Game Mechanics S A N D B L O C K

AmazingMaciek

AmazingMaciek

Skeletron Prime
:sigh:I have a huge problem with this thing... and it's block swaping, let me explain... When you try to block swap sand it simply doesn't work, this could be a huge problem when you're building a town in a desert in early hardmode where everything could kill you in 1-2 hits. I hope that in 1.4.0.5 (or maybe 1.4.1) this will be fixed. -_-
 
Hey @darthmorf , could you point me towards any development team replies or responses that explain in more detail?

Is there a technical reason? Sand blocks assumes a impassable/hard state when underlayering a cactus, so i can't see a difference why when the blockswap is started, it couldn't simply swap out for that one until the process is complete and its replaced by dirt or another block for a seamless transition if the devs are worried about falling blocks.

Not to negate the difficulties of getting around sand, but it also would benefit from a safe standing position being able to make a roof to go through sand pits without levelling the entire obstacle pointlessly with tnt or working top down and quell a lot of apparent player feedback on the blockswap system.
 
FantasticFwoosh said:
Hey @darthmorf , could you point me towards any development team replies or responses that explain in more detail?

Is there a technical reason? Sand blocks assumes a impassable/hard state when underlayering a cactus, so i can't see a difference why when the blockswap is started, it couldn't simply swap out for that one until the process is complete and its replaced by dirt or another block for a seamless transition if the devs are worried about falling blocks.

Not to negate the difficulties of getting around sand, but it also would benefit from a safe standing position being able to make a roof to go through sand pits without levelling the entire obstacle pointlessly with tnt or working top down and quell a lot of apparent player feedback on the blockswap system.
Click to expand...
I'm afraid that I don't have any public sources (it might have been said publicly somewhere but I'm not aware of it), but if I recall correctly the reason was that block swap made the difficulty of navigating gravity based environmental hazards such as sand, silt and slush negligible. @Leinfors may be able to provide a more detailed/accurate reason if they have a free moment.
 
The general idea was that Sand is considered a hazard and sometimes an obstacle to navigate carefully, and blockswapping through it was just a little too easy.

However, a little too late to change it, we've had some second thoughts about it being completely unblockswappable period. We are reconsidering, and might be doing some sort of middle ground functionality, but due to the current bug fix waves and iterations, we haven't had time to experiment with that.

So keep an eye on future patchnotes, we might end up changing this to be a bit more flexible! :)
 
Leinfors said:
The general idea was that Sand is considered a hazard and sometimes an obstacle to navigate carefully, and blockswapping through it was just a little too easy.

However, a little too late to change it, we've had some second thoughts about it being completely unblockswappable period. We are reconsidering, and might be doing some sort of middle ground functionality, but due to the current bug fix waves and iterations, we haven't had time to experiment with that.

So keep an eye on future patchnotes, we might end up changing this to be a bit more flexible! :)
Click to expand...
ok :)
 
Yay I just finished my Desert Pylon village too, wasn't so bad making a custom sand dunes with homes inside, but block swapping could've really helped
 
I think it would make sense to be able to replace a gravity block(sand, silt etc) if there are no gravity blocks above them. Mining out sand would take the same amount of time, and wouldn't eliminate hazards any quicker, but would let block swap work for the majority of cases that people would actually use them in.

Also, if you guys end up having extra time, it'd be nice to eventually have SOME way of tunneling through sand without disturbing it, purely because I don't want to ruin the entire surface desert just trying to mine a tiny bit of tungsten that I spotted behind 5 blocks of sand. Perhaps an upgraded, hard-mode scarab bomb that hardens sand at the edges of the explosion?
 
I like this idea ^
Kind of like how tunneling through cracked dungeon bricks makes random other blocks "activate" and break tunneling through sand/silt/slush should have a chance for nearby blocks to loosen and fall as well!
 
Leinfors said:
The general idea was that Sand is considered a hazard and sometimes an obstacle to navigate carefully, and blockswapping through it was just a little too easy.

However, a little too late to change it, we've had some second thoughts about it being completely unblockswappable period. We are reconsidering, and might be doing some sort of middle ground functionality, but due to the current bug fix waves and iterations, we haven't had time to experiment with that.

So keep an eye on future patchnotes, we might end up changing this to be a bit more flexible! :)
Click to expand...
It would be excellent if this was changed!

Digging through sand isn't really hard, just limiting. Like if you build a house in the desert and build downward and to the side.. you have to remove a whoooole ton of sand to expand your base.. this is an issue with lava too, with needing to fully drain the lava out, and replace it if you want your underground lava base. And if you wanna expand again.. well, rip.

Blockswap would be an amazing method to allow horizontal digging through sand though. It'd take a little time, but would save you the effort of digging out the rest of the desert.

And as a tiny side note.. sand can't be placed in ammo slots anymore.. :dryadcry: pls revert/fix?
 
Speaking of sand being an obstacle...

I was using the Digging Molecart recently to clear out the path for my cross-world subway, when I came across the unfortunate knowledge of the molecart being unable to proceed past gravity-affected blocks such as sand, silt, and slush. This created a problem when my desired elevation ended up above the Underground Desert area.

Some method of block swapping for sand or converting sand blocks in the world to hardened sand so I can proceed would be great for this process as I'd rather not destroy my Oasis biome just to lay my subway. In previous versions, digging out a desert and replacing it with a sand gun was doable, but doing so now would cause the Oasis to cease to exist as is and require me to now have to spend extra time rebuilding the oasis as well.
 
Sand can be such a huge problem when mining near a desert, and you want to keep the surface above intact too. Sometimes you also have these things where a column of sand blocks access to a cave, but that column goes all the way to the surface, and it's not just that mining out 100 blocks of sand is ridicolus to get access to said cave, but that it would ruin the surface above too. - even worse indeed, if the oasis would be above that, so that would get ruined too.

I get that block swap could turn dealing with the hazard too easy, but sand rarely means actual hazard when you know how to mine it (and you learn it pretty fast I think, once messed it up one or two times XD), it's just simply an annoyance, that you have to mine out 687 blocks of sand because you wanted an 5x3 tunnel but there's no way around the sand...

I know there's a mod (Maybe Vipix toolbox, or something, but I'm not 100% sure) that adds an item called "rattlesnake wand" that can turn a sand block into hardened sand, by left click, and hardened sand into sand by right click.
that's insanely useful for any sort of mining and building around deserts or random underground sand deposits to be able to deal with them easily without having to mine out a sidicolous amount of sand to pass though, ruining the surface in the process maybe (and then having to manually put all that sand back, if you want to return the surface the way it was before (although that goes faster because sand falls. but it's still a needless annoyance that could been avoided, if sand would be easier to work with...)
 
Oh-ho boy, looks like Lein kept kept to his word.
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