[Modpack] Sea [0.4.2] [sea]

[Inocudom]

Concerning the nodebox models of the plants, you could keep the current ones for more powerful computers, but make less detailed ones to be used as default. There is a program that can make the creation of nodebox models easier. Below is a link to it.
http://forum.minetest.net/viewtopic.php?id=2840

[bdjnk]

I've been playing with this mod a bit, and I've noticed some issues.

Digging while holding a "Leavy snack" or a "Chewstick" causes the held item to vanish. I'm not sure why, but it doesn't happen with any of your other node types. Oh, and leavy should probably be leafy, which is the much more common spelling.

The plants are ridiculously hard to find, being both rare and difficult to see. If part of the problem is the complexity of the nodeboxes, you can make them simpler, or simply do away with them altogether. Papyrus and the various grasses look fine, and they're all 2d. Even if you think 3d is truly important for plants, why are they so complex? A good looking 3d plant (one that fits the block style of minetest) likely doesn't need more than 10 boxes. You use more than a thousand.

edit one: Is it impossible to have plantlike node not displace water? Cause that would be silly, but also explain quite a lot.

edit two: That's odd. The longer I spend in an area, the more sea plants are generated nearby. Definitely not the expected behavior...

[Topywo]

I've been playing with this mod a bit, and I've noticed some issues.

Digging while holding a "Leavy snack" or a "Chewstick" causes the held item to vanish. I'm not sure why, but it doesn't happen with any of your other node types. Oh, and leavy should probably be leafy, which is the much more common spelling.

The plants are ridiculously hard to find, being both rare and difficult to see. If part of the problem is the complexity of the nodeboxes, you can make them simpler, or simply do away with them altogether. Papyrus and the various grasses look fine, and they're all 2d. Even if you think 3d is truly important for plants, why are they so complex? A good looking 3d plant (one that fits the block style of minetest) likely doesn't need more than 10 boxes. You use more than a thousand.

edit one: Is it impossible to have plantlike node not displace water? Cause that would be silly, but also explain quite a lot.

edit two: That's odd. The longer I spend in an area, the more sea plants are generated nearby. Definitely not the expected behavior...

- Left clicking with food in your hand will make you eat it (it doesn't make a difference if you have 10 hearts). You'll have the same effect with apples.

- Afaik there are only two 'blocks' that do not displace water:
- Entities (with all their behaviour problems)
- Nodeboxes and in that case only the parts sticking out the 'primary' {-0.5,-0.5,-0.5 0.5,0.5,0.5} box
- The use of nodeboxes lowers the fps more than the use of 'simple' nodes. However I had the impression the use of a lot of boxes doesn't make much difference. I used that lot because I wanted to make some curves. I also wanted to 'fold' the upper side of the leaves to close them. I used as top texture the same texture as the ground the plants are standing on. making a pyramid gives them the texture of the side textures. (I needed the top texture to be the same texture as the ground to cover the water displacement on top of the 'primary' nodebox/using the '0.502' blocks).
- In the next version I'll change leavy with leafy

- The seaplants are generated by ABM. Generated map areas will continue to add seaplants until they reach a maximum amount (to keep the fps under control). I'm still learning LUA. The use of on_generate in combination with selection of the right position for the seaplants is still a bit to difficult for me. Advantage of the ABM system is that some time after digging the seaplants, they'll return.

Thanks for the feedback!

[Topywo]

Concerning the nodebox models of the plants, you could keep the current ones for more powerful computers, but make less detailed ones to be used as default. There is a program that can make the creation of nodebox models easier. Below is a link to it.
http://forum.minetest.net/viewtopic.php?id=2840

I'll try that one out again when I find some time for it. I didn't get it working properly and not working at all, two times earlier, but probably need to read the instructions more carefully. I'm curious to try out if it can make curves.

[Sokomine]

There's the plantlife mod from VanessaE that may help with finding ways to spawn plants fast.

The plants may look even better and be easier to find if they where illuminated from beneath. The node they "grow" on could emit a faint glow.

[Topywo]

There's the plantlife mod from VanessaE that may help with finding ways to spawn plants fast.

The plants may look even better and be easier to find if they where illuminated from beneath. The node they "grow" on could emit a faint glow.

