Posted this to the cursedorge before reading the note about github: I really like the idea behind this mod, and the features that didn’t bug out or end up being annoying were cool and I enjoyed them. But I think this mod needs a lot of work, and I say this as constructive criticism, because if a majority of these issues were fixed I’d love to download this mod again.

I tried out this mod and ended up uninstalling it. It has good bases but it needs a lot of work.

Some constructive criticism that I hope the mod owner takes into review:

1. it’s very buggy. The most notable issues I experienced:

-My dogs kept disappearing and reappearing in odd places. The most notable example is I a pack of 10 dogs in the Nether, while traveling I lost three. I figured they’d teleport back to me like vanilla dogs tend to do, right? Wrong. I let it go since I had 7 others. When I went back to the Overworld, it turns out they went to my house in the overworld ?? What?? No I didn’t die and respawn, I went back to the overworld when I was done in the nether and that’s where I found them. They glitched out into the overworld and I can’t even begin to think how since I was nowhere near my portal.

-The other 7 dogs disappeared as well while I was traveling and I will never find again, even though I put radio collars on them. The creative radar told me that there were no dogs around the nether even though I should have had 7 radio collared dogs. I got to a nether fortress decided to cut my losses and go into creative to spawn some more dogs to fight with me - guess what happened? Vanished.

2. The dog AI needs a lot and I mean a -lot- of work. Dogs won’t teleport like vanilla dogs will, when I used vanilla dogs I could teleport anywhere and my dogs were soon to follow. Not my doggy treats dogs, I had to drag them with me with a lead to get them to go where I wanted them to go. This is really difficult when I use teleporting to get back to my home since I get lost easily. The dogs are really really annoying compared to vanilla dogs, they are constantly either in my face or wandering away endlessly and make everything difficult. I spend more time trying to reign in my DT dogs than playing the game. I was trying to harvest crops and they trampled all of them because they were right in my face. Vanilla dogs at least wander at a small distance instead of being constantly right in my face. The berserker mode doesn’t work very well, I tried to turn it on when I was in a nether fortress and they attacked only a small percentage of the mobs I encountered.

3. I want to stress again the dogs do not teleport. At least they never did for me, sometimes they would over small distances but they wouldn’t over long distances which is the whole point of dogs teleporting. They also don’t follow very well, I kept having to backtrack to get my dogs to follow me.

4. The pack puppy talent is really bad at lvl 5. My dog kept picking up everything I did not want him to pick up, I liked the idea of keeping things I mined in my dog that I wanted to keep like ores but he wouldn’t take ores because he was filled up on cobblestone and dirt. I tried to destroy some things in my lava pit and the dog kept picking them back up. Rework this talent please .

5. Not a huge issue compared to the glaring bugginess and obnoxious AI but I really think the dire treats should have a different recipe. End stone is really really really hard to get. Considering tamed wolves can’t even get to the End unless you cheat with creative mode it also seems kind of an odd choice. Maybe a nether block if you wanted it to be hard to get? End stone just seems ridiculously hard for a dog treat.

Anyways:

I tried out this mod and ended up uninstalling it. It has good bases but it needs a lot of work.

Some constructive criticism that I hope the mod owner takes into review:

1. it’s very buggy. The most notable issues I experienced:

-My dogs kept disappearing and reappearing in odd places. The most notable example is I a pack of 10 dogs in the Nether, while traveling I lost three. I figured they’d teleport back to me like vanilla dogs tend to do, right? Wrong. I let it go since I had 7 others. When I went back to the Overworld, it turns out they went to my house in the overworld ?? What?? No I didn’t die and respawn, I went back to the overworld when I was done in the nether and that’s where I found them. They glitched out into the overworld and I can’t even begin to think how since I was nowhere near my portal.

-The other 7 dogs disappeared as well while I was traveling and I will never find again, even though I put radio collars on them. The creative radar told me that there were no dogs around the nether even though I should have had 7 radio collared dogs. I got to a nether fortress decided to cut my losses and go into creative to spawn some more dogs to fight with me - guess what happened? Vanished.

