A mod idea...

[Bluehorazon]

Well the first thing you might want to do is to check what a village should be able to do.

While Miner would be a nice job, the question still exists if villagers should be allowed to mine. Also it would make sense to create mechanics that actually create some economy.

So there are some questions that need to be taken care of, since it actually changes a lot:

1. Should Villages expand on themself?

A Village would have several types of Buildings. Community-Buildings like the well or propably a church, buildings for processing like a forge and of course living-space. So you might also want to look into the weird decision of villagers to live within every "thing" that has a 3 doors etc. Villages expending on themself could lead to some troubles, exspecially if they have to clear ground for it.

2. How much should a village be allowed to change it's surrounding?

Choping down trees and replanting them or planting some wheat is not such a problem. But if they go to harvest sand, or even mine they could drastically change the landscape. This could be a bad idea.

3. Should Villages develop based on there ressources or should ressource-needs develop based on the idea of building a certain object?

They could either tell the player that they want to build a forge and need certain materials or the player cells them certain materials and they decide to build a forge. The former is propably easier to code, the later would be a bit more realistic.

 

[Democretes]

But if they have cobble, couldn't they just make a Furnace?

They still would have to get fuel for it. If they have no fuel, then they stop selling/start accepting stone and items crafted from it.

 

[ShneekeyTheLost]

Drive-by thought: "Miner" might be another job role for a villager.

The Miner and Quarry building are already under consideration.

The Town Hall includes a Baker with Furnaces which cook food as well as wood into charcoal as needed

There's also a 'tier 2' building Stonemasonry, which has more furnaces, and the Stonemason will turn Cobble into smoothstone and stone bricks, and starts actually replacing all the cobble in the village with stone brick. prioritizing the walls first. However, until he shows up, the villagers really have no interest in smoothstone or its byproducts, so it has no value to them.

Other Tier 2 buildings include the Enchantment Study and the Brewery. Despite needing diamonds/obsidian for the enchantment study and blaze rods for the brewery, the blocks in the buildings are non-functional to players, and won't drop anything if broken.

As far as the trade system... If they don't see a viable use for the item in question, they won't want it. It doesn't really matter how 'expensive' an item is, if they can't use it, then it is effectively valueless to them.

There's also an idea of a 'Training Manual' which you can combine with higher tier vanilla items (a process which consumes xp, because you are literally sharing your experiences) to 'teach' the village about them. For example, iron tools and armor might be largely beyond them until you teach them how to make them. Once you make them, however, they will start producing them and distributing them among the villagers. Only after all the villagers are 'equipped' will there be a chance of any for sale. Villagers are smart that way: equip yourself first, and only sell surplus.

He also had a great idea about putting villages in extremely hilly/mountainous terrain on nether-fortress-like pillars and foundation. That way, you've got a good village, that looks cool and you don't have situations like a street suddenly vanishing as it goes 'over' a ravine or down a cliff. Pathways up to the village might also be a 'thing', however they're likely to be things like switchback trails... and Archers are planned to man the walls and have the upgraded skeleton targeting package, which makes it extremely defensible for them.

 

[Exedra]

This looks like it would be great. I've always been bored by villages, and only go there to steal their farms and their loot. With this, thye would be much more exciting.

 

[ShneekeyTheLost]

Now, do keep in mind that everything is still in the 'theoretical' stage. Arkangyl is pretty much going to be doing most of the coding, since I can't even get a proper install of Eclipse to work for some reason (the version in the Ubuntu Software Center is archaic, and the one from the website is a PITA to manually install since the tarball isn't playing nice). He's looking into the appropriate code from MCP and Forge, but we're realistically looking at 'possibly months of work' at an absolute *minimum* before we can even get solidified what we are going to be capable of doing.

In other words, you know how some mod authors have a listed release date of 'Soon(tm)'? I can definitively state that this will take longer than that. Let's call it "Not Soon(tm)" for now. We're not even using the Blizzard definition of 'Soon', more like the Duke Nukem Forever version.

