[Game] Sky-Test [0.5] [beta]

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HeroOfTheWinds
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[Game] Sky-Test [0.5] [beta]

by HeroOfTheWinds » Post

Image

After thinking it over for a decent amount of time, I decided to make the plunge, and make a whole Minetest game based off of floating islands, as brought up in my skylands thread.
Image

Image

So, apart from the obvious implementation of skylands throughout the whole world-space, this packages numerous mods from the forum in the base game, with the goal of streamlining the sky theme and making it easier to get things done when huge voids separate the lands. These mods are:
Spoiler
[beds] (PilzAdam version) --since exploring hole-filled islands at night can be detrimental to your health.
[bone] --BlockMen's mod to add bones and bonemeal to Minetest. Because instant tree growing is a must for bridge builders.
[bridgetool] --A mod by Kilarin that is perfect for easily creating bridges between islands.
[farming] --not to be mistaken for the default farming mod; this is TenPlus1's version, which I feel is somewhat cleaner and superior.
[flyingmachine] --I still need to edit in a craft recipe for Controller, but I mainly included this as a secondary option for sky travel, and a reason to build sky-docks. ;)
[helicopter] --A very well done mod by Pavel_S, which I am giving as a default item to allow players to leave the starting island.
[inventory_plus] --You know what this does. xD
[mesecons] --I personally advocate the belief this should be included with the base game. In any case, this is very useful for automating certain tasks, such as building bridges between islands with an injector-style setup.
[moreblocks] --Necessary for nicer skylands.
[moreores] --ditto.
[moretrees] --Variety is the spice of life. Now fully integrated into island generation!
[plants_lib] --Variety comes at a price, lol.
[pipeworks] --Another mod that has many functions, and with the rarity of water in the floatlands, a way to pipe it around is welcome.
[technic] --One of the most powerful and involved machinery mods out there. Take the time to learn it, and you won't regret it.
[throwing] --Arrows are very useful, and I can think of no better use for the teleport arrows than here.
[unifieddyes] --Useful, depended on by a decent number of mods.
In addition to these, all the regular base game mods are here, as well as one more half-mod (demi-mod? xD):
skytest_init, which does two things: Force the mapgen to use singlenode, and generate an island a short distance below origin to serve as a safe starting place. The island is a sort of bowl filled with water so as to cushion the fall of any player. Picture:
Image

Now onto the specifics of the game itself. When players join, give_initial_stuff is active by default, although here it only gives 99 torches, one steel pick, one steel shovel, a steel axe, 99 cobble, a bridgetool, and one helicopter. The torches are there to help when islands shade each other (which is very common). This game runs in parallel with my development of skylands, so usually any updates there follow here shortly after. Eventually, I would even like to add a goal to this game, potentially finding some sky temple or slaying some dragon (or both). But that's still a ways away.

Now, for the proper things:
Download: https://github.com/HeroOfTheWinds/Sky-T ... master.zip
Unzip in the games folder of your Minetest installation, and rename to sky-test.
GitHub: https://github.com/HeroOfTheWinds/Sky-Test-game
License: WTFPL (for now)

SCREENSHOTS! (Outdated)
Spoiler
Approaching a volcanic biome island in a helicopter at night:
Image

Cross-section of three arid biomes:
Image

Island with a lake surrounded by various trees from MoreTrees:
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Massive island:
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Waterfall:
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The treachery of night!
Image
Enjoy, and be sure to post your thoughts and suggestions.
Last edited by HeroOfTheWinds on Mon Nov 10, 2014 06:38, edited 6 times in total.
Nam ex spatio, omnes res venire possunt.
Why let the ground limit you when you can reach for the sky?
Back to college now, yay for sophomore year schedules. :P

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Re: [Game] Sky-Test [0.1] [beta]

by philipbenr » Post

Looks pretty good. I don't know if I would like it, but I bet that others will...

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Re: [Game] Sky-Test [0.1] [beta]

by Mikerhinos » Post

Cool mod, helicopter bugs on my comp (I randomly fall of helicopter, don't know why but always had that problem with that mod), but I like the floating islands because it multiply playable surface, it can be awesome on a very populated server.

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Re: [Game] Sky-Test [0.2] [beta]

by HeroOfTheWinds » Post

After much inactivity, I finally updated this!

Now runs SkyLands 3.1, making for much better islands more suited to having a whole game mode on them. I also added two new mods to the game: BlockMen's bone mod, since fast plant growing is useful when you're trying to explore a lot, as well as Kilarin's bridgetool mod, since it makes sense and allows purists to avoid flying without breaking their necks.

