Suggested Exploration World Ideas

[Nihal Singh]

Related to this GSoC item- https://github.com/MovingBlocks/Terasology/wiki/GSOC#exploration-world
Issue- https://github.com/MovingBlocks/Terasology/issues/2775

There can be so much possible (probably not a whole lot because of missing combat systems). This thread is mainly intended to discuss ideas and possibilities. We could probably then pick the best ones that could be stuffed together in the summer timeline.

 

[Nihal Singh]

A few ideas that resulted after a discussion with @Cervator yesterday in addition to some of my own are listed below:

Creatures
Add creatures around the world that could be tamed/hunted. Inspired from ARK Survival. Watch a quick video here-

Taming- Taming would require a player to chase and knock down or subdue an animal. Lethal weapons would be required to use cautiously as they could possibly kill the animal. Spiking the animal’s food with a mildly poisonous berry or potions would be a possible idea too. Chasing the animal and knocking it out with a non-lethal weapon would be the easiest. Animals will have different speeds and the ones having higher speeds will be difficult to chase. Such animals could be captured by leading them to a trap. Trap ideas

• Breaking blocks with cage underneath
• One way portal
• Trip wires
• Nets that fill when you walk over a block
• Quicksand which makes an animal stuck

Hunting- Instead of knocking out or subduing animals, you’d just kill them for food.

Animals would each have unique abilities.

• Can follow you around
• Can be instructed to stand and wait. (Makes them prone to harm/loot or taming by another character. Should possibly lock them away in a garage-for-creatures or secret caves for safekeeping.)
• Will have a larger inventory that can be used to carry around things. Can be used for carrying large items while building a base.
• Maybe can be used as a saddle to ride upon. (faster speed). Sea creatures for sailing etc.

Exploration
The world could be such that some places are locked away and aren’t directly accessible. You’d need to solve puzzles or interact with different components to unlock them.Puzzle settings and special mazes where co-op is required to activate a series of pressure pads and use portals etc to obtain a key or a magical scroll that contains the passphrase to unlock the door akin to LoTR.

Series of puzzle rooms like

Farming
I’ve tested out simple farming but it’s tedious. Maybe we could allow for using tools that facilitate sowing seeds/planting/harvesting in a whole region. Additional activities like ploughing and adding fertilizers may be added too. Maybe add an irrigation and a power supply system similar to this-

Barter
Interact with players to exchange inventory items. Instead of throwing things around and picking them. Add money as an exchange medium.


Multiplayer Gameplay

• Building a base- Combine efforts and build a base, move large items and place them.
• Taming animals- Set up an elaborate trap and increase chances of capturing an animal by surrounding it from all sides.
• Puzzle solving- Some puzzles can only be solved by a team effort.

Rails and improved mining
Fix the rails module and allow for carts to carry stuff to places.

Maze Gampelay
http://forum.terasology.org/threads/maze-world-gameplay.1765/ discusses a lot about maze gameplay but that wouldn’t be possible without having a physics based combat system in place.

 

[smsunarto]

Heya - Generally, I think a end-user ready gameplay is what we should aim for instead of many different features in the project but no actual way for a player to enjoy it.

Loving the creatures idea! It's totally something that can increase what players can do in-game. You can get some inspiration for the Taming system from https://dev.bukkit.org/projects/mypet. It have a lot of cool features like pet leveling system, feeding, and behaviors. In regards of hunting, I think it's an extremely good idea since that way we can add more meat items to the cooking module and connect it with this idea!

The farming idea is also extremely cool too! Knowing we have lots of cool things in SimpleFarming (bushes and now trees and vines!) we can probably start making actual content from it. The fertilizer concept could be somewhat like the "Growth Can" or maybe a reduce growth time kind of concept. I love the irigation system feature too, maybe make a crop wither if there's not enough water surrounding it and etc. We could also probably use some unique crops that can only grow on certain blocks (Cactus on sand) etc. We also need to make sure that those plants do have a purpose. As an example, berries can be eaten directly or cooked.

I think barter can be less of a priority, since most players usually prefer to just drop their items, but it's totally debatable. The currency idea is equally cool, but it will add more complicated stuff on how much the money can be earned and/or valued. With money implementation that would also mean we need some sort of faucet for it (Banks? Trader?) and some things to prevent inflation from going crazy.

