[Mod] Pontoons for construction on liquid [pontoons]

[FaceDeer]

This mod adds some simple building blocks that can be placed on top of liquid, making it easier to construct things on a body of water without needing to first build a piling from the ground underneath. There are both wood pontoons and steel pontoons (for building your floating lava-castle on).

It also allows existing wood and tree blocks to have this property added to them. Since a wood block is equivalent to a wood pontoon, wood pontoons are disabled by default. See the mod's settings under "advanced settings" for enabling wood pontoons.

Dependencies: No hard dependencies.
License: MIT

Links

• GitHub
• Download

[octacian]

Nice idea! Screenshot?

[FaceDeer]

Nice idea! Screenshot?

Slipped my mind, got one up now.

[Chibi ghost]

interesting idea

[texmex]

Hey FaceDeer, great to see this came into being!

I like how you didn't go with any leather dependancy and stuck to default blocks. Also great that you diversified it for lava use as well, didn't even think of that!

The mod should be considered for inclusion in mt_game when it's finished as it opens up richer gameplay at sea, in combination with the water bubble bug hopefully becoming solved.

Is the 1.0 milestone the same as the "enforce buoyancy" feature?

Kudos!

[azekill_DIABLO]

it's a must for building a floting city

[FaceDeer]

Hey FaceDeer, great to see this came into being!

No problem. Initially I was kind of at a loss for how to make this work, but then I had a head-slap moment: buckets can be used on water blocks, I could just look at how those do it. Turns out it's really simple. :) The bulk of this mod's work is just overriding all the node definitions belonging to "wood" and "tree" groups to add "liquids_pointable = true" to them. The specialized pontoon blocks are almost superfluous after doing that (aside from the lava-proof one, of course)

Note that this mod should work for any other wood and tree group blocks as well, just add them to the dependencies.txt to ensure that they get loaded before this mod does (otherwise it won't have the opportunity to override them). I added [moretrees], but didn't go on an extensive search looking for other tree-related mods so if anyone knows of some they'd like this mod to support just let me know.

Is the 1.0 milestone the same as the "enforce buoyancy" feature?

If you mean the thing we talked about in PM about pontoons rising to the surface and dragging the stuff built on them up with them, it's probably going to be a while before I get to it. Moving arrays of nodes around is hard work and for Minetest it'll be a bit of an edge case since water is normally pretty static (though I've done what I can to fix that :)). I mainly just called this version 0.5 because since it's the initial commit I'm sure there are plenty of unknown bugs and minor missing features that people are going to tell me about now that it's posted.

[texmex]

No problem. Initially I was kind of at a loss for how to make this work, but then I had a head-slap moment: buckets can be used on water blocks, I could just look at how those do it. Turns out it's really simple. :) The bulk of this mod's work is just overriding all the node definitions belonging to "wood" and "tree" groups to add "liquids_pointable = true" to them. The specialized pontoon blocks are almost superfluous after doing that (aside from the lava-proof one, of course)

I feel bad for not pointing that out now, because I noticed the special treatment of buckets, boats and such in relation to liquids really early on. Sorry! :)

If you mean the thing we talked about in PM about pontoons rising to the surface and dragging the stuff built on them up with them, it's probably going to be a while before I get to it. Moving arrays of nodes around is hard work and for Minetest it'll be a bit of an edge case since water is normally pretty static (though I've done what I can to fix that :)). I mainly just called this version 0.5 because since it's the initial commit I'm sure there are plenty of unknown bugs and minor missing features that people are going to tell me about now that it's posted.

Actually I wouldn't dare to dream that big for Minetest. My aim was the first step really, that the buoyant block rises to the surface if placed underwater with nothing other than water above it.

If another solid block is placed above half way to the surface it and then removed the realistic thing for it to do would be to continue to rise, but I know for that to happen a whole other taxing piece of code needs to run so that part is not justified in my opinion.

[FaceDeer]

Actually I wouldn't dare to dream that big for Minetest. My aim was the first step really, that the buoyant block rises to the surface if placed underwater with nothing other than water above it.

If another solid block is placed above half way to the surface it and then removed the realistic thing for it to do would be to continue to rise, but I know for that to happen a whole other taxing piece of code needs to run so that part is not justified in my opinion.

Oh, that. :) Yeah, that part isn't hard. I'll look into setting that up tonight. I'll probably want that behaviour to be pontoon-specific rather than applying to wood or trees, though, in case people want to build pilings or ocean-bottom wooden structures.

[texmex]

Oh, that. :) Yeah, that part isn't hard. I'll look into setting that up tonight. I'll probably want that behaviour to be pontoon-specific rather than applying to wood or trees, though, in case people want to build pilings or ocean-bottom wooden structures.

Yes, only for poontoons, or people will have to build bottom-up :)

I've noticed that falling nodes falls smoothly and not in block-sized steps. It would be so cool if this could be reversed for floatables, but I'm going to guess that's a hardcoded engine feature specifically written for falling blocks. Anyway, a non-smooth movement is fine too of course.

[texmex]

Just had another of those ideas… Wouldn't it add to the experience to include hollow-sounding punch sounds in the mod? One for wood, another one for metal?

[FaceDeer]

I've noticed that falling nodes falls smoothly and not in block-sized steps. It would be so cool if this could be reversed for floatables, but I'm going to guess that's a hardcoded engine feature specifically written for falling blocks. Anyway, a non-smooth movement is fine too of course.

Actually, it's not hard-coded. Falling blocks turn themselves into entities, which move smoothly and then turn back into nodes again once they hit ground. I've never done the coding for that myself but I remember looking over some of it and it seemed simple enough, at least for nodes that don't have fancy metadata or inventories to worry about.

