Obviously, what makes Minecraft so phenomenal is the possibility to build almost anything. This, however, is not the only thing Minecraft does brilliantly. It also excels at sound.
Minecraft uses sound to inform you about monsters. But it also uses it to frighten you. Have you ever sit in that hole and wondered whether there really is no way in? Because these sounds seem to have come closer ..
I don't think I need to convince anybody about this, actually. It is obvious: A good virtual world uses sound at least as skillfully as Minecraft. One premise to make this work is, of course, dangerous monsters. This might sound trivial, but considering current MMOs it is clearly not: Monsters should be dangerous; at least some of them. Only dangerous monsters can trigger angst. And only sounds that dangerous monsters make can be frightening.
I always appreciated the use of sound in ffxi. Abilities and spells have individual sounds so you have an idea what's happening without having to read scrolling combat txt.
ReplyDeleteAlso monsters have aggro noises, which can trigger fight or flight angst in particularly dangerous places.
Man I can't get minecraft MMO idea out of my head. Been digging around and like all insanely complex projects its looks relatively simple on surface.
ReplyDeleteWorse though I found a perfect client for it , now all its missing is network stack and backend. and of course the integration of this together. And prolly 100-man-bear-pig-years work to make it actually fun game
Max, I am pretty sure that the idea of a reasonable implementation of the Minecraft block system into an MMO is not new. But it is a magical idea, I agree :)
ReplyDeleteIf done right, this could really be the next big thing. And I don't say such things easily.
1) Building your house/cave/castle is proven as 'inherently fun' in a single player game.
2) It is an activity that has a strong indirect social component.
3) It can be done in chunks of 10 minutes or 12 hours.
4) It is meaningful, yet friendly for solo players. Without being an isolated activity, like running instanced dungeons.
This is the kind of activity any great virtual world requires. But try to convince investors of the 'unrealistic' graphics ;)
Also, I don't know what happens when you decrease block size. It is not easy to think this through completely. But coding a prototype shouldn't be too hard for any skilled team.
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ReplyDeleteMax, I am pretty sure that the idea of a reasonable implementation of the Minecraft block system into an MMO is not new. But it is a magical idea, I agree :)
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It definitely comes up on minecraft forums for sure.
But having researched the subject in past few days I am thinking while idea might be not really new as in " no one thought about it before", but it definitely was (and maybe stull is?) under radar of most people and designers in mmo industry
There are 2 components to it and one aspect is how mainstream rendering of 3d is done nowdays. Its mostly variations of BSP trees. Prebuilt and predistributed.
There were only one attempt (count it - one!) to have dynamic content in 3d world - it was shadowbane and approach was piss poor. ( I know nothing about how was it done in actuality but having witnessed the train wreck SB was in general and dynamic buildings in particular I dont think it was anything but a dirty hacks on top of standard approach)
But here is the magic word and silver bullet in one - octree.
Chickens. The damn chickens. Until they cluck they sound just like creepers creeping. CLUCK OR I'LL SHOOT!
ReplyDelete(Use < and > instead of [ ] :)
ReplyDeleteThere were only one attempt (count it - one!) to have dynamic content in 3d world - it was shadowbane and approach was piss poor
The genius behind Minecraft's 'dynamic world' is the absolute simplicity. With these cubes - especially if the cube-resolution is smaller, you can do almost anything. Completely bug free.
Modeling decay or damage can be done by any trainee with this system. And I think this is the difference to prior 'dynamic world' experiments.
(Use < and > instead of [ ] :)
ReplyDeleteI always get BBcode (for forums) and pseudohtml (for blogs) wrong :)
The genius behind Minecraft's 'dynamic world' is the absolute simplicity. With these cubes - especially if the cube-resolution is smaller, you can do almost anything. Completely bug free.
Well its frankly its not that novel idea. minecraft uses extremely simplified approach representing whole world as chunked arrays of big boxes, and hence its quite limited - no slopes, no smaller boxes (as memory footprint grows exponentially)
There are things called voxel and there was a heli simulator game back in MS-DOS era using it( called comanche). Then there was revolutionary game magic carpet with amazing terrain for its time and supporting terrain deformation (voxels as well)
Then 3d acceleration took off and everyone concentrated on polygons and triangles. Completely forgetting other techniques
Now the thing for minecraft like game would be using octrees instead of arrays of boxes. As it allows much smaller boxes and much better looking environment. While retaining all the cubes ease of use. in fact you could replicate current minecraft 1:1 with octrees reducing memory footprint and increasing performance, while retaining options of making boxes much smaller.
Minecraft boxes do have that lego like look and feel which I suspect is big reason why people find it fun right from the start. I do think engine which allows to build not just boxes with same flexibility is much more superior though
p.s. btw google Sparse Voxel Octree -it seem bounced back with a vengeance. Quite possibly next gen graphical engines would use this feature. r.
p.s. btw google Sparse Voxel Octree -it seem bounced back with a vengeance. Quite possibly next gen graphical engines would use this featurer.
ReplyDeleteI feel like you may be very right about this. Graphics have become as good looking as they can get. perhaps you could improve some face animations and stuff, but this is most artistic art, not an inherent restriction of the technology.
Time to focus on players changing the world! We don't just want to look at it!!