CC: @J Young Kim @Isaac @jellysnake

 

[Nihal Singh]

@Cervator @Skaldarnar @oniatus @manu3d @Florian @Rostyslav Zatserkovnyi
Could you provide more suggestions?

 

[Cervator]

The creatures angle is really what I've been wanting to push since the very first pitch I made to @begla years ago that started this whole crazy journey - back then there was even only Blockmania, the Terasology name hadn't even been thought up yet!

Thinking about it some more got me to one repeatable mechanic I could see helping keep a world expandable, especially beyond a base set throw in with a GSOC type item like this: biome sets of creatures, resources, and themes.

We barely use biomes at the moment despite having a silly amount of data space available to track them, and they seem underused / too arbitrary elsewhere like in MC and its many mods. There are also many different ways to define and use biomes, but in this context I'm thinking similar to ARK where each part of the world is a very specific biome: beach, jungle, forest, arctic, swamp, redwood forest etc. Whether we call those biomes or something else. Each has its own small set of creatures, challenges, and resources. But that could be way expanded on, especially with our overall lower cost for assets (one ARK dino model probably contains more polys than every model and object created for Terasology so far). ARK doesn't even have anything more granular than "metal" - we have lots of potential different ones, and different creatures could specialize in helping harvest different types.

In this view of a biome one would contain a rock-paper-scissors (likely more than just 3 factors) balance that itself would interact with the sets from other biomes.

• Creatures: rather than bigger is better focus on very specific strengths and weaknesses. Creature A has an advantage against and hunts creature B, which tends to crowd out creature C, which has a perfect defense against creature A. If A gets too strong C will tend to show up. The player interacting with the creatures would likewise be able to use the specific types against others
• Resources: make biome-specific resources to go with more basic and global ones. Skilling up to handle resource A allows better access to B which allows easier survival, but is heavy so creature C tends to be needed to help lug it around. Maybe creature B can help harvest resource C. And so on.
• Theme: Each biome should have its own distinct style, eventually including nice and subtle shaders (hi @manu3d one day!) to really get that jungle vibe or some more weather options to get cold in the arctic. Structures could differ in architecture.
• Inter-biome: Rock-paper-scissor type relationships should both exist within a biome and between them. Maybe the player starts in biome A and really wants access to biome B but that's difficult without some of the creatures, resources, or other rewards from biome C. Creatures from A even when the player has acquired a "mastery" would be too weak in the environment of biome B, but while C can help there they suck in A
• Traps & puzzles: Again these could be somewhat tied to biome to help the theming along. Stuck digging through ruins in a jungle full of old tombs and temples? Break out the Indiana Jones jumping puzzles and dart traps!

Make travel and movement of stuff in bulk harder. Travel might be easy if you go light, but if you want to build a pyramid out of a stone only found in another biome a half-day journey away encourage the usage of caravans or even trains to help move it.

 

[Nihal Singh]

Biomes​

A new world that would have different biomes. Each biome would have special features and characteristics-

• Different Soil (sand, dirt, grass, snow, rocks, clay, water)
• Flora- Biome dependent plant life. Plants belonging to a specific biome will not grow in any other biome.
• Fauna- Creatures/Animals would have a niche or habitat which would be biome specific. Taken out, it would slim chances of survival.
• Minerals- Different minerals underneath different biomes
• Different availability of materials overall
• Different survival strategies required. For eg. :-
  • Arctic- too cold, warm shelter
  • Ocean- Breath, Drowning
  • Forest- Dangerous animals
• Different climate conditions- different shaders/graphics

Biomes would be-

Oceans

Would be a large part of the world.
Travelling across oceans by swimming would be difficult because of long stretches, hunger (with limited food in inventory) and sharks.
Would merge into landforms via beaches or mountains.
Can be used to fill in infinite borders to a finite world.
Depth of ocean would increase as distance from land increases till ocean bed is reached.

Flora-
Floating plants- Floating heart, Lotus
Submerged- Water Lily, Water Hyacinth, seaweed

Fauna-
Sharks, Crocodiles- Dangerous
Dolphins, turtles, fishes (Starfish, Jellyfish), squids, octopus

Minerals- Coal and oil deposits underneath ocean bed. Pearls present on ocean bottom.

Deserts

Would be present away from oceans and not have any inland lakes etc. Maybe a few oasis (mirages deep inside deserts?). Terrain would be mostly smooth with small sized dunes similar to a small scale BuilderSampleGameplay.
Deserts would only exist deep within the continents.

