FOSS gamedev and creative worlds

Toby109tt and I have been working on another subgame, this time it's steampunk/prehistoric themed.
The game has a very long way to go, but it'd be good to have some feedback on the game in its current state.

There are three main aspects we are working on:
1. Steampunk(sort of) machinery. Eventually I hope to make several machines which can be built upon with other nodes to improve how they work. Also there will be decorative nodes(think scifi nodes but with more pipes and cogs)
2. Villages. Village building will be an optional goal of the game. Players will be able to build houses for npc's, who can take on various jobs(butcher, baker, etc.). So far players can only build small houses for npc's, which only remember where their home is but don't carry out any actions related to it.
3. Dinosaurs and prehistoric life. Players will be able to make(?) dinosaurs and prehistoric creatures from fossils.

Other stuff:
>New biomes; swamps, bamboo forest, tall conifer forests. (mg v7 is the default for this subgame)
>Dungeons and structures will spawn in the mapgen. (or they will once I get around to adding it)
>Eventually I plan on adding a lot of mobs :)

Some screenshots:




Github: https://github.com/D00Med/farlands

IMPORTANT NOTE: We have decided to use some of the newer features in minetest, so you will need to use a dev build. https://minetest.kitsunemimi.pw/builds/ ... c-win64.7z <--this is the one we are currently using.

Note: We haven't got around to updating all of the license/readme files, so please don't borrow/use any of the code or resources just yet. They will be updated soon(ish)

This sounds amazing! Can I help? possibly?maybe?
Except for one thing...

Players will be able to make(?) dinosaurs and prehistoric creatures from fossils.

Oh gosh, it's Jurassic Park all over again :P jk it's fine.

ah, at last!

I had been aware of this developing on github and had bookmarked it.
But I was waiting for the big presentation in the forums.
Now I can add it to the subgames list on the wiki

GreenDimond wrote:This sounds amazing! Can I help? possibly?maybe?
Except for one thing...

Players will be able to make(?) dinosaurs and prehistoric creatures from fossils.

Oh gosh, it's Jurassic Park all over again :P jk it's fine.

How do you want to help can you program or do you want to do art ( I don't think I really need someone to do art at the moment) but I can Still Take A Look At what you have :)

And if you have ideas or suggestions please tell me (remember there's no such thing as bad ideas but there maybe better ideas)

Also bug testers are welcome

twoelk wrote:ah, at last!

I had been aware of this developing on github and had bookmarked it.
But I was waiting for the big presentation in the forums.
Now I can add it to the subgames list on the wiki

Yay :)

toby109tt wrote:How do you want to help can you program or do you want to do art ( I don't think I really need someone to do art at the moment) but I can Still Take A Look At what you have :)

And if you have ideas or suggestions please tell me (remember there's no such thing as bad ideas but there maybe better ideas)

Also bug testers are welcome

I can do both (though I am better with art). I can also come up with ideas.

D00Med. I can not see any screenshot of your post

GreenDimond wrote:

toby109tt wrote:How do you want to help can you program or do you want to do art ( I don't think I really need someone to do art at the moment) but I can Still Take A Look At what you have :)

And if you have ideas or suggestions please tell me (remember there's no such thing as bad ideas but there maybe better ideas)

Also bug testers are welcome

I can do both (though I am better with art). I can also come up with ideas.

Well if it's OK for d00med you can help with programming
Also im interested in your artwork (textures and sprites)
Please go here to talk about this https://github.com/D00Med/farlands/issues/77

And I gladly hear about all your ideas (nothing is too crazy but Keep the limitations of minetest in mind)

Azazel wrote:D00Med. I can not see any screenshot of your post

I can :/

the nicest thing on the screenshot is tha lil' shroomy!

Gonna check it out... I like steampunk themes... (not so crazy about the prehistoric aspect but, I'll just pretend it's not there :P )

I like taller trees... that's what I plan to make as well for my own subgame thingy...

It's great to see that you guys are interested.

Does anyone have any suggestions or ideas?

(For things like blocks, items, animals, monsters, or game mechanics?)

This looks promising! I will especially keep an eye on that steam machinery…

Oh, dinosaurs? Have you told Christian9? I'm sure Christian9 would be very interested. :-)

There's a mod with dinosaurs: viewtopic.php?t=11266

Wuzzy wrote:Oh, dinosaurs? Have you told Christian9? I'm sure Christian9 would be very interested. :-)

There's a mod with dinosaurs: viewtopic.php?t=11266

I have now XD

What do you think of the subgame?

I've been testing the game lightly now and I have to say it really holds up in terms of visual quality and coherence, (which is not to say for the bulk of Minetest subgames) The models are skillfully made to fit the voxel style. Especially the new mobs are exquisite, with great use of textures. The textures in general are really, really good.

What I really like about the steam machinery is that it's modular and all built in-game, without formspecs. I'm keeping an eye on that part especially.

The boat and air ballon are beautiful (and they work great too). Together with the new content such as the scarecrow, the head statue the painted sand blocks, the skulls, the palm trees, the steam machinery, the interesting new tree types, the plants and the mobs all feels like the components of a new story which haven't been told yet.

A problem that was evident early on is the lag. I get the feeling that those bird mobs takes their toll, but I don't know. Usually I can have my draw distance set to about 200, but in Farlands I need to lower it to around 60 to achieve the same framerate. I suggest looking into the mod profiling that is mentioned around the forum.

