The Meaning of Life, the Universe, and Everything.
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Finding Ferrodil
NOTE: A brief demo of the map is planned for release soon! Stay tuned!
About and Backstory
Finding Ferrodil is a work in progress RPG (Role-Playing Game) that will support both multiplayer and singleplayer
The map begins with you, the player, living a peaceful day as a child in the humble village of Ferrodil. What seems like a normal day of playing and interacting with the villagers takes a dark turn whilst you're playing in the caves. For reasons unknown, Ferrodil's friendly Mage begins terrorising the village, stealing the souls of its citizens and destroying the town.
Scared, you run out of the caves and slip, falling from quite a height. You die.
Many years later, you are mysteriously revived. The old Ferrodil you knew is now unheard of, with nobody knowing the town as you described it. You do hear, however, of a town called 'New Ferrodil' in the far-away lands of Mybiscar. You board the first ship heading to New Ferrodil, hoping for some answers.
The journey begins.
The journey of Finding Ferrodil
Summary
So the backstory (written above) is rather basic, but I've simplified it.
In short, Finding Ferrodil is about a deceased child, brought back in an adult's body, looking for the village of Ferrodil he used to live in. The main quest obviously isn't the soul focus of the map, though - sidequests, dungeons, skills, loot, and many other common RPG elements are present or planned for the map (a detailed list of planned and implemented features is below)
Features
Below are spoilers for Implemented, and Unfinished, Features respectively.
If you would like to know more about a particular feature or how they work or will be used, feel free to ask!
Quests
Talking to villagers, visiting certain locations, or getting certain items can start a Quest - once a Quest is started, a title will display the name of the quest and brief objective, whilst a popup in chat will show with better details on the Quest. You will be able to view active chests in chat so you know what you have to do; other than that, the Quests will be intentionally open-ended, and we certainly don't intend to hold your hand through them.
Skills
All planned skills are already implemented and appear to work flawlessly, these include: Mana (used with spellcasting, levelling up gives higher Mana and faster Mana restoration rates); Fighting (levelling up gives strength and resistance); Stealing (levelling up decreases the radius that villagers may catch you in); and many more
Flower Foraging
This one sounds daft but may blow your mind if you get a chance to try the map: Every flower in Finding Ferrodil can be picked. No, that's not a mistake; and no, flowers are not a rare sight at all - there's many of them, including dead-bushes, that can be picked up...but the best part? We implemented some specially-made redstone for them to grow back over time (generally around a minecraft day); they also randomise when they regrow (except for specific exceptions such as rare or exotic plants, such as Cacti and the very rare Allium flowers in the map)
Loot Chests and Private Chests
This one sounds so simple but has a huge impact on the map - there are basically 2 types of chests: Loot Chests (sometimes called 'free chests' or 'particle chests' due to their constant particle-glow) provide the player with free items, and will randomise with new loot roughly every minecraft day. Similarly, Private Chests (sometimes called 'house chests' or 'locked chests' since they are always locked, and require a Lockpick to open) also randomise their loot, but will raise your bounty if you're caught stealing by a nearby villager - the success of your steal depends on your Stealing Skill. Both Private and Loot Chests share the same categories for randomising, I won't go into detail about what they are but trust me when I say that there's quite a lot of combinations possible.
Inns
As well as owning a house, players will be able to visit Inns/Hotels (the names vary) for a night at a custom price, depending on the Inn itself. The benefit of staying is that it gives you a new location to respawn in, as well as often giving you some free items from Loot Chests. Inns always provide a bed and ender chest to securely keep and transfer items, making them quite a useful asset, albeit a bit costly for beginners.
Customising your Home
In the map you will be able to buy your own house(s). Once you get a house you will be able to extensively customise not only your furniture, but the entire interior is yours to change - from the floors to the inside walls and stairs, you can completely tear out the inside of your home and redo it how you like, without being able to grief the outside world and cheat the map! Yay!
Seriously, though, this is one of my favourite features, even though it won't have a big impact on the map itself it's very fun to play around with, although it's admittedly fiddly at times, due to some restrictions.
Custom Soundtrack
Since one of the ANVIL-Team members (minihilly) is an amateur musician, Finding Ferrodil will eventually have its own original soundtrack - it already has redstone mechanics built-in to support tracks to play at certain times in the day, and plans for location-based music will be addressed in future. Right now, this feature isn't deemed too important so will only be worked on heavily at a later stage. Some examples of tracks that are likely to be used (after some tweaks)can be found at minihilly's SoundCloud page.
