[1]: https://veloren.net/ the game is still under development but it has been playable for more than a year now.
This is such a meme by now, I have to assume it's an inside joke. Even games mention that they're "written in Rust" in the first sentence in their official presentation, what other programming language communities does this? Why would anyone except other Rust programmers care?
It’s definitely weird for end-user software to promote itself based on internal implementation details, but it’s by no means a rust-exclusive phenomenon.
1) The player community and the dev community are not distinct: we involve players in the development process and actively encourage them to become contributors.
2) There are many people that are interested in working with Rust, and it's often a big pull factor for new contributors.
3) Veloren is by far the biggest public domain game written in Rust: it's a good demonstration of what the language can do and how it performs at scale (Veloren's game server scaled up to a 48-thread machine with 181 players online in the same world during the last release party: not many games, let alone voxel games, can manage these numbers). We want to encourage other game developers to consider using it too.
Otherwise I mostly only see this when it’s “for developers by developers”
The game is extremely open-ended: there is no overarching objective, and you are free to interact with the world as you please. For most players, this means a combination of exploring, crafting, conquering challenges (dungeons, caves, etc.), finding rare items, and socialising with other players.
The game is 100% free so you have no reason not to jump in and give it a go if you're curious!
> How is it similar to Dwarf Fortress?
Veloren has an open procedural world with a history generation system. Although work on the history simulation is still very much ongoing, the world already more cohesive than those of many other voxel games. Our end goal is a world that feels as rich and as complex as that of Dwarf Fortress. Whether we end up succeeding is still to be determined!
> How is it similar to Minecraft?
Veloren is a voxel game, so... cubes and open-world exploration. Not much more to say about this one.
And at this point they are clearly looking for contributors much more than for players, that's why all the documentation you'll find is targeting the former.
Documentation and marketing material require a lit of work, and doing so continuously against a fast-moving target is a enormous effort.
If you add all that, though, you might there might be some glitches (roads passing through buildings..) but that's part of the fun.
[1] https://wiki.minetest.net/Map_generator
[2] https://forum.minetest.net/viewtopic.php?f=9&t=27374
[3] https://forum.minetest.net/viewtopic.php?f=11&t=18529
I'm personally not fond of the (pretty crude) lod view, especially because of the moiré in it.
https://www.curseforge.com/minecraft/mc-mods/lod-level-of-de...
Perlin noise is cool, but why not try to fully simulate plate tectonics, weather patterns, drainage? It would go a long way if deserts were in the rainshadow of mountain ranges, islands corresponded to real volcanic activity, etc.
I guess there is a limit to what you can do with the chunk-by-chunk approach, but I think a certain type of minecraft player stays basically put within a couple dozen chunks. Having worlds "load" on exploration would be a worthwhile tradeoff.
I get that this is a hard, but it is interesting, and it's a problem that would captivate an intelligent developer. They have like a million dollars, why not?
If you generate a noise function that dictates where the "plates" are, then the location of the "plates" is already predetermined from the construction of the function. Then the output of that function could be used to alter the mountain/terrain functions.
Thus, no need to pregenerate everything. You pregenerate all of the functions in advance, but not all of the outputs.
[0] https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCmtyQOKKmrMVaKuRXz02jbQ
"Real" is an interesting concept. Any such simulation couldn't really be based on Earth geophysics. Who wants to spend months crossing the steppes? Real magma isn't something you find by accident. Real tunnels can collapse. And so on. So these intelligent developers will need to create a new system of geophysics.
I've read that Dwarf Fortress uses a process more like what you describe.
I wouldn't say so. With the increased mountain height I'd argue the terrain is more realistic than ever, and not boring.
As another comment mentions, dwarf fortress does do all of this though. I don't think this would work in minecraft though, I think minecraft needs a mix of terrain types near each other to be most interesting, and tectonic plates would spread it out.
So you're basically stuck near spawn unless you want to spend much more time getting around.
A lot of surface iron was replaced with copper, which is useless, meaning progress is now slower than ever, and grinding becomes even more of a necessity. Generally, many of the items that now clutter the inventory are mostly useless, and the inventory needs constant attention.
Minecraft is a fantastic game that I have spent well over a thousand hours on over the last decade, with many more to come very likely. That being said, with the account transition to Microsoft/Xbox and this update that gives me personally the "Microsoft knows whats best for its users" vibes that I still distinctly remember from WLM and Skype, I am definitely less optimistic about the game's future than I was a few years ago. I do hope my caution proves to be unwarranted.
