Procedural block world project

User projects written in or related to FreeBASIC.
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Gonzo
Posts: 722
Joined: Dec 11, 2005 22:46

Re: Procedural block world project

Post by Gonzo »

just a heads up, the world has been reset since i made some major changes
new climate model with desert back, rocky mountains in desert, oasis in desert
and lakes pretty much everywhere.. i expect there will be major headaches with corner cases for lakes
but i dont have unlimited time to work with it, so if a floating island has a waterfall that looks strange, so be it :P

http://fbcraft.fwsnet.net/lakes1.jpg
http://fbcraft.fwsnet.net/lakes2.jpg
http://fbcraft.fwsnet.net/lakes3.jpg (crater)

http://fbcraft.fwsnet.net/waterlevel.jpg

and from one of my testers with better computer:
http://fbcraft.klk-computers.com/testcl ... -53-75.png

realtime minimap added:
http://fbcraft.fwsnet.net/minimap.jpg
TESLACOIL
Posts: 1769
Joined: Jun 20, 2010 16:04
Location: UK
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Re: Procedural block world project

Post by TESLACOIL »

id say lose the blurry sky. its kind of tiresome that the top half of the screen is blurry, blurry trees + blurry sky = eeew !

I know far objects have to be dealt with but i cant see any reason why you would want have to have blurry sky. The compass is a but gooey too but that might not be so easy to fix without redoing it. Knit-picking i know, but as with all games or interfaces its death by a 1000 cuts.

have you seen this ?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lB684ym3QY4
Gonzo
Posts: 722
Joined: Dec 11, 2005 22:46

Re: Procedural block world project

Post by Gonzo »

i don't know how to fix the blurry sky, it's a silhouette problem, not related to the sky itself
the minimap has had its precision doubled + some other adjustments, i just havent written about it since its a small fix =)
finally, i don't like to watch minecraft videos, since i'm trying to make my own game
the less i know about minecraft the better
that's not to say i shouldn't take ideas from minecraft modders, there are some great mod ideas out there after all
but the whole reason i started this project was because i felt that minecraft world had much more potential

now working on rivers:
http://fbcraft.fwsnet.net/river1.jpg
TESLACOIL
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Re: Procedural block world project

Post by TESLACOIL »

i posted the computer thing as an example of that potential

The rivers pic reminds me of age of kings or the settlers. AOK had lockable gates, very cool and often useful feature. You built the walls in a minecraft type way. They took damage and could be repaired.
http://www.microsoft.com/Games/age2/img/ss_b_40.jpg

Idea and probably the killer app
Make some blocks ownable/ indestructible. I want to make a castle or house that cant be easily vandalized. Id like to have a lock on the door and a strongroom to store my valuables.

Think of minecraft 2.0 as some kind of RPG. But building and surviving and cooperating is at the core of the game. If you dont lock the city gates or put up a city wall and defense towers the demons will come and wreck the town. Maybe there is a dragon on the kingdom. Might take weeks to build up the city and several months to figure out that huge flaming catapults with diamond tips are the only way to kill it. If you dont put out enough sheep for it to eat it starts to eat people. That kind of thing would be epic fun. Casual players are housed in a Hotel, when its been built. Pay to play gives you the key to your own door and ownership of indestructible bricks, at least when they are placed in your land lot. Ig you paid for land via a mortgage it gets repossessed if you dont keep up the payments, lol. That a few real word $s or a mountain of bricks :-p

Other kingdoms may be more peaceful. Perhaps the only way to get to the 'moon server' is to work with others and build a giant rocketship....you get where in coming from ? Im so sure im on the money with this.
http://www.saintvespaluus.com/325206-Wo ... de_124.jpg

I can see a battlefield type game emerging. 64player max, clan based, but persistent worlds. A clan or group of friends log onto a particular server. Its a desert island, they build a castle, fortress whatever. This is there homebase, or homeworld. From time to time a darkportal may open and others not necessarily friendly or hostile may enter that world. The emphasis on building , trade and community rather than combat. But there are times and places where battles have to be fought. Perhaps captured on film. You log on to discover you've been raided, "barstewards, whose done this" , your automated guards over run. The gold stolen & graffiti on the wall. Several weeks later the big war meeting takes place. Construction of an atomic bomb begins in earnest.

Anyway just some ideas and themes to get you thinking. To make a proper game you need a talented team, some dollars for sure and a heck of a lot of commitment and plenty of business smarts to commercialize it. No easy buy in, no easy picnic. Certainly no free lunch....there is huge potential in minecraft 2.0 that much is clear. It will be interesting to see who delivers the goods in this arena.



Good artists copy, great artists steal, be utterly shameless. As a creator, the entire universe is your clay. This is not cloning or bandwagonning, its the forward progress of mankind. Its just making the effort to build what needs to be built.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CW0DUg63lqU







There are two competing worlds as far as i see it.


