[Modpack] lorebooks

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Dokimi
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[Modpack] lorebooks

by Dokimi » Post

What is this?

Think of this like a vast game of Dungeons-and-Dragons, or 'Wiki-storytelling'.

I have seen many threads with people wanting to know the history and lore of Minetest (e.g. What is Mese? Why Nyan cats? Who built X on server Y? What would a Minetest bible look like?). I have also seen people want to use Minetest to tell stories.

This mod solves both desires: it adds lore books (like in Skyrim), to allow story telling within a Minetest universe.

These books can contain short stories, poems, religious decrees, official pronouncements... anything at all.

The aim is for these books to create a Minetest Universe, to add a sense of narrative to playing Minetest, as well as to capture the stories and culture of the Minetest community - inside the game-world. These books can be used to tell fictional tales, or fictionalized versions of real peoples interactions with the Minetest game, and the Minetest community.

The books can then be added to or spawned in the world. Players can collect and discover them, slowly uncovering the stories of Minetest as they go.


The mods:

- lorebooks: The collection of books. They can only be accessed in creative mode (or crafted if you already have a copy).
- lorebooks_display: Used by book collection mods to display the books to the user. You can use this as a dependancy for your own lorebooks mods
- trm_lorebooks: Registers the books with the Treasury mod. Allows books to be spawned in the world provided you have Treasury spawning mods (see the Treasurer mod for details).

Depends
default
treasurer (for trm_lorebooks)

License:

Code is licensed under GNU LGPLv2+. Textures are licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0 Unported.


DOWNLOAD

View code at Github
https://github.com/DokimiCU/lorebooks


Image
Spoiler
You can create your own book collection mod to add a new collection of books. You shoud use the 'Lorebooks' and 'trm_lorebooks' mods as templates. Refer to the formatting advice to make sure it displays correctly. If you wish your collection to be consistent with the default set of books, then refer to the worldbuilding "Lore Guide". (You can of course add whatever you like, just remember to warn users if it does not fit with the default set.)

Formatting guide:

limit to around 240-250 words per page
only two pages.
err on the side of being shorter, otherwise you will lose text.
use ' for quotations within the text (" is needed by the code).
Do not use enter for new lines: use \n \n for a blank line paragraph break.
make sure the book has a unique name

How to add a book:

copy a prexisting book's file, change to following to suit:

local book_title = "lorebooks:my_books_name_goes_here"

local book_desc = "My Book's Name Goes Here"

local inv_img = "default_book.png"

local book_text = "'This is on page one,' said Mark.\n \n'Good to see you've used a paragraph break there,' said Steve."

local book_text2 = "We are now on page two. Good thing this is short, or the end of our story will disappear off the page."

local author = "Wombat the Wise"

local date = "360"

The generic registers need to be in the file, but these are the same in all files. No need to change them!
The book also needs to then be run from the init.lua file, and registered for treasury.

Inventory Images:

Having different images for each topic helps with sorting. Each book could have a unique image, but the number of images would become very large. These are the categories so far:
default_book.png (for anything)
lorebooks_advice.png (for tutorials, selfhelp etc)
lorebooks_science.png (works of scholarship)
lorebooks_religion.png (religious/philosophical topics)
lorebooks_politics.png (political tracts, official documents)
lorebooks_literary.png (stories, poems etc)
lorebooks_personal.png (personal diaries, logbooks, primary source documents etc)
lorebooks_bio.png (accounts of peoples lives, notable figures etc)
lorebooks_places.png (travelogues, histories of cities, famous landmarks etc)
Spoiler
This is for the "Minetest Universe" created in the default set of books.

People can write what they like... within some constraints. The suspension of disbelief must be maintained! We need to agree on a few basics so that all the books feel like they are in the same universe. Therefore please consider the following:

Everything should be written from a perspective inside the game. For the author Minetest is the real world!

No "Breaking the 4th wall": to allow references to members of the Minetest community, and people and places in the real world I have created two religions and an Empire. Please use them!

Minetestism: Allows talk of how Minetest came to be. The developers are gods within a polytheistic pantheon, other notable members are legendary heroes (or sea monsters, demi-gods,or whatever). The clergy is The Order of Mine.

The Outsider Cult: Allows talk of the real world. These are mystics who believe the world is an illusion, and the entire universe in contained within a place called "Outside". We can mystically 'go Outside' by 'Stopping'.

