Home - First Glimpses

[Detritus]

At Flowerchild's bidding I have moved this discussion to a separate thread, where it would be more appropriate.

I created this thread in order to discuss what we think Home will look like. I intend for this to be a serious discussion about it, so if you don't have anything terribly constructive to say, don't say it!

To begin, I will quote myself from the Dev Diary:
[quote= "Detritus"]
Who knows what kind of dark and twisted universe Steve originally inhabited?
From what we've seen so far, it is quite obvious that Steve is an evil being, and so why should he live in a world anything like our own?
The way I envisage Home is nothing like the overworld. I see it as a perpetually dark place, made mostly out of a dark alien substance, with other things interspersed. I really don't think that FC will implement a dimension much like the overworld at all.
[/quote]

Now go minions! Discuss!
(:P)

I also ask that you read the entire thread before posting; we don't want any confusion.

EDIT: I'm a retard, can't manage to make the quotes work :P

[Azdoine]

It's dwarf fortress but with only one dwarf :P

[Detritus]

It's dwarf fortress but with only one dwarf :P

Unlikely :P

[Azdoine]

Yeah, that's for sure... I don't have enough imagination to even concieve of Home at this point.
Probably overthinking it.

[Detritus]

Yeah, that's for sure... I don't have enough imagination to even concieve of Home at this point.
Probably overthinking it.

Well isn't Minecraft as it is now a simplified version of DF with only one Dwarf?

[Kazuya Mishima]

I would speculate that home would not be that dissimilar from the overworld or a natural earth environment with vegetation and caves. FC has put a lot of intellectual labor into creating the foundations for all these low tech systems and while he did say some more high tech solutions in the other thread may be possible i think that is a hint at the topography. I would expect trees and wood and even various types of mammal like fauna to inhabit. FC has said, somewhere, that leather doesn't even have it's intended function yet so I'm figuring we will still collect hides.

I had this weird notion a while back, before this API got delayed again but after the revelation of the tapestries, that Steve's body itself might be a shell or a prison and not the true form of the entity inside. With all the Lovecraftian references here i was thinking steve would come out of that SFS portal looking more like a Ghast than a blocky-humanoid.

[Detritus]

I would speculate that home would not be that dissimilar from the overworld or a natural earth environment with vegetation and caves. FC has put a lot of intellectual labor into creating the foundations for all these low tech systems and while he did say some more high tech solutions in the other thread may be possible i think that is a hint at the topography. I would expect trees and wood and even various types of mammal like fauna to inhabit. FC has said, somewhere, that leather doesn't even have it's intended function yet so I'm figuring we will still collect hides.

I had this weird notion a while back, before this API got delayed again but after the revelation of the tapestries, that Steve's body itself might be a shell or a prison and not the true form of the entity inside. With all the Lovecraftian references here i was thinking steve would come out of that SFS portal looking more like a Ghast than a blocky-humanoid.

Interesting theory... I do believe there will still be different types of vegetation and animals, but I doubt they will take a form that we can recognise.

[haphazardnuke]

Well isn't Minecraft as it is now a simplified version of DF with only one Dwarf?

I suppose it is, if you leave out all the Fun parts of DF. Maybe that's what Home will be like! The Minecraft Overworld, but with added Fun!

Hmm, now that I think about it, wasn't there a discussion on these forums a while back about the idea of altering terrain gen to include more caves below the bedrock layers, in which one would find terrible monsters and great treasure once a way through was found?... not that I'm saying Home will be like that; in fact I expect the 'surface' or entry-level monsters to be fatal too, judging by FC's changes to Endermen.

As for the inhabitants themselves, who can say? FC has shown he draws inspiration from a lot of places. As you pointed out, we'll probably still have cows for leather, but adding in a bunch of animal mobs and plant blocks for aesthetics doesn't seem like FC, so any mobs living in/at/on Home will have a purpose of some kind, even if that purpose is to kill the player :p

[CumuloNimbus10]

I could see Home like the tainted lands from Thaumcraft 2. It would have many more threats and have that darker feel that we find in the Nether. It could also contain most of the vMC materials that are basic building blocks for BTW blocks, but with more added items and blocks to fill out the world to make it visually distinct from the vMC overworld. I'm assuming that we will still have access to the Nether and the End since they contain resources needed for BTW, unless FC has plans to make his own versions of these resources as well.

