So, my tired brain and I were thinking about the water, and we think we came up with something interesting.

Maybe it shouldn't be block based? The system I thought of was like...

Say you have a 3x3x3 cube, and it's hollowed out (like a cup). And you have, like, a bunch of these lined up together on a plane. So the middle one (hypothetically) slowly gets filled up, and the more water is in it, the higher the level gets (not block-based, but it gradually rises, like normal water) and when it gets above the edges of the cup, the program would check along the ground that makes up the cup-plane to see where either the next wall, or the next dip is. Then if it hits a wall, you can just continue filling it with the changed rate of surface-height-change for the new geometry of the cup, or you can divide the water that's filling the cup into each of the dips the new field of water has and fill those dips up accordingly. I think that's a good way to explain it.

So, like... if X=ground and a number is the amount of water in a place that's empty (and the empty spots are 3 units high.
XXXXXXX
X0X0X0X
XXXXXXX
X0X3X0X
XXXXXXX
X0X0X0X
XXXXXXX
--- add 1 unit of water to the filled spot
XXXXXXX
XaXaXaX
XXXXXXX
XaX3XaX
XXXXXXX
XaXaXaX
XXXXXXX (where a=1/8) (1/8 because there's 8 spaces for the water to fill up.)

And you'd have the water height in those areas go on a scale of 1 unit is equivalent to 1 block, so the middle one would have three full block-heights of water in it, and the others would have an eighth of a block-height filled up with water. And for added effect, have a bluish film cover the ground that the water is flowing over.

It'd be pretty easy (I think) to accommodate differently sized areas, like so):
XXXXXXX
X0X0X0X
XXXXX0X
X0X3X0X
XXXXX0X
X0X0X0X
XXXXXXX
--- add 1 unit of water to the filled spot
XXXXXXX
XaXaXbX
XXXXXbX
XaX3XbX
XXXXXbX
XaXaXbX
XXXXXXX (where a=1/10 and b=(1/10)/5)

This seems pretty easy to implement right now, but as I said, I'm a bit tired, and I'm not sure if it's reasonable in regards to efficiency or not, so, you know, take what you will from it.

It seems like it would be possible to make it somewhat efficient, but I could be completely wrong. I mean, you'd only have to calculate the outer edges of any large bodies of water (to check if there's some extra space around them to fill with the new depth).

(According to the blog, the wall-bug is crushed.)

Regarding water: if we're going to float that high off the water (it seems really high), we should be able to get up onto one-block-high blocks (relative to the water's surface).

And I think we jump slightly higher now. It's much easier to make towers of blocks by jumping and building under you, and going up narrow staircases is much more vomit-inducing.

EDIT: Buuuuuut... it's not.

So... apparently having water and lava touching each other causes graphical glitches, and doesn't make sense. I had a cave with some water in the bottom, and lava above it, and you could see what looked like a second lava surface where the water was through the surface of the lava on the top, and the lava surface above the water was slightly lower (like normal liquid surfaces), which made it look really bad.

Perhaps lava should become some kind of stone when it touches water.

Also, the way the liquid surfaces work, the top of the water will stop if they reach a block that's just above the surface, and they'll be slightly lower than the top of a normal block that's on their level, so if you lo...



It's that. I r nto liekz ti.

(And yes, mipmapping please! Textures from afar make castles look ugly!)

EDIT: And liquid physics are being really slow in places where being slow is really bad, like down narrow tunnels. I was digging (upward, deliberately trying to find water), found water, and expected either to immediately be engulfed, or to have one of those classic awesome running-through-tunnel-from-water things, definitely not just looking at the bottom of the water for a minute or two, then walking away.

And I once saw an air bubble in water stay there for a very long time.

Also, regarding block-sized air bubbles, I think it'd be cool that when they get filled in, they spawn a bunch of small "bubble" particles that float up to the surface really quickly.



Note that I'm in block creation mode there, not deletion. Having building mechanics go screwy at weird angles makes it really hard to build my nefariously placed castles (and towers, no matter whether or not their parent castle is nefariously placed or not). Which makes me sad. I mean, this allows me to replace a block, but only being able to quickly replace a block at totally awkward angles doesn't seem intuitive.

Regarding your question on your blog (because the character limit is very restrictive for me):

I think having blood in Minecraft would be okay. I'd be perfectly cool with finding little giblets from monsters I've courageously slain in caves and such. And maybe I'm imagining wrong, but I keep imagining epic, castle-siege type battles with tons of warriors, and I think having a battlefield strewn with gore after major fights would be a nice effect.

On that subject, do you think you'll be able to implement some sort of AI bots for people to fight with? I really like the idea of humongous battles in the big world that gets generated (especially if you can set up some sort of point-capture type system), but I often don't like actually playing online, and even then, I'm not sure (though it would be great if it does) the game will manage to keep a big enough player-base to have such large battles after very long, simply because so few games actually do manage to do it.

And I think that having little harmless bunnies, like in your blog post, to release aggression upon would be a fun addition, despite having no effect on actual gameplay. (And I think they'd be fine in all the game modes. Perhaps you should just have a "bunnies" option that players can turn on/off.)

Also, I think having just a normal wood block (not boards, but just wood, like on a tree) and a dirt-road (like normal dirt, but it will never grow grass) block would be nice as well. Also, fire. Spreads from flammable blocks to nearby flammable blocks, and changes/destroys them. (It changes grass to dirt, which will grow back, but wood is destroyed, of course.) It seems like it would be pretty easy to implement, but I may be wrong.

I made... a second castle!

(A cooler one than before!)

---



Hey, is that some sort of castle over there? We should go take a look!