Hopefully I can update this a little quicker next time...
Nam ex spatio, omnes res venire possunt.
Why let the ground limit you when you can reach for the sky?
Back to college now, yay for sophomore year schedules. :P

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Re: [Game] Sky-Test [0.2] [beta]

by Kilarin » Post

Loving the new version!
I'm flattered that you included my bridgetool mod!

In Sky-Test I'm experiencing nodes with problem textures. Cinder, Cinder Blocks, and acacia tree logs all appear invisible in the inventory (but show fine when you drop or place the node) And some stairs have come up with scrambled strange looking textures.

Is this a problem with my setup, or is anyone else experiencing it?

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Re: [Game] Sky-Test [0.2] [beta]

by HeroOfTheWinds » Post

Seems to be something on your end, because I just tested it with my latest commit, and I don't get those errors at all. The blocks appear correctly in my inventory and in the world... I wonder what would be causing it.
Nam ex spatio, omnes res venire possunt.
Why let the ground limit you when you can reach for the sky?
Back to college now, yay for sophomore year schedules. :P

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Re: [Game] Sky-Test [0.2] [beta]

by Amaz » Post

Great job WIndHero!

Kilarin, I used to get that it Minetest... Never looked to see if there was a fix. I found that restarting Minetest helps.

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Re: [Game] Sky-Test [0.2] [beta]

by Kilarin » Post

Amaz wrote: I found that restarting Minetest helps.
restarted multiple times, but it is very consistent. For example, cobble stairs are invisible in my inventory. And they stay invisible, no matter how many times I restart.
Amaz wrote: I just tested it with my latest commit, and I don't get those errors at all. The blocks appear correctly in my inventory and in the world.
I'll keep researching on my end then. Thanks for checking.

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Re: [Game] Sky-Test [0.2] [beta]

by Amaz » Post

Bug: (Not sure if here or skylands is best...) Over 1000, and I think over 400, saplings don't grow into trees... Which is quite irritating, as that removes a renewable source of materials...
Looking forward to the next release!

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Re: [Game] Sky-Test [0.2] [beta]

by HeroOfTheWinds » Post

Thanks for the catch! I'll try to get this updated later, fix those saplings, and maybe add saplings for the new trees as well. I also intend to beef up farming_plus, moreblocks, and several other mods, but idk if all of them will get done in a day. (knowing myself... I'd need extraordinary motivation, haha.)
Nam ex spatio, omnes res venire possunt.
Why let the ground limit you when you can reach for the sky?
Back to college now, yay for sophomore year schedules. :P

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Re: [Game] Sky-Test [0.3] [beta]

by HeroOfTheWinds » Post

Image

Updated the internal SkyLands engine to SkyLands 0.4.1. This introduces the heaven and sandstone biomes, as well as saplings for acacia, pine, and golden trees. Saplings are now fixed, and will grow at any altitude. I edited the [bone] mod included with the game to have bones appear in the unique dirt nodes offered in SkyLands, a.k.a. drygrass, permafrost, icydirt, and rich_dirt. Bone drop rates are also higher, especially in more arid regions. The bucket mod was edited to allow the scooping up of spring water from the Heaven biomes. Finally, I brought this game's default mod in line with the current Minetest version's default, thus meaning the textures and everything else now match Minetest NeXt.

Expect more updates as the week progresses! I have big plans for farming_plus, moreblocks, and bone.... and maybe more!
Nam ex spatio, omnes res venire possunt.
Why let the ground limit you when you can reach for the sky?
Back to college now, yay for sophomore year schedules. :P

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Re: [Game] Sky-Test [0.2] [beta]

by Kilarin » Post

This is looking great!

I would LOVE to see someone running a skytest server. It would be wild to see what a group of people working together could do in a skytest environment.

I tried to get on the "sky" server the other night. It's running some kind of floating island variation. But it suffered from a problem of over-burdened spawn. The spawn island was small, and pretty much all resources were gone. Unless I was going to start tearing apart other peoples structures, and I didn't want to do that, it was virtually impossible to figure out how get what was needed to move from the first island to the next.

If anyone ever ran a skytest server that was ALL floating islands, no actual "ground" level, that didn't come with a helicopter or other flying device, then I think they would need to address the spawn issue.

My suggestions:

1: The floating island at 0,0 could be forced to be very, very large. Large enough that new players could still find a tree to cut down and make their first pick. You could have an island a 1000 nodes across at spawn and I don't think it would take away from the floating island feel. I could still find unclaimed territory within 1000 nodes of spawn (or at least not much past it) in xanadu, so I think 1000 nodes or less would do.

OR,

2: Put a special portal near spawn that would allow new players to teleport out to a random floating island. The logistics of coding this might be difficult though, because you DO want to teleport them to solid ground, and you don't want to distribute them too randomly or players would never meet. And dropping them onto an island that some other player has completely protected won't help them at all. It might work if the admins actually set the destination portals and moved them around when any new island started getting too developed.

