StargateCraft or SGC, bringing the stargate universe to minecraftia!
The idea: Based on the stargate universe, this mod tries to replicate as much concepts of the series as possible. About stargate: Stargate is a military science fiction franchise, initially conceived by Roland Emmerich and Dean Devlin. The first film in the franchise was simply titled Stargate. It was originally released on October 28, 1994 by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer and Carolco, and became a worldwide hit grossing nearly $200 million (USD) worldwide. Three years later, Canadian Brad Wright and Jonathan Glassner created a television series entitled Stargate SG-1 as a sequel for the film.
In addition to film and television, the Stargate franchise has expanded into other media, including books, video games, and comic books. These supplements to the film and television series have resulted in significant development of the show's fictional universe and mythology. In 2008, the filmsStargate: The Ark of Truth and Stargate: Continuum were released direct-to-DVD, which in total grossed over 21 million in the United States. In 2002, the franchise's first animated series, Stargate Infinity, was released as an introduction to the Expanded Universe. In 2004, Stargate Atlantis was released as a spin-off from Stargate SG-1. The newest Stargate spin-off series, entitled Stargate Universe, began airing on October 2, 2009. Source: http://stargate.wikia.com
Developer’s notes
Dolor: Hey guys. Though I’m not starting on the actual SGC myself right away (i’m currently working on my projector block idea), I wanted to gather the ideas and plans. I have experience with programming (quite a bit actually), but things I don’t have experience with are Minecraft modding, and collaborative programming. I hope one of you does, but for now I think it’s best if we make a list of what we want to do, and schemes of how we want to do it. Then we can decide who does what, and see what kind of developers we need beside us ;)
Pontoe: Important note: Mods that add a new dimension are not that special anymore on the forums, so in order to make this become more popular, we gotta be creative! I think, in order to do this, we have to not look to much to other mods, but get inspired by the movies itself! Try to do stuff that hasn’t been done before with mods! I know it might be hard, but we don’t want it to be easy, now do we? :3
Dolor: This mod is mainly meant for the fans who will likely very much enjoy it. However, by adding enough challenge and content that also non-fans can understand, it should be enjoyable for everyone.
References and informational sources
I think it’s a good idea to enumerate a couple of great sources and references for everyone’s ease of use. Great source page: http://stargate.wikia.com For information about the different species found through the Stargate movies, goto ‘Around the universe’, and then choose ‘Races’. For the different Planets, both inhabited and non-inhabited (If that’s even a word), goto ‘Around the universe’ and then choose ‘Planets’. This will give you a full overview of all planets, including their inhabitants, and pictures of the movies can be found here. Great reference images. Especially since we are aiming for a mod which is as close to the real movies as possible. Including their environments and inhabitants. Another great feature, found under the heading ‘Around the universe’ as well, is ‘Technology’. This includes all kinds of cool items and tools found around the movies, we can realize in the mod.
Planets
I think it would be great if we have a list of planets we want to realize in the mod. I think it’s cool if we chose some planets with obvious characteristics. This including both their inhabitants, as well as their environment. Get ready to get a headache, since they chose to name their planets things such as P2X-416 and P3X-797.
So, in order to decide which planets we want, I think we have to keep in mind the planets all have to have their own characteristics. I think all planets should have inhabitants, but we might change that idea. Some should have temples, some have advanced technologies and buildings. The mobs that can be found there, of course, should all fit in there, and it might be a fun idea (Not sure, though) that random inhabitants from other planets, could, with some luck, be found on other planets as well. Like they are travelling with the Stargates as well. Even though certain races didn’t use them theirselfes, I think it is important to tweak the real story in order to make the planets a little bit more interesting.
One thing to decide, though, is this: Does Steve (Your character) actually live on earth? This might seem like a silly question, but many consider Steve’s world to be called Minecraftia. Now, we can just say this: Steve lives there, the environment and all such are just like Earth (Ignore the fact that flying islands exist, and everything is square), so it is Earth. What do you think? I think we should leave all existing mobs in the Overworld just like they are right now, and make a planet Earth in this mod. Dolor: Agree on this. If possible, we should make a generator that makes something close to earth, likely something close to the normal generator.
