[Mod] Zoonami [1.2.0] [zoonami]

JALdMIC
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Re: [Mod] Zoonami [0.8.1] [zoonami]

by JALdMIC » Post

I made a 3D model of the Metalanc,you can find them in Makehuman Community Assets
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isaiah658
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Re: [Mod] Zoonami [0.9.0] [zoonami]

by isaiah658 » Post

v0.9.0 is released and it's huge. This update adds several core gameplay features such as an in-game guide book, a computer to store monsters, and surprisingly 3D mobs for all 20 monsters! Let's take a look at each of the features.

The guide book is an item that when used opens a formspec interface allowing the player to learn about the Zoonami mod. Consider it a mini in-game wiki. All new players and respawning players are given a guide book. The first chapter, basics, helps new players understand just what they need to know to get started. As a player progresses, they can continue to read other chapters when they feel they need to. The guide book is not finished. More chapters will be added in the future. If you notice any grammatical errors or think something could be explained better, please let me know!

The computer is a block that when right clicked will bring up a formspec interface for storing monsters. I put off making the computer because I had no idea how I could make such a complex idea with the formspec elements that were available. Eventually the idea hit me and I could envision how it would work. My hope is that the computer is intuitive to use. The computer consists of a home page that lists 25 folders. Inside each folder is 10 boxes (pages). Each box has 25 spaces for monsters. This means in total each player has access to store 6,250 monsters. I'm hoping this is plenty and future proof. The key to making the computer formspec easy to use is the selection/highlighting system. Each of the spaces is shown as a button. Spaces with monsters will show the monster image on the button. When a button is clicked once, it becomes selected. Clicking on a different space will swap the two spaces. Clicking on an already selected monster will bring up the stats page for that monster. More info for using the computer is included in the guide book.

Next is 3D mobs. If you asked if I was adding 3D mobs to Zoonami a month ago, the answer would have been no. I have no experience with 3D modeling. This all changed when I tried using Wings3D instead of Blender. Wings3D was so much more intuitive to use that I've actually managed to make 3D models for all 20 of the monsters currently in Zoonami! With that being said, it's still a time consuming process, so 3D mobs have a low priority over other things I need to finish, but I think it adds a lot to the game.

The first thing to explain is that the 3D mobs are a separate mod from Zoonami. The reason for this is the file size. 3D mobs will take up around 8MBs when all the monsters in Zoonami are added. If you are just playing single player, this shouldn't matter. But for server owners, this does matter. Servers have to send that extra data to new players. Considering that the Zoonami mod is currently around 3MBs, some servers might desire to not use 3D mobs. The second thing to explain is the 3D models. While I don't mind 3D modeling, I can't stand UV mapping. UV mapping is the process of mapping a texture to the model. My solution to this has been to instead UV map each of the parts to a simple pixel color palette. This means 3D shapes are used to define most features rather than textures. It's probably unconventional to do this, but it seems to work ok. The third thing to explain is that if a 3D model does not exist for a monster that is in Zoonami, the monster will fallback to using the 2D model. The 3D mobs mod even includes an option for enabling and disabling the 3D mobs. This is useful for comparing the two, but be warned that the collision boxes for the 3D mobs and 2D mobs are not the same size. Switching back and and forth between 3D and 2D will result in existing monsters in the world being stuck in nodes after loading in. In most cases, they will be able to escape.

The 3D mobs are not animated. I don't plan on animating them. If I ever did make animated 3D mobs, I would create a separate mod for them like the current 3D mobs. From my understanding animated mobs use more CPU/resources. I still think the static 3D mobs look ok.

I have switched to using 9 slice buttons for formspecs. This did ruin the rounded pill shaped buttons in the backpack formspec by making them rectangles with rounded corners, but the benefits outweighed these changes. The buttons now look crisp and are easier to work with in the code.

Zeenite ore was added to solve the issue of copper, iron, gold, etc not having a widely used group for crafting recipes. Zeenite ore is similar to other ores in terms of where it can be found and the quantity. This means crafting recipes for the healer, computer, and vending machines now use this ore instead of the stone group that was previously used. This ore will be added as a battle reward from certain monsters in the future making it "renewable."

Now the Zoonami has a crafting recipe for the guide book, I was able to take advantage of this to add a crafting recipe for the bookshelf block. You no longer have to find it in village buildings.

13 new moves have been added. I am getting close to reaching my base goal of 5 moves for all 13 types. NPCs now stand still when a player is talking/battling with them. The NPCs also turn and face the first person who talks to them. Once that player has moved away from them, they will resume roaming around. This isn't a perfect method as a second player can talk to an NPC while the first player walks away resulting in the NPC to roaming away from the second player, but it's simple and better than before. Starter monsters are now level 10 instead of 8. This is to help new players find more battles that they can actually win against wild monsters. Items can no longer be used in battles against other trainers.

There are several other small changes and fixes listed in the full changelog that can be found in the first post. Overall, this update is big. Please be sure to report any issues you find.
Last edited by isaiah658 on Thu Mar 17, 2022 22:39, edited 2 times in total.

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Re: [Mod] Zoonami [0.9.0] [zoonami]

by freshreplicant » Post

Holy cow, that really is a HUGE update. The 3D models look great. Will fire it up right away.

What's next on the list for Zoonami?

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Re: [Mod] Zoonami [0.9.0] [zoonami]

by isaiah658 » Post

Edit: Also just noticed that something on the forums changed with attached images. If an attached image isn't placed inline in the message, it shows the picture at the bottom of the post. I want back and edited my posts to fix this.

I just found the first bug. Water monsters (currently Maluga is the only water monster in the game) with the 3D mobs attempt to swim out of the water into the air. This is due to collision box differences between the 2D and 3D models. I thought I fixed this at some point. I'll have to look into it again.
freshreplicant wrote:
Sun Dec 12, 2021 21:57
Holy cow, that really is a HUGE update. The 3D models look great. Will fire it up right away.

What's next on the list for Zoonami?
Here is most of the stuff on my to do list in no particular order:
  • Finish the remaining base moves. The base moves won't be enough to make Zoonami fun or strategic. I'll have to add in other moves like priority moves, defense moves, and static damage moves. The goal is to make it so that players have some decisions to make when it comes to putting moves on a monster. This will also pair up with monsters having slightly varied stats in the wild.
  • Consider making the monster level that NPCs have to be dynamic based on the monsters levels that the player has in their party.
  • Make a function for the NPCs to be able to switch monsters after one faints. This is why currently all NPCs only have one monster.
  • The AI for computer battles needs to be made smarter. Currently the AI is very basic. It has no real strategy.
  • Make a chatterbox NPC specifically for creative mode players to spawn and be able to change the text that the NPC says. This would be useful for custom maps or servers.
  • Make a function for monsters to learn moves during level up.
  • Monsters are going to differ from other monster catching games in that monsters will always retain the moves that they know. Players will then be able to assign which four moves they want by clicking on the move buttons in the backpack formspec (and maybe the stats page in the computer).
  • Player vs player battles. I hope I can integrate it with the existing battle system rather than having to maintain two separate battle systems.
  • Once I've added in more monsters, I'll need to start assigning them more meaningful battle rewards and balancing the rewards.
  • Now that I've switched to my own mob framework, I can investigate if it's practical to allow a player to having a party monster follow them in the world. This has more to do with technical limitations of Minetest. I'd need to make sure there is no way for players to abuse this and spawn more than one monster in the world.
  • Once more monsters are added in, I should go back and review the spawning conditions to make sure it's balanced and somewhat unique for each mob.
  • When the mod is closer to being finished, I should go back and consider what items should appear for sale in automatic vending machines.
  • When the mod is closer to being finished, I'll need to start balancing monster stats, how damage is calculated, etc.
  • Fix bugs. Even features that I thought were solid have ended up having some flaws.

