BTW: Design Philosophy

[cheechako]

Yeah, transporting steam is not complex.

Actually, it is. That's part of the reason axles can only transmit power over 3 lengths. Re-enforced axles have been suggested numerous times, but the code involved adds more complexity (and possibly performance hits) than any benefit offered.

[Deepsniper]

Yeah, transporting steam is not complex.

Actually, it is. That's part of the reason axles can only transmit power over 3 lengths. Re-enforced axles have been suggested numerous times, but the code involved adds more complexity (and possibly performance hits) than any benefit offered.

Im not too inclined with the programming but couldnt you implement the code for steam to work the same as redstone?

[Gilberreke]

Im not too inclined with the programming but couldnt you implement the code for steam to work the same as redstone?

Yeah, though I imagine it's be more inline with mechanical power. Axles mirror pipes and gearboxes mirror pressure valves (or similar). It probably needs an even tighter constraint, again to mirror previous features design-wise.

[Adjudicator79]

Ok, let's wrangle this back on-topic.

Given the general level of response, I find my own suspicions confirmed with the idea that BTW should not overly concern itself with trying to mirror vM in any significant way.

What I do want to really grab onto is the way of expressing the interaction between vM and BTW that Battlecat put out there (and that many of you identified as useful as well). "BTW is best as a mod that can be added into an existing vM game without creating a new world." I love this description. It sums up so much about what we've discussed before - the need to overcome the diamond reset, the inherent lack of technological progression for vM, the need for distinct Ages that BTW provides, etc.

I love the idea of BTW as the mod that vM players turn to once they hit the diamond reset a couple of times, play around with IndustrialCraft, BuildCraft, and MineColony for a few weeks, and realize that none of those actually offer any real challenges. Once you've hit that point, you're probably ready for BTW. And, as Battlecat points out, you can take any world that you've built up (minus the item id specific elements from non compatible mods, which most vM users that have experimented with mods would automatically realize), add BTW to it, and actually engage in some meaningful construction, design, and progression in a way that vM simply doesn't offer.

I do like cheechako's comparison of vM to regular Legos and BTW to Legos Robotics. It is a thinking person's mod. No cute, fluffy animals or easy fly around the world BS here. We expect you to work for your fun in BTW! And I wouldn't have it any other way.

[cheechako]

Im not too inclined with the programming but couldnt you implement the code for steam to work the same as redstone?

Redstone is a different beast, and still subject to limitations. You can't run it in parallel, for example, without space inbetween. Keep in mind that it CAN be done, but the coding complexities and possible performance hits don't always make it worthwhile.

I do like cheechako's comparison of vM to regular Legos and BTW to Legos Robotics.

All this talk is making me want to replace my broken RCX. If only I didn't buy a car this past week. Sigh. :)

[Haniale]

Should BTW pursue a development style that is geared towards only modifying vM in such a way as to remain predominantly accessible by a vanilla player stepping into the mod fresh? Or should BTW be willing to break wholly away from the development path of Mojang (though not necessarily the feel and style of vM) and pursue its own development path that might result in BTW players basically playing a separate game than vM players.

Honestly, this question seems completely pointless. BTW starts walking on the same path as vM, then makes a sharp right to it's own path, but the path is still in the vM world. Before the end of Wood Age, you hit the split pretty hard, and it's no longer vM with an addon - it's vM used to make a new game. From here, any addition can go any direction without adding first time complexity. Wood age is accessible in the described manner, and if we assume the next ages to require items from wood age, every entry into BTW is going to be accessible as a result. So, as question answer "Yes, it already is."

I think BTW should make efforts to fit in with adventure mode, but I agree not in quest method - that can either be mojang or another mods department. I don't think this will be hard, since BTW is already very balanced. I would like to see more objects that interact with the world in it, at various tech levels, for adventure though - presumably, villages will be attacked, and the BTW thought chain seems like it'll be more fun to defend with than the vM thought chain. Of course, I'm still waiting on iron tipped waterwheels of doom.

[Elensaar]

I think the current direction the mod seems to be going strikes a good balance between accessibility from vM and taking it's own direction. You can start on your BTW builds at any point in a world, and get (comparatively speaking) the same experience.

If you've invested a lot of time in a vanilla world you have resources that make starting a BTW build easier, as you don't have the same need to balance mining and building. You still start out at the same point though - at the start of the tech tree.

