My list of semi stupid ideas, thoughts, ramblings etc...

[Kai Kratz]

MY LIST

Ok hi, first of all i wanna keep this as some sort of personal journal of ideas for Terasology. Feel free to comment and discuss in this Thread! Be aware that most of these ideas are anything but thought trough to the end. Oh and also note I now can say "YOU are on my list buddy!" ...yeah quite random, i know

I try to categorize them a little:
hacking! - coding related
look! - how to advertise Terasology (indirectly mostly)
pinkie pie! - insane stuff
dirty work!
reading!

ISSUE 1(hacking!): Externalize some performance critical code to use SSE2 or openmp or ASM
Thinking about mesh generation here mostly or maybe some parts of the terrain generation. Not that important right now but might be interesting later on when we start using much more CPU power.

ISSUE 2(look!): We need a screenshot/video capture/replay functionality!
Need this to promote Terasology. A Sandbox game NEEDS ways to promote whatever cool stuff you build!
Hmm maybe i should add a screenshot issue to github...

ISSUE 2b(look!): Twitter, Facebook, g+ integration!
Wouldn't it be cool if you could directly push your cool screenshot, video, or html5 webgl model (or blueprint) to your favorite social network?

ISSUE 3(look!): Every block based game has it, we need it as well - Dwarf fortress importer!
Insane amount of work, esp models and textures.

ISSUE 4(hacking!): Level of detail
Currently we render a lot of triangles, possibly (esp. for further away geom.) this can be reduced a lot. Maybe use Geometry Shading maybe even simple raytracing?

ISSUE 5(pinkie pie! - insane stuff): Everyone and their dog has it, i want it too: Achievements System ? Stats system
1. Gosu style achievements. Find 100000 Gold blocks. Kill 300 monster in 5 sec.
2. Stats! Ideally this should log everything, minutes idle, steps taken, shits given, axe swings whatever

ISSUE 6(pinkie pie! - insane stuff): Portal into the ASCII dimension
Should be some April Fools portal. after going trough it, the game will be rendered using ASCII styles (like the ASCII mpeg codec)

 

[rapodaca]

+1 for Twitter, Facebook, and g+ integration
+1 for video capture, but unsure how much effort that would take. Directly upload to YouTube even?

 

[Kai Kratz]

+1 for Twitter, Facebook, and g+ integration
+1 for video capture, but unsure how much effort that would take. Directly upload to YouTube even?

I had a direct upload in mind, but i don't know if there is a YouTube API supporting this easily. And I am not a web savvy guy. So i like to see that feature but i don't know when or if anyone will be working on it any time soon.

Maybe You want to volunteer for that? HINT HINT

EDIT:

Now that i think about it, i have to code some video-streaming @ work anyways. lets see if there is a nice opencv like lib (or bindings) available.

 

[Cervator]

Whoa, there's the rest of the thread - saw its initial pseudo-post and forgot about it for a bit.

Tons of good stuff, some of it I was expecting would happen naturally down the line, like achievements (that's pretty much expected nowadays - tho I'd like to see some useful/creative ones in particular). Social integration and better capture? Goodies, me want, need volunteers tho. ASCII dimension? Sure, just change the texture set in the background while porting, woodspeople even has a nifty looking "abstract" texture set already in the forum around here somewhere

But... DF importer? :shock:

For some reason I had never thought of that, never even seen (well, or looked for) existing importers. But that would be pretty dang neat, yeah. Prolly depend a bit on what Toady thinks tho...

 

[Kai Kratz]

Whoa, there's the rest of the thread - saw its initial pseudo-post and forgot about it for a bit.

Tons of good stuff, some of it I was expecting would happen naturally down the line, like achievements (that's pretty much expected nowadays - tho I'd like to see some useful/creative ones in particular). Social integration and better capture? Goodies, me want, need volunteers tho. ASCII dimension? Sure, just change the texture set in the background while porting, woodspeople even has a nifty looking "abstract" texture set already in the forum around here somewhere

But... DF importer? :shock:

For some reason I had never thought of that, never even seen (well, or looked for) existing importers. But that would be pretty dang neat, yeah. Prolly depend a bit on what Toady thinks tho...