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Re: [Mod] Zoonami [0.9.0] [zoonami]

by freshreplicant » Post

Just some early feedback:

I had the error "Could not load image "zoonami_stone.png" upon startup.

I'm not sure if I mentioned it before, but it seems like if you're walking or running continuously the map feels very empty, you hardly ever see any monsters - but if you stop for a while (like fighting a monster, etc.) they seem to spawn in bigger numbers. This isn't unique to Zoonami though, saw it happen in other mods.

Villages seem pretty rare, even with Carpathian mapgen.

The Guidebook is a brilliant idea, really like you UI. Only thing I noticed is that the writing seems to go beyond the margins on the right side a little bit.

One thing I think is unusual is that you earn money fighting wild monsters and not just trainers. I guess maybe you could spin it that you're automatically being rewarded by some trainer or wildlife ranger organisation.

Really like the sound of the roadmap though.

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Re: [Mod] Zoonami [0.9.0] [zoonami]

by isaiah658 » Post

Thank you for the feedback!
freshreplicant wrote:
Tue Dec 14, 2021 22:54
I had the error "Could not load image "zoonami_stone.png" upon startup.
Ahh good catch! I didn't notice that. Zoonami will attempt to use whatever mapgen_stone is set to to try having the ore blend in with stone from other mods, like default. But in cases where that isn't defined, I made a stone texture. I forgot to include the texture in the release.
freshreplicant wrote:
Tue Dec 14, 2021 22:54
I'm not sure if I mentioned it before, but it seems like if you're walking or running continuously the map feels very empty, you hardly ever see any monsters - but if you stop for a while (like fighting a monster, etc.) they seem to spawn in bigger numbers. This isn't unique to Zoonami though, saw it happen in other mods.
Yes, this is something I will need to address. There are a few reasons for it.

One reason is that due to the low amount of monsters in Zoonami at the moment, several spawn conditions are essentially "going to waste" because there are literally no monsters that meet those conditions. For example, the only water monster is Maluga and it's a rare spawn. Any spawn attempt that spawns a common or uncommon monster on water will spawn nothing. This will improve as more monsters are added in.

Another reason for this is that monsters only attempt to spawn near players once every 10 seconds. If a player is moving fast, those spawn attempts will never keep up to have the world filled with monsters. After brainstorming, I think I might have a solution. Currently, monsters have a "life timer" that determines how long they stay around until they despawn. Currently it's 10 minutes. However, the timer also takes into account the change in time since a monster was last loaded. If you leave an area that has a bunch of monsters and come back in 20 minutes, they'll all be despawn as soon as they are reloaded as they will know their time is up. By increasing the time to 20 or 30 minutes and removing the change in time since a monster was last loaded, this means a monster will only despawn after it's actively been around a player for 30 minutes. This allows new monsters to spawn during that time and help create a never ending cycle of monsters around an area. The second thing to solve is that when a player travels to a new area, it's going to be very empty until they've been there awhile. The solution to this is to spawn wild monsters during mapgen similar to NPCs in villages. Combining these two ideas I think I can pull off the effect of monsters always being around the player.
freshreplicant wrote:
Tue Dec 14, 2021 22:54
Villages seem pretty rare, even with Carpathian mapgen.
I would like to know what mods you have installed. Villages depend on biomes. Specifically, it takes advantage of known biomes that have little to no trees. Currently most biome names are from Minetest the Game. This might have some overlap with other biome mods, but some might call the biome something else in the code (one might be "plains" and another "grassland"). I can add those additional biomes for them to spawn in. I might also need to adjust the village rarity based on the amount of biomes. If there are 100 biomes, but only a few of them are suitable for villages, I could decrease the rarity in that situation.
freshreplicant wrote:
Tue Dec 14, 2021 22:54
The Guidebook is a brilliant idea, really like you UI. Only thing I noticed is that the writing seems to go beyond the margins on the right side a little bit.
Thanks. I didn't notice this. On my screen size the words all aligned in such a way that they none of them when into the right margin. I will fix it.
freshreplicant wrote:
Tue Dec 14, 2021 22:54
One thing I think is unusual is that you earn money fighting wild monsters and not just trainers. I guess maybe you could spin it that you're automatically being rewarded by some trainer or wildlife ranger organisation.
It's more of a game balance thing. I don't want players searching endlessly for trainers just to get money. I expect money to be quite useful on servers to buy things from other players via vending machines. But trainers right now are very worthless to fight as they provide no advantages over fighting wild monsters. Perhaps I can make it so trainers give double money or something. Or maybe trainers can have item rewards that monsters don't.

The next update will be a bug fix/improvement update.

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Re: [Mod] Zoonami [0.9.0] [zoonami]

by freshreplicant » Post

isaiah658 wrote:
Fri Dec 17, 2021 02:30
The solution to this is to spawn wild monsters during mapgen similar to NPCs in villages. Combining these two ideas I think I can pull off the effect of monsters always being around the player.
That sounds great! It would definitely add to the immersion if you're able to come across monsters just doing their thing.
isaiah658 wrote:
Fri Dec 17, 2021 02:30

I would like to know what mods you have installed.
I am actually testing Zoonami in a vanilla MTG world, with just a few tool mods installed (none that add biomes). I was however running Ethereal with Zoonami too before. I would say that's a pretty good mod to target for compatibility at some point, since many people use it.

Currently trying to put together a list of mods that would complement Zoonami well (which could for example be on a Zoonami server). Do you have any suggestions/personal must haves?

