This is my first post. First, let me thank all developers and congratulate them with their work. I've been playing Minetest for a few weeks only. Previously I had played the game Dwarf Fortress. I am completely aware that by design, Minetest is not Dwarf Fortress, and that I may probably be influenced in my perceptions by that game, but please bear with me.
My question is: In Minetest, does there exist a mob mod in which the mobs have the following behavior:
- They spawn FAR AWAY from any of your homes, and far away from any of the subterranean passages that you have dug yourself and/or that you have sufficiently lighted. (They can still spawn in natural caves and/or in unlit caves.) I.e. "home" could be defined as any of the places you have sufficiently lit up. The mobs should spawn in the places that are completely outside of that, i.e. where at night it is completely dark.
- After spawning, the mobs move towards you, or towards the inside of your "fortress" (the latter could be again defined by torches, or alternatively and probably better by also by beds, chests, furnaces, doors, etc.).
If you are not inside your fortress, then they attack you directly. If you are inside your fortress, then they try to get inside, to attack you, and also to destroy your bed, chests, etc. - While trying to get inside your "fortress", the mob is able to find even passages that take detours, i.e. that are not a "direct line" between its current location and its target.
The point of the items 1, 2, 3 is, that this creates a mob that has siege behavior: It spawns outside your "fortress", then attacks your fortress.
And the point of this siege behavior is that it would add some interesting strategy to the game: namely, this adds the element that you know the rough "direction" from which the enemies will come (namely, from "outside", trying to get "inside"). This allows you to in advance prepare traps etc. to fight these enemies. This strategy element is not there when mobs can just spawn anywhere.
(Note: With mobs that can spawn anywhere, I think the only possible kind of trap that makes sense is the kind of thap into which you can actively lure those mobs, i.e. when they spawn, move away through your trap with the mob following you. But IMO this is a rather limited type of trapping. What I am seeking is mob behavior that enlarges the scope for trapping strategies.)
So far, I have tried out the following the mob mods: simplemobs, cme, and mobs_redo; the latter with animal, monster, and nssm. I definitely like the way how NSSM and the various other "monster-like" mobs make the game more challenging; however all these monsters, both NSSM and the others, just spawn anywhere, including in lit underground corridors in the center of your "fortress" structure. Therefore these mobs do not create an opportunity for siege-like situations to arise.
Also, in none of these mob mods, the mobs seem to be able to detour around an obstacle, i.e. the pathing seems to be "straight line" only. If there is a wall of 10 meters or so wide between the mob and you, then the mob does not go around the wall. When inside a house with only one opening, a mob spawning outside of the house on the side away from the opening then attacks the back side of the house and does not find the opening. For real siege behavior I think a precondition is that the mobs are able to find paths that are complex.
I have not yet played on-line server games, only singleplayer. I suspect that in on-line games, you do get the siege behavior, namely because of the other players trying to get into your "fortress", to pillage your stuff and to kill you, would that be correct? But online playing is not what I am addressing in this post. My question is, whether for Minetest there exist "NPC" mob mods where the mobs mimic a real player, spawning outside your fortress (instead of just anywhere), and capable of pathing in a relatively intelligent way while trying to get into your fortress.
I have not yet found an existing Minetest mobs mod that can do this. Do such mobs exist? Is anyone currently developing something like it? Would such mobs be simple, or hard, to create given the current Lua APIs ? Note: I have not yet had a look at the .lua files of the mob mods I tried out. Does Minetest have some kind of support for mob mods trying to achieve the mob the behaviors 1, 2, 3 that I listed above?
With best greetings,
-- MRubingh