mensreaMC
commented
10 years ago REVISION 1 -this article is very old and filled with outdated info -the labor system is covered under "labor system and blocks" -the workshop system is covered under "workshop system and blocks"
I have decided to create a revolutionary new crafting system. Minecrafts system of placing items in a grid is tedious and nonsensical; theres nothing fun about it, especially with mods like gregtech that have 100's of intermediate steps for finished product. Sure, it encourages "automation" and is "realisitic" in so far as its time consuming and repetitive, but minecraft is a game, and games should be fun/challanging, not tedious and mind numbing. Considering we are designing a mod that encompasses all the aspects of early-modern industry, we could go balls to the wall with crafting recipes, and wind up with something EVEN MORE tedious and time consuming than even gregtech would dare. Instead of going this route though, I hope to do things abstractly, streamlining them, eliminating the need for a thousand intermediate parts, and yet maintaining the challange of moving through the tech tree and gathering resources. I would be lying if I said that this approach wasn't inspired by thaumcrafts research system (fucking brilliant I might add), but rather than needing accumulated knowledge you will need accumulated CAPITOL and LABOR.
When the player starts a game they find themselves alone, stranded in some strange world and surrounded by a vast unkind wilderness that is all too eager to end their life. One of the first steps they take in conquering this unfamiliar land is to construct some simple tools from wood, which they then use to work materials in a basic fashion to their needs and wants. While simple wooden tools and hands and wits alone can accomplish a great many things, modern technology has a whole tree of predecessor technologies that enabled its creation and use. The players goal is to gradually develop their tools to the point that they can begin to make better and better tools. From this point on I will refer to these tools as capitol. Capitol ranges from the humble wooden workbench to precise lathes, CNC machines and even lithography machines, from hand tools to ship building gantries. All of it is capitol, and as you accumulate capitol and refine it you begin to see exponential returns. Precise machine tools enable the player to build more sophisticated tech: better turbines, better dynamos, better tools. Improvements enable further precision which enable further improvements and so on.
So then the question of how capitol is developed. Whether it be a wooden mallet or a drill press, all capitol requires 2 things: materials and labor. Materials range from wood to steel to chemicals. They must be mined, grown, harvested or made using a variety of processes with varying inputs. Labor is the product of man and animal; while man and animal only need food and water as an input to perform labor, that is not to say that survival is as simple as merely eating and drinking. Without shelter, safety and rest man and animal could scarcely work or if so, work at a diminished efficiency. So it follows that to develop capitol one must have not only the resources and tools to do so, but must have sufficient provided for labor to turn those crude, simple things into all the pieces that encompass the whole of industry.
For this mod materials are obvious. You chop down trees, mine ore, quarry stone, sand and dirt, pump water, oil and gas, generate electricity and erect farms and pastures for producing food. On the other hand, labor is a concept that is alien to minecraft as no mod has yet to introduce it as a resource in and of itself. Most mods will have you tediously toil at your crude wooden workbench to produce modern tools and even advanced electronics. Dragging and dropping this or that item into a grid over and over again only to use the finished product in yet another, more complex recipe. Indeed, if minecraft and the techmods incorporate the idea of labor at all, it is in the meta form of the player clicking away for hours at a time in the workbenchs. This mod seeks to change that, and below I will outline how it will approach this.
The whole idea of the labor resource is centered on the concept of Steve being the representative or avatar of a large group of people. While it would be possible to make an entire system of NPC's that do work and have needs something like that would be exceptionally hard to program, very resource intensive for the average users computer, and probabaly very clumsy. You're not just feeding and providing for one person, but rather a whole group of people.
