Righto, this fast traveling through a hell dimension has gotten me very excited. I've got a ton of ideas, hopes, and suggestions for it, and I cannot resist the urge to type them all out. I'm sure others feel likewise. So let's use this thread to discuss what Fast Travel ought to be!
I'ma start with what I'm expecting.
The quote from Notch is "A brand new hell world for fast travel. Portal in, move ten meters, portal out, and you're hundreds of meters away."
Great! A good start, but let's consider this. Notch suggests a 1:10 ratio for fast travel. So moving one block in hell is ten blocks in the normal realm. Ten blocks in hell, a hundred in real world. That's a huge ratio! It takes about a day and a night to walk a kilometer in Minecraft (IIRC). Now, if you spent a day and night in hell, you would reappear 10 kilometers away! That's big. That's a lot of chunks. That's going from a 2 MB file to a 40 MB file (Assuming all the chunks in between are generated).
Now, I'm not saying 1:10 is a bad thing. I'd say it's exactly right. Any less, and you might as well just walk. But it needs to be balanced. How do we balance it? We make hell into HELL. Difficulty needs to be ridiculous.
Here is how. Constant Mob Spawning! I don't know if hell will have a sun. Maybe it's eternal night? Don't know. But either way, mobs need to spawn everywhere, all the time. There can be no safe time in hell, and maybe even no safe places. Increased Mob Senses! Currently, and enemy mob will pursue you as soon as you enter a 10-15 meter range, with no solid blocks preventing line of sight. Not so in Hell! Mobs should be able to detect you from a MUCH greater distance: Something like 50-75 meters. And within 10-15, they can sense you through walls. Why? Because this means as soon as you enter Hell, you are being hunted. As soon as your feet touch that scorched plane, you are under attack. Build-ability! Hell, like the normal would, is modifiable. Obviously, if portals are constructed, this is necessary. But you can also build roads, walls, even gates and guard towers. But it shouldn't be easy. Here's how I would go about making Hell and unfriendly (But interesting) place to build: Natural Durability Hell should be rife with lava, obviously. Large quantities, that aren't easy to block or remove. But in addition to lava, there should be large deposits of obsidian and bedrock. Durable materials that are not easy (Or in bedrock's case, impossible) to tunnel through. In Hell, the landscape does not bend to your will. Extreme Heat One idea that occurred to me is overwhelming heat within Hell. Any wooden blocks, or other flammable materials would ignite as soon as you place them. This includes chests and crafting tables. So to build and survive in hell, all of your materials need to stay in your inventory, and all of your tools need to come from the surface world. This is a slightly more radical notion. I think it would be interesting, but not 100% necessary. Having it would open up some interesting crafting recipes, though. Perhaps a combination of snow and gold can create a "cold block" that chests/crafting tables can be safely placed on. Unique Materials Hell should have a number of unique, gather-able blocks. These materials would be valuable on the surface world, but due to the dangers of Hell, mining operations would be ridiculously risky. However, it could be required that one of these unique blocks are required to create the portal out of Hell. Whole new appearance! Hell needs to be alien. Hell needs to be unsettling. Not like a DOOM hell with disturbing imagery. Just different. The sky, a bloodred. The sun, a fiery vortex glaring down from overhead. Obsidian and bedrock splinters jutting from the ground. Twisted horns of rock rather than mountains. No 'sea level' like the real world. Lava can appear in lakes on mountaintops, spilling out into the valley you find yourself travelling. Rather than small square dungeons, occasional towers of bedrock, damaged and desiccated. No Lumber! This goes without saying if the 'extreme heat' is included. But if it isn't, I maintain that there should be no natural wood in Hell. Woe unto the miner who enters unprepared.
If you take nothing out of this thread:
Take this. Hell should not be fun. Hell should be the hardest thing ever included in minecraft. When you got raped by skeletons one night, that should look like a picnic compared to Hell.
