FOSS gamedev and creative worlds

Blocklife is fork of Minetest 0.4.7, its actual version is 1.1. We added some mods for Minetest to the main game, too. Its main goal is make realistic game in blocks. You can download it on our website http://www.gibucsoft.8u.cz/en/download.php. There is a screenshot:

Why Minetest 0.4.7 and not 0.4.12?
You could create a subgame for your ideas.

Better to make it as subgame.

I dont know why everybody tries to make a new game, especially with not much difference

We used Minetest 0.4.7 because it was the actual version when I got the idea to make a fork. We had downloaded it and then we started to make changes. And we have decided to make a fork, not a subgame because we plan to make some changes, which will not be compatible with Minetest engine.

soooooooooo,
can this client connect to normal minetest servers?
Can minetest clients connect to a server hosted by this fork?
Can mods or maps be shared?
Can texture packs or skins be shared?

if more realistic,
more meshes, less voxels?
more Second Life, less Minecraft?

or rather more realistic gameplay wise?
better physics?
or having to invest more time to get things done?

more (insert question here)?

reading your web page I sort of miss things like "based on", "inspired by", "some code used from".
You know the "standing on the shoulders of others" stuff.

1. It should be compatible for protocol versions 13-20.
2.Mods can't be shared. However if you change all words minetest in code of mod for Minetest 0.4.7 to blocklife, then you created mod for Blocklife. Maps should be compatible.
3.Texture packs for things, which are both in Minetest and Blocklife, can be shared. Skins should be compatible.
4.No, there are still many voxels.
5.I don't know the game Second Life but screenshots of it seem a little like my vision of Blocklife. However Blocklife should still be in blocks.
6.Gameplay and physics will be made more realistic in future versions.
7.I have changed the websites, this stuff is written there now.

I will try to write here about Blocklife once more. Its actual version is 1.4. Since version 1.1 we added: juice extractor, which you can use for making juices, speedometer and fuelmeter to cars and helicopters, horisontal traffic signs, rye, barley, oat, poppy, vine, hop, horseradish, lentil, sunflower, bean and maple, from which you can get maple syrup, physical excretion, oil refinery, which you can use it to product oil products as gasoline, avgas, paraffin and asphalt, honey extractor, which you can use it to product honey and bee wax, candles from bee wax or paraffin, off-road car, more kinds of grass, which you can cut them by sickle or scythe and dry it to get hay, mud, sulfur, quartz and apatite, phosphorus, which can be made from apatite, matches, lighter and flint and steel, oven, microwave oven and refrigerator. So please, download it, try it and write some constructive critism.

Near no difference with Minetest, I didn't know why you don't choose to do a subgame with the latest stable version of Minetest...

Anyway, good work :)

gibucsoft wrote:I will try to write here about Blocklife once more. Its actual version is 1.4. Since version 1.1 we added: juice extractor, which you can use for making juices, speedometer and fuelmeter to cars and helicopters, horisontal traffic signs, rye, barley, oat, poppy, vine, hop, horseradish, lentil, sunflower, bean and maple, from which you can get maple syrup, physical excretion, oil refinery, which you can use it to product oil products as gasoline, avgas, paraffin and asphalt, honey extractor, which you can use it to product honey and bee wax, candles from bee wax or paraffin, off-road car, more kinds of grass, which you can cut them by sickle or scythe and dry it to get hay, mud, sulfur, quartz and apatite, phosphorus, which can be made from apatite, matches, lighter and flint and steel, oven, microwave oven and refrigerator. So please, download it, try it and write some constructive critism.

You should really change this to physical excertion;
physical excretion sounds like something nasty.

Napiophelios wrote:

gibucsoft wrote:I will try to write here about Blocklife once more. Its actual version is 1.4. Since version 1.1 we added: juice extractor, which you can use for making juices, speedometer and fuelmeter to cars and helicopters, horisontal traffic signs, rye, barley, oat, poppy, vine, hop, horseradish, lentil, sunflower, bean and maple, from which you can get maple syrup, physical excretion, oil refinery, which you can use it to product oil products as gasoline, avgas, paraffin and asphalt, honey extractor, which you can use it to product honey and bee wax, candles from bee wax or paraffin, off-road car, more kinds of grass, which you can cut them by sickle or scythe and dry it to get hay, mud, sulfur, quartz and apatite, phosphorus, which can be made from apatite, matches, lighter and flint and steel, oven, microwave oven and refrigerator. So please, download it, try it and write some constructive critism.

You should really change this to physical excertion;
physical excretion sounds like something nasty.