Flora- Cactus, thorns, bushes.
Fauna- Scorpions, Camels, Rats, Snakes and Coyote.

Low water availability (but water available underground). Can build pumps to fetch underground water.

Beach

Would merge other landforms with oceans (except arctic or islands or mountain regions). Mainly sand followed by grass, would merge into grasslands.
Flora- Palm trees, Maple, Alder. Hawthorn, Hazel, Coconut
Fauna- Alligators, turtles, wild boar, rattlesnake

Grasslands

Transition between beaches -> forests or forests-> deserts.
Can be further divided into different types of grasslands.
Majorly uniform terrain with rich vegetation, plants, shrubs and bushes.

Flora- Variety of plants/shrubs, lesser tall trees
Fauna- Deer, foxes, badgers, horses, zebra, cows, lion, giraffe etc.

Forests

Would have thick vegetation, mostly tall trees. Can be further divided into different types of forests with specific flora and fauna.

Mountains

Would be tall, often steep. May appear near edges of landmass or somewhere inside serving as a divide between grasslands/forests and deserts.
Would have special minerals underneath, difficult to dig through. Some mountains could be active Volcanoes!

Flora- Pine trees, Cedar, Spruce, Fern, Alpine plants
Fauna- sheep, goat, yak, bears, mountain lion.

Arctic

Snowy islands as big as Antarctica. Or Mountains that extend further as land with a high elevation above sea level.
Have special precious minerals underneath. Coal deposits.
Frost meter- Require you to stay indoor in warm igloos or get some clothing that protects (skin of animals, plant fibers)
Very scarce vegetation, little to no water present. Frozen lakes (only top layer frozen) are the only source of water.

Flora- Lichens, Moses, shrubs, arctic cotton grass (clothing)
Fauna- Arctic fox, Polar bear, walrus, penguins.

Swamp

Mainly provide a transition between oceans-> grasslands or lakes->grasslands.
Clay soil.
Flora- Mangroves etc
Fauna- Alligators, ducks, frogs, crabs

Lakes

Lakes would be inland sources of water so that one wouldn’t have to travel all the way to oceans. Smaller in size, lesser depth.
Flora- Ocean flora
Fauna- More fishes, crocodiles, snakes.


The above are generic biomes. Biomes can be further broken into specific ones. Like Forests -> {Redwood, tropical, broadleaf}.

The main question about this is regarding implementation. How do we create such a world and divide it into such biomes?
HeightMap- Height map is a 2D contour map with each pixel representing a chunk. It is color coded such that the color depicts the height of the chunk. This is an example of such a height map.
One could manually create a heightmap (not sure how) of a finite world surrounded by infinite water on all sides and parse it to the SurfaceProvider. That way we get the landforms, we just need to associate biomes to regions. Need suggestions on how to do this best?

@Cervator @msteiger

 

[Cervator]

To chime in further from the discussion on some focus points: biomes have naturally been done before, but in games like MC they don't tend to matter a whole lot and often are entirely random (mostly meaning vanilla MC here, I realize there are mods that improve it). Mostly they just give a different appearance - more trees, more open area, more hills, etc. Sometimes creatures vary but there aren't really a ton of variety in something like MC (again thinking vanilla)

In something like ARK: Survival Evolved the biomes can get a lot more meaningful. Lots of the notes are above, but it comes down to harder survival from having to manage temperature, toxic environments, dangerous flora, and so on. Creatures tend to fit very well like assorted critters with fur in the snow, that benefit the player by giving off a heat aura for instance. Likewise some of the materials could be ideal for building or crafting stuff to help live in that particular biome. Maybe some crops will refuse to grow outside a suitable biome.

@msteiger @Skaldarnar @Josharias and others would better know how to build a better initial biome map, and @Marcin Sciesinski used something climate related in TTA for growing plants somehow. I'm not sure how much hassle it would be trying to aim for the above without better world gen phases so you can layer in the generation of landmass, biome, sub-biome, etc. One of the key (and tricky) parts is the biome transitions and avoiding ill fitting biomes being near each other. We might also want to find ways to suppress some of the world gen facet features in some biomes - for instance don't allow Lakes to generate inside desert.