If you start a new world with BTW on the other hand, you don't feel the same pressure to dig deep and get that diamond armour/sword as fast as you can. And you're still at the start of the tech tree. It will take you longer to get the resources to build an enclosed hemp farm and such, but still.

It feels like this is the direction FC is going with the mod. You can always start on building things from it, and you always have to start relatively small. And as you progress deeper into the possibilities offered by the mod it starts to live it's own life, the next thing you want to build suddenly requires more materials from the previous thing than from vM.

Still, I think that BTW should (and probably will) continue to feel like part of the Minecraft world. I don't know what's planned for the Adventure update of vM, but our ever more powerful means of automating production and defences should always feel like they "fit in". Even though we might have to take a long detour from the vanilla path to get there.

[BigShinyToys]

I have been playing minecraft with no mods ( when 1.7.3 came out (I didn't back up stupid me)) and it made me start thinking . Diamond reset is a problem I didn't have . cos i wanted to make bigger better things in my world . i was not driven to diamond or else . This makes me think this is a game about motivation . if you are very motivated you will make you're own fun. but if you aren't you will play for a while get frustrated by the game and leave. As form me i like hunting I have a Nice obsidian base to hunt from .( so no creepers can damage it. ) As for how useful this mod is it depends on the player's use of the tools available and a lift / pistons / minecraft train systems are only helpful for people motivated enough to make them. the new turntable is one very useful device for making timers. ( I think the last setting should be 5 seconds thought ) This is because you cant make 60 seconds timers ( trust me i have tried ) if it was 5 seconds you can make 10 or 20 second gaps ( currently the closest you get to 60 seconds is 64 and that is not very helpful) this would be a Small modification that would increase the usefulness of the turntable alot .

[petrus4]

If you start a new world with BTW on the other hand, you don't feel the same pressure to dig deep and get that diamond armour/sword as fast as you can. And you're still at the start of the tech tree. It will take you longer to get the resources to build an enclosed hemp farm and such, but still.

Maybe I'm just weird, but for me, Minecraft has never been about the diamond. It's honestly the most overrated material in the game, in my own opinion.

Still, I think that BTW should (and probably will) continue to feel like part of the Minecraft world. I don't know what's planned for the Adventure update of vM, but our ever more powerful means of automating production and defences should always feel like they "fit in". Even though we might have to take a long detour from the vanilla path to get there.

I feel as though vM is primarily focusing on homogenised, juvenile populism these days, to be truly blunt. I feel sufficiently confident that I'm among kindred spirits here, that I can express the opinion that that is basically what the wolf addition was. I'm not going to mince words. ;)

It's not really Notch's fault, however. He probably has at least a couple of million 14 year olds (not to mention a CEO, now) constantly screaming at him via Twitter, or literally anywhere else they can get hold of him, to keep adding more stuff like wolves and birthday cakes, and to do so five minutes ago. They don't give a damn about bug fixing, and they also don't give a damn about the sort of content that those of us who *do* have the odd micron of maturity and intelligence might actually want. Compared to the degree of pressure that the Facebook generation are able to bring to bear on him, however, we likely don't have a prayer of getting through to Notch about our preferences.

We therefore need people like Flower and SpaceToad, who are willing and able to give us the functionality that Notch won't, for the most part. Let's not forget (and I'm sure nobody has) that there hasn't been a single truly substantial addition made to vM since Halloween to my knowledge, that did not come directly from the modding community. Ambient occlusion, the new chunk format, pistons, and probably even the GL rendering spam.

And how have Mojang mirrored the community's innovations? The weather system, (which isn't really anything other than a nuisance anyway, in my own mind) beds, (which truthfully *are* mildly useful in game terms, but still feel more like something that a 13 year old would appreciate) birthday cakes, cookies, squid, and wolves. In other words, the equivalent of about 20% of the Mo' Foodz and Mo' Creatures mods, each.

Your Honour, the case for the prosecution rests. I gave up on this game more than two months ago now, and if I hadn't discovered modding, I would have stayed away. Engineering mods are the only thing keeping me here. Don't give up, Flower, no matter how much you get trolled by the mindless children on the public forum; who are basically Notch's target demographic, at this point. As I've said before, if this game is going to survive at all for many of us, it will only be because of projects like Better Than Wolves, BuildCraft, Red Power, and ToggleBlocks. Some of us need games which allow us to be truly creative and engage our minds. The suits won't provide that for us because we are the minority; the majority are happy to be spoonfed crap, and so that is where the money is.

