[Game] MineClone 2 [0.68.0]

[Robsoie]

I think villages simply should be varied size, there should be small villages, big ones, little community habitat, different type of building found in a settlement bit not in another etc... to allow more diversity and so more interest in exploring more the world.

But that's more about wishfull thinking as i have no idea how to do that :D

[Robsoie]

Having made a fishrod and a boat, i went to fish a bit at sea.
And i don't think what i saw was intended :


lots of land animals seems to spawn on the sea surface.

[bzt]

I think villages simply should be varied size, there should be small villages, big ones, little community habitat, different type of building found in a settlement bit not in another etc... to allow more diversity and so more interest in exploring more the world.

But that's more about wishfull thinking as i have no idea how to do that :D

I think there's no reason to reinvent the wheel here. I think the code that generates the mineshafts could be reused for villages:
- at the centre, where minshafts have a big 4 way crossroads room, would be the church.
- the mineshaft corridors would be the roads, there's only one thing to modify, the terrain height needs to be copied to the road block's height coordinate.
- the buildings (houses, library, farms etc.) could be randomly placed next to the paths, similarly how treasure chests are placed in mineshaft corridors, at terrain height in the middle of the the mts
- finally there should be a little fixup beneath the structure and above the terrain where there's air block left, like this:

Code: Select all

\ +-------+
.\|  ++   |
..|  ||   |
..+--++---+  <- structure base's centre (or the entrance) is at terrain height
...^..\  :
...|...\ :   <- here, where the terrain is lower than the base, needs to be filled
...|....\:      up with the default block of the biome (dirt, sand, snow etc.)
...|.....\ 
   |
here, where the terrain is higher than the structure's base, the terrain should be simply removed

It's easy to implement, simple and imho looks good. And this algorithm works on arbitrary terrain, there's no need for a huge plains to place the villages. (Note that the road follows the terrain's height, so houses would be placed at different heights.)

This would generate interesting random (seed dependent) villages instead of a fixed layout. And just like there are different sizes of mines, there would be different sizes of villages. Now I've checked the code, and I was shocked that the mines mod is actually hardcoded in the C++ engine, however I see no reason why it couldn't be parameterized from Lua so that it could place roads instead of corridors and houses instead of chests.

Just a thought how to make this game much better, tell me if it's a nonsense or a bad idea. I'm sure there's something we can help Wuzzy to make villages happen.

Cheers,
bzt

[bosapara]

Anvils works a few wrong. Pick and Axe can be repaired with 3 material without any problems.

By idea (from Minecraft) should be: pick, axe = 3, sword, hoe = 2, shovel = 1. The same things with an armor.

[BlazeGamingUnltd]

Having made a fishrod and a boat, i went to fish a bit at sea.
And i don't think what i saw was intended :


lots of land animals seems to spawn on the sea surface.

I have the same problem. It’s so annoying

[Sokomine]

It's easy to implement, simple and imho looks good. And this algorithm works on arbitrary terrain, there's no need for a huge plains to place the villages. (Note that the road follows the terrain's height, so houses would be placed at different heights.)

I did take a look at screenshots and videos from MC villages when I implemented mg_villages, but I didn't like the way the MC villages looked like. The houses where too simple in style, the roads (village seems to be generated in 2d and then dropped on the terrain no matter what it's like) often not passageable and houses - even though they're small - often sitting on too high dirt platforms.

[bzt]

It's easy to implement, simple and imho looks good. And this algorithm works on arbitrary terrain, there's no need for a huge plains to place the villages. (Note that the road follows the terrain's height, so houses would be placed at different heights.)

I did take a look at screenshots and videos from MC villages when I implemented mg_villages, but I didn't like the way the MC villages looked like. The houses where too simple in style, the roads (village seems to be generated in 2d and then dropped on the terrain no matter what it's like) often not passageable and houses - even though they're small - often sitting on too high dirt platforms.

I have to admit, I have no clue how they look like in MC. The only villages I know in a voxel game is your mg_villages mod :-D They look good (I like that there are many different kind of houses), but require a huge plain terrain to be placed, according to Wuzzy. But I agree, if MC villages are generated in 2D and just dropped on the terrain then it's lame. We could easily do much better! What I proposed would follow the terrain's height, and also because houses would be generated next to the road (as chests in corridors), that would guarantee passage between houses. Let's talk about this, maybe if we work together we can came up with a good solution, your house models and village mod (which is awesome btw), and my road algorithm. Maybe it could fit into MCL2 perfectly too (if Wuzzy don't mind that villages wouldn't be exactly like in MC)! What do you say? I have fair knowledge on programming, but not much with MCL2 Lua interface, mts handling nor with Minetest plugin writing.

