FOSS gamedev and creative worlds

I bought Terraria for less than a couple bucks on a steam sale. I fired it up to see what all the hoopla was, tried chopping down a tree, started building a house and was underwhelmed to say the least. It was a 2D poor man's Minetest. Why would I play this when I had both Minetest and Minecraft? And so it sat, unplayed for years. But as I searched for popular games on Steam, I kept on seeing 13,789 people in game playing Terraria. WT? why are so many people always playing this game when other more polished glitzy games are lucky to get a few hundred people playing them? So I fired it up again, and played with my kids. And they were hooked. There was so much to discover, so much variety, so much to do. It was endless. And it was so much fun to play. We kept choosing it over Minetest, Minecraft, and Garry's Mod.

Then a realization hit me, all this time, we've been asking ourselves the wrong question. Celeron55 has been complaining that the Minetest community has no clear vision of what Minetest should aspire to be. Above all else Minetest should be fun to play. It is Terraria, not Minecraft that should show us what Minetest should aspire to be. Now I'll grant you that Terraria's vast depth and variety comes from the fact that it is 2D, and that allows it to have such a vast amount of content that we can't have it all. Which means we need to pick the best parts of Terraria and add that to Minetest.

Here are a few things that jump to mind as Needed:

The Underworld vs. the Nether: We've always wondered what should be at the bottom of the Minetest world. Should you hit bedrock? Should you fall into empty space? Terraria has the answer. You should fall, but you should fall into a vast cavern filled with lava, large villages of forsaken souls. Think Villages modpack in Hades. There should be ghosts from Blockmen's creatures mod. There should be demons, and bats made of fire. Let your imagination run wild. Let the underworld from Terraria be your guide.

Decorated dungeons: Dungeons in Minetest are so boring. Sure you can use Blockmen's Creatures mod to get Zombie spawners, and his Dungeon Loot mod to get chests with pickaxes and torches in them. Boring. Terarria dungeons are filled with decorations. We could use x-Decor to give us much of what Terraria gives us: Chandeliers, anvils, book cases, etc. Yes, somebody lives down here. Maybe a wizard, maybe a crazy miner, who knows? There should be pots that you can quickly smash open with shattering sound and all the dropped items jump into your inventory. Race your friends to see who can grab the most loot first! Instant fast paced excitement. I'm serious, until you experience a Terraria Loot frenzy, you won't know what I'm talking about. And you have to go fast, because your buddy might get some rare awesome gear that you are going to miss out on.

Underground minecart tracks: Right click on a minecart track you discover underground and whiz around quickly to discover new exciting areas.

Interesting NPC's: Dryads, weird dudes in dungeons with a story who can trade you for goods, or turn into monsters at night.

Interesting Mobs: Sand worms that come out of cave walls to attack you, and then quickly disappear back into them. Hard to kill.

Blood moons: When the nasty mobs go crazy, and you better hunker down and fight for your life.

Awesome Gear: Mining helmet we have (Night Vision Goggles mod). Grappling hook we have (Hook Mod) But should let you climb more quickly like the Terraria Grappling hook. Claws that let you cling to walls and jump climb walls (again fast paced action). Hermes boots, that let you run fast when on a long straightaway.

Crystal Hearts: When you find these bad boys, your max hitpoints gets an extra heart. Start out with fewer hearts and discover new ones.

Cool Armor and Fashion items: Wear dear antlers, or a wizards hat, a cape, whatever. Lots of fashion items and useful wearables.

Nasty traps. Falling boulders that do terrible damage and pressure plates with arrows that fire at you.

I'm seeing another theme here, fast paced action, grappling hooks work faster, loot is faster.

This is just scratching the surface of what Terraria could show us that we need.

interesting ideas ...

i think implementing mobs in default minetest was not wanted, but the mob engine could surely use those new creatures.
i heard a layered mapgen to support underworld and skyworld is in development. yay!

I would stay away from the magic and lost souls (maybe something like Undertale, where there is a whole community of other beings under your feet)

MT should be a game, IMO.

benrob0329 wrote:I would stay away from the magic and lost souls (maybe something like Undertale, where there is a whole community of other beings under your feet)

You would, and I'm guessing this is because of your religion, not an issue, if you don't like it, don't play it.

benrob0329 wrote:MT should be a game, IMO.

How is this not about a game? (mt is an engine anyways, I think you are talking about mt-game)

I'm thinking there could be multiple underworld mods, one with less objectional creatures, and another where you can smoke stogeys with the devil and hang out with succubi. :)

I had the same experience - tried it once, didn't get the point. Tried it again, realised how much stuff there was in game, how much variety and replayability. I want this in Minetest, that variety. I'm not very good at art though. If someone could make the art, and make it good, then I'd be willing to do some programming for it. (It's not as simple as you think, you would need to play around with tool types to make different weapons viable.) But maybe when I have less to do university wise.

sounds like the worst ideas ever

EDIT: (i hate terraria)

As a game, I prefer Terraria to Minetest.

rubenwardy wrote:As a game, I prefer Terraria to Minetest.