[Thordan Ssoa]

Yeah, that's for sure... I don't have enough imagination to even concieve of Home at this point.
Probably overthinking it.

Well isn't Minecraft as it is now a simplified version of DF with only one Dwarf?

No. They both have voxel based rendering (though that's a bit more loosely applied in DF), but that's about the end of the similarities. Adventure mode in DF is a roguelike, MC is a sandbox game, and fortress mode is something else entirely.

[Kazuya Mishima]

Interesting theory... I do believe there will still be different types of vegetation and animals, but I doubt they will take a form that we can recognise.

Maybe or they might just be loose interpretations of earth fauna. FC added hemp afterall as a means of generating raw material which is a recognizable species. There was talk somewhere of a plant that only grows in moonlight but dies in sunlight requiring light sensitive regulation and I'm no botanist but i can't think of any earth organism that is useful for industrial or agricultural purposes that requires those conditions. That alone begs for some sort of photosensitive mythical flora.

Still my money would be on somewhat staying grounded in a reality we would recognize while introducing magical elements.

I don't think we will be floating squids that secrete mucous blocks or rip open the fabric of reality into other vanilla overworlds(block id's) and demand testificates sacrifice their children's souls by funnel them into the fissure linking our realms for our survival.

[Chomamonka]

I accually hope that "home" Isn't quite as aweful as you all describe. Don't get me wrong I want it to freaking harsh and difficult! But I always hoped it would be like a Lewis and Clark esque feeling; A dangerous and difficult land, but a beutiful one, one that we can fall in love with. In my mind "home" was a darker, richer, and deeper version of the overworld. Sort of an untamed forest with deep grass and wild knotted trees. A forbodeing forest but filled with all kinds of new life, life that would be really intersting and very very hostile. There would be towering mountains and deep gorges with waterfallls; A place that made you feel insignificant and small but with time you would be able to conquer with machinery forged from the very world you knew nothing about when you began. Thats what I hope to see in "home."

[Chomamonka]

Sorry for the double post but, also, how I envisioned the creatures of this world. For example perhaps FC wants to have wool in "home" well we cant have lame old sheep! So instead we would have big muscled rams with horns. The only way to corral them would be to aggro them and have them chase you into the pen. And the pen couldn't be made out off a lame little fence or the beast would be able break out. Things like that, not animals that you could mindlessly slaughter in a simple machine. But beasts that would have to be tamed out of the wild. vMC animals would basically be the domesticated versions of "Home" animals with there claws taken away and their horns cut off. oh and their brains removed... And just wait till we get to the hostile mobs! Muahahhahah!

[The Lord of Brick]

For my version of home, all you have to do is take a bit of the Nether, invert it, replace lava with some kind of alien sludge, mutate the monsters into something twice as terrifying, multiply that terror by 4 and then add some wierd high-tech machines to top it off.
That is what O think Home looks like.

[ProjectMayhem]

Looking at FlowerChild's taste (from what I've seen), I'm expecting a wasteland actually. It seems obvious that Steve's Home is not going to be full of other Steves, so there's a reason he arrived in Minecraftia (apocalypse? escape? wars?)

I'm expecting more of a Mad Max kinda world - not a complete wasteland because it's going to replace vanilla in a way. Certainly a broken world, with hostile mobs and probably a more desolate, empty feel, which is already present in vanilla I feel, but heightened to emphasize that aspect.

What about remnants of civilization though? I can certainly see FlowerChild including artifacts of civilization, to introduce a scavenger-like mechanic, further echoing the apocalyptic feel and most importantly, allowing for sensible exploration, based on needs. Combined with the lack of F3 and maps (which will certainly carry over), this will feel like being lost on a strange planet, one that used to be home, but now is something else.

