GalianRyu wrote:Indeed. One of the things I want to see if we can do is to "even out" the cultures a bit. Right now what we have is 'Normans having huge depth and scale, but feeling very old (almost like their buildings were designed in Minecraft Alpha lol), other cultures feeling more modern, but much smaller and tacked on.' I was waiting until I was closer to release to start the hype engine, but here is what I'd like to do (with Kinniken's blessing):
- Replace the default Norman buildings with ones from or very close to Crik-Crok's "Total Norman Replacement."
- Update several Byzantine buildings: several buildings, especially the player houses and lone buildings, missed some previous update, they look different (and have brick instead of the clay tile).
- More Japanese villagers and dialog options. Right now they spend far too much time just talking about being tired.
- Update Hindi buildings. Maybe it's just me, but the Hindi buildings feel very plain compared to the others. Even the Mahal (which is literally supposed to be a fancy palace), feels like there should be more to it. Maybe it's because they already had more custom blocks than most (with the various cooked bricks), but maybe they could make use of some of the new stones from 1.8 then? I dunno, but they almost feel like they need a "complete replacement" style change as well.
- More village types for other cultures. There should be something like the Fort and Hamlet villages in the Byzantine and Japanese cultures I feel, and the Hindi should have some other type, I'm just not sure what.
- More quests. The Normans have about 10-12 different quests, the most any other culture has is 5. Plus each culture should have a Creation Quest, and I feel they should be somewhat cohesive, that they are all pieces of a story on how the Millenaire people, and the player, ended up here.
- Include the Inuits. By all accounts, this was the next culture to be included in Millenaire, and if Filinoel thinks they're ready, they'd certainly be a welcome addition. I will be honest though, i never downloaded them before, so I don't truly know where their at.
And bear in mind, I don't need you guys to go make a ton of things (to work in the current system), I'm having to overhaul the custom content import anyway. Whatever changes we all agree to; text files, screenshots, world files that have the building designs you have built out will be fine. These are a lot of changes, but I'm hoping the people who make custom content can help me get them ready, and that way Millenaire won't just be back, it will be better than ever.
I may say hooray for the update at all, for the Norman improvements, including Inuits etc.
I'm so thankfull that You are working on it
If You don't mind, I will post here a few suggestions, maybe some of them may be helpful?
What I may suggest is including some food crafting recipes for the Japanese, to craft udon or ikayaki, because I love the crafting recipes that hindi and mayan culture posess, and not having them for japanese food is a sad thing. They may use the squid ink, some grass and fish, and rice of course.
Including the new 1.8 blocks in Millenaire buildings would be cool stuff also. For now, we can't sell them acacia wood, as they don't recognise it, and they treat mesa clay as an "artificial" block, sometimes blocking the building site. If they could build anything using acacia or dark oak wood, or with mesa clay or granite, diorite etc, it would be cool.
But I don't agree with total reworking of the Hindi culture. They are one of my favourite cultures in Millenaire, and I think their buldings look quite good. There is a "hindi" desert feel into it. Of course, they might need some improvements here or there, as You have mentioned the palace (and the village temple is a bit boring too), but the general feel of Hindi villages is OK for me.
What I love the most is the Hindi brick moulding tool, and I think that the mesa clay would be inherited in their building style, but please, don't remove the Hindi bricks!
For the long time there is a bug which makes Millenaire decorations such as hindi statues, norman tapestries and mayan carvings not work. They are just invisible in game. If they could be working somehow in the updated and reworked version, some buildings may look way much better
I think that granite, andesite and diorite suits best for Norman or Mayan, not for the Hindi buildings.
I may also suggest to include the SoNick stable mod from Library into Millenaire, as it is great addition after the horses joined Minecraft. SoNick made great stables, just the norman one may use some timber frame (in my opinion), and the Hindi and Byzantine should have double doors instead of fence gates. But the Byzantine stable has a cool NPC with a saddle shop, which is great. It may be added to other cultures as well. And in the Millenaire items listing file there is a bug, the Millenaire silk is listed twice, in one place overwriting the Minecraft spider string. This is a bug making SoNick stable shop hard to play with, as he designed it to make saddles from spider strings. As You are rewriting the whole mod, I hope there will be no silk overwriting the string issue anymore
I may also suggest that since Minecraft 1.8 adds the sheep / lamb meat, there is no longer a need for the Millenaire special lamb meat in Byzantine culture. They would just produce and sell regular Minecraft lamb meat instead.
Some culture may have the use of the rabbits, maybe the rabbit farm? Normans already grow carrots, they could have the rabbit farm, and sell the Minecraft rabbit dish. Or maybe Inuits? I'm not sure if Inuits knew the rabbits or not, just think that Normans already have many additions, and maybe Inuits are not as well developed and may need some new kind of farm.
I noticed that Millenaire doesn't recognize the regular Minecraft NPC villages. I mean, Minecraft NPC villages are invisible on Millenaire village map, as a place free to build. I think this should be changed, as the Minecraft NPC villages are also a nice thing. The places where there are both villages spawned - the Minecraft vanilla NPC and the Millenire village, are a cool place to live and play
It adds to the variety of the game. But, sadly, wherever I find such a place, I must carefully surround all the Minecraft vanilla NPC village buildings with cobblestone and water, since the well is the only building recognized by Millenaire village as something disturbing their building site. So they will not build on a cavern or a ravine, on a to much steep, water and on cobblestone or other "artificial" blocks, but they will bulldoze all the Minecraft vanilla NPC houses. And I found it rather strange, that cobblestone is an "artificial" block for them, but the stone bricks doesn't. I built the brigde of stone bricks near one of the villages and it was also invisible on a village map, as it would be made out of dirt, so they are able to destroy it to build some lumberman hut there. I mean, if cobblestone is artificial, maybe stone bricks should be too?
I think that minecraft vanilla NPC villages are able to be bulldozed, because the material their roofs are made of is also not listed as "artificial" in Millenaire. Sandstone should be left as a natural block, since it could be spawned on the desert, but the sandstone stairs (common on desert villages roofs) and the wooden stairs (common as roof at the villages other biomes) may be added to the Millenaire artificial block list, not allowing to build on them. This way the vanilla NPC villages should be safe
. Also I don't know if that is possible, but could you try to make villagers walk faster when they are building? There are some buildings that take an eternity to upgrade. Mainly the Norman and Byzantine castle when moats are added because the villager has to circle the wall entirely several times