In Terraria, you *really* want to mine because of all the awesome stuff you find down there, despite all the hazards. That made me think of something else Minetest needs, nasty traps. Falling boulders that do terrible damage and pressure plates with arrows that fire at you.

When I first got into Terraria, I felt the same way. "OMG, this game is so much better than Minecraft!" Thing is, Terraria was like crack so long as I didn't exhaust all of its features or get stuck at a boss. Once I did, I got bored of it and went back to playing Minecraft for a while (or more recently, modded Minecraft and Minetest modding). Plus, Terraria's "survive your first first few nights" phase is one of the most boring and frustrating gaming experiences I've ever had. That bad first impression is why I bet a lot of people have a negative opinion of Terraria. There is a creative aspect to Terraria too, but I never really got into it because I would worry about meteors, and it wasn't nearly as immersive as Minecraft/Minetest.

Terraria is a great game, but I feel its entertainment relies heavily on boatloads of expendable content, and its features do not make the most out of its procedurally-generated world.

I do agree that existing Minetest structures could use some more decorations and the dungeons could use some actual loot, but Terraria is far from the only game that does that right.

If there is ONE feature in Terraria that I would like to see in Minetest, it is some sort of tutorial. The only reason Minecraft and similar Minetest subgames get away with this is because their game mechanics are simple and well-known. Regardless of what direction Minestest Game takes, if we really want to innovate in gameplay, we will need to inform players of what's new.

stormchaser3000 wrote:sounds like the worst ideas ever

EDIT: (i hate terraria)

I'm still not sure you wouldn't get any benefit from this however. Each of the features implemented would be implemented as a separate mod. One good example is the heart crystals mod. If you didn't like the feature, but let's say you like the night vision goggles feature or the herme's boots mod, you would just install the mods you like. For me I would like to start out with fewer abilities, and have an excuse to go mining, for example to be able to run faster over flat terrain, or be able to jump-climb cliffs with claw boots etc.

rubenwardy wrote:I had the same experience - tried it once, didn't get the point. Tried it again, realised how much stuff there was in game, how much variety and replayability. I want this in Minetest, that variety. I'm not very good at art though. If someone could make the art, and make it good, then I'd be willing to do some programming for it. (It's not as simple as you think, you would need to play around with tool types to make different weapons viable.) But maybe when I have less to do university wise.

I'm thinking loot that gives you abilities would be the best place to strart. Hermes boots, Climbing claws, or crystal hearts might be a good first mod. Anything to add excitement to mining. That for me is the biggest difference between Terraria and minetest. I'm excited to go mining in Terraria, not nearly as much so in Minetest.

Same.
Mining in MT is just monotonously holding LMB and waiting for my eyes to bleed.

Want to make mining more exciting in Minetest? Add monsters.

mapgen v5 and 7 support biome defintions underground.
with this you can make glowing cave worlds.
underground realms is the only mod that does this, wich is really strange ...
there are so many mods for farming and mobs and stuff, but only 1 for this.

I find the U.I. very unintuitive in Terraria, particularly its crafting system.

But I confirm it's exciting to go mining in this game, unlike Minetest.

jp wrote:I find the U.I. very unintuitive in Terraria, particularly its crafting system.

But I confirm it's exciting to go mining in this game, unlike Minetest.

Minetest has no threat, and threat, like it or not, is what makes games exciting: with no risk, there is no feeling of reward.

I feel that Minetest's height advantage should be used as a strength, rather than a weakness. Want those fabled rainbow caves? Work through lots of mobs near the bottom of the world for the riches. Risk should equal reward on a 1.75x difficulty scale. When Y is at 0, the difficulty should be easy (or how hard the subgame is), and by ~30000, it's difficult beyond belief. It gets to the point of a near infinite stream of things to kill before you can get those riches. Potentially, enemies could spawn in well lit areas, but just not as much. (Hint, lower altitudes equals more enemy spawning chances.) The sky could also have a difficulty multiplier, with cloudy-like nodes. (Sky islands?) With flying and other types of enemies.

I'd also like to point out that MT (subgame) looks like a turd that someone tried to polish. The textures look terrible. (Maybe bar Sam II, but blame bias.) :^) Don't give me those looks. You know I'm right. MT needs artistic direction, (as well as engine development direction, ayy lmao) rather than a few pixels thrown into a folder and then calling it a done job. Tools look like they're from a damn cartoon. (Cough, mese pickaxe.) Grass looks like it was made in GIMP without even filtering the texture or lowering the noise levels. Dirt is just terrible. No discernable shapes, like te old Cisoun texture used to have. Voxus (and by extension, jp's X-Decor mod) are great examples of design.

+100

I think that MT Game should contain some mobs (DM, Orkki, Rat, Sheep, Bird(s)?) based on a C++ mobs API (IMO closer to MobF than Simple Mobs)

Also, when you walk in on a DM, it should be like this IMO:

Jordach wrote:

jp wrote:I find the U.I. very unintuitive in Terraria, particularly its crafting system.

But I confirm it's exciting to go mining in this game, unlike Minetest.

Minetest has no threat, and threat, like it or not, is what makes games exciting: with no risk, there is no feeling of reward.

