When it comes to aesthetics, I'll often work really productively for several days straight, then burn out and not work on anything for a little bit. Sometimes that break is a couple of days and sometimes it's a month or two, but 90% of the time it's about a week.
To me, placing loot and spawners is really repetitive, so that's what burns me out the most. My alpha testing is also going pretty slowly; I enjoy playing through The Painter (I'd be concerned if I didn't), but to be honest I've just gotten sick of it at this point. I'm really motivated to start on map 2, but I can't do that until I finish map 1, which I'm not motivated at all to do.
When I'm in a period of burnout or just taking a break, I usually play on random minigame servers (PlayMindcrack, Hive, Shotbow, Mineplex, etc), load up other CTM/parkour maps to play, or play other games if I'm in the mood. And then there's real life stuff as well; in particular, I've been busy for the past three and a half weeks because of the start of the marching band season.
I'm working on my "first" ctm map (although I've started and scrapped maybe 10+ concepts before). I haven't gotten past the starting area, infact, I've just laid down the foundation so far. I have a cool idea, and I'm currently inspired to work on it, but I suspect that my inspiration will fade. Hopefully I'll be able to finish this first area, and then come up with another cool, inspiring idea; inspiring enough to get me through that area too. I just have to repeat that 16 times for all the wool blocks, and I'll have a complete CTM map.
I'm thinking it'll be a rom-hack difficulty map. Inspired by Vechs' Nightmare Realms, maybe? Ghasts in the starting area, maybe?
Pic looks cool.
About the rom-hack hard map, BE CAREFUL. Making a hard map fair is way harder then making a hard map garbage. You NEED to make sure it's hard, but in a fun way. Don't overflow the player with mobs and just say "yeah, it's hard". That isn't difficult, that gives now gameplay. Make sure it's difficult, not punishing and annoying.
Make sure it's difficult, not punishing and annoying.
*cue lightbulb
d-d-d-Double c-c-c-Community Question:
What do you think should be the punishment for death/what do you think should be the thing that'll make the player not want to die/ what do you think the player should need to do if he dies?
Side note: let's for the sake of this question pretend he didn't get his stuff back.
d-d-d-Double c-c-c-Community Question:
What do you think should be the punishment for death/what do you think should be the thing that'll make the player not want to die/ what do you think the player should need to do if he dies?
Side note: let's for the sake of this question pretend he didn't get his stuff back.
punishment for dead should be losing your inventory. The thing that makes the player stubborn to die (terminology yee) is that he needs to get back to the place, and gear up again. Whenever the player dies, he has to take the area on with less resources.
Honestly, it's not the dying that does it. Dieing and making the area harder isn't the point. The game plays before the adventure starts, when you gear up. What do you take with you, and what do you leave behind since you don't want to leave it.
I'm more a fan of positive inventory management, where you need to think about what to take with you, instead of what to leave behind since you can only carry 36 items. Having your entire inventory filled up should be just as punishing as going with nothing. It's a bad choice. Players need to balance their inventory to match the areas difficulty and chance of destruction of drops.
d-d-d-Double c-c-c-Community Question:
What do you think should be the punishment for death/what do you think should be the thing that'll make the player not want to die/ what do you think the player should need to do if he dies?
Side note: let's for the sake of this question pretend he didn't get his stuff back.
What do you mean by making the player not want to die? I mean the player already doesn't want to die and he already loses his items.
What do you mean by making the player not want to die? I mean the player already doesn't want to die and he already loses his items.
Infinity is referring to the "penalty to improve", I think. And that's actually not really necessary, As you say, players already don't want to die, and losing your items isn't a penalty to say "Hey you! You failed. Don't do that again, or you will eventually have no stuff left". That IS NOT necessary. You do NOT need to tell players not to die. Losing your inventory has nothing to do with that, and isn't really the purpose of it (although it is in the vanilla game, but that's another discussion).