Previously, the time-optimal strategy to acquire iron and diamonds was to dig a hole deep into the earth and then bore straight paths. This was exceptionally grindy (fans would say zen, detractors would say tedious), but effective.
With 1.18, the optimal strategy is now to enter a cave and find the resources there. The holes in the ground that you dislike are entry points to that system, where many resources are available -- though at the risk of encounters with monsters.
So the transition is from a static grind to the new system based on cave exploration and risk. It's more dynamic and engaging, directly the opposite of your claim here. You mention iron, claiming that progress is slower, but in actuality it's significantly easier to acquire useful amounts of iron now. Jump into any random cave and it's all over the place. Sure, there's a lot of relatively useless copper too, but no one is forcing you to mine it. Just skip what you don't need and you don't need to manage it in your inventory.
Likewise, the new topology with increased heights means that rivers are significantly more important for exploring. You point out that it makes it more difficult to go from one peak to the next, which is accurate (though in my opinion you overstate the difficulty), but regardless it is quite easy to make long journeys if you follow the rivers and low terrain.
So yeah it's harder to go directly in a straight line than it was in before, but now you're paying attention to the terrain in the world and adapting your gameplay as a result. It just requires different navigation techniques. Like it or not, you're absolutely not stuck at spawn.
No, and I don't think I have made any comment on the intention. I understand what they were going for. My point is specifically what you are saying: It massively changes the game play. If I wanted different game play I would play a different game. Every update so far, including the ones since MS takeover have felt like natural progression of the game to me. I enjoyed those updates and have lots of good things to say about them and the way they expanded the game.
This update feels to me like it should have been a different game, or a mod. That's the contrast I was trying to highlight with my comment.
It's worth noting I'm not claiming anything as a fact. I was stating my personal opinion and concern for the direction the game is headed in, relative to my own expectations, after a decade of playing Minecraft. I explained why I think that way, because we're on HN.
> The holes in the ground that you dislike are entry points to that system
Those existed before, just that covering them and getting the materials for it if you're not a fan of big craters and abysses in the ground wasn't a project of its own before.
> So the transition is from a static grind to the new system based on cave exploration and risk.
Cave exploration and mob bashing is still grinding. This will get old fast if you just want to get to it and build your base or whatever self assigned goal you have.
> It's more dynamic and engaging, directly the opposite of your claim here.
That is entirely subjective.
> You point out that it makes it more difficult to go from one peak to the next, which is accurate (though in my opinion you overstate the difficulty)
That wasn't my claim, no. I said it is now more difficult to see directly from the water, because the landscape is raised so much relatively the water. Overcoming that is just tedious, not difficult, because you have to get out of the boat every so often to get a view of the landscape.
For me it is comparable to amplified maps no longer being opt-in, basically. It's fun for a change, but not the game experience I am looking for most of the time. Now I no longer get to pick unless I stick with old versions, which of course sucks for online play.
Does 1.18 change things? I'm trying to keep an open mind, trying to convince myself that the new ore distribution adds nuance to my opening moves. When that conviction fails, I look for other things that hold promise. Something that I've toyed around with doing in the past is creating a Zork-esque underground empire, but have always held back on those plans since the old cave networks were bland and cramped. Yet the new underground biomes make such a project more appealing.
I'm not a big Minecraft player, but I'm pretty sure the time-optimal strategy for getting diamonds consistently was to set up a deliberate mine topology which is mathematically efficient, not just dig forward in straight lines. AFAIK diamond mining was the only thing that couldn't be automated; for iron the time-optimal way is to construct an iron farm, i.e. engineering, not grinding.
https://minecraft.fandom.com/wiki/Ore?file=1-18-ore-distribu...
We did not find the world "riddled with holes," though, and gaps in Minecraft have always been easy to traverse by simply placing blocks.
1.18 ore distribution sucks. Going caving virtually requires full armor due to mobs, but now to get full armor you need to go caving (or get extremely lucky).
I much prefer the Minetest game NodeCore, which is playable with 8 inventory slots (the small HUD bar is all you get, because the game shuns all modal UI except a hints system for figuring out crafting and other gameplay mechanics without using a guide to see whole recipes, which are considered spoilers) and makes the fancy terrain more navigable by letting you scale cliffs and even climb overhangs without placing or mining anything.
I do agree with you on inventory clutter, but that has been a problem for as long as I have played the game (since about 2010? I don't remember which version). I am disappointed that they have delayed the introduction of the bundle.