It's really physical excretion, not physical excertion. We made no mistake. In our game you just have to go to the toilet (sometimes).
@Minetestforfun: We were thinking about it, but we decided the code is incompatible with the latest Minetest engine and reprogamming it would be too much time-consuming and we also plan new functions, which will be completely out of Minetest possibilities, like round earth in version 2.0 and much more. And thank you for your reply - every constructive feedback is very important for us.

gibucsoft wrote:@Minetestforfun: We were thinking about it, but we decided the code is incompatible with the latest Minetest engine and reprogamming it would be too much time-consuming and we also plan new functions, which will be completely out of Minetest possibilities, like round earth in version 2.0 and much more. And thank you for your reply - every constructive feedback is very important for us.

like paramat's flexrealm mod?
viewtopic.php?f=11&t=7887&hilit=flexrealm
(gravity adjustments not included)

the only things that minetest does not have are weather, directional lighting and shadows, directional gravity and stacked realms.
(altough the last one will be possible soon)

gibucsoft wrote:It's really physical excretion, not physical excertion. We made no mistake. In our game you just have to go to the toilet (sometimes).

Well in the immortal words of philipbenr: "Eww"

firefox wrote:

gibucsoft wrote:@Minetestforfun: We were thinking about it, but we decided the code is incompatible with the latest Minetest engine and reprogamming it would be too much time-consuming and we also plan new functions, which will be completely out of Minetest possibilities, like round earth in version 2.0 and much more. And thank you for your reply - every constructive feedback is very important for us.

like paramat's flexrealm mod?
viewtopic.php?f=11&t=7887&hilit=flexrealm
(gravity adjustments not included)

the only things that minetest does not have are weather, directional lighting and shadows, directional gravity and stacked realms.
(altough the last one will be possible soon)

Ok, I've never heard about this mod, it seems good. But doesn't the missing directional gravity mean, that if you go too south, you just fall into a void? If it does, then I think our implementation of round earth will be much better because it will be in the engine and it will support the directional gravity and also directional weather and so on.

"directional weather" ?
sounds interesting,
like seasonal winds? Monsoon and trade winds for a sailing mod?

How do you walk on a round earth made of big cubic blocks? I mean.. there will be whole areas where you would be walking on edges (specially latitudes 45°, -45° but it probably will still be weird in all the intermediate angles until you reach either 0° or 90°).

It's also not just directional gravity. The camera of the player is hardcoded in a certain orientation, you can't turn around the camera to look upside down, and entities don't get tilted like that. I don't think this would be easy to implement. Specially if you are doing it without collaborating with any of the Minetest devs.

IMHO, it would be best to make a subgame and submit PRs to the official engine repo if you need engine changes. If then your changes don't get accepted you would have a reason to make a fork.. but at least you'd have tried.

twoelk wrote:"directional weather" ?
sounds interesting,
like seasonal winds? Monsoon and trade winds for a sailing mod?

Probably as well, but later. I mainly meant it, the rain, snow, lightning and so on will be oriented to the earth's core and not "down" (to the smaller values of y coordinate).

Ferk wrote:How do you walk on a round earth made of big cubic blocks? I mean.. there will be whole areas where you would be walking on edges (specially latitudes 45°, -45° but it probably will still be weird in all the intermediate angles until you reach either 0° or 90°).

It's also not just directional gravity. The camera of the player is hardcoded in a certain orientation, you can't turn around the camera to look upside down, and entities don't get tilted like that. I don't think this would be easy to implement. Specially if you are doing it without collaborating with any of the Minetest devs.

IMHO, it would be best to make a subgame and submit PRs to the official engine repo if you need engine changes. If then your changes don't get accepted you would have a reason to make a fork.. but at least you'd have tried.

I agree it won't be easy to implement but I think, we can somehow handle it. And I know, that the most correct way would be to suggest these changes. But I don't think, that they would have accepted and also we have some other plans about Blocklife with even smaller probability to be accepted by the Minetest engine developer team.

Hey, we have just released new Blocklife version with number 1.5. We have improved meal crafting a lot. More specifically these things: Butter and cheese can be made from milk. Sausage can be made from meat. Popcorn can be made from indian corn. Dough can be made from flour and egg, raw bakery products can be made from dough. Roll and bun were added. Ketchup, sunflower oil, mustard and horseradish spice were added. Mayonnaise can be made from oil and egg. Tatar sauce can be made from mayonnaise and cucumbers. Dark and light beer were added and can be made of malt. Wine was added and can be made of must. Download this new version, try it and reply us.

We have just published Blocklfe 1.6. Since last version we made these changes: Left hand, so you can now use both hands, free inventory fields for hands were added, item or block can be no longer used as a tool, tutorial mode, game mode has to be set during the creation of the world and it can be no longer changed, graphics was improved, some bugs were fixed. So download it, try it and reply us. There are some screenshots of the current version:

That's cool!