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Re: [Mod] Zoonami [0.9.0] [zoonami]

by isaiah658 » Post

freshreplicant wrote:
Fri Dec 17, 2021 10:30
I am actually testing Zoonami in a vanilla MTG world, with just a few tool mods installed (none that add biomes). I was however running Ethereal with Zoonami too before. I would say that's a pretty good mod to target for compatibility at some point, since many people use it.
There's something weird though with your set up. The alias "mapgen_stone" is defined in the default mod. But your game didn't have that defined. A month or so ago you also found an audio bug caused by the default mod being defined but all of the sounds tables were non-existent. There is something weird with your default mod and I would need to know more. I will take a look at Ethereal biomes. Also, nothing has changed in terms of village rarity since they were introduced. Did you find the villages to be too rare at that time as well? If not, the issue might be something else. I want to make sure it's not a different problem before I start messing with the rarity of the villages.
freshreplicant wrote:
Fri Dec 17, 2021 10:30
Currently trying to put together a list of mods that would complement Zoonami well (which could for example be on a Zoonami server). Do you have any suggestions/personal must haves?
Funny thing is, I've never sat down and just played Minetest. I discovered Minetest when I was looking for a good technical skyblock game with well thought out progression. Unfortunately, I couldn't find something like that, so I tried making it. After realizing there were too many problems and gaps that mods didn't fill, and I would have to fill all of those, I stopped working on it. I then came back after realizing Minetest might work well with Zoonami.

If I were to create a server for Zoonami, the first thing I would look for is a furniture mod. Something that matches the houses and other furniture already in Zoonami.

The next thing I would consider would be "towns." I'm not familiar with Minetest protection mods, but a mod that allows players to pay (ideally modifying it to use ZC as payment) to claim an area of land would be nice. If it allowed selling those plots to other players or unclaiming them but getting no money back, that would be kind of cool. Minecraft had a mod like that many years ago called "towny." The server had allowed you to pay to establish a town. I believe the owner of the town could give permissions to other players to be able to build in the town. I don't think Minetest protection works that way though. Either way, being able to buy protected land using ZC would be cool.

Perhaps a map mod or compass mod depending on how big the server would be. Maybe a mod for some form of travel.

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Re: [Mod] Zoonami [0.9.1] [zoonami]

by isaiah658 » Post

Released version 0.9.1. Also noticed that I never updated the download link when I released version 0.9.0. Anyone who downloaded it most likely downloaded the old version unless they downloaded from the source code. Anyways, let's look at the changes.

This is a smaller update, but an important one. First, let's look at the smaller changes. The missing stone texture has been added. Mobs that swim or float now no longer try to swim out of the water. Spawn eggs now spawn mobs at the correct height.

Now let's look at the bigger changes. Mobs now have a life timer of 30 minutes. The life timer no longer decreases when unloaded. Monsters generate with new chunks during mapgen. The nodes that monsters spawn on and spawn by has been overhauled to allow for more consistent, but still unique spawning. The default spawn interval has been decreased from 10 to 7. Removed the "no spawn range around players" setting as it was misleading and unnecessary. Fixed nearby mobs detection when spawning a mob from using the wrong position and resulting in very few wild spawns.

Overall, monster spawning was dramatically changed. I initially tried searching all nodes during mapgen with "find_nodes_in_area_under_air". This resulted in Zoonami taking 1000 microseconds on average per game tick instead of 30 microseconds on average. I quickly realized that this method will not work with such a large amount of nodes. I then tried my hacky method I've been using for the villages. I made an invisible node that is sparsely placed on the nodes that monsters can spawn on. The node is a "decoration" during mapgen. I then used the same method for spawning villagers in villages to spawn monsters on these invisible nodes. This resulted in little to no noticeable increase in microseconds per game tick. The only increase is from the extra mobs that are in the world.

Players should now notice a lot more monsters in the world. I'll still have to do some long term testing to see if the amount of wild spawns around a player are enough to keep with the monsters that will despawn. If they don't, I have a few options for increasing the amount of wild monster spawns, such as increasing the life timer.

Edit: You will also notice a lot of burrlock and merin monsters. This is due to the spawn code. When a monster that has a condition to spawn by another node and it's not nearby, it then tries to spawn any other monster that can meet the conditions. Thus burrlock is getting spawned more often. I might change this in the future to just cancel the spawn after one attempt. I'd rather wait though until more monster have been added as it might not be as big of a deal if there are more options to spawn other than burrlock.

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Re: [Mod] Zoonami [0.9.0] [zoonami]

by freshreplicant » Post

isaiah658 wrote:
Fri Dec 17, 2021 16:11
There's something weird though with your set up. The alias "mapgen_stone" is defined in the default mod. But your game didn't have that defined. A month or so ago you also found an audio bug caused by the default mod being defined but all of the sounds tables were non-existent. There is something weird with your default mod and I would need to know more. I will take a look at Ethereal biomes. Also, nothing has changed in terms of village rarity since they were introduced. Did you find the villages to be too rare at that time as well? If not, the issue might be something else. I want to make sure it's not a different problem before I start messing with the rarity of the village.
I don't think there's anything unusual about my setup. I actually set up minetest-server on my Debian VPS (5.3 and 5.4 - I realised only the latter is fully compatible with Zoonami). On my desktop my Minetest is on 5.5 (dev package), all of them had the Zoonami stone issue. I am happy to say though it is fixed with Zoonami 9.0.1.

Villages were always fairly rare, but lately, both using my server hosted and local versions, I can't seem to find any buildings or villagers after 20-30 minutes exploring. No biome mods installed.
isaiah658 wrote:
Fri Dec 17, 2021 16:11
If I were to create a server for Zoonami, the first thing I would look for is a furniture mod. Something that matches the houses and other furniture already in Zoonami.

The next thing I would consider would be "towns." I'm not familiar with Minetest protection mods, but a mod that allows players to pay (ideally modifying it to use ZC as payment) to claim an area of land would be nice. If it allowed selling those plots to other players or unclaiming them but getting no money back, that would be kind of cool. Minecraft had a mod like that many years ago called "towny." The server had allowed you to pay to establish a town. I believe the owner of the town could give permissions to other players to be able to build in the town. I don't think Minetest protection works that way though. Either way, being able to buy protected land using ZC would be cool.

Perhaps a map mod or compass mod depending on how big the server would be. Maybe a mod for some form of travel.
I can help you find complementary mods, I've been experimenting with various mods I usually play with and whittling them down if they don't suit Zoonami, with a view of running a server for the mod. I think Minetest the Game is ridiculously bare, so I do think there's a lot of small utility mods needed - things like item drop mods, wield3d (to see what players holding) and so on. Things that really should have been part of the game to begin with. Then there's decisions to make like whether to add something like DFCaverns or Cave Realms/Cave Realms Lite to spice up the underground. Little decorative mods like giant mushrooms and so on won't interfere too much with the feel of the mod.

Farming could also be complementary with the gameplay of Zoonami, but I'm not sure I like how farming_redo just put edible crops all over the world in random places. I have been playing Zoonami without hunger/stamina mods, which might suit the easygoing feel of games like Pokemon more. Also obviously no hostile mobs. Vehicle mods might be cool, but many depend on mobkit, though I've found 3 that don't. Some mods don't really mix well with Zoonami - like Ambience Lite. It makes the world feel more alive, but the sounds overlap with the Zoonami battle music, which would be a shame to drown out like that. Ultimately, I think Zoonami has enough promise to be it's own game eventually or to at least offer that as an option.


