**FRACTURED 0.08 **
It was with the best of intentions that the great wizard created the world stone. He drained power from the very heart of the earth to make it, and poured much of his own essence into it as well. And the result was a creation of magic so powerful, and so intimately connected to the world, that it could alter the structure of reality itself.
The wizard placed the world stone in a great tower in the center of the world, and used it for good, or at least for what he thought was good. With its power, he eliminated all violence between people. No person was able to physically attack another person in any way. And even property was sacrosanct under the great wizards rule. He greatly reduced or even completely eliminated the dangerous monsters that roamed the land. And with the control the stone gave him, he caused the earth itself to give up its great wealth of ores and minerals in bounteous profusion.
There were those who found the wizards rule stifling, but overall, life was good, and few complained. After all, what could they do against the world stone? But the wizard had drained too much of himself into the world stone to give it power, and after only a few decades of his peaceful reign, he died, and passed the stone, and his rule, on to his daughter.
As is often the case, the great wizard's child was not the same kind of person her father was. Not satisfied with the incredible power and control that the world stone was already exerting, she attempted to expand it. She wanted to dominate, not just peoples' violence, but their every thought and action. Finally, when she attempted to use the power of the stone to kill, it was too much. Her father had built the world stone to be an object of peace, to kill went so far against it's own nature that the stone could not take the stress, and it fractured. The power contained within the world stone poured out, destroying the great wizard's daughter, and most of the kingdom as well.
Power from the heart of the earth had been poured into the world stone at its creation. And when it flowed back out, it changed things. Great cities were destroyed, or utterly vanished. And most of the people also disappeared, or worse. The fracture in the world stone was mirrored in a great rift that formed, dividing the world into two halves, east and west. The magic that had protected the world fractured as well. In the east, it was still impossible for people to harm each other, or even another's property. But on the western side of the fracture, that magic failed and all kinds of violence were possible. The monsters that the world stone had eliminated were still rare or extinct on the eastern side of the fracture, but appeared in great numbers with great strength to the west. The further one went away from where the world stone had broken, stronger and more dangerous the monsters became.
This strange link to distance from the world stone's destruction was also seen in the distribution of the ores and minerals that the stone had previously made so abundant everywhere. Now ores and minerals became more and more scarce as one approached the center of the world where the world stone had broken, and more abundant as ones distance from it increased. And the dangerous west was richer in almost all valuable ores and minerals than the east. Many of the most powerful and valuable minerals could no longer be found east of the fracture at all.
You are one of the survivors of the world stone fracturing, and now you face some interesting choices. Will you attempt to rebuild civilization in the east where things are relatively safe? Or will you be drawn by the lure of adventure and riches into the wild west side of the fracture? Perhaps you will cross back and forth, bringing back trade items for sale? With the world stone gone, The choices are all yours.
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SO WHAT IS THIS ALL ABOUT?
Let me make clear from the very beginning, this project is so much "In Progress" that it can barely be said to be in progress yet at all. Right now this is just some proof of concept mods tacked on top of minetest-game.
1: fractrift: The Fracture Canyon between the worlds generates
2: blastradius: A "blast area" of damage is generated from where the world stone shattered
3: newspawn: Spawn is moved to the east of 0,0 and code attempts to make the new landing spot usable.
4: orethinning: Ore is distributed according to distance from spawn. Ore is twice as likely in the west and Mese and Esem only generate in the west.
I'm putting this out here at this very very early stage in order to elicit help, and also so anyone who gets a thrill watching the progress of a project can watch this one from early on. Once they are working better I will release the custom mods separately of course.
The discussion below this point is mostly IDEAS, the vast majority of it is not developed yet.
The general goal of the game is to create a world that will be playable in both singleplayer and multiplayer, but with some features specifically designed to enhance the multiplayer experience.
The world is divided into east and west by a large canyon. PvP combat is OFF and protection (probably the Areas mod) works on the east side. On the west side PvP should be ON and it is impossible to make any block invulnerable to attack, although you can defend them with tame monsters. Tame monsters should stay within a protection area and only attack people not on the protection list.
Ore distribution is modified so that the further away from spawn you go, the more common ores are. But also the more frequent and stronger monster spawns are. In the west ore is twice as common at the same distance as any location in the east. And Mese (special component in most technological recipes) and Esem (special component in most magical recipes) will exist ONLY in the west.
But the monsters are correspondingly more dangerous in the west, and of course, other players most dangerous of all. Many kinds of monsters will only spawn in the west, but this is one of the draws of the west, because drops from those monsters will be important ingredients in some very special items.
I want to add RPG elements to the game. Especially to have characters grow more powerful (and skilled) with experience so that there is a much bigger difference between a new player and an experienced player than just their stuff. Since new players can gain experience in the east without danger of more experienced players hunting them down, this should be workable.
There will be three primary paths for skill development. Combat, Technology (crafting steam-punk style items), and Magic. I would like to make it so that the actions you take with your character really have an effect on what you are good at later in the game. I hope to be able to include ruins, and even some NPC's and quests. Much of the magic and tech paths will require recipe/spell books that the player must hunt down.
My hope is to build a world where players are driven to move out from spawn and explore because the resources get better the further they travel. Also it should be a place where very different kinds of players can interact happily. Those who want conflict and adventure will spend most of their time in the west, but will be drawn back into the east to rest and enjoy the fruits of their labors. Those who mainly wish to build beautiful things while avoiding conflict will be able to build in the east without fear of attack or interference, but there will always be the draw of the west when they need more supplies.
