A new era.

A new era.
Industrial Craft is entering a new era. Gone is the old eNet, recipes, textures, and general way of doing things. Everything about the mod is changing under the title "experimental". IC2Exp is far from done, but I have one simple question for when it "is":


What happens next?




Under this question:
Will it be Industrial Craft 3?
What will become of the old forum?
Will it go up on Curseforge or other mod distro?
(Note that all of these are assuming that Alblanka doesn't return or pull an Elo.)


When/if IC2Exp gets to the point where it is considered complete, I think that these need to be addressed. Take the forum, for instance. It is running very old forum software, and although people have become accustomed to it and love their post counts, it is honestly a terribly designed forum. Both aesthetically and functionally the IC2 forum is a mess. What will become of it? I propose a cleaner, more minimal forum that is first and formost a website. One like the BC website, just far less ugly and one that puts forum right at the forefront. I think that the idea of everything being a thread is just utter shit, I mean just look at the Gregtech thread. It is a total mess, restricted by the confines of a forum thread.


Now if you were to take a different approach, one where there was a website, and under it there were several tabs, you could solve this issue. For instance, you would have an about page, a wiki page, a bugtracker page, and a download page. Then you would have a "hub" for addons (and texture packs). Bigger addons would recieve higher status and be on the top of the list. Now, under this system, Gregtech or something like GraviSuite, would have a page, one that could be styled to fit the addon without the confines of an OP.


The forum would be for discussion. It would be a place to talk about mods, post guides and info and such. It wouldn't be a garbled mess of mod downloads, idea threads, suggestions and discussion. A forum is for the sharing of knowledge and discussion, not for download links and texture packs.


Tell me what you think.


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Now as for the mod itself, I think that several big things need to be done.


First is the GUIs. Sirus's texturing work is nice, and tooltips help a ton, but right now IC2Exp GUIs are rather cluttered. They are tough to navigate and are a bit strange. Something more userFriendly would aid the User Experience tremendously.


Second is magic boxes. IC2 is splitting from the TE way of doing things. IC2's main differentiator from the RF world besides many of the obvious things, is that it is more difficult and takes time to achieve the reward rather than letting a magic explosionProof box do the work for you.


The current mutliblock trend is helping this, but what I think would add to the IC2 experience greatly is to take cues from MC itself. Minecraft has the best multiblocks ever: Redstone and minecarts. The way to automate in minecraft requires sprawling complexes to house complex redstone/water/minecart/piston contraptions to farm food and process materials. The user determines the multiblock, not some 3x3x3 dimension.


The issue with this is server lag, of course, but in 1.8 this is all but removed entirely. As for 1.7, it is up to the devs.


Basically I think that "magic boxes" are far less fun than something like a factory. Instead of adding one little blast furnace block, maybe add a blast furnace process. Give the user options, tell them to find a way to heat up some sort of space and add some compressed air through any series of methods, that can be timed with redstone or automated with minecarts. This is intentionally vague, but I hope my idea got across.


Tell me what you think.


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Finally, I will disclaim that I am on some serious meds for my 2nd round of wisdom teeth being taken out this morning, so if this makes little sense, or I made a slip up here or there, feel free to yell at me.

By the way, here is something I did whilst bored yesterday: [image attatched]

It is a mockup of a concept GT website. I think some of the principles could apply to a concept IC3 website, so I decided to reupload.

Quote from Chocohead

How are the GUIs cluttered? If there were, then I'd suggest something similar to the way Binnie did it for Extra Bees and Trees, so that holding shift over a section would explain it, and show where the item you shift clicked on would go. But IMO they're fine, and there's not really any good way to "declutter" them, since everything which is there needs to be.

Less cluttered, more strange. Lots of black borders, and the canner has a very strange layout. I meant that they could be very easily simplified.