We are thus forced to meet our own needs.

[petrus4]

As another post that may be of some relevance here, I've just been re-reading some elements of The Art of UNIX Programming. It's been a favourite book of mine for probably six years now, and going through it again, I was suddenly reminded of why, when someone encouraged me to try IndustrialCraft a few days ago, I realised that I prefer Better Than Wolves, although I really see those two mods as competitors of each other. The single main reason why is because IC is literally so big that if you run that and BuildCraft, you have virtually no sprite indices (and close to no blockids) left. This means that even if I wanted to run both IC and BTW together, I literally can't.

I also view them as serving fundamentally the same role. Better Than Wolves and IndustrialCraft both essentially serve as replacement for default Minecraft's tech tree. The point, however, is that they make fundamentally different assumptions. IndustrialCraft is basically self-contained; it has new ore types, and is almost a complete replacement for Minecraft's core gameplay. IC also doesn't assume that it is going to be interoperating with any mods other than BuildCraft, because again, due to the technical limitations of Minecraft itself, it really can't.

IC's other problem is that it has a particularly stark version of the Diamond Reset, as well. Get the nanotech armor, a bat pack, the highest level ray gun, and a diamond drill, and then run around one shotting everything in sight. It's game over at that point.

Better Than Wolves, on the other hand, is much more generic, and I was reminded of this when looking at a recent discussion on how to automate a hemp farm. I started thinking about whether I could use Allocators or ToggleBlocks or even Magic Chest sets with the quantum software, in order to filter out the hemp from the seeds and get it to its' destination in the mill stone. BTW plays a lot better with other mods than IC does, and it also has the kind of content where using other mods with it actually makes sense. There's a quote from Doug McIlroy here (one of UNIX's founders) which I think is relevant.

Word and Excel and PowerPoint and other Microsoft programs have intimate — one might say promiscuous — knowledge of each others' internals. In Unix, one tries to design programs to operate not specifically with each other, but with programs as yet unthought of.

In other words, BTW provides me with a core, and the central reasons for something to do, (the hemp farm, in this case) but because all of its' other pieces are so much more capable of interoperating with other mods, I can literally have as many different possible approaches for solving said problem as I want. I can just try and use hoppers and manual redstone and water if I want, or I can use Red Power, BuildCraft, and the others. As a result, I feel as though I have a *lot* more freedom with BTW than if I was using either IC or stock Minecraft. This gives me a core tech tree, but how I choose to interact with said tree, is completely my own decision.

[Rasuth]

I really, really hate to see this amazing thread going down. *necromancy engaged*

Unfortunately this thread got slightly derailed by speculation on what the future Age might be. Let me try to get things back on track with a new topic.



Today and maybe the next few days I'd like to discuss the question "How much direction does a sandbox game need?".

Before the addition of achiements into minecraft a completely new MC player would have no clues about what to do or how to do it. Is figuring out how to play the game part of the fun of the game or is there a need for at least some basic instructions? Given the amount of tutorials, recipe lists, How To ...s popping up on the internet, isn't it smarter to integrate part of that information into the game itself, so the playing experience isn't interrupted when the player needs to look something up? I think the most prominent examples of what I mean are Risugami's recipe book or WoW's Dungeon Journal.
A 3rd point to consider, BTW adds a whole new Tech Tree to the game. Do players need an ingame indicator of how they can progress in the tech tree or is figuring it out themselves more fun?


I hope I can spark a new discussion with this topic. I will wait to see what you think and then try to come up with a nice summary of your ideas and mine.