The east is comfortable and safe, but the GOOD STUFF is in the west. If you want that lava pick, you will need to go into the west and kill some lava flans to get the lava orbs to make it. If you want to craft a jet-pack, you might need some dragons blood from the west as catalyst for the fuel. And, of course, most of the tech and magical recipes will need mese or esem, which can only be obtained in the west.
The west is rich, but it is dangerous and unstable. If you want a place to securely store your supplies, you will need to head back east. And if you are looking for shops with a wide variety of goods, you will probably only find them in the east. Also, most of the most beautiful buildings and constructions will be in the east.
There is a lot of incentive to travel back and forth. Of course, the world would hopefully develop a lively economy based around adventurers wandering into the wild west and returning to sell their goods in the east.
Because of all this, teleportation must be rather strictly limited. A major part of this game is the difficulty of getting far away from spawn where the resources are good. I may include some kind of teleportation mod, but will almost certainly limit it to short hops or limited use items.
To expand upon the Tame Monsters idea I mentioned above. I would like to have a way to capture and tame monsters into "eggs" when they are low on hit points. (this should be difficult and expensive) There might also be other ways to capture or bribe monsters into service. Monster eggs can be hatched inside a protected area in the west and will then stay inside that protected area and attack any players besides those on the area's list. There should also be "guards" that can be hired who function much the same way. This will allow players to defend locations in the west, but not to make anything invulnerable to attack.
I hope to include mesecons as an OPTION, but it is so lag inducing that it must be removable without breaking the basic operation of the game. I'd also like to incorporate HeroOfTheWinds's skylands and caverealms if it can be done without slowing down the mapgen by too much. AND, if I can figure out a way to do it, I hope to have a "Journey to the Center of the Earth" style land completely underground. BUT, that's a LOT of goals for someone who doesn't have a lot of time, and doesn't know what he is doing. I may have to trim a lot.
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PROBLEMS
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Yeah, I'm just barely started and already running into problems.
Ore thinning works, but the distribution ratio of ores is demonstration only and will almost certainly need adjusting for payability. Uncomment the lines tagged VIEWTHINNING in fractured/mods/orethining/init.lua if you want a visible demonstration of how ore thinning works.
The fracture canyon needs some work. If I don't block off the water when passing through oceans you get some really strange looking walls of water. I fixed that by putting up walls whenever you pass water. BUT, the walls that block water would probably be better as slopes, and the bottom of the canyon should probably be less flat. Also, I coded for random holes in the wall to make pretty waterfalls, but only some of them end up spilling out. Not sure what makes the abm fire or not. The fracture can only be generated running north-south right now, in the future it should be easily modifiable to run any direction you want.
I'm getting a lot of long delays on map generation already, probably due to inefficiencies in my code.
I made a menu header and icon for fractured, but my son tells me the header is unreadable, so it will have to be reworked at some point. Art is NOT my strong point. :)
WHAT TO WORK ON NEXT
I have no CLUE how PvP logic works. Since turing PvP off in the east and on in the west is central to the whole idea of fractured, I need to research this issue very soon.
HELP!
I am VERY open to help on this project. My skills as an artist are very poor. And while I am an acceptable programmer, I'm working in a language and system that I am far from expert on. To be absolutely clear, I do NOT know what I'm doing. :)
I promise NOT to be offended if you tell me I've done something wrong, stupid, or ugly. I welcome suggestions, corrections, additions, and pull requests, but please don't be offended if I decided something you suggested doesn't fit with my particular plans for this game.
CODE:
Browse:
https://github.com/Kilarin/fractured
Download:
https://github.com/Kilarin/fractured/archive/master.zip
unzip in the minetest games folder and rename to fractured.
Remember, There is NOT much of a playable game yet! Its just Minetest-game with a few proof of concept changes.
LICENSE
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All of my code for this project is licensed CC0 (public domain)
The only other material included so far is everything in minetest-game (license unaltered)
and dry dirt from Ethereal (GNU GENERAL PUBLIC LICENSE)
Change Log
0.08 wildweapons added, and pvp=false, now you can only damage another player with weapons on the wild side of the world. Not certain this will be final solution, but works for now.
0.07 fractured mod added with iswild and wilddist. These functions should be used by all mods that need to know if they are on the wild or tame side, and how far.
Orethinning and areas modified to use iswild and wilddist.
also, I'm converting spaces to tabs in these mods. I hate tabs, but in an open source collaborative project I should use what is considered the standard.
0.06 world stone tower and optimizations by HeroOfThe winds
BlastRadius changed, now levels down to 0 and gradualy steps up or down to meet environment, more crater like.
areas and markers mods added. areas will not protect in west! changes planned for markers
added mods: compassgps, bridgetool, explorertoolsall
0.05 world stone tower in progress, needs much work and perlin noise adjustment
0.04 fracturerift optimization and leak fix by HeroOfTheWinds and
thining algorithm choice in orethinning with new exponential algorithm by HeroOfTheWinds
0.03 set static_spawn from within newspawn, suggested and demonstrated by jojoa1997
0.02 Fracture variance code by HeroOfTheWinds
0.01 Initial release to the public. NOT READY as a game at all.