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How to improve upon what Minecraft is


Erik

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VintageStory's development is almost at a state, where the core engine is finished (apart from entities and tile entities) and it's about to become more than a simple Minecraft (classic) clone. Therefore you need to decide the direction it's heading and make it unique, so it doesn't fall in the category of unfinished, boring Minecraft clones that nobody plays, because everybody owns a copy of Minecraft, which is more polished and has more content. Your vision is basically a sightly improved version of Minecraft and bits of TFC, which isn't bad, but just isn't enough to make a profitable game, that can afford updates and work on it and not ending up as an unfinished product. (Sounds a bit rough, but I think you will manage to create a great game :) )

There are a lot of things that made Minecraft great in the first place, the four most important being building, engineering, adventuring and the community itself. The building aspect is the easist to cover and already implemented in a good way. The main factor being limitation, which leads to creativity and a more pleasant and satisfying building experience. The player shouldn't have too many options for block shapes, some variety, but not something in the way of mods like "Chisel and Bits". You should also raise the height limit (shouldn't be a problem performance-wise, because of cubic chucks) to 1024, making very large builds possible (like star destroyers :P) 

The engineering part is a bit trickier, Minecraft had redstone, a simple, but ingenious system. Automation in Minecraft is very hard but doable in most cases. Your system should be comparably difficult, but the player should be able to automate everything, even if its very hard to do so. Automation should also be doable in multiple ways, without there being one "perfect" solution and shouldn't be that resource expensive, so the player can focus on engineering (fun) and not just mining/grinding (less fun) and is more likely to start automation. GUIs are boring, in world interaction is much more immersive and fun. Create "machines" like furnaces, that are actually build in the world (a bit like TFC or BTW (take a look at "Better with Mods", its a 1.10 reinterpretation of BTW that focuses on the very good automation)), can be engineered to fit it's use (a blast furnace could be build out of several different stone types, could have several heat sources, have a bigger or smaller smelting area...), like a real machine, that is build out of many different parts that behave and interact differently and not a "single block superstructure", multiblock machines are always better (so please don't implement a blast furnace thats build like the VintageCraft one...). Such a "machine" wouldn't have an inventory based system, it wouldn't even have an interface. Don't make the player transfer their stuff using inventory based systems, like hoppers or pipes, make them be pushed around by pistons, frame machines (like RP)  or conveyor belts, items should be placed as or in blocks (some kind of crate), so they could be transferred the same way. For a good example of what I mean, take a look at the BTW/Better with Mods kiln and try to automate it. These are many concepts and I hope some will find their way into the game. The problem would be, that it would add a lot of complexity and has to be explained somewhere (ingame documentation please...) And give minecarts a purpose (look at Railcraft for inspiration).

Your better world generation allows for better exploration and a world height increase could open up the possibility for even better landscapes and better underground exploration. The underground shouldn't be boring, it should be an exiting and dangerous place with many hidden treasures and dungeons. Underground biomes could also be a thing, like jungle caves or ice caves... To say it simple, make the underground like Terraria's underground. Ores should also be distributed in a more TFC-like manner, you could take a look at Reasonable Realism for even more inspiration.

I will expand this list later, but i think it has the most important things now :) 

Thanks for all your affords on producing this game, keep up the great work!

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Hey, thank you for the lenghty response. Entities and Tile entities themselves actually finished already, but whats missing is the rendering part for both of them. Also a mob/animal ai and graphics of course.

I very much agree, redstone was a fantastic addition to minecraft. I also want to have a few basic components that are turing complete (=programmable). I also agree that GUIs should only be used where it can't be avoided. Can you please elaborate though whats wrong with vintagecrafts blast furnace?

Exciting underground is on the top of my list - as soon as we have mobs and animals and playable survival in the game i will add dungeons and mini biomes to the cave system.

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I totally agree on " The player shouldn't have too many options for block shapes". When it comes to models, we are trying to add as little detail as we can - just enough for player to immediately recognize what it is. I think having a simple model with the right texture on it is the best way to go. :)

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I took a look at your blast furnace again and it isn't as "bad" as I remember. The main reason I dislike it is, that it feels so small and monotone (has to be build only one exact way to work, no options), not like some big, sturdy multiblock, like your coke oven. I could also imagine the coke oven in a cool way, where you don't need the hatch, because you could use piston-like technology to move the center top block of the multiblock to drop coal in (like a falling block entity), light it and let it be closed quickly by the piston. After it turned into coal coke a piston would remove the bottom center block, so the coke would drop out.