As said, losing your inventory has to do with gearing up. I'd love to let players keep their inventory to try again, while still keeping the gearing up gameplay, but haven't found a way to yet. Unlike most MMO's or RPG's tell, you don't need to punish players for dieing. It's basically like long iteration cycles, unless you want to bully your player, there's no reason.
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Okay let me clarify a few things: I did intend with that question what Rubisk said, but furthermore, I intended for it to ask also this: how should the player deal with things after death? Should we make it be so it's super easy to re-gear, should we make it be so you'll only have decent gear that isn't like your previous gear but you can use it and keep yourself alive, etc.
To give a better example of this, let me say my answer to this question: I think how it should be is that the player has enough xp bottles and decent gear so he'll be able to die a few times in a row, but not enough to do constant death runs with them. I want the player to have space for mistakes, so after death, he may rage a bit but not need to go grind for forty days and forty nights to get gear at the same level the gear he had before was. This is actually one of the reasons I like MH so much: (nearly) everything is renewable, so dying will at most only set you at most a bit back with your gear level, because there'll nearly always be a good set of gear that's obtainable from mobs/trading what the mobs drop/ using the mobs drops to acquire it.
What I think you could is maybe give them some basic gear after death, and if possible teleport all of their items into some small area that provides a challenge to get their stuff back.
Okay let me clarify a few things: I did intend with that question what Rubisk said, but furthermore, I intended for it to ask also this: how should the player deal with things after death? Should we make it be so it's super easy to re-gear, should we make it be so you'll only have decent gear that isn't like your previous gear but you can use it and keep yourself alive, etc.
To give a better example of this, let me say my answer to this question: I think how it should be is that the player has enough xp bottles and decent gear so he'll be able to die a few times in a row, but not enough to do constant death runs with them. I want the player to have space for mistakes, so after death, he may rage a bit but not need to go grind for forty days and forty nights to get gear at the same level the gear he had before was. This is actually one of the reasons I like MH so much: (nearly) everything is renewable, so dying will at most only set you at most a bit back with your gear level, because there'll nearly always be a good set of gear that's obtainable from mobs/trading what the mobs drop/ using the mobs drops to acquire it.
Even if the gear *is* renewable, you still have to grind the mobs to get it. Most maps, you can get loot from loot chests, and grind a little if you really want more gear. The reason I dislike MH as a concept is that most of the time, the whole point of the map is that you *have* to get your gear from the mobs. What you have to do to make sure your MH map is good is to make it involve little to no grinding. And I don't really see any good ways to do that. I would love to see you prove me wrong, though.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Mapmaker and LPer of Complete The Monument (CTM) maps.
Creator/owner of the CTM Community Mapping Server - ask about it on the CTM Community thread!
Current projects:
Thanatos - a subterranean semi-open-world urban CTM
Titan's Revolt - a collaborative project run by ProjectCTM; sequel to Pantheon
Pinnacle - a "sketch" mini-CTM intended for newer players (nearing completion!)
What I think you could is maybe give them some basic gear after death, and if possible teleport all of their items into some small area that provides a challenge to get their stuff back.
Unfortunately the Go to first unread button has been swallowed up in the update. It's on the list of things to be fixed apparently, but until then the update is in fact less functional. (unless a plethora of new features have been added that I just missed)
No, the functionality exists again. Just add /unread to the end of your URL.
Yes it is Use /execute to detect a player with 0 health combined with a tp @e with a small radius => will tp the items wherever you want... I'mma use that now- thanks!
Or you just teleport all the players with the correct cooldown whenever you detect a player with 0 HP. That will teleport any fallen items too ;-)
Anyways.
My thoughts on renewable, unlimited, resources, inventory management and stuff
(I should really just put out word documents for these T_T)
Renewable never equals disposable. Disposable is stuff like cobblestone in vanilla, or zombie flesh. This is the stuff you can throw into lava pits forever and still have plenty. That isn't true with renewable stuff.