4 Major Towns
New Ferrodil and Smotelea (the first 2 towns in order of appearance in the Main Quest) are over 90% complete and very close to finished; Verish is around 60% complete, while Glacianath (to-be the most difficult and likely largest town) has barely been started. Glacianath's architectural style has not been decided upon, but since it's the last major town in the Main Quest line we're happier to start it later when we have a good feel for how the map plays.
5 Procedurally-Generated Dungeons
Since Tobi29 and minihilly are part of the ANVIL Team, and they both made the somewhat-successful map 'True Labyrinth', one of the key features of Finding Ferrodil will be a new reimagining of True Labytinth's unique procedurally-generated dungeon design - only this time, it's way better. The actual 'core' mechanics for the procedural dungeons is actually ready, and appears to be working fine, but it's still listed as Unfinished since none of the dungeons have a complete set of room and decoration templates, as well as the randomised mobs and loot that need balancing out.
Who is ANVIL?
ANVIL(ANetwork of Vanilla Inventions and Logic) is both a team of builders/mapmakers/redstoners and a vanilla minigames server that shares the same name. If you want to know more about the members of ANVIL and their roles, click the AnvilMC profile.
The Meaning of Life, the Universe, and Everything.
Join Date:
10/18/2014
Posts:
60
Member Details
A playable demo of this map, including the first few Quests, the first procedurally-generated Dungeon and a bunch of other showcases of features should be released in the short future to allow people to playtest the map and provide feedback on what it might need
At the current stage of the map, it's fairly hard to judge how long until the first demo is out, but we speculate it won't take long than 2 months from now, and should be a lot sooner unless something goes horribly wrong.
In the meantime, we'll be posting new screenshots and information on the thread and in the OP as frequently as possible, so be sure to check back regularly!
Full release will definitely take quite a long time, but we will try our best to have frequent demos soon (see above) - subscribe using the green button at the top so you don't miss out on the first demo!
The Meaning of Life, the Universe, and Everything.
Join Date:
10/18/2014
Posts:
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Member Details
Progress Report 1
GitOut, our redstoner dude, has been hard at work adding the first quests to the map. Up to this point the year of work so far has been in preparation of this moment; Finally, it's happening: the gameplay begins!
First 2 [playable] cutscenes and their quests are ready;
only needs 'fake' NPCs put in for visuals
99% done
The port-town of Fishmoor was started;
about 40% done
New Ferrodil is nearly complete;
only the castle, tower interiors, and <10 house interiors need finishing
about 90% done
Smotelea is nearly complete;
only around 5 interiors need finishing
about 98% done
First Bank for exchanging currencies added to Fishmoor
100% done
The screenshots in the main post have updated, adding 5 new ones taken at the end of March/start of April.
The Meaning of Life, the Universe, and Everything.
Join Date:
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Posts:
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Member Details
Progress Report 2
So, it hasn't been that long since the last progress report, but I just had to show off this next bit!
GitOut and minihilly have started working on the first procedurally-generated dungeon in the map (which will be included in the demo). As mentioned in the main post, the mechanics behind dungeons have been in-place for well over a year already, but it's only now that we've had the time, as well as enough planning, to start creating a full first Dungeon.
Dungeon 1 is called 'The Mines' (subject to change), and is styled to look like a convincing cave, making it unique compared to other dungeons we have planned. Since Dungeon 1 is a cave, it contains ores (coal and iron) which you may mine if you have a pickaxe handy - it also contains lootable chests (minecart chests to match the theme), randomised enemies, randomised interior decoration (such as rocks, abandoned living-space, lakes, etc.), randomised exterior walls/floor, and a walkway that connects through each room.
This first dungeon will be included in the first demo, and is 4x4 rooms in size (16 rooms in total, not counting the boss room or stairways). The dungeon will provide some challenge, but is mostly intended as a means to gather your first basic resources, as well as a method of getting free coal and iron ore. Like all the procedurally-generated dungeons, this dungeon is part of the main quest.
Dungeon 1: 'The Mines' progress has begun
about 65% done
Added Bank to Smotelea for exchanging currencies
100% done
Began adding shops into some of the Smotelea buildings
about 70% done
Added to the main quest up until the first Dungeon is reached
Images of the Dungeon 1: 'The Mines', have been added to the original post!
This looks amazing! Will definitely play when it comes out!
We're super excited to try and get the first demo out as soon as possible!
As mentioned, the demo will be nowhere near the complete thing, but will still contain a sizeable amount of gameplay at around 2 hours; likely more since it's an open-world setting (although roughly half of the world will be out-of-bounds in the demo until they're ready) and there'll possibly be a few sidequests ready in the demo, too.