Another possibility, however, is to add human mobs to the Overworld, and that way call it Earth. However, I think we should have to avoid as much changes to the Overworld as possible, so that our mod just adds it’s very own content instead of tweaking already existing features (Referring to Mo’creatures, Humans+, Creeps & Weirdos etc.) This way, we can do with our mod whatever we want, without giving the users no other chance than choosing between certain mods, because our mod might clash with others. (I.E. Mobs we might create start to have a war with mobs from Mo’creatures etc.)
Enough about this gibberish, let’s just start with the list. Milky Way planets Earth (Depends) - Would be a planet with an environment that’s as close to the real Earth, our homeplanet, as possible. Inhabitants: Tau’ri Dakara - Mars-like planet with some collapsed, sandstone(?)-like buildings. Inhabitants: Jaffa P4X-650 - Mountainish planet with a lot of forests. Inhabitants: Tau’ri P3X-888 - Flat, Earth-like planet with lots of forests and plains. Inhabitants: Goa’uld, Unas Chulak - Mountains, forests, lakes, rivers and some cities with decent-sized buildings. Possibly higher rate of fog. Ruins. Roman-styled buildings. Inhabitants: Jaffa KS7-535 - Mountains, snow, ice, and a LOT of it. Possibly a layer of several blocks of snow deep? Atlantis The lost city of the ancients. Likely in a future patch with the entire pegasus galaxy, including their monsters and technology.
Ha’tak While not a planet, it is one of the places SG-1 has been sent to through the stargate. It’s a goa’uld mothership. Would likely be overrun by tons of jaffa in a short time (jaffa monster spawners?) Technology
During the movies, a lot of technology and devices can be found. I think it would be interesting to add some of these.
Some points I think are important.
- Goa’uld Devices can only be used by entities which have Naquadah in their blood (That means, said person is or has been a Goa’uld host. This could add some interesting gameplay to the mod aswell, such as getting infected by a symbiote, and having to remove it in order to not get attacked by particular races. However, leaving it will give you possibilities of using Goa’uld devices.) I think we shouldn’t pay attention to details like that. The player will be able to use goa’uld technology like a zat’nik’tel (zat gun) and staff weapon once they aquire it. Besides it being really hard to implement something like this, in stargate you wouldn’t be in control of your character when being controlled, let alone try to remove it.
- Devices can be both handheld or static. This means that some of them will be items, and some of them blocks. This adds both new kinds of redstone interaction, as well as new weapons, and other purposed technology.
Weapons: Weapons use, like all goa’uld technology, naquadah. Because it is energy-based, the best way to balance the weapons would be to (i think) give them a limited amount of uses.
Make sure overworld weapons (nearly) won’t harm non-Earth beings, so that the user is forced to acquire devices from other planets.
-Zat’nik’tel or Zat gun: Handheld gun-like weapon, made with a small amount of naquadah. The energy it uses is inferior to that being used in a staff weapon. If possible, it could have a possibility to have a short stun effect. -Staff weapon: Can both be used as a melee weapon and a ranged weapon. In the series the melee aspect is used pretty much every time at close range. Consider ways to replicate this effect by making melee more effective up close, besides making melee OP. This weapon is relatively inaccurate on longer ranges, but could get a knockback due to the impact of the projectile. It’s powered by a vial of liquid naquadah.
Liquid naquadah Used as a power source for several pieces of goa’uld technology, one vial of this stuff is capable of providing enough power to the stargate to dial an 8-chevron (so from earth to atlantis) address. http://stargate.wikia.com/wiki/Liquid_Naquadah
The stargate Obviously the thing this whole mod is built around. The user will have to build this device, much like a nether portal but circular and out of naquadah blocks (to be determined how to aquire this, either by using 9 ingots or in an easier way). The overworld should have a very low amount of naquadah so this mod will be tier 2 or even 3, and require a diamond block to build the DHD, as it is crystal technology (goa’uld technology generally uses crystals where we would use chips and such).