Now, there are 2 types of renewable, and I'd like to feature them both. Type 1 is the easiest, it's farmable in a safe matter. This is where taking a 20 comes in. You can get plenty of it, as long as you stick time in it. Now, here's the point. Because you spend time gathering the stuff, you're going to be careful with it. It's kinda a way to tell through mechanics that those resources are available unlimitedly, but you shouldn't waste them. If you encounter 1 zombie, and only got 20 arrows, you're more likely to kill him with a sword, even though it would be safer to shoot him. Why? Because, you need to farm skeletons again after you shot him. And you'd like to conserve your resources. It isn't unlimited, and shouldn't be either. Giving a player a double chest of leather is totally different from giving them 2 cows and seeds. With the doublechest, you can instantly make a suit of leather anytime, taking on punishing or loot-heavy areas with full leather all the time. With 2 cows and seeds, you're... less likely too.
And than there's the second type of renewable, the monster-hunter type. This is very, very interesting, because you basically allow for players to fall back all the way to the start, and have to start climbing slowly. Basically, you need Tier I resources to be able to "safely" gather Tier II resources. And you need those to get the better stuff, etc. This features great inventory management. If you take all your stuff with you, you're very likely to lose it and be set back a tier. That makes for amazing design and gameplay.
However, mapmakers have to be careful with this type of renewability. You must make sure that there is an intrinsic reward, and not only the Tier-ladder. If the combat ITSELF isn't fun, if there is no engagement in killing the mobs you need to kill, the map will fail. Monster hunter maps (afaik) have a harder time using exploration as intrinsic reward, so they kinda need interesting combat. And that's tough too pull off.
Dieing with none-renewable resources is a totally different story though. Maps should never be designed using only non-renewable resources. They should intent on player betting the resources, and sometimes losing. If the player bets right, and beats the area using just what they need, they'll eventually save up a giant stockpile of resources. However, if the player always takes the best stuff he gots, he's going to get a harder time throughout the map. If he always takes the worst stuff, he eventually might run out of resources that are renewable, not disposable, and find that it might be a better idea to get some decent gear so he doesn't have to farm charcoal all the darn time.
Or you just teleport all the players with the correct cooldown whenever you detect a player with 0 HP. That will teleport any fallen items too ;-)
Anyways.
My thoughts on renewable, unlimited, resources, inventory management and stuff
(I should really just put out word documents for these T_T)
Renewable never equals disposable. Disposable is stuff like cobblestone in vanilla, or zombie flesh. This is the stuff you can throw into lava pits forever and still have plenty. That isn't true with renewable stuff.
Now, there are 2 types of renewable, and I'd like to feature them both. Type 1 is the easiest, it's farmable in a safe matter. This is where taking a 20 comes in. You can get plenty of it, as long as you stick time in it. Now, here's the point. Because you spend time gathering the stuff, you're going to be careful with it. It's kinda a way to tell through mechanics that those resources are available unlimitedly, but you shouldn't waste them. If you encounter 1 zombie, and only got 20 arrows, you're more likely to kill him with a sword, even though it would be safer to shoot him. Why? Because, you need to farm skeletons again after you shot him. And you'd like to conserve your resources. It isn't unlimited, and shouldn't be either. Giving a player a double chest of leather is totally different from giving them 2 cows and seeds. With the doublechest, you can instantly make a suit of leather anytime, taking on punishing or loot-heavy areas with full leather all the time. With 2 cows and seeds, you're... less likely too.
And than there's the second type of renewable, the monster-hunter type. This is very, very interesting, because you basically allow for players to fall back all the way to the start, and have to start climbing slowly. Basically, you need Tier I resources to be able to "safely" gather Tier II resources. And you need those to get the better stuff, etc. This features great inventory management. If you take all your stuff with you, you're very likely to lose it and be set back a tier. That makes for amazing design and gameplay.
