FOSS gamedev and creative worlds

While there is still much to bring Minetest out of it's beta infancy, I think now is a good time to start thinking about all the things that can be done to make Minetest an improvement on all the other mining sims out there. This shouldn't be just another Minecraft clone, and with the wonderful and simple modding structure already in place, it seems to already have an advantage over similar games. While there are other threads dedicated to talking about future features of MT, many of them focus on things that other games, specifically Minecraft, have already done. While we will be following in the footsteps of giants, we can, and already are, making Minetest something special in its genre.

My ideas so far:

Improved water volume physics: One of the biggest things I'd like to see is an improvement to water physics. Minecraft uses water source blocks, which often causes water to do some rather odd things. Total Miner just allows water to flow and spread infinitely across the same level or lower. I think we can do better. My idea would be to have a set number of different water blocks representing the water level. It's probably more complicated than I would expect (I do have a decent amount of C++ experience, but it's all self-taught) but with a bit of work, I think we could make code that would accomplish semi-realistic water volume physics.

item modification: Games in the mining sim genre focus on two major features - mining/gathering and crafting. Minecraft added an experience point system that allowed players to enchant their equipment with certain effects. It was a nice touch, but I think it would be more interesting to do something similar under a crafting mechanic. What if we created a new 'crafting' tool/interface, similar to the 'Crafting table' and 'furnace', that gave the player one or more slots to add a modifier item to a tool in their inventory. For example, the player has an iron sword. Killing a slime mob gives them a jelly. using the 'modifying table' (for lack of a better name) the player adds the jelly to the sword. Now the sword has a chance of inflicting poison on creatures struck with it. These modifications could prolong the life of an item, increase its strength, or give a variety of special effects.

richardmv wrote:Improved water volume physics

like in terraria?

richardmv wrote:item modification

disagree. it's the same enchanting, but simpler. we shouldn't have enchants in MT, it's too minecraft-ish.
i have come up with a scheme, which does enchanting, but in an odd way. way of TES. you have poison, you apply it to the blade, you have one poisonous strike. or three. a limited number. then, something more new. you have expirience, you have levels. then, you have skills and skill points. you train your skills with your skill points, and you have enchanting skills. which enchant your items for 1-7 uses depeniding on the skill level. perhaps, so?

richardmv wrote:This shouldn't be just another Minecraft clone

totally and strongly agree!

We should not focus on not being Minecraft. We should focus on making a good game.
E.g.: I never played Minecraft. After making my farming mod without knowing how MCs farming system works I watched some videos about the farming system of MC and I noticed that its quite similar to mine.
This genre has some basic features, and every game has to implement this features in similar ways.
IMO: If we do all we can to be different from Minecraft, it can happen that this game goes into a wrong direction. We should focus on the game itself and not on other games.
Dont misunderstand me: I dont want to copy MC; I want that we develop Minetest without looking at MC (if this is possible).

I hope you understand what I mean.

PilzAdam wrote:I want that we develop Minetest without looking at MC (if this is possible).

we should do THAT. exactly that. we'd better look at some other great games, probably...

For minecraft there is a mod that makes exactly what you want. Some time ago I played minecraft on a friends account and used this mod. The standard liquid is just boring, a finite one gives you a lot of possibilities. And collecting rainwater is just nice.
So I totally like this idea. The only problem I see is that it needs more calculation power which interferes with the original intention of minetest.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EX5hGbfDfm4

I totally agree that minetest should be a game by it's own. The thing it needs to develop this way is: more development. We are facing to the right direction, but we are not walking very fast. It seems to me that celeron is the only one editing the source code, and the last commit was a month ago.
Are there no other people who can do C++, or is celeron the only one who can make changes?

Casimir wrote:I totally agree that minetest should be a game by it's own. The thing it needs to develop this way is: more development. We are facing to the right direction, but we are not walking very fast. It seems to me that celeron is the only one editing the source code, and the last commit was a month ago.
Are there no other people who can do C++, or is celeron the only one who can make changes?

what about the forks?
maybe then have a community git?

