What do we not want?

[fr0stbyte124]

Here's an interesting thought I just had.

Though it has changed over the years and gotten more sophisticated, the big selling point of Minecraft has always been its lack of constraints. You can build anything you want and go anywhere you like and do things which the developers had never explicitly planned for. When redstone came out, all we had was wires and inverting torches, but with those two things, we could do anything up to and including Turing-complete CPUs. When I joined, back in the heyday of /indev/, we were making logic gates with infinite water and torches holding up sand blocks.

The point is, we had simple tools and were able to do decidedly non-simple things with them. At its heart, that is one of the special things about Minecraft. I feel like we've been getting away from that spirit in these discussions, making Futurecraft into a game where there is one correct way to do things, which we decide.

So my question is, what can we do without, and what can we do more simply? There are some things, like piloting controls, which needs to have a unified interface just to be playable, but what about something like factories, or moving pieces? How specific do they really need to be?

I was recently pointed towards a mod in development called Ugocraft, which looks like an attempt to recreate the Zeppelin mod, only with block-based motivators rather than remote control. It's pretty flaky for now, but it had some interesting ideas. There was a block which rotates the moving piece, another which slides it, another mounted on the moving piece catches when passing the slider, and another propels it like a cannonball. It was elegant in its simplicity. Redpower is more complex but the same rule of no fixed-purpose parts still applies, so on a fundamental level, what do we actually need? Or more to the point, what do we not?

[Dr. Mackeroth]

"The Plan" was my attempt to write down what we need. Then, I mentioned the two "axioms" of Futurecraft: spaceships and inter-server travel. As long as Futurecraft has these two things, I am happy. All the rest is stuff to make these tow axioms look prettier, and make them more fun.

There are A LOT of things we don't need, and it is important that we cull features and focus on what directly adds to these two axioms.

[Iv121]

Well there is only one thing that adds to them both and this is spaceships. I have no idea what else could contribute to inter-server travel ...

[fr0stbyte124]

Alright, let me rephrase. What sort of things can we do which won't force a fixed mode of gameplay? If we keep approaching things they way we have, it's going to turn into a linear game, and players will only be able to do what we had intended from the start for them to do. But Minecraft is about unlimited potential, like taking an inverter block and turning it into a CPU and other things nobody had planned for. So how do we capture that within the framework of Futurecraft? It's not about removing content, but rather making the content we provide open-ended in its utility.

[Dr. Mackeroth]

Maybe rather than having assembled ship-equipment, all of it is in blocks that you can mix-and match. Think the laser mod combined with an industrial mod: with only a few blocks, you can have a massive range of possible uses, some completely unintended: like using lasers as a force-field, or as a guide for launching fighters, or as a tractor beam on my ship (these are all things that I did on one of my older ship series).

I think we need to keep crafted-options (even modular ones) to a minimum. I need more time to think about what else to do...

[Iv121]

Yea but really with the gameplay we plan to introduce I think it would be a better idea to actually add a shield. Don't even try to just make it a game with no boundaries because it's not going to happen - the second you chose to make space travel you already limited them. How do people play EVE for example ? You can't even build your really own ship ... You give the player tools, many tools , like in tekkit for example, and let them do what they want with them, build whatever ship they want, go with it wherever they want, do whatever they want for their living. You can eve help them by adding quests and objectives like in Skyrim - they are not forced to do them but their existence adds even more options for gameplay. That is how all games work and I'm sure that everyone waiting for this mod will be perfectly fine with this level of freedom (it is a quite high level of freedom BTW)

[Dr. Mackeroth]

All we can give them are tools and materials, and see what they make of them. We do not want to give them a blue-print for a house. That's how Minecraft does it, and that's how we're going to do it.

[Iv121]

OFC, minecraft has always been about construction, I never forced specific designs upon the player, I'm just trying to give them as much as possible to do with their new toys. I even want to make the fighters as customizable as possible -.-

[Keon]

That's something I've been thinking about. Is it possible to make a entity with many models?

[Iv121]

Dunno, I do know though that we can at least highly customize the functionality and stats of the fighter ...

[Keon]

Interesting, I'll need to look at code for a bit.