So, this was sort of inspired by someone's idea for a slime biome - I forget his/her name, but it was a really brilliant idea, and I liked the idea of a biome where something is horribly wrong and you can at least partially "fix" it, as well as the idea of a biome riskier than the conventional ones but containing better (or at least more unique) rewards.
While walking in the woods, you come across a stone path. You follow it, wondering where it leads, and notice that the trees seem to be losing their leaves and the grass seems patchier as you go on, coughing from the smog. Finally, you emerge and find yourself looking over a massive factory complex, a series of apartment blocks, and a few small huts. But as the sun sets and you wait for the lights to come on... they don't.
A Dark Metropolis biome is basically intended to emulate a player-made city and elaborate mining complex, but abandoned after a large-scale disaster of some sort, and polluted due to a still-running Mega-Furnace.
New block list: Pipe, Asphalt, Reinforced Glass, Reinforced Concrete. Asphalt is a cosmetic block covering, like snow, and can be easily broken off with a pickaxe (or bare hands). Pipes are solid blocks that connect themselves like minecart rails, and are purely cosmetic. Reinforced concrete and glass are only destroyable with TNT, and cannot be recovered.
-Due to the pollution, grass grows in patches, or not at all. Flowers don't grow, and wheat takes longer to grow. The sky turns more of a brownish color the closer you get. These changes slowly start to reverse themselves once the Mega-Furnace is deactivated, and will restore themselves if it's reactivated (more on that later).
-The area is much more flat than normal, although not completely. Large, rectangular buildings (made of either cobblestone, wood, or concrete) dot the landscape, their maximum possible height slowly decreasing the further one gets from the Mega-Furnace. These buildings are procedurally generated, connected by asphalt roads, divided into rooms, and with each floor being decorated in a particular theme - as you climb a building, for example, you might pass a bookshelf-lined library, a bedroom, and an art gallery. The buildings may have balconies and opened windows to the outside, and you'll have to watch out for mobs jumping from the lower ones. One of the rarer room types is a "survivor's nest," walled off with a cobblestone-barricaded door and containing a single zombie and a chest of either supplies or valuables. Survivor's nests will have a window and some source of light in them, making them easy to locate at night, but will never be on the ground floor, and are usually found in concrete buildings; thus, you'll have to either dynamite the building from the roof down, or crawl through floors of monsters to get there.
-There will be a few small huts, entrances to a mining complex underground. Made of simple, rectangular strips carved out of the earth, these mines have been mostly stripped of anything worth mining, and the torches have been burnt out for ages. Occasionally you'll find a chest full of cobblestone, dirt, and gravel somewhere, but there's little iron, gold, diamond, or coal to be found in the walls or in chests. The stone in the entire biome contains less ore in general, as well. Somewhere in the mines, you'll find a cobblestone wall erected as a barricade by the last miners alive - break it down to find a small room, containing a chest of tools and some angry skeletons.
-At the center of the city is the Mega-Furnace complex, a large industrial factory made of reinforced concrete. Its roof has a number of enormous smokestacks (pipes) sticking out of it, extending nearly to the world ceiling, where they emit thick black smoke as long as the Mega-Furnace is online. Its interior has a few small rooms sealed off with iron doors, containing mob spawners hidden by concrete, but is mostly one large hall, containing a spiderweb of tangled pipes and a 2x2 indestructible Mega-Furnace. Right-clicking on this furnace while it's online will let you smelt entire stacks of material at a time for no cost, but will open the iron doors, most likely allowing the mobs to swarm the player. The player can also hit the lever on the side of the Mega-Furnace, completely shutting it off - this stops the pollution, turning the sky back to blue and allowing plants to grow normally again after a few in-game days. The furnace can be turned back on, re-polluting the land.
The actual city would be rather small compared to most biomes, but it would have a few asphalt roads extending far into other regions. The smog's effect would be about half the radius of the roads, so when you're halfway there you'll start seeing dead grass.