Minor feedback from 9.0.1:

1. The spawn rates are better and the world does feel more populated. You also sometimes see monsters in the distance. It could possibly still be a bit more populated, but this might even out as more monsters are added.

2. Minor issue, but I've noticed that land dwelling Zoonami that live near the sea often go for dips. Is there a way to make some mobs water shy? Scallapod I think makes sense both on the sea floor and the shore, but Merin and the others feel out of place.

3. I spawned some villagers in and I noticed something: Villagers have an annoying tendency to climb up on blocks, so if say there's a counter, they'll stand on it or hop over it. I also had one villager climb onto a window sill and sort of get stuck there.


Some ideas:

1. Very minor thing, but maybe the trainer model could be adjusted to have a 3d backpack? Could be kinda neat.

2. Could the sound effect for when you pick your starter be more celebratory? Maybe something like the victory tunes from games like Final Fantasy. Picking your starter is a huge deal in Pokemon, but it seems a little bland in Zoonami currently. Maybe it could also generate a chat message like when you use the healer: "You chose Scallapod!".

3. Fossil hunting/fossil Zoonami. I know this is very Pokemon, but I am actually inspired by Paleotest here. Its fossil hunting mechanics are brilliant and it's being abandoned (or at least not being developed further) which is a pity. I think something like this for Zoonami would encourage you to explore caves, build a little lab to analyse fossils, etc.

4. Maybe there could be something like a bait block or some special grass or plant that encourages Zoonami to spawn or spawned ones to gather in a particular place.

5. Setting up a Zoonami Matrix server to help coordinate playtesting and the eventual launch of a server. If you're interested I could help with this.

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Re: [Mod] Zoonami [0.9.0] [zoonami]

by isaiah658 » Post

freshreplicant wrote:
Sat Dec 18, 2021 13:52
I don't think there's anything unusual about my setup. I actually set up minetest-server on my Debian VPS (5.3 and 5.4 - I realised only the latter is fully compatible with Zoonami). On my desktop my Minetest is on 5.5 (dev package), all of them had the Zoonami stone issue. I am happy to say though it is fixed with Zoonami 9.0.1.
I think I may have figured it out. Because Zoonami doesn't have an optional dependency on default, Zoonami might load before default does. The order is not guaranteed because my mod doesn't have a dependency on it. Unfortunately, adding an optional dependency negates the whole purpose of trying to make Zoonami use the stone texture regardless of the base stone textures used, such as default and MineClone. I'll have to think of something else or just use my texture at all times. This also reminds me I should add zoonami_3d_mobs as an optional dependency.
freshreplicant wrote:
Sat Dec 18, 2021 13:52
Villages were always fairly rare, but lately, both using my server hosted and local versions, I can't seem to find any buildings or villagers after 20-30 minutes exploring. No biome mods installed.
Currently, villages only spawn in savanna, savanna_shore, grassland, grassland_dunes, snowy_grassland, and plains between Y level 4 and 10. I can look into other biomes that might work. If your initial spawn is in a place that doesn't have those biomes nearby, you are correct that it can take awhile to find one.
freshreplicant wrote:
Sat Dec 18, 2021 13:52
Vehicle mods might be cool, but many depend on mobkit
I think you may have misunderstood something. Zoonami should be fine with Mobkit and Mobs Redo even though it doesn't use them itself. So if you find a Mobkit mod you like, go ahead and try it. But artistically it might not "blend" in with Zoonami.
freshreplicant wrote:
Sat Dec 18, 2021 13:52
1. The spawn rates are better and the world does feel more populated. You also sometimes see monsters in the distance. It could possibly still be a bit more populated, but this might even out as more monsters are added.
I will be adding a setting to the mod to allow adjusting the monster mapgen fill ratio. This paired up with the existing spawn interval setting means you will have control over this. You will be able to tweak this to be what you want or even disable it by setting it to zero.
freshreplicant wrote:
Sat Dec 18, 2021 13:52
2. Minor issue, but I've noticed that land dwelling Zoonami that live near the sea often go for dips. Is there a way to make some mobs water shy? Scallapod I think makes sense both on the sea floor and the shore, but Merin and the others feel out of place.
Scallapod is the only mob that should sink in the water, and that's by design. It made more sense for him to sink instead of floating on the water. The other mobs will all float on the water. They will sink at first when they fall in but then slowly swim up an tread water. Sorry, but I probably can't make mobs steer away from water. This would start to get in the realm of path finding. In order to keep the mobs simple so there can be an abundance of them in the world, this was one of the features that was foregone. But even with Mobs Redo, this was never a feature. Mobs Redo mobs only steer away from the water if the mob is set to take water damage. They do steer away from cliffs and lava, but not water. So even when I was using Mobs Redo, this wasn't a feature.
freshreplicant wrote:
Sat Dec 18, 2021 13:52
3. I spawned some villagers in and I noticed something: Villagers have an annoying tendency to climb up on blocks, so if say there's a counter, they'll stand on it or hop over it. I also had one villager climb onto a window sill and sort of get stuck there.
I don't think I can do anything about it. The mobs have to be set to have a step height of 1 block so they can automatically move around the terrain. Without it, they couldn't walk over dirt, stone, etc. Trying to get them avoid walking on stuff like that would get in the realm of path finding. Adding path finding would undo all the benefits of making simple mobs.
freshreplicant wrote:
Sat Dec 18, 2021 13:52
2. Could the sound effect for when you pick your starter be more celebratory? Maybe something like the victory tunes from games like Final Fantasy. Picking your starter is a huge deal in Pokemon, but it seems a little bland in Zoonami currently. Maybe it could also generate a chat message like when you use the healer: "You chose Scallapod!".
I suppose I could. I just want to point out that Pixelmon for Minecraft handles this the exact same way that Zoonami does. https://youtu.be/vYmrkoiYXms?t=292 I'm only pointing this out because you mentioned Pokemon and I thought maybe Pixelmon handled this differently. The actual games make starters important, but in an open environment, it seems less important because people can always find the starters in the wild.
freshreplicant wrote:
Sat Dec 18, 2021 13:52
3. Fossil hunting/fossil Zoonami. I know this is very Pokemon, but I am actually inspired by Paleotest here. Its fossil hunting mechanics are brilliant and it's being abandoned (or at least not being developed further) which is a pity. I think something like this for Zoonami would encourage you to explore caves, build a little lab to analyse fossils, etc.
I'll take a look at it. I'm definitely interested in adding things for players to find and do as long as they are reasonable to implement.
freshreplicant wrote:
Sat Dec 18, 2021 13:52
4. Maybe there could be something like a bait block or some special grass or plant that encourages Zoonami to spawn or spawned ones to gather in a particular place.
I've considered this before, but I don't like the idea. Players should explore the world to find new monsters. If not enough monsters are spawning for your liking, you can decrease the spawn interval in the mod settings. I'll also be adding a setting for the amount of monsters spawned during mapgen.
freshreplicant wrote:
Sat Dec 18, 2021 13:52
5. Setting up a Zoonami Matrix server to help coordinate playtesting and the eventual launch of a server. If you're interested I could help with this.
If you could set up a server when the time comes, that would be helpful. I don't think Zoonami is ready for that yet.