[HavokSCOUT]

To draw on past games such as red dead redemption or GTA, sandbox games are very fun, but many of them at least have an underlying plot that you need to loosely follow, or some sort of Endgame that will allow the player to say, "Whew! That's over. Time for a snack break." Minecraft is neither of these things, and the only thing I've seen that makes it even resemble such a game as GTA or RDR is Adventure craft, and even that has its limitations. Until notch implements such an endgame, people will continue to become bored and heap on mods, trying to regain that spark they felt the first time they found diamond, or the first time that they killed a creeper. Yes, knowing how to do something is important, but finding out how to do something from experience, rather than watch someone's Let's Play, is what made minecraft fun. If, during that first day, you simply explored and didn't make a house, you would soon find out, once the sun went down, that that was a VERY bad idea. If, when you first went into a cave, you didn't bring a stack of logs or even some sticks, you found out that creatures can spawn down there and kill you while you mine ore. Many games need directions such as a HUD, that tells the player, "Go here next." If minecraft were to implement such a device that said, "Do this next," it would seriously detract from the sense of wonder that getting that first wood gives the player, and this is why I don't necessarily like the added achievements.

[Battlecat]

Right now, minecraft is a pretty pure sandbox experience which leaves you open to create and explore with no enforced goals. And that is incredibly liberating. The only limitation is my ability to build things or acquire the resources to build. The quests are my own creation and I would not want the game to loose that feeling.

But at the same time, there are days where it would be nice to just have the game hand me a goal. The achievements are a small set of goals that fit that bill nicely and more of them could be entertaining. NPC villages could add another set of goals; Millénaire for example allows you the player to contribute to the growth of the village. But interacting with the villages is totally optional which allows you to totally ignore them and proceed with your sandbox game if you so choose. There are many other mods and enforced game styles (404 challenge, Tree Spirit Game) that create goals and restrictions on the game.

Additionally, not every player is necessarily capable of deducing every aspect of the game. The wiki and other knowledge bases are evidence of this and there is no shame in having to consult reference documents, especially when some creations get quite complex. Achievements and in game goals are simply an extension of that.

In conclusion, I think there is room for both pure sandbox play and quest style play in minecraft, as long as the quest system is purely optional.

[Elensaar]

I must say I mostly agree with Havok, in that the journey of discovery for new players is quite unique in vMC. This is part of what makes the game so special. Still, I feel that the few subtle pointers given by the achievement system are probably quite useful. It might have been a good idea to maybe not expose the entire achievement tree at once, in stead opening up the next available ones as the prerequisites are gained.

As for BTW I think a similar approach might be good. I think that discovering the techtree is part of the thrill, but well considered achievements could give players that don't quite know where to go with their builds next a helpful pointer without exposing too much.

An ingame collection of already discovered recipes might be a good addition overall - as it's sometimes frustrating to have to look something up i a browser. I think that a complete book of all recipes in the game before they've been made at least once might be going too far. Though recipes that have not been discovered yet found through adventures in dungeons might be a good addition. (As if... ;))

[thepokkanome]

let me just say that some things in minecraft would be almost impossible to stumble upon yourself if you did not know they existed or how to make it, and that especially goes for BTW. a good example would be the waterwheel. the recipe makes perfect sense, but would you really be able to figure it out on your own without a few hints?

yes the discovery aspect of sandbox games is a unique thrill that makes the game truly worth playing. however, without guidance, you would never find everything that can be done in the game.

what i believe though, is that the online minecraft community is the exact kind of guidance the game needed. players have taught other players and ideas have been built upon to get to the point we're at now. i dont believe direction needs to be built directly into the game, whether it be an achievement system or a recipe book (even though it's convenient). the fact is that we could all need some community interaction to be good at minecraft because that's how the game evolves.

also you need internet in order to get minecraft, so internet guides should be just fine.

[Elensaar]

let me just say that some things in minecraft would be almost impossible to stumble upon yourself if you did not know they existed or how to make it, and that especially goes for BTW. a good example would be the waterwheel. the recipe makes perfect sense, but would you really be able to figure it out on your own without a few hints?

yes the discovery aspect of sandbox games is a unique thrill that makes the game truly worth playing. however, without guidance, you would never find everything that can be done in the game.

Very true, to be honest. That's why, for example, achievements that hint at the next step are a good thing, I think. The fact the one of the next available achievements is "build a waterwheel" (to take a, maybe somewhat oversimplified, BTW example) will point players in the right direction. You now know that you can build a waterwheel. The recipe makes sense, as you say, so after some experimentation you will eventually stumble upon the recipe.

I'm also more and more partial to the recipe book. I don't think it will ever appear in Minecraft, but a book of recipes you've discovered, maybe even with the possibility of finding recipes in dungeons, would be a good ingame resource and would maybe feel as less of a break of immersion.