Thanks for your reaction!

From what I saw and understood VanessaE's plant_lib from plantlife is a piece of art. I certainly hope to have one day enough knowledge of Lua to use that to full advantage. The slow spawning is caused by the high ABM values. With my present abilities it would be easiest if I lower the ABM values, since there's a max amount of seaplants that can appear in an area.

I followed Neuromancer's advice to comment out the light_source for the seaplants. If I coded correctly the seaplants should not appear deep enough to have no light at all during daytime.

Light under water gives me more than one headache. First reason is that the color of the sand or dirt that are part of the seaplants nodebox (sand more than dirt) most of the time is darker or, with light_source =1, lighter than the surrounding blocks. Second reason is that indeed during the night and in deep sea it's too hard to find the seaplants when not emitting light, while lightning them looks more unnatural than expected.

But I'll find a solution or workaround for those issues. It just may take some time.

[rubenwardy]

Please optimize the meshes, or even use node boxes!

They reduce my fps to 11 from 60.

[Topywo]

Thanks for your comment.

It's a too big drop to be acceptable. I already have less fps (10-12) in vanilla, so I didn't notice that big drop.

You're using 0.2.1? I made that one after 0.2.0 brought the fps down to 0-2 fps.

I'm not sure what you mean with use node boxes. Are the clams (entities) now causing the fps drop? The seaplants use nodeboxes.

I actually needed to read on the forum and internet to try to understand what meshes meant. I'm still not sure if you meant the textures, the {X,Y,Z, X,Y,Z} coding in lua or both?

I had the idea that the drawtype had more impact on performance than what is 'coded' in the drawtype, but I'll check that again.

Looks, like I'll be busy reading a lot the next few weeks/months to improve this mod :-/

[Inocudom]

I heard that RealBadAngel is attempting to create true mesh nodes. If he can pull that off, then the creation of the models of your seaplants would be easier and the models themselves would have far less polygons.

[hampa16]

this is not a modpack! this is just a mod!

[kaeza]

this is not a modpack! this is just a mod!

Nope, it's a modpack.

[rarkenin]

this is not a modpack! this is just a mod!

Calm down and stop shouting. Technically it is.

[Inocudom]

Any luck with development these days?

[Topywo]

Any luck with development these days?

Thanks for the interest. :-)

Since the last update I didn't do a thing with this modpack. As soon as I have enough time and spirit to develop it further I certainly will. But that may take some weeks, maybe 1 or 2 months.

[Sokomine]

I've had a look at the mod now. It offers far more than I first tought and is definitely a plus for all players who like rich plantlife and farming-like activities. It also adds nice, expensive blocks.

Here's a more detailed look-on:

First: You ought to advertise it more by showing in the first posting of the thread what can be done with it - and how. Introduce the blocks and crafts shortly, show how to go from algae found to the end-product, show how the bleacher works and what it's good for. Show the shell-covered glass blocks - I'm sure a lot of people will like the mod for them alone! Right now, understanding the mod requires too much code reading.

Killing a living clam is close to impossible - even a strong sword does not seem to deal enough damage in the short time the clam can be wounded. It looks a bit odd if you drown while wielding the strongest sword and utterly fail to combat against a poor, defenseless clam :-) Maybe you could introduce nets to catch them. Sapiers mobf mod has some. Caught clams could remain alive until they're "crafted" to crushed shells. Maybe all the abms could run more often.

Producing the colored glass is quite expensive. It ought to remain whole when digged.

Dyes could be created from the algae themshelves by adding something. Perhaps you can take the old receipe for the dye base from unifieddyes that's not used anymore (glass bottles, bucket of water, junglegrass) and offer the old liquid dyes for a combination of such a dye base and algae. To get the "modern" pulver, it could be placed into the bleacher. That's a much more complicated process then than the current dye production - but why not? The liquid dyes could be required for the glass production instead of the algae themshelves.

Your lightglasses could also be supported by my colormachine if you want to. The white one could be turned with dye into colored ones and vice versa. That should have little effect on the production cost.

It would be nice if the bleacher got an inventory and would work similar to a furnace, only without fuel.

Regarding the code, please don't use copy and paste if the only part that varies between the copies is the name of the color. Use a function instead. Saves you changing everything three times :-)

Now, to the second part, the seaplants: I'm amazed that it works. Didn't know so many nodeboxes where possible. I ran into trouble with way less of them. But right now it all worked fine (slightly better hardware, and, most of all, recent MT version). The plants are amazingly detailed. They look very fine. Only...it's a bit vasted because you usually don't see many of them. Perhaps the detailed versions could be kept for rare occasions like aquariums? Something you bring home to your house after a long life as an explorer? A nodebox version with far less nodeboxes would be better for the everyday-seaplants. See the bamboo mod for example. Or papyrus in technic. They all look good with way less nodeboxes.

The approach you took here - with the plant beeing a nodebox extension of the node below - can be taken in a slightly diffrent way with drawtype plantlife as well. It is...hacky, but you wouldn't get killed from the coredevs (they promised :)): Instead of using the node below the plant (the one that forms the ocean floor), use one node below the ocean floor for a plantlike node. To get the plant large enough so that you can really see it above the ocean floor, give the node a sufficient high value for visual_scale (i.e. visual_scale = 2.5 ). The image of the plant will then streach out far enough. This is true for the bottom as well; perhaps the texture ought to be transparent there or posess some roots. It will also need a higher resolution than usual because it gets magnified so much (we need it to be large enough to show on top!). Second problem: If you just placed a normal node above the plant (as ocean floor), the plant would become black. The node it sits in needs to receive light. Even that can be solved: Create a special block that has "sunlight_propagates = true" set and is a normal node (with all the textures you want). Additional bonus: The images can even be animated. See the torch for that! So seaplants could move in the current of the water and thus look even better (provided a skilled artist does the textures - that's beyound what I can do).

Example of the dandelion yellow from homedecor, with 256px resolution, only changes are adaption of the selection box and "visual_scale = 2.5":



You can find a code sample on pastebin. It's mostly default nodes changed slightly so that they work in the underwater setup. The torch is fun :-)

[Topywo]

I've had a look at the mod now. It offers far more than I first tought and is definitely a plus for all players who like rich plantlife and farming-like activities. It also adds nice, expensive blocks.

Here's a more detailed look-on:

Wow! Thank you very much Sokomine!

I read and reread your post. My first impression is that it's very helpfull for me. I wanted to answer more in detail right now, but I'll have to postpone it an hour or so.

[Topywo]

Right now, understanding the mod requires too much code reading.

I agree. Somehow I seem to have forgotten to describe the activities that can be done. I just experienced it myself. In order to create a clam I needed to look the way to do it up in the init.lua.

Killing a living clam is close to impossible - even a strong sword does not seem to deal enough damage in the short time the clam can be wounded. It looks a bit odd if you drown while wielding the strongest sword and utterly fail to combat against a poor, defenseless clam :-) Maybe you could introduce nets to catch them. Sapiers mobf mod has some. Caught clams could remain alive until they're "crafted" to crushed shells. Maybe all the abms could run more often.

I wasn't able to kill a clam either. Probably the damage system has changed too much. Normally they got no damage when closed, damage when half-open and more damage when fully open. But even when this would work, I should make changes because of the drowning feature.

Additional bonus: The images can even be animated. See the torch for that! So seaplants could move in the current of the water and thus look even better

Reading this I was not only thinking about the seaplants for this. Perhaps I can use this for the clams too, since entities have their problems.

Producing the colored glass is quite expensive. It ought to remain whole when digged.

Dyes could be created from the algae themshelves by adding something. Perhaps you can take the old receipe for the dye base from unifieddyes that's not used anymore (glass bottles, bucket of water, junglegrass) and offer the old liquid dyes for a combination of such a dye base and algae. To get the "modern" pulver, it could be placed into the bleacher. That's a much more complicated process then than the current dye production - but why not? The liquid dyes could be required for the glass production instead of the algae themshelves.

Your lightglasses could also be supported by my colormachine if you want to. The white one could be turned with dye into colored ones and vice versa. That should have little effect on the production cost.

I really liked the colored glass bottles from unified dyes. If they aren't used anymore I'll find a way to use them. I wanted to type that breaking the colored glass would return them into the inventory, but then I remembered the vessels mod. Maybe I could do something with that. And off course I would like to make use of your colormachine. To summarize it: The crafting and the products from clams need a big makeover.

