Obsoletes Hearts (though the Lore is pretty cool), Diggy Biggy (same) and Kavernz, though having a 2D fixed screens version of this engine or something similar does seem like a generally good idea.
A gigantic cave exploration game. Overlaps significantly with Hearts Wander and Kavernz and probably replaces them both. Also probably replaces Diggy Biggy, I'll just import that content and set up some kind of mmo object placement system for this game.
It isn't infinite (making it mappable seems to be better), but it might as well be since each tile in the grid is a big twisty skein, and the grid goes to the JS integer limit in all directions.
I want to focus on emergent terrain prototypes rather than handcrafted content, as that would get very boring very quickly. This should be a game you could explore forever, literally. I'm not quite sure how to do that with text layouts yet but I'll find a way.
I want to build this game incrementally, just create content for it as I explore it, with a closed game saving feature. This is gonna change the terrain as I work on but w/e the game is infinite anyway.
Real-time hunger, thirst and tiredness. You can however set up a stockpile of food, water and a bed for automatic use of these systems while you're gone IRL.
Shelter, via Tents and Campfires. A lot goes through the Campfire endpoint.
Boredom is definitely a thing. You can bring in free ebooks on caverns or infinity via some mechanic, and reading a page or so allows you to bypass the boredom stat. Or maybe you can read up to 10 pages per real-time day or something, idk. Idk if these are in-game finds or you can bring stuff from the gutenberg game or whatever. It honestly makes sense to just integrate the gutenberg library into this game and the fishing game.
The crafting system ties into essential stuff you have to do (like boil dirty water), however you also get to name whatever you're making, which changes its properties in a procgen way based on the name.
Usable Items will definitely wear out. Organic items will also rot pretty realistically.
You have an upradeable item known as an Apparatus that will store a limited number of items for you. Also things like Tents which are pretty essential for shelter. Items are stacked and you can definitely condense them in various ways for things like Ores, which you need to always carry large stacks of around with you.
Dying breaks all your usable items and rots your organic items. It also teleports you somewhere else completely random in the caverns. You still keep mineral stacks and apparatus functions however.
The world is separated into cubes in a 3d grid. Your 3d coordinate is indicated somewhere so the space can be accurately mapped. Cubes can have 2-6 exits, and the charm algorithm is used to link grid exits together (so like a cube with a top exit will look up for the closest down exit and will be linked to it, unless it passes another top exit on the way in which case it'll look for the top exit after that, etc).
These exit passageways can potentially be pretty long, and will therefore offer content dependent on their length. They should be known in-game as Tunnels.
Cube Layout
Cubes are divided into "Rooms" and "Passages". Each cube generates some number of rooms, connects them together via passageways and some algorithm (varies depending on the cube), and then makes additional connections. From there, passageways with different endpoints can intersect each other depending on some variable therein. None of this has to actually be modeled in 3d or make any kind of sense.
Rooms can contain subrooms, and passages can contain subpassages, which will go to small off-grid rooms. Passages can be "blocked" by various obstacles -- the origin has 6 exits and nothing is blocked but beyond that it varies. The amount of subrooms and subpassages varies depending on the seed.
Various terrain tags are generated at some room (again, based on the seed and its preferences) and can trace paths to other rooms via these layouts. Alterations can then also happen, like a strengthening of a particular terrain feature (like water). Or ore veins presumably.
Anything within a room or passageway is assigned to some kind of grid with various modes of access to the different parts like how the combat engine works. This makes each room potentially itself a vast space depending on what's in it.
Rooms can contain plants, in which case they'll also contain a huge light source in the ceiling. This can vary -- phosphorescent mushrooms, glowing crystals, exposed magma. The source can also vary, like maybe it's in a column or ruined tower or something. Plants are pretty essential to survival in various ways.
Passageways (and especially tunnels) are usually dark -- this requires using consumable torches to explore them. If you run out of fuel you can find your way back out to where you came from, but it takes a good bit of real-time.
This isn't purely a singleplayer game, however the size of it is so large it might as well be.
To spread players out a bit the starting area is the Room of Orbs -- a skeined collection that spreads players waaaaay out into the caves. You can bring an orb with you -- you can't do this with the ones near 0,0,0 but it allows you to effectively prevent players from following you. Orbs can also be exported/sold/etc in the hub world since they're just items. The cave-at (heh) is you can only own one orb at a time per account period -- buying other orbs also won't work.
If you die, you respawn in the Room of Orbs. I think your items should suffer some fate too but not as bad as in the current version of my Notes.
Changes are saved to a single database, which I realized actually cuts down on the amount of space. This includes Cybern kills -- when the amount of data of kills is high enough it'll instead change to a database of aliveds (and might change their behavior as well).
Players can place monuments with the system described in Diggy Biggy -- this game has basically absorbed that project in its entirety.
Items can be exported to and imported from the hub world, which allows base building with them, and buying/selling/trading/leasing/renting. Since there's a single seed this is probably important. However you can't use this as an alternate storage system -- exports happen from within the apparatus and as long as you own the item in some capacity it still takes up a slot therein. You can however export them permanently (with a lot of confirmation), which prevents them from ever going back into this game, but allows you to gather items in this game to use elsewhere.
This one is a bit different because I want to release it ASAP and then build things out incrementally over time -- it probably won't ever be finished.
Get the grid/exit/charm system in place.
The room of orbs that allows passage within that space.
Build out the basic skein -- rooms and passages.
Subrooms, room gridding, subpassages and the coordinate system.
Some rooms have exits, which tie it back into the universe grid system.
The items system -- no limits, just basic inventory stuff. Needs to be mmo-formatted from the outset however.
Distribute ores -- no content yet, just a basic thing.
Emergent ore content, passageway blocks, and the key/door aspect of this to make things a bit more interesting. Again, focus on mmo ajax clarity for picking ores up.
This will enter the project into its next phase:
Start building out the content/item/crafting/survival systems. These are all kinda a big complex of content that aren't really separable until checklisted. I want fishing, hunting/trapping, hunger, thirst, cold and heat, sleeping, boredom, comfort, etc. Needs to be pretty robust.
Combat and Cyberns, and Cybern limiting.
Bosses, and the puzzle mechanic therein. Will defo need the combat engine for this, which needs to get done anyway.
Death mechanics and item limiting / apparatus stuff.
MMO stuff such as monuments. Maybe clearing cyberns out lets you alter the rooms and create portals to other cleared rooms via Seer Stones or w/e. I had an idea also for magnetite nodes and allowing you to wire connected rooms, with those that have electricity having special building properties.
Golden orbs / orb systems.
Scanning systems for sanity. Will require robust Journaling, which should also be done at this point.
The overall game goal -- the thing where you put golden orbs into a receptacle and whoever puts the most in within a month gets a medal (but the orbs are removed regardless, so this makes things a bit more interesting). Idk maybe it makes sense to see how many orbs other players are putting in so it's not just guesswork. And then like you can hold onto orbs. Idk how any of this works just yet -- I want to make it competitive, but not retarded.
sections that have been "cleared out" can open up arbitrary links to other sections of the cavern, if they're also cleared out those areas will be two-way.
otherwise see my improved notes on the hub project.