Before you ask, redoing Digtron to use entities like that would be rather a lot more complicated. :) There are a few mods I've seen out there that allow groups of nodes to move by fusing them together into one big entity, but the resulting object isn't capable of complex operations. It's just a big inert monolithic thing that looks like it's made out of a bunch of nodes.

I'll look into something like that for pontoons, though. If it works like I think it should the pontoon block would not actually be *built* when you tried placing it underwater, it would just spawn an entity that would move upward until it hit surface or obstruction and turned into the node at that spot.

As for sounds, I just grabbed the wood and metal defaults as an expeditious way to get the mod rolled out. If you know of a good freely-licensed hollow thud sound I could swap that in.

[texmex]

Actually, it's not hard-coded. Falling blocks turn themselves into entities, which move smoothly and then turn back into nodes again once they hit ground. I've never done the coding for that myself but I remember looking over some of it and it seemed simple enough, at least for nodes that don't have fancy metadata or inventories to worry about.

That is good news then! Sweet…

Before you ask, redoing Digtron to use entities like that would be rather a lot more complicated. :) There are a few mods I've seen out there that allow groups of nodes to move by fusing them together into one big entity, but the resulting object isn't capable of complex operations. It's just a big inert monolithic thing that looks like it's made out of a bunch of nodes.

Wouldn't dream of it :D Mainly because the nature of that masterpiece of a beast is and should be jerky. I've also tried the meshnode mod, it seems… hacky.

I'll look into something like that for pontoons, though. If it works like I think it should the pontoon block would not actually be *built* when you tried placing it underwater, it would just spawn an entity that would move upward until it hit surface or obstruction and turned into the node at that spot.

That will be 100% fulfilling of that particular idea for me.

As for sounds, I just grabbed the wood and metal defaults as an expeditious way to get the mod rolled out. If you know of a good freely-licensed hollow thud sound I could swap that in.

I can look for it, or experiment with those sounds and audio filters. Would be cool to build upon the default ones.

[texmex]

Hey FaceDeer! I've tried the falling_extras mod and it could contain valuable code for forcing pontoons to float to the surface on placement.

I managed to create negative gravity with the mod simply by modifying this line as Wuzzy suggested was possible.

Here's how it behaved when gravity was negated.

+ Spoiler

[TumeniNodes]

Hey FaceDeer! I've tried the falling_extras mod and it could contain valuable code for forcing pontoons to float to the surface on placement.

I managed to create negative gravity with the mod simply by modifying this line as Wuzzy suggested was possible.

Here's how it behaved when gravity was negated.

+ Spoiler

heh..., purty cool! Falling In Reverse :P

[azekill_DIABLO]

so cool!

[Wuzzy]

Woah. This idea is genius. Really changes how you build near large bodies of water. Something like this would have been immensely useful on Just Test, @test@, JT2, etc. Those are/were servers which have their spawn right in the middle of a large ocean, and players build entire cities over water.

I don't like that usual wooden planks and tree nodes are now placable like pontoons as well. It's less convenient in my opinion. If you want to build wooden planks underwater, you're screwed. I think this was a bad idea.

I also don't like that the wooden pontoon is disabled by default. WTF?

I suggest to keep this mod simple, instead of overengineering it. I think stuff like making pontoons rise in water is just overkill, it doesn't really add much to gameplay.

Steel pontoons are a bit cheap, they only cost 4 steel ingots. A real steel block costs 9 steel ingots.

Steel pontoons are pointless anyway, as wooden planks can be placed into lava as well.

[Fixer]

Very useful for water-city building...

[StarNinjas]

+1 cool! i might use this code for xblox viewtopic.php?f=9&t=19816, if that's fine with you:)

[StarNinjas]

oh man just posted an extra post by accident, very sorry:(((((

[FaceDeer]

I don't like that usual wooden planks and tree nodes are now placable like pontoons as well. It's less convenient in my opinion. If you want to build wooden planks underwater, you're screwed. I think this was a bad idea.

I also don't like that the wooden pontoon is disabled by default. WTF?

They're all independently configurable, so they can be enabled or disabled to your taste. The reason wooden pontoons were disabled by default was because wood and log floating was enabled by default - a wooden pontoon is completely redundant if you can build wooden planks directly into the water. I can see your point, though - when I was testing building pilings underwater I must have been using noclip, it's hard to get stuff on the ocean floor without it.

I'll swap the defaults. They can still be set to whatever pattern users prefer, of course.

Steel pontoons are a bit cheap, they only cost 4 steel ingots. A real steel block costs 9 steel ingots.

Well, they're hollow, after all. :) IMO the balance problem is more that steel blocks aren't as useful as they should be. When I build a structure out of solid steel blocks I would expect it to be a mighty vault, worthy of the investment I spent. But in basic default minetest it can be tunneled through almost as easily as any other basic building block. I've got the same issue with stone brick, those nodes take a lot of work to construct and are only more useful than cobble for cosmetic reasons.

Perhaps a subject for another mod.

Steel pontoons are pointless anyway, as wooden planks can be placed into lava as well.

They can, but they don't last very long.

[FaceDeer]

+1 cool! i might use this code for xblox viewtopic.php?f=9&t=19816, if that's fine with you:)

Sure, pontoons is MIT-licensed so do with it as you wish. :)

[StarNinjas]

+1 cool! i might use this code for xblox viewtopic.php?f=9&t=19816, if that's fine with you:)

Sure, pontoons is MIT-licensed so do with it as you wish. :)

Thanks!

[minerdudetest]

@FaceDeer: Hello! I have added compatibility to Mineclone2 in your mod as well as added dynamic fix to recipe conflict with "Airtank" mod. They are present in pull request on github. Thanks!