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A totally different Minecraft experience?
MCRegions
Member Posts: 2
One of the problems IMO with Minecraft is that out of the box the game is way too simplistic and is not very good at context for the tasks players engage in. Within an hour or so most players have an abundance of iron and diamonds, no matter where they start. There's no use building massive fortresses, as anyone else can just mine right through it. There's no real reason to interact with other players, except for PVP. Therefore the idea with this plugin is to create something that makes the game more exciting through a number of limitations, while still keeping the basic game fun. I am well aware that this is probably not what most Minecraft players want, but there must be more out there, who find this attractive?
IDEA:
- Limiting who can craft what, so that players need to seek out others to get the items they need.
- Introducing natural regions that can be claimed by players. These regions are protected, but not in the binary sense like other plugins.
- Exciting obstacles before any of the above can be reached.
IMPLEMENTATION:
Profession books: The core of the plugin is ten unique profession books. The holder of one of these books can craft the items exclusively related to that book. Without a particular book, those items cannot be crafted. Examples of books are:
- CARPENTER (Wooden stairs and fences, chests, beds etc)
- DECORATOR (Carpets, item frames, banners etc)
- WEAPONSMITH (Weapons and armor made of iron and gold)
The books are unique, i.e. once you have the carpenter book in your possession you will be the only one on the server who can create such items. If a book is dropped, it stays there until found again. If it is destroyed, a player will need to go out and hunt for it again.
Regions: Whenever players are moving about in the world, new regions are defined. A region is any contiguous area of chunks of the same biome type. Each region is given a fantasy sounding name; i.e. "The Eld-tastas taiga".
Dungeons: The dungeons can be found by an over ground glowstone, next to a spiral staircase. The dungeons are procedurally generated, and their size is related to their regions size. In big enough regions the dungeon can be several floors. The dungeons are populated by mobs, and of course chests with random loot. Also, somewhere in the dungeon there is a special treasure room with extra special loot. In this room Profession books can be found and will reincarnate if they have been destroyed. The dungeon itself is protected and cannot be destroyed unless you bring TNT or lure a creeper.
Claiming regions: In the special treasure room in each dungeon, there is a sign above a chiseled stone block. The four lines on this sign correspond to the passwords for the four different access levels to this particular region. The top line for the level with highest access ("The King"), the bottom one for the level with lowest access (the ordinary "Citizen"). "The King" can do anything within the region, including placing out plot markers for other players (Lapis lazuli blocks). The next level, "General", has the same rights as "The King" except access to the dungeon and can't place plot markers, the next level, "Officer", can break/build natural blocks, like dirt, stone, sand and vegetation, but not any "man made" blocks like bricks, stairs, fences etc. They can also use most items like furnaces, chests, doors etc. "The Citizen" can break/build the same as the officer but can only use levers, plates and buttons. All of them can however do whatever they want inside their own plots. A plot (Lapis lazuli block placed by "The King") can be claimed by simply being the first to right click it with any (or none) tool/item. To determine if a player has access to a region, that player must carry a NAME_TAG named the same as one of the passwords written on the above mentioned sign. Opposite to the password sign there is another sign. This sign is there if players want to assign their regions a "Kingdom" name. When a region is identified by any player, the "Kingdom name" will be attached after the region name, like; "The Eld-Tastas taiga in the Kingdom of Unsung Heroes".
Identifying regions: By hitting anything (including air) with a wooden hoe, the chat will inform you what region you are in, and what level you are in this region.
Map: A web based map function has been created that plots the regions discovered by players dynamically. Apart from giving the players a sense of the world and its regions it also offers completely new ways of navigating using the landscape itself.
You can watch my ongoing adventure here:
http://www.whatarebirds.net/mcregionsmap/?Barsoom&collection=SteviesQuestForAStifferLife
Click on the colored markers to see screenshots and notes.
Communication: There is no global chat in the game. The preferred way of communicating with other players is of course to meet up and chat but we have also implemented other ways of interacting. Using villagers (NPCs) you can send in-game letters to other players or simply leave a message to the next player that passes through the same village. Villagers may also give you information/hints where you can find profession books – for a price of course. Furthermore, we use a an existing plugin called Realistic Chat that lets you chat we people nearby and shout to people far way using exclamation marks. The latter will consume a lot of food though…
CONSEQUENCES:
We have been playtesting this for a while with a small group of people. And for us, this has completely changed how we perceive Minecraft. It is much more thrilling and exciting. Not being able to build a bed for example, until you've found the Carpenter book, or found the player who has the Carpenter book, creates much more tension the further you explore from your camp in search for the things you need. In order to get a diamond sword, you must: Mine iron ore, bring the iron ore to the Smelter, bring the iron ingots to the Toolsmith to make an iron pickaxe, mine the diamond, bring the diamond to the Diamondsmith. Imagine the travels needed, with your backpack filled up with you valuable iron ore or iron ingots. The game gets completely different.