With that caveat, here's some more teasing on our 'wishlist':

• Non-neutonian blocks as a foundation for the entire village. This goes under everything else, so you don't have the problems that vanilla villages have with, for example, the gravel streets going down into a Ravine
• Foundation material will depend on the biome. Desert biomes use sandstone, arctic biomes use snow, temperate biomes use cobble, watery biomes use wood planks. Yes, we are planning on having a village on stilts in swamps. Another idea was an underwater city in ocean biome, covered by a dome of glass. Another idea was floating island cities. For obvious reasons, these start out with multiple Iron Golems and tend to have an 'overgrown' look, using mossy cobble and extensive use of vines.
• Tiered building spawning mechanics, with a prerequisite system. For example, you'll need a Town Hall, a Residence, and a Farm to permit pretty much any other building to spawn.
• Villagers consume food to produce work, which is why the Farm is prioritized
• Quarry, Forge, Lumbermill, Ranch, and Reed Farm are 'Tier 1' buildings
• Library is a 'Tier 1.5' building
• Enchanting Study and Brewery are 'Tier 2' buildings
• 'Martial' Villagers include: Guard, Archer, Alchemist (requires Brewery, uses splash potions like a Witch, as well as beneficial ones on other villagers)
• Other building types which serve no 'utilitarian' function also exist, such as Church, Fountain, Garden, Well, and Park.
• Improved Iron Golem mechanics, with respect to villagers. Player-created ones are unaffected
• Tier 1 walls are built after a Quarry is established, using the vanilla Cobblestone Wall blocks
• Much more intelligent lighting layout to keep the entire village well lit.
• Tier 2 walls have a catwalk which archers prefer to be on, and will snipe from their vantage point
• Ire system lets the villagers get very upset with Players who 'grief' them. They will blame Players for explosions
• You can pay a 'fine' to reduce Ire. As the amount of Ire goes up, the fine per point of Ire increases
• If you get enough Ire, you get flagged as 'Hostile' to the town.
• Growth mechanic is revamped. Villages can continue to grow and build new buildings, depending on their resources. No more door farms.
• Players can influence which buildings they make by providing or denying them key resources necessary for construction
• Compatibility with mods that add new village buildings and villagers is a high priority, but might be difficult to code properly

Village construction mechanics will come first, then Growth Mechanic, then Villager AI.

Initial development stage will be Closed Source, because we want everything to be at least standardized before we go Open Source. Once we get the core coding formalized, however, this may well change. If we give up on the project, we will likely release what we have as Open Source so any interested parties can pick up where we left off.

Working name is 'VillageCraft'.

 

[Yuka]

Ooh, this sounds really awesome, really gonna be looking forward to it, don't care how long it takes, the wait will probably be worth it.

 

[Chocorate]

The mods seems amazing, I just hope it will be simpler than Millenaire. Also I hope it will be less sensitive to change in the architecture.. I hate having to make all the houses the same and not being able to live among the villagers..

 

[ShneekeyTheLost]

The mods seems amazing, I just hope it will be simpler than Millenaire. Also I hope it will be less sensitive to change in the architecture.. I hate having to make all the houses the same and not being able to live among the villagers..

It is going to be simpler than Millenaire. Specifically, we have no current intentions of any sort of a quest or faction mechanic. There also will be almost no new blocks added, all of the buildings will be built with vanilla blocks. We are also using the existing testificates as the basis of what we are doing, rather than making a parallel NPC system. Right now, the only blocks we are looking at will be 'dummy' blocks which look like higher-tier created blocks (anvil, enchanting table), but are functionless for Players and don't drop anything when broken. This is done purely to discourage player griefing or permitting them early access to such valuable resources. Oh, and the locked chest, which players won't ever be able to access.

I don't know what you mean about sensitive to change in the architecture, but the villagers won't like it if you start tearing down buildings, you'll find yourself quickly flagged as 'hostile' if you do that. If you mean door farms, then no, that's going away. New breeding mechanics are basically 'if there is room in the village for more villagers, there's a chance one will spawn at night. If there isn't, a new building with room for villagers will be built'. Out to a certain point, of course. We're still deciding on how large they can get, but they will be (potentially, anyways) significantly larger than vanilla villages are. Individual buildings are certainly going to be larger, on average, than vanilla ones are, at least.