I completely agree with you on the online community. It was an invaluable resource to me when I started playing. I discovered a few recipes on my own, but quite a few of them only came to me after I read about the possibilities that existed. And most of them I needed (and still sometimes need) to look up. After all the possible combinations of stuff in the crafting grid are far too many to just try everything and see what sticks...

[Rasuth]

Thank you all for your answers. I did hope to get more of the long time participants of this thread to post, though.

Anyway, time to wrap things up so far.

Direction via plotline
There are sandbox games, that offer great freedom, but do have an underlying plotline. HavokScout talked about Red Dead Redemption and GTA in that regard. Giving a game a plotline helps chunking the game experience. After reaching some milestone in the game, the player is more inclined to take a break.
I think this helps players to not burn out so fast on these kind of games.

Minecraft on the other hand has a distinct lack of plotline. After surviving the first days/nights it's all about the goals and milestones the players set for themselves. This makes the game very flexible and liberating, but that type of game is not suited for everybody. There are people that need some sort of guidance to not get lost in all the possibilities or expect a game to tell them what to do next.

Direction via instruction
Another thing that minecraft lacks completely are ingame instructions on how the most basic things work. Attacking, placing blocks and the crafting grid are supposed to come naturally, or figured out through trial and error. After that the achievement page at least hints at the ressources needed in some of the recipes. However the players have to discover most things on their own.
This is contrasted by a ton of tutorials on the wiki, youtube, forums and other online ressources. However the disadvantage of these ressources is that they take the players out of the game or "break the immersion".

yes the discovery aspect of sandbox games is a unique thrill that makes the game truly worth playing. however, without guidance, you would never find everything that can be done in the game.

I completely agree with you on the online community. It was an invaluable resource to me when I started playing. I discovered a few recipes on my own, but quite a few of them only came to me after I read about the possibilities that existed. And most of them I needed (and still sometimes need) to look up. After all the possible combinations of stuff in the crafting grid are far too many to just try everything and see what sticks...

This seems to be a general concern, so one common approach to overcome this problem seems to be an ingame recipe book. Whether it should contain all the possible recipes right from the beginning or fill itself as the players discover more and more recipes hasn't been discussed so far, personally I think, people will favor the second approach because:

Yes, knowing how to do something is important, but finding out how to do something from experience, rather than watch someone's Let's Play, is what made minecraft fun.

The exploration, experimentation and the joy of discovery is what draws people into minecraft. Later on the players asks "What did I miss? Is there something else I can do?" I think, that should be the point people have to start to consult ressources that are not part of the game.

Direction via teasers
Achievements tell you what can be done, but not how. This gives the player an incentive to try new recipes. For BTW Flowerchild altered the splash texts, which also tell the players what can be done with different things in the game/mod. But again the players have to discover on their own how to get the needed materials and how to build the contraptions that achieve the set goal.
I think this is a great way to leverage the curiosity of the players to keep them interested in the game.

[empath]

I think the best thing in the aether mod is the random books you can find that offer a tutorial on all the items in the various realms. I think it's a really good system, and I like that you need to find an item before you can find out what you can make with it.

[Damion Rayne]

I thought I'd post up some of my over all feelings after a week really working with the mod.

Now when I started playing with BTW I started playing on a map I had been working on since March this year, I have months worth of bases, exploration, supplies and everything you can imagine built up. So it was easy for me to roll right into it and just start figuring how things worked and what I could do with them.

The major difference between BTW and vM, is that all vM has outside the sandbox in it's "Survival Mode" is a ladder that is very linear, this is why I think a lot of people don't bother exploring for any other reason besides finding new resources to build projects. The game forces you into a straight line in order to get to the end where you can really play. When you really get down to it, this is vM as it stands;

Get Wood > Make Wood Tools
Use Wood Tools to get Stone > Make Stone Tools
Use Stone Tools to get Iron > Make Iron Tools
Use Iron tools to get Redstone/Diamond > Make Redstone stuff, make Diamond Tools
Use Diamond tools to get obsidian > make portal to nether
Explore Nether and gather netherrack, glowstone and soulsand.
End/Repeat

I mean what is this? This is why so many people place on peaceful, so many people play creative. There is no sense of danger, no reason to explore and search for hidden treasure and artifacts. Though some of this is hinted at with 1.8 and I hope Notch redeems himself with it. BTW on the other hand really opens the world, really makes you think and plan and move out from a hole in the ground. It serves to break the repeating nature of a game that prides itself on being a sandbox, a game in that what you put in to it you get back from it. You have to find your own enjoyment and amusement from Miencraft and if you are not even a little creative, or imaginative you wont.

