- Name: Toby Shaw
- Social: https://github.com/TobyShaw, https://www.facebook.com/toby.shaw.16
- From: United Kingdom, 2nd year undergraduate at Imperial College London
- Skills / Tools: Java, Eclipse, C++, Python, Haskell
- Found via: GSoC
- Interests: I've been obsessively into Minecraft for around 5 years now. I also enjoy art (mostly drawing and digital painting) and of course coding. I've also had experience making games before, my last project being a bare-metal assembly Doom-like game (https://github.com/kcsongor/arm-doom)
- Extra: I'm very involved in the creative minecraft scene, I'm a co-founder and current lead developer of blockworksmc.com. My work there has been developing tools for creative work (above and beyond what is provided by WorldEdit or VoxelSniper), although sadly it isn't open source. The ideas I would be interested in are the ones based around world generation:
Advanced and dynamic geology based on plate tectonics
Port advanced organic growth simulator from Python
Alternatively, I think I could bring the necessary knowledge and skills to make terasology appeal to the creative crowd. This might include an editor or creative mode mimicking features found in 3D modelling programs like blender or WorldMachine.
Contributor Toby Shaw, intro for GSoC
- Thread starter toby_shaw
- Start date
I like your alternative suggestion of making terasology appeal to the creative crowd (I personally like it even better than the advanced dynamic geology based on plate technoic or the advanced organic growth simulator as it has more practical use. ).
Terasology isn't very comfortable to use for creative users yet. There is a BlockPicker module (https://github.com/Terasology/BlockPicker/), but it hasn't been made multiplayer compatible yet.
Currently the only way to get blocks in multiplayer is via cheating. And for this you need to give the player the cheat permission. I made a very simple module that gives players per default the cheat permission(Just look at it, its actually just a single file that isn't even code...): https://github.com/Terasology/CheatsForAll. User and permission management is currently also only doable via the ingame command line.
Having nice tera forming tools would be also a great addition to terasology. The nice thing about terasology (compared to minecraft) is it's flexibility. It has a cool component/system/event concept that makes almost anything extendable (Some wiki links about it: https://github.com/MovingBlocks/Terasology/wiki/Entity-System-Architecture, https://github.com/MovingBlocks/Terasology/wiki/Events-and-systems).
The wiki has also some nice articles of how to get started with developing terasology (https://github.com/MovingBlocks/Terasology/wiki/Dev-Setup).
Terasology isn't very comfortable to use for creative users yet. There is a BlockPicker module (https://github.com/Terasology/BlockPicker/), but it hasn't been made multiplayer compatible yet.
Currently the only way to get blocks in multiplayer is via cheating. And for this you need to give the player the cheat permission. I made a very simple module that gives players per default the cheat permission(Just look at it, its actually just a single file that isn't even code...): https://github.com/Terasology/CheatsForAll. User and permission management is currently also only doable via the ingame command line.
Having nice tera forming tools would be also a great addition to terasology. The nice thing about terasology (compared to minecraft) is it's flexibility. It has a cool component/system/event concept that makes almost anything extendable (Some wiki links about it: https://github.com/MovingBlocks/Terasology/wiki/Entity-System-Architecture, https://github.com/MovingBlocks/Terasology/wiki/Events-and-systems).
The wiki has also some nice articles of how to get started with developing terasology (https://github.com/MovingBlocks/Terasology/wiki/Dev-Setup).
Also when you need help, feel free to visit the IRC channel (My nick there is _Flo). As a fair warning: We have currently a lot of students and just probably 1-2 GSoC positions to fill. The more you know about terasology, the better will probably your proposal be. When you try terasology you will probably find something small that you want to improve and that you could give a try. That way you could get more familiar with the code.
Link about writing proposals:
http://write.flossmanuals.net/gsocstudentguide/writing-a-proposal/
Link about writing proposals:
http://write.flossmanuals.net/gsocstudentguide/writing-a-proposal/
Hi @toby_shaw and welcome - impressive website and amazing builds!
Proposals aren't limited to the ideas list so yeah if you'd like to work on something more creative like in-game content creation that would be an option too
Two other ideas to mention real quick that may fit:
We also used to have some blueprint / copy-paste options so you could place structures copied from one spot to another. But that was in the legacy version and not carried forward yet. Not difficult, just a big game with only so many people working on it. Maybe since you have so much experience with big builds it would be something to develop an in-game (or even out of game via world editors and such) ability to store builds or components for later reuse in some catelog, or even a custom block editor for miniaturization (build big thing then shrink into a normal block to make that custom block available normally) or creature making (embedded mini-Blender like VoxelShop).
Lots of options but yes grab the source and play around with it some to get started
Proposals aren't limited to the ideas list so yeah if you'd like to work on something more creative like in-game content creation that would be an option too
Two other ideas to mention real quick that may fit:
- Agent-based simulation of land usage - https://github.com/MovingBlocks/Terasology/issues/944
- Noise-based generation of distinguishable terrain features - https://github.com/MovingBlocks/Terasology/issues/943
We also used to have some blueprint / copy-paste options so you could place structures copied from one spot to another. But that was in the legacy version and not carried forward yet. Not difficult, just a big game with only so many people working on it. Maybe since you have so much experience with big builds it would be something to develop an in-game (or even out of game via world editors and such) ability to store builds or components for later reuse in some catelog, or even a custom block editor for miniaturization (build big thing then shrink into a normal block to make that custom block available normally) or creature making (embedded mini-Blender like VoxelShop).
Lots of options but yes grab the source and play around with it some to get started