It's probably worth mentioning that there are some fairly promising FOSS Minecraft clones out there, but as of yet they fall short of either:
Duplicating all aspects of the Minecraft experience, including polish (not that Minecraft is particularly polished), or
Adding enough to the experience to make them compelling on their own.
There are two clones that I'm keeping an eye on:
Minetest is probably the most well known and widely supported, and has a real mod API and support for a number of mods that are similar to the various industry mods in Minecraft. The texture packs need some work, and (as far as I know, correct me if I'm wrong) it doesn't support 3D models for mobs (only 2d sprites). Also, I think a better name might be in order.
Terasology is a bit newer and minetest and pushing towards defining its own nice with a unique look and gameplay that you can't find in minecraft.
Both of these are free software and built with modding in mind, which is cool.
Sorry, sometimes the spam filter can be overzealous (although unfortunately, right now the alternative is to have so much spam that I can't take care of it at all). In any case, the spam filter shouldn't give you any more trouble, so feel free to post whatever.
Honestly, I'd assumed we'd scared you off with information overload, so I'm glad that's not the case. It can be pretty daunting to get into programming, so feel free to ask questions here if you have any.
Quick question, do you know anything about a company called "Scoreiod"? They're distributing this and some of your other works as part of an art pack, and they're making it appear that you're affiliated with them in some way. If you gave them permission to do that, it's cool, but I wanted to find out.
Just to avoid further confusion when you contact them, we need specifics about the license they're providing them under. "Freely available" is pretty vague. If you can get them to agree to CC0, CC-BY or CC-BY-SA, that would be optimal.
Sorry to be such a pain about this, but open source and indie developers need legal specifics in order to make sure they're not infringing on anyone's copyrights.
Also, I want you know that I appreciate you taking the time to get this information.
That's all I can come up with at the moment. Some of the above are just variations of yours, I think.
Also, a caveat about escort quests: Everyone hates them, particularly in games where they move at a fixed speed and don't stay with the party, then get themselves killed.
I'd definitely aree with that approach, although if we're calling what I'm talking about subquests to differentiate them from beats, I'm not clear on how beats would apply to the story generation algorithm.
When I was thinking about varying the beats in a story, I guess I'm thinking of them more about how a computer would generate steps in an adventure, as opposed to plot points in a story.
Let's pretend to we're randomly generating a plot.
So we start with a big bad, and we decide that he's some sort of evil god who can only be killed with the legendary Mace of Windu. Of course, a thousand years ago, someone with far too much time on their hands split the Mace of Windu up into eleven parts and hid them in dungeons all over the world. So in this case, the goal of the adventure would be to collect those seven parts. Maybe some are in dungeons, maybe some belong to people who want you to go on quests for them, maybe some have fallen into the hands of villains who need to be defeated.
But that's just one story structure. If the big bad is an army or a curse on the hero or something, that structure won't necessarily work. To defeat the army of orcs, you might need to go around and gather allies. To end the curse, maybe you have to explore and try to find out who put it on you and why before you can remove it. That's what I mean about varying the beats -- in the terms I'm thinking of, a "beat" would be a specific game event; going to a dungeon, doing a story quest, or whatever, because that's how it would make most sense for randomly generating a game plot. Beats don't necessarily map to plot points the way writers might think of them.
It's probably worth mentioning that there are some fairly promising FOSS Minecraft clones out there, but as of yet they fall short of either:
There are two clones that I'm keeping an eye on:
Both of these are free software and built with modding in mind, which is cool.
Okay, glad to hear it. Thanks! :)
@RainHippie
Sorry, sometimes the spam filter can be overzealous (although unfortunately, right now the alternative is to have so much spam that I can't take care of it at all). In any case, the spam filter shouldn't give you any more trouble, so feel free to post whatever.
Honestly, I'd assumed we'd scared you off with information overload, so I'm glad that's not the case. It can be pretty daunting to get into programming, so feel free to ask questions here if you have any.
Bart
I think that could work very well, actually. It would certainly feel a lot more coherent than just using them completely at random. :)
Also, one other one I thought of:
Hey Kenney,
Quick question, do you know anything about a company called "Scoreiod"? They're distributing this and some of your other works as part of an art pack, and they're making it appear that you're affiliated with them in some way. If you gave them permission to do that, it's cool, but I wanted to find out.
(Apologies for being off-topic.)
Just to avoid further confusion when you contact them, we need specifics about the license they're providing them under. "Freely available" is pretty vague. If you can get them to agree to CC0, CC-BY or CC-BY-SA, that would be optimal.
Sorry to be such a pain about this, but open source and indie developers need legal specifics in order to make sure they're not infringing on anyone's copyrights.
Also, I want you know that I appreciate you taking the time to get this information.
Thanks!
Bart
That's all I can come up with at the moment. Some of the above are just variations of yours, I think.
Also, a caveat about escort quests: Everyone hates them, particularly in games where they move at a fixed speed and don't stay with the party, then get themselves killed.
I'd definitely aree with that approach, although if we're calling what I'm talking about subquests to differentiate them from beats, I'm not clear on how beats would apply to the story generation algorithm.
@pennomi:
When I was thinking about varying the beats in a story, I guess I'm thinking of them more about how a computer would generate steps in an adventure, as opposed to plot points in a story.
Let's pretend to we're randomly generating a plot.
So we start with a big bad, and we decide that he's some sort of evil god who can only be killed with the legendary Mace of Windu. Of course, a thousand years ago, someone with far too much time on their hands split the Mace of Windu up into eleven parts and hid them in dungeons all over the world. So in this case, the goal of the adventure would be to collect those seven parts. Maybe some are in dungeons, maybe some belong to people who want you to go on quests for them, maybe some have fallen into the hands of villains who need to be defeated.
But that's just one story structure. If the big bad is an army or a curse on the hero or something, that structure won't necessarily work. To defeat the army of orcs, you might need to go around and gather allies. To end the curse, maybe you have to explore and try to find out who put it on you and why before you can remove it. That's what I mean about varying the beats -- in the terms I'm thinking of, a "beat" would be a specific game event; going to a dungeon, doing a story quest, or whatever, because that's how it would make most sense for randomly generating a game plot. Beats don't necessarily map to plot points the way writers might think of them.
Thoughts?
Looks like it's gonna make it. :)
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