by 4aiman » Thu Apr 25, 2013 10:28
Yeah, but this engine-oriented approach make Minetest boring. I'll explain: Minetest has Lua API which is great and engine improvements to add more Lua callbacks possible are fascinating. However, that's all about it.
What can one do in minecraft?
Well, one can do following regarding no special order:
- build
- hunt
- go into farming (you should eat to recover HP and stay alive. )
- go into farming of domestic animals (to gain resources and meat)
- go into farming of hostile mobs (to gain XP and loot, like arrows)
- go into farming of NPC (to take advantage of their services)
- go to 2 different realms
- hunt in both an take realm-specific blocks
- go fight bosses
- discover the art of alchemy any time before of after you beat the boss
- spawn a boss and make a competition
- pvp fights
- dungeon exploration
- mining
- make an NPC to protect other NPCs and be chased by that NPC for rudeness towards it's "clients"
etc...
In Minetest one can:
- build (in al it's forms!)
- kill mobs (they don't give any XP or valuable loot like arrows, which makes hunt pointless. Besides, peaceful mobs do not run away if you hit them.)
- go into farming (No need to feed oneself, there's no hunger and plenty of apple trees)
- go into farming of domestic animals (MOBF add smth like this but what for? One can heal by the mean of apples, so no need in other food. It's just too much trouble to make a mob farm to get food compared to having an apple)
- go into farming of hostile mobs (No XP, no special loot crafting which in relatively expensive. So, why bother?)
- go into farming of NPC (There are crafters, but actually I don't know whether they can spawn and live if one build a house for them. Either I don't know if MT's NPC can reproduce themselves.)
- go to 2 different realms (MT has buggy nether, with no special mobs or minerals, which occupy only part of the "planet" layers. Also world generation takes up to 10 minutes on a single cored 2.93GHz CPU. Also MT have floating islands, again, w/o specific blocks, but there's no point in collecting "ender sand" in MC anyway. Well, floating island were added and now they need some more use.)
- hunt in both an take realm-specific blocks (there are realm specific blocks for nether. But their only function is decoration while in MC every block have it's own "hardness" or "explosives-proof" parameter. And nether bricks in MC is way harder to break than stone bricks. But this can be done in Lua, so let's move on.)
- go fight bosses (There are no bosses at all. MOBF doesn't work for me properly, so there's no mobs but simple. Simple mobs are good but have problems with mobs self-defence. PilzAdam, I really want simple mobs be improved, if you care to listen to my suggestions, please, PM me.)
- discover the art of alchemy any time before of after you beat the boss (there is a potions mod, but it lacks types of potions, cause there's no point to have improvements... ;)
- spawn a boss and make a competition (Not simply spawn, but undergo a certain ritual. Can be done in Lua, but regular mobs goes first)
- pvp fights (the only thing that bothers me is damage system. But I can't really say, that pvp should be easy. Perhaps it's a plus, perhaps not.)
- dungeon/temple exploration (didn't see any dungeons, didn't see any temples in Minetest. Guide me, please with seed and coordinates ;)
- mining (in al it's forms!)
etc...
And many of equal Minetest features is done via mods which aren't in the default game. Prepackaged custom games are used instead. Or one can make his/her own compilation.
Now, Ghosts will add a unique feature, opening gates to a different realm within existing one. But for invisible to alive buildings, desaturation and other things the engine should be tweaked. I'd agree with celeron55 if this additions would break anything that exists for now. But if it wouldn't, then why not? There will be several more features in the engine - that's all. For example 2 different sets of textures can be used to make fake/secret blocks, unseen until certain conditions. There are mods which do this, but swapping many nodes through Lua isn't fun at all.
I'm glad, that at least HUDs and death screen are finally discussed, though.
W/o game-specific features Minetest will be boring unless there would be a possibility to add some feature via lua.
For ghosts it's 2 sets of textures (for alive/dead), lua HUDs, hardware lighting, deathscreen moved to lua.
For minitest it's animated wield item and animated wielditem's textures, as well as head movements and a different crouch animation.
For dwarves it's basic AI in C++ or some other way to make mobs sane.
2 of 4 for ghosts were considered possible and being worked on. Personally I want other 2 too. Why both? Well, 2 sets of textures require big changes, but hardware lightening require them also. So why not add this if changes will be made anyway? (At least no one denies hardware lightening is a desired feature).
I speak to much probably. That's only my opinion. But if anyone want ghosts's changes in the engine, he/she need thought of different possible uses of any feature needed by ghosts...
Last edited by
4aiman on Thu Apr 25, 2013 10:42, edited 1 time in total.