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Re: [Mod] Zoonami [0.9.2] [zoonami]

by isaiah658 » Post

Zoonami v0.9.2 and Zoonami 3D Mobs v0.2.0 are released.

I added in 3 new water monsters to help with testing water monster spawning. 3D models were made for them as well. One of the monsters, Shellephant, is slightly modified version of the monster made by j0j0n4th4n. Thank you for making the original sprites!

I discovered that when Zoonami loads before default or other mapgen mods, those mods clear all registered decorations and other mapgen features. I've adjusted the mapgen code in Zoonami to always load last. This was the reason for no villages and no monsters generating with the mapgen.

There is a setting for controlling the fill ratio of monsters generating during mapgen. Setting this to 0 disables mapgen spawning entirely.

Water monsters now spawn in the water instead of on the water surface. The water surface is still used for spawning, but the actual mob is placed down in the water. Previously they would spawn above the water and fall down in. This looked weird.

There are some other bugs I've found that I was not able to fix yet. One of them being that the detection and use of default sounds is flawed. This leads to Zoonami falling back to it's own node sounds when it doesn't need to. I also noticed some of the Zoonami sounds are stereo instead of mono. Mono sounds are necessary for positional audio. I'll need to fix that. Monster and NPC mapgen spawning appears to have some issues that I never noticed before. Some spawns that are supposed to happen don't. This was especially noticeable with water monsters. I was able to reduce the issue so that most mobs spawn, but I want to investigate this more.

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Re: [Mod] Zoonami [0.9.5] [zoonami]

by isaiah658 » Post

v0.9.5 is released. This update fixes a few bigger issues that I'll explain below.

I've always intended to have Zoonami work on as many games as possible. Up until this point, I've been testing on Minetest the Game. Now that Zoonami is getting closer to having some gameplay value, it makes sense to get it working on other games.

The first issue that has been addressed is node/item groups. Zoonami heavily relies on these groups for things like spawning and crafting recipes. Rather than explicitly listing a node/item, a group can be used instead. However, not all games use the same groups. Some games, like Farlands Reloaded, change the group names for digging nodes from "crumbly" and "cracky" to "dig_dirt" and "dig_stone". Thus, I have added code that functions similarly to how sounds in Zoonami are handled. By default, the node groups use the names that Minetest the Game uses. If a different game is detected, it overrides the default values. So far I have tested Mineclone 2, Hades Revisted, and Farlands Reloaded and added any necessary override values.

The second issue that has been fixed is that Mineclone 2 uses a few extra node fields for hardness and blast resistance. These have been added to the nodes in Zoonami. Zoonami also uses the Mineclone 2 node sounds if it's detected.

With those two problems resolved, Zoonami should be playable on most games. However, some games have more caveats. Some force v6 mapgen which means villages won't spawn due to v6 lacking biome info. Some games also disable mapgen decorations. This affects berry bushes and mobs that generate during mapgen. Zoonami is still playable without those two features, but due to the importance of them, I'm currently overriding the decoration setting to always allow Zoonami to place its mapgen decorations. My plan is to add a setting to Zoonami to turn this override off in case having all decorations off is desirable. In most cases, it should be left on. Lastly, some games, such as Hades Revisited, don't have snow or other essential nodes that are used for monster spawning. In those cases, you'll need to either find a mod that adds those nodes or accept the fact that monsters that spawn on those nodes will be unobtainable.

Due to the caveats listed above, I've decided that the only "officially supported games" are Minetest the Game and Mineclone 2. Other games, like Farlands Reloaded, will be listed as "compatible but might have caveats". Games that have issues, like Nodecore, will be listed as "incompatible". I have added this list of games to the readme file in the mod and the forum post.

The third and final issue that has been mostly solved is the issue of mobs not generating consistently during mapgen. This was noticeable the further the player moved from spawn. It turns out that using gennotify was the culprit. Gennotify events that occur far away from the player are triggering before lighting is calculated. I thought I had fixed this by using minetest.forceload_block, but after inspecting it more, I realized this was returning false in many cases. This means it was not able to forceload the block. Basically, gennotify appears to be unsuitable for entity spawning purposes.

I switched to using an LBM and it is much more consistent. LBMs normally only trigger on areas that were generated before the LBM was introduced, but there is a setting to have it trigger every time an area is loaded. I've adjusted the code to remove the invisible nodes that are used for spawning monsters. This means the LBM will only trigger one time because the node is removed after it triggers. The end result is the same as before. Mobs generate with the mapgen. This method does appear to use a small but measurable amount of CPU to remove the invisible nodes. Previously the nodes were left as is because gennotify only triggers once. In a few cases, the LBM appears to not actually trigger. This is easily seen when changing the invisible nodes to be visible. I'm not sure what causes it, but it's usually not very many nodes and it's not linked to the nodes being far away from the player. In those cases, subsequent visits to those areas will trigger the LBM again and eventually remove the invisible node. Even still, the LBM method is much more consistent.

That wraps up this update. Players can now start testing Zoonami on Mineclone 2 and other games and report the results here. Even though Minetest the Game and Mineclone 2 are the only "officially supported games", I will do what I can to support other games. Just know they might have caveats, like Hades Revisited not having snow blocks by default which makes some monsters unobtainable.

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Re: [Mod] Zoonami [0.9.5] [zoonami]

by wsor4035 » Post

interesting, thank you that you where willing to try your mod out on one of my wip games (farlands reloaded). feel free to reach out via forums/irc/discord if you need anything. I've long been a proponent of game agnostic mods and done work in that area, however i would have to disagree with you on groups. there great, however i would much more prefer to have different group schemas if the values are assigned to different things other than say what minetest game follows. (trying to avoid the mtg debate, but its status as a default isnt the best, not saying my games are perfect by any means).
j5uBLfc6NxgersvVj5D5dIsiKDkoQb0o

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Re: [Mod] Zoonami [0.9.5] [zoonami]

by isaiah658 » Post

wsor4035 wrote:
Fri Jan 21, 2022 02:26
interesting, thank you that you where willing to try your mod out on one of my wip games (farlands reloaded). feel free to reach out via forums/irc/discord if you need anything. I've long been a proponent of game agnostic mods and done work in that area, however i would have to disagree with you on groups. there great, however i would much more prefer to have different group schemas if the values are assigned to different things other than say what minetest game follows. (trying to avoid the mtg debate, but its status as a default isnt the best, not saying my games are perfect by any means).
I'm not sure what you mean. Minetest the Game node groups being treated as default values in my mod isn't an opinion that the node groups in it are the best or that node groups are good in general. I have to choose something for default values to use in my mod. Since the node groups in Minetest the Game appeared to be the most commonly used among games (partly because many games use Minetest the Game as a base), it makes sense to use those as my default values. If someone tries to run Zoonami on a game I have not tested, this gives it the highest chance of working. The node groups you have chosen in Farland Reloaded are just fine. All I'm doing is using equivalent node groups if a game chooses to use different groups. Also, Nodecore is incompatible due to the crafting system being completely different. I wouldn't be able to use craft items in crafting recipes.

