolds not because the protagonist is a hapless victim, but because curiosity and/or avarice drive them into danger. They meddle in things that they ought to know better than trifle with in the pursuit of learning some secret that matters more to them than the possible consequences of seeking it out.

Too often horror mods end up being intrusive, even annoying, in the way that they put the player in a passive role. The monster acts, the the player is acted upon. In Lovecraft's work, the world is full of horrors, but for the most part they only affect the lives of those who seek them out, or who are associating with those who do. I think this is a good fit for a mod that is meant to be played with, and not just to be reacted to on Youtube.

So with a little more thought, that comparison gave me a set of design pillars to work with;

Everything starts off feeling normal.

Player actions are the driving force in things getting worse.

The mechanics of the mod should act as a "lure" to the player.

Answers should be discovered through curiosity, rather than just conveniently handed to the player.

So at this point I had a general concept of a horror mod, superficially disguised as a "Vanilla+" magic mod. Something that gives the feel (at least at first) of old playground rumors and urban legends being brought to life.

The first thing on the agenda, or maybe I should say things, is to get players into the mod's mechanics through Vanilla systems, into Vanilla-esque mod mechanics. So, no guide book here. Don't want to tip our hand too soon. Instead, we want to rely on normal methods of discovery to get players things that will hint at what to do next. Like the painting you can get that hints at how to make a Wither.

We can include one or more new paintings that hint at other things the player can build in world, or actions they can take (and maybe some others that are red herrings, to keep the mystery). Similar to ruined portals, trail ruins could be expanded to sometimes include a ruined multiblock the mod adds. Perhaps some new Pottery Sherds, or some other item added to the archaeology pool could also contain a hint. The key here is that none of these things is a direct set of instructions. A painting of a default Alex holding out a black flower to an iron golem that has it's arms spread out wide might hint pretty strongly at a mechanic of "use a Wither Rose on a golem afflicted with Blindness," but neither spells it out, nor tells the player what it does. They do it because they want to know what happens if they do.

At first, the effects would be beneficial. Maybe a certain structure waters crops more efficiently than placing water, allowing for larger farms. Maybe performing a certain ritual clears the weather. Maybe when an Iron Golem is given a Wither Rose, it changes into a "Black Iron Golem" with a vampirism effect, that's harder to kill. Maybe there's a way to use Sculk Catalysts to make an altar where new items can be crafted (unlocked in the recipe book), but it must be "fuelled" with exp from things that die nearby. Maybe with the right assistance, the Sniffer can find new, more functional plants.

...but while the player is gaining new features and unlocking new mechanics, they are also unlocking hidden downsides, and building up a corruption that will unleash the horrors of the mod upon them. It would start out subtly. Maybe the rain clearing ritual changes the percentages of some new weather types from zero to actually possible, and then increasingly more frequent. Weather types with strange effects that can't be cleared, like blood rains that strengthen hostile mobs, or a dense fog in which a revamped version of the Giant mob can sometimes spawn. (Maybe even denser fog than this.)

Black Iron Golems might start changing into something more sinister if they stayed alive for long enough, and killed enough things. Maybe the plants would have an interaction with the farm-watering multiblock, allowing even stranger plants to spring up like weeds. The altar might be slowly spreading "roots" deep underground, changing things and mutating monsters where the player can't see.

Of course, that would only be "Phase 2" of the mod. The point where it becomes obvious that there are consequences to messing with the new mechanics, but things are still mostly still "Minecrafty." If the player were to decide to engage with these side effects and exploit them to go even further, then they would start to get into the less "normal" and more decidedly horror aspects.

I think the best part of this concept is that it could have any number of "phases" to introduce more extreme effects and bizarre monsters, so long as there is a breadcrumb trail of new toys to lure the player in deeper, drawing them ever closer to a doom that is as inescapable as it is self-inflicted.

[redstoneflux]

Since I plan on giving my base (the machines in a field that you see here are a starter base) a roof that lets in as much sunlight as possible, I need a lot of glass.

This beautiful thing is a semi-automatic glass generator. Its only input is cobblestone, which is something I'm more than happy to at least partially get rid of (if only there was a similar process that consumed deepslate instead...). Its output is freshly smelted glass, with a clay and flint byproduct - the flint is kinda useless but the clay may come in handy at some point.

[kaiasky]

my dream mc modpack is i think

create and tinkers. disable slime islands.

massively nerf storage. the player's inventory and backpacks stay the same, but otherwise 1 m^2 is a max of 10 item types and 64 items total.

in exchange for that, it's easy to make multi block storage or to unify multiple storage blocks into one interface like ae2. By the early midgame "ah, I need more cobblestone, let me add another cobblestone warehouse" is easy.

you CANNOT void items. If an item would despawn, it places itself on the ground if it can. If it's not a block, it places a "refuse layer" that stack up and form piles. and if it can't find a valid placement location then the chunk starts dealing damage ticks to you because fuck you! don't try and cheat my system

whenever possible, gathering items should impact the world. mining requires leaving mines and spoil tips, forestry and farming require space, industrial processes are larger and get larger the higher tech they are. Solar power takes up actual space, no "tier 5 draconic solar panel" shit. (When possible this isn't just "10x10x10 multiblock" it's a series of machines that need to work together.)

uneven resource distribution, you have to go different places for different ores, i love when modpacks do this

There's an early item called the drafting table that lets you enter into spectator mode with copy/paste and worldedit features within a range around the drafting table. Inventories linked to the drafting table get used by construction bots to construct and deconstruct. Expanding the range and capabilities of your drafting table is an important part of the mod. To get you started it has an inventory the size of 10 double chests, but you can't place two drafting tables within range of one another.

Construction bots can mine natural blocks but they can't collect them, to 1) encourage actual mining solutions and 2) let you build underground bases without creating tons of spoil.

Chisel mod but more. Most decorative blocks are unified into 20 'structural base' blocks that can be stonecuttered into a variety of decorative blocks. So e.g. you automate 'wooden structure block' which can be stonecut (in the drafting table ui this is a radial menu or something) into logs, stripped, planks, slabs, various 'chisel' textures all at a 1-1 ratio. When mined, they drop as 'x structure block', preventing you from needing to micromanage which building blocks you have enough of. eg you don't say 'shit i need more mossy bricks', you say 'i need more stone structural blocks' which means bigger factory, not crafting montage.

easy and convenient wireless redstone and wireless storage info, but no ender chest stuff. data is easy to get from a to b, and materials require infrastructure.

thermal dynamics viaducts are the primary player transportation thing, bc i think they rule extremely hard. lategame transportation is the jump clone ichun mod. and/or getting fired out of artillery. you gotta water bucket clutch tho

none of that 'oh the endgame is making creative items with omega crafting' shit. you launch a rocket into the sun (the joke is that this is the only way to truly void items, so it is the Ultimate Tech) and the credits play. there can be 'postgame' stuff but i hate a modpack that overstays its welcome and makes 100%ing it the only 'winning'.

[minecraft]

i like the idea of a industrial/tech/magitek mod thats entirely made up based on like, offhand drunken conversations or assumptions about how one should work, and contains stuff like, machine resonance where certain types of multiblock machines work either better/worse and more/less efficiently if they're surrounded by other types of multiblock structures. and then there's some sort of tier system where the higher tiers of machines require a constant supply of different types of energies and materials and its not even fully tested if its possible to achieve those in the first place. just a bunch of chaotic emergent gameplay.

[iamjapanese]

Yu Chengyou（于承佑 Chinese, b.1953）

Forest 谧林 2012 Multiblock Woodcut 86X96cm via