FOSS gamedev and creative worlds

0.4.9 release.
Try the conifers.

Nice work. It's not perfect, but it's getting better!

Thank you.

The next thing I want to add would cause big changes in gameplay, so I would like to have some opinions on this. With the mod in the attachment you can test it. Create a new world and enable the mod before you enter it. To make stone tools you first have to find rocks. Later you can craft nine cobble into one rock. Also, no more punching trees with the bare fist.

bare fists are useless?

For those who play with "Fancy Trees" off I made this small texture pack. (It only includes leaves textures.)


Also: No, bare fists are not useless. You just can't cut down a tree with your hand anymore.
The rock-mod is now part of the game.

I'm happy to see that Meldrian reviewed this subgame. If you want to peek into nodetest (and speak German) I suggest you to watch this. And also watch the other videos on his channel.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DningxSf1n8

For me it is interesting to see how someone else uses the game, There are some things I have to reconsider, mainly the hunger system which I probably will redo completely.

Is footsteps in nodetest could work alone with minetet game standart ?
Does it needs some special texture, i've seen CasimirKaPazi/nodetest/blob/master/mods/default/textures/default_grass_footsteps.png is a special texture.
if i put the image in texture in footsteps mod is this will work ?

Yes it should work without problems.

Ok thx
I will try it

The conifers now look much better. They still don't appear in nature, you might want to use "/giveme nodetest:conifersapling 99".
Also in the picture, sneak elevators can be build with only one row now. That also allows to hide them behind corners.
There now is straw that you can craft from nine wheat, and stronebricks got added again.
One more thing I am proud of: empty buckets are stackable.

Complete rewrite of the hunger system (with bar).
It all depends on your health. The less hp you have the faster you will feel hungry. When the hunger bar reaches zero you just get hurt. So when there is only a halve heart left you will starve in about 40 seconds unless you find something to eat. Eating only heals you, it does not reset the hunger bar. With full health it takes more than a minetest day until your stomach hurts.
(Depending on your window size the bar can be offset in a strange position. Currently I can do nothing about this.)

Some changes:
The hunger and drowning statbars being offset is fixed now.
Conifers get covered with snow when growing on snow (3/4 chance).
For stairsplus the craftquide only shows the recipes of wood. This way the craftguide does not get flooded with recipes that all are the same.
Eating also restores hunger.
Added damage sounds.

indev mapgen will probably be removed or completely changed in the next few months, just so you know.

Latest changes:
* removed freeminer support and perlinore
* eat sound
* new main menu icon

* almost complete rewrite of the doors mod to make it modular
When crafting doors you now get two half doors. You can make windows, or three node high doors this way. Also, when you place a door, the joint will be where you are pointing at.

@paramat Thank you, I changed the first post accordingly.

With the release of 0.4.10 Nodetest was renamed as Voxelgarden. The license changed from GPLv3 to LGPL 2.1, making it more compatible with mods and other subgames.

Changes since the last post:
* Removed unused features (pots, perlinore).
* Fixed steel door bug.
* Improved clay generation.
* You get hungry faster.
* Added an API to farming, similar to the one of minetest_game.

For most important changes since 0.4.9 start reading here: viewtopic.php?p=124028#p124028
Or look at the commits on github: https://github.com/CasimirKaPazi/Voxelgarden/commits

*farming

I had to check that, as I wasn't sure if it was actually a typo, or you have added a picture frame mod :P

Oh, thank you (fixed).

Btw. For those who don't know. With the name change your old worlds will not appear in the main menu. You have to go into the directory of the world "/minetest/worlds/yourworld/", open "world.mt" and change the gameid to "gameid = Voxelgarden".

Myswiat did a review of the very latest version.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D5pREOVDjRQ
I don't understand anything of what he says, but I think it is Polish.

Casimir wrote:Oh, thank you (fixed).

Btw. For those who don't know. With the name change your old worlds will not appear in the main menu. You have to go into the directory of the world "/minetest/worlds/yourworld/", open "world.mt" and change the gameid to "gameid = Voxelgarden".

That is very nice to know. I have been wishing to know how to do that for a while.

Will you add minecraft like item drop/pick ?

I tried to fire up a voxel garden, but there appears to be nothing but stone and water, as far as the eye can see...

whatever am i doing wrong?

You are using magpen version 7. It is incomplete right now, so try magpenv6 instead.

Thanks, that seems to work a LOT better :)

Your welcome. As for more info, that new one, is not finished, but still has a lot of better features. For instance, there are mountains and rivers. Much better terrain than magpen 6. And there are a couple mods around to add some terrain (dirt, savanna, mountains, tundra, etc) around in mod releases.

But anyhoo...

andersje wrote:Thanks, that seems to work a LOT better :)

Your welcome. ;)

Some changes:
* Cactus do have spices now, but still don't do damage.
* Used cleaned up tree code by ShadowNinja, which speeds up tree growing by about 30 times.
* Right click with a tool places the node that is right to the tool in your inventory. Useful for exploring caves with a pickaxe and torches.
* Further improved mapgen settings. The highest mountain I found so far in v6 was 126 nodes high.
* Doors can now be used as hatches.
* If you haven't noticed there is a Voxelgarden server. In it I am also testing some mods that will probably become part of the game in the future (mobs and beds).

