CSo many things wrong with the way this suggestion is derailing itself.
TO EVERYBODY MAKING SUGGESTIONS:
Always avoid creating precedents / arbitrary exceptions to how the game already works.
Look at block drops. They ALL directly drop one thing 100% of the time. Spiderwebs don't drop strings 20-30% of the time, for example.
The only exception are:
Ores: which sometimes drop a NUMBER of identical items (lapis and redstone).
Leaves : oak leaves specifically drop apples instead of nothing with 1/200 odds when broken by hand or natural decay. If using shears you ALWAYS get a leaf block, not multiple types of drops.
So please forget using 'weird' odds.
Also, the OBVIOUS drop for a clam block, is a clam item. Not slimeballs ! A block should drop ONLY it's one most obvious drop because that is how Minecraft dopes it for (nearly) everything else DUH.
NEVER diverge from pre-established game design : In Minecraft, EVERYTHING grows fast. The clams should follow suit, rather than create an ugly exception. This is a suggestion for vanilla or for a mod ? Do you understand the difference ? Suggestions for vanilla must be more limited in scope because they have to follow the way the rest of the game was made, otherwise they're suggestions that won't ever get implemented. And by definition a suggestion that don't even have a chance to see the light of day, is always a "bad" suggestion. The idea might be good, and here it IS a good idea, but the choice of implementation, of mechanics used, must ALSO be good AND consistent with the rest of the game. And here it is not.
Always make suggestions as simple, as easy, and as painless to add as possible. Appealing to the mass. This means re-using actual code that is already there, whenever possible, instead of creating entirely new mechanics unless it is absolutely necessary. This means using the cute Minecraft outlook on things, rather than the "realistic" interpretation. And this means also knowing your stuff and not turning a simple suggestion into a lag problem.
So do not make clams into entities. Entities cause a LOT of lag and take WAY more processing compared to mere blocks. Entities are for things that can move and thus need to be constantly checked every tick in fact. You have nearly a million blocks loaded around at all times (up to far sight range, 16 chunks radius, that is still hundreds of chunk loaded with each from 1 to 16 section loaded and each section is 16x16x16 = 4096 blocks. But only a few hundreds entities are enough to bring the game to a crawl. If a block will do, avoid entities like the plague !
Also, the clam block should not "grow" like snow layers. Sure, it would be a little bit more "realistic" because "in real life" clams do grow into thick colonies. But hey guess what ? This is a GAME if you really want real-life then turn off your computer and go outside. What would players like better ? What would "work" better in the actual context of Minecraft ? Too often those who make suggestions are so engrossed with their vision that they start forgetting for which game the suggestion is for. They forget that their suggestion must fit with the entire rest and the whole "context", not the other way around. I'm not sure a "big thick block of clams" would be very appreciated. Little clams that look more like individual little clams would however be more easily recognized and appreciated by more players especially kids. Mushrooms too, in real life, they tend to grow in often well-packed thick "colonies", but in Minecraft they stay as cute individual mushrooms and the "colony" forms over some surface area.
Clams should simply look like a still water source block, and act like a water block, but with a single "clam'" at the bottom (probably with a random offset like flowers and tall grass). Compared to the 16x16x16 'pixels' size of a normal block, the clam could be say a simple "box" of about 8x8 pixels wide and 3 or 4 pixels tall, with the clam texture simply disposed "diagonally" on that box (random orientation, same as for lillypads: nothing to store a simple X Y Z coodinates hash would determine the direction) for a better overall look. This would minimize the polygons needed, as per the way everything else in Minecraft is already done.
C;ams would reproduce at the bottom of water, but preferrably EXACTLY like mushrooms, only just... under water. That is sufficiently slow enough, and will also prevent clams for overtaking the entire ocean. A colony would be just like a mushroom colony: several clams adjacent -or a little bit apart from each other- in a relatively small area, nothing more complicated. forming a "patch" of clams just like we have patches of mushrooms which spread but don't extend forever.
Also, there should be a rather "thin" depth at which clams can grow. Say, from right under water to a couple blocks down. Sea level is layer Y=62 (Y elevation from 0-255) so let's say clams would grow at (and spread to) only Y elevations from 60 to 62. You'd find clams along the shores only, NOT in deep waters ! This would avoid the world's oceans from having clams almost everywhere and anywhere ! You don't want that. Finding pumpkins requires exploration, close enough and without obstacles in the way. But spotting clams underwater while fast riding on a long boat trip would be quite easy So you have to limit where they can be found somehow. To avoid shores having clams almost everywhere, natural world generation should be relatively rare: one "clam colony" every say 1000 blocks of shores. This would make then "rarer" than pumpkins, but still quite easy to find, because you only have to follow the shore of the ocean long enough. Also, once found, they would be stupidly easy to breed: lots of shore around after all !
Deserts do not have lakes anymore (except rarely in SOME deserts near the border of the biome), and even if they did, I don't see why deserts, a biome that is "by design" without food (not even animals), would suddenly gain a type of food. In real-life some types of cactii are edible (a bit like sugar cane underneath a hard exterior shell they have a sugary fibrous but not too hard interior), but did Mojang make the ONLY thing that grow in the deserts edible ? No. They could easily have done so but no they didn't: cactus is only for green dye. So adding food in that biome would break the pre-established biome design by Mojang.
So, no clams in deserts please: Only Oceans and Deep Oceans (those have small islands so yeah good spots for clams). The odds of getting a clam patch could possibly be let's say double normal in deep ocean. This means one patch ever 500 blocks of "shore". Given the size of deep ocean small islands, about 20-25 blocks wide on average, such a value would mean that you'd find (on average) one clam patch every 5 or 6 small islands. This would mean that as soon as you find an ocean, you would usually relatively easily get clams too, just not instantly. Those numbers might be adjusted a bit, but NOT TOO LOW because that would go contrary to how Minecraft already handles pumpkins and mushrooms and the rest. I didn't pop those numbers out of thin air, I simply guesstimated just how rare Minecraft makes it's "rare plants" and used that directly.
Given how simple it would be to make a clam farm really huge, way easier than for mushrooms in fact, just like mushrooms the clams should not be directly eatable, only through the bowl recipe, but contrary to mushroom making the recipe should be a little bigger investment, and maybe a bit later in the game, so yeah, clam chowder could use milk bowls (requiring cows) and baked potato (kind of like with rabbit stew). For mushrooms you need to either find a rare x-hills biome with LOTS of giant outcroppings, or patiently dig a huge room underground, or just plant along tunnels, which means lots of walking around. Meanwhile with clams all you need is spread them a bit further away along the shore, shore that there is obviously more of it on both sides of where you found the clams in the first place.
Squids should NOT eat clams. Cows and sheep don't eat tall grass, even throwing seeds at chickens (not right-clicking, just throwing) and the chickens will not eat what is obviously their favorite food. So, the "chosen design" for stuff that mobs eat, is that they eat it ONLY if the player gives it to them specifically. So If you want your squids to eat clams, then that should be part of a suggestion for ALL animals to eat whatever they eat wirhout player intervention. *NOT* a single "sticking out like a sore thumb" exception for a single mob. This is what "in-game consistency" really means. Disobeying that rule is rarely good game design and thus not a good way to design a suggestion when it is intended for vanilla.