Hell will be fun BECAUSE of its difficulty. Single Player Hell will be the ultimate challenge. MULTIPLAYER Hell will be the ultimate cooperative effort. Gathering together your friends on some SMP server, in hopes of linking two distant towns, knowing that many of you WILL die, and that there is a good chance that you will not succeed... That's where it's at.
Preparing, and arming, and standing at the foot of some mighty portal into a realm unlike your home, feeling simultaneously the heat on your face and the chill on your spine. Gripping tight that diamond sword, sweating into your iron helmet, preparing for either a glorious conquest over the supernatural as you tame a thin strip of road through the Wastes... or for terrible defeat, crushed beneath the endless onslaught of the denizens of Hell.
I like your ideas and agree with all of em, Hell should be ridiculously difficult, and I would love for it to have other purposes then just to fast travel, like having a bunch of unique materials.
And I would also like to be able to build in hell, should be fun.
I'm actually most excited about this feature of the update. The fast travel is intriguing, and I agree that there's no reason Hell should be a fun place to be. It'd be interesting if you had to weigh the dangers of long-distance travel with valuables vs. fast travel in Hell and not really have a clear notion of which is more dangerous.
I'm also very excited at the prospect of easily-obtainable lava. Lava's the *original* infinite lantern :smile.gif:
If it's dark and without lava, I'll survive, because the fast travel would outweigh it. But I have my fingers crossed!
A lava based hell would be pretty cool, but what about a smooth, dark, shadowy hell?
Grey / brown smoothstone, little-to-no natural light, monsters in the dark and the like?
Torches there could wear out twice as fast, there might be unique monsters there.
I considered that as well. It would certainly be cool looking, a pitch black world filled with monsters. But I think the main problem is 'smooth.' Difficulty in Hell shouldn't just be about monsters and the like, it should also be very difficult to traverse. You should have to fight for every meter, whether it's against monsters or the very landscape.
Quote from SpitfireBro »
Some very nice ideas. I agree that hell should be extremely hostile in both inhabitants and environment. I just haven't decided whether the ability to stay within the hell realm would be a positive or a negative concept..
I'm all for having a castle in hell, but I think it would discourage players from visiting the original world. I'm presuming most of the features in Minecraft now, such as water, passive animals, and even multiple future features, such biomes, won't exist in the hell realm.
I like the idea of building a fortress in Hell, but not an expanding one. With no natural wood, and hopefully further challenges, you would need a really good reason to make one and you still wouldn't want to stay there. Water evaporates, so you can't farm. There's no grass, so there's no livestock. Basically, Hell will have no comforts. The only available building materials will be ores and stone, so expansion will be difficult.
Perhaps a particularly dangerous strip of road through hell would need a small fortress in the center, with guards stationed there to protect travellers. Maybe the spawning mechanism during the night-cycle is so gratuitous that monsters can literally pile over short walls, and such protection will be necessary. Plus, an occasional creeper vs. zombie fight near the road might lead to damages to the path.
I'd also like to do a foray into Hell with my clan: Set up a fortress in a particularly dangerous place, and hold out for as long as we can, before an extraction team comes from the surface.
_____________________________________________________________________________________
Where Hel is:
Helheim ("house of Hel") is one of the nine worlds of Norse mythology. It is ruled by Hel, the monstrous daughter of the trickster god Loki and his wife Angrboda.
This cold, dark and misty abode of the dead is located in the world of Niflheim, on the lowest level of the Norse universe. No one can ever leave this place, because of the impassable river Gjoll that flows from the spring Hvergelmir and encircles Helheim.
Once they enter Helheim, not even the gods can leave. Those who die of old age or disease, and those not killed in battle, go to Helheim while those who die bravely on the battlefield go to Valhalla.
The entrance to Helheim is guarded by Garm, a monstrous hound, and Modgud. The giant Hraesvelg ("corpse eater") sits at the edge of the world, overlooking Helheim. In the form of an eagle with flapping wings he makes the wind blow.