It would be nice if the bleacher got an inventory and would work similar to a furnace, only without fuel.

Yes, I know and agree it's a more stylish approach. I've never before studied lua's formspec (and so) code. It looked quiet difficult for me. But there are now enough mods to use the code and learn from.

Regarding the code, please don't use copy and paste if the only part that varies between the copies is the name of the color. Use a function instead. Saves you changing everything three times :-)

So true :-) I would have done it that way if I was a better programmer. I've seen some nice and clean code in other mods and will learn to use it for the sea modpack. The only question I've with this is that I read 'somewhere' that using functions takes more time for a computer than code that has been fully written. Off course I've no clue how true this is or if it's also valid for LUA.

Now, to the second part, the seaplants: I'm amazed that it works. Didn't know so many nodeboxes where possible. A nodebox version with far less nodeboxes would be better for the everyday-seaplants.

Especially the curves take a lot of nodeboxes. I agree I should make those with less nodeboxes or maybe smarter nodeboxes. If I had more feeling for mathematics I would have used functions for making the curves. There's only one thing I still want/need to check. At some point I started to think that it's not the quantity of the nodeboxes that influences the fps , but the node- and/or drawtype.

use one node below the ocean floor for a plantlike node. To get the plant large enough so that you can really see it above the ocean floor, give the node a sufficient high value for visual_scale (i.e. visual_scale = 2.5 ).

Example of the dandelion yellow from homedecor, with 256px resolution, only changes are adaption of the selection box and "visual_scale = 2.5":

You can find a code sample on pastebin. It's mostly default nodes changed slightly so that they work in the underwater setup. The torch is fun :-)

This is so usefull! I can experiment to get the best out of it.


In about two weeks I must be able to start working on this mod again. Your suggestions will make it easier to upgrade this modpack to a more usefull and lean version (so thanks again!). I still got a lot to learn about lua but I'm looking forward to it.

[hampa16]

Making the seas a bit more interesting:

Sea modpack, 2 mods:

sea/clams:
- Find the algae blocks in the sea. They produce a a bit light. You might even find a shell on top of it.
- Make a shell farm, but if you got a lot of them, don't go too far away.
- Look for the shells on algae or breed them yourself.
- Make colored, light-glasses from glass, shells and algae. Break them, make dye.

sea/seaplants
- Two types, two colors of seaplants.
- Eat them directly for a 1/2 heart or combine them for a sea salad, restoring 3 hearts.

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/65428713/2013-01-30-011906_1600x900_scrot.png

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/65428713/2013-01-30-014815_1600x900_scrot.png

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/65428713/2013-06-16-124126_1600x900_scrot.png

Textures: 16x16


Downloads (if your format is not present, ask for it and I'll try):

Latest 0.2.1
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/65428713/sea.0.2.1.7z
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/65428713/sea.0.2.1.tar.gz
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/65428713/sea.0.2.1.zip

Changes 0.2 --> 0.2.1:
- Maximization of seaplants in an area
- Noticed by accident that minetest.env: is deprecated, so I changed it for both clams and seaplants into minetest.

Old 0.2
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/65428713/sea%200.2.7z
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/65428713/sea.tar%200.2.gz
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/65428713/sea%200.2.zip

Changes 0.1 --> 0.2:
- Algae, sea_cult, shells and shells_dye are now in 1 mod called 'clams'
- New filled bleacher recipe:
{'clams:crushedyellow', 'clams:crushedred', 'clams:crushedblue'},
{'clams:crushedyellow', 'clams:crushedred', 'clams:crushedblue'},
{'default:leaves', 'clams:emptybleacher', 'default:leaves'}
- New mod, seaplants

Old 0.1
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/65428713/sea.7z
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/65428713/sea.tar.gz
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/65428713/sea.zip

Known issues: the removing of far objects. Shells are entities. If there are more than 49 in a block and you go to far away, they'll disappear.