Hey, this is pretty cool. Hey, wait a second, those staircases seem off.



Aha! I knew that had to mean something! I wonder what's in there. Let's go check!



Wow, crates full of ancient treasure! We'll be rich!

---

I love this so much.

The cliff was just so awesome, I had to make something out of it.

Also, that cave system in the cliff is gigantic. The thing goes all the way from the top of the cliff (there's holes everywhere, they were a serious hindrance to construction) to the very bottom of the level, and stretches, as far as I could tell, to every quadrant of the map. I couldn't find any small, independent caves. Just one huge cave. It was great.

Yes, agreeing on the thing about the monsters.

I think if there were different kinds of monsters that were spawned based on the depth (deeper=stronger, uglier monsters), it would be totally awesome. When I'm exploring cave systems (which are awesome), I keep wanting a monster to jump out and for me to have to courageously slay it (or courageously flee, but you know, same thing).

I made a castle! Normally it would be night and there would be lightning, but alas, those things do not exist.

My friend tried to make a pirate ship, but it was too fail to post.

Well, when an alpha keeps drawing me back to play it, you know you've got something good. I can't wait to see what this game becomes.

And Evil-Ville, what is that thing inside your temple? A tree of some sort?

ONE MILLION POINTS?

But... but... HOW?

The most I've been able to get was ~300k!

Yeah, what is that, six times now? It was ridiculous by the third...

As a rabid AD&D 2.0 fan, I'd go so far as to say that 3.x "ruined" D&D. (And 4e just continued the trend.)

2.0 seemed much more "fast-n-loose" compared to later versions. Because the books were so incredibly disorganized and incoherent, it felt like it was more encouraging of just doing whatever the hell made sense in the situation, and the books were more like barely coherent whispers in your ear that you might (or might not) get an idea for how to resolve something going on in the game.

The only rules I ever kept to regularly in my games were the effects of the abilities, and thieving skills.

But 3.x felt more like a flexible robot than mystical smoke. And I like mystical smoke.

Also, I agree completely that computerized D&D games suck. (Baldur's Gate, etc.) Because they're computerized, they almost never have that fast-n-loose feeling, because they're always following set rules. And I have friends that I can play D&D with if I want to.

Pretty.

I get about 15 FPS.

Whew, and here I was thinking I'd never get to play it.

Regarding the tentacle-thing: I notice you went in with 1 health left, got hit, and still had 1 health left. Interesting.

I actually really liked the steel bars. They're realistic, and do their job well, but can still be destroyed. It's a nice quirk.

I'll be amazed if you manage to finish it, but if you do, I assure you that I'll be playing it.

I like the shooting demo, but aiming seems slow, and the blur effect is really just annoying.

That's why you don't push it all the way. He only shoots through the block when the firing image goes past the block because he and the block are smashed together.

Also, to voice some ideas that Deciton_Reven had, but was unable to tell you himself:

He likes the idea of adding stuff to the beginning room, or to a trophy room. He had quite a few ideas for this. For example, enough kills with the rock replaces the flare in the starting room with a basketball, or maybe a baseball or something. He also had the idea of having aquariums/terrariums in the background, with background-bound monsters in them, for killing related monsters.

Another idea was the Golden Shovel. You can buy the golden shovel from the Tunnel Man like the shortcuts, but instead of being permanent, whenever you complete a payment for it, the price raises back up so you can buy it again after a few more games, and you get a Golden Shovel, which works like a pickaxe (but maybe downward instead of to the side), but never breaks. It also adds a golden shovel on a rack to the beginning room the first time you buy it.

Also, adding to the idea of having a rescue-able cow in the UFO mothership, a mermaid in the water beneath the jungle (or maybe up on a small rock, but the rock has to be far from any other above-water rocks, so you actually have to swim pretty far to get to her). This would add even more reason to go down and try to fight the giant fish, or at least risk being in the water for a while.

Yeah, I played for almost an hour, didn't find anything, gave up. Got close, but of course wound up getting not close again because the pings are so far between NO MATTER WHAT (I guess they'd be pretty fast if you're ON TOP of the data voxel, but that's pointless).

I really think that this is too hard. I don't want to run around a huge random map randomly hoping to find stuff. If you could add a few more tracking devices to the ship, it'd be better.

A direction indicator could work, but I'd recommend that you make it basic, so as to not fall into the boringly easy area. Maybe it can only show cardinal directions. So you can know the general direction, but not simply be able to follow an arrow. That might also get too easy, though. Or maybe you could make it an exact direction indicator, but make the map denser, so simply trying to follow the arrow would be futile.

A ping-time indicator would be nice. It would make triangulation easier, and still require the game to be a somewhat complex mental activity. (I also don't think a tutorial on triangulation should be given, I'd like to figure out the nuances of it on my own. If someone does want a tutorial, the concept can be found on the internet within seconds, and it should be easy to understand it from there.) I often had to travel VERY far before I could actually notice a difference, and then it was usually slower, so I'd have to go back, which is hard, because it's hard to tell where you started in a place with little or no landmarks at all, and the whole thing felt like a crapshoot.

I really like the idea, but I really, really don't like the game because I feel I'd accomplish the same thing the game offers by rolling a die repeatedly until I get five tens in a row.

This was a really fun game.

That's basically my whole message.

I liked the concept, you executed it very well, all's good and dandy.

I'm interested to see what Chessmine: The Shores of Hell will be like.

Spoilers: There is a boss. (Which can kill you.)

Game looks pretty. And if you're going in a platformer/exploration direction with it, I can't wait to see it in action.

(And "grief" wouldn't be caught in a spell-check.)