Cheers,
bzt

[Sokomine]

I have to admit, I have no clue how they look like in MC. The only villages I know in a voxel game is your mg_villages mod :-D They look good (I like that there are many different kind of houses), but require a huge plain terrain to be placed, according to Wuzzy.

Require...may not be the right word here. Mg_villages creates the flat village area before placing the village. You can see that if you use it in a combination with a mapgen that i.e. just creates a 1 node deep ocean. The villages will then appear as islands. How large the village will be depends on the village type and can be configured.

I was wondering how to adjust house positions to terrain height for quite a while. Eventually I settled on this flat solution after observing many players ingame: The vast majority flattens the land first. A few can adjust to sourrounding terrain and build something that fits in. A few even more capable builders can shape the terrain according to their taste and make it look natural and beautiful. Thus, buildings found on rather flat terrain are common. If the vilalge is created in an area with many hills and mountains, it may even look like it was placed in a valley - a location where many real villages sit.

But I agree, if MC villages are generated in 2D and just dropped on the terrain then it's lame. We could easily do much better! What I proposed would follow the terrain's height, and also because houses would be generated next to the road (as chests in corridors), that would guarantee passage between houses.

Right now, using the village generator that nore created (which mg_villages does), roads are generated and then houses or roads branching off are placed at the sides.

Let's talk about this, maybe if we work together we can came up with a good solution, your house models and village mod (which is awesome btw), and my road algorithm.

How much do you know about how mapgen works? I was thinking about having one large road going over the entire map i.e. from north to south, with villages located directly at or close to this main road. The main road could perhaps even wind around the map like the river in Riverworld.

Maybe it could fit into MCL2 perfectly too (if Wuzzy don't mind that villages wouldn't be exactly like in MC)! What do you say? I have fair knowledge on programming, but not much with MCL2 Lua interface, mts handling nor with Minetest plugin writing.

Forget about MCL2 in that regard. I do support it to some degree in mg_villages and consider it important, but MCL2 doesn't make life easy for other mods. Perhaps Wuzzy ought to add a translation function/table for node names that correspond to those in default. Having an own name space as such isn't bad, but there need to be translations. There's a reason why standads exist.

In order to create a mod where villages are not isolated occourances that are not connected with each other, you have to know where each village is (can be done to some degree - after all even spawn position is set deliberately to a place where a village is, and positions of generated villages are stored) and where your roads will be. The trouble is that mapgen throws a mapchunk at you and you have to be able to generate exactly that slize of the map that's inside this chunk without knowing how it's connected to the rest (apart from the position).

[Robsoie]

But I agree, if MC villages are generated in 2D and just dropped on the terrain then it's lame. We could easily do much better! What I proposed would follow the terrain's height, and also because houses would be generated next to the road (as chests in corridors), that would guarantee passage between houses.

Right now, using the village generator that nore created (which mg_villages does), roads are generated and then houses or roads branching off are placed at the sides.

Let's talk about this, maybe if we work together we can came up with a good solution, your house models and village mod (which is awesome btw), and my road algorithm.

How much do you know about how mapgen works? I was thinking about having one large road going over the entire map i.e. from north to south, with villages located directly at or close to this main road. The main road could perhaps even wind around the map like the river in Riverworld.

Maybe Paramat's excellent path and road mods could be usefull to get a whole map road network with villages spawning around it :
viewtopic.php?f=11&t=10064
viewtopic.php?f=11&t=15423
viewtopic.php?f=11&t=15430

[bzt]

Require...may not be the right word here. Mg_villages creates the flat village area before placing the village. You can see that if you use it in a combination with a mapgen that i.e. just creates a 1 node deep ocean. The villages will then appear as islands. How large the village will be depends on the village type and can be configured.

I see, my mistake.

I was wondering how to adjust house positions to terrain height for quite a while. Eventually I settled on this flat solution after observing many players ingame: The vast majority flattens the land first. A few can adjust to sourrounding terrain and build something that fits in. A few even more capable builders can shape the terrain according to their taste and make it look natural and beautiful. Thus, buildings found on rather flat terrain are common. If the vilalge is created in an area with many hills and mountains, it may even look like it was placed in a valley - a location where many real villages sit.

Where I live (IRL) villages are actually on the top of the hills. It's a quite common landscape that the main road runs through the spine of the hill, and farms are going down from the top on the hillside.

Right now, using the village generator that nore created (which mg_villages does), roads are generated and then houses or roads branching off are placed at the sides.