I (Dolor) am currently working on a projector mod, a block that ‘projects’ the blocks you need to build for a certain building plan above it. If you complete the building plan, an additional (special) block can be spawned if necessary (e.g. water on top of a fountain). I was planning on using this to build the stargate; When the gate is built and a diamond block placed in front at the right spot, a DHD block will spawn on this diamond block and enable the user to dial the gate.
Another idea is to let the gate check for blocks within it if it tries to dial. If there is less than a certain number, let them be destroyed. If there are more, the dial fails. This can be used to create an iris.
DHD This is the device used to dial the stargate. Requires expanding As the DHD works with crystal technology, i think the recipe should be with a diamond block in the middle. No idea for the rest yet. Also: The total DHD should be 2 blocks high, but will those be 2 seperate components placed on top of each other or a block you place in one go?
There have been several ideas of how to implement this device. A simple block that will create special portal blocks in the stargate once rightclicked with a piece of paper with the address on it, possibly found in chests around the universe. Rightclicking it without could take you to Chulak? A block that opens a dialing interface when rightclicking. There could be two ways to dial from here: A list of planets you have found the coordinates of, similar to the SGC computer. A bunch of buttons that you will have to dial manually. Would require the user to remember the coordinates.
Possibly adding a “kawoosh” (Unstable Vortex) when opening? This could be done with blocks appearing in front of the gate when opening. Touching this will cause insta-death. -Dolor: If possible, would be awesome. NPC’s
There is a variety of races, both hostile, neutral and friendly, in the Stargate universe. Most planets only have a small amount of different species. On the main planets occurring throughout the series i think we should give them only their series inhabitants. On others, you could get a random mix of enemies.
Jaffa Most common enemy. Generally uses staff weapons and sometimes zats (zat guns). Since every goa’uld ‘god’ has its own kind of jaffa (serpent guards, horus guards, dragon guard, brahma guard etc.), we could implement several models depending on the planet.
Goa’uld Pretending to be gods, the goa’uld are much rarer than jaffa. One goa’uld generally has thousands of jaffa under him and more than one goa’uld per planet is rare. The goa’uld are beings taken over by symbiotes. They generally use humans as host, though they have also been seen in Unas and a couple of other races.
Hostile. Has a hand weapon with a great deal of knockback and slowly regenerates health.
Unas Neutral - attacks when provoked
Humans Most humans encountered are descendants of earthlings, brought to their planet to serve as slaves. There are a very limited number of planets (4) with tau’ri, the humans from earth: These planets are Earth itself and the 3 alpha sites, locations the tau’ri have used as a place to flee to in case of a catastrophe.
Friendly
Wraith Hostile. Very hostile. Will vampirize when in melee range.
Ancients ascended, so ghost like, very rare. Likely peaceful and non-interactive. Can’t be hurt.
Asgard Friendly, technologically very advanced.
Materials
Naquadah ‘Naquadah is a rare, super-dense metal element used by a wide number of different races. Its most basic use is as a weapon: naquadah greatly amplifies energy, making it extremely potent if paired with explosives.’ Naquadah is a rare metal that’s not found on earth. However, as we’re likely not going to bury a complete stargate to get the naquadah from (how the hell would you have to find it? On a second thought... Maybe it would be cool if we scatter some Egyptian temple-like structures around the world, with a small chance of there being a stargate inside, as the stargate was found at egyptian ruins if i recall correctly). Possible uses: Stargate Explosives (tnt, replace sand with naquadah ore/refined naquadah? Naquadah dust?) Goa’uld weapons Refining in some way to produce a more powerful version?
Trinium ‘Trinium (also called ke) is an element that is a hundred times lighter and stronger than steel. Unrefined trinium is brittle and relatively useless.’ This metal is used as tips for arrows and in an alloy of the Asgard, together with carbon and naquadah. Possible uses: (armor piercing) Arrows Darts Alloy Armor