hammergil wrote:I am new to sub_games and have installed carbone ready to play. I have a few questions:
1. What is a sub_game? Is it just a bundle of mods? How does this differ from just the base game and installing mods?
2. In Carbone, what is the point of coins? Is it supposed to be a scoring system and the game is to outscore your opponents? Are the coins used for some economics...trading, etc?
3. What is the overall goal of the game? Is it just a social environment in multiplayer? Competitive in some way? meant to be played as a singleplayer?
thanks!
1. The term “sub_game” is undefined and meaningless. But the term “subgame” exists and has a meaning, but only within the Minetest community, it is a
technical term. A subgame is
mostly just a bundle of mods indeed. There are a few additional metadata to a subgame: Name, main menu images (background and banner) and customized settings; each subgame can have its own minetest.conf. And that's it!
Subgames are represented by the little icons in the main menu, clicking those icons switches the current subgame.
Subgames basically exist to create a complete gaming experience, so the user does not go through the hassle of manually installing a bunch of mods and finding a good configuration.
Another difference is that all mods in the currently seletected subgame cannot be un-selected, they are fixed. The only way to get rid of them is to modify the subgame itself or use another subgame. But the user can enable
additional mods, as long as they do not conflict with the subgame's mods. Luckily, this is not often the case. The subgame mods are written in blue font in the mod selection menu.
The base game itself
is a subgame, also just called “Minetest” for some crazy reason, but in the forums, it is often called “minetest_game”.
“subgame” is probably a misnomer, since a subgame must not neccessarily be an actual game. In fact, most subgames are just sandboxes at the moment.
2. Coins are completely useless in Carbone.
3. Carbone is not a game. Carbone is only a sandbox, like many other subgames.
There are no goals and no real challenges, this is why Carbone is
not, a game. In fact, I know of only two subgames which are games: City v City and The Hungry Games. Every other subgame lacks basic challenges or even goals. This is not neccessarily bad, it just means they aren't games.
Basically the main stuff you do in Carbone is digging into the earth and build awesome buildings and sometimes kill some mobs. There are a few extras in Carbone, but that's basically it.
Carbone itself is not competetive at all. Carbone could be played both in singleplayer and multiplayer. AFAIK there are a few Carbone servers out there.
Carbone itself does not have any built-in trading system, so the coins are worthless. But there are a few economic mods out there which allow trading in multiplayer servers. I don't know whether any Carbone server with trading exists right now.