Starting a village won't be easy, and we're still trying to decide how we're going to do it, or if it is really possible.

 

[Chocorate]

It is going to be simpler than Millenaire. Specifically, we have no current intentions of any sort of a quest or faction mechanic. There also will be almost no new blocks added, all of the buildings will be built with vanilla blocks. We are also using the existing testificates as the basis of what we are doing, rather than making a parallel NPC system. Right now, the only blocks we are looking at will be 'dummy' blocks which look like higher-tier created blocks (anvil, enchanting table), but are functionless for Players and don't drop anything when broken. This is done purely to discourage player griefing or permitting them early access to such valuable resources. Oh, and the locked chest, which players won't ever be able to access.

I don't know what you mean about sensitive to change in the architecture, but the villagers won't like it if you start tearing down buildings, you'll find yourself quickly flagged as 'hostile' if you do that. If you mean door farms, then no, that's going away. New breeding mechanics are basically 'if there is room in the village for more villagers, there's a chance one will spawn at night. If there isn't, a new building with room for villagers will be built'. Out to a certain point, of course. We're still deciding on how large they can get, but they will be (potentially, anyways) significantly larger than vanilla villages are. Individual buildings are certainly going to be larger, on average, than vanilla ones are, at least.

Starting a village won't be easy, and we're still trying to decide how we're going to do it, or if it is really possible.

What I meant by architecture sensitivity is how in some mods, the village system will just sort of break. It's nice that they will actually respond to it instead of just breaking. So excited for this mod, I have a good feeling it'll turn out great and easy to understand C:

 

[Pundite]

Now I realize I came to this thread a little late, but I love this idea and would like to place a suggestion in regards to the guards. I apologize if the suggestion is unwanted. I myself find suggestions to be tiresome at times, but I have dreamed of this project since I first got Minecraft. If the guards were to have armor slots similar to the player's that could be interacted with. Perhaps they have a default armor rating of full leather armor and the damage rating of a wooden sword... then a player could use armor and a weapon on that guard, thus improving their gear level and appearance. All items given do not lose durability, but at the same time can not be taken back to prevent griefing. Items given to the NPC will over-write the current item, but only if the item is superior quality to the current one, once again, to prevent griefing. (I.E. A player can give a guard a diamond sword to replace an iron one, but the guard can not accept an iron sword if it already has a diamond one.) Enchanted items still hold their enchantments (I.E.: Thorns still damages enemies, but loses no durability) and keep their enchanted appearance. An enchanted item will over-write their non-enchanted counterparts. For example, as with the quality of an item (stone, iron, diamond) enchanted items have priority over non-enchanted.

Since wood and leather are default, the item list goes as follows Default Equipment < Enchanted Wood/Leather < Stone < Enchanted Stone < Gold <Enchanted Gold < Iron <Enchanted Iron < Diamond < Enchanted Diamond < Additional Item Mods (Perhaps Knightly)

As for the Guard's A.I., I am completely incompetent with code, but as a light suggestion I feel they should share a similar set-up to the player-made iron golem guardians with the A.I. upgrade. Perhaps instead of attacking Creepers, they carry a torch at night and can make the creeper flee the guard to prevent any unwanted detonations.

All of this is just a suggestion, and of course, a pipe dream of mine. If you find any of these ideas to your liking, hooray. If not, I still eagerly await your mod. Please message me upon completion or upon testing with a link or file for manual download. If you would like any input at all, I eagerly await.

 

[eric167]

I just found this, and I have to say it sounds interesting. ill follow this.

 

[Algester]

reminds me of the sims mod but since the sims mod adds its own entities much like millianaire mod I don't think that would work... hmmm I dont think millainaire had something similar but will the villages also set up a trading route between nearby explored villages?