However, mapmakers have to be careful with this type of renewability. You must make sure that there is an intrinsic reward, and not only the Tier-ladder. If the combat ITSELF isn't fun, if there is no engagement in killing the mobs you need to kill, the map will fail. Monster hunter maps (afaik) have a harder time using exploration as intrinsic reward, so they kinda need interesting combat. And that's tough too pull off.
Dieing with none-renewable resources is a totally different story though. Maps should never be designed using only non-renewable resources. They should intent on player betting the resources, and sometimes losing. If the player bets right, and beats the area using just what they need, they'll eventually save up a giant stockpile of resources. However, if the player always takes the best stuff he gots, he's going to get a harder time throughout the map. If he always takes the worst stuff, he eventually might run out of resources that are renewable, not disposable, and find that it might be a better idea to get some decent gear so he doesn't have to farm charcoal all the darn time.
Ok, Done. Go use it please. And please read it <3
Really good ideas, I actually made a few mobs that have a percent chance to drop leather or sticks and over time at the start of the map you'll gather leather while fighting zombies so the more you kill the better equipped you'll become.
Even if the gear *is* renewable, you still have to grind the mobs to get it. Most maps, you can get loot from loot chests, and grind a little if you really want more gear. The reason I dislike MH as a concept is that most of the time, the whole point of the map is that you *have* to get your gear from the mobs. What you have to do to make sure your MH map is good is to make it involve little to no grinding. And I don't really see any good ways to do that. I would love to see you prove me wrong, though.
Alrighty then. Let me explain what exactly I had in mind for all this: what I'm trying to make this be like is that it'll be more exploration based, and the more you explore, the more loot you'll get. Furthermore, I'm trying to be decently generous with loot and mob drops and whatnot, so it'll be more of a thing like that you go through an area and get your gear from chests and other things that I put loot in, and beyond that, you get gear and other drops from mobs, and you can use these drops to trade with villagers to get more gear. With this, I try and put a higher emphasis on exploration than on grinding, as you can get your gear either from exploration or from grinding, and just the mobs you kill while exploring will give you enough loot to buy a decent bit of gear.
But now you may be asking "But Infinity, what if I miss a villager?".
This is where the monument area comes into play. In the monument area, there'll be a trading hub within which there'll be villagers of past area's. These villagers will have all the trades except for certain special trades (mostly Quest trades probably is what they won't have).
But now you may be asking "But Infinity, what if I don't explore much, which will make me not kill a lot of mobs and not get a lot of the chests?".
On one hand, it's partly your fault, because this is a pseudo-open world map. On the other hand, not exploring much doesn't necessarily mean not killing mobs or getting a lot of the chests. If for example you went through the second area and tried to go straight to the boss fight, you'd encounter at least about 5 structures along the way, which would have the 3 main mobs of the area and a few loot chests, so basically, as long as you don't chicken out and you do things properly, there should be no problem (except for the fact that it may be a tad short).
Basically, trying to be generous and having a good balance of loot chests and mobs combined with trading can help ease if not fully get rid of that problem.
I can do terraforming and building, but items and mobs are my weak spot; What filters/mods should I use to create custom mobs (with the ability to assign custom drops to mobs and custom titles and descriptions to items)? I don't use Minecraft Forge, and I most likely won't so any mods that require that are a no-no.
tl;dr What mods/filters should I use to create custom mobs and items? NO forge mods.
Or you just teleport all the players with the correct cooldown whenever you detect a player with 0 HP. That will teleport any fallen items too ;-)
Anyways.
My thoughts on renewable, unlimited, resources, inventory management and stuff
(I should really just put out word documents for these T_T)
Renewable never equals disposable. Disposable is stuff like cobblestone in vanilla, or zombie flesh. This is the stuff you can throw into lava pits forever and still have plenty. That isn't true with renewable stuff.