OR,

3: Perhaps a better alternative than the portal, as far as player distribution goes, would be some kind of flying device that lasted only for a short amount of time so that new players could hunt down an unoccupied island, but then would have to work their way from place to place after that. This would let players get scattered around, but keep the starting places within a reasonable distance of spawn.

OR, the "cooperative" option:

4: The first few players will build bridges out to many islands in all directions. The admin should ensure those bridges are protected so that a new player will be able to travel to some land that is not completely used up. This option requires more intervention by the admins though. And cooperation by the players in leaving the main highways open.

Of course, if you are passing out helicopters, this would not be an issue. But my personal prejudice is that the game is a lot more fun with no, or at least limited, flying. Discovering and reaching a new island should feel like a great accomplishment. When you can just fly around, getting somewhere new doesn't mean much, and the thrill of spending hours and hours searching out the limits of a new land turns into 5 minutes of zipping past the scenery, and then moving on to the next island.

Just my opinion.
Thanks for a REALLY cool game!

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Re: [Game] Sky-Test [0.3] [beta]

by HeroOfTheWinds » Post

I'm glad you like it so much. :D

So far, my answer to those problems has been to provide a helicopter for those who are not purists, and to provide a bridgetool with 99 cobble for the purists. I am considering expanding the spawn island, thanks for letting me know that this is a welcome idea. I too would love to see a server running this, it would make development a lot easier because I would then have an idea of what people do and do not attempt, and what kind of things I would have to provide to ensure a certain method of reaching the first island. If I could find a way to guarantee a large enough perlin noise value at the origin, it would be easier to create a large spawn island without it being completely unnatural.

Another approach would be to give players renewable materials to start: a sapling or 3, a block of dirt, maybe some bonemeal to instantly grow it, and a bridgetool. Then they can infinitely create trees and harvest more saplings, and make a bridge when they have enough. But some players might get bored with that...

As far as the portals go: If I took a closer look at travelpoints, I could probably hack something together to create a travelpoint on each island and a link to it from the spawn, but there's a problem: islands only generate when you get near enough to a chunk to generate them. So by default, there are no portals to go to, and the idea is bunk.

Temporary flying device: As it stands, a lot of people glitch out with the helicopter anyway, so I might have to remove it. But imagine this: you still don't find an island at the end of the machine's lifespan, and you fall into the void. This could be mitigated by making it disappear as soon as it touches ground...

Option 4: Probably the best, and in reality, the server OWNER can keep shuffling through seeds until a decent-sized island is relatively near spawn. And as far as requiring admin intervention goes... What good is a title if you never use it? ;)

And I will be clear: I very much prefer the purist method of playing SkyTest. :D

EDIT: Found the topic for the Sky server: viewtopic.php?id=7068 Apparently it runs the indev mapgen with internal floatlands enabled. (paramat's FAVORITE.) (obviously a joke)
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Re: [Game] Sky-Test [0.3] [beta]

by Kilarin » Post

HeroOfTheWinds wrote:Option 4: Probably the best, and in reality, the server OWNER can keep shuffling through seeds until a decent-sized island is relatively near spawn. And as far as requiring admin intervention goes... What good is a title if you never use it? ;)
Excellent points all.

And just to be clear, I didn't mean to be running down the sky server. It looked really cool. I just was having a really hard time figuring out how to get around when all of the resources seemed to be used up or claimed. I might try it again sometime.

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Re: [Game] Sky-Test [0.3.2] [beta]

by HeroOfTheWinds » Post

Alright, new update!

Very large one too... Added moretrees and plantlib, if everything works as it should, you should see more trees now... Updated the mesecons and moreblocks installations, and I added an "easter egg" in mesecons: an incinerator that lets you do two things: pulverize an item in style using the inventory of the incinerator, or create a fire-spewing floor trap! I also added moreblocks support to SkyLands, so now the blocks that previously could be made into stairs and slabs can be made into so much more with the circular saw.

I also made one (imo) controversial change: I completely deleted farming_plus and replaced the default farming mod with TenPlus1's Farming Redo mod. I found it much easier to build upon his work than on the original, and I liked his textures a bit better as well. Furthermore, I integrated it into SkyLands even more tightly: the rich dirt in heaven biomes can be tilled into rich soil, which has twice the growth rate of normal soil! I had to make a special change to SkyLands to spawn vegetables at island generation, but I sadly cannot port those changes to the standalone mod due to the impossibility of checking for the farming mod. (TenPlus1's mod is named exactly the same as the base game's mod.... making it impossible to tell the difference.)