For more information about the plugin and its features please visit:
https://residentemil.wordpress.com/2015/04/23/regions-the-player-documentation/
If you are interesting testing the game out, let us know by sending an email to mcregions (at) gmail.com. You do need a normal Minecraft account/client of course.
Comments
I could see at one time the intrigue with Minecraft but i long ago realized it was just a cheap piece of software not worth any time of mine.It tells me more that there are quite a lot of people without much knowledge in the gaming industry.
Why pay to play Minecraft when there are free ,far superior game engines to learn and play with,example the Unreal engines are free with tools.Why would anyone in 2015 want to see chunky ugly graphics that were surpassed imo even in the 8 bit era.
It all looks like lego land to me,i quit legos like 40+ years ago.
You want a better experience,get away from Minecraft and learn to use some of the newer better looking engines.
IMO the whole Voxel idea was a hard pushed idea onto the gaming scene,to me it is as much a step backwards as it is forward,as is i am not too interested in these blocky looking games.
Never forget 3 mile Island and never trust a government official or company spokesman.
One of the problems IMO with Minecraft ...
IDEA:
There isn't a "right" or "wrong" way to play, if you want to use a screwdriver to put nails into wood, have at it, simply don't complain when the guy next to you with the hammer is doing it much better and easier. - Allein
"Graphics are often supplied by Engines that (some) MMORPG's are built in" - Spuffyre
Right...because graphics are apparently all that matters...wow...
Minecraft can be a very deep experience and did wonderful things for gaming in general. Your view is narrow and your bias is showing.
Out of the box Minecraft is just the start, and if you're so inclined you can customize it to an incredible degree. There are so many mods and texture sets for Minecraft you can make it into any kind of game you want, really. Magic-based worlds, futuristic tech-based worlds, zombie apocalypse worlds, multidimensional worlds, steampunk worlds, underwater worlds, underground worlds, you name it there's a mod for it. I run about 70 mods, and still add more whenever I find something new that I like.
I'm not a fan of the 16x16 graphics, but that's just my personal taste. I like 32x32 texture packs and sometimes change to a 64x64. There are many hundreds of graphic styles for Minecraft, from 16x16 (even 8x8 but I think they look ghastly) up to 512x512 based on all kinds of themes. I even have a mod that transforms the cubist style into a voxel style if I fancy a change.
Minecraft HAS no limits - it's all about freedom, not restrictions. Mind you, there will be mods out there that could remove or limit game elements, I'm sure, should someone want them.
I always figured if you wanted a game you wouldn't be playing Minecraft in the first place. It's a lousy base game and while I would guess there might be a handful of mods that make it enjoyable as a game, the majority of interest seems to revolve around just playing with the sandbox like a Lego set. Then again people in this thread are claiming it's "mostly PVP" which sounds crazy to me and maybe that just means I haven't delved into the game's mods enough -- any PVP possibility of the game wouldn't be Minecraft at all, but would wholly come from whatever mods were being run (much like how when you were playing Counterstrike 1.6 you weren't considered to be playing Half Life 1 because the mod was doing all of the work as far as gameplay was concerned.)
If you wanted a game, you'd play one of the many more game-like spinoffs. Terraria for some pretty decent PVE (crafting tiers and bosses.) King Arthur's Gold for a fun little team-based PVP game about sieging and undermining the enemy's base to steal their flag. Maybe Ace of Spades provided good shooter+minecraft gameplay but I wasn't interested enough to really try it. Dwarf Fortress for a giant unit management game. I'm sure others more into Minecraft style games could name even more and better examples.
While I think some elements of sandbox experiences have great gameplay potential, I generally like to start thinking of game designs from the core interesting activities first, rather than try to figure out a way to make a cool game out of a Lego set.
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
This isn't a signature, you just think it is.
Axehilt, thank you for your insightful and constructive post.
I agree wholeheartedly with your first paragraph; Minecraft is a failure from a game play perspective, which is probably also why most Minecraft servers today are full of various round based mini games. But Minecraft also has something which no other game really have, the editable open sandbox world.
My idea when I started developing this project was that a few changes to basic Minecraft functionality could unlock truly player driven emergent game play. And so far it seems to work very well on the server we have running. I am aware that this isn't for everybody (as can be seen in some of the highly literate and constructive posts above) , and that many players will likely not even consider the implications of the concept. That's fine. The games you raise as examples, while doing their thing very good, doesn't even come close to the openness, freedom and immersion that Minecraft can give. That is if you can look past the blocky world.
Well the freedom and openness is why Minecraft lacks in gameplay. In sandbox mode it's not actually a game (due to lack of rules and so much freedom), it's a toy. In survival mode it has barely enough rules to be considered a game, but is at the far sandbox end of the spectrum and suffers because of it.
We can't call it a failure for its gameplay, because gameplay wasn't the goal.
Basically the looser and fewer a game's rules, the more freedom it will offer, but the worse gameplay it will offer. Gameplay is created when the player must deal with constraints (rules), which are the opposite of freedom.
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver