[Voxelgarden] The Ocean Experiment

[Casimir]

https://github.com/AndrejIT/minetest-protect
Lag from JT made this, just comment out the protectors and keep the braziers. :)

Thank you, that looks good. It might work.

So the concept that I have is, that when placing a protector node it shows you a cost of running it. You put some fuel in and it works for as long as it is full.
The "value" of a particular block (as in mapblock, not node) is saved. So when ever you place a protector node it reads that value to determine what that location is worth and then doubles it. The doubled price decreases until someone is willing to pay. That is a form of countdown auction (or reverse auction). This way any free plot can be claimed and the system determines the right price.
The prices around spawn would be way higher than further away, and in empty ocean they would be zero. This way people can claim areas around spawn, but only if they are invested into it. When they loose interest it falls back to the public.

Can't join...down again?

No. Up and running.
(By the way, I could use a restart script, but I don't because then I wouldn't fix the bugs.)

The ressources in a Voxelgarden world are not necessarily limited.

Yes, it's the opposite of limited - growing. But if resources get locked up for ever, then it could shift to the other side and shrink.
I now increased the bone share time by a factor of 300, so it lasts for 100 hours. Does that help? It allows you to keep your inventory for when you come back. I might even double that time if the current doesn't clutter the world to much.

...but even those mostly suffer from the land around spawn beeing used and new players having to walk far away in order to find a place to build. Efficient means of travelling (i.e. my travelnet mod) can help. Keeping roads open also helps. That requires some limited amount of planning and/or intervention.

This is what I don't like about most (big) servers. When you join spawn is surrounded by a town, but to build something and get started you need to travel and find some empty spot. The town consists of many individual buildings and straight roads. While it seems like people a building together, they are really building side by side. All good things are created by individuals or by tight groups. One might even come to the conclusion that this is how things are, that good creations only come from individuals.
For my patchworks like this don't look beautiful. What I would like to have is a server where everyone can build together, but still without a common plan. TOE is intended to be an organically growing, emergent structure.

...but don't destroy your game or server by omitting those things that are needed for running it.

I am aware that the server lacks essentials. It also is far from what I want it to be. But lets say I'm a certain kind of minimalist.

"Perfection is achieved not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing left to take away." Antoine de Saint Exupéry

The problem with that approach is that taking away is hard when you have a running system. As an theoretical example, if Minetest might be improved by removing some features, that would never happen. There would always be some group that wants to keep that feature. Additionally, in a system it is hard to remove anything that is connected to other parts of that system.
My approach therefor is to start with less than minimal and be cautious about what to add and then also make sure it works well with the existing features.

That's the same approach that I (try to) take with the Voxelgarden game. By having less features it's easier to handle and maintain, but also easier to develop into the direction that I want to. And it works. I really invest very little time in VG, but it works because I only have a few issues on my list. In that way it's more rewarding to work on it, as almost everything I do is working on details or new features.
So please view this server not as a finished product, but as something in it's infancy that is carefully growing.

[Casimir]

Accidentally quoted instead of edit.

[Sokomine]

Yes, it's the opposite of limited - growing. But if resources get locked up for ever, then it could shift to the other side and shrink.

But - which ressources? There's no growth limit apart from your disk space. The game is set up so that additional blocks can be produced - generating new papyrus roots, using cobble generators. In theory it'll all end up filled with cobble. But there's no fear of that either because it can be digged into the player's inventory and be destroyed from there.

The world would end if all water would be gone. That is a very academic limit. Other games where ores are digged have indeed a limited amount of ores and not all ressources are renewable. Yet no server has even remotely reached that limit yet.

I now increased the bone share time by a factor of 300, so it lasts for 100 hours. Does that help? It allows you to keep your inventory for when you come back. I might even double that time if the current doesn't clutter the world to much.

No, that doesn't really help. A 100 hours - that's just about four days. Takes me longer to build something good. And bones would pollute the environment.

The town consists of many individual buildings and straight roads. While it seems like people a building together, they are really building side by side.
All good things are created by individuals or by tight groups. One might even come to the conclusion that this is how things are, that good creations only come from individuals.
For my patchworks like this don't look beautiful. What I would like to have is a server where everyone can build together, but still without a common plan. TOE is intended to be an organically growing, emergent structure.

Let me get this straight: You don't want people to have a common plan, but you don't want them to act independently either, and they ought to be a large group - *and* produce something aestheticly pleasing? Sorry, wrong species. We're humans, not ants.