 

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Another suggestion on a completely different topic I have would be replacing the playstyle system with a completely configurable "world config", like in ARK Survival Evolved. Some settings affect the world and some the players, the player settings are per player and the world standard is applied on first joining a world. Players could change their and the standard settings via commends/cheating, which would allow for "switching gamemodes" (although there aren't any gamemodes anymore...). Everybody could configure their game the way they want to play without needing any extra mods. Configurable things could be: toggle hunger, toggle health, block breaking speed, creative inventory, flying, water breathing, what creatures/mobs would spawn, climate/biomes... and many more!

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Yea we can think of making the blast furnace look bigger. It is actually bigger than it looks because all the metal plates around it take the space of a whole block. Automation for furnaces and ovens is something I do want to add, yes.

I will make some of the world rules configurable, but the playstyles will stay this way. It allows players to instantly start a game without needing to go through a myriad of configurations. Worldgen already has many tuning knobs by the way! At the moment you have to open and edit json files though.

Something I would also love to have is a world configurator where you can set various parameters for the world generation of your new world. There is a game named Clonk that I used to play forever that had this. I found that those simple to modify parameters totally awesome during my childhood:

weather.png

 

 

 

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  • 3 weeks later...
  • 1 year later...
On 9/8/2016 at 1:40 PM, Erik said:

GUIs are boring, in world interaction is much more immersive and fun. Create "machines" like furnaces, that are actually build in the world (a bit like TFC or BTW (take a look at "Better with Mods", its a 1.10 reinterpretation of BTW that focuses on the very good automation)), can be engineered to fit it's use (a blast furnace could be build out of several different stone types, could have several heat sources, have a bigger or smaller smelting area...), like a real machine, that is build out of many different parts that behave and interact differently and not a "single block superstructure", multiblock machines are always better (so please don't implement a blast furnace thats build like the VintageCraft one...). Such a "machine" wouldn't have an inventory based system, it wouldn't even have an interface. Don't make the player transfer their stuff using inventory based systems, like hoppers or pipes, make them be pushed around by pistons, frame machines (like RP)  or conveyor belts, items should be placed as or in blocks (some kind of crate), so they could be transferred the same way. For a good example of what I mean, take a look at the BTW/Better with Mods kiln and try to automate it. These are many concepts and I hope some will find their way into the game. The problem would be, that it would add a lot of complexity and has to be explained somewhere (ingame documentation please...) And give minecarts a purpose (look at Railcraft for inspiration).

Your better world generation allows for better exploration and a world height increase could open up the possibility for even better landscapes and better underground exploration. The underground shouldn't be boring, it should be an exiting and dangerous place with many hidden treasures and dungeons. Underground biomes could also be a thing, like jungle caves or ice caves... To say it simple, make the underground like Terraria's underground. Ores should also be distributed in a more TFC-like manner, you could take a look at Reasonable Realism for even more inspiration.

I will expand this list later, but i think it has the most important things now :) 

Thanks for all your affords on producing this game, keep up the great work!

8

A person after my own heart. Yes GUI's are boring, condensed logic circuits are awesome(didn't like the bulky aspect of redstone), Multiblocks are indeed awesome(Favorite thing about immersive engineering ), when it came to power systems I really liked Rotarycraft as it took thought and calculations. Cave biomes are what brought me to this thread. I completely agree it needs to be a thing and needs cave formations such as flowstone, stalactite, stalagmite, helictite, Dogtooth spar, cave pearl, frostwork, soda straw, rimstone, etc. I also enjoyed Reasonable Realism for its ore distribution and the flora that indicated where shallow deposits might be.

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I agree with the point about Terrarias underground biomes.  It took me a long time to pick up Terraria because I just thought it was a 2d minecraft.  In reality though its full of content.  Exploring different biomes was exciting because of the unique resources, items, creatures that could only be found in those biomes.  If you were a completionist you would have to set up mob farms in certain biomes in order to kill enough of a certain creature to obtain its ultra rare drop because many creatures had basic as well as very rare drops.   Also the underground had ruins and dungeons contain rare artifacts that couldn't be purchased by merchants.  Many rare items could be mixed with other rare items to create even rarer but supper useful items.  I feel like the only reason to cave in Minecraft is for diamonds when you lose your armour in a pit of lava.

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