by sofar » Tue Dec 01, 2015 08:12
I've been playing with lots of small ideas to improve on minetest gameplay, and even contributed some mods, tools, etc. to add realism, gameplay. However, lately I've been feeling overwhelmed with the things I'd like to change (it's just too long of a list), and so, ultimately, I think I need to do the following to create it:
1. Make a new subgame
2. Create a team of people to help
So, this thread is my invitation, to everyone, to come and help me realize this new minetest subgame.
A word of notice: I do not expect this subgame to be easy to do. I suspect it will take me a year or two before I think most of the technical hurdles are actually solved to making all the parts doable. In the mean time, we can start simple and work on low hanging fruit parts of the plan. Also, not everything is set in stone, but I have strong stylistic feelings about the project and how things should be done, so I foresee discussions that may take a while to resolve (which will be fun!).
The project would be hosted in a new github group. Developers joining the project would get commit access directly, no pull requests needed (ideally).
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A Tome With Trials
This subgame aims to provide an enjoyable single-player story, set in an open world. The hero, our single player character, is free to build and explore an unbounded map in any direction. The setting is pre-industrial, non-fantasy, for the most part. Coal is something you burn in a forge, you cook on a stove or campfire. There are no trains, but primitive railcars exist, and miners have discovered that Topaz crystals, when properly tempered, act as an electricity generator that can be used to power devices with copper wires. There's no such thing as Mese, The last sentence before this one, and this sentence should be removed.
Things aren't as easy as making a wooden pickaxe with wood to get stone blocks. Wood doesn't make a dent in rocks, instead a hammer allows the player to get gravel. The gravel however has flint, making a nice flint axe which marks your first weapon. Or maybe you're the kind that prefers a stone -tipped spear. Stone rock hammers are great for bashing rocks, though, and allow the player to mine tin, which is an excellent metal to make light tools like a bucket, shears, or a hoe. Stone swords are entirely unpractical, since they shatter in a blow, you'll have to mine for copper.
As you can see the player will have a bit more trouble going through ore types, and there's a natural progression that's somewhat logical and ordered. After copper comes bronze, which, after leather, is the first strong armor type. Gold and Silver exist, but are limited in usefulness and only need to be mined to make electrical components.
The world itself is full of dangers, but living at the surface is relatively safe. There are some dangerous animals around, but they're usually scattered. It gets a bit more dangerous in the mines. Villages can be found in nearby locations, but the player may have to travel over 1km to find one, they're not prevalent at all. Npc's in the villages offer quests of some sorts, and limited exchanges of goods. Living in a village may sound beneficial, but the villagers... at night... I'm kidding. Or maybe not.
Travelling and cave exploring, the player finds several books that hint to otherworldly places. Some books speak of places deep in the belly of the earth, while others write lengthily about floating islands with rich treasures. These areas seem like a treasure trove to explore, but they are filled with dangers that require the player to stock up on food, armor and consumables to survive the perilous under and over worlds.
Besides armor, which can be enchanted, and weapons, potions are vital. They can be crafted simply by combining a potion bottle with water and several ingredients, which makes a mixture, and then cooking that mixture on a fire. Potions themselves can also be combined, and some potions appear to have no effect until they are combined with others. The alchemy knowledge is hard to find, but finding enough books scattered over the world may reveal enough clues to dare the player to create a few potions himself.
From long-lost books the player discovers that a horrendous peril is threatening the entire world, promising to destroy all the wealth and riches of the land, and turning monsters loose in the entire world. The only solution is to attack the fiend head-on, and it appears that the monster can be summoned.... right on the surface, releasing the world in to darkness, but giving the opportunity for the player to destroy it's nemesis. While battling the nemesis, however, and forever more afterwards, the shards of the fiend remain on the world, causing destruction and chaos all over.
( end of player storyline )
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How is this going to work in-game?
- modified nether and flolands mapgen for high/low areas to create under and over worlds
- randomly spawned villages, dungeons, ruins, even primitive roads
- random story books can be found all over the world. Some provide funny stories, some songs, some provide alchemy hints, clues, some are just cryptic. Some books contain well hidden recipes and are only found in particular places (e.g. overworld), others are found commonly (village bookcase)
- some transport mechanism to get to underworld (a nether portal, perhaps). Getting to the overworld probably requires crafting some special portal with a ledge
- npcs offer rewards for farming actions, providing some replay value and grinding rewards for players who like that, access to books or potions
- mods to provide item enchantments in some way
- a solid stat model, maybe something based on health,armor and stamina
- a good food/drink model. Cooking fires for cooking food. A stove may be a more efficient way to cook food (less fuel needed, but still slow)
- forges for forging/smelting. Anvil for blacksmithing. Effort is required to get a forge running, it's not just sticks. A fan unit is needed to blow air, requiring topaz, to work the toughest metals.
- crafting overhauled. Harder to farm (see crops) and less freebies (apples). Some animals are useful or non-aggressive, but there are those that attack as well.
What else?
- solid 16px bitmaps, no discussion, no excuse. All inventory images are 16px as well. (someone making a separate 32x texture pack can of course do so).
- all formspecs are themed, including chests, signs, bookcases and books with appropriate 16px-like textures
- world dynamics. The world changes, slowly. E.g. 'sedimentology' mod. Some plants spread naturally, others may die.
- weather. rain or snow or hail or ... may need core modifications.
- a solid reduction of useless items and useless crafts from some of the used mods. Fences yes, but not 250 homedecor items. I'm fine with 6-8 types of wood, as long as there are stairs, fences and slabs for all of those. Wool carpet, wool blocks.
- renaming of many, many basic blocks. Mese -> topaz. Ore lumps are fine. Mese wire -> copper wire (cmon, of course wire is made of copper). Tin is needed to make logic blocks, and quartz, and topaz, and copper... so mesecons recipes will need quite a redesign.
- mobs. All of them, will need to be redone. Mobs animations are terrible, including the default player animation, all need to be spiced up. Some better way of choosing skins.
- npcs that give out quests, or rewards. Trading is a very, very simple interface, not a vending machine (suitable for single-player is having 5 random npc's rewarding random rewards, not a village full with the same vending machines).
- textures, textures, textures. If you know my "crops" mod, you'll know what style I mean. Lots of pixellation, but all suggestive and not "hello kitty" cartoon style. Avoid moire and "streaking" effects for landscape blocks.
- no... nyan... cats
- translations, but not until the game is somewhat well underway (english only to start).
- lastly (well, probably not lastly) I consider a lot of blocks in minetest "randomly added experiments" that were never really well done. I intend to heavily cut into blocks that make no sense (coal checker blocks anyone?) and just clutter the inventory
So who can help?
- Everyone. This is your fair shot. I have extensive experience in the Computer Science world mentoring and tutoring software engineers, and I am willing and capable of teaching you all the skills you need to do this as a project with me. Do you want to program mods, paint textures, write books for in-the-game? All that is needed. Although most of the work will be mod work (lua), I foresee plenty of help needed for testers, and later on for translators. I've coached people through all of these projects, and done them myself, so come learn with me!
In return for my coaching, I do expect people to allow me to make the artistic decisions, so that the end result is not something that looks and feels "randomly gobbled together" but has a coherent feel and smell. That can only happen if the elements of the storyline, the world itself and the parameters of the game play are working together. Don't worry, there will be plenty of open bits to solve later, and things that may just not work out the way we, or I want.
Who's in? Reply to thread!
First public contribution will be: a kick-ass project name!
Last edited by
sofar on Wed Nov 02, 2016 16:25, edited 3 times in total.