In response to the OP's ideas on the sun/mob spawning and extreme heat:
Why not reverse the rolls of the mobs and the player with the sun? The mobs are all well and good in the sun but the moment it touches you, you burst into flames. This will limit the possible "abuse" of fast traveling as only night travel or long tunnels will allow some what safe travel for a long period. Just a thought.
I would love this, but I would add new mobs, ones that are smart/can tunnel through or under weak materials. If it's real hell then they can slowly tunnel through stone, and cannot tunnel through obsidian. They would have to be very rare so that you can actually BUILD a base though. But I agree that hell should be there to make a challenge for players, not just to make new crafting templates.
_____________________________________________________________________________________
Where Hel is:
Helheim ("house of Hel") is one of the nine worlds of Norse mythology. It is ruled by Hel, the monstrous daughter of the trickster god Loki and his wife Angrboda.
This cold, dark and misty abode of the dead is located in the world of Niflheim, on the lowest level of the Norse universe. No one can ever leave this place, because of the impassable river Gjoll that flows from the spring Hvergelmir and encircles Helheim.
Once they enter Helheim, not even the gods can leave. Those who die of old age or disease, and those not killed in battle, go to Helheim while those who die bravely on the battlefield go to Valhalla.
The entrance to Helheim is guarded by Garm, a monstrous hound, and Modgud. The giant Hraesvelg ("corpse eater") sits at the edge of the world, overlooking Helheim. In the form of an eagle with flapping wings he makes the wind blow.
I love the idea of more alternative Hells, something different than the rather clichéd lava hell. But the problem I see with this kind of hell in Minecraft is twofold:
A) Cold and misty, we can do. Snow, ice, forced fog. But then look at a winter biome. Besides the trees, the difference is negligible. The reason I recommend all the fiery-lava-obsidian hell is because that never occurs naturally.
:cool.gif: Dangerous and unfriendly, currently the snow brings neither. Lava will burn you to death, obsidian is slow to break. Perhaps if the terrain is extremely rough, and some kind of 'wind' mechanic can push you off of cliffs... But I think Notch is more likely to work with what is already there in this case.
This is the most exciting feature for me as well. But...
I had to play debbie downer but when you design ideas you also have to think ways it could be "gay" in gaming terms. There's a stark difference between something being annoying and challenging.
LAVA in hell would be horrible. Assuming you are playing legit (not difficulty hopping), lava really sucks. It's fatal. If we cant SEE hell before we're in it, whats stopping me from teleporting into hell at some point and just falling into a lake of lava.
From what I read on the update it sounds like hell teleporting is a toggle. You "use" it and don't find it.
This only supports that hell should be at random but set locations, but that'll limit the game and thats not what I want
This is the most exciting feature for me as well. But...
I had to play debbie downer but when you design ideas you also have to think ways it could be "gay" in gaming terms. There's a stark difference between something being annoying and challenging.
LAVA in hell would be horrible. Assuming you are playing legit (not difficulty hopping), lava really sucks. It's fatal. If we cant SEE hell before we're in it, whats stopping me from teleporting into hell at some point and just falling into a lake of lava.
From what I read on the update it sounds like hell teleporting is a toggle. You "use" it and don't find it.
This only supports that hell should be at random but set locations, but that'll limit the game and thats not what I want
I considered this as well. Creating a portal could easily drop you into a bit of hell that happens to be lava-floored. But that's actually easy to counter: If portals are built constructs, then when you go through it to hell, there has to be one there to get out. So your portal appears in Hell on top of a cobblestone platform. It may suck if you're in the middle of a lava lake, because now you have to bridge out. But it won't be instant death.
Lava is very dangerous on any real difficulty, yes. But it can be countered with water (Both creating bridges, and putting out fire) and sneaking. Dying in lava is the rageful part of hell. It happens and you smack yourself for not being careful enough.