There was a DF level importer for Minecraft in the works but i don't know what happened to it. Could use DFHack to extract level info. And about ASCII dimension I had some rendering like this http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ToXWi70PlQ4&feature=related in mind

 

[Kai Kratz]

ISSUE 7(dirty work!): Installer (Windows / Mac / Linux)
We need to create installers for all major plattfoms. Comments on YT convinced me that people WANT to play around with Terasology but don't want/know how to build it from source.

ISSUE 7b(dirty work!): github tag hook -> build installer on jenkins
Automate installer build on creating a tag from Master branch and automatically deploy it to the website.

7+7b are really nasty but something we should do soon

 

[Cervator]

It might be a bit early to really go nuts trying to support people other than 1) normal users that just download the zip or 2) developers able to work out building from source with the current setup. Improving the related doc would be nice though, and I've wondered if we could provide a semi-automated setup that would prep Git, clone the project, etc. Do you mean something like that?

Other one has a ticket already that's just waiting for attention - if you mean applet, anyway, which also is waiting to work again

https://github.com/MovingBlocks/Terasology/issues/66

Although it doesn't relate to tags, idea is to simply auto-deploy the applet for each major branch somewhere

 

[Kai Kratz]

It might be a bit early to really go nuts trying to support people other than 1) normal users that just download the zip or 2) developers able to work out building from source with the current setup. Improving the related doc would be nice though, and I've wondered if we could provide a semi-automated setup that would prep Git, clone the project, etc. Do you mean something like that?

Other one has a ticket already that's just waiting for attention - if you mean applet, anyway, which also is waiting to work again

https://github.com/MovingBlocks/Terasology/issues/66

Although it doesn't relate to tags, idea is to simply auto-deploy the applet for each major branch somewhere

Ill put those 2 up mostly because begla asked me to "please keep them in mind" and and well you know its a random stuff list

But besides that: the sooner we can deploy with a single click, the easier it is to do it when necessary. Usually on of the first things i set up is easy deployment. And then i try to touch it only when absolutely necessary.

 

[rapodaca]

There is indeed a YouTube API - and pretty well documented:

http://code.google.com/apis/youtube/2.0 ... tocol.html

But it seems like doing the video capture itself would be the hard part. UI would be important, for example. But there may already be an in-game video capture API for Java.

 

[Kai Kratz]

ISSUE 8(hacking!): Event based user input handling / communication of components
Decoupling of components please

ISSUE 8b(reading!): Related reading material - do a write up
http://rivermanmedia.com/programming/28-object-oriented-game-programming-the-scripted-event-system
http://rivermanmedia.com/programming/6-programming/20-object-oriented-game-programming-the-behavior-system
http://rivermanmedia.com/programming/6-programming/20-object-oriented-game-programming-the-behavior-system
http://www.gamedev.net/page/resources/_/technical/game-programming/simple-event-handling-r2141
http://www.gamedev.net/page/resources/_/technical/game-programming/effective-event-handling-in-c-r2459
http://eblong.com/zarf/essays/rule-based-if/
http://www.incursion-roguelike.org/TechPaper (Web Version).htm

Do a proper writeup on the topic: What is state of the art? What alternative models exist? Can alternative models coExist in the same codebase? How will this influence an entity based system?

 

[Exile]

More mad Dev's, yay!

 

[Kai Kratz]

ISSUE 9(look!):Take loading screen images / menu background from screenshot folder
Looks good, seems simple! DO IT!

 

[Cervator]

Now that's what I call an info dump on those event system links

Yeah the link to an ES is especially interesting, and we have some existing potential there with Immortius' stuff for Nightblock.

 

[dei]

I was looking for a project like yours since the first version of minecraft and Java is my most used programming language anyway.
I had much fun playing minecraft but after a while, especially in multiplayer mode it gets boring because you don't have any mission objective so I thought out some ideas. I hope to find some time starting to develop on your project this fall so I can try out some of my gamemode-ideas:

- ISSUE 10a(gameplay!) Some sort of teamplay capture the flag, where the flag can be placed freely (for example somewhere in your castle)
where some sort of (baked) blocks take long to destroy to make it possible to build a fortress

- ISSUE 10b(gameplay!) combined with eventually a commander-mode with fly-view for one player per team, which is able to plan things and give the other players commands which are displayed on their HUDs

- ISSUE 10c(gameplay!) Logistics (Transport and Storage) should be made more important (so that regions with rare ressources of a specific type can be supplied) --> Trade with somewhere seldom goods gets interesting --> for example we can really use minecarts for economic purposes

- ISSUE 10d(gameplay!) Base the whole weaponry-concept on 3 Elements: Water, Fire (Lava) and Solid-Materials in a circular manner(water beats fire, fire beats solid, solid beats water) --> Adds some mystic touch to the game

- ISSUE 10e(gameplay!) Add an apocalypse mode where after some time the sky burns and you have to survive completely underground.