I'm just using node groups to keep Zoonami as mod agnostic as possible. Most of the node groups are for monster spawning conditions. Only a few of the groups are used for crafting recipes. As for me listing Minetest the Game and Mineclone 2 as "officially supported", that has to do with both games not having any caveats and also having a relatively predictable and stable future. Games that are more WIP and experimental, like Hades Revisited, might lack something important or make a dramatic change, like not having snow. That's why they are being listed as compatible, but might have caveats.

I hope that clears up any confusion.

Edit: After reading your message again, you might have been referring to the actual values of equivalent node groups. Yes, I noticed that issue. That's why the actual nodes in my mod have all of the node groups that games might use explicitly defined. For example, the gravel path node has crumbly = 2, dig_dirt = 3, handy = 1, and shovely = 1. If a mod ever decided to use the same group names as another mod but for a completely different purpose, yes, that will screw things up.

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Re: [Mod] Zoonami [0.9.5] [zoonami]

by freshreplicant » Post

Feedback on Zoonami Version 0.9.5
(Minetest 5.5 dev, MTG)


Bugs:
ZoonamiOutput.png
ZoonamiOutput.png (74.09 KiB) Viewed 5846 times
1. Console output visible when interacting with NPC trainers (possibly also chatterbox NPCs).
ZoonamiShadow.png
ZoonamiShadow.png (41.35 KiB) Viewed 5846 times
2. Strange texture under table (shadowmapping related [Turned on at low setting]?).

As usual Feature Ideas/Requests:
(Rough in order of simplicity + good to have)

1. Ability to give nicknames own Zoonami
2. Distinguish own Zoonami from opponent’s, e.g. “Opponent’s Scallapod...’ not just ‘Scallapod...’ (confusing if you have the same monster).
3. Scope tool for admins/locked behind privileges to see monsters’ levels without starting fight (may not be possible if randomly generated on click).
4. Admin ability to spawn special Zoonami or modify values of already spawned ones, e.g. set level, set size of Zoonami (for ‘boss’ or special event Zoonami for example).
5. You mentioned this already, but I agree that it would be good to have a limited mode for Zoonami, e.g. not spawn any structures, NPCs or Zoonami in, so that server admins could place these manually. Some way of limiting the roam range of placed Zoonami (either within radius of a specific node, or in high grass, etc.) would be good too. For survival, mabye this node could be craftable. Useful for games where the landscape being barren/somewhat devoid of life is important, e.g. Exile and Hades Revisited.

You know the drill for these, no need to consider any of them or reply, just putting it out there.

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Re: [Mod] Zoonami [0.9.5] [zoonami]

by isaiah658 » Post

Flamore wrote:
Fri Jan 21, 2022 14:13
isaiah658 wrote:
Fri Jan 21, 2022 03:39
Also, Nodecore is incompatible due to the crafting system being completely different. I wouldn't be able to use craft items in crafting recipes.
This is completely false, Nodecore uses craftitems and nodes for recipes. Adding craftitems is done the same way as in MTG
My mistake. Craft items are in Nodecore. I'll have to look into it more to see how the crafting recipes work. I've been trying to avoid spoilers for it since it's a game I want to play at some point.
freshreplicant wrote:
Fri Jan 21, 2022 18:43
1. Console output visible when interacting with NPC trainers (possibly also chatterbox NPCs).

2. Strange texture under table (shadowmapping related [Turned on at low setting]?).

3. Scope tool for admins/locked behind privileges to see monsters’ levels without starting fight (may not be possible if randomly generated on click).

4. Admin ability to spawn special Zoonami or modify values of already spawned ones, e.g. set level, set size of Zoonami (for ‘boss’ or special event Zoonami for example).
Thank you for catching the console output issue. That was used when debugging the NPCs and I missed removing it. The texture bug would be a shadowmapping issue then. That should be reported to whoever is working on that feature. I just tested this, and it's not a shadowmapping bug. It's because I left one of the textures blank on the table rather than having it use an actual blank texture. I'll fix that. The monster's level, moves, and other stats are generated when right clicked. From my understanding, entity properties are sent to clients, so a hacked client would be able to see any explicitly defined property. This is already a bit of an issue as hacked clients can cheat to find rare monsters because the entity names are visible.

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Re: [Mod] Zoonami [0.9.5] [zoonami]

by isaiah658 » Post

freshreplicant wrote:
Fri Jan 21, 2022 18:43
2. Distinguish own Zoonami from opponent’s, e.g. “Opponent’s Scallapod...’ not just ‘Scallapod...’ (confusing if you have the same monster).
I just checked the game and it already does this. When it's your monster, it says "Your Scallapod" and when it's the opponent's it says "Enemy Scallapod". If you're not seeing this, that's a bug. You'll have to watch if it says this again and what situation it says it.

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Re: [Mod] Zoonami [0.9.5] [zoonami]

by JALdMIC » Post

How about use some of the creatures from Tuxemon.
Que tal sobre usar algunas de las criaturas de Tuxemon.

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Re: [Mod] Zoonami [0.9.5] [zoonami]

by freshreplicant » Post

Heya Isaiah, been keeping up with development on Codeberg, glad to see you're still working on it and cranking out features.

Just encountered a crash when clicking on the vending machine, though I'd share it here:

Code: Select all

2022-05-27 19:13:37: WARNING[Server]: Undeclared global variable "vending_machine_formspec" accessed at ...eplicant/.minetest/mods/zoonami/lua/vending_machines.lua:152
2022-05-27 19:13:37: ERROR[Main]: ServerError: AsyncErr: Lua: Runtime error from mod '*builtin*' in callback item_OnPlace(): ...eplicant/.minetest/mods/zoonami/lua/vending_machines.lua:152: attempt to call global 'vending_machine_formspec' (a nil value)
2022-05-27 19:13:37: ERROR[Main]: stack traceback:
2022-05-27 19:13:37: ERROR[Main]:       ...eplicant/.minetest/mods/zoonami/lua/vending_machines.lua:152: in function 'on_rightclick'
2022-05-27 19:13:37: ERROR[Main]:       /usr/share/minetest/builtin/game/item.lua:455: in function </usr/share/minetest/builtin/game/item.lua:448>
2022-05-27 19:13:37: ACTION[Server]: singleplayer leaves game. List of players: 
2022-05-27 19:13:37: ACTION[Main]: Server: Shutting down

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Re: [Mod] Zoonami [0.10.0] [zoonami]

by isaiah658 » Post

It's been a long time since the last update, but this entire time I've continued to work on Zoonami. I held off on officially releasing an update since many of the features, while important, didn't really add a ton of gameplay value on their own. I wanted a release that would be worth a player's time to check it out. What this means is that this update is fairly big.