"Perfection is achieved not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing left to take away." Antoine de Saint Exupéry

Hmm. And a perfectly empty world is just by definition perfect. And empty.

My approach therefor is to start with less than minimal and be cautious about what to add and then also make sure it works well with the existing features.

Well, as such that's not bad. Reducing the elements can increase creativity. A block of white wool can be a wall, a sail, a white dot, a car, a cloud - literally whatever you can imagine. While a chair is just a chair.

So please view this server not as a finished product, but as something in it's infancy that is carefully growing.

But that doesn't mean that you have to treat your players badly by not caring about them.

In RL, societies tend to have safeguards in place so that people who destroy what others created can at least be kept from doing so in the future. Rules envolve which are somehow enforced. This doesn't work if the one who does the destruction can do so with very little effort - and with just logging out afterward and be gone, never becomming part of the society, but comming back without effort when everyone else sleeps and continue destruction. Now, if you place value just on the blocks as such, those would be kept with your bones model...just not at the place they used to be before...

Not all players who destroy something may do so out of malice. Some most likely just don't know how to play yet, how to control their client. That takes some practice. But you won't hand a burning candle to a toddler to play with unsupervised either.

Servers with whitelisted players can work. It's not unkown that a group who shares a common goal can work together, there beeing no need for locked chests or protection as long as no others with contradicting intentions can interfere.

[Menche]

I agree that area protection can lock away choice real estate near spawn away from the public, and I have been very annoyed at this on many servers. For me, the whole point of building on a server is interacting with others, and if I have to walk for ten minutes to get to my plot I feel like I'm out in the wilderness and might as well play singleplayer. Travelnets can help this, but it can be overwhelming when there's a wall of travelnet boxes, each with a half dozen targets.

What is there to do about this, though? A public server published on the serverlist that doesn't have area protection will quickly get vandalized to pieces. When I had a server, I made it a little less public: anybody could join and talk, but you had to talk to a moderator to get interact privs. This weeds out lower effort vandals looking for targets of opportunity, as well as players who don't know how to control their client. There were locking chests and basic protectors (protector blocks only, fixed radius), IIRC.

I don't think everyone needs a common goal to make something cool together. The lack of a common goal might actually add to the charm; maybe most of what is needed is some level of respect for others' work. Adding a bit of inconvenience to the process of joining makes the removal of players without that respect more manageable, IMO.

Minetest and its playerbase has grown a lot since I first discovered it, and even since I had my server. This is generally a good thing, but does have its problems.

[Menche]

On a more specific note; how does lava on this server work, exactly? I tried many times to place lava sources for a stone generator, but it always vanished. I presume this is an anti-griefing measure. In Voxelands, I added a feature that caused lava flows to cool in more places, making spills contain themselves automatically. I can find that and translate the logic over to lua, if interested.

Also, the server doesn't make sure there's room to respawn you at the last bed you clicked. I respawned a bunch of times with my head stuck in a node, lol.

[Casimir]

The protection mod is making progress. I might have a useable prototype next week.

On a more specific note; how does lava on this server work, exactly?

You can only place it under high zero, meaning below the water line. It's a grief protection that I added after someone poured lava from high above over the whole world.

[Casimir]

Hunger now is active again. I hope to have fixed that bug which only occurs in multiplayer. If anything strange happens with your health bar, please tell me.

Also, lava cools to crumbled stone above height -20, and to stone and ores below -20. This way new players can get crumbled stone, but you can still go mining for ores. This is a temporary fix until someone thinks of something better.

Also the current land around spawn:

[Casimir]

Here is the protection mod with basic functionality: land value tax
Not much left until it is usable and online.

And here a map (a bit outdated - made on Saturday)

[Casimir]

Despite being incomplete and full of bugs, I added the lvt mod to test it out. I'm a bit excited.

[Casimir]

There have been some changes. Most are small ones regarding the Voxelgarden game - most importantly hunger and drowning behaviour changed.

Regarding the server itself, lavacooling now creates ores depending on their depth as in normal mapgen. This mean, in order to get mese, you will have to build a stone generator way down under the surface.

I also added a use to rainbows. Whoever finds out can share the secret or keep it. Credit goes to JustinLaw64.

[Menche]

Did I break it? I died of drowning, then the server immediately crashed…

[Casimir]

I recently messed with the hunger code and published with little testing. So there was a bug with respawning that would cause a crash. It's fixed now.

[Casimir]

The server is down because the map is broken. Even when trying it in singleplayer the server just shuts down without error. If someone has an idea what this could be, please tell me.

Below is a picture of the spawn island.