I would also encourage a distinction between the primary/generic biomes above and more specific biomes. Even ocean can be divided into coastline, continental shelf, deep ocean, coral reef, ocean ridge, hydrothermal vents, lagoon, tropical ocean, arctic ocean, and so on. Probably a top level map should primarily be concerned with generic biomes and stuff like climate, then chunk gen can figure out from available data (more noise!) which exact biome it should apply per blockspace (since we have biome at that level - also helps with not having biomes go on forever up and down!)

Modules could inject additional sub-biomes dynamically into an already generated biome map. Even in an existing world with additional biome modules added later, when we can add modules after initial game creation.

 

[Skaldarnar]

I think we are mixing up two different discussions - (a) what should different biomes look like, what are their gameplay features, etc., and (b) how should the biome mechanism to implemented such that it is exentable, easy to use, and allows for greate flexibility. While there are many good (and bad) example out here for (a), the implementation details are an important factor we have to count in.

Dynamic Cities/Economics of last year's GSOC had to work out a similar problem: how can an economy system be general and extensible while still providing everything one would expect from it? The current implementation is based on maps between keys (strings) and corresponding aspects, like currency. While being very flexible, and still quite simple in the implementation, this approach involves type casting, and is generally weak regarding typing.
To point out a few drawbacks: the string keys have to be matched _exactly_ in order to work correctly. Changes in a module's key may break a lot of things. Furthermore, some things might be mandatory, others optional. The plugin system would take this into account quite nicely.

Another aspect of gameply I'd like adress in this post is how the transition between biomes works. Usually, and possibly the most easiest way, is to have hard transitions from one biome to another - you are either in the jungle biome or in the desert, but there is nothing in between. In order to get believable worlds, the transition should be smooth, but not even. This might become even more believable if we are able to describe constraints on biome occurence - which biomes occur side-by-side, which not. This could also be probability based.

Further thought can be put into categories (or layers of biome specifications): there can be several instances of a desert, all looking very different. Should we seek for a way to treate them somewhat uniformly, or should a sand-desert be completely unrelated to a stone-desert? Is there a hierarchy of biomes? Is it a graph, i.e., is an ice desert a snow biome and also a desert? How can modules define new biomes, that are then picked up by the world generator?

I know I'm throwing in a lot of questions, and few (to none) answers. However, I hope that some of my thoughts are useful to you (or anyone working in this direction)

 

[Cervator]

I remember that one! For transitioning biomes we have an extra tool in our tool belt in that the biome block data is so huge we could "fade" in and out of biomes. Probably you could apply some shader hax based on that to literally mix biome theme colors for a super smooth transition.

I picture the hierarchy approach with the top level sort of generic biomes then the specific ones, with an option to indicate how "pure" the biome is. So maybe GREENLEAF_FOREST_1 is the very edge of such a forest and _10 is the center. Probably a bunch of ways to vary spawning, colors, etc on that

That could also allow for hybrid biomes but that could get messy fast. Maybe biomes can be represented a bit like entities and an arctic desert can be both desert and extremely cold.

 

[Skaldarnar]

I remember that one! For transitioning biomes we have an extra tool in our tool belt in that the biome block data is so huge we could "fade" in and out of biomes. Probably you could apply some shader hax based on that to literally mix biome theme colors for a super smooth transition.

Good that you mention biome theme colors (or even theme color palette, maybe 3 colors?). This might be a stretch, but default colors might, at some point, be used for distant rendering of chunks. This may allow for chunk representations purely based on heightmap and biome, no need to retrieve the actual blocks. Although that's more or less me day-dreaming about possibilities.

I picture the hierarchy approach with the top level sort of generic biomes then the specific ones, with an option to indicate how "pure" the biome is. So maybe GREENLEAF_FOREST_1 is the very edge of such a forest and _10 is the center. Probably a bunch of ways to vary spawning, colors, etc on that

In any case, we have to make sure in which way the hierarchy is denoted. We could aim for something like <category>_<type>_<characterization>, but this still has problems with multiple categories associated with a biome type.

That could also allow for hybrid biomes but that could get messy fast. Maybe biomes can be represented a bit like entities and an arctic desert can be both desert and extremely cold.

This would be perfect, but requires a re-implementation of the ES for biomes. We were not sure if it is worth the effort, or if this should be the way to go for Dynamic Cities/Economy. Maybe @Immortius has some thoughts to throw in here. Anyways, there are ways to work around this.