Before talking about the individual changes, I think the most important thing this update has is that it's becoming fun to play. I tested this several months ago with a friend and we ended up playing 8 hours total over 2 different gaming sessions. So about 4 hours each session. Those gaming sessions were huge for finding bugs, understanding what was balanced and what wasn't, and in general finding out if Zoonami was fun.

With that being said, expect future updates to still break things in such a way that you'll probably need to start fresh on a new world. Don't expect your progress made in this release to carry over to the next.

One more question I want to answer is whether or not Zoonami is recommended on servers yet. If you want to make an experimental server just for Zoonami and are prepared for crashes and issues, I would say yes. However, one glaring issue that might make it not work even on experimental servers is that the "active mob count" setting has been removed. The setting was removed because it was not implemented correctly, like at all. I need to figure out a way to properly add it again. What this means is that there is no cap on how many Zoonami mobs can be active at any given time. The mob AI has been improved to prevent mobs from piling up in holes and water, and there was a major bug that has been fixed with despawn times not being correct effectively giving all monsters really long despawn times. So hopefully even without the active mob limit setting, these fixes will help keep the mob count reasonable until I can add the setting again. Other settings, like the spawning interval and max nearby mobs, can also be used to help control the amount of mobs.

Now for the actual changes. As usual, we have new monsters. There are 7 new monsters bringing the total number of monsters in Zoonami up to 30. Two of these monsters are intended to be obtain mostly from underground excavation sites, however, I have not added those yet. Thus, I've left them in as a rare underground spawn. In the future when excavation sites are added, I'll increase the natural spawning rarity to mythical. This will encourage players to obtain these monsters through excavation sites but still make them possible to find if no excavation sites can be found. The 3D mobs mod has been updated to have 3D models for all the new monsters.

As for moves, there are 16 new moves bringing the total number of moves in Zoonami up to 73. This completes the goal of 5 basic moves for all 13 monster types and also adds in more unique moves. Moves now have a priority value. This priority value is the first check when determining who attacks first. If the move priority ties, then monster agility is checked. I've also added in a new category of moves called static moves. These moves deal a set percentage of the opponents max health in damage. The trade off being that typing advantages and stats won't affect the damage. Monsters can now learn new moves when leveling up as well.

Move books have also been added. These books are used when a monster needs to be taught a move instead of learning it via leveling up. I've only added two books for the static damages moves because I haven't really thought out what the taught moves should be for monsters. The only way to obtain these move books is from a battle reward when defeating Howler. This is mostly temporary. I intend to make the books obtainable from excavation sites and other means.

Players can now make a trading machine to trade monsters with another player. This a pretty big deal as it's the only way players can really interact currently in Zoonami. PVP battling has not been implemented yet.

Keeping track of monsters and moves became easier with the addition of a monster journal and move journal. Both journals act as encyclopedias. The monster journal only show pages for monsters that have been tamed or traded for. This means it doubles as a progress tracker. This progression system can be turned off in the mod settings if you would rather have all of the journal pages unlocked right away.

The computer AI in battles has been completely overhauled. Previously, the AI was nothing more than a simple function to choose move. It's now much more advanced. With these improvements, the AI can handle switching monsters allowing trainers to finally have more than one monster. The AI isn't super smart, but it will at least try to put up a fight. At the moment, the AI is incapable of using static moves. If the AI somehow only has a monster with static moves, which shouldn't happen, it will only use skip.

Trainer NPCs have been overhauled. As mentioned before, they can finally have more than one monster. I've also given them a 5 star difficulty rating system. This system is intended to let players know the average difficulty before they choose to actually fight. This also solves the issue of not having stronger trainers for players who have strong monsters. Previously there was no real incentive to fight a trainer instead of wild monsters as the battle rewards were the same. To change that, I've made trainers give 2.5 times more ZC (Zoonami Coins) than what wild battles give. I will adjust this bonus amount to be lower if it turns out to be too much.

NPC spawning has been, you guessed it, overhauled. Previously, NPCs were just a random rare spawn. In order to keep the NPCs that generated in villages to stay in villages, I made NPCs never despawn. This meant that I had to keep spawning them in the wild very rare because they would never despawn. All of that has changed with the addition of the NPC Wood Chair. This special chair is used to attract NPCs to villages. The chair can be active or inactive. An active chair allows NPCs to spawn near it using the same spawning mechanics that monsters use. In order for a chair to be active, two conditions must be met. The node above the chair must have a natural light level of 13 or less and an artificial light level of 3 or higher. What this means is the chair needs a ceiling above it and a torch or some other player placed lighting nearby. This is basically my way of forcing the chair to be in a "house," but the rules that define a house are purposefully very loose. The chair will periodically check these conditions. If a condition isn't met, the chair becomes inactive. The only way to get an inactive chair back to active is to break it and place it again. Trainer NPCs will spawn occasionally in the wild and not by a village. With these changes, players can create their own villages. More info can be found in the in-game guide book.

The first step towards making Zoonami adventure maps has been made. The infobox NPC type has been added. The infobox NPC is similar to a chatterbox NPC except the messages it says can be configured by any player with creative privileges. Infobox NPCs can only be spawned with spawn eggs. Infobox NPCs do not move around, but they do rotate. They don't take any damage as well. If more than one message is configured, each time a player talks to the NPC one of the messages is chosen at random. The infobox NPC is useful for basic story purposes, introduction messages, and random tips on adventure maps or servers.

The backpack GUI has been redesigned. I realized that showing the player inventory on all pages didn't make sense. It only needed to be shown on the items page. This means other pages now have a lot more space and overall it look visually better. The monsters page also features some new features. The first change is the ability to showcase a monster in party by clicking on the heart icon for it. This will spawn a mob in the world with your player name above it to let everyone know it's your monster. The monster will also follow you around as you walk. The second change is that more detailed monster stats can be viewed by clicking on the 3 stacked lines icon. This is useful for knowing how much EXP is needed to level up without using the chat command to view monster stats. The third change is that monsters can have their move slots remapped to other moves they know by clicking the blue move buttons on the monster pages. Once a monster knows a move, it always knows that move whether it's assigned to a move slot or not. You can view every move a monster knows, aka the move pool, by using the chat command to view monster stats.

The mob AI has been improved to detect cliffs and water and to avoid them. This has improved monsters from falling into natural pits forming unintentional mob farms and causing lag. You're also less likely to see land monsters swimming in water. I've also adjusted mobs to allow swimming, floating, sinking, and dying in water and lava. This means monsters that shouldn't be able to swim in water, like avian monsters and fire monsters, will now die when touching water. However, fire monsters can float on lava. I totally plan on adding a monster that spawns in lava and swims in lava to give players a bit of a challenge.