Also, the simple "each clam patch simply stops growing by the maths chosen for their mechanical growth" aka as per mushroom patches spread mechanics, is much, much less processing intensive. Minecraft processing is ALREADY overloaded. The least a suggestion could do is try not to add to that. Do you now why suddenly when you discover a new forest, especially jungle, the game lags like mad ? Because until all the leaves in the forest have "settled" into non-decaying (there is actually two types of leaves: decaying and non-decaying), then there is a lot of extra processing (me wonders why Mojand doesn't just spawn trees with their leaves and vines already "set" instead of spawning rough structures then letting them settle through "growth" algorithms - which is way more intensive).
Now, imagine if the oceans, instead of acting like they are now, suddenly had to process ALL the clams getting born and growing and with their population being kept in check" by squids, and that constantly. Can you say laaaaag ?
And anyway your math is wrong: a population is kept in check by a predator ONLY if the slower-breeding predator breeds to compensate and also dies out when there is not enough food, creating an cycle of food abundance and rarity (NOT a stable thing either). But here in Minecraft the, number of squids is more or less "fixed". So what would happen is either: we'd have too many quids and *ALL* the clams would get eaten. Or we would not have enough squids and the clams would start to spread too much and eventually take over the ENTIRE oceans (and welcome to lag city !). given that squids are in packs, with some places with LOTS of squids and other places almost none, the latter scenario would become a certainty as surely SOME of those places would be given enough without enough squids" time to breed to a level huge enough so that EVEN if suddenly there were a ton of squids spawning in he area, even that would not be enough to contain what is basically an exponential spread. It would work only if the number of squids was PRECISELY balanced. All the time. Or of the entire squid population and spawning relied suddenly not at all on the way the other mobs work anymore, but on the amount of clams instead. And if you do a spawning algorithm upgrade for squids why not do it for every mob. And we all know that ain't going to happen anytime soon. So DO NOT rely on squids as a clam populatio control - it just won't work unless you also make MAJOR changes to the spawning rules.
A clam block would have to act like a normal water source. It would not be a clam + a water block, it would just be a single block ID, for the clam block, but just like a flower seems surrounded by Air, the clam block would look like a clam surrounded by still water. However, such block should also behave like a still water source block. And if you "removed the water" from such a clam block (say using a bucket), then the clam should immediately pop out as an item, leaving only an Air block. Realistic ? No: in real life clams stick to stuff like solid glue. But simple to design and to code and would follow suit with how the game actually already works with such kind of things ? Certainly. Example: Place a flower on grassy ground. In real life it is "stuck" inside the ground, right ? Then push the ground block using a piston. You would expect the flower to "move with" the ground, but instead it will simply pop out of the ground as an item instead. Realistic ? No. Simple to code into a game and quite acceptable ? Yes.
So yeah, THAT is how the Minecraft "world physics" currently work, and thus how ANY suggestion should ALSO work. Unless the suggestion is for a change in the world physics themselves. Or unless, once again, your aim is to target the suggestion as a mod, not for vanilla.
Also, for the love of Herobrine, It is BOWLS (a recipient for liquids) not BOWELS (the internal organs inside the deep belly - intestines etc.). Try to Google words you aren't sure about --- unless you want to look like a 5 years old !
The idea is good, excellent even ! We do need more oceanic content. But the implementation is so "out there". Just try again.
Also, please provide images and actual NUMBER. you did not even say the nutrition values !
Placeable: Yes [only in Water blocks above specific types of solid blocks. If the clam "decays" -wrong biome, wrong elevation, etc.- then it will "pop out" as an item on it's next random block update.]
Why those values ? Nourishment value is ALWAYS 0.2 for "junk" foods, 0.6 for "uncooked", 1.2 for "prepared meals" , 1.6 is reserved for "meat" and 2.4 for "enhanced" foods. There are no exceptions.
Obviously, a clam chowder isn't pure baked meat but is a prepared and should be a good food, so it gets the best possible here of 1.2. Nourishment value. Saturation is simply Hunger times Nourishment - so it is only a derived value. Hunger should definitely be better than a simple baked potato and merely going from 5 to simply 6 wouldn't be nowhere near enough of an incentive especially for a food that doesn't stack.
Also, most Minecraft recipes use ONE of each ingredient - tools and armor and the cake being exceptions. Mojang can make a few exceptions, but we should try to avoid it !
However, just like there are 2 types of mushrooms, it could be cool to have 2 differently colored types of clams. In that case, the clam chowder should use both types. This is my preferred approach. Each clam type should have preferred environment to grow. Easy: just use the temperature biome map, and make one type of clam grow in "tropical" oceans, and another type of clam in "normal" oceans. And no clams at all along "very cold" places (anywhere where it snows instead of rain).
2. Last comment was posted in June, more than 2 months ago. Plus, the suggestion is about a Chest re-skin.
3. That was made in 2013.
4. Another 2013 suggestion.
7. This is a recipe for cooking Clams. Not Minecraft Clams, real Clams. It's in the Clans forum.
5-6 + 8-9. Suggestions made in 2012.
10. Not a suggestion. They're talking about a forum bug that caused the "Clans" section to appear as "Clams".
As far as I can tell, my suggestion may share the general theme of "Clams", but I've got a very different idea of it from everyone else.
A lot of the older suggestions were for an actual Clam mob, and number 2 wasn't a mob at all. What I'm suggesting is a pseudo-mob, something more akin to a plantable crop.
In fact, it doesn't have to be a Clam at all. It could be a Seaweed or even a Barnacle and the mechanics would still fit.
What I'm suggesting is more of a system concept if anything. A method of using the Snow layering system for more than just Snow Blocks.
I just chose Clams because that's what people tend to think of when thinking of immobile food sources from water.
Regarding exponential growth problem, I would suggest using something similar to mushroom, whose spawning logic limits the number of mushroom available at any given location.
A clam block behaves like a water source, and cannot be obtained even with silk touch. Visually, it will just be a block of water with clam(s) sitting on the ground.
A clam can only spawn new clam IF there are fewer than 5 other clam within a 9x9x3 area. And can only spawn adjacent to the clam block (and not on top of the clam block).
There is nothing wrong with suggesting new mechanics. There is nothing wrong with suggesting deviation with pre-established mechanics. There is nothing wrong with suggesting new relationships between mobs and blocks that are different from other mobs and blocks. There is nothing wrong with not reusing as much code as possible, and in fact, it is sometimes better when Mojang doesn't do that (look at what happened to mobs in 1.8).
What we're looking at here is an animal-like creature that grows like a plant underwater but looks like a block. There is no equivalent in Minecraft, though comparisons have been made to snow layering and crops. We don't need to copy tired old mechanics for no reason. This is something new, and it's different enough that most likely no one would care if it was different in mechanics from old stuff.
As for your problem with too many/not enough squids, if a clam colony grows large enough then most likely there will be squids nearby to eat everything. If it's too small then squids may not notice it. Has to do with area of expansion and how far the range of 'noticing' is. If you really want to farm clams, kill all squids and wait for a nexus to spawn more colonies. I for one approve of more interactions between mobs and other mobs/blocks. It makes the game come alive. I mean, imagine a clam colony right next to an ocean monument. Right there you have a minor ecosystem, with squids coming down to eat clams and guardians destroying squids. That's interesting. That brings oceans to life. Who cares if nothing else does it? (Oh wait, wolves eat sheep, don't they?) Wouldn't it be better if more things did? You have to start somewhere.
