Games in our "sphere of interest"

[MajorLunaC]

Actually Iceball would be the way to go there for further dev: https://github.com/iamgreaser/iceball
Oh, and I was wondering, I mentioned some tools for making voxel models, but I don't know if Terasology supports any of the formats used (would be nice to for simple easy voxel models): http://www.reddit.com/r/iceball/comments/2y9v42/iceball_what_it_is_and_how_you_can_help/

I've wanted to try Trove, but it doesn't work through Wine (Linux).

There is the C-programmed voxel engine Craft (ridiculously they don't want to pick a new name) which I've found very efficient, although there wasn't anybody else online to test it with and nothing moves so far (even no liquids): http://www.michaelfogleman.com/craft/

Now, as for a game I would really want a free open-source clone of, it's CubeWorld ( https://picroma.com/ ). I mean just from the looks, it's pretty much converting all your favorite 80s-90s pixel games into voxels, which I think could work out great, and there's already the pixel art out there to do it! Maybe a tool to directly sculpt a cube-shaped mass right out of a pixel model would be great (literally just matching size, position, and color of pixels). The thing is, I don't know what's happening to Cube World, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cube_World . I'm sure everyone has doubts it'll show up this decade, especially with just 2 devs (really 1 coder, 1 artist, neither good at handling DoS attacks).

 

[Cervator]

Yeah I thought that video might be another outcome of the Ace of Spades debacle. That game seemed to fragment all over the place with multiple follow-ups after it hit drama long ago.

CubeWorld has spawned its own small set of lookalikes, it has a very successful (and imitable style), but that's probably indeed from people trying to gain some of the success or making an open source version. It came up in the past that we could do plainly colored voxels instead of textures just fine, it was just a style choice originally by @begla long ago to use textures.

As for models to use we currently support md5, collada, and to some degree Techne. A couple other formats have come up over time as well. Really just needs somebody interested enough to plug in the support

 

[MajorLunaC]

I have yet to see any clones for CubeWorld, and I've searched far and wide. Textures are fine, even preferable, although comparable performance is a question.

Great news! VoxelShop supports Collada (.dae) export! Also makes animations, Textured Voxels, etc. : https://blackflux.com/node/11

 

[mahmut]

Just another minecraft-like game. ( in development )
It is based on minetest but it seems will be more popular then minetest soon.
It has not something special yet.

https://forum.minetest.net/viewtopic.php?f=50&t=10895

 

[MajorLunaC]

Very cool! I've been waiting for real vehicles in Minetest for a long time. However, minetest and it's derivatives seem to suffer from performance and internet problems. You can often see gigantic landscapes missing (even offline!) and you often end up jittering and warping about. The processor usage can be quite significant. It's paradoxical to me, because although it's written in C++ (supposed to be so efficient), it runs more poorly than ANY of the Java-based miner games, including Minecraft itself. I'm worried it has to do with bad base programming, because as I said above, "Craft" written in C worked so smoothly and seamlessly, ONLINE even, and you can see to the horizon without problem. Maybe they need fog to hide some of the map, like many professional games do.

That mod actually mentions using another cool Voxel Editor+Animator:
https://github.com/grking/zoxel
http://zoxel.blogspot.co.uk/p/about-zoxel.html

I just feel it's a very bad base to start from. The derivatives inherit the same problems. That's why I'm here: I wanna see how good Java can do, and so far it's doing better, even though this doesn't seem that popular.

One of the coolest free block games with vehicles is Robocraft, where you build and fight with all kinds of vehicles. It can suffer from various balance problems, probably why I think they're calling it Alpha or Beta, but it's getting there slowly. Very cool idea for a game, although I've seen others non-free with the same.

