[game] dYSToPiA

[Merlin]

I am not even sure if I am allowed to do this, but I'll just go ahead.

So, I played BlockMen's Wasteland game with the canyon Mapgen by paramat and stumbled upon some really weird water formations(of course, because canyon generates water), first, I remeoved the water but then, thinking about sfan5's oil mod, I was like "wouldn't it look so cool to fill the rivers with oil?!".
I made an oil texture, found out how to make it flow and merged the oil together with Wasteland and canyon and it was only one step to thinking "Couldn't I make a whole game out of that idea?!".

This is only the very start, but I thought people could already suggest ideas? And I plan on expanding it a lot.
Please keep in mind that it is currently heavily based on the three games/mods above, and only shows the first idea!

Spoiler

(someone told me how to do the spoiler thing, thanks ^^)

"Thousands of liters of liquid, but nothing to drink."

Now for the interesting part, some plans:

I want this to develop into a not so easy to beat survival game which aims to be rather realistic on the side of science.

• nice mapgen, I'll probably take parts of canyon and watershed(the irony) for this
• periodic table as far as it makes sense and other science stuff
• ruins of villages and cities
• toxic lakes, rivers, waste etc.
• (human) mobs
• instead of leaving the player alone with no crafting guide or a whole crafting guide, he will either have to try out(can be dangerous considering some scientific realism) or he will be lucky to find crafting recipes in ruins(motivation to go to dangerous places?)
• hunger, thirst, tiredness
• some goals for the player, like finding out what caused the dystopia or trying to get a bit of flora and fauna going

I made a documantation of my plans, you can take a look at it here: https://github.com/sct-0/dystopia

Tell me what you think.

[Don]

To do the spoiler thing you need the spoiler tag.

Code: Select all

[spoiler=title of spoiler]
stuff goes here
[/spoiler]

[Krock]

So the target is to add more waste to the wasteland?
Interesting idea. Looking forwards to this subgame.

[Merlin]

Yes, but not only more waste! :D

Don't get me wrong, Wasteland is great, but currently the only reason to play it, is the sole act of playing.
That might sound strange at first, but think about it like reading: You don't only read for the purpose of reading. Or else, people wouldn't spend time in bookstore to find an interesting book.
You read a book for its story, for the imagnination of the worlds that form in your mind.

And just as well, people usually don't only want to play a game for the purpose of playing something, but because they want to be part of a story, a world, challenges, a community etc..
Wasteland has no story. Okey, stories can be made up by the player, but usually that alone won't work as long term entertainment, because once the player loses a bit of motivation, the story dies as well.
Wasteland gives a world and minetest in general has a community, has a challange, which is surviving. But the main mini-challenge to fulfill that is basically finding/growing food.
And fulfilling only one challenge with the only reward being "not dying", won't keep the player entertained for a long time either.

That is not negative, the game is simply very, very open, which is great and definitely a keeper for a lot of people(including me) and of course it's not only about surviving but as well bringing a bit of green back, building stuff despite the bad conditions and more and more, depending on the player. But that means, doing these things is not needed to achieve something meaningfull inside of the game.

And there are people who don't like challenging themselves or rather like to be challanged by others/the game itself(you can count me in here as well).

I think that's one of the biggest differences between minecraft and minetest: Minecraft has an end, which makes it interesting for the second group, while still being very open(greatly playable without working towards the End), which makes it interesting for the first group.
Minetest has no end(maybe there's an "End" Mod?), which makes it not that suitable for the second group.

So what I want to do is give a story, something to play for, when the sole purpose of surviving and building isn't enough, while at the same time not creating the need to play along the story.

Of course this is all just theory and there are loads of exceptions and little "buts" and corners to run against, but basically, this is how it works(I think).

[Merlin]

Replaced the useless 0.2 mod with a documentation of my ideas.

https://github.com/sct-0/dystopia

[Merlin]

Hey guys, just wanted to tell you that after some months of personal business, I am back at developing the game.

[Don]

Hey guys, just wanted to tell you that after some months of personal business, I am back at developing the game.

Welcome back!

[Merlin]

I already developed the core story and the main character is also in development.
The setting is going to be dystopian and kinda post-apocalyptic with society having a bit of a Bioshock touch.
Don't know how much I'll reveal about story details, as I am not sure how much of the initial story will be present to the player at the very beginning.