Lag is a strange argument to use. It's valid, but all it does is make people mad. The OP has attempted to alleviate lag with limits. That's probably the best they can do.
I would suggest reducing your huge amount of paragraphs to more easily followed bullet points about what you think. I don't wish to insult you, but that is quite frankly too many words for what amounts to a list of complaints and suggestions.
CSo many things wrong with the way this suggestion is derailing itself.
TO EVERYBODY MAKING SUGGESTIONS:
Always avoid creating precedents / arbitrary exceptions to how the game already works.
Look at block drops. They ALL directly drop one thing 100% of the time. Spiderwebs don't drop strings 20-30% of the time, for example.
The only exception are:
Ores: which sometimes drop a NUMBER of identical items (lapis and redstone).
Leaves : oak leaves specifically drop apples instead of nothing with 1/200 odds when broken by hand or natural decay. If using shears you ALWAYS get a leaf block, not multiple types of drops.
So please forget using 'weird' odds.
Also, the OBVIOUS drop for a clam block, is a clam item. Not slimeballs ! A block should drop ONLY it's one most obvious drop because that is how Minecraft dopes it for (nearly) everything else DUH. What about Gravel then? Gravel has a chance of dropping either normal Gravel or Flint. Look at cows. They have a chance of dropping both Leather and Meat.
NEVER diverge from pre-established game design : In Minecraft, EVERYTHING grows fast. The clams should follow suit, rather than create an ugly exception. This is a suggestion for vanilla or for a mod ? Do you understand the difference ? Suggestions for vanilla must be more limited in scope because they have to follow the way the rest of the game was made, otherwise they're suggestions that won't ever get implemented. And by definition a suggestion that don't even have a chance to see the light of day, is always a "bad" suggestion. The idea might be good, and here it IS a good idea, but the choice of implementation, of mechanics used, must ALSO be good AND consistent with the rest of the game. And here it is not. Trees grow slowly. Animals grow slowly. Most things in Minecraft grow slowly. I only stated that it grows slower than crops. Note that when I say grow, I'm talking about reaching its final life-cycle. Clams can be harvested throughout any of its life cycles.
Always make suggestions as simple, as easy, and as painless to add as possible. Appealing to the mass. This means re-using actual code that is already there, whenever possible, instead of creating entirely new mechanics unless it is absolutely necessary. This means using the cute Minecraft outlook on things, rather than the "realistic" interpretation. And this means also knowing your stuff and not turning a simple suggestion into a lag problem.
So do not make clams into entities. Entities cause a LOT of lag and take WAY more processing compared to mere blocks. Entities are for things that can move and thus need to be constantly checked every tick in fact. You have nearly a million blocks loaded around at all times (up to far sight range, 16 chunks radius, that is still hundreds of chunk loaded with each from 1 to 16 section loaded and each section is 16x16x16 = 4096 blocks. But only a few hundreds entities are enough to bring the game to a crawl. If a block will do, avoid entities like the plague ! Clams are pseudo-mobs, not entities. They are blocks with properties of mobs. If anything, they're crops you can plant in water.
Also, the clam block should not "grow" like snow layers. Sure, it would be a little bit more "realistic" because "in real life" clams do grow into thick colonies. But hey guess what ? This is a GAME if you really want real-life then turn off your computer and go outside. What would players like better ? What would "work" better in the actual context of Minecraft ? Too often those who make suggestions are so engrossed with their vision that they start forgetting for which game the suggestion is for. They forget that their suggestion must fit with the entire rest and the whole "context", not the other way around. I'm not sure a "big thick block of clams" would be very appreciated. Little clams that look more like individual little clams would however be more easily recognized and appreciated by more players especially kids. Mushrooms too, in real life, they tend to grow in often well-packed thick "colonies", but in Minecraft they stay as cute individual mushrooms and the "colony" forms over some surface area. Pretty much the only difference between a Clam and a Crop is that you can stand on the Clam.
Clams should simply look like a still water source block, and act like a water block, but with a single "clam'" at the bottom (probably with a random offset like flowers and tall grass). Compared to the 16x16x16 'pixels' size of a normal block, the clam could be say a simple "box" of about 8x8 pixels wide and 3 or 4 pixels tall, with the clam texture simply disposed "diagonally" on that box (random orientation, same as for lillypads: nothing to store a simple X Y Z coodinates hash would determine the direction) for a better overall look. This would minimize the polygons needed, as per the way everything else in Minecraft is already done. Polygons? A Clam Block is a Snow Block Layer with a different texture.
C;ams would reproduce at the bottom of water, but preferrably EXACTLY like mushrooms, only just... under water. That is sufficiently slow enough, and will also prevent clams for overtaking the entire ocean. A colony would be just like a mushroom colony: several clams adjacent -or a little bit apart from each other- in a relatively small area, nothing more complicated. forming a "patch" of clams just like we have patches of mushrooms which spread but don't extend forever. Clams Colonies do not spread forever. They have a general limit based on the number of Nexi in the area.
Also, there should be a rather "thin" depth at which clams can grow. Say, from right under water to a couple blocks down. Sea level is layer Y=62 (Y elevation from 0-255) so let's say clams would grow at (and spread to) only Y elevations from 60 to 62. You'd find clams along the shores only, NOT in deep waters ! This would avoid the world's oceans from having clams almost everywhere and anywhere ! You don't want that. Finding pumpkins requires exploration, close enough and without obstacles in the way. But spotting clams underwater while fast riding on a long boat trip would be quite easy So you have to limit where they can be found somehow. To avoid shores having clams almost everywhere, natural world generation should be relatively rare: one "clam colony" every say 1000 blocks of shores. This would make then "rarer" than pumpkins, but still quite easy to find, because you only have to follow the shore of the ocean long enough. Also, once found, they would be stupidly easy to breed: lots of shore around after all !
Deserts do not have lakes anymore (except rarely in SOME deserts near the border of the biome), and even if they did, I don't see why deserts, a biome that is "by design" without food (not even animals), would suddenly gain a type of food. In real-life some types of cactii are edible (a bit like sugar cane underneath a hard exterior shell they have a sugary fibrous but not too hard interior), but did Mojang make the ONLY thing that grow in the deserts edible ? No. They could easily have done so but no they didn't: cactus is only for green dye. So adding food in that biome would break the pre-established biome design by Mojang. So, no clams in deserts please: Only Oceans and Deep Oceans (those have small islands so yeah good spots for clams). The odds of getting a clam patch could possibly be let's say double normal in deep ocean. This means one patch ever 500 blocks of "shore". Given the size of deep ocean small islands, about 20-25 blocks wide on average, such a value would mean that you'd find (on average) one clam patch every 5 or 6 small islands. This would mean that as soon as you find an ocean, you would usually relatively easily get clams too, just not instantly. Those numbers might be adjusted a bit, but NOT TOO LOW because that would go contrary to how Minecraft already handles pumpkins and mushrooms and the rest. I didn't pop those numbers out of thin air, I simply guesstimated just how rare Minecraft makes it's "rare plants" and used that directly.