Minecraft + more specialist blocks + more physics

The Sims + greater customization and first person perspective
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DPsri_-tIXk

Isometric gives us a good perspective of the world around us. Killer problem with flat computer screens. Our brains have a Sims type simulator built into them, we also have overhead maps built into our brains too. There is a lot of crossover between brains and computer worlds.

My take is this, we like to use Isometric view points to get our bearings, but then parachute down into first person action. The satisfaction of laying down a block by hand vs the convenience of drag and drop. The minecraft computer is awesome because it takes so much time and skill. But its totally crap utility wise.

A lean back experience is often preferable. What we need is a super mouse designed for first person perspective. I want to be able to do all my movement via the mouse. People will go out and buy a joystick or a multibutton mouse if the software is good enough. I spent $100 on a mouse to play Age of Kings. Huge improvement in my game experience.

Its the hard core gamers and fans that form the community core and spread the word. An unpaid army of marketeers, help desk staff & trainers.



Minecraft took off because it brought new capabilities to the table. It enabled users to do things that they could not do before. Faster computers and the internet really helped. Its sheer simplicity was the hook. The big win for me was to be able to stand still and erect a tower that i was standing on. That gave me the perspective i needed to get my bearing....without that single capability mine craft may have faded. Building a 'looking tower' just by holding down buttons is the killer app if you like. This may seem a strange thing to say but it is true.

Removing that capability would be akin to removing the start bar in win8, these things are far more important, even critically important than most programmers realize. Even game designers get it wrong. No excuse really. One has to get inside the mind of the player and give them what they need as well as what they want. Design is my ace if you like, so such things take top priority simply because they are 'top priorities'



Computation limits = hard limit. It is unlikely that computation will increase tenfold anytime soon now we have hit the ghz limit. If it cant run on an i7 with a $300 gfx card its probably not going to playable by large numbers of people this side of 2030ad.

Network latency, lag and disconnects are perennial problem. Frequent server crashes break the spell. Have to build around this limitation too as its not going anytime this century that's for sure. This is the main stumbling block for my "Epic space game' that im working on. aka , how to integrate repeated system failure into the gameplay arena with out spoiling the cake.

Ive spent may hours constructing maps, scenarios and modding numerous games. Its hard slog but very rewarding when you get it right. Hence my interest in all things minecraft & your project in particular. Trouble is one man and his dog wont get very far, projects stall far more often than not. Initial enthusiasm is abundant, long term commitment is up their with fairy dust and hens teeth. That's the Achilles heel of open source and the bane of collaborative efforts. Very few projects make the cut. This is why modding is as far as most efforts progress. Its all about committed teams these days.

Im following David Braben's progress on Elite 2.0
http://elite.frontier.co.uk/
badmrbox
Posts: 664
Joined: Oct 27, 2005 14:40
Location: Sweden
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Re: Procedural block world project

Post by badmrbox »

Is the server down?

Edit: Never mind. I had to reset my starting position for some reason. When I did that it worked again.
Edit 2: Seems like the world have lost a lot of data.
Gonzo
Posts: 722
Joined: Dec 11, 2005 22:46

Re: Procedural block world project

Post by Gonzo »

badmrbox wrote:Is the server down?

Edit: Never mind. I had to reset my starting position for some reason. When I did that it worked again.
Edit 2: Seems like the world have lost a lot of data.
if you check your logs, it will probably have alot of "inetq buffer exceeded"
which means no data is lost, the client just isnt able to queue all of it
it can be fixed in 2 ways, one in which i make the clientside queue a simple byte buffer, and the other is the server sending sorted datasets.. either one will remove the issue, and both will make things faster
im unable to make any changes to the client right now, so dont get your hopes up
but im sure the serverman is on it already
badmrbox
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Re: Procedural block world project

Post by badmrbox »

Gonzo wrote: if you check your logs, it will probably have alot of "inetq buffer exceeded"
Yeah, I noticed that.
I'm not sure if it a coincidence or not but I have been forced to reset my position twice and both of these times I have been at the very bottom of the world.
Gonzo
Posts: 722
Joined: Dec 11, 2005 22:46

Re: Procedural block world project

Post by Gonzo »

it's fixed now, no more warnings :)
agamemnus
Posts: 1842
Joined: Jun 02, 2005 4:48

Re: Procedural block world project

Post by agamemnus »

It's good that you spent some time on the interface. I would further suggest to remove the compass directions altogether and have a single "N" on top of the minimap. Or, perhaps keep some of the directions and adjust the map to the rotation but keep the map as a straight un-rotated square.
mrToad
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Joined: Jun 07, 2005 23:03
Location: USA
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Re: Procedural block world project

Post by mrToad »

Late reply, but rivers look awesome. Still watching this great project.
Image
mistersatch
Posts: 5
Joined: Oct 20, 2013 13:05

Re: Procedural block world project

Post by mistersatch »

Hello, i'm very interesting about this project, is that project still alive ?
I'm volunteer if help is needed
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