The Empire: Allows talk about anything else to do with the community. A vast nebulous political entity no-one understands. (e.g. Moderators/admins = imperial senators, officials etc. Modders = scientists, wizards etc. Griefers etc = criminals, rebels, terrorists etc)

Geography: The universe contains many realms. Each has unique technologies, societies, and laws of nature. Singleplayer = distant wildlands 'Outer Realms'. Servers = Cities, regions, nations etc. How travel between realms actually occurs is controversial (as are many things in the strange and shifting Minetest Universe).

Time: 1 real year is 45 game years (according to rough back-of-the-envelope calculations...which I have declared Imperial Standard Time!)

2010 = year 0 (when Minetest was first made). Therefore 2018 is 8 x 45 = year 360. One real yr is decades long. 2019 = year 405.

Use 'Imperial Standard Time' to figure out the dates of events, and when your book was published.

Authors: you can use made up names, real names, or user names (but make it grammatical and pronounceable i.e. change numbers/symbols to text e.g. Wombatk44 to Wombat'k the 44th).

Authorship: you may reuse other people's fictional characters (unless they say otherwise). But please don't use peoples' actual names - let them tell their own story (unless your work is supposed to be a fraud!)

Author style consistency: when writing documents that are supposedly from the same source (e.g. the official religion, the Imperial government), try to match the style found in their currently existing documents.

Mod specific content: for things highly specific to one mod (e.g. how to make nuclear reactors in Technic), include a line like this to reduce confusion: "If you live in the right place..." or "Some people say this stuff never happens".

Reference other works! Books, characters, places, events. Make allusions to them. This ties things into one super-narrative.

Read other works! At least try to live in the same universe as the rest of us!

Go wild: Invent things. Put in obscure and vague references e.g. "During the time of troubles...". Just assume the reader will somehow know what you mean. It rapidly fills out a vast mysterious world, and gives other people materials to work with.

Put your criticisms in a book: If you dislike my idea for the religion/empire etc (or books that anyone has written) don't complain to us! Write a book of your own saying explaining how the world really works. But at least aknowledge that the Empire etc is the 'common sense' picture of reality (at least until some new story emerges).

Remember the first law of improv - if someone says something you run with it. Never say No!

Decency: this will be available to the general public, including children. Don't be an ass!
Spoiler
Two questions:
  • - If Minetest was the real world, who would you be? (Where have you been, seen, built? What servers, mods, forums topics...?)
    - How would your story emerge within the Minetest universe (Witnesses? Arrest warrants? An autobiography?)
e.g. I would clearly be a mad scientist (my Self Organizing Systems mod created self-replicating robots and doomsday weapons!) So my tale is told over a few books:
  • - Various 'research notes': copied from mod documentation, and notes based on testing a mod.
    - The Mysterious Doktor Dokimi: someone trying to figure out who I am.
    - Travels in Ecologia: someone visiting the testing site where I developped my mods.
The result is a story seen in glimpses, hinting at swirling controversy, conspiracy, and danger.
Here's a couple of book examples:
Image

Image

See the lorebooks init.lua for a full list of books, authors, and dates.
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Last edited by Dokimi on Tue Sep 25, 2018 07:12, edited 1 time in total.

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Dokimi
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Re: [Modpack] lorebooks

by Dokimi » Post

A few thoughts/ideas/questions

- If this mod proves popular... it will explode to enormous size. It could also end a central part of how the Minetest community imagines itself. If that happens some better way of running this thing will probably have to be found. It would be more than a mere mod.

- I am not the right person to be administering this (at least beyond the experimental stage). I do experiments, then I vanish. You might as well ask a pigeon to carry your suitcase! That's just my personality. If you guys want this to run long-term think about who would be best as "Chief Imperial Censor"!

- Supporting mods: this needs more mods to add books to the world. Treasurer is a bit sparse. Perhaps some lore friendly stuff (The Mikido Literary Foundation is the lore explanation for lorebooks existence... perhaps someone could make Mikido Libraries? Something?)

-Legal stuff: I am aware of Minetests requirements for code, textures etc. But this will become a collection of literature. What licences should apply to the text? Any legal experts out there?