PilzAdam wrote:We should not focus on not being Minecraft. We should focus on making a good game.

I totally agree with you.

PilzAdam wrote:We should not focus on not being Minecraft. We should focus on making a good game.

I agree with this to an extent. We don't want to look at Minecraft and say, 'let's not be that guy'. Some things are popular because they are good. Everything Notch and Mojang have done in making Minecraft has been to make the best game possible (in their eyes) and they're doing a fantastic job.

If we keep following in Minecraft's footsteps without blazing our own trail, however, we'll be crushed. Mojang is a talented team with professional programmers dedicated to working on Minecraft because it's making them tons of money. It's their job AND their passion. For us, it's only a passion. We have an advantage of having our code in C++ and much easier to mod, BUT they've been working on Minecraft for years. To be fair, the whole project started as one man's vision, and grew into what it is today...

Anyways, we need to focus on Minetest and making it the best we can, but we also need to learn from the good and bad aspects of the other games in our genre. We also need to think of new, innovative things that we can implement, just like Notch did when he made Minecraft. It needs to be equal parts, 'this is essential to the genre, so we need it', 'this worked well in this game, so let's make our own version in this one', and 'I always wanted them to do this in a game, but nobody ever has'.

How about just forgetting MC and thinking of some new ideas?

The next question is what Celeron is going to do.

CTMN wrote:The next question is what Celeron is going to do.

Why is everybody focusing on celeron so much?

Casimir wrote:

CTMN wrote:The next question is what Celeron is going to do.

Why is everybody focusing on celeron so much?

because nobody else seems to be ready to take up the development as much as it needed to be more important than celeron. and celeron created it, you can't deny this fact.
at least that's how i see the reason

No one except him may continue developing the original Minetest. That´s the reason.

why not?

celeron55 has not mentioned any plans for spending bulk time on minetest development. We are very eager for someone with time and c++ experience to fork the project on git.

If anyone starts doing this, I will be watching very closely.

cornernote wrote:celeron55 has not mentioned any plans for spending bulk time on minetest development. We are very eager for someone with time and c++ experience to fork the project on git.

If anyone starts doing this, I will be watching very closely.

+1

Mito551 wrote:

Casimir wrote:

CTMN wrote:The next question is what Celeron is going to do.

Why is everybody focusing on celeron so much?

because nobody else seems to be ready to take up the development as much as it needed to be more important than celeron. and celeron created it, you can't deny this fact.
at least that's how i see the reason

I BEG TO DIFFER, i am QUITE interested in adding in new things to the game, be it that they are mods with the lua api, they are still very new things, like:
-XP
-SuperFlatWorld for creative mode
-Flint and Strike
-Infinite item placement for creative mode

Instead of enchantments in Minetest, let's have Buffs :D
For example - you take an Iron Sword and kill a slime with it. It's guts spill out and you get some acid from it. You take that acid, throw it in an alloy furnace with some Mese, and make an alloy made of Mese, infused with the acid. Then, coat the backside of a sheet of that Mese-alloy with a thin layer of Mese to protect the sword's frame, then grind down the iron sword's edges, make notches in the sides, and smash the Mese-alloy onto it and surround it completely. Take that, heat it some, beat it into more of a sharp-shape, and voila! You now have a sword capable of cutting almost anything in-half with 1 hit.
:D

SegFault22 wrote:Instead of enchantments in Minetest, let's have Buffs :D
For example - you take an Iron Sword and kill a slime with it. It's guts spill out and you get some acid from it. You take that acid, throw it in an alloy furnace with some Mese, and make an alloy made of Mese, infused with the acid. Then, coat the backside of a sheet of that Mese-alloy with a thin layer of Mese to protect the sword's frame, then grind down the iron sword's edges, make notches in the sides, and smash the Mese-alloy onto it and surround it completely. Take that, heat it some, beat it into more of a sharp-shape, and voila! You now have a sword capable of cutting almost anything in-half with 1 hit.
:D

Another explanation for the infinity tools mod.