Now, there are 2 types of renewable, and I'd like to feature them both. Type 1 is the easiest, it's farmable in a safe matter. This is where taking a 20 comes in. You can get plenty of it, as long as you stick time in it. Now, here's the point. Because you spend time gathering the stuff, you're going to be careful with it. It's kinda a way to tell through mechanics that those resources are available unlimitedly, but you shouldn't waste them. If you encounter 1 zombie, and only got 20 arrows, you're more likely to kill him with a sword, even though it would be safer to shoot him. Why? Because, you need to farm skeletons again after you shot him. And you'd like to conserve your resources. It isn't unlimited, and shouldn't be either. Giving a player a double chest of leather is totally different from giving them 2 cows and seeds. With the doublechest, you can instantly make a suit of leather anytime, taking on punishing or loot-heavy areas with full leather all the time. With 2 cows and seeds, you're... less likely too.
And than there's the second type of renewable, the monster-hunter type. This is very, very interesting, because you basically allow for players to fall back all the way to the start, and have to start climbing slowly. Basically, you need Tier I resources to be able to "safely" gather Tier II resources. And you need those to get the better stuff, etc. This features great inventory management. If you take all your stuff with you, you're very likely to lose it and be set back a tier. That makes for amazing design and gameplay.
However, mapmakers have to be careful with this type of renewability. You must make sure that there is an intrinsic reward, and not only the Tier-ladder. If the combat ITSELF isn't fun, if there is no engagement in killing the mobs you need to kill, the map will fail. Monster hunter maps (afaik) have a harder time using exploration as intrinsic reward, so they kinda need interesting combat. And that's tough too pull off.
Dieing with none-renewable resources is a totally different story though. Maps should never be designed using only non-renewable resources. They should intent on player betting the resources, and sometimes losing. If the player bets right, and beats the area using just what they need, they'll eventually save up a giant stockpile of resources. However, if the player always takes the best stuff he gots, he's going to get a harder time throughout the map. If he always takes the worst stuff, he eventually might run out of resources that are renewable, not disposable, and find that it might be a better idea to get some decent gear so he doesn't have to farm charcoal all the darn time.
Ok, Done. Go use it please. And please read it <3
Extremely helpful and well written. Also the mention of intrinsic rewards means you either do your research into your terminologies or you watched that episode of Extra Credits. Either way, cheers! <3
You have to admit, though, that using an NBT editor is a lot harder than using some of the simpler tools around. Heck, even I don't have most of the NBT tags memorized. That would be difficult.
Also, why does it seem like every monster hunter map ever is some variety of open world? What is wrong with a traditional cave map where all your resources come from mobs? I feel like too often, open world MH maps suffer from BD2 syndrome. Vast, somewhat barren landscapes without anything interesting to do but fight the custom mobs. Not saying your map is going to be anything like that, Infinity, but that seems to have been the pattern.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Mapmaker and LPer of Complete The Monument (CTM) maps.
Creator/owner of the CTM Community Mapping Server - ask about it on the CTM Community thread!
Current projects:
Thanatos - a subterranean semi-open-world urban CTM
Titan's Revolt - a collaborative project run by ProjectCTM; sequel to Pantheon
Pinnacle - a "sketch" mini-CTM intended for newer players (nearing completion!)
Even if the gear *is* renewable, you still have to grind the mobs to get it. Most maps, you can get loot from loot chests, and grind a little if you really want more gear. The reason I dislike MH as a concept is that most of the time, the whole point of the map is that you *have* to get your gear from the mobs. What you have to do to make sure your MH map is good is to make it involve little to no grinding. And I don't really see any good ways to do that. I would love to see you prove me wrong, though.
Arachnapocalypse did a decent job with experimenting with that concept. The core set of gear you needed for the map you could get from loot chest, however you could use the loot drops off enemies to trade with the traders for better gear. Additionally you could get most of the useful resources you needed such as coal, wood and cobblestone from mob drops as you were going so you weren't required to sit around mining or chopping down trees.