Hope you enjoy the changes!
Nam ex spatio, omnes res venire possunt.
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Re: [Game] Sky-Test [0.3.2] [beta]

by Kilarin » Post

Whoo Hoo! downloading now!

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Re: [Game] Sky-Test [0.4] [beta]

by HeroOfTheWinds » Post

New update!

Technic is now officially supported! Not only has this powerful mod been added to the game, but the internal SkyLands engine also integrates it fully by generating Zinc, Uranium, and Chromium among it's other ores, as well as by faithfully recreating the sheet ore generation of marble and granite! At the moment, these are features unique to SkyTest, but I plan to eventually bring them over to SkyLands in the form of an optional dependency.

Til then, enjoy!
Nam ex spatio, omnes res venire possunt.
Why let the ground limit you when you can reach for the sky?
Back to college now, yay for sophomore year schedules. :P

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Re: [Game] Sky-Test [0.4] [beta]

by HeroOfTheWinds » Post

After noticing some of the mods in this game get updates fairly recently, I finally got around to updating some of the more critical mods in SkyTest!

UPDATE:
Pipeworks
Technic (which was actually missing from the repo for some reason...)
Moretrees (much faster now)
Plants_lib
Moreblocks (way overdue)
Moreores

And finally, SkyLands! Brought over the cavorite tools from my last update. :D
Note that these updates mean that SkyTest MUST use Minetest 0.4.10 onward now.

Once again, enjoy!
Nam ex spatio, omnes res venire possunt.
Why let the ground limit you when you can reach for the sky?
Back to college now, yay for sophomore year schedules. :P

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Re: [Game] Sky-Test [0.4.2] [beta]

by HeroOfTheWinds » Post

Terrible me, triple posting...

But, the reason is UPDATE!

Image

TenPlus1's farming redo mod has been updated to 1.0.1, and both SkyTest and the mod itself have been edited to support it. To prevent a quadruple post, I will edit this post if I make any more updates in the next 24 hours.
Nam ex spatio, omnes res venire possunt.
Why let the ground limit you when you can reach for the sky?
Back to college now, yay for sophomore year schedules. :P

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Re: [Game] Sky-Test [0.4] [beta]

by HeroOfTheWinds » Post

Gonna bump this topic here, since I finally got a moment to breathe with college... which means update time.

Nothing too terribly big, except for the fact that I updated the farming from 1.01 to 1.10. That means that much of the improvements in TenPlus1's code have been implemented, and there are now raspberries, blueberries and rhubarb in the game, in addition to the tweaks made to other plants since the last version.

Also, I did indeed add the Air Sword, now with corporeal form. Even a Dungeon Master can't take more than one hit from this hallowed sword. That's part of the reason I haven't given out the last puzzle piece on where to find the right air.

Enjoy!
Nam ex spatio, omnes res venire possunt.
Why let the ground limit you when you can reach for the sky?
Back to college now, yay for sophomore year schedules. :P

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Re: [Game] Sky-Test [0.4] [beta]

by Baggypants » Post

Well, I'm probably being an idiot but I'm totally lost with this game.
I've tried with minetest 4.10 and minetest git and every single world gen but I either get a very normal world or the bowl in the sky and nothing else.

A README would be appreciated.

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Re: [Game] Sky-Test [0.4] [beta]

by Kilarin » Post

If you get a bowl in the sky, that is correct. To find other islands you need to set your visual range out as far as your computer can handle, and build bridges.

The islands can be packed close together in some places, but they can also be far apart in others. Sometimes you can't see another island and you just build a bridge up until you run into one.

I posted a journal of some of my experiences playing SkyTest, perhaps that would help you? Jacobs Ladder: A SkyTest Journal

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Re: [Game] Sky-Test [0.4] [beta]

by Baggypants » Post

What mapgen are you using?

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Re: [Game] Sky-Test [0.4] [beta]

by Baggypants » Post

Is this pretty normal?
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Re: [Game] Sky-Test [0.4] [beta]

by HeroOfTheWinds » Post

Baggypants wrote:Is this pretty normal?
Yes, sadly that is pretty normal... I keep meaning to push an update to give triple the amount of cobble when you start out, but keep delaying. I'll go update it right now...

Also, one small tip is to go diagonally up. For some reason, islands seem a little more common when you're moving on two planes instead of one. Additionally, when all else fails, use the helicopter. And don't forget that you can dig up the bridge you've made behind you! I'm gonna be working on a submod that has an "island-radar" for easier discovery of islands, so hopefully that will also improve playability.
Nam ex spatio, omnes res venire possunt.
Why let the ground limit you when you can reach for the sky?
Back to college now, yay for sophomore year schedules. :P

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