Make Thermal Stone into new inventory item temperature mechanism too

[Cassielu]

Let it join this mechanism, so that it can obtain all the stuff currently being develop for the inventory item temperature mechanism. Like the temperature bar displayed in the inventory slot and interaction with the ocean, water and all other.

Also for consistency , you know, its important.

Edited 22 hours ago by Cassielu

[hoxi]

The temperature bar could be a little weird given the unique state changing based on local temperature, but yeah absolutely.

Not only it'd make more sense for consistency but it'd also mean significantly lowering performance strain. As it is, thermal stones and dumbbells use the same temperature component that players use, meaning they update on every tick and go through a lot of unnecessary checks that aren't really used by non-player entities.

 

That said, I do think this could be extended to more than just thermal stones and dumbbells.

• Desiccants, to dry up (they currently can only be dried up by propagating fire sources, which is very unintuitive).
• Maybe ice and beewax and so (basically meltables).
  • This could end up adding a lot of instances (for ice), but they'd be updating slowly compared to propagators updating and checking for these on every tick.
  • Something to keep in mind is that these items could end up melting over contained fire sources (which they currently don't), although the heater sources search could have a unique check to filter out sources that don't propagate fires, to keep this behavior.
    • Heater sources searching could also be disabled when held in inventory/container, to keep behavior as is as well, as ice in your inventory or so won't melt over a nearby propagating fire (unless you take fire damage).
• Maybe, just maybe.. food temperature could be made into part of this system. It's currently very unintuitive and inconsistent.
  • Cold food never loses its cold, but warm food can lose its warmth and not regain it normally.
  • It's inconsistent regarding how warm food even loses its cold (basically only an insulated backpack preserves it, and otherwise warmth is lost at a steady rate if location temperature is below the overheating threshold, with only fridges/snow Chester speeding up the process).
  • It interacts weirdly when stacking items, allowing restoring of warmth by stacking and pulling from a stack a bunch (and then putting the whole stack in an insulated backpack to keep it). This is also the only way to restore warmth to food, which is also weird.
    • This new system still "dilutes temperature" on stacking, but it'd be the same as moisture on items so it wouldn't be as weird, and it'd intuitively allow to restore temperature anyway.
  • For this to work, food would need to lose its warmth/cold at a much slower rate compared to a player, so you could warm up/cool down near a campfire/endothermic fire, and have that food still be warm/cold by the time you need it (at least enough to affect your temperature).
  • This could even expand to affecting food in general, not just food that has temperature (which are specific ones).
• Possibly many other items, if deemed fitting. Just can't think of any others right now.

 

Anyhow, point is, this new system opens up a lot of cool possibilities, and could bring some mechanics that are there in the background and/or are unintuitive, into a more consistent and intuitive system! Maybe some of these not for this beta as it could be a lot, but still worth considering!

Edited 7 hours ago by hoxi
Small correction