Given how simple it would be to make a clam farm really huge, way easier than for mushrooms in fact, just like mushrooms the clams should not be directly eatable, only through the bowl recipe, but contrary to mushroom making the recipe should be a little bigger investment, and maybe a bit later in the game, so yeah, clam chowder could use milk bowls (requiring cows) and baked potato (kind of like with rabbit stew). For mushrooms you need to either find a rare x-hills biome with LOTS of giant outcroppings, or patiently dig a huge room underground, or just plant along tunnels, which means lots of walking around. Meanwhile with clams all you need is spread them a bit further away along the shore, shore that there is obviously more of it on both sides of where you found the clams in the first place. Clams are not directly edible. The difficulties of growing Mushrooms is countered by the fact that you can grow and collect en-mass by using Bonemeal, a renewable resource dropped by Skeletons.
Squids should NOT eat clams. Cows and sheep don't eat tall grass, even throwing seeds at chickens (not right-clicking, just throwing) and the chickens will not eat what is obviously their favorite food. So, the "chosen design" for stuff that mobs eat, is that they eat it ONLY if the player gives it to them specifically. So If you want your squids to eat clams, then that should be part of a suggestion for ALL animals to eat whatever they eat wirhout player intervention. *NOT* a single "sticking out like a sore thumb" exception for a single mob. This is what "in-game consistency" really means. Disobeying that rule is rarely good game design and thus not a good way to design a suggestion when it is intended for vanilla. Cows and Sheep eat tall grass. If they can eat tall grass, why can't Squids eat Clams? By Squids eating Clams, I'm talking about Squids consuming Clam Blocks that are below a certain "age".
Also, the simple "each clam patch simply stops growing by the maths chosen for their mechanical growth" aka as per mushroom patches spread mechanics, is much, much less processing intensive. Minecraft processing is ALREADY overloaded. The least a suggestion could do is try not to add to that. Do you now why suddenly when you discover a new forest, especially jungle, the game lags like mad ? Because until all the leaves in the forest have "settled" into non-decaying (there is actually two types of leaves: decaying and non-decaying), then there is a lot of extra processing (me wonders why Mojand doesn't just spawn trees with their leaves and vines already "set" instead of spawning rough structures then letting them settle through "growth" algorithms - which is way more intensive). Clams stop growing after a certain limit.
Now, imagine if the oceans, instead of acting like they are now, suddenly had to process ALL the clams getting born and growing and with their population being kept in check" by squids, and that constantly. Can you say laaaaag ? Clams will lag the game as much Wheat does. Similar to how Cows and Sheep consume grass, I doubt that lag is a concern.
And anyway your math is wrong: a population is kept in check by a predator ONLY if the slower-breeding predator breeds to compensate and also dies out when there is not enough food, creating an cycle of food abundance and rarity (NOT a stable thing either). But here in Minecraft the, number of squids is more or less "fixed". So what would happen is either: we'd have too many quids and *ALL* the clams would get eaten. Or we would not have enough squids and the clams would start to spread too much and eventually take over the ENTIRE oceans (and welcome to lag city !). given that squids are in packs, with some places with LOTS of squids and other places almost none, the latter scenario would become a certainty as surely SOME of those places would be given enough without enough squids" time to breed to a level huge enough so that EVEN if suddenly there were a ton of squids spawning in he area, even that would not be enough to contain what is basically an exponential spread. It would work only if the number of squids was PRECISELY balanced. All the time. Or of the entire squid population and spawning relied suddenly not at all on the way the other mobs work anymore, but on the amount of clams instead. And if you do a spawning algorithm upgrade for squids why not do it for every mob. And we all know that ain't going to happen anytime soon. So DO NOT rely on squids as a clam populatio control - it just won't work unless you also make MAJOR changes to the spawning rules. Don't squids spawn automatically? Last time I checked, squid farms still worked. Wouldn't they just spawn regardless of the Clam population and keep their set amount? The player simply has to eliminate the Squids of an area until a Clam Block grows to a certain age.
A clam block would have to act like a normal water source. It would not be a clam + a water block, it would just be a single block ID, for the clam block, but just like a flower seems surrounded by Air, the clam block would look like a clam surrounded by still water. However, such block should also behave like a still water source block. And if you "removed the water" from such a clam block (say using a bucket), then the clam should immediately pop out as an item, leaving only an Air block. Realistic ? No: in real life clams stick to stuff like solid glue. But simple to design and to code and would follow suit with how the game actually already works with such kind of things ? Certainly. Example: Place a flower on grassy ground. In real life it is "stuck" inside the ground, right ? Then push the ground block using a piston. You would expect the flower to "move with" the ground, but instead it will simply pop out of the ground as an item instead. Realistic ? No. Simple to code into a game and quite acceptable ? Yes. Again, Clams act like crops. If you move the bottom of a Soil Block, the crop is broken. Similar to how sugar cane adjusts color when placed on Dirt or Sand, I'm sure that a Clam can adjust itself. So yeah, THAT is how the Minecraft "world physics" currently work, and thus how ANY suggestion should ALSO work. Unless the suggestion is for a change in the world physics themselves. Or unless, once again, your aim is to target the suggestion as a mod, not for vanilla. My suggestion is targeting Vanilla, not a mod.
Your post was so long that it broke the quoting system...
Your post was so long that it broke the quoting system...
Well, ok I'm guilty here.
I am quite forced to have to agree on the "rambling" adjective from ChamelionRed - lol ! And he has convincing arguments too.
I'd use spoilers but seems like none of my browsers allow my to use tags properly. Bummer and sorry.
> What about Gravel then? drops Gravel or Flint. Cows: Leather + Meat.
You're right about gravel but it's an exception, not the rule. Without the rare gravel flint drop the game would have to provide some OTHER way to get it, as it is now the only 'reliable' way to get the flint. Trading is not 'reliable', it's just a 'complementary' way. Cows ain't comparable to blocks: In vanilla Minecraft, mobs often have multiple drops. Can't use a multiple drops mob (= 'normal'), as validation for a multiple drops block (= 'exception'). Slimeballs aren't even tradeable, and a player farm can easily be made really huge = clams would "steal the show" for the main way to get slimeballs (or at least seriously compete with slimes). I just think it makes more sense for most blocks to simply drop themselves only, and not dip too much into other game features' "rightful domains".
> Most things in Minecraft grow slowly. I only stated it grows slower than crops.
I agree - trees grow slower. But they aren't "slow". A couple MC day-night cycles is not even 1 hour of play and already enough for nearly everything to reach full maturity including trees. One's own personal mileage may vary about what is slow or fast. This is a game where you plant something and unless you go out of your way to extremely exhaust yourself, enough crops for you to eat will have matured BEFORE you start dying from hunger. no need to make a reserve ! A game where by the time you finish harvesting your farm, a lot of stuff is already ready to be harvested *again* right away. Those just can't be called "slow".
"Slow" would be if you have a medium sized farm of let's say half (not all) of the types of animals and crops (not a huge farm just something normal), and then you go and farm it, and then you go build a house or mining or explore or whatever for let's say a couple hours of playtime, and then once you are back, your crops will have grown a lot, but NOT reached full maturity quite yet. "Ultra-fast" would be more like when you try to harvest let's say 20 pumpkins but, by the time you finish, 3 of them have already grown again, right behind your back ! Oh wait, that is what we already have now in vanilla ! So, yeah, trees = very fast and everything else = even faster. lol. While I do not agree with that design choice by Mojang, it is what we have to work with.But that would be an entirely other topic.