It'll treat each player independently, so some points in the storyline won't make sense for multiple people, but the mechanics (dungeons, guilds, homes, loot chests, etc.) is all built with multiplayer in mind, and should work flawlessly.
The Meaning of Life, the Universe, and Everything.
Join Date:
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Posts:
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Member Details
Bad News
Due to the removal of an important feature (see: MC-80671), Finding Ferrodil will have to be post-poned indefinitely.
While 1.8.3 or 1.8.5 could theoretically work as 'stable' versions for Finding Ferrodil to be developed in, those versions are littered with other issues within minecraft that we do not wish to be in any releases of the map (since any players would blame us, as opposed to Mojang, for these issues - and we can never be sure if the map is safe from being completely broken from the many bugs).
[We are aware that alternatives are possible as workarounds, but we have neither the time, nor the motivation, to redo a large part of our redstone to incorporate those workarounds, and frankly we shouldn't have to, as the current design would be the best solution were it not for this situation.]
So, it is with regret that we announce FF's cancellation until further notice. Mojang simply broke it too much.
Due to the removal of an important feature (see: MC-80671), Finding Ferrodil will have to be post-poned indefinitely.
While 1.8.3 or 1.8.5 could theoretically work as 'stable' versions for Finding Ferrodil to be developed in, those versions are littered with other issues within minecraft that we do not wish to be in any releases of the map (since any players would blame us, as opposed to Mojang, for these issues - and we can never be sure if the map is safe from being completely broken from the many bugs).
[We are aware that alternatives are possible as workarounds, but we have neither the time, nor the motivation, to redo a large part of our redstone to incorporate those workarounds, and frankly we shouldn't have to, as the current design would be the best solution were it not for this situation.]
So, it is with regret that we announce FF's cancellation until further notice. Mojang simply broke it too much.
Well that's sad to hear. This was on the top of my "maps to check out" list too :(.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Generation 38: The first time you see this,copy it into your signature on any forum and add one generation. This is a social experiment.
When I saw this I was like "Yay! ANVIL is working on an RPG!" Which was great news, since this server is no longer up, but now that I've heard that you guys can't be bothered working around that feature, now I just feel depressed
What is the future for ANVIL? I mean, if you're not going to do anything, you should just break up the group.
PS: And since you've worked so hard on this, are you going to even do anything with the map? (I mean like the terrain and stuff).
ANVIL is nominally retired but the group is still pseudo together. It's not like we all instantly stopped contacting each other, but at the moment I doubt we're going to do anything under the ANVIL name. So to answer your post-script statement no, there will probably not be anything done to FF.
The Meaning of Life, the Universe, and Everything.
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It is too bad such a potential map was cancel due to a exploit that allowed you to become OP but whats more important ignoring a problem just because of map makers dependence on it or prevent any trolls or griefers using the command block exploit.
Finding Ferrodil
Finding Ferrodil is a work in progress RPG (Role-Playing Game) that will support both multiplayer and singleplayer
The map begins with you, the player, living a peaceful day as a child in the humble village of Ferrodil. What seems like a normal day of playing and interacting with the villagers takes a dark turn whilst you're playing in the caves. For reasons unknown, Ferrodil's friendly Mage begins terrorising the village, stealing the souls of its citizens and destroying the town.
Scared, you run out of the caves and slip, falling from quite a height. You die.
Many years later, you are mysteriously revived. The old Ferrodil you knew is now unheard of, with nobody knowing the town as you described it. You do hear, however, of a town called 'New Ferrodil' in the far-away lands of Mybiscar. You board the first ship heading to New Ferrodil, hoping for some answers.
The journey begins.
The journey of Finding Ferrodil
Summary
So the backstory (written above) is rather basic, but I've simplified it.
In short, Finding Ferrodil is about a deceased child, brought back in an adult's body, looking for the village of Ferrodil he used to live in. The main quest obviously isn't the soul focus of the map, though - sidequests, dungeons, skills, loot, and many other common RPG elements are present or planned for the map (a detailed list of planned and implemented features is below)
Features
Below are spoilers for Implemented, and Unfinished, Features respectively.
If you would like to know more about a particular feature or how they work or will be used, feel free to ask!
Seriously, though, this is one of my favourite features, even though it won't have a big impact on the map itself it's very fun to play around with, although it's admittedly fiddly at times, due to some restrictions.
Who is ANVIL?
ANVIL (A Network of Vanilla Inventions and Logic) is both a team of builders/mapmakers/redstoners and a vanilla minigames server that shares the same name. If you want to know more about the members of ANVIL and their roles, click the AnvilMC profile.
