FOSS gamedev and creative worlds

Squaresville is a simplified world dominated by ruined cities. This is a stand-alone mapgen. You can't use it with any of the stock mapgens (though it should cooperate with other "mapgen" mods).

The world is very two-dimensional -- it doesn't generate any caves or dungeons -- (the ruins are meant to be above-ground dungeons). The terrain will probably be too flat for most. You could adjust this a bit by tweaking the terrain noise, but it won't give the realistic shapes that more serious mapgens manage. City areas are completely flat -- only the wilderness has any shape at all. All the default biomes are reimplemented in lua, along with most of the stock decorations.

This is a work in progress.





Actual spoiler:


The source is available on github.

Code: GPL3, textures: CC-BY-SA and CC0

Mod dependencies: default, flowers, wool, bucket, beds, stairs, vessels

Download: https://github.com/duane-r/squaresville ... master.zip


Note for other developers: This mod does all of the mapgen work in lua, including planting decorations. This allows me to completely ignore chunk boundaries and problems with the C mapgens' decor spilling over into my work. The only random numbers used are for decorations -- all of the terrain and structures are completely repeatable.

Note for fans of the "complete" squaresville: You can still get the original can of worms on github. I no longer maintain it. I've published some of the missing pieces as separate mods.

Elixirs
Fun Tools (chainsaw, flare gun, rope ladders, wall hammer, etc.)
Hard Wood
Inspire (rewards similar to the metal/gem crafting requirements)
Wooden Bucket

None so far...

+1

awesome +1

I'm gonna have to sneak this on to our Pi Server and mess with the family. I'll let you know if I smell smoke.
Thanks for the efforts, it looks awesome :D

ExeterDad wrote:I'm gonna have to sneak this on to our Pi Server and mess with the family. I'll let you know if I smell smoke.
Thanks for the efforts, it looks awesome :D

You just love making trouble. : )

This is such an awesome idea and sooo welcomed to a game I'm working on!!! I love the idea of ruined cities being dungeons because they would have lots of treasure from stuff left behind by its former residents. I feel like a broken record but you really make some amazing mods! My students are still loving the cityscape mod!

EDIT is there any easy way to combine this with the medieval type cities you were making? Not sure I'd even use it since I'm still deciding the exact theme (aka modern vs medieval) but just wondering. BTW I loved those cities too especially when the rivers would go through them.

More screenshots please, the one's in the screenshots thread will be forgotten after a while.

paramat wrote:More screenshots please, the one's in the screenshots thread will be forgotten after a while.

I think you've pretty much seen everything already. It's very repetitive terrain. I'm mostly focusing on game play.

TheReaperKing wrote:is there any easy way to combine this with the medieval type cities you were making? Not sure I'd even use it since I'm still deciding the exact theme (aka modern vs medieval) but just wondering. BTW I loved those cities too especially when the rivers would go through them.

I never got very far with exeter. There were too many problems dealing with the C mapgen and decorations. Using the approach I took here would definitely make it easier, but there's not really much similarity between the two projects except on the surface.

Squaresville got its name because everything is extremely simplified. The cities are all squares within squares within squares. I use only one, two-dimensional noise for the terrain and two for biomes. The only reason it looks tolerable is that I use that noise to cut off the tops of the buildings, which gives them a bit of character. To give it a medieval flavor would require a lot of irregularity, which might slow things down too much to make it practical.

I could probably add rivers, without slowing things down too much, just skipping the blocks a river flows through. I'll try it, just to see what it looks like, but for this mod, I'm focused on game play over realistic scenery. (Everybody else has that pretty well covered.)

Thanks for your insight on the different mapgens, that's super interesting. I hope to play with all that myself someday. And I agree, gameplay is always key! I'm hoping to eventually let my students play this and make it so they just turn the monsters into bunnies or something haha. I really love the idea of the city dungeons, it isn't something that we've seen much of before, if at all.

No, I'm not going to add rivers. They cause too many problems for the mobs. I also get these bizarre lighting issues.

Sounds fair and also super interesting screen!

This looks a lot like a Fallout type world, a large post-apocalyptic landscape covered by ruins and hostiles. I like it, it adds, in it's own way, more than the Aftermath game. +1

mr_dean wrote:This looks a lot like a Fallout type world, a large post-apocalyptic landscape covered by ruins and hostiles. I like it, it adds, in it's own way, more than the Aftermath game. +1

Thanks. At some point in the future, I'm going to break this mod up the way I did fun_caves, separating the actual mapgen from all of the game components (mobs, equipment, etc.). This will make it easier for people to pick and choose which bits they want and to maintain the mapgen.