> Clams are pseudo-mobs, not entities. They are blocks with properties of mobs.
Pseudo-mobs ? Just what is that ? This is realyl where you are losing me. All I know from the official wiki is : we have blocks, and we have entities. Please explain just what is different here ? You say "blocks with properties of mobs" - what properties ? All I see is that they can grow and spread - totally normal for crops, which are 100% normal blocks. Random block updates on totally normal blocks are every 70 seconds (avg). Plenty to deal with non-moving thing growing slowly. So what's different here
Personally, I only see a normal like you say: a re-textured snow (layer) block. It doesn't even need metadata: just the damage value by itself is sufficient to define all growth stages.
> only difference between Clam and Crop is that you can stand on Clam.
Is that a hard-and-fast absolute requirement ? Let's say, if players were NOT able to stand on clams, kind of like they can't stand on, say, mushrooms, would that be so bad ? What would be "lost" that is so important that this specific crop ALSO needs to be a solid block?
I still kind of think single-clams, each defined by it's little box, would still look a lot better than a full-block-of-layers-of-clams-piled-upon-one-another. I think players would relate better to that.
I'd go with that "layers" thing more for stuff like coral reefs or equivalents. But for clams I think something closer to this (but with much less polygons and smaller too) would probably work better:
Could you make an image showing what you think it should look like ?
A PNG texture (no need to be a pro), name file snow.png, open minecraft.jar archive (make backup !) replace snow.png with your texture, then make a creative flat world with Overworld preset. Use TNT / dig to create a wide hole, let's call that "the ocean" - dirt parts are "shallow waters along shore", stone parts represent deeper waters. Don't actually add any water - it might screw up with the "snow" blocks. Just imagine that water reaches to ground level. Then place snow layers to form what a typical colony would look like according to you. Then screen capture, post on imgur, and join image to topic here.
How much drops clam blocks give ? Vary according to layer ? Use standard MC 1/X format (X not being a weird number).
I'd avoid slimeball : the way you describe clams, they look like a pack "cemented together", not loosely held by green goop.
How do squids eat them ? Squid moves towards clams, from how far, or only when touching randomly ? Special eating animation, or it just "happens" ? How often eating occurs, up to what clam stage is eaten, and how many stages eaten at a time ? Typical average distance (in blocks) between colonies ? Found up to how deep waters ?
Take your "typical clam colony" image. Count number of layers total per colony, multiplied by suggested layer drops = does that seem to give a reasonable or an insane amount of Clam (item) ?
Average growth time per stage ? For comparison Wheat grows a single of it's 8 growth stage from 5 minutes (optimal conditions) to 35 minutes (worst conditions). Those are averages of course.
> Clams Colonies do not spread forever. They have a limit
Makes sense - same principle limiting mushrooms growth. But please provide details.
Mushroom mechanics is something already tested, already there, ready for cut and paste, already works. And it makes reasonably sized patches. Just saying. but it works only for "individual" crops like shrooms. For a much different looking "colony of stuff growing by layers", maybe it would look really weird if those weren't somehow connected in a big pile. so yeah, maybe we need something different here.
Does clam blocks start "spreading "out" only when at full 8 layers ? How do they spread "out" ? How fast ? Just what is there exactly to prevent the clam growth from being exponential without ever stopping ?
Very curious.
> Cows and Sheep eat tall grass. If they can eat tall grass, why can't Squids eat Clams?
Woops yeah sheeps. I made an overworld preset creative flat world, spawned hundreds of cows + sheeps, went survival for days. Cows didn't eat anything, sheep immediately went to work on the grass. But tall grass is very common. Sheep don't eat grass to "control" it's amount. It is more like a "decorative" thing to make the game look nicer. So yeah, while it could be cool to have squids "clam eating", the point I made stays valid: don't use that for "growth control". The colonies must be able to stop growing all by themselves, without squids needing to play a role. Otherwise a player on Peaceful will eventually have a clams problem.
As for "squids would eat it all", you are right sorry - I forgot you said they'd eat only the smaller ones.
You also thought about player farming of clams by making squids not eat clams that are right under the water surface level. Good thinking there because otherwise the squids would be a constant farm-ruining annoyance. However, not really needed: Just make clam farm above Y=62 or below Y = 46: Squids won't spawn.
> Clams stop growing after a certain limit. > Clams lag game as much as Wheat does. I doubt lag is a concern.
On 2nd thought I agree with you - as long as a limit is there, overhead should be small. It's not as if clam growth "logic" needs to be complicated. And the squids are already entities, so adding extra behavior to them shouldn't add much. Still, question remains: What limit ? How is it determined ?
The advantage to using clams as simply "underwater mushrooms" is that it would be very easy to add them. Mostly a big "cut & paste" from the mushrooms class, then adjust for underwater aspects to display a solid-texture "box" at bottom of what would seem to be a water block.However, now I understand the main idea is to use the snow layer mechanic for more than just snow. Interesting.
Those are "tiny" clams, that tend to mostly stay in place. Note how they don't pile up: they stick to 1 "layer" only. If they stacked, the clams underneath the others would die of hunger, and then the ones above would drift away. Such clams really need to "grip" on a solid "anchor". But in a game anything is possible lol.
I actually really like this idea. I'm always happy to hear about new food suggestions. Not sure what else to say on this subject apart from the fact that I like it, even though as some people have said, it needs some retouching. Otherwise, Support.
TO EVERYBODY MAKING SUGGESTIONS:
Always avoid creating precedents / arbitrary exceptions to how the game already works.
Look at block drops. They ALL directly drop one thing 100% of the time. Spiderwebs don't drop strings 20-30% of the time, for example.
The only exception are:
Ores: which sometimes drop a NUMBER of identical items (lapis and redstone).
Leaves : oak leaves specifically drop apples instead of nothing with 1/200 odds when broken by hand or natural decay. If using shears you ALWAYS get a leaf block, not multiple types of drops.
So please forget using 'weird' odds.
Also, the OBVIOUS drop for a clam block, is a clam item. Not slimeballs ! A block should drop ONLY it's one most obvious drop because that is how Minecraft dopes it for (nearly) everything else DUH.
NEVER diverge from pre-established game design : In Minecraft, EVERYTHING grows fast. The clams should follow suit, rather than create an ugly exception. This is a suggestion for vanilla or for a mod ? Do you understand the difference ? Suggestions for vanilla must be more limited in scope because they have to follow the way the rest of the game was made, otherwise they're suggestions that won't ever get implemented. And by definition a suggestion that don't even have a chance to see the light of day, is always a "bad" suggestion. The idea might be good, and here it IS a good idea, but the choice of implementation, of mechanics used, must ALSO be good AND consistent with the rest of the game. And here it is not.
Always make suggestions as simple, as easy, and as painless to add as possible. Appealing to the mass. This means re-using actual code that is already there, whenever possible, instead of creating entirely new mechanics unless it is absolutely necessary. This means using the cute Minecraft outlook on things, rather than the "realistic" interpretation. And this means also knowing your stuff and not turning a simple suggestion into a lag problem.