Obviously it was more of an experimental concept with the no natural spawns, but I'd say the idea is there.
ohai lots of mobs, MH, and gameplay discussion... very good thx, I wanna make sure to do those things right this time... In other news, dancing armor stand nonsense should make a monument area pretty funny. Maybe they start dancing or jumping after you complete the monument or something... I can't decide how crazy I want the congratulations to be at the end though... Fireworks, big letters in the sky, particles everywhere, text spam, 50 flaming supercharged creepers that have 26 minute fuses... should be pretty hilarious
ohai lots of mobs, MH, and gameplay discussion... very good thx, I wanna make sure to do those things right this time... In other news, dancing armor stand nonsense should make a monument area pretty funny. Maybe they start dancing or jumping after you complete the monument or something... I can't decide how crazy I want the congratulations to be at the end though... Fireworks, big letters in the sky, particles everywhere, text spam, 50 flaming supercharged creepers that have 26 minute fuses... should be pretty hilarious
I just had visions of a monument where, when completed, the wools all start jumping around. Relatedly, I just had the most trolly idea ever: Once a couple of wools are placed, then every time the player leaves a certain area around the monument, the wools' positions are switched. I bet some people wouldn't even notice. Minor differences can be the most irritating things to the people who notice them, though.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Mapmaker and LPer of Complete The Monument (CTM) maps.
Creator/owner of the CTM Community Mapping Server - ask about it on the CTM Community thread!
Current projects:
Thanatos - a subterranean semi-open-world urban CTM
Titan's Revolt - a collaborative project run by ProjectCTM; sequel to Pantheon
Pinnacle - a "sketch" mini-CTM intended for newer players (nearing completion!)
When it comes to aesthetics, I'll often work really productively for several days straight, then burn out and not work on anything for a little bit. Sometimes that break is a couple of days and sometimes it's a month or two, but 90% of the time it's about a week.
To me, placing loot and spawners is really repetitive, so that's what burns me out the most. My alpha testing is also going pretty slowly; I enjoy playing through The Painter (I'd be concerned if I didn't), but to be honest I've just gotten sick of it at this point. I'm really motivated to start on map 2, but I can't do that until I finish map 1, which I'm not motivated at all to do.
When I'm in a period of burnout or just taking a break, I usually play on random minigame servers (PlayMindcrack, Hive, Shotbow, Mineplex, etc), load up other CTM/parkour maps to play, or play other games if I'm in the mood. And then there's real life stuff as well; in particular, I've been busy for the past three and a half weeks because of the start of the marching band season.
Pic looks cool.
About the rom-hack hard map, BE CAREFUL. Making a hard map fair is way harder then making a hard map garbage. You NEED to make sure it's hard, but in a fun way. Don't overflow the player with mobs and just say "yeah, it's hard". That isn't difficult, that gives now gameplay. Make sure it's difficult, not punishing and annoying.
d-d-d-double p-p-p-p-page get.
*cue lightbulb
d-d-d-Double c-c-c-Community Question:
What do you think should be the punishment for death/what do you think should be the thing that'll make the player not want to die/ what do you think the player should need to do if he dies?
Side note: let's for the sake of this question pretend he didn't get his stuff back.
punishment for dead should be losing your inventory. The thing that makes the player stubborn to die (terminology yee) is that he needs to get back to the place, and gear up again. Whenever the player dies, he has to take the area on with less resources.
Honestly, it's not the dying that does it. Dieing and making the area harder isn't the point. The game plays before the adventure starts, when you gear up. What do you take with you, and what do you leave behind since you don't want to leave it.
I'm more a fan of positive inventory management, where you need to think about what to take with you, instead of what to leave behind since you can only carry 36 items. Having your entire inventory filled up should be just as punishing as going with nothing. It's a bad choice. Players need to balance their inventory to match the areas difficulty and chance of destruction of drops.
What do you mean by making the player not want to die? I mean the player already doesn't want to die and he already loses his items.
