Posts by wesleybruce

Historically stone picks are very rare. The stone-age progression found in the archeology is antler pick; deer or moose, copper picks and a hammer stone with the picks and chisels lasting only about 10 to 30 blows before they needed replacing or reforging at an anvil. The pyramid builders probably had one smith going flatout to keep 3 to 6 masons supplied with sharp copper chisels.
If we don't start out with the iron tools of today this may be an idea particularly in hard mode.

In a game sense we could treat both antler picks and copper picks like ammunition for a mason/ miners hammer. One deer or moose should produce 5 to 10 picks and one copper chunk 4 or so chisels. Both should stack up to 30 or more and be used up automatically like ammo producing blint picks and chisels. Turn blint antlers into other things. Reforge the chisels. This level of realism should be tolerable because we will be progressing to iron fast.

Historically most stone mining was done with wedges. Logs were also split to planks and beams too using wedges. A pioneer without a good supply of hardwood or iron wedges was a dead pioneer. They would be used in sets (again like ammo) 8 or so per block or log and they should yield stone blocks or planks directly. Again they should stack.

If you want a little historical realism and a hard start this should be fun and new but once you've made your sawmill they are forgotten in a dusty box.
See my Archaeology course at uni was useful after all.

Water in voxel worlds is a challenge. It lags things out fast particularly if its flowing with lots of little fractional voxels or sprites.
One solution that has not been tried is to add a solid block, silt or something, that is distributed first in world but then morphs to water in contact with it. I.E. water erodes it but may not erode it all particularly uphill of the water. Because the silt is painted into the soil and rock you get less hanging water and random flows. You're then just switching texture and collision functions. I would then set 'silt' to turn to stone if there is air under it so It does not flood caves and other peoples buildings unintentionally. Set it to turn to dirt if there is air beside it [dykes] or a waterfall. In some cases a waterfall could then be added if more than one silt voxel is vertically beside air. Set only some trees to grow/spawn on silt and spawn low.
Water on normal soil, grass and stone can then be set to despawn if there are air voxels beside it; it soaks in. If its on or beside silt it fills replacing the silt. The waterfalls could be just sloping or rounded blocks with a water animation over rock or a clear water animation blending to white foam. Four to six block types.

Seas can be added ideally as a different water type to land water. Often game creators use the same water and have a lot of work later. Two water types would help with biomes, flora, fauna distribution and water resources. Salt versus fresh water.

It might be nice to add waves as big translucent mobs moving on a sea surface. This has not been done but if you can have a goat roaming about a wave moving in a straight line and uniform speed should be do able. Have it dieing with a boom on hitting shore with suitably wet spray sprites [optioned to turn off in case of lag. ] Have it push the player, boats, etc up and along on collision.

I'm trying to code some of these innovations in Unity but I'm just not good enough at programming yet. A designer not a coder.

Finding ores is a challenge in a big procedural world. Minecraft has to add huge amounts of extra ore just to make it findable. One real world solution is Geobotanical prospecting. It has not been done in a computer game yet. Some plants only grow on mineral deposits, copper etc. Spawning a recognizable plant above a shallow ore deposits would make finding ore much easier. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geobotanical_prospecting Many games have complex prospecting processes that are often just grind in others its just too obvious. Looking for a plant would be historically accurate, fun and realistic.

Quote from ZaCormyr

If I remember correctly, the devs want a zombie dog. But other than that, no zombies.

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A rabid dog would work well in all world types from fantasy to science fiction and rabies is in part the origin of the zombie mythos. I like the idea of no zombies they've been done to death. Pun intended. We have a mix of low technology and high technology items so that will test the design team when it comes to a back story. Bandits, raiders, slavers and invading troops of various technology levels would get my vote. With both low technology and high technology foes togel-able in a menu. In some contexts you can mix both low technology thugs and high technology raiders. With the game mechanics coming together well the challenge will be making the world make sense.