So do not make clams into entities. Entities cause a LOT of lag and take WAY more processing compared to mere blocks. Entities are for things that can move and thus need to be constantly checked every tick in fact. You have nearly a million blocks loaded around at all times (up to far sight range, 16 chunks radius, that is still hundreds of chunk loaded with each from 1 to 16 section loaded and each section is 16x16x16 = 4096 blocks. But only a few hundreds entities are enough to bring the game to a crawl. If a block will do, avoid entities like the plague !
Also, the clam block should not "grow" like snow layers. Sure, it would be a little bit more "realistic" because "in real life" clams do grow into thick colonies. But hey guess what ? This is a GAME if you really want real-life then turn off your computer and go outside. What would players like better ? What would "work" better in the actual context of Minecraft ? Too often those who make suggestions are so engrossed with their vision that they start forgetting for which game the suggestion is for. They forget that their suggestion must fit with the entire rest and the whole "context", not the other way around. I'm not sure a "big thick block of clams" would be very appreciated. Little clams that look more like individual little clams would however be more easily recognized and appreciated by more players especially kids. Mushrooms too, in real life, they tend to grow in often well-packed thick "colonies", but in Minecraft they stay as cute individual mushrooms and the "colony" forms over some surface area.
Clams should simply look like a still water source block, and act like a water block, but with a single "clam'" at the bottom (probably with a random offset like flowers and tall grass). Compared to the 16x16x16 'pixels' size of a normal block, the clam could be say a simple "box" of about 8x8 pixels wide and 3 or 4 pixels tall, with the clam texture simply disposed "diagonally" on that box (random orientation, same as for lillypads: nothing to store a simple X Y Z coodinates hash would determine the direction) for a better overall look. This would minimize the polygons needed, as per the way everything else in Minecraft is already done.
C;ams would reproduce at the bottom of water, but preferrably EXACTLY like mushrooms, only just... under water. That is sufficiently slow enough, and will also prevent clams for overtaking the entire ocean. A colony would be just like a mushroom colony: several clams adjacent -or a little bit apart from each other- in a relatively small area, nothing more complicated. forming a "patch" of clams just like we have patches of mushrooms which spread but don't extend forever.
Also, there should be a rather "thin" depth at which clams can grow. Say, from right under water to a couple blocks down. Sea level is layer Y=62 (Y elevation from 0-255) so let's say clams would grow at (and spread to) only Y elevations from 60 to 62. You'd find clams along the shores only, NOT in deep waters ! This would avoid the world's oceans from having clams almost everywhere and anywhere ! You don't want that. Finding pumpkins requires exploration, close enough and without obstacles in the way. But spotting clams underwater while fast riding on a long boat trip would be quite easy So you have to limit where they can be found somehow. To avoid shores having clams almost everywhere, natural world generation should be relatively rare: one "clam colony" every say 1000 blocks of shores. This would make then "rarer" than pumpkins, but still quite easy to find, because you only have to follow the shore of the ocean long enough. Also, once found, they would be stupidly easy to breed: lots of shore around after all !
Deserts do not have lakes anymore (except rarely in SOME deserts near the border of the biome), and even if they did, I don't see why deserts, a biome that is "by design" without food (not even animals), would suddenly gain a type of food. In real-life some types of cactii are edible (a bit like sugar cane underneath a hard exterior shell they have a sugary fibrous but not too hard interior), but did Mojang make the ONLY thing that grow in the deserts edible ? No. They could easily have done so but no they didn't: cactus is only for green dye. So adding food in that biome would break the pre-established biome design by Mojang.
So, no clams in deserts please: Only Oceans and Deep Oceans (those have small islands so yeah good spots for clams). The odds of getting a clam patch could possibly be let's say double normal in deep ocean. This means one patch ever 500 blocks of "shore". Given the size of deep ocean small islands, about 20-25 blocks wide on average, such a value would mean that you'd find (on average) one clam patch every 5 or 6 small islands. This would mean that as soon as you find an ocean, you would usually relatively easily get clams too, just not instantly. Those numbers might be adjusted a bit, but NOT TOO LOW because that would go contrary to how Minecraft already handles pumpkins and mushrooms and the rest. I didn't pop those numbers out of thin air, I simply guesstimated just how rare Minecraft makes it's "rare plants" and used that directly.
Given how simple it would be to make a clam farm really huge, way easier than for mushrooms in fact, just like mushrooms the clams should not be directly eatable, only through the bowl recipe, but contrary to mushroom making the recipe should be a little bigger investment, and maybe a bit later in the game, so yeah, clam chowder could use milk bowls (requiring cows) and baked potato (kind of like with rabbit stew). For mushrooms you need to either find a rare x-hills biome with LOTS of giant outcroppings, or patiently dig a huge room underground, or just plant along tunnels, which means lots of walking around. Meanwhile with clams all you need is spread them a bit further away along the shore, shore that there is obviously more of it on both sides of where you found the clams in the first place.
Squids should NOT eat clams. Cows and sheep don't eat tall grass, even throwing seeds at chickens (not right-clicking, just throwing) and the chickens will not eat what is obviously their favorite food. So, the "chosen design" for stuff that mobs eat, is that they eat it ONLY if the player gives it to them specifically. So If you want your squids to eat clams, then that should be part of a suggestion for ALL animals to eat whatever they eat wirhout player intervention. *NOT* a single "sticking out like a sore thumb" exception for a single mob. This is what "in-game consistency" really means. Disobeying that rule is rarely good game design and thus not a good way to design a suggestion when it is intended for vanilla.
Also, the simple "each clam patch simply stops growing by the maths chosen for their mechanical growth" aka as per mushroom patches spread mechanics, is much, much less processing intensive. Minecraft processing is ALREADY overloaded. The least a suggestion could do is try not to add to that. Do you now why suddenly when you discover a new forest, especially jungle, the game lags like mad ? Because until all the leaves in the forest have "settled" into non-decaying (there is actually two types of leaves: decaying and non-decaying), then there is a lot of extra processing (me wonders why Mojand doesn't just spawn trees with their leaves and vines already "set" instead of spawning rough structures then letting them settle through "growth" algorithms - which is way more intensive).
Now, imagine if the oceans, instead of acting like they are now, suddenly had to process ALL the clams getting born and growing and with their population being kept in check" by squids, and that constantly. Can you say laaaaag ?
And anyway your math is wrong: a population is kept in check by a predator ONLY if the slower-breeding predator breeds to compensate and also dies out when there is not enough food, creating an cycle of food abundance and rarity (NOT a stable thing either). But here in Minecraft the, number of squids is more or less "fixed". So what would happen is either: we'd have too many quids and *ALL* the clams would get eaten. Or we would not have enough squids and the clams would start to spread too much and eventually take over the ENTIRE oceans (and welcome to lag city !). given that squids are in packs, with some places with LOTS of squids and other places almost none, the latter scenario would become a certainty as surely SOME of those places would be given enough without enough squids" time to breed to a level huge enough so that EVEN if suddenly there were a ton of squids spawning in he area, even that would not be enough to contain what is basically an exponential spread. It would work only if the number of squids was PRECISELY balanced. All the time. Or of the entire squid population and spawning relied suddenly not at all on the way the other mobs work anymore, but on the amount of clams instead. And if you do a spawning algorithm upgrade for squids why not do it for every mob. And we all know that ain't going to happen anytime soon. So DO NOT rely on squids as a clam populatio control - it just won't work unless you also make MAJOR changes to the spawning rules.