I love Doom, but this one seems like the best one to just 'fit' Minecraft.
Love all the ideas so far. For sure the OP's.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
People who build absolutely stunning objects of fantastic creativity, those who are the leaders in what you can only imagine to accomplish in the infinite possibility that is Minecraft, I applaud you.
Another comment on the 1:10 ratio and how it creates chunking.
How would the game generate chunks if the chunks aren't connected when they generate.
By that I mean, imagine if the game didn't chunk as you traversed Hell. You portal in, travel 100 meters, appear a kilometer away after portalling out. Imagine the chunk you stepped into JUST generated as you left the portal, or generated when the portal was generated. Those two kilometer apart chunks don't connect on the map. If you walked back in the real world to reconnect them, how would they generate? What if a biome is trapped oddly between them?
I'm curious because I don't know the game's complicated chunking program.
Also, if it did generate the world as you traversed Hell, wouldn't the lag be ridiculous?
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
End ignorance, myth and misinformation.
Below is the sourced list of Notch's actual words: viewtopic.php?f=3&t=49256
That, and what if it was in a different universe. You would teleport out and would see an emmense void in front of you, then, a small portal, leading back to your universe. Then you realize.
YOUR NOT ALONE.
Ps. Creepers should be everywhere and anywhere.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Quote from Bowserking64 »
Quote from Andeh6 »
What? So when pigs get hit by lighting, they suddenly develop into bipeds and receive brown leather skirts and golden swords from nowhere?
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I have to ask, why does everyone want hell to be so hard? Don't get me wrong, I think that it should be very hard to last in hell, but people are asking to make it inpossible. Really, making hell too hard makes it not fun.
I'ma start with what I'm expecting.
The quote from Notch is "A brand new hell world for fast travel. Portal in, move ten meters, portal out, and you're hundreds of meters away."
Great! A good start, but let's consider this. Notch suggests a 1:10 ratio for fast travel. So moving one block in hell is ten blocks in the normal realm. Ten blocks in hell, a hundred in real world. That's a huge ratio! It takes about a day and a night to walk a kilometer in Minecraft (IIRC). Now, if you spent a day and night in hell, you would reappear 10 kilometers away! That's big. That's a lot of chunks. That's going from a 2 MB file to a 40 MB file (Assuming all the chunks in between are generated).
Now, I'm not saying 1:10 is a bad thing. I'd say it's exactly right. Any less, and you might as well just walk. But it needs to be balanced. How do we balance it? We make hell into HELL. Difficulty needs to be ridiculous.
Here is how.
Constant Mob Spawning! I don't know if hell will have a sun. Maybe it's eternal night? Don't know. But either way, mobs need to spawn everywhere, all the time. There can be no safe time in hell, and maybe even no safe places.
Increased Mob Senses! Currently, and enemy mob will pursue you as soon as you enter a 10-15 meter range, with no solid blocks preventing line of sight. Not so in Hell! Mobs should be able to detect you from a MUCH greater distance: Something like 50-75 meters. And within 10-15, they can sense you through walls. Why? Because this means as soon as you enter Hell, you are being hunted. As soon as your feet touch that scorched plane, you are under attack.
Build-ability! Hell, like the normal would, is modifiable. Obviously, if portals are constructed, this is necessary. But you can also build roads, walls, even gates and guard towers. But it shouldn't be easy. Here's how I would go about making Hell and unfriendly (But interesting) place to build:
Natural Durability Hell should be rife with lava, obviously. Large quantities, that aren't easy to block or remove. But in addition to lava, there should be large deposits of obsidian and bedrock. Durable materials that are not easy (Or in bedrock's case, impossible) to tunnel through. In Hell, the landscape does not bend to your will.