2. The dog AI needs a lot and I mean a -lot- of work. Dogs won’t teleport like vanilla dogs will, when I used vanilla dogs I could teleport anywhere and my dogs were soon to follow. Not my doggy treats dogs, I had to drag them with me with a lead to get them to go where I wanted them to go. This is really difficult when I use teleporting to get back to my home since I get lost easily. The dogs are really really annoying compared to vanilla dogs, they are constantly either in my face or wandering away endlessly and make everything difficult. I spend more time trying to reign in my DT dogs than playing the game. I was trying to harvest crops and they trampled all of them because they were right in my face. Vanilla dogs at least wander at a small distance instead of being constantly right in my face. The berserker mode doesn’t work very well, I tried to turn it on when I was in a nether fortress and they attacked only a small percentage of the mobs I encountered.

3. I want to stress again the dogs do not teleport. At least they never did for me, sometimes they would over small distances but they wouldn’t over long distances which is the whole point of dogs teleporting. They also don’t follow very well, I kept having to backtrack to get my dogs to follow me.

4. The pack puppy talent is really bad at lvl 5. My dog kept picking up everything I did not want him to pick up, I liked the idea of keeping things I mined in my dog that I wanted to keep like ores but he wouldn’t take ores because he was filled up on cobblestone and dirt. I tried to destroy some things in my lava pit and the dog kept picking them back up. Rework this talent please .

5. Not a huge issue compared to the glaring bugginess and obnoxious AI but I really think the dire treats should have a different recipe. End stone is really really really hard to get. Considering tamed wolves can’t even get to the End unless you cheat with creative mode it also seems kind of an odd choice. Maybe a nether block if you wanted it to be hard to get? End stone just seems ridiculously hard for a dog treat.

This mod has some really good ideas and good things about it, I enjoyed the immortal dogs and some of the talents are very useful. I maxed out my nether pack on the hellhound so they wouldn’t die so easily, and the pack puppy talent is good when I don’t want to clear out enough space to send a mule or donkey down with me. But it needs a lot of bug fixing and smoothing out to make it playable.

Hey, thanks for taking the time to create this issue and I'm sorry I didn't get round to resolving it. I've not worked on this project for a while and have decided to archive the git repository. Fear not, there is a fork https://github.com/DashieDev/DoggyTalentsNext which might be of interest. I don't expect to be back within the Minecraft community so farewell and happy mining!

Hi! Initially I came here to leave similar feedback (so many crops trampled...) and to ask about the possibility of including some of the AI improvements made by the (very) old Sophisticated Wolves mod, such as dogs keeping their distance if the owner starts mining/chopping and moving away from creepers (unless they have Creeper Sweeper).

I've also run into a bug that I have also found with vanilla wolves. Sometimes they just refuse to attack anything, whether that's auto-attacking skeletons or attacking monsters I punch. Also extends to the Creeper Sweeper talent tree. I think that might be a Minecraft bug and not caused by this mod.

I appreciate that you're no longer playing much, percivalalb, and that major improvements may not be possible. I wish I had the expertise to help. Thank you for the work on this mod anyway, and even if it may be that I have to snip my doggies' collars and uninstall it, it was fun to try.

(P.S. As for portals, I didn't think wolves could travel to the Nether, so maybe it's some issue with that? Just a guess. I haven't tried taking DT dogs through a portal.)

First of all - thank you for taking the time to write this post.
I agree with your overall feeling about the mod, 90% ideas and features off the mod have not changed in 7+ years and really are showing there age. At the time it was new and just cool but now a better user experience is required and really crack down on bugs to create a playable experience. Not sure how much code is still original but DoggyTalents is the place I first learnt to code. If I was to have another attempt it would be a lot better but this is time and commitment I do not have currently (doing final year university exams current).

One problem is I am working alone and get little direct feedback its hard to make decisions on my own that would benefit everyone and make their experience better.

Another issue I have never actually played with DT in a survival time for an extended period of time, so have not been able to create a playable experience. For that matter I haven't played minecraft in 5 years or games in a couple, I still enjoy the occasional dip into the minecraft code and do want to improve on it. Earlier last year I did consider creating a doggy talents 2 but didn't get very far. I do want to look at this again over the coming 6 months.
I am not making excuses just trying to explain.

Responding to some of your issues:
The dog AI is very similar the wolves AI with tweaks but obviously needs looking and issues being solve.
For example "they went to my house in the overworld" I have no idea how this could even happen.
I am aware of issues like doggy disappearing especially when interacting with portals but don't know the cause.