Maybe though, that's just what I expect, because I love post-apocalyptic settings like that :). On the other hand, I'm fairly certain he's not going to go for the enchanted fairy woods look, complete with unicorns (has anybody ever made a post-apocalyptic fairy woods game? I'd play that. Mutant unicorns and zombie centaurs for all!)

[Wafflewaffle]

Desolation is not the word i would use for the Home I picture in my mind's eye. I aways saw map generation in mnecraft to be awfully European with only loose interpretations of what jungles and deserts may look like. So imagine with you just appear in a prehistoric (sans dinosaurs) version of Europe and try to live of the land. I dont know about you, but the first thing i do would not be punching trees.

Steve is in Minecraftland due to being banished from his land by some powerful force. His knowledge of simple wood crafting and tool construction and basic fighting skills show that he was some sort of instructed person who has at some point meddle with magic elements (i always think of him as a blocky Gordon Freeman).

To me if he ever go back Home, it will be unrecognizable. His actual home and family would be long gone or not yet be created .The device may send him to the right place, but the wrong time.

[ProjectMayhem]

the first thing i do would not be punching trees.

Always wanted to punch a dinosaur huh? :)
Don't punch the ones in the tall grass

[Stormweaver]

I expect home to look...pretty normal to be honest. Sure; it'll be dark, uncompromising and dangerous...but I fully expect to see fairly normal trees, grass and flowers all over the place too.

All I can say is that I'm crossing my fingers for the byte of metadata. If it works out, we're looking at severe amounts of potential...potential. I doubt flower'll do anything less than a masterpiece for terrain gen, since it's the one thing that is going to be there right from the start.

[Wafflewaffle]

I expect home to look...pretty normal to be honest. Sure; it'll be dark, uncompromising and dangerous...but I fully expect to see fairly normal trees, grass and flowers all over the place too.

All I can say is that I'm crossing my fingers for the byte of metadata. If it works out, we're looking at severe amounts of potential...potential. I doubt flower'll do anything less than a masterpiece for terrain gen, since it's the one thing that is going to be there right from the start.

Its funny right? Terrain gen is the only thing we always knew FC would never mess around with due to potential world breakage. But ironicly he probably always thought about enhancing and localizing certain resources. He mentioned Biome especific farming once, and i think that would be so awesome. Imagine if we had to actually explore to find more valuable resoures other then just dig straight down to bedrock and start from there. Ow man im so pumped! I need to get my shit working in BTW fast!

[Six]

I think it's pretty hard to guess what Home will end up looking like, but we can speculate on a few of the things FC may be wanting to achieve with the terrain generation from things he has complained about in the past. One of the things which springs to mind for me is how there is actually a disincentive to building on a hill, as below the surface vMC terrain is divided into y levels levels for resources. Building a base higher up simply means you need to dig further to find any of the good stuff.

So maybe a more varied resource distribution, with reasons to build mines into hillsides?

<EDIT> Although, now I'm thinking about ProjectMayhem's mention of a post-apocalyptic wasteland, and considering how fun it would be to have most of your resources coming from the 'reconstitution recipes'. So gathering tables and wood stairs, and throwing those in front of your saw to get wood. This is just asking for an addon...

[Sarudak]

Personally I imagine home as being a lot like the overworld except better. More scary and more exciting to explore with more interesting resources to find.

[Elevatator]

I expect placenta at spawn.

[Rianaru]

I expect placenta at spawn.

Why limit it to spawn?

[Thordan Ssoa]

I expect placenta at spawn.

Why limit it to spawn?

Placenta rain?

[Chomamonka]

I really hope that FC does a fantastic terrain generator (We of course can expect nothing less from the true Master of Mincraft)! That is one thing that since 1.8 has bugged the crap out of me. The vanilla terrain generatior really is absolute garbage. The only mods that I have ever enjoyed beside BTW have been terrain genoration mods. With all new blocks made by the man himself whatever "Home" turns out to look like I think we can all agree that it will be a work of art!