Extreme Heat One idea that occurred to me is overwhelming heat within Hell. Any wooden blocks, or other flammable materials would ignite as soon as you place them. This includes chests and crafting tables. So to build and survive in hell, all of your materials need to stay in your inventory, and all of your tools need to come from the surface world. This is a slightly more radical notion. I think it would be interesting, but not 100% necessary. Having it would open up some interesting crafting recipes, though. Perhaps a combination of snow and gold can create a "cold block" that chests/crafting tables can be safely placed on.
Unique Materials Hell should have a number of unique, gather-able blocks. These materials would be valuable on the surface world, but due to the dangers of Hell, mining operations would be ridiculously risky. However, it could be required that one of these unique blocks are required to create the portal out of Hell.
Whole new appearance! Hell needs to be alien. Hell needs to be unsettling. Not like a DOOM hell with disturbing imagery. Just different. The sky, a bloodred. The sun, a fiery vortex glaring down from overhead. Obsidian and bedrock splinters jutting from the ground. Twisted horns of rock rather than mountains. No 'sea level' like the real world. Lava can appear in lakes on mountaintops, spilling out into the valley you find yourself travelling. Rather than small square dungeons, occasional towers of bedrock, damaged and desiccated.
No Lumber! This goes without saying if the 'extreme heat' is included. But if it isn't, I maintain that there should be no natural wood in Hell. Woe unto the miner who enters unprepared.
If you take nothing out of this thread:
Take this. Hell should not be fun. Hell should be the hardest thing ever included in minecraft. When you got raped by skeletons one night, that should look like a picnic compared to Hell.
Hell will be fun BECAUSE of its difficulty. Single Player Hell will be the ultimate challenge. MULTIPLAYER Hell will be the ultimate cooperative effort. Gathering together your friends on some SMP server, in hopes of linking two distant towns, knowing that many of you WILL die, and that there is a good chance that you will not succeed... That's where it's at.
Preparing, and arming, and standing at the foot of some mighty portal into a realm unlike your home, feeling simultaneously the heat on your face and the chill on your spine. Gripping tight that diamond sword, sweating into your iron helmet, preparing for either a glorious conquest over the supernatural as you tame a thin strip of road through the Wastes... or for terrible defeat, crushed beneath the endless onslaught of the denizens of Hell.
Yeah. That's what I want.
And I would also like to be able to build in hell, should be fun.
I'm also very excited at the prospect of easily-obtainable lava. Lava's the *original* infinite lantern :smile.gif:
If it's dark and without lava, I'll survive, because the fast travel would outweigh it. But I have my fingers crossed!
http://lodeoffmymine.blogspot.com/
Maybe make Hell mobs spawn even on peaceful then.
I considered that as well. It would certainly be cool looking, a pitch black world filled with monsters. But I think the main problem is 'smooth.' Difficulty in Hell shouldn't just be about monsters and the like, it should also be very difficult to traverse. You should have to fight for every meter, whether it's against monsters or the very landscape.
I like the idea of building a fortress in Hell, but not an expanding one. With no natural wood, and hopefully further challenges, you would need a really good reason to make one and you still wouldn't want to stay there. Water evaporates, so you can't farm. There's no grass, so there's no livestock. Basically, Hell will have no comforts. The only available building materials will be ores and stone, so expansion will be difficult.
Perhaps a particularly dangerous strip of road through hell would need a small fortress in the center, with guards stationed there to protect travellers. Maybe the spawning mechanism during the night-cycle is so gratuitous that monsters can literally pile over short walls, and such protection will be necessary. Plus, an occasional creeper vs. zombie fight near the road might lead to damages to the path.
I'd also like to do a foray into Hell with my clan: Set up a fortress in a particularly dangerous place, and hold out for as long as we can, before an extraction team comes from the surface.
Nuff said.
http://www.angelfire.com/realm/shades/vikings/helheim.htm
_____________________________________________________________________________________
Where Hel is:
Helheim ("house of Hel") is one of the nine worlds of Norse mythology. It is ruled by Hel, the monstrous daughter of the trickster god Loki and his wife Angrboda.