BTW and what FC has done with it really is a game changer, especially with the most recent update to it. I always felt like "What's the point?" when I got to the nether after climbing that ladder. Netherrack burns for ever, cool, so what now? Glowstone is really hard to get for just being a simple light giving block when crafted, now what? Soulsand might help defend your base from monsters and might make cool traps, but what after that? BTW and it's most recent update has answered a lot of those questions. It's made you think about working with very essence of hell itself, it's made you worry about messing things up.

Now as to the main non-nether world, BTW adds things to vM that really breaks the ladder and turns it into a tree full of branches and decisions to make. It forces one to work towards automation, as automation never was a give-in even in the real world. We didn't just create factories out of thin air, we had to discover technologies and act on them to get to that point and BTW symbolizes this.

You have to choose where to put what, what resources to devote to what project and how, and not just live in a little hidy hole. I for one really hope things keep moving forward and FC doesn't run out of ideas and shows us more cool tools and toys to play with.

[Brethern]

Thank you all for your answers. I did hope to get more of the long time participants of this thread to post, though.

Anyway, time to wrap things up so far.

Dircetion via plotline
There are sandbox games, that offer great freedom, but do have an underlying plotline. HavokScout talked about Red Dead Redemption and GTA in that regard. Giving a game a plotline helps chunking the game experience. After reaching some milestone in the game, the player is more inclined to take a break.
I think this helps players to not burn out so fast on these kind of games.

I have to disagree with you there. Red dead and GTA are linear there are only so many ways to do things. To me a better example is TES oblivion. Once you get out of the sewers you know your main quest you know where you have to go.

Do you have to? No, sure you can rush through the game and beat it in 12 hours or you can take the time and level abilities. Find weapons and armor and just explore and complete side quest's. There's also many ways to do things. You can go into a shop and buy an item or you can wait by the shop until no ones around and steal it.

Another good example is Gmod there is no objective and you are limited to your own creativity If you play alone it's to create awesome things. Online you can build and have wars. vM and BTW to me should be a mixture of both. You have a semi objective which is to advance through the ages but you don't have to follow a linear path and you come up with the way that you do it.

[Rasuth]

Thank you all for your answers. I did hope to get more of the long time participants of this thread to post, though.

Anyway, time to wrap things up so far.

Dircetion via plotline
There are sandbox games, that offer great freedom, but do have an underlying plotline. HavokScout talked about Red Dead Redemption and GTA in that regard. Giving a game a plotline helps chunking the game experience. After reaching some milestone in the game, the player is more inclined to take a break.
I think this helps players to not burn out so fast on these kind of games.

I have to disagree with you there. Red dead and GTA are linear there are only so many ways to do things. To me a better example is TES oblivion. Once you get out of the sewers you know your main quest you know where you have to go.

Do you have to? No, sure you can rush through the game and beat it in 12 hours or you can take the time and level abilities. Find weapons and armor and just explore and complete side quest's. There's also many ways to do things. You can go into a shop and buy an item or you can wait by the shop until no ones around and steal it.

Another good example is Gmod there is no objective and you are limited to your own creativity If you play alone it's to create awesome things. Online you can build and have wars. vM and BTW to me should be a mixture of both. You have a semi objective which is to advance through the ages but you don't have to follow a linear path and you come up with the way that you do it.

Thank you for your input Brethern.

While discussing this topic I had to think about TES Oblivion, too. The difference with Oblivion is, that there is an ingame tutorial and only after the players manage to get through it, they are presented with the enourmous amount of possibilities, places, sidequests and whatnot. So yeah, Oblivion offers more freedom than GTA or Red Dead Redemption (I have to admit, I only played Oblivion) but as far as I can tell, players can do whatever they want in everyone of these games.
However without instructions/quests/missions telling players where to go and what to do next they can easily get lost in the game worlds. I think, the discussed games are similar enough to Oblivion in that regard.