Infinity is referring to the "penalty to improve", I think. And that's actually not really necessary, As you say, players already don't want to die, and losing your items isn't a penalty to say "Hey you! You failed. Don't do that again, or you will eventually have no stuff left". That IS NOT necessary. You do NOT need to tell players not to die. Losing your inventory has nothing to do with that, and isn't really the purpose of it (although it is in the vanilla game, but that's another discussion).
As said, losing your inventory has to do with gearing up. I'd love to let players keep their inventory to try again, while still keeping the gearing up gameplay, but haven't found a way to yet. Unlike most MMO's or RPG's tell, you don't need to punish players for dieing. It's basically like long iteration cycles, unless you want to bully your player, there's no reason.
And I'll link a video for more information.
To give a better example of this, let me say my answer to this question: I think how it should be is that the player has enough xp bottles and decent gear so he'll be able to die a few times in a row, but not enough to do constant death runs with them. I want the player to have space for mistakes, so after death, he may rage a bit but not need to go grind for forty days and forty nights to get gear at the same level the gear he had before was. This is actually one of the reasons I like MH so much: (nearly) everything is renewable, so dying will at most only set you at most a bit back with your gear level, because there'll nearly always be a good set of gear that's obtainable from mobs/trading what the mobs drop/ using the mobs drops to acquire it.
Even if the gear *is* renewable, you still have to grind the mobs to get it. Most maps, you can get loot from loot chests, and grind a little if you really want more gear. The reason I dislike MH as a concept is that most of the time, the whole point of the map is that you *have* to get your gear from the mobs. What you have to do to make sure your MH map is good is to make it involve little to no grinding. And I don't really see any good ways to do that. I would love to see you prove me wrong, though.
i dont think that second part is even possible
No, the functionality exists again. Just add /unread to the end of your URL.
Or you just teleport all the players with the correct cooldown whenever you detect a player with 0 HP. That will teleport any fallen items too ;-)
Anyways.
My thoughts on renewable, unlimited, resources, inventory management and stuff
(I should really just put out word documents for these T_T)
Renewable never equals disposable. Disposable is stuff like cobblestone in vanilla, or zombie flesh. This is the stuff you can throw into lava pits forever and still have plenty. That isn't true with renewable stuff.
Now, there are 2 types of renewable, and I'd like to feature them both. Type 1 is the easiest, it's farmable in a safe matter. This is where taking a 20 comes in. You can get plenty of it, as long as you stick time in it. Now, here's the point. Because you spend time gathering the stuff, you're going to be careful with it. It's kinda a way to tell through mechanics that those resources are available unlimitedly, but you shouldn't waste them. If you encounter 1 zombie, and only got 20 arrows, you're more likely to kill him with a sword, even though it would be safer to shoot him. Why? Because, you need to farm skeletons again after you shot him. And you'd like to conserve your resources. It isn't unlimited, and shouldn't be either. Giving a player a double chest of leather is totally different from giving them 2 cows and seeds. With the doublechest, you can instantly make a suit of leather anytime, taking on punishing or loot-heavy areas with full leather all the time. With 2 cows and seeds, you're... less likely too.
And than there's the second type of renewable, the monster-hunter type. This is very, very interesting, because you basically allow for players to fall back all the way to the start, and have to start climbing slowly. Basically, you need Tier I resources to be able to "safely" gather Tier II resources. And you need those to get the better stuff, etc. This features great inventory management. If you take all your stuff with you, you're very likely to lose it and be set back a tier. That makes for amazing design and gameplay.
However, mapmakers have to be careful with this type of renewability. You must make sure that there is an intrinsic reward, and not only the Tier-ladder. If the combat ITSELF isn't fun, if there is no engagement in killing the mobs you need to kill, the map will fail. Monster hunter maps (afaik) have a harder time using exploration as intrinsic reward, so they kinda need interesting combat. And that's tough too pull off.
