wildejackson Some good ideas there. Yes, mudbrick will be addressed. I thought it was already downwards unstable and sideways unstable until dry, but I'll double check when I crack the project open for the next update in the next few weeks and make sure it is behaving right.

I've also considered snow blocks for similar reasons. I love the north, and want to live in an igloo.

Not sure what you mean about the stick grid block thing. What are you referring to exactly?

Strewn straw should be sideways unstable. If it is not, either it's not working or it was an unintended oversight and I did not get the patch in for it.

I'm not sure how to make cob stable once grass has grown on it. That'd take code, and it is beyond me. I may work on some sort of "reinforced cob" block, which incorporates sticks or something as a reinforcing material, and allow for it to be stable once dry. Only issue there is, folks will just use it freely in unintended ways and we'll be back to "reinforced" cob castles and such that are hyper unrealistic. Cob is tricky, and I'm not sure what else to do with it at the moment. I'll give it some thought though.

Excited for the mudbrick update someday that block always urks me with how easy it is to accrue and build massive structures with. I have some ideas on cob and strewen straw. Cob once it has grown grass should not have gravity. Grass mound structures are really cool caveman stuff and I just wanna build them. Also strewn straw currently has no instability and it really should be sideways unstable considering its a flooring material (I mean or an insulating material but that makes no sense in the game).

Is it possible to adjust the model for the stick grid block thing so that it occupies the top of the block rather then the bottom?

Also also considering it so closely matches earth-material building options: snow building blocks! Building in the artic sucks big time and it really needs some love. I imagine the mechanics would work similar to however you are going to impliment mudbricks, where you make snow bricks and place them to let them dry (or freeze rather) into useable snow bricks. These probably would be sideways unstable aswell.

CarlAnder
Oof. Wet cobble should not be able to be chiseled. I need to fix that. You should be able to chisel it only once it has dried.
I'll have a fix out later today. Surprised this has not been spotted yet. Thanks for letting me know!

Not sure if this is a possibility or not but I noticed that you can chisel wet cobblestone but it doesn't seem to ever dry. Is it possible to support dryable chiseled blocks? If not maybe wet cobblestone should not be chiselable?

Also sorry for the dumb question but does this mod make it so that destroying a wattle and daub block only returns you sticks? If so then that might be worthwhile including it in the description.

Final note: chiseling also allows you to cheat the systems this mod adds a bit. You can chisel a wet cobblestone block and then it is no longer unstable. You can also chisel a dried cobblestone block to allow yourself to pick it up and move it. Honestly not sure how you avoid this though because they should obviously be chiselable.

Cool

That was my approach. My forest mod does not add any new blocks at all, it simply tweaks the sizes of specific tree types to make the more common forests more open. This does result in "more" blocks because the trees are larger, but not any "new" blocks.  This should not be an issue, since the game engine allows for creating 100% forested worlds, so it should be able to handle the added tree block load on your average game settings. We are running a world with 50% more forests and not seeing any issues.

If the larger tree size is impacting performance, try nudging the forest size down a notch.

Thanks for the tips! I've used all the simple and known ways to reduce the load and performance impact, so I couldn't think of anything better than to make a separate mod to improve the forest without adding any new blocks at all. Maybe someone could use this)

PafnutiyI wish I could be more help on this. I'm not very clear on what makes some asset mods more performance heavy than others. I've run one mod that adds a ton of trees without any issues, and I've run another mod that adds a ton of trees that cripples performance on my machine.  And that is part of the issue- What works great for you might kill someone elses' game.

I'd make sure that textures are not too overly detailed (pixel count same as vanilla texture assets), and make sure you rmodels are efficient (disable sides that are not intended to be viewd). Study how Biomes tree modules and assets are made. I've had very few performance issues with their trees.

As for adding a ton of new wood types- Keep in mind that each new variant is a whole additional set of texture assets that the game loads. That eats up room on the textureatlas pretty quick, when a lot of new variants are added.

Wish I could be more help, but I'd start with making sure those things are as efficiently done as possible.

Hello, Thalius. Sorry to be off-topic, but it seems you have more experience and I could use your advice. Can you tell me how much mods that add new blocks affect performance? I am the author of a small mod with new trees (florashpere), and each type of wood entails about 30 new blocks - variations for roofs, fences, planks and others from the new type of wood. In total, the seven tree species add more than 200 blocks. In addition, new trees (and therefore new blocks) are generated in large quantities in the world. How much should this affect performance, and do you know any tricks for optimisation? And why do large amounts of blocks from vanilla not affect as much as blocks from mods? Would appreciate an explanation and any related information.
Thanks in advance, and sorry for my English.

I'll look at it.
Rammed earth should only be downward unstable. Packed dirt I see more as a dirt flooring block that won't grow grass and such on it, and should be sideways unstable.

There is no need for a new asset. The vanilla game has 'packed dirt' and 'rammed earth' by default. I have packed dirt set to sideways unstable and rammed eart as stable. But you could set it to vertically unstable.

CarlAnder As a server owner for some time, I have become acutely aware of how mods that add addtional assets start to impact performance. For this reason, a guiding principle in the mods I want to develop aim to add as few new assets as possible. I also want to focus on using vanilla assets as much as possible, and bringing depth to vanilla mechanics and how those vanilla assets are used.

Block Adjustments adds only transitional blocks. In the end, once they have "dried", you are left with only vanilla block assets. Adding a new cobble type that uses clay and yields a "crude" cobblestone sounds cool, but it would mean adding a new asset to the game that would be dependant on this mod remaining. As it works now, one can give time for any "wet" assets to dry and then remove this mod without issues. I am leaning toward keeping that a priority.