- Separate lorebooks collection: I realize people may want things in their native language, or to do adults-only content. That may require having different collections in this mod. For now - English, and keep it clean.

- Think you are too bad a writer to contribute? Me - I like writing (maybe one day I'll publish a novel!). If you say "Please, please, pretty please!" I might improve your book for you (for story and style - I'm not spellcheck!). Alternatively....

- Yob Pikelet (and the Pikelet family) have become the go to lore idiots (think Forest Gump). Think you sound like an idiot? Publish it under the name So-and-so Pikelet. Because they are an idiot.

- Did you try to submit game-breaking crap: The Censor has no mercy, and a lethal sense of humor (you have been warned - you will be published, but not as you intended)!

- This story could get very complicated. Use this thread to discuss where plot lines could go, what is in your books etc.

- And... now I've forgotten what else there was! Have fun with it guys!

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Dokimi
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Re: [Modpack] lorebooks

by Dokimi » Post

That's what it was!...

The Doomed City by the Strugatsky brothers gives a good model for what a Minetest Universe would feel like...diverse people thrown together, in a bizarre place which is constantly changing for no logical reason, run by shadowy people who may or may not be human, and may or may not have some grand purpose...the setting has a lot of parallels with what a Minetest universe would have to look like.

Just a thought.

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Re: [Modpack] lorebooks

by firefox » Post

interesting idea

i once had a similar idea for my game, when thinking about unique items that only drop from monsters.
i thought of "Ripped Page" which would have different variations (M), (G) and (B).
and if you collect 3 of the same type, you could craft a book (just like the standard book craft recipe) of the corresponding type: "Melchior's Book", "Gaspar's Book" and "Belthasar's Book".

since the world is very big, i think that collecting and restoring them from renewable sources is better than having only 1 copy in the entire world.
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Re: [Modpack] lorebooks

by v-rob » Post

I actually had this idea for my own subgame that may or may not be released. I don't want to contribute to this because these books have no set direction. As I've seen from the books you wrote, these books are set in modern times, which totally doesn't correspond to my idea of Minetest Game. I always think of Minetest Game as being medieval. I think this mod should be divided into sections for medieval, modern, sci-fi, and a few others to achieve a partial sense of balance.
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Dokimi
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Re: [Modpack] lorebooks

by Dokimi » Post

v-rob wrote:... these books are set in modern times, which totally doesn't correspond to my idea of Minetest Game. I always think of Minetest Game as being medieval. I think this mod should be divided into sections for medieval, modern, sci-fi, and a few others to achieve a partial sense of balance.
My idea was to create an entire Minetest Universe... one that includes all the various realms for anyone who has ever played Minetest. e.g. think of each map ever created as a realm existing within the Minetest Universe.

So some of these realms can be medieval, sci-fi etc... but they exist within a wider universe - which is admittedly strange and perplexing (hence why I referenced Doomed City, it has that odd we-are-in-a-world-that-doesn't-make-sense feel).

You are right though, it could be split up any number of ways.

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Re: [Modpack] lorebooks

by TumeniNodes » Post

heh, the Minetest Scrolls

cool idea. I have only skimmed the main post but seems like this could evolve nicely.
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Re: [Modpack] lorebooks

by Hamlet » Post

I love this mod, I'm planning to make a fork supporting Intllib and add my translation.

I've found an issue though: text doesn't fit in the given space (see the image).

Oh, btw, what on earth is "Finland"?!
shrugs returning to his fort ... "Finland" ... shakes his head.
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Dokimi
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Re: [Modpack] lorebooks

by Dokimi » Post

Hamlet wrote:I love this mod, I'm planning to make a fork supporting Intllib and add my translation.

I've found an issue though: text doesn't fit in the given space (see the image).
Okay.. I've finally got around to updating this. I was hoping I'd figure out the display problem. But no. I'm guessing you're using non-standard fonts.

The update:
- a few new books
- I've changed how the modpack is set up.
Now lorebooks display can be used as a dependency by other people's mods (don't need to submit stuff to me. You can turn my stuff off if you want.) e.g. You could stick an Italian version in Lorebooks_italian? Or a server specific set in a lorebooks_[server name]?

If anyone can figure out a better way of coding lorebooks_display go for it (e.g. multiple pages, non standard font). I'm happy for this mod here to simply be my own little corner of insanity.

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