Dieing with none-renewable resources is a totally different story though. Maps should never be designed using only non-renewable resources. They should intent on player betting the resources, and sometimes losing. If the player bets right, and beats the area using just what they need, they'll eventually save up a giant stockpile of resources. However, if the player always takes the best stuff he gots, he's going to get a harder time throughout the map. If he always takes the worst stuff, he eventually might run out of resources that are renewable, not disposable, and find that it might be a better idea to get some decent gear so he doesn't have to farm charcoal all the darn time.
Ok, Done. Go use it please. And please read it <3
Really good ideas, I actually made a few mobs that have a percent chance to drop leather or sticks and over time at the start of the map you'll gather leather while fighting zombies so the more you kill the better equipped you'll become.
Alrighty then. Let me explain what exactly I had in mind for all this: what I'm trying to make this be like is that it'll be more exploration based, and the more you explore, the more loot you'll get. Furthermore, I'm trying to be decently generous with loot and mob drops and whatnot, so it'll be more of a thing like that you go through an area and get your gear from chests and other things that I put loot in, and beyond that, you get gear and other drops from mobs, and you can use these drops to trade with villagers to get more gear. With this, I try and put a higher emphasis on exploration than on grinding, as you can get your gear either from exploration or from grinding, and just the mobs you kill while exploring will give you enough loot to buy a decent bit of gear.
But now you may be asking "But Infinity, what if I miss a villager?".
This is where the monument area comes into play. In the monument area, there'll be a trading hub within which there'll be villagers of past area's. These villagers will have all the trades except for certain special trades (mostly Quest trades probably is what they won't have).
On one hand, it's partly your fault, because this is a pseudo-open world map. On the other hand, not exploring much doesn't necessarily mean not killing mobs or getting a lot of the chests. If for example you went through the second area and tried to go straight to the boss fight, you'd encounter at least about 5 structures along the way, which would have the 3 main mobs of the area and a few loot chests, so basically, as long as you don't chicken out and you do things properly, there should be no problem (except for the fact that it may be a tad short).
Install an nbt-editor of any kind (I'd recommend texelelfs McEdit filter), use this page:
http://minecraft.gamepedia.com/Chunk_format
And you should be good to go <3
Extremely helpful and well written. Also the mention of intrinsic rewards means you either do your research into your terminologies or you watched that episode of Extra Credits. Either way, cheers! <3
You have to admit, though, that using an NBT editor is a lot harder than using some of the simpler tools around. Heck, even I don't have most of the NBT tags memorized. That would be difficult.
Also, why does it seem like every monster hunter map ever is some variety of open world? What is wrong with a traditional cave map where all your resources come from mobs? I feel like too often, open world MH maps suffer from BD2 syndrome. Vast, somewhat barren landscapes without anything interesting to do but fight the custom mobs. Not saying your map is going to be anything like that, Infinity, but that seems to have been the pattern.
Arachnapocalypse did a decent job with experimenting with that concept. The core set of gear you needed for the map you could get from loot chest, however you could use the loot drops off enemies to trade with the traders for better gear. Additionally you could get most of the useful resources you needed such as coal, wood and cobblestone from mob drops as you were going so you weren't required to sit around mining or chopping down trees.
Obviously it was more of an experimental concept with the no natural spawns, but I'd say the idea is there.
Special thanks to Axl Rosie for the sig.
ohai lots of mobs, MH, and gameplay discussion... very good thx, I wanna make sure to do those things right this time... In other news, dancing armor stand nonsense should make a monument area pretty funny. Maybe they start dancing or jumping after you complete the monument or something... I can't decide how crazy I want the congratulations to be at the end though... Fireworks, big letters in the sky, particles everywhere, text spam, 50 flaming supercharged creepers that have 26 minute fuses... should be pretty hilarious
I just had visions of a monument where, when completed, the wools all start jumping around. Relatedly, I just had the most trolly idea ever: Once a couple of wools are placed, then every time the player leaves a certain area around the monument, the wools' positions are switched. I bet some people wouldn't even notice. Minor differences can be the most irritating things to the people who notice them, though.