While I agree with you in principal, the truth is that if you don't update the launcher it doesn't break - and if you do update the launcher it also doesn't break, it just requires you to complete an account migration.
One of my favorite game memories of all time was the first time I played Minecraft during the alpha days and immediately got lost in the world. For me, going into a 1.18 world and finding a giant mountain chain and then finding a cave on the peak of the mountain that falls all the way into a giant underground ocean at the bottom of the world in a huge cavern complete with underground vegetation… it brought me right back to that sense of exploration and wonder that I remember from the very first time I played Minecraft.
Also, I found this datapack (sort of like a mod but doesn’t require patching the game since the game natively supports loading datapack files) called Terralith [1] that extends the 1.18 worldgen with even more cool stuff. Wandering around the new 1.18-style mountains is incredible, and then stumbling across something the resembles Yellowstone National Park added by Terralith is even more incredible. It’s worth a try if you like just wandering around in Minecraft marveling at the scenery.
[1] https://www.planetminecraft.com/data-pack/terralith-overworl...
There's a trailer they made for a recent update that shows off some of the terrain results:
Like, it's perlin noise and a bunch of algorithms and it makes mountains and caves and overhangs that are all decorated and such and a river bleeding into a ravine that leads into a giant cave network.
Just yesterday I watched this fantastic explanation of how to generate realistically looking ocean surface: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kGEqaX4Y4bQ
The fantastic part about this video is just how little of actual physics you need to know to create convincing, complex waves. You can skip entire fluid dynamics and condense it to "water molecules move in circles when subjected to a wave".
Forget about Perlin noise, it is useful to getting something but it is IMO dead end if you are for realistic looking world. There isn't a way to fix it because, fundamentally, it is completely disconnected from how land features are created in real life. To get asymptotically to realism you have to start taking into account more and more of physics and passage of time and Perlin noise just completely ignores this.
To get realistic representation you need to build a little model that knows a little bit about how the features are created.
You can even go Dwarf Fortress direction and model processes that create various features of the world over time.
Edit, I think I found something nice (a cave) at -281, -15, 436, that's not something 1.18 generates by default I guess?
They've spoken recently about one of their intentions for Survival is for the world to be a blank slate for players own creations. Adding more and richer structures detracts from that. There's also the part where it's still a game that needs balancing, and just importing arbitrary structures and resources detracts from Survival.
There is the marketplace which has community servers/worlds/levels that showcase what other people have built. I think that's the right level for this.
Otherwise, stuff like this is perfect for the data pack ecosystem they created.
Similar idea without neural networks:
https://github.com/mxgmn/WaveFunctionCollapse
I'm surprised no one applied this idea to Minecraft yet. There's even a 3D version:
I'm not entirely sure how the jigsaw system (the subsystem the game uses for building villages and bastions from a large palette of pre-builts using a set of rules and connectors) integrates with the custom world generator options, but that would seem the best bet for it in a vanilla game.
The problem with an "official" player creations is both vetting them and the social backlash because you didn't pick little Timmy's shack. As well as the disjointedness of theme that could occur with a player's playstyle.
I play a modpack. Create: Above & Beyond, they've added a bunch of new random structures to the game, but they're all within a similar theme of quasi-medieval for the surface structures, and a few of the underground ones stray a bit more modern.
Some elements of Factorio were inspired by Minecraft. I think Minecraft could now use some inspiration from Factorio.
I'm playing the "Create: Above & Beyond" pack.
There is grind, the pack gives you a goal (build rocket, go to moon), but how you get there is up to you and the automation isn't quite so arcane as vanilla, and doesn't rely on "magic blocks" (Where you plonk down a single block and it magically does all the things) instead relying on you making a machine/factory line from multiple blocks.
I like many aspects of bedrock edition, most related to performance. I want a gregtech-like experience in bedrock so badly that I'd go as far as making it myself. I just wish the command interface wasn't so janky. When I've done test blocks and interactions in the past I've run into limitations that would prevent my vision. This was maybe 18 months ago, so I don't think much has changed yet.
Create mod by itself is fine as it is imo, no extra stuff required.
As an example, the "auto-crafter" block could be powered by chorus fruit, which means the player would not have access to it until after beating the Ender Dragon. That would also mean that truly automating crafting would also require an automated chorus fruit farm, which would give the system a minimum space requirement.
I forgot this, but that's actually why I stopped playing it. I was in uni around 2007-08 and realised it was using a serious amount of my time and energy. I just quit cold turkey back then. I've barely played any video games since this point, in fact.