 

[Cervator]

@MajorLunaC I've seen several CubeWorld-likes, but of course can't presently think of any names

Interestingly we talked to @flux in the past about VoxelShop. He was around for a while and we were tweaking at using VoxelShop models in Terasology. At some point though he moved ahead in one direction that I think lacked support for something we needed - it was a while ago and my memory is a bit hazy. Might be different now. I wanted to go crazy and have support for embedding the whole editor in-game for making custom content

Vehicles is definitely high on my wish list. Robocraft is also cool.

 

[Trekmarvel]

Yesterday was released Lego Worlds, a new game of construction with a lot of potential.
It's available on Steam in Early Access:

 

[glasz]

http://www.strangeloopgames.com/eco/

 

[metouto]

Has anyone seen/played Creativerse ...... might inspire ideas for terasology

 

[Cervator]

Has anyone seen/played Creativerse ...... might inspire ideas for terasology

Haven't heard of it before, but it sure seems to follow the standard recipe. Make it look like Minecraft, add some polish, try to make money

Reminds me of Trove just looking at it a bit.

 

[Trekmarvel]

I found this Dwarf Fortress/Minecraft inspired game and is open source.

 

[Cervator]

Nice find @Trekmarvel ! That looks vaguely familiar and might be one of the early age Kickstarter entries that pulled in 5-6 digits several years ago that I've mentioned elsewhere as an interesting period. Sadly it also seems like it is one of the ones that failed to deliver and probably recently went (partial) open source out of desperation more than actual dedication to open source ideals

It seems like they're hoping to gain the benefits of open source (extra activity) as they're running out of money (again) without in turn actually letting people run with it fully open source style. They are using a custom license and preventing use of game assets with the "open source" engine which sort of renders it a moot point. Lots of pretty unhappy people on their Kickstarter page.

Another similar entry is Stonehearth which funded around the same period for more than 10 times the DC total and despite a far greater amount of polish is also years late by now. Indie game dev is hard!

 

[Skaldarnar]

The world creation screen looks interesting, would like to see something similar for Terasology as well. IMHO one reason this looks a bit more polished than what we have right now is that they have a (somewhat) consistent look and feel for all their menus, graphics, icons, etc. The fullscreen menus neither feel out of place. This makes it feel more like a solid game (in contrast to "just" a bunch of modules put together). We likely want to address stuff like this with our gameplay/integration modules.

Other than that, we should make videos again. Hopefully I can manage to record something (as I promised some time ago) - if anybody has some good ideas about a potential series of videos, let me know

 

[Cervator]

Yes more videos would be good

Maybe some of the GSOC items could result in a video overview of what was made.

More polish would also be good. And having some more consistent content. Maybe @Nihal Singh's exploration world will help there.

I noticed http://kotaku.com/a-giant-mmo-made-entirely-from-minecraft-1795419945 get some attention lately, not that I'm sure I would call that an MMO. But it is an adventure world for sure. Maybe somebody here would be interested in checking it out sometime and reporting back with some thoughts?

 

[keturn]

Seed of Andromeda, mentioned earlier in this thread, just had its code released under the MIT license: https://www.reddit.com/r/gamedev/comments/8ocemc
It's in C++ so I don't expect Terasology would incorporate any of its code directly, but there might be a lot to learn from its engine!

 

[keturn]

Caves of Qud doesn't look much like Terasology, at least as far as how it's rendered visually. It's all turn-based with 2D sprites, in the style of a classic roguelike or perhaps Dwarf Fortress's Adventure Mode.

The reason I bring it up here is that it's doing some noteworthy things in blending a scripted adventure with procedural world generation. From the 50,000 foot view, the map looks the same every game, with oceans and deserts and mountain ranges in the same place, but the details of the terrain are all procedurally generated. Ruins of old cities and lairs of legendary creatures are sprinkled around the map.

Caves of Qud is still very much in development and has a lot of rough edges, but after putting a ridiculous number of hours into it over the past week or two, I can attest that it's very much playable as it is today.

I don't know how their authors feel about derivative works, but I can totally imagine Terasology modules based on the world of Qud.