A clam block would have to act like a normal water source. It would not be a clam + a water block, it would just be a single block ID, for the clam block, but just like a flower seems surrounded by Air, the clam block would look like a clam surrounded by still water. However, such block should also behave like a still water source block. And if you "removed the water" from such a clam block (say using a bucket), then the clam should immediately pop out as an item, leaving only an Air block. Realistic ? No: in real life clams stick to stuff like solid glue. But simple to design and to code and would follow suit with how the game actually already works with such kind of things ? Certainly. Example: Place a flower on grassy ground. In real life it is "stuck" inside the ground, right ? Then push the ground block using a piston. You would expect the flower to "move with" the ground, but instead it will simply pop out of the ground as an item instead. Realistic ? No. Simple to code into a game and quite acceptable ? Yes.
So yeah, THAT is how the Minecraft "world physics" currently work, and thus how ANY suggestion should ALSO work. Unless the suggestion is for a change in the world physics themselves. Or unless, once again, your aim is to target the suggestion as a mod, not for vanilla.
Also, for the love of Herobrine, It is BOWLS (a recipient for liquids) not BOWELS (the internal organs inside the deep belly - intestines etc.). Try to Google words you aren't sure about --- unless you want to look like a 5 years old !
The idea is good, excellent even ! We do need more oceanic content. But the implementation is so "out there". Just try again.
Also, please provide images and actual NUMBER. you did not even say the nutrition values !
Here is something to help:
Clam (item):
Sugested icon :
http://img3.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20140924185445/family-guy-the-quest-for-stuff/images/thumb/7/73/Icon-clam.png/35px-Icon-clam.png
Stacks: Yes (64)
Edible: No (well, not directly).
Placeable: Yes [only in Water blocks above specific types of solid blocks. If the clam "decays" -wrong biome, wrong elevation, etc.- then it will "pop out" as an item on it's next random block update.]
Clam Chowder
Shapeless Recipe: 1 Baked Potato, 1 Clam, 1 Milk Bowl = 1 Clam Chowder
Hunger 8 / Saturation 9.6 / Nourishment Value 1.2
Why those values ? Nourishment value is ALWAYS 0.2 for "junk" foods, 0.6 for "uncooked", 1.2 for "prepared meals" , 1.6 is reserved for "meat" and 2.4 for "enhanced" foods. There are no exceptions.
Obviously, a clam chowder isn't pure baked meat but is a prepared and should be a good food, so it gets the best possible here of 1.2. Nourishment value. Saturation is simply Hunger times Nourishment - so it is only a derived value. Hunger should definitely be better than a simple baked potato and merely going from 5 to simply 6 wouldn't be nowhere near enough of an incentive especially for a food that doesn't stack.
Also, most Minecraft recipes use ONE of each ingredient - tools and armor and the cake being exceptions. Mojang can make a few exceptions, but we should try to avoid it !
However, just like there are 2 types of mushrooms, it could be cool to have 2 differently colored types of clams. In that case, the clam chowder should use both types. This is my preferred approach. Each clam type should have preferred environment to grow. Easy: just use the temperature biome map, and make one type of clam grow in "tropical" oceans, and another type of clam in "normal" oceans. And no clams at all along "very cold" places (anywhere where it snows instead of rain).
1. That suggestion is mine.
2. Last comment was posted in June, more than 2 months ago. Plus, the suggestion is about a Chest re-skin.
3. That was made in 2013.
4. Another 2013 suggestion.
7. This is a recipe for cooking Clams. Not Minecraft Clams, real Clams. It's in the Clans forum.
5-6 + 8-9. Suggestions made in 2012.
10. Not a suggestion. They're talking about a forum bug that caused the "Clans" section to appear as "Clams".
As far as I can tell, my suggestion may share the general theme of "Clams", but I've got a very different idea of it from everyone else.
A lot of the older suggestions were for an actual Clam mob, and number 2 wasn't a mob at all. What I'm suggesting is a pseudo-mob, something more akin to a plantable crop.
In fact, it doesn't have to be a Clam at all. It could be a Seaweed or even a Barnacle and the mechanics would still fit.
What I'm suggesting is more of a system concept if anything. A method of using the Snow layering system for more than just Snow Blocks.
I just chose Clams because that's what people tend to think of when thinking of immobile food sources from water.
A clam block behaves like a water source, and cannot be obtained even with silk touch. Visually, it will just be a block of water with clam(s) sitting on the ground.
A clam can only spawn new clam IF there are fewer than 5 other clam within a 9x9x3 area. And can only spawn adjacent to the clam block (and not on top of the clam block).
There is nothing wrong with suggesting new mechanics. There is nothing wrong with suggesting deviation with pre-established mechanics. There is nothing wrong with suggesting new relationships between mobs and blocks that are different from other mobs and blocks. There is nothing wrong with not reusing as much code as possible, and in fact, it is sometimes better when Mojang doesn't do that (look at what happened to mobs in 1.8).
What we're looking at here is an animal-like creature that grows like a plant underwater but looks like a block. There is no equivalent in Minecraft, though comparisons have been made to snow layering and crops. We don't need to copy tired old mechanics for no reason. This is something new, and it's different enough that most likely no one would care if it was different in mechanics from old stuff.
As for your problem with too many/not enough squids, if a clam colony grows large enough then most likely there will be squids nearby to eat everything. If it's too small then squids may not notice it. Has to do with area of expansion and how far the range of 'noticing' is. If you really want to farm clams, kill all squids and wait for a nexus to spawn more colonies. I for one approve of more interactions between mobs and other mobs/blocks. It makes the game come alive. I mean, imagine a clam colony right next to an ocean monument. Right there you have a minor ecosystem, with squids coming down to eat clams and guardians destroying squids. That's interesting. That brings oceans to life. Who cares if nothing else does it? (Oh wait, wolves eat sheep, don't they?) Wouldn't it be better if more things did? You have to start somewhere.
Lag is a strange argument to use. It's valid, but all it does is make people mad. The OP has attempted to alleviate lag with limits. That's probably the best they can do.
I would suggest reducing your huge amount of paragraphs to more easily followed bullet points about what you think. I don't wish to insult you, but that is quite frankly too many words for what amounts to a list of complaints and suggestions.
If you are planning to make a suggestion, please read this.
If you want to know more, you can read this.
For those who complain about post-Beta generation, you might want to see this.
Your post was so long that it broke the quoting system...
Well, ok I'm guilty here.
I am quite forced to have to agree on the "rambling" adjective from ChamelionRed - lol ! And he has convincing arguments too.
I'd use spoilers but seems like none of my browsers allow my to use tags properly. Bummer and sorry.
> What about Gravel then? drops Gravel or Flint. Cows: Leather + Meat.
You're right about gravel but it's an exception, not the rule. Without the rare gravel flint drop the game would have to provide some OTHER way to get it, as it is now the only 'reliable' way to get the flint. Trading is not 'reliable', it's just a 'complementary' way. Cows ain't comparable to blocks: In vanilla Minecraft, mobs often have multiple drops. Can't use a multiple drops mob (= 'normal'), as validation for a multiple drops block (= 'exception'). Slimeballs aren't even tradeable, and a player farm can easily be made really huge = clams would "steal the show" for the main way to get slimeballs (or at least seriously compete with slimes). I just think it makes more sense for most blocks to simply drop themselves only, and not dip too much into other game features' "rightful domains".