The thing is, we didn't define what what exactly makes a game a "sandbox". What is the degree/amount of freedom that has to be offered? This might be a great topic for this thread in the future.

[Brethern]

@Rasuth:
Thanks for replying, I also forgot one very important thing. In the earlier GTA games and Red dead you can't swim. Right there you lose we'll say 25 percent of your freedom.

In terms of a tutorial you're right however Red dead does have a tutorial as does Gmod, GTA uses tool tips for it's tutorial. vM uses achievements and the trial and error method. BTW uses players experience with vM to learn how to play.

With regards to a sandbox game I can only think of one definition. Freedom. I choose what I want to do. Why am I swimming across that ocean? why am I killing bandits? Why am I trying to kill an ogre?

If the answer is why not? then it's a sandbox game. Any game that follows those rules is a sandbox game. However there are amendments, a game can be a sandbox game even if it's a on rails shooter if you have more than two options for getting past a section. For example crysis 2 you are in a city but you have options. The original crysis for the first few hours gave you nearly unlimited options for beating sections.

[Folrig]

BTW: SMP Design Philosophy

You all may have noticed we are approaching vMC 1.8, and along with 1.8 is an increased meshing of vMC SMP (Survivor Multiplayer) and vMC. These events herald the possibility of the SMP version of BTW.

Because BTW SMP is somewhere on our horizon I wonder: Should the BTW Design Philosophy be altered for SMP? Or rather: Should/can BTW evolve to respond to multiple Steve's?

I only wonder because in my experience and observation, in moving from Singleplayer to Multiplayer most MineCraft mods/maps become easier (albeit more fun...for a time). Everything moves more quickly, because resource collection is faster if not easier. Generally:

(# of Player increases) = (Difficulty decreases)

This inverse relationship between difficulty and number of players is seen in many games. I believe that is because the Multiplayer function is often tacked on after the game is completed. Whereas the more successful Multiplayer games are built keeping in mind that several gamers will be interacting with the environment.

So, again: Should/Can BTW Design Philosophy evolve to respond to multiple Steve's? Will it even be an issue?

[diegokilla]

BTW: SMP Design Philosophy

You all may have noticed we are approaching vMC 1.8, and along with 1.8 is an increased meshing of vMC SMP (Survivor Multiplayer) and vMC. These events herald the possibility of the SMP version of BTW.

Because BTW SMP is somewhere on our horizon I wonder: Should the BTW Design Philosophy be altered for SMP? Or rather: Should/can BTW evolve to respond to multiple Steve's?

I only wonder because in my experience and observation, in moving from Singleplayer to Multiplayer most MineCraft mods/maps become easier (albeit more fun...for a time). Everything moves more quickly, because resource collection is faster if not easier. Generally:

(# of Player increases) = (Difficulty decreases)

This inverse relationship between difficulty and number of players is seen in many games. I believe that is because the Multiplayer function is often tacked on after the game is completed. Whereas the more successful Multiplayer games are built keeping in mind that several gamers will be interacting with the environment.

So, again: Should/Can BTW Design Philosophy evolve to respond to multiple Steve's? Will it even be an issue?

I believe the idea and design aspect of BTW realy caters to a multiplayer setting (with small-mid size populations). However, I think you would see players emerge as the "tree farm engineer/guy" who has the best tree farm design, and puts up tree farms for small towns etc. In all honesty though, the idea of BTW in multiplyer really isnt a factor until you can overcome the thecnical hurdle of:
how many servers can handle 50-odd tree farms + 97ish hemp farms + 36 reed farms.... well you get the idea.

[Folrig]

I believe the idea and design aspect of BTW realy caters to a multiplayer setting (with small-mid size populations). However, I think you would see players emerge as the "tree farm engineer/guy" who has the best tree farm design, and puts up tree farms for small towns etc.

That is a very good point! BTW would be interesting to see on a server where the players get a "plot" of land on which to build. Then there is only so much room, and the player would have to decide what resources he most values. Furthermore, someone clever with redstone would have a greater reach vertically along the production line.

In all honesty though, the idea of BTW in multiplyer really isnt a factor until you can overcome the thecnical hurdle of:
how many servers can handle 50-odd tree farms + 97ish hemp farms + 36 reed farms.... well you get the idea.

I wonder what is the limit? Is it really a problem though? Wont time simply take care of hardware limitations?