This cold, dark and misty abode of the dead is located in the world of Niflheim, on the lowest level of the Norse universe. No one can ever leave this place, because of the impassable river Gjoll that flows from the spring Hvergelmir and encircles Helheim.
Once they enter Helheim, not even the gods can leave. Those who die of old age or disease, and those not killed in battle, go to Helheim while those who die bravely on the battlefield go to Valhalla.
The entrance to Helheim is guarded by Garm, a monstrous hound, and Modgud. The giant Hraesvelg ("corpse eater") sits at the edge of the world, overlooking Helheim. In the form of an eagle with flapping wings he makes the wind blow.
_____________________________________________________________________________________
Anyways, Just a thought!!! :-)
Why not reverse the rolls of the mobs and the player with the sun? The mobs are all well and good in the sun but the moment it touches you, you burst into flames. This will limit the possible "abuse" of fast traveling as only night travel or long tunnels will allow some what safe travel for a long period. Just a thought.
I love the idea of more alternative Hells, something different than the rather clichéd lava hell. But the problem I see with this kind of hell in Minecraft is twofold:
A) Cold and misty, we can do. Snow, ice, forced fog. But then look at a winter biome. Besides the trees, the difference is negligible. The reason I recommend all the fiery-lava-obsidian hell is because that never occurs naturally.
:cool.gif: Dangerous and unfriendly, currently the snow brings neither. Lava will burn you to death, obsidian is slow to break. Perhaps if the terrain is extremely rough, and some kind of 'wind' mechanic can push you off of cliffs... But I think Notch is more likely to work with what is already there in this case.
I had to play debbie downer but when you design ideas you also have to think ways it could be "gay" in gaming terms. There's a stark difference between something being annoying and challenging.
LAVA in hell would be horrible. Assuming you are playing legit (not difficulty hopping), lava really sucks. It's fatal. If we cant SEE hell before we're in it, whats stopping me from teleporting into hell at some point and just falling into a lake of lava.
From what I read on the update it sounds like hell teleporting is a toggle. You "use" it and don't find it.
This only supports that hell should be at random but set locations, but that'll limit the game and thats not what I want
I considered this as well. Creating a portal could easily drop you into a bit of hell that happens to be lava-floored. But that's actually easy to counter: If portals are built constructs, then when you go through it to hell, there has to be one there to get out. So your portal appears in Hell on top of a cobblestone platform. It may suck if you're in the middle of a lava lake, because now you have to bridge out. But it won't be instant death.
Lava is very dangerous on any real difficulty, yes. But it can be countered with water (Both creating bridges, and putting out fire) and sneaking. Dying in lava is the rageful part of hell. It happens and you smack yourself for not being careful enough.
hundreds, not hundred.
http://wot.wikia.com/wiki/Machin_Shin
I love Doom, but this one seems like the best one to just 'fit' Minecraft.
Love all the ideas so far. For sure the OP's.
How would the game generate chunks if the chunks aren't connected when they generate.
By that I mean, imagine if the game didn't chunk as you traversed Hell. You portal in, travel 100 meters, appear a kilometer away after portalling out. Imagine the chunk you stepped into JUST generated as you left the portal, or generated when the portal was generated. Those two kilometer apart chunks don't connect on the map. If you walked back in the real world to reconnect them, how would they generate? What if a biome is trapped oddly between them?
I'm curious because I don't know the game's complicated chunking program.
Also, if it did generate the world as you traversed Hell, wouldn't the lag be ridiculous?
Below is the sourced list of Notch's actual words:
viewtopic.php?f=3&t=49256
That, and what if it was in a different universe. You would teleport out and would see an emmense void in front of you, then, a small portal, leading back to your universe. Then you realize.
YOUR NOT ALONE.
Ps. Creepers should be everywhere and anywhere.
Dedicated VPS, 30 slots, 24/7 uptime and a great community!
Runs Runecraft, Llama, hMod and many plugins.