> Most things in Minecraft grow slowly. I only stated it grows slower than crops.
I agree - trees grow slower. But they aren't "slow". A couple MC day-night cycles is not even 1 hour of play and already enough for nearly everything to reach full maturity including trees. One's own personal mileage may vary about what is slow or fast. This is a game where you plant something and unless you go out of your way to extremely exhaust yourself, enough crops for you to eat will have matured BEFORE you start dying from hunger. no need to make a reserve ! A game where by the time you finish harvesting your farm, a lot of stuff is already ready to be harvested *again* right away. Those just can't be called "slow".
"Slow" would be if you have a medium sized farm of let's say half (not all) of the types of animals and crops (not a huge farm just something normal), and then you go and farm it, and then you go build a house or mining or explore or whatever for let's say a couple hours of playtime, and then once you are back, your crops will have grown a lot, but NOT reached full maturity quite yet. "Ultra-fast" would be more like when you try to harvest let's say 20 pumpkins but, by the time you finish, 3 of them have already grown again, right behind your back ! Oh wait, that is what we already have now in vanilla ! So, yeah, trees = very fast and everything else = even faster. lol. While I do not agree with that design choice by Mojang, it is what we have to work with.But that would be an entirely other topic.
> Clams are pseudo-mobs, not entities. They are blocks with properties of mobs.
Pseudo-mobs ? Just what is that ? This is realyl where you are losing me. All I know from the official wiki is : we have blocks, and we have entities. Please explain just what is different here ? You say "blocks with properties of mobs" - what properties ? All I see is that they can grow and spread - totally normal for crops, which are 100% normal blocks. Random block updates on totally normal blocks are every 70 seconds (avg). Plenty to deal with non-moving thing growing slowly. So what's different here
Personally, I only see a normal like you say: a re-textured snow (layer) block. It doesn't even need metadata: just the damage value by itself is sufficient to define all growth stages.
> only difference between Clam and Crop is that you can stand on Clam.
Is that a hard-and-fast absolute requirement ? Let's say, if players were NOT able to stand on clams, kind of like they can't stand on, say, mushrooms, would that be so bad ? What would be "lost" that is so important that this specific crop ALSO needs to be a solid block?
I still kind of think single-clams, each defined by it's little box, would still look a lot better than a full-block-of-layers-of-clams-piled-upon-one-another. I think players would relate better to that.
I'd go with that "layers" thing more for stuff like coral reefs or equivalents. But for clams I think something closer to this (but with much less polygons and smaller too) would probably work better:
http://i.ytimg.com/vi/KKYUJ3hE7Rw/hqdefault.jpg
(from Mo's creatures dev)
Could you make an image showing what you think it should look like ?
A PNG texture (no need to be a pro), name file snow.png, open minecraft.jar archive (make backup !) replace snow.png with your texture, then make a creative flat world with Overworld preset. Use TNT / dig to create a wide hole, let's call that "the ocean" - dirt parts are "shallow waters along shore", stone parts represent deeper waters. Don't actually add any water - it might screw up with the "snow" blocks. Just imagine that water reaches to ground level. Then place snow layers to form what a typical colony would look like according to you. Then screen capture, post on imgur, and join image to topic here.
How much drops clam blocks give ? Vary according to layer ? Use standard MC 1/X format (X not being a weird number).
I'd avoid slimeball : the way you describe clams, they look like a pack "cemented together", not loosely held by green goop.
How do squids eat them ? Squid moves towards clams, from how far, or only when touching randomly ? Special eating animation, or it just "happens" ? How often eating occurs, up to what clam stage is eaten, and how many stages eaten at a time ? Typical average distance (in blocks) between colonies ? Found up to how deep waters ?
Take your "typical clam colony" image. Count number of layers total per colony, multiplied by suggested layer drops = does that seem to give a reasonable or an insane amount of Clam (item) ?
Average growth time per stage ? For comparison Wheat grows a single of it's 8 growth stage from 5 minutes (optimal conditions) to 35 minutes (worst conditions). Those are averages of course.
> Clams Colonies do not spread forever. They have a limit
Makes sense - same principle limiting mushrooms growth. But please provide details.
Mushroom mechanics is something already tested, already there, ready for cut and paste, already works. And it makes reasonably sized patches. Just saying. but it works only for "individual" crops like shrooms. For a much different looking "colony of stuff growing by layers", maybe it would look really weird if those weren't somehow connected in a big pile. so yeah, maybe we need something different here.
Does clam blocks start "spreading "out" only when at full 8 layers ? How do they spread "out" ? How fast ? Just what is there exactly to prevent the clam growth from being exponential without ever stopping ?
Very curious.
> Cows and Sheep eat tall grass. If they can eat tall grass, why can't Squids eat Clams?
Woops yeah sheeps. I made an overworld preset creative flat world, spawned hundreds of cows + sheeps, went survival for days. Cows didn't eat anything, sheep immediately went to work on the grass. But tall grass is very common. Sheep don't eat grass to "control" it's amount. It is more like a "decorative" thing to make the game look nicer. So yeah, while it could be cool to have squids "clam eating", the point I made stays valid: don't use that for "growth control". The colonies must be able to stop growing all by themselves, without squids needing to play a role. Otherwise a player on Peaceful will eventually have a clams problem.
As for "squids would eat it all", you are right sorry - I forgot you said they'd eat only the smaller ones.
You also thought about player farming of clams by making squids not eat clams that are right under the water surface level. Good thinking there because otherwise the squids would be a constant farm-ruining annoyance. However, not really needed: Just make clam farm above Y=62 or below Y = 46: Squids won't spawn.
> Clams stop growing after a certain limit.
> Clams lag game as much as Wheat does. I doubt lag is a concern.
On 2nd thought I agree with you - as long as a limit is there, overhead should be small. It's not as if clam growth "logic" needs to be complicated. And the squids are already entities, so adding extra behavior to them shouldn't add much. Still, question remains: What limit ? How is it determined ?
The advantage to using clams as simply "underwater mushrooms" is that it would be very easy to add them. Mostly a big "cut & paste" from the mushrooms class, then adjust for underwater aspects to display a solid-texture "box" at bottom of what would seem to be a water block.However, now I understand the main idea is to use the snow layer mechanic for more than just snow. Interesting.
By the way, this is what a real-life clam colony looks like:
http://www.divediscover.whoi.edu/expedition15/hottopics/images/eco2.jpg
Those are "tiny" clams, that tend to mostly stay in place. Note how they don't pile up: they stick to 1 "layer" only. If they stacked, the clams underneath the others would die of hunger, and then the ones above would drift away. Such clams really need to "grip" on a solid "anchor". But in a game anything is possible lol.
Then there are the bigger clams - Those don't come in "tight packs".
Seems like they love their salt lol:
http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xs2j2n_clam-enjoys-eating-salt_animals
And the bigger clams can be extremely mobile :
Interesting !
I established a growth limit for Clam Colonies. I'll get to other things later, but it's there now.
I like to use the term pseudo-mob to describe a block that is capable of advanced functions like growth.
Generally applied to crops, they're more advanced than simple blocks, but much less so than entities.
Ah it's clearer then thanks.
100% support
-Minersof49ers of the Crafting Cousins
*sarcastic comment*
*disapproving look*