What I loved about Minecraft initially was the exploration. I got into it during the beta (I think) when there was no mini-map or any "lifelines" you expect from a normal game. One thing that was possible was to go down into cave system, run out of torches, fall somewhere and just be trapped in the dark. The game was so simple there was a very real fear of losing your save file because you got trapped in a cave forever.
Are there any other games that have real stakes in them like the early Minecraft versions?
The first public version of Minecraft came out in May 2009.
I'm sure players would pay to access it if it worked.
https://www.spigotmc.org/wiki/about-bungeecord/
And as others have already mentioned, WorldQL is an effort to transparently replicate and shard the world without even requiring "world hopping"
As for integration.
This time round instead of the "harsh" borders we've gotten before (where new and old chunks meet, often resulting in sheer cliffs due to height differences) the borders will be blended and smoothed.
Your old chunks will also be upgraded, the bedrock that was at Y0-5 will turn into the deepslate block, and you get the full 0 to -64 Y generated underneath.
Ethoslab, a youtuber with a very old world save, is on 1.18 now, and they've got one of the new lush caves in the new negative Y generation under their base.
> Always remember to back up your old save files before loading them into the newest version of the game. With the new changes to world generation, Mojang say that new chunks generated in worlds you bring forward to 1.18 should better blend with the existing terrain in your save file. So long to big flat chunk borders in old worlds!
I have a genuine question as I’m very naive to Minecraft. I see a lot of time / thought / energy dedicated to making things in Minecraft and can’t help but feel it’s a bit of a waste of time. I think I feel this way because I don’t know much about Minecraft or the community. Other than for pleasure (which is a plenty good enough reason on its own) is there any value generated here? People can obviously do what they like with their time but I would much rather spend my precious hours working on something to add to the real world.
Also, what is "the real world"? At this point, considering how massively popular Minecraft is, Minecraft __is__ an extension of the real world at this point. It's very unlikely that we will ever lose Minecraft to history. Commit the worldsave to a repo and that world is as good as the real world.
I've found positive outcomes from playing the game as well, beyond gaming: for example it helped me realize that you can have a lot of things (in game: build materials) but it doesn't mean anything if you don't use them (in game: build something!). It also helped me reconnect with old friends (we play together in our server, hop into a voice channel sometimes and we also share unrelated stuff outside the game). I know it helped some people get through the pandemic.
It's also a good motivation for kids (and grown-ups!) to learn basic server administration, plugin development, community moderation, and some people also like to fiddle with textures as well.
The game is a creativity source, very much like Lego bricks. The things you do in-game may not have much value, but I'd say it yields great results in the players :)
I'm excited for mappers that can now build 1-1 scale recreations of real and fantasy locations like everest (~4000m from the base), minas tirith (300m), barad-dur (1400m), courisant senate building (600m), etc.
Mob spawn light rules are unchanged and don't match up with the RT front end, but that rarely matters.
Guessing you could let the saved game or the player pick which world generation algorithm to use and you need to keep the code for the old and new generator around? It's probably less of a big deal for e.g. rouge-like games are over for good in a few hours, but not for games like Minecraft.
I hope they once again push for a revival of modding multiplayer servers, although that is most likely a pipe dream because of the Bukkit DMCA issues in 2013-2014 :(.
Spigot/Paper are bukkit-compatible and you can load modpacks from the spigot.org site, or even bukkit.org, which is still operational to this day.
Source: I run several instances myself and I help develop a server management tool for it: https://craftycontrol.com/
I think the whole field of world generation is awesome. Perlin noise, and the concepts of "smooth noise" that have come from it, and the clever ways people have found to layer noise and use it to map biomes and heights, and spawn locations, etc. And then, even more impressively, with games like No Man's Sky, you have this concept applied to spherical geometry. I just think it's all so cool.
Incidentally, his (Sean Murray, creator of No Man's Sky) is the best talk I've ever seen on the topic:
Bravo, nu-Mojang.
I wonder if this new update adds similar generation again?
And now we're having a massive celebration because... Microsoft added caves? What a joke. Caves are among the oldest of inventions in human history.
Where's the factory biome with weird machinery and pipes running around? Where's the dead biome thick with fog and populated with graves and zombies? Where's the airship biome that floats high above in the sky and takes building effort to get to?
There's so much creative potential, totally unrealized, for decades. Minecraft never went anywhere. It will die the moment a more imaginative clone pops on the market. It might by Hytale, or something else.
They seem to go on forever.