The way the energy stat is increased when a monster levels up has been changed. Previously it worked like other stats by having a per level value. This was very unbalanced. A monster that had a low max energy amount wouldn't have enough energy to use higher attack moves until it was a much higher level than other monsters. Now monsters have a max energy stat. Every 10 levels, a monster will gain 1 energy stat until it equals the max energy. For example, Chickadee has an energy total of 3. This means at levels 0 to 9, Chickadee will have 1 energy. Levels 10 to 19 will have 2 energy. Levels 20 to 100 will have 3 energy because it has reached its max energy total.

There have been a handful of improvements to battles. The first is that monsters that reach 0 health have their sprite turn invisible to make it visually easier to understand what monster fainted and easier to see what monster switches in. The battle text boxes for the monster stats are now displayed above the move animations. While this can obscure the view a little, it looked weird before having animations sometimes display over the text. The last change is that players are now made invincible during battles. The breath meter is also stopped. This allows players swim underwater to battle underwater monsters without dying. It also prevent players from creating traps to kill players in battles.

A very small addition is monster repellent. If you are clearing monsters out in an area, it can be annoying to right click on a monster to start a battle and then immediately exit to get rid of the monster. Or worse, all your monsters in your party are fainted and you can't battle monsters. With monster repellent, a simple left click on a monster will despawn a monster immediately.

Anyone who tried creating a berry bush farm/garden probably noticed a flaw with berry bushes. Berry bushes had the "buildable_to" node group which meant right clicking on a berry bush while holding a node would delete the berry bush and place the node. Picking berry bushes was also a little hard due to the full node hit box size. Both of these oversights have been fixed.

The guide book has new sections to explain some of the new features in the game in more detail. Make sure to check it out if you have questions.

There are many bug fixes as well. Things like Zeenite ore not generating, trainer NPCs monsters not being healed after battles, starter monsters being able to be deleted, and scroll events in backpack and battle items menu from causing "exploit attempt" debug messages have all been fixed.

This concludes that 0.10.0 update. There are even more changes and bug fixes in the changelog if you want to read all of it. There are still a handful of big features that need to be added, but that number is shrinking. Thank you to everyone who helps playtest, report bugs, and gives feedback!

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Re: [Mod] Zoonami [0.10.1] [zoonami]

by isaiah658 » Post

Version 0.10.1 is released. It's fixes a few bugs like the move book items were missing and item leftovers not being dropped when a player's inventory is full.

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Re: [Mod] Zoonami [0.11.0] [zoonami]

by isaiah658 » Post

Zoonami v0.11.0 and Zoonami 3D Mobs v0.4.0 are now released.

There are 3 new monsters bringing the total amount of monsters in zoonami up to 33. No new moves were added.

Village generation during mapgen has been greatly improved. Villages are now more consistently found and have a more consistent amount of buildings. Due to the improvement to the spacing between buildings, I was able to add flower beds and water fountain structures to villages. These are random structures and won't always generate in a village. NPC spawning in villages was adjusted to give NPCs priority over monsters. There's also a separate variable for controlling the max amount of nearby NPCs when spawning in a village. It was a little rough trying to balance the spawning. I may still have to adjust spawning to ensure not too many NPCs spawn.

One issue that came up when adding the water fountains was buckets. Unfortunately, not all games provide a bucket mod or a way for other mods to make use of existing buckets. Because of this inconsistency, I needed to add a pail to Zoonami. It functions exactly like a bucket except just for Zoonami liquids. I know it's not ideal to have multiple buckets for liquids, but this ensures that players can move the liquids that Zoonami adds no matter what game they are playing on.

There is a new merchant NPC. Merchant NPCs spawn in villages. They function similar to a vending machine except with more limitations. Merchants will never restock or change items. The item they have is the only item they will have. Merchants also charge a littler bit more for items than vending machines do. Merchants will have a few unique items that vending machines won't have. At the moment, the only unique item is Zeenite Ore.

Excavation sites were added. They can be found underground. A page was added to the "getting started" guide book section explaining how the excavation sites works. The short version is you need to mine around all the debris nodes before mining the middle core node. If done correctly, you will have a good chance at receiving random loot. One of the loot items is a mystery egg. Once placed, every mystery egg has a different light level that it needs in order to hatch. Right click on the egg to try to hatch it.

There were quite a few bug fixes and minor improvements. You can read the full changelog in the first forum post.

isaiah658
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Re: [Mod] Zoonami [0.12.0] [zoonami]

by isaiah658 » Post

Version 0.12.0 is finally here.

This update focused on one thing only. Adding PVP to the game. Many months ago I had a made a prototype for PVP battles. It was basic, but it functioned. Thus when working on the v0.12.0 update I thought things would go smoothly and quickly because I already had the basics figured out. I was very wrong. Between the battle rules and other corner cases, it was hard to add anything in while making sure it wouldn't break anything. Overall, the backpack code and the battle code are a bit sloppy. But everything functions and I'm not sure if/how I would further improve the code cleanliness, so I'm saving that for a future update.

Despite these difficulties, this is actually a really big milestone. One of the main reasons I wanted to make Zoonami in the first place was to take advantage of multiplayer. Players battling each other via formspec felt like such an interesting idea. Now it's a reality.

I have added in a chapter to the guide book explaining how PVP works (it's on the 2nd page of the index), but I'll also explain a bit here. To start, go to the PVP page in the backpack menu. One player will host the battle and the other will join. The host configures the battle rules, types the opponent's name into the host text field, and presses enter. If successful, the status will say it's waiting for the oppoonent. The joining player then types the name of the host player. If successful, the status will say you joined the opponent. The joining player will be able to see the battle rules the host has proposed and either accept or reject and leave. If accepted, the game checks that both players are within 25 nodes of each other and that both players have at least one monster. If both conditions are met, the battle begins.

That's the summary of how two players start a PVP battle. For more information about the battle rules and how PVP battles work in general, refer to the guide book. One notable thing is that all monsters are automatically healed when entering a PVP battle and none of the stat changes are saved after battle. This allows players to have PVP battles without worrying about placing a healer down somewhere. If you randomly bump into someone on a server, go ahead and have a bit of fun battling. PVP battles don't give EXP or items, so they really are meant for fun/competition.

As always let me know of any bugs or problems you find.

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Re: [Mod] Zoonami [0.12.0] [zoonami]

by Nathan.S » Post

I've been watching this for a while, finally got around to trying it out, and I have to say it's impressive so far. I've never played any Pokemon or Pokemon style games, but with the help of the in-game documentation you've provided I was able to get on my feet in about twenty minutes or so.
I'm wondering if you have this mod running on a server someplace, or if you would be interested in having it on a server.
I record Minetest videos, Mod reviews, Modding tutorials, and Lets plays.
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