Bukkit

You should make a vid.

Great. I love the screenshots, looks fantastic.

Does the 3x3 structure somehow know that its one? Perhaps the modular addons could be like a 1x3 which attaches on the side of the building (e.g. you click with your wand item on a modular setup -> checks requirements for module -> check to see if attached to the correct base -> increases base output level).

I had imagined (and these are entirely suggestions, please ignore at your will) that the forge would include a furnace block for the interface, but just alter its output for valid items. Not sure how possible that is at all, or if its completely redundant.

Also, have you thought about how to dismantle a forge? How often will it do checks to see if the structure is still valid?

Would you mind if I just mess around with a few 'module' layouts or structures for other buildings, and perhaps send them through to you to jog some ideas?

No worries Flascher. Glad you like my ideas. I always wonder if I sound like an idiot after I hit the post button :D

Perhaps for the workings of it, you might have to do a bit of a workaround. I'm not a good programmer, and have never touched mods or plugins aside from using them, since I dont understand Java (yet). But I do know that generally plugins dont add blocks, mods do. So to get around that, if youre set on the plugin thing (and I would be, since it means it can work on vanilla clients, etc. and bukkit is only plugins I think...) maybe you can use existing blocks, or add new enchantments to achieve your end goal.

So for example: your 'white hot' might be an enchantment on ingots that signals your workbenches to improve the end result.

And perhaps you can use a beacon as the marker for your buildings. Beacons usually detect a pyramid structure of resource blocks below them, and then add a 'buff' to player objects in the range. Perhaps you can modify them to look for certain arrangements of structures above and around them, and then use its 'buffing' to modify furnaces and crafting tables within the range of the structure.

Again I'm no programmer, and I have no idea how you begin to make this work. But I try and think logically (and sometimes, that even works :P ) and perhaps using existing methods to establish your foundation might be the most...natural way of doing it, although not necessarily the easiest.

I might just point out that I do check back on this topic everynow and then, so if you need a hand with anything, please feel free to ask or PM.

Hi, my first comment, I registered just to give you some input because your idea is amazing! Hope it goes well for you :)

So other than smithing skills, perhaps you can include other kinds of skills, and maybe look outside of just weapons/armour and regular enchantments at one day.

woodworking: create better bows and faster boats (maybe a subskill of fletching for better arrows). Would require a multi craft table setup surrounded by a log cabin, instead of a lava/brick for your smithing as described.

a subskill of smithing could be metalwork: create faster minecarts or tracks, or buckets that hold more than one item block of liquid.

chef: A setup that includes a crafting table, and an 'oven' setup instead of a furnace. Although it would have both interfaces, and food created could have better hunger filling and saturation, or regeneration side-effects (and other items made in it would recieve no benefit). A subskill could include 'brewery' where potions are given additional sideeffects (might be too hard to improve effects, so adding new effects might be the best way) or when getting to a high enough skill, the ability to combine potions.

Perhaps also look at not just a new item of 'white hot iron' but when an item is actually made from the interface of such a building it receives such an upgrade. This would open up the chance to create items of any sort or material with enough of a 'skill level', rather than forcing you to create new items (white hot iron, white hot gold, white hot diamond...etc, etc. If a mod adds new ores, your system would have poor compatibility). Also, if your enchantments include percentage increases on knockback, weapon reach or damage in any way, any mod that adds new weapons could also recieve the same benifit.

Perhaps if you go to craft something outside of your skill on an Artisan interface (e.g. you use the smithing workbench to make a diamond sword) it will say 'you realise your skills suck, and your item turns out in average quality' or if it is within your skill level it says 'you admire your new item, and it gleams with quality'. If you make a sword at the wrong Artisan interface, say for example a chef bench it might say 'the tools you need arent present, and you end up making an average item'.

I would suggest that aside from the original station, you make it somewhat modular. For example, you may have a furnace station, but by building an 'anvil' style building next to it, it opens the subskill improvements of metalworking. Same would apply for woodworking with the subskill of fletching, or carving, and for chef with 'creating' as the base skill and 'baking' 'brewing' as modular buildings added on. You could make the basis of such modular buildings a chest containing an item of a certain level from the previous attachment, meaning that a minimum level and amount of craft would be required to open up new skills.

This could also give rise to modular improvement within the one skill. For example, you might forge a sword. But if you create a cooling module, it would improve the sword again. And if you make an anvil module, etc. and same with sharpening. (each module doesnt have to be 3x3, can be varying sizes.) (Also, although I'm no blacksmith, I believe the main components of creating a good sword/armour involved pure metals, a hot forge, the right degree of cooling to avoid crazing or flaws, as well as multiple beatings, and then sharpening. For example, some samurai swords were beaten into sheets and folded back into a blade shape 70 times before being sharpened to give them incredible strength.)

Probably is a lot of work, but its just a suggestion. I'm no modder, and even just looking at what I've said, theyre ambitious suggestions. Hopefully my idea is clear enough to understand what I mean, and hopefully you may use these ideas some time in the future.

YES MAN

I'd like to see this as a guild system (organized by groups/permissions) where you join a guild to learn the various crafting disciplines. Add in leveling (maybe subgroups with titles like apprentice, squire, etc.) to learn more skills and improve the ones you have. I think it would be a nice compliment to any RPG server.

Wow, this is great, I am really looking forward to this for my server! Do you have an eta when you may have an initial release?