The only module that adds new assets to the game world is the Panning Overhaul module and it's "Rich Gravel". I don't really like that, but it is a small addition. I also could not think of any other way to make that module work using vanilla assets, so I made an exception to the "no new permanent asset" principle. There is no vanilla gravel asset that is rare to which I could tie new panning drops, or I'd have done so.

As for packed dirt and adding a variant that is downward stable as well, that would mean two things- A: New "heavily packed dirt" permanent block asset or some in between packed dirt asset (which I want to avoid). B: Heavily packed dirt blocks (completely stable) could be used for ceilings and other overhanging building features that dirt blocks should never work for.  The ONLY real world exception that argues against this principle are various earthen arched and dome architectural features that do allow for building with dirt blocks overhead. Saddly the game does not allow for such physics to be taken into account, and I can't, at this point, find a way to add an overhead dirt block feature that could not be "abused" by being used in a way that defies gravity in illogical ways.

I've seen rumors of possible building physics mod being worked on that made some stable blocks become downward unstable the further out they get horizontally from other stable support blocks like walls and pillars. If that ever becomes a thing, I could envision this mod applying such physics in various ways.

Thalius that makes sense. I just get minor anxiety thinking about finding out I wanted something different after dry and having to wait till I get copper to change it lol. But it really is a small thing. Your reasoning makes sense.

If you do add an option for allowing dry cobblestone to be broken "by hand" you could just have it return no stone whatsoever. It would make sense too because if you are using crude tools to dismantle cobblestone then the cobblestone is basically just turning to gravel as its dismantled since you are just chipping away at it for a long time.

In terms of having two different dry cobblestones: I think that is a very cool idea. However I also generally like when mods try to use vanilla items as much as possible for compatibility reasons. So maybe its not worth doing that unless there is a larger difference between the two stone types? Just my immediate thoughts in case they are helpful when you work on this module again!

I also really like some of the ideas from Pentasis. Particularly around the packing dirt. I play with sideways instability so it would be cool if you could pack dirt and cause it to only be downward instable, but then be able to pack it even further so that it becomes completely stable. The possibilites are endless! And perhaps out of the scope of this module lol.

CarlAnder I don't at this time, have plans to make cobble easier to work with without tools. Wet cobble can be broken and moved, so there is a mechanic built into the feature that allows for planning, rethinking, and adjusting a building to make sure it is the way you want it before it dries. Once it dries, it should be hard to tear down.

Should it be breakable by hand once dry? Maybe. I've given that some thought, and will give it more when I come back to thinking on how to better improve this module. The main thing I was addressing by requiring a pickaxe was to remove the tendancy to immediately seek out and dismantle a ruin for buiding purposes. Even with making cobble drop loose stones when broken by hand or with a flint shovel, it'd be a way to acquire copious amounts of loose stone for building with, right away.

But also, with the changes this mod makes, one could assume that ruins that have lasted so long were built with cobble made with mortar, making them even harder to dismantle and def requiring a tool to do so.  I know that implies a difference between cobble with clay as a binder and cobble that uses mortar. I wanted to keep it simple and have just the vanilla cobble blocks in the end and had no intention to add a "crude" cobblestone made with clay that could be broken more easily, but perhaps that might show up at some point.

Currently pretty wrapped up in streamlining W.Rustbound, as some performance issues have come to my attention. W.Block Adjustments is still a "dev" release. I want to give some further thought to some things and take community suggestions into account, once I can circle around and invest some more time in it.

I have made a similar mod some time ago, but purely for my own use (I hardly ever publish my mods).
I didn't touch cobblestone, but I did change the rest not unlike you. My reasoning was as follows:

Wet-cob to cob
Easy to make, but each layer takes 1 day to dry,unable to pick up (drops soil when broken.) So you need to build layer by layer, one layer per day.

Wet mud bricks to adobe
More time consuming to make at the start. It takes 3 days to dry, but can be picked up, so you can make large batches on the ground so once you have all of them, you can just build without interrution. I reduced the breaking chance to 0.95

Rammed earth.
This was actually a genuine building material. So I kept it stable.
This should be labour intensive, and rammed earth is about 50% of original earth, so I went:
6 earth -> 4 packed earth and 6 packed -> 4 rammed earth.
So you need to dig up a fair amount of dirt to make a decent building. (18 dirt becomes 8 rammed earth). Personally I would like it to be more costly somehow but unsure at the moment how to so this.

All other soil related blocks are vertically unstable including Strewn Staw (strawbedding) and I also added Hay bales to the unstable (vertically) bunch.

Just some ideas for you, do with it as you want ;)

Would you consider making the requirement that cobblestone needs a pickaxe to be broken a configuration setting that I can turn on or off? I really like the realism and immersion this mod brings when working with stone but I don't like that if I want to change the structure after it stabilizes that I have to work my way to a copper pickaxe. Especially since I have several other mods (some also from your Wilderlands series!) which slow down the game and cause me to be in the pottery age for longer than normal.

I know I could wait to use cobblestone and just stick to wattle and daub but I like the look of cobblestone for an early stage pit kiln structure. I wouldn't mind if I still had to work at digging away the stable cobblestone with a flint shovel for a while and for none of the materials to be retrieved if I break the cobblestone this way. I just hate the idea of being able to place a block but not being able to take it away later.

Either way though, thanks for this mod. Its a very cool idea and brings a lot to the game!

Thanks! Hope you enjoy it!

Takes some getting used to, but once you get the hang of it, it can be quite satisfying. Also completely alters the early game building progression.

Especially on a community server.

I'm playing around with this a little bit. Very cool concept!