[Mod] Lost and Found [lostandfound] (WIP)

[Ben]

Lost and Found mod

This mod modifies the way inventory items are lost on player death, or rather, how they are obtained again after losing them. The traditional method is that inventory items are dropped or placed at the place the player died bones mod and similar). This allows the player to return to that place and reclaim the lost items, if they hurry. Which is therefore what most players do.

In Lost and Found, items are "in limbo" after death. The player has no direct way of accessing them. Instead, such lost items are gradually "found" over time, and can be picked up at special "lost and found" nodes.

The motivation is to encourage "backup equipment". If the player loses an important tool (e.g. a diamond pickaxe), it now makes sense to have a spare at home. Also, the phase after death is a bit more relaxed, because nothing is permanently lost and nothing but patience will bring them back.

Current behavior

A new "Lost and Found" node is introduced. At the moment, this needs to be placed via creative inventory or otherwise cheated in; there are no crafting recipes.

When a player dies, the "main" and "craft" inventories are cleared into a hidden per-player inventory with size 64 (enough for two fully laden deaths, not counting "craft"). This inventory is then drained over time into a 16-slot inventory accessible through the "Lost and Found" nodes.

For development, the speed of this draining is greatly increased. In addition, a "Lost and Found debug" node is available, which shows the "lost" inventory, but offers little interaction.

Future plans

• Tune the draining process
• Disallow placing items into the Lost and Found chests
• Implement list rings for the formspec
• An on-screen indicator when you have waiting items

Version: 0.1.0
License: Code LGPL 2, Textures CC-BY-SA

Download:

• Version 0.1.0 (.zip)

Dependencies:
None

[Ben]

Just throwin' this out real quick – screenshots to follow at some point. Not that there's much to see so far.

Feedback welcome, especially the "what's the point?" kind ;-) I'd love to discuss the game mechanic in general, not just the mod itself.

[Don]

Really neat idea.
Question. If I die when my items goes into the lost and found can anyone get the items?

[Ben]

If I die when my items goes into the lost and found can anyone get the items?

Nope! It's like a MC ender chest, except you don't fill it. Well, not on purpose, that is ;-)

Technical reason: these are all additional player inventories, which the formspec just makes accessible.

[Ferk]

This mitigates the threat of going out exploring too far away from home. Though depending how it's done it might make it way too easy, to the point that people might as well just kill themselves to go back home and get their stuff from the node after dinner.

On the other hand, it could make it harder for deaths that are closer to your home. Instead of walking a bit to go and pick the stuff from your bones you will have to wait longer.

I guess it would make sense for the items to stay longer in limbo the further away your death happened.

Also: what if I die multiple times before I'm able to collect my stuff from limbo, what happens when there's no space left? Do old items disappear to make space for the new ones, or do the new ones simply get lost?

[Ben]

@Ferk: Ok, simple questions first:

If there is no more space left for lost items, they will currently fall to the ground, as in the bones mod (check the code ;-) ). This is less than ideal; the plan is to resize the hidden inventory on the fly. I don't know if this is really possible, nor how good the idea is.

Items staying lost longer when you lose them far from home: this would make the code a lot more complex, but more importantly I don't know where the spawning point is. My understanding is that the "spawning point" is wherever the mod in control of spawning teleports you to. I could stash the items on respawn, not on death, but that seems very glitchy and unreliable.

As to your first observations: yes, you're absolutely right. This makes the distance to death irrelevant. It would be interesting to see the actions and thoughts of players on a server which implemented this mod without them choosing it.

One thing to note, though: the "found" inventory is usually half the size of your full inventory, so it's not the delayed delivery service one might fear it is.

[Ferk]

I don't know where the spawning point is

You might not need to depend on the spawning point necessarily. It could be in function of the position of the node where the player has to go to pick their stuff.

Even if the "found" node was far away from home and closer to the death place, this would force the player to walk all the way to where the found node is.

But yeah.. if it's too complicated to code maybe this would require some testing first to see if it actually really matters.

EDIT: oh.. I just realised that your found node is probably sort of like an ender chest, so its placement wouldn't really matter and you could have multiple found nodes in different places with a shared inventory.

[Ben]

Yes, in fact it's currently too much like an ender chest – until I learn how to stop players from putting stuff in and only allow them to take stuff out :-P

I'm also concerned about how to get such a L&F chest. I first thought it would need to be expensive, or even un-craftable, imagining one L&F office per player settlement, placed by admins. But singleplayer needs at least one such chest, or else they permanently lose everything. So maybe add one to starting inventory?

Then I realized that, since it does not work like an ender chest, the actual cost and availability of L&F chests is irrelevant – the actual price is the waiting. So I'll most likely pick some simple crafting recipe, and be done with it.

[benrob0329]

Coal Blocks?

[Ben]

Hey everyone, I'm putting this mod on hold until I can find a way to either block players from putting items into their own inventories, or find another way to store lost & found items and make them available.

Ideas welcome :-)

[TenPlus1]

Personally I prefer the DroponDie mod where you lose everything when you die and players nearby can pick them up... That definitely forces you to be more careful with your items...