-labor takes food, shelter and safety
-food: easy, you grow/raise it, harvest it, and turn it into a variety of things that are satisfying to consume. -but man cannot live on bread alone, a diverse diet of carbs, protein and the vitamins and minerals of greens are necessary for a sustainable and healthy lifestyle -this means at the least that you need to farm wheat/corn/rice/potatos, beef/pork/chicken and carrots/other leafy shits
-shelter: seemingly simple, but potentially much more complex; while its possible to live in a muddy hole in the ground, a proper shelter not only protects you from the elements and hostiles, but keeps you comfortable as well -this means you need, at the least, a decent house thats sturdy and heated during cold times and ideally is comfortabley furnished and pleasing to the eye -this means you need a roof, walls, heating, ventilation, lighting, enough space to not be cramped, and some things to grant you comfort like soft bedding or furnishings -in addition to having a house, people also need clothing, shoes and simple tools to maintain their own belongings
-safety: something players will be more familiar with, given the myriad hostile monsters and the darkness which must be warded off else it spawn them -this means you need a certain amount of space free of hostiles, enough light to prevent the darkness from seeping in, enough food to hold people over in times of scarcity, and even the psychological security offered by armed men willing to shed blood
Now the question is how we turn the needs of labor into things that can be gotten in the game.
I.when you go to craft something at one of the mods workbenchs it will have certain material and capitol requirements and run certain checks 1.it will require the metal, wood and stone actually necessary to make it A.it will take the materials from the players inventory and/or attached chests B.OR it will scan for a "warehouse" building and subtract the materials from there 2.it will require capitol and the power to run the capitol if necessary A.all the power transmitted through cables will go to the workbench in question and build up, when you make something a certain amount of power will be subtracted a.power decays over time b.power can be stored in things to prevent it from decaying, though turning power into something storable costs energy itself B.the majority of machines in the mod will not require power themselves, nor need a steady stream of power at all times C.the player will not have to use this or that machine to make most capitol, instead the idea will be abstracted and will only require that you have the machine itself placed near the workbench, not use it D.the mods workbenches run a check to see if the appropriate machines are nearby when something is selected to be built 3.it will require "bread", "meat" and "veggies" A.It will take the materials from the players inventory and/or attached chests B.OR it will scan for a "granary" building and subtract the food from the stores there 4.it will check to see if there are nearby hostiles A.the block will scan a huge area to make sure its free of mobs B.ideally the mod will add some new mobs, preferably ones that break through walls or seek out housing, farms, and other buildings for occupation a.if paired with a mod like coro's AI or a plugin like monster apocalypse this aspect will become much more challanging 5.it will check to see if you have food stockpiled [optional?] A.it will scan nearby granaries for a certain amount of food but will not actually use it 6.it will check to see if you have shelter of sufficient quality A.it will scan a large area for "shelter" blocks a.shelter blocks scan areas for certain things in order to be placed i.those things will be blocks,furnaces,etc, that are either in a certain arrangement or assumed to be in the form of housing 7.it will check to see if you have a military of sufficient quality [optional?] 8.it will check to see if your labors needs have been met
potential shit -Have village blocks spawn npcs to randomly wander [work with npc mod] -A well block that attaches to cistern blocks in case we want the people to have to have a water supply as well. -real glass block made in a realistic way for recipes needing glass -use actual beds, etc to make house blocks, then have them spawn show ones in an internal storage -instruct workshops to produce things in idle time to get experience and produce things, still uses constant power -lighting system that involves a block for the distribution of fuel for fires/candles/lamps/bulbs in an area -the more machines you have of the same type grants a reduction to labor resources for this or that thing OR speed bonus and more slots -the peoples tools! upgraded with various resources to aid in mining, harvesting, quarrying -low quality living conditions and/or harsh rule can trigger a timer til hostile npcs spawn from housing blocks and grow progressively more numerous and dangerous until conditions improve -military assets can be used get people to work without as much labor resources; reduces labor costs -liesure/luxury assets used in same way -aesthetic assets consider flowers, trees, etc and work in same way -each house block provides a certain population, and population is needed for the peoples tools!, operating machines and assets -towns cannot be built in certain biomes -tools for detecting ores and things -special crops for special food, crops require special tilled soil blocks that decays after so long and needs fertilized/irrigated -justice assets -add a waiting mechanic to item output that is quite long