I really like this game :)

May I use your default/textures/ for my game? (Surely with the creator and license stuff)

I'm glad someone likes it. And of course you can use the textures.

Casimir wrote:The next thing I want to add would cause big changes in gameplay, so I would like to have some opinions on this. With the mod in the attachment you can test it. Create a new world and enable the mod before you enter it. To make stone tools you first have to find rocks. Later you can craft nine cobble into one rock. Also, no more punching trees with the bare fist.

This is certainly something you need to mention at a more prominent place. Not burried in the middle of a long thread! And the alternative to gain these stones from cobble is a bit expensive (27 cobble for one pick).

I eventually figured out what "rocks" are. I first thought they where random blocks placed by players. If you really care about rocks, please take those nodeboxes from undergrowth or stoneage or whichever of the nice nature mods it is that adds them. This also causes problems on multiplayer servers as eventually all rocks in the vicinity of spawn (something your server doesn't seem to have?) are collected, and new players have difficulties getting started.

Harvesting cotton did not give me anything. It only turned the plant into a bare one. Harvesting wheat only gave me harvested wheat, no seeds.

The few houses I found on the server where of very good quality and nicely built, although small and few. They where just a bit too dark. More torches would have been good.

The modular door system is very well done. It might be worth offering that as a standalone mod.

Casimir wrote:Right click with a tool places the node that is right to the tool in your inventory. Useful for exploring caves with a pickaxe and torches.

That's a very good and useful feature.

Casimir wrote:Instead with modularity, polished mods and stairsplus it offers the freedom to be creative (creative like create not decorate). In fact, there are many mods you don't need because you can build the same using only a few nodes and your fantasy.

You do have a point there, and your buildings show that you have the necessary creativity. I personally like to have some nodebox-mods around as they allow me to build smaller than full-block. But it's certainly true that blocks that are too detailed limit creativity.

Casimir wrote: Good textures by default, forming an overall consisted style.

The textures look good. Would the server have been one where more consideration was placed on protection and multiplayer, some textures would indeed have been extremly inviting to build with. That papyrus root is a very nice one, and others also look very good. The game alltogether looks well.

Casimir wrote:Self planting saplings. No need to collect them. Forests will spred

Nice feature, but as most players will never get around cutting a tree down due to lack of tools, it's probably less relevant. The falling apples are good as well.

The highland pools also seem pretty nice. I think those ought to be part of the default game.

Torches that fell down after their stone has been digged seem to replant themshelves. That's nice!

The footprints are not too annoying.

Stack size seems to be reduced to 90. That's bad.

Alltogether, I think the game might work well as a basic game. There are certainly some very nice ideas and textures present, and it fits together. However, as a multiplayer server, it lacks a lot. Documentation is missing, spawn (servers are there in order to occasionally meet other players) and home commands are missing (perfect way of killing immersion if you've got to track coordinates in the upper part of the screen to find back somewhere). And without protection, all building is rather sooner than later utterly pointless.

It would be good if the server would get more advertisement (presence in server list, short description, more articles here) so that more players can take a look.

Thank you for the feedback, it is very helpful to read someone else view.

The rock thing seems to be a bigger problem then I expected. I'm trying to think of solutions to this, but haven't come up with something nice so far. Maybe add flint as in my stoneage mod, and replace rocks with flint_block that drops four flint and is crafted with four. As the rocks are a defining part of the game, every fix will include some bigger game changes. In general I want the player to be able to achieve their goals on different ways. The rock thing/getting stone tools is a bottleneck atm.

About cotton:
https://github.com/minetest/minetest/issues/1640

The modular door system is very well done. It might be worth offering that as a standalone mod.

Good Idea. I will do that.

The highland pools also seem pretty nice. I think those ought to be part of the default game.

Highlandpools slows down generation quite much. I want to keep the standard mapgen at least as fast as it is now.

Torches that fell down after their stone has been digged seem to replant themshelves. That's nice!

Also signs, rails and plants. In general all attached nodes.

Stack size seems to be reduced to 90. That's bad.

A stack of 99 seems to be chosen arbitrary. With middle click you can place 10 items and the craft gird has nine slots. So 90 is better for crafting (e.g. 90 papyrus --> 10 papyrus roots).

The server mainly is an experiment and won't last long anyway. I wanted to see the behavior of the subgame itself and therefor added only very few mods. When the server continuous then I will consider your suggestions. For now I enabled sethome on the server.

It would be good if the server would get more advertisement (presence in server list, short description, more articles here) so that more players can take a look.

I'm very very bad at advertising. And somehow the announcement to the serverlist is not working.

Casimir wrote:Right click with a tool places the node that is right to the tool in your inventory. Useful for exploring caves with a pickaxe and torches.

YES! I miss this feature when I'm playing online and can't use it.