If you have time, feel free starting to implement some of my ideas. I'll repost here before starting to implement something.
Big compliment for your progress so far..!

 

[Cervator]

Thank you! That all sounds like great stuff, very solid potential for game modes / mods

Definitely agree on logistics. I'd much rather see a more realistic approach like in EVE Online where location and distance actually matters.

Apocalypse Now sounds like it could be interesting for shorter games with replayability. Start in a fresh world with an obvious dire feel to the overworld (giant comet in the sky, massive sun, or what not). Got a little while to explore above to grab a few useful plants in the local area. Grab what you can and secure it before it is too late (everything starts catching on fire), then see how that particular selection will help you survive (or not..) below ground. Can you find some useful caves before you starve, or will they be populated by hostiles...

 

[metouto]

Apocalypse Now sounds like it could be interesting for shorter games with replayability. Start in a fresh world with an obvious dire feel to the overworld (giant comet in the sky, massive sun, or what not). Got a little while to explore above to grab a few useful plants in the local area. Grab what you can and secure it before it is too late (everything starts catching on fire), then see how that particular selection will help you survive (or not..) below ground. Can you find some useful caves before you starve, or will they be populated by hostiles...

Love this for single player mode ... but could be used also in multiplayer where did I lay the big sun abd coment and all those hevenly body .....

http://news.yahoo.com/light-alien-super-earth-seen-1st-time-215909030.html

 

[dei]

Yeah you got my Apocalypse idea, exactly as I imagined it.

IDEA ANTMOD:
Why don't we play with animals? Why have it always to be humans, elfes and dwarfs?
Some completely different concept, which I don't know if it would be realizable with such a first-person-engine, would be a game-mode with Ants. Characters are mostly bot-ants which can be guided by the player(s) by commands or pheromons (like real ants use). This wouldn't need any tools or techtree or clever NPCs first but a well performing AI and path-finding to guide all the hundreds of ants.

The ability to model terrain and reuse the blocks for building purposes would exactly match on a ants life. Difficulties would be how to design planning in 3D for the player(s) as painless as possible and without losing the overview (3D-planning in underground areas would be difficult, like in your dungeon-keeper idea).

Technical question: How hard would it be to make a Block-Type that is passable only by one player and no bots/minions...?

Would an own thread for mod-/gameplay-ideas make sense as this aren't my last ideas in this direction for sure?

By the way, does someone knows the movie "The secret of Nimh"? One of my absolute favorite films since I was 4 years old and has many elements of your engine in it. (you can watch it on youtube)

 

[Cervator]

Hmm, nope, haven't seen that movie, but now my wife won't stop talking about it so we'll probably end up seeing it sometime

I love ants and played Sim Ant like mad as a kid. Yeah, both interesting concept and tricky with the 3D planning.

There are so many possible game modes out there - I don't know what to do with them all

It has come up that we should eventually have a forum dedicated to mod ideas (apocalypse, ants, animals, etc). We could do that, and I'm sure we'd be flooded in great concepts (kinda like the MC forums last I checked). I just wish we could do more than that, push closer to implementing. But I guess for that we really need the modding api developed more

 

[dei]

I thought we could start designing the modding-interface based on the ideas. Else things that needs to be changed for half of the desired mods would be hardcoded and its a pain to lay them open afterwards...

Hey, you just got your wife wanting to see some fantasy-like stuff. Don't waste your success...

 

[Cervator]

Ironchefpython and AlbireoX are already going nuts on the API angle, I'm just waiting to see how it goes

We could probably create a forum like that after we see if Xenforo works out (most likely)

And yeah, but now she'll want to buy it and all sorts of stuff like that