The spoiler below contains more specific credit.
Seems cool. I will try it out once finished.
(First post :D)
A playable demo of this map, including the first few Quests, the first procedurally-generated Dungeon and a bunch of other showcases of features should be released in the short future to allow people to playtest the map and provide feedback on what it might need
At the current stage of the map, it's fairly hard to judge how long until the first demo is out, but we speculate it won't take long than 2 months from now, and should be a lot sooner unless something goes horribly wrong.
In the meantime, we'll be posting new screenshots and information on the thread and in the OP as frequently as possible, so be sure to check back regularly!
Full release will definitely take quite a long time, but we will try our best to have frequent demos soon (see above) - subscribe using the green button at the top so you don't miss out on the first demo!
GitOut, our redstoner dude, has been hard at work adding the first quests to the map. Up to this point the year of work so far has been in preparation of this moment; Finally, it's happening: the gameplay begins!
99% done
about 90% done
about 98% done
The screenshots in the main post have updated, adding 5 new ones taken at the end of March/start of April.
So, it hasn't been that long since the last progress report, but I just had to show off this next bit!
GitOut and minihilly have started working on the first procedurally-generated dungeon in the map (which will be included in the demo). As mentioned in the main post, the mechanics behind dungeons have been in-place for well over a year already, but it's only now that we've had the time, as well as enough planning, to start creating a full first Dungeon.
Dungeon 1 is called 'The Mines' (subject to change), and is styled to look like a convincing cave, making it unique compared to other dungeons we have planned. Since Dungeon 1 is a cave, it contains ores (coal and iron) which you may mine if you have a pickaxe handy - it also contains lootable chests (minecart chests to match the theme), randomised enemies, randomised interior decoration (such as rocks, abandoned living-space, lakes, etc.), randomised exterior walls/floor, and a walkway that connects through each room.
This first dungeon will be included in the first demo, and is 4x4 rooms in size (16 rooms in total, not counting the boss room or stairways). The dungeon will provide some challenge, but is mostly intended as a means to gather your first basic resources, as well as a method of getting free coal and iron ore. Like all the procedurally-generated dungeons, this dungeon is part of the main quest.
We're super excited to try and get the first demo out as soon as possible!
As mentioned, the demo will be nowhere near the complete thing, but will still contain a sizeable amount of gameplay at around 2 hours; likely more since it's an open-world setting (although roughly half of the world will be out-of-bounds in the demo until they're ready) and there'll possibly be a few sidequests ready in the demo, too.
Looks awesome.
Will this have multiplayer support?
Absolutely!
It'll treat each player independently, so some points in the storyline won't make sense for multiple people, but the mechanics (dungeons, guilds, homes, loot chests, etc.) is all built with multiplayer in mind, and should work flawlessly.
Although, we don't think we will manage our initial target to release before June, but release sometime in June is possible.
While 1.8.3 or 1.8.5 could theoretically work as 'stable' versions for Finding Ferrodil to be developed in, those versions are littered with other issues within minecraft that we do not wish to be in any releases of the map (since any players would blame us, as opposed to Mojang, for these issues - and we can never be sure if the map is safe from being completely broken from the many bugs).
[We are aware that alternatives are possible as workarounds, but we have neither the time, nor the motivation, to redo a large part of our redstone to incorporate those workarounds, and frankly we shouldn't have to, as the current design would be the best solution were it not for this situation.]
Well that's sad to hear. This was on the top of my "maps to check out" list too :(.
Yeah. I was looking forward to the demo.
Please check out my PvP map based around explosions and fire, FireFight!
Sometimes, I wonder why they call mapmakers mapmakers and not cartographers.
Dragons n' Stuff
Please click!
When I saw this I was like "Yay! ANVIL is working on an RPG!" Which was great news, since this server is no longer up, but now that I've heard that you guys can't be bothered working around that feature, now I just feel depressed
What is the future for ANVIL? I mean, if you're not going to do anything, you should just break up the group.
PS: And since you've worked so hard on this, are you going to even do anything with the map? (I mean like the terrain and stuff).
So basically, I'm stupid.
ANVIL is nominally retired but the group is still pseudo together. It's not like we all instantly stopped contacting each other, but at the moment I doubt we're going to do anything under the ANVIL name. So to answer your post-script statement no, there will probably not be anything done to FF.
It is too bad such a potential map was cancel due to a exploit that allowed you to become OP but whats more important ignoring a problem just because of map makers dependence on it or prevent any trolls or griefers using the command block exploit.
Awwwwwwwww times 1000