Is it still LGPL? if so that'd be cool to commit back into Minetest (if you wanted, of cource)

That's great you like our game.
Yes, it's LGPL because LGPL bans changing of license to another one except GPL. But we don't have enough time to commit it back into Minetest but if somebody wants to commit it back, he can of course.

So, compatibility with Windows XP is tested - works.

Please use LuaJIT in the next build. It takes forever to generate all that landscape stuff. I had to disable those mods to get into the game without waiting like 10 minutes.

1) Personal settings were still activated. A czech player called 'Martin' played it the last time.
2) Using the arrow keys is a pain. Please revert that to the WASD controls by default, so there's still one hand left for my mouse.
3) "free_move", it's still in the settings but the privilege seems to be gone. Builders won't like it but you seem to create a fork that is close to the reality. How's noclip helpful when you can't fly?
4) There is a massive singleplayer lag, about 4 seconds - is it just me or did you mess a bit with the code in that area?

The most interesting (and perhaps the only) is that two-hands system. But are the F11 and F12 keys really needed? Just assign the left hand to the left mouse button and the other for the right mouse button. For a total confusion, add a setting to swap left/right mouse buttons but keep the hands as they are.

First impressions: Not that good.

First of all, spawning. Why do I spawn in the ground each and every time?

Next, the controls. The arrow keys seem to be for a left-handed person, with the mouse on the left. Please, most of us are right-handed. Also, the dual-wielding commands are a bit strange. Please explain them. What is the hotbar for if I can only use the predesignated left-right hand...

@Krock
Use of LuaJIT is interesting idea, if there is no problem with compatibility it will be probably used in the next version.
1) Activated personal settings are error during publishing, it will be repaired as soon as possible.
2) Ok because of interest in it, it will be reverted to WASD in the next version.
3) Yes, free_move should be deleted because it is unrealistic. We have forgotten to delete the setting, it will be repaired in the next version. Noclip will be also deleted.
4) We will check it, there is maybe some problem in the code.
I think, it is needed because in Blocklife torch can be placed but it can be used to ignite something as well. So how would you distinguish it?
@benrob0329
Read end of the message for Krock.
@wilkgr76
There is maybe some bug with the landscape mode as for the spawning, we will check it. The controls: WASD will be default in next version. Dual wielding commands: L - move item from hotbar to left hand or back, R - move item from hotbar to right hand or back, F11 - activate left hand, F12 - activate right hand. We think it is useful in this way because you can quickly move item from hotbar to hand or back and you can use both hand or just one of them. Meaning of hotbar was explained by this explanation of the dual-wielding controls.

gibucsoft wrote:@wilkgr76
There is maybe some bug with the landscape mode as for the spawning, we will check it. The controls: WASD will be default in next version. Dual wielding commands: L - move item from hotbar to left hand or back, R - move item from hotbar to right hand or back, F11 - activate left hand, F12 - activate right hand. We think it is useful in this way because you can quickly move item from hotbar to hand or back and you can use both hand or just one of them. Meaning of hotbar was explained by this explanation of the dual-wielding controls.

Thank you ☺

Just something which might be nice, is that if you hit "R" while an item is selected, swapping the selected item and the wielded item. Just some thoughts...

Overall, it's a very nice game, esp. with dual-wielding.

@wilkgr76
Swapping selected item and wielded item is good idea. We are happy that you like our game.

1. Will it work with MT servers or do I have to use regular Minetest?
2. Has it been updated with a new fork? (maybe 0.4.12 or even 0.4.13 once the next version comes out in the next month)
3. Is it compatible with Windows 7 x64 cause that's what my PC is

garywhite wrote:1. Will it work with MT servers or do I have to use regular Minetest?
2. Has it been updated with a new fork? (maybe 0.4.12 or even 0.4.13 once the next version comes out in the next month)
3. Is it compatible with Windows 7 x64 cause that's what my PC is

1. Why not just try?
3. Why not just try? It works on Windows 10 x64.

@garywhite
1. You can connect but it won't work without problem because of double wielding in Blocklife because it isn't a mod but it's right inside the Blocklife engine. So use rather regular Minetest for connecting to Minetest servers.
2. No, it isn't a subgame, it's a separate game and the Blocklife engine will be developed independently on Minetest engine.
3. Yes, the Windows version has been compiled on Windows 7 x64 but it should work on all widely used versions of Windows.

i seem to have had some trouble getting it working. i built the source code but when i tried to play on a new world it gave me an invalid multibyte string error.