Keep up the good work!

texmex wrote:I've been testing the game lightly now and I have to say it really holds up in terms of visual quality and coherence, (which is not to say for the bulk of Minetest subgames) The models are skillfully made to fit the voxel style. Especially the new mobs are exquisite, with great use of textures. The textures in general are really, really good.

What I really like about the steam machinery is that it's modular and all built in-game, without formspecs. I'm keeping an eye on that part especially.

The boat and air ballon are beautiful (and they work great too). Together with the new content such as the scarecrow, the head statue the painted sand blocks, the skulls, the palm trees, the steam machinery, the interesting new tree types, the plants and the mobs all feels like the components of a new story which haven't been told yet.

A problem that was evident early on is the lag. I get the feeling that those bird mobs takes their toll, but I don't know. Usually I can have my draw distance set to about 200, but in Farlands I need to lower it to around 60 to achieve the same framerate. I suggest looking into the mod profiling that is mentioned around the forum.

Keep up the good work!

Thank You For Your feedback
It's Great to hear that my artistic work pays off (d00med also did a fantastic job so give him some love)

texmex wrote:I've been testing the game lightly now and I have to say it really holds up in terms of visual quality and coherence, (which is not to say for the bulk of Minetest subgames) The models are skillfully made to fit the voxel style. Especially the new mobs are exquisite, with great use of textures. The textures in general are really, really good.

What I really like about the steam machinery is that it's modular and all built in-game, without formspecs. I'm keeping an eye on that part especially.

The boat and air ballon are beautiful (and they work great too). Together with the new content such as the scarecrow, the head statue the painted sand blocks, the skulls, the palm trees, the steam machinery, the interesting new tree types, the plants and the mobs all feels like the components of a new story which haven't been told yet.

A problem that was evident early on is the lag. I get the feeling that those bird mobs takes their toll, but I don't know. Usually I can have my draw distance set to about 200, but in Farlands I need to lower it to around 60 to achieve the same framerate. I suggest looking into the mod profiling that is mentioned around the forum.

Keep up the good work!

Do you have any suggestions?

As with most Minetest games I feel like a proper beginning is missing. Something to tell you how you got into that world. Are you born at spawn or where does your clothes come from? Are there ancestry? Did they leave culture and tools to you? In short, some kind of "onboarding" to introduce the player to this specific universe. It could be as simple as a crashed spaceship, wrecked ship or a failing portal behind you where you first spawn. There's still the whole world to explore of course.

Personally I'd like to see much more temples, ruins, pyramids and other structure that might enhance the storytelling and therefore the immersion. I've seen the statue and the painted blocks in there so I guess you're doing that.

Make sure multiplayer works well.

Ambient sounds and more item-specific sounds also improves immersion alot.

I know it's a very open sandbox type of game, but some kind of game progression mechanics such as experience points, deadlier mobs, collecting pieces of a puzzle or something similar would keep the player playing for a longer time I think.

Those are all good ideas, thanks :)
And you are right about the structures, I just haven't got around to adding them

texmex wrote:A problem that was evident early on is the lag. I get the feeling that those bird mobs takes their toll, but I don't know. Usually I can have my draw distance set to about 200, but in Farlands I need to lower it to around 60 to achieve the same framerate. I suggest looking into the mod profiling that is mentioned around the forum.

YES. The FPS is horrible. I really think it is the birds. I have a private server that I play with a friend that had mobs_sky installed, but recently the server got bogged down by the game having to keep track of all the bird entities. The mod was promptly disabled (useless anyway) and a clearobjects run. Lag was fixed. I agree, this is an issue.

That's interesting, I haven't had many problems with lag, but I always have the viewing range at 50.
I will try reducing the spawn rate for the birds.
Could it be the abm's from the machines?

D00Med wrote:That's interesting, I haven't had many problems with lag, but I always have the viewing range at 50.
I will try reducing the spawn rate for the birds.
Could it be the abm's from the machines?

I'm suspecting the birds more. I did not experience increased lag when building machines.

Ok, that's a shame because there aren't many mobs yet, and we were planning to add more.

D00Med wrote:Ok, that's a shame because there aren't many mobs yet, and we were planning to add more.

Adding more is probably fine. It's just that birds spawn too often and there are too many.

heh, I find myself getting caught up rescuing the cute lil things from the waterfalls they keep flying into... that's about as far as I get :P

I like them.

I also recently found out about the fireflies which used to exist... I like those too.
But I think they were done as particles, rather than actual mobs, which is cool

I didn't read up on them too much. But I'm gonna add them to my own subgame eventually, just because I like them but hope that they are able to be set using daytime settings (meaning have them appear only at night)

But these might be a cool addition to Farlands

You can bet on them being in it eventually, I'm really looking forward to glowing and animated particles when the next version of minetest is finished :D Hopefully I can add butterflies as well, without causing much lag. Actually, should the game be made for the dev version? This would be good in some ways, but it'd make it a bit awkward trying to update(and keep track of) all the changes to minetest_game(it sure was a pain for Legend of Minetest).

D00Med wrote:You can bet on them being in it eventually, I'm really looking forward to glowing and animated particles when the next version of minetest is finished :D Hopefully I can add butterflies as well, without causing much lag. Actually, should the game be made for the dev version? This would be good in some ways, but it'd make it a bit awkward trying to update(and keep track of) all the changes to minetest_game(it sure was a pain for Legend of Minetest).

I would think most end users (outside of this forum) actually don't use the dev builds.

Ideas and requests for farlands

Do you have any ideas or requests please tell me :)