Quote from Chocohead

Making multi-blocks for things that don't need it? The coke oven from Railcraft was only a multi-block because there was going to be a different way of getting creosote oil from smelting coal. It was new and different, as nothing else really had multi-blocks. Now it seems many mods do it, when it's really not necessary. IC2's way of small scale multi-blocks like the steam generator are flexible, but most of it could be done remotely if necessary. I think the way IC2 has made small scale multi-blocks in the form of heat and kinetic generators and receivers is suitable and has no need to be drastically changed. And reactors, if a little lead heavy for the amount that is generated, are fine too.

I agree here somewhat. I like what you said about ic2's small scale multiblocks (the nuclear reactor was among the first), but I also think that something like an ore washing plant could be made into an actual plant, not just a block. This means more blocks required, which could also remove some of the recipes from machines, removing that horribly-dubbed-and-somewhat-incorrect-but-nevertheless-complained-about-crafting-"tedium"

Quote from Chocohead

That's just adding steps because you can. Making it difficult for people just puts them off. When there's a compressor, there is no need for specific timing or fancy over the top automation, because Pnumaticraft does things with air, IC2 just adds it to make the blast furnace a little more exciting. The blast furnace makes one thing, and that is refined iron. Maybe if it was more core to IC2, like if it made plates, then perhaps it could do with something a little more, but it doesn't.

You are correct, this was a poor example.

Quote from Chocohead

http://www.industrial-craft.net/ There you go. Were it not abandoned, and maybe tweaked a little, it seems to fit perfectly with what you describe.

Exactly. It is abandoned. And I agree with you that it would fit perfectly, albeit with some design tweaks. (is alblanka the owner though?)

Quote from Chocohead

The IC2 forum is fine. I can't see why it is necessary to mess with something that functionally, fits it's purpose. The mess is caused from having a finished threads section, but it not being used. The issue if you start removing old things, is if someone is still doing something, and suddenly they make a duplicate because it' been taken away. Granted, things like the addons, suggestions and support threads need cleaning, but someone will ask why is this happening, or make a suggestion that is a duplicate of one has been moved. Not to mention the time factor of shifting every over.

I agree that it is "fine", but "fine" is not good enough. That is why I think a new forum would be needed with IC3, so it could start fresh- hence "a new era". There would be no need to move over.

Quote from Chocohead

No. Why should we bend down to Curse when we have perfectly good ways of distributing it ourselves? That and we never have, so there is no reason to have a duplicate download link which would need to get updated as well.

I don't really care here either way, but some people prefer Curse's method. It is rather nice actually, and despite Curse's usuall shittiness they have done a remarkable job- so it shouldn't be too hard.

That said, I agree with you here.

Quote from Chocohead

When the E-net's finished.

I am aware of that, sorry I meant to cut that part from the OP.

Quote from Chocohead

Pyure

Quote from Pyure

With regards to the forum being fine-as-is:

As someone with only passing familiarity with this forum specifically, I can agree with the OP that its...a bit of a clustersomething.

Generally speaking, I can't make heads or tails of it. Finding what I want is nearly impossible, and the amount of text on the screen is overwhelming.

This is in contrast to...well, seriously, every other forum I've ever seen in the last 10 years. Functionally it may work for veterans on this forum, but its offputting for new players in general, and those who are accustomed to, say, the FTB forum in particular.

Regarding the E-Net: how the hell do I find info on it? Is there any public info, or is everyone basically just being patient until we learn what it will entail? My googling is failing hard here.

Regarding multi-blocks: Agree with the OP mostly. I love multiblocks, pointless or otherwise.

Regarding multi-processes: Agree, but understand that this is far outside the scope of the project.

Regarding Thursdays: they should act more like Fridays.

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First off, glad to see you on this forum

Secondly, I agree with your points here, and I have a feeling they are echoed throughout new and old users alike.

Quote from Chocohead

Sure, but imer can still use/change it, so that won't be a problem.

I think he's being overly mean on Thursdays. Mondays and Tuesdays are way worse

Those damned mondays. Fuck those guys.