I think you should simply copy the height of the terrain to the roads, and then only flatten the terrain below the houses. You should try it and see how the generated villages look like.

How much do you know about how mapgen works? I was thinking about having one large road going over the entire map i.e. from north to south, with villages located directly at or close to this main road. The main road could perhaps even wind around the map like the river in Riverworld.

I think I've seen modules to generate roads across the map. This is a very good idea imho.

Forget about MCL2 in that regard. I do support it to some degree in mg_villages and consider it important, but MCL2 doesn't make life easy for other mods. Perhaps Wuzzy ought to add a translation function/table for node names that correspond to those in default. Having an own name space as such isn't bad, but there need to be translations. There's a reason why standads exist.

You are probably right. However MCL2 is the closest thing to a proper MC feeling, and it has lots of features that I simply couldn't achieve in Minetest Game using mods. Mobs are one of the main issues here. No matter which mod I've tried, MCL2 is still the best by far (apart from mobs playing Jesus, aka walking on water, of course :-)

In order to create a mod where villages are not isolated occourances that are not connected with each other, you have to know where each village is (can be done to some degree - after all even spawn position is set deliberately to a place where a village is, and positions of generated villages are stored) and where your roads will be. The trouble is that mapgen throws a mapchunk at you and you have to be able to generate exactly that slize of the map that's inside this chunk without knowing how it's connected to the rest (apart from the position).

Actually I wouldn't mind separated villages in MCL2 if they were spawned at all (with a few villagers to trade with). But I think what you want can be achieved reasonably easily. I'm pretty sure that when a mapchunk is generated, there's a Lua callback which gets called (however that page only notes an explicitly called callback, there should be a global one too). Now there's two things:
1. at world creation time, a 2D web of roads should be generated between the villages (as you said, their spawning coords are known)
2. when a mapchunk is generated, a Lua callback should check the chunk's coordinates, and if it's on the surface and intersects with the road map, then the upmost bricks should be changed to road blocks where the road map intersects the chunk.
On the aforementioned page, there's an example Lua Voxel Manipulator.

Or, maybe it's simpler to get a mod that creates roads across the map, and simply change the village spawn positions to be next to a road :-)

Cheers,
bzt

[Segmented Worm]

What do I name the file folder for MineClone 2? Minetest says it contains disallowed characters. It is currently named MineClone2

[Wuzzy]

Use “mineclone2”.
Please paste the exact error message here.

[Segmented Worm]

Minetest said: Failed to enable "MineClone2" as it contained disallowed characters. Only character [a-z0-9_] are allowed. I renamed the file mineclone2, it works fine now. Thanks for your help!

[Segmented Worm]

Ok, now it says: Failed to load and run script from C:\Users\Basic\Desktop\minetest-5.0.1-win64\bin\..\mods\mineclone2\init.lua:
C:\Users\Basic\Desktop\minetest-5.0.1-win64\bin\..\mods\mineclone2\init.lua: No such file or directory

[Wuzzy]

MineClone 2 is not a mod, so it must be in the games directory, not the mod directory. Don't make it so diffiult for yourself. Just download MCL2 from the Content tab.

[Segmented Worm]

Ok, it is working now, I've never downloaded a game before, only mods.

[excavenger]

okay, this is too much.

[Sokomine]

okay, this is too much.

Really? :-) They're just normal ocean-dwelling horses. Bears love sitting on ocean waves as well. And some sheep hide inside solid stone.

[Sokomine]

Where I live (IRL) villages are actually on the top of the hills. It's a quite common landscape that the main road runs through the spine of the hill, and farms are going down from the top on the hillside.

That's intresting! I've already noticed during research for the medieval build style of my villages and the villages in general that quite a lot of it does not only seem time-limited (this was so for a period of time) but also regional.

I think you should simply copy the height of the terrain to the roads, and then only flatten the terrain below the houses. You should try it and see how the generated villages look like.

Sadly, awful. I had this by accident during mod development. The villages inside mg_villages are also pretty tightly placed. There's not much room between them for rough terrain.

You are probably right. However MCL2 is the closest thing to a proper MC feeling, and it has lots of features that I simply couldn't achieve in Minetest Game using mods. Mobs are one of the main issues here. No matter which mod I've tried, MCL2 is still the best by far (apart from mobs playing Jesus, aka walking on water, of course :-)

There are a lot of diffrent, intresting mob mods out there. mobs_redo is pretty common; but there's also nssm (not so simple mobs) with lots of nice and detailled models (sadly, they're all out to kill you - even the ducks!), or more recently petz with intresting concepts and - apart from the cuteness and some errors - relatively convincing npc. Just...if you get ever tired of one kind of mobs - there's more out there :-) Until then enjoy the ones you've got :-)

that when a mapchunk is generated, there's a Lua callback which gets called

Yes, that's where almost all mods that do something at mapgen time (apart from only registering biomes and decorations once) do their work.