I feel that Minetest's height advantage should be used as a strength, rather than a weakness. Want those fabled rainbow caves? Work through lots of mobs near the bottom of the world for the riches. Risk should equal reward on a 1.75x difficulty scale. When Y is at 0, the difficulty should be easy (or how hard the subgame is), and by ~30000, it's difficult beyond belief. It gets to the point of a near infinite stream of things to kill before you can get those riches. Potentially, enemies could spawn in well lit areas, but just not as much. (Hint, lower altitudes equals more enemy spawning chances.) The sky could also have a difficulty multiplier, with cloudy-like nodes. (Sky islands?) With flying and other types of enemies.

I'd also like to point out that MT (subgame) looks like a turd that someone tried to polish. The textures look terrible. (Maybe bar Sam II, but blame bias.) :^) Don't give me those looks. You know I'm right. MT needs artistic direction, (as well as engine development direction, ayy lmao) rather than a few pixels thrown into a folder and then calling it a done job. Tools look like they're from a damn cartoon. (Cough, mese pickaxe.) Grass looks like it was made in GIMP without even filtering the texture or lowering the noise levels. Dirt is just terrible. No discernable shapes, like te old Cisoun texture used to have. Voxus (and by extension, jp's X-Decor mod) are great examples of design.

Agreed!
I think new texture are needed, but it's difficult to produce better textures when the game lacks some form of goal or theme/tone. Once that's solved, it could leave a straight path for artists to follow because some pixel art styles are more fit for some games than others...

Neuromancer wrote:What's Minetest still missing over Terraria?

For me, it's action, survival aspects, character customization, and an interesting goal.

Terraria has huge replayability because you really have lots of choices in how you play the game. Sure, the first few nights in Terraria (particularly before beating the three first bosses and having access to the dungeon) is quite boring and repetitive. But once you enter "hard mode", you start getting access to lots of stuff to experiment with and look for more challenges. I've started a new game from scratch (i.e. new character and world) dozens of times in Terraria, experimenting with different setups, and each time it was a challenge because I needed to revise my strategy and try different things each time. Minecraft is pretty much linear for the most part, if you play it to reach the "goal" of defeating the Ender Dragon/Wither. Minetest doesn't even have a "goal", much less an interesting one. And no, reaching the end of the map doesn't count for me.

Of course, this argument is moot for those who play these games for the creative aspect.

I have attached a placeholder crystal heart image that could be used for a crystal hearts mod.

Neuromancer wrote:The Underworld vs. the Nether: We've always wondered what should be at the bottom of the Minetest world. Should you hit bedrock? Should you fall into empty space? Terraria has the answer. You should fall, but you should fall into a vast cavern filled with lava, large villages of forsaken souls. Think Villages modpack in Hades. There should be ghosts from Blockmen's creatures mod. There should be demons, and bats made of fire. Let your imagination run wild. Let the underworld from Terraria be your guide.

mg_villages currently can't handle villages at diffrent heights. But that could be changed. What you'd really need would be convincing buildings in a suitable style.

Neuromancer wrote:Decorated dungeons: Dungeons in Minetest are so boring. Sure you can use Blockmen's Creatures mod to get Zombie spawners, and his Dungeon Loot mod to get chests with pickaxes and torches in them. Boring. Terarria dungeons are filled with decorations. We could use x-Decor to give us much of what Terraria gives us: Chandeliers, anvils, book cases, etc. Yes, somebody lives down here. Maybe a wizard, maybe a crazy miner, who knows? There should be pots that you can quickly smash open with shattering sound and all the dropped items jump into your inventory. Race your friends to see who can grab the most loot first! Instant fast paced excitement. I'm serious, until you experience a Terraria Loot frenzy, you won't know what I'm talking about. And you have to go fast, because your buddy might get some rare awesome gear that you are going to miss out on.

And how about caverealms? The vast caves that mod adds are very intresting and worth exploring! And of course there's the gobilns mod you might enjoy. As to who lives down there...yes, I always wondered. Especially about how they got air, water, food and - well - why did they live down there in these dungeons anyway? :-) Some more decoration and fallen-in tunnels might help. Even if there's hardly anyone living down there now, someone ought to have build the dungeons for some purpose before they became abandomed.

Neuromancer wrote:What's Minetest still missing over Terraria?

Real physics tweakable and for every node.
With good physics support you can do what every you want as an action game. Without this feature Minetest is just a block-build game.

https://github.com/minetest/minetest/pull/3208 for example.
https://github.com/minetest/minetest/issues/2960
https://github.com/minetest/minetest/issues/1176

I haven't tried Terraria yet, but it's probably better than Minecraft. I stopped playing Minetest when I got MC, but MC gets so boring, so fast, I decided to go back to MT after nearly a year.
I hope Terraria's good.

The truth is minetest can be all that and more. It's open source and LUA scripting... just no one knows it. Once people knows it exists stuff like easy mods like protection wins minecraft players over instantly.

Steam will sell any crap.

What we need is something like Minetest for Dummies which should have a tutorial in writing LUA for mods.