[Game] Secrets of the Moon

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Blockhead
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[Game] Secrets of the Moon

by Blockhead » Post

Secrets of the Moon
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Secrets of the moon is a game about discovering what the moon is made of by excavating it. It was made in less than a week for the Minetest 2022 GAME JAM and features many original assets: sounds, textures, a model and even a little bit of music..

Links Compatibility
Tested on Minetest 5.6.1, backwards compatibility not guaranteed.

Licence
All my original code is licensed under the GNU Affero General Public License 3.0 (AGPL), but there are some submodules with other licenses.

All my original media assets are licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike International 4.0 Licensed (CC BY-SA 4.0), but there are some other licenses, all Creative Commons of some variety as far as I know though.

Check the source on GitHub for full details.
/˳˳_˳˳]_[˳˳_˳˳]_[˳˳_˳˳\ Advtrains enthusiast | My map: Noah's Railyard | My Content on ContentDB ✝️♂

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Re: [Game] Secrets of the Moon

by W3RQ01 » Post

Nice game!
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Re: [Game] Secrets of the Moon

by Wuzzy » Post

I am interested to see where this game will go post-jam. Because the game jam version was pretty short. Do you have a roadmap or a list of ideas of how your game vision roughly looks like? Would be interesting to see where this will go.

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Re: [Game] Secrets of the Moon

by Blockhead » Post

Secrets of the Moon was always intended to actually be a narrative game, not just the fetch quest it became due to time constraints. The original plot idea was like this: you arrive on the moon after a communication failure, probably a rescue mission or something, and discover the research of the scientists whose bases are now in ruins due to some kind of threat (not well established, maybe aliens, maybe sub-surface life). You would travel from your starting point, probably a lunar lander, to several randomly placed bases via a Moon Buggy, piecing together what happened and what the result of all the research was. I don't think enemies and combat is necessary, but the game could easily be a horror game if it were to go that direction, it's a good setting for it. After the research is recovered the final objective might be to retrieve some of the moon ice, and the game would end by returning to the lander to complete the astronaut's mission. Or the moon ice mission might be a different/second chapter, where a different astronaut returns with the objective of finding ice, chosen from the game menu. Finally, creative mode would let you build your own bases out of the materials used in the game, just for fun.

In terms of gameplay features, SotM is supposed to have a vacuum just like the planet moon, planet mars etc. mods as well as several other survival mechanics, so as to not make purely a narrative walking simulator type of game. The temperature would also drop at night, requiring you to plan your movements carefully. You would need to refill your oxygen tanks and recharge your suit batteries which power your heater that keeps you alive in low temperatures. You would be able to rest and pass the night, perhaps with an oxygen cost (I'm not sure how unforgiving to make the game in terms of power and oxygen, whether they should be limited in supply or if bases should provide ample to unlimited amounts).* The narrative would also I think mostly be told through datapads (term from Star Wars, basically tablet computers), which would have a formspec like the introduction one.

In terms of terrain, SotM is meant to have a custom Lua terrain generator, based on the actual geography of the moon. The terrain should exist in 4 biomes: Highlands, Degraded Highlands, Mare and Icy, plus the whole thing should be littered with craters of various sizes. The highlands would have a rough perlin noise and feature the moon rock, maybe a scattering moon sand. The degraded highlands would still be somewhat rough but not as sharp as the highlands, and feature a lot more moon sand. The Mare would be mostly flat, other than the craters obviously, and made out of basalt. The Icy biome would be quite rare, probably based on the highlands terrain, but around the rim of the craters there would be some surface moon ice (it is thought that the only surface water ice on the moon is at its south pole, which this biome is meant to be representative of). The terrain component would ideally be reusable for an improved version of the planet_moon mod usable in other games like Minetest Game ( I think planet moon mod is pretty lacklustre as it is).

In terms of media, a soundtrack with several atmospheric looping pieces would be good. Also some stingers for key events like game start, major discovery and game end. I'm not that much of a composer and am not familiar with DAWs but I had fun even just making some SFX and the end jingle for the Jam. The natural world is already adequate, except maybe that moon sand looks just a bit too similar to moon rock. Some more built-environment components would help: things like beds, tables, chairs, research lab type props. The narrative would really benefit from voice over and images rather than pure text, but it's not essential.

*Footnote: SotM should also just drop its existing sliding doors and use scifi_nodes doors (maybe reskinned) - I just wrote my own implementation to try to avoid using as much external content and code as possible for the Jam.
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Re: [Game] Secrets of the Moon

by Wuzzy » Post

Sounds interesting! I guess I just wait and see. It's nice that a custom mapgen is planned, I think this is really important to set the game apart.

Also, the idea of multiple bases seems to be much better than just one base for everything, because then you have always to return to the same spot for everything and exploration is actually rewarded.

I guess I just wait and see.

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