new feature: activities

[cauchy]

Hi everyone,

I'm new here.

I had an idea of feature that can be developped for minetest. It makes the gameplay a bit different, and maybe it can be interesting (or not).

The idea is to add the concept of "activities".
A player can choose its own activity, which will un-veto some recipes but also other activities.
At the end, it adds non-linearity to the game and the possibility to have specialisation of players in a same server.

In pratice, there is an example of how it works:
- each time a player get a valuable ore, he get 1 point.
- with a special menu, he can "buy" a new activity. For example "metalsmith" will allow to craft a pick with Mese.

Things can become more complex:
1) 6 different fields of activity: military, artistic, religious, economics, sciences and and politics.
Getting valuable ore gives 1 "economics" point, getting dye gives 1 "artistic" point, crafting a pick gives you 1 "science" point, ...
2) the activities can be organised in tree: from "none", you can choose between, let's say, "miner" (costs X economic points, allows to forge better picks), "farmer" (costs X economic points, allows to build farm plots, ...), "engineer" (cost X science points, ...), ... but "metalsmith" can only be chosen when the current activity is "miner" or "engineer" (and "metalsmith" costs X economic points and Y sciences points), ...
3) some activities can veto recipes or other activities

This of course is quite complex, should be implemented in the core of minetest (but I can participate, I know C), and can appears to be not interesting.
But it can give an interesting gameplay:
- non linearity of the game ("this time, I will try to develop this branch. Oh, I didn't know this activity")
- interesting interaction in multiplayer mode (the activities costing points, some activities will be rare, and some players will be able to do things that other cannot and will be unable to do things that others can)
- this is something new and different from Minecraft (I guess)

What do you thing of the concept ?

(ps: I've never played Minecraft, I don't know if something similar exists. The initial concept comes from a game I've developped in python some years ago)

[sky]

I vote yes and i like it, you never played minecraft, i played it and if you wanna know how is minecraft search minecraft lets play and it will show you every thing that can inspire you for ideas

[PilzAdam]

First of all: Realy great idea!

should be implemented in the core of minetest

No. It should be implement in Lua as a game for the engine (like minetest_game).

[Mito551]

it is really great idea and interesting way of implementing rpg elements! i like it.

[leo_rockway]

Something like this was discussed in this thread: http://minetest.net/forum/viewtopic.php?id=3029

I think it's a wonderful idea and I'd like to see this implemented.

[irksomeduck]

I agree to all of the above, but I think it restrains the freedom of minetest, and should not be added to the core game.

[cauchy]

Thanks for the positive feedbacks.

I was not aware of the possibilities of Lua. I've started to look at it and I've already have a first step implemented.

In my mind, this feature should remains a mod (if I've talked about changing the core, it was only to add API, not to change the behavior. But as PilzAdam has noticed, it should be done in Lua).

I will hopefully be back to you in the "mod" section of this forum ;)

[Leroy]

This should only be on servers who want this system. Casual people don't want to PLAY MORE game to LEVEL UP in order to craft a MESE pickaxe and they have 12 stacks already.

[leo_rockway]

This should indeed be a different minetest_game on its own and shouldn't be default.
I do want this to happen though. I like the sandbox, open area style of MT, but it would be nice to have more of an aim.