Crafting and cooking:
In crafting.txt of the mod folder

Credits:
- Celeron55 for making minetest and this mod possible (the mapgen.lua code and part of his mob mod code)
- Cornernote for the dye_code. Thanks for all your work for minetest cornernote!
- Chinchow, for asking me what I was doing (nothing constructive till then)
- Sapier, because of his fish in his animals-mod I understood you could build something under water without an waterblock around it.
- Inocudom, for the support of this modpack and telling me about Jeija's hydro-turbine.
- Jeija because of the hydro-turbine (mesecons).
- Neuromancer for the constructive feed-back concerning the performance.

Dependencies:
sea: none
sea/clams: default, bucket, dye
sea/seaplants: default

Licenses:
Most of it is under GNU Lesser General Public License, but a part of the code (in shell_dye) uses GNU General Public License. Further I saw that the breaking glass sound falls under CC BY 3.0 and the crumbling dirt and leaves sound fall under CC BY-SA 3.0.

If you like or need to read it, look for the specific licenses in the file:
LICENSE AND README.txt
This file is present in the folders sea, sea/clams and sea/seaplants

:? hey are those fish aquariums? and if not, then what do those do?

[Topywo]

:? hey are those fish aquariums? and if not, then what do those do?

Those are not fish aquariums. Default the sea offers not much life and only some clay, sand, dirt and stone-blocks and a lot of dark water. This modpack spawns algae, clams and seaplants in the water (sea) to lighten and brighten it a bit up. You can eat the seaplants and harvest/grow clams to make coloured blocks (that can produce dye). This mod tries to work around the airbubbles that surround nodes in water.

You can try this mod out, but I recommend (actually for most mods) to try it out on a new (test) world. Especially because I'm busy remaking this mod, thus breaking a lot.

At the moment the clams can't be killed because of a change in the api (I found out how to fix this). And they are entities (so the usual entity drawbacks).

The use of (a lot of) nodeboxes for the seaplants seems to reduce fps too much. For me I already have low fps and barely notice a difference between 15 or 9 fps, but others did notice a significant drop in performance. I've lowered the probability of them appearing in huge groups to avoid this.

I'm also thinking about a nice way to prevent players to drown (too quick), while enjoying the underwater scene.


Edit Typo

[Inocudom]

There is another mod that would go very well with this and provide some assistance:
https://forum.minetest.net/viewtopic.php?id=7175

[Topywo]

Version 0.3.0 is out.

Not compatible with previous versions.

Maybe this version will be nicer for the FPS :-)

ABM and Ore generation can be unbalanced.

[Mossmanikin]

The new plants and corals look awesome! :)
I hope you can find a way to get rid of all the air in water.
Also the game really runs a lot smoother with this version.
Keep up the good work.

[Inocudom]

How well does this work with liquid_finite turned on?

[Topywo]

The new plants and corals look awesome! :)
I hope you can find a way to get rid of all the air in water.
Also the game really runs a lot smoother with this version.
Keep up the good work.

Thanks :-)

I'm still not sure if "waterbubblesalmostgone" helps or the bubbles will disappear anyway.

I'm glad this sea version runs smoother.

How well does this work with liquid_finite turned on?

Almost always I use the 'standard' minetest.conf (+jungles and dungeons).

I just added:

liquid_finite = 1
liquid_update = 0.2
liquid_relax = 2

and tried out a new world. It looks like it works as well with liquid_finite turned on.


Edit: Tried it again, because I didn't test removing seaplants and corals. Removing them will cause airblocks (solution causing the problem :-p ), However, after a while the seaplants and coral will regrow 'removing' the airblocks. There may stay a problem for seaplants that have been partly harvested.

I'll think about this for a while. Too much block changing will cause glitching. Are there many players using finite?

[jenova99sephiros]

i love it!

[GJH105775]

Nice, +1 for sure.

[Wuzzy]

I installed and activated the modpack but not and corals of anything else “sea-like” spawned so far. :-(

[Topywo]

i love it!

Nice, +1 for sure.

Thanks! :-)

[Topywo]

I installed and activated the modpack but not and corals of anything else “sea-like” spawned so far. :-(

Try exiting and restarting the game.

Sometimes with testing I had to wait too and then 'suddenly' a lot appeared at the same time.

[Jouster27]

Could you alias the 0.2.0 items in 0.3.1 so we don't have a bunch of unknown blocks, please?