I’ve lately been prototyping a Mount and Blade meets Minecraft type game. The game will feature multiplayer combat with bow arrow, and various melee weapons. Various game modes including castle sieges, and other typical multiplayer game modes. I know Minecraft clones are frowned upon, but this won’t even be close to a clone - think of it as a FPS in a voxel world.
The video shows some of the early progress
Various random notes:
The graphics are placeholders for the prototype - I obviously won’t be using Minecraft textures
The lighting and voxel stuff is mostly done and works in multiplayer - some optimizatoin is still required
Currently working on the multiplayer map editor - the idea is to be able to produce maps that are hosted on a game server
Some digging/building will be part of the game play strategy, but the focus is on the combat
well I really like your concept it will be more of a pvp then like minecraft is more of just survivel it would be great to help but I dont know what I could model because its all cubes
if you need help for some reason feel free to contact me on skype : leonardarmstead
I think with limiting players resources and forcing them to think precisely about tactics about how they should build a base, weapons, armors, and by providing a timelimit to basebuilding it could be quite effective. So far the concept sounds alright !
I don’t get it, if there’s yet another Slender clone being posted people go balls to the wall crazy. But a Minecraft clone? Hey man no problem! It’s not like these games are more of a clone then Slender games!
I don’t think he was commenting on it being a unique quality, but rather a nice aesthetic touch.
As for the game itself, it looks to be well polished on the elements we’ve seen so far. The concept is a little hazy to me though. Would you mind explaining some more features of the game?
Think if it like a FPS, but with ranged (bow arrow/crossbow/spears), and melee (swords, spears, shields) combat. The melee will be a bit deeper than just hacking at the other guy - there will be direction based blocking with shield as well as blade. Ranged weapons will have deeper mechanics as well.
Pre-built maps, like in a typical FPS, so building a la Minecraft isn’t a big part of the game. The map making tools will be included which will allow user-made maps, as well as modding other aspects of the game.
One of the key game modes will be castle sieges. One team will defend the castle, the other will try to take it over by breaking through defenses and holding a flag for a certain period of time. Breaking through defenses may involve breaking through doors, placing siege ladders, building/moving siege towers to the walls, and so on. Again, the maps will already exist, including the castles - building the castles isn’t part of the game.
A goal is to support games with 80-90 or more players. A castle siege with that many players is quite fun.
If you’ve heard of Mount and Blade, there are a lot of influences from that - but, in a voxel world.
Yes, the lighting is typical Minecraft style lighting - based on propagating sunlight to neighboring voxels with a reduction in strength. This lets the light propagate into caves and overhangs - kind of a grossly simplified radiosity algorithm.
A game mode like this, where you actually do have to build everything within a time limit, would be pretty cool too. I’ll give this a lot of consideration.
This is indeed true, Planetside can attest to that.
I find the “castle siege mode” very intriguing. There are a lot of elements that can go into this to a - separate you from being a Minecraft clone, and b - create an interesting and enjoyable atmosphere. I assume there will be a variety of siege weapons on both the battlefield and the castles, but are you planning on adding any physics to the mix? Crumbling walls would be a very nice touch in a siege environment.
Siege towers, ladders, probably ballista/catapult type weapons. These will probably require some teamwork to operate.
Wall-crumbling physics would have to be visual only. It would be very difficult to have networked physics for that sort of thing. But as long as it didn’t affect game play (i.e. getting crushed or shoved out of the way by a falling block) that sort of thing is certainly possible.
Here’s an updated video. Not a huge amount of visible difference, but a lot of internal changes. Cleaned up the way the terrain is handled to facilitate loading and saving maps. Had to make all that work well with clients so clients can load the appropriate map, and respawn the player and such.
Added the beginnings of a console and implemented a few console commands for listing and loading maps.
Added a simple “climb” mechanic so you don’t have to jump to get to a block 1 unit up - it just climbs up the block instead. Performance improvements when destroying, building, and relighting blocks.
Also added the beginnings of a tool inventory for the level editing. I want users to be able to create new downloadable maps for sharing, so I’m concentrating on making the level editor at this point. It will be a multiplayer editor, so multiple people can work on creating a map at the same time.
I like the concept. I was thinking of doing a very similar game myself. But I decided on another project that isn’t block based. It looks great so far though!
Keep up the good work. I’m excited to see where this will go.
Looks like a very nice concept, but how do you plan that the building/destroying is going to work during gameplay? Unlimited building/destroying will just make the game a big mess and no one will use the siege weapons. One idea is to either have the defending team build on the castle for a short time with unlimited resources during start and/or giving the players a limited amount of resource points that can be used to either place a block or destroy it.