1. at world creation time, a 2D web of roads should be generated between the villages (as you said, their spawning coords are known)

Only withhin a region...but that can probably be extended worldwide. I'm not sure about efficiency in that regard. My understanding of the noise functions and their usage is too limited.

when a mapchunk is generated, a Lua callback should check the chunk's coordinates, and if it's on the surface and intersects with the road map, then the upmost bricks should be changed to road blocks where the road map intersects the chunk.

That's all not so easy as it sounds. Even if you've successfully generated your terrain, mapgen of the next neighbouring chunk may eat its caves through your road. That can be prevented if you use nodes for the road that are not ground_content - which might work for a road (not for houses). And then there's height. It's not a big problem to determine the height of the nodes in the current mapchunk, but...if you don't know how it'll continue in the next chunk...which height to select for the road? People don't like falling into an abyss because their road suddenly stopped at a cliff. Or in front of a mountain.

I've played a bit with Rochambeaus settlement mod. It places houses around a central spot and is limited to one mapchunk. But even there, building paths between the houses is difficult, and I havn't found a way yet to do that in a way that looks convincing and is walkable.

[bzt]

That's intresting! I've already noticed during research for the medieval build style of my villages and the villages in general that quite a lot of it does not only seem time-limited (this was so for a period of time) but also regional.

And also influenced by the terrain :-) Here the landscape looks like many long (not too high) hills with valleys one after another. It's often raining (flooding the valleys) so I guess it was obvious to place the roads and houses on top the hills (however as time went by, the rivers got regulated and there are houses everywhere lately).

Sadly, awful. I had this by accident during mod development. The villages inside mg_villages are also pretty tightly placed. There's not much room between them for rough terrain.

That's a pity. Looked like a good idea. I guess we have to live with flat land villages, not a big deal.

There are a lot of diffrent, intresting mob mods out there. mobs_redo is pretty common; but there's also nssm (not so simple mobs) with lots of nice and detailled models (sadly, they're all out to kill you - even the ducks!), or more recently petz with intresting concepts and - apart from the cuteness and some errors - relatively convincing npc. Just...if you get ever tired of one kind of mobs - there's more out there :-) Until then enjoy the ones you've got :-)

I've tried those (and a few others as well). But the goal here is to get the feeling closest to MineCraft for my boy. If he says it's not like that, then I have to look for another mob mod. With MCL2 he was satisfied in 100% and only missed the villages.

Regarding the roads (connecting villages and height and all the rest): I see, and I share your concern about efficiency, and yes, not knowing the next chunk is indeed a problem. I think the best would be then to get a mod which already makes wordwide network of roads, and change only the spawner code to put villages next to the roads. It seems the easier way (also I think more reasonable, because then there's no need to hack inter-village roads into your mod, and you can also replace the road mod beneath experiment with different networks if you want, provided you can get the map of road from it). Robsoie's list looks promising. Some of the mods are capable of creating bridges too just to address your (very valid) concern about falling roads.

Cheers,
bzt

[Segmented Worm]

There are two big bugs in this game which really annoy me:
1. Skeletons can shoot through walls, so the only way to get away from one is to run away or attack and kill it.
2. You don't respawn at your bed.
Together these bugs have basically ruined my world, because I attacked a skeleton mob spawner, after getting hurt I tried to run away but got killed through the walls, then didn't respawn a my bed, but out in the middle on nowhere.

[Wuzzy]

I am pretty sure that beds work, however. You have to actually use/rightclick your bed to set your spawnpoint.

[Wuzzy]

Changelog:

• Mobs drown after a delay instead of by touching water alone
• Mobs take fire and lava damage separately
• Fix falling node not falling if it rested on an anvil that was destroyed
• Increase boat speed on land
• Fix turbo backwards boat
• Fix slightly incorrect placement of placement in /spawnstruct command
• Mob damage particles are black hearts and are proportional to damage taken
• Fix mobs spawning with 0 health if mob difficulty is 0 (minimum health is now 1)
• Mob difficulty setting is no longer experimental
• Give llamas appetite for hay bales and wheat
• Give tamed wolves appetite for meat

[excavenger]

I just have to ask, are these new? It's the first time I've encountered a structure like this spawning out in the overworld.

[Wuzzy]

No, they are not new. Just a bit rare.