As for what I'm trying to accomplish for this, it's basically a way of optionally emphasizing the combat, horror, and exploration aspects of Minecraft without ruining or even displacing its more peaceful mining-and-megaprojects flow. With all those darkened rooms, balconies, narrow streets and alleys, and the inability to make more bacon or wheat, the Dark Metropolis presents a tough monster-infested challenge for the nighttime explorer - and you'll have to come at night to find the best valuables in the survivor nests, as the light they give off is the only way to find them from the outside. The Mega-Furnace is outright overpowered, but its surrounding area is deficient enough in minerals where you won't want to build a permanent base near it, and thus using it requires travelling through the infested city with all your valuables if you want to smelt them; on the other hand, if one wants to build a base here, it offers its own unique aesthetic, with a few of its visual effects toggleable. The pipes represent both a way to make your own convincing-looking machinery and "bragging rights proof" that you made it to the center of the city and back, sort of like industrial mossy cobblestone. The indestructible concrete and glass could be problematic if usable by players, so they aren't.
I tried to make it easy to code, too - although I haven't actually looked at Minecraft's code, so I might be completely off the mark. Rectangular buildings divided up into regular floors seem easy to make a generator for, and the individual room templates would add variety without requiring a slew of different buildings to be considered. The mining complex is simple and rectangular for these same reasons. The new blocks also do nothing another block can't already do, with the exception of being only destroyable with TNT, which I'm guessing wouldn't be too difficult.
tl;dr: Break into a randomly-generated, polluted, mob-infested city to loot, smelt, and explore
I actually like it, a some what horror, apocalyptic scene.
But, couldn't u block the iron doors with blocks?
Yeah, I thought about it, but couldn't think of another way to get a bunch of monsters to come out at the same time without requiring some new kind of activatable spawner, and decided it was okay if it only scares the **** out of newbies and not experienced players.
Very neat ideas, and my original idea for the Mega-Furnace involved some sort of automated security system guarding it (think a redstone-powered GLaDOS redirecting steam vents and lava chutes to try to burn you), but I was trying to focus on ease of implementation and use as few new game mechanics as possible. That said, concrete slowly turning into ivy-covered concrete (or something) once the Mega-Furnace is off would be a beautiful little touch, and could probably reuse the grass-spreading code...
Well, GLADOS is simply a hostile robot. I think I'd prefer the depressing factor when you consider that the Automaton is just doing it's job. It may have been useful, but it has served it's purpose. The problem is that it won't stop, since there isn't anyone to stop it.
Right, and I love your idea on a thematic basis. I'm just avoiding adding any new monsters unless strictly necessary due to the amount of work that goes into one.
This is a very nice idea, but its a little to easy... I mean a furnace that smelts with no cost? Plus, you can deactivate the spawners before hand and turn it on with no effect...How about, we have more of a ruiend metropolis type area.
Like that... and IT COULD HAVE FACTORY'S GIANT SKYSCRAPERS AND ZOMBIES AND MORE! Also it should be true biome sized for the epicness
The spawners in the factory are more intended to ambush and scare the player the first time they find it rather than act as a constant deterrent. The entire rest of the city, with zombies crawling out of the alleys, creepers jumping from rooftops, skeletons shooting at you from balconies, and spiders waiting for you in the buildings, is the deterrent - and remember, you'll be making that walk with all the ore you want to smelt, so you really don't want to wind up dead in a back alley you won't be able to find again. The resource deficiency also means that if you've come across enough ore where you really want to use the Mega-Furnace, you're also probably a fairly great distance away from it. That said, it does make smooth stone and glass constructions a lot easier, which probably isn't a bad thing.
Of course, there isn't anything special about the biome that makes mobs spawn more often aside from the floors of darkened rooms, so one could gradually "tame" the city with enough lanterns or TNT, or just make a well-lit fully-shielded minecart track to and from the center. But seeing as Notch has said we'll be able to tame Hell with enough effort, this doesn't strike me as a balance concern.
I also can't see the pic you linked, but assuming it's of a more ruined city, I was thinking that at a few of the "room types" would have gaping holes in the walls or floors, implying either crumbling or explosions.
This does not fit in with the rest of the game. Think "ghost town", though even this implies social interactions and some sort of backstory which is entirely lacking in minecraft.
Regularly-shaped buildings become very boring to explore.
The monster AI is not built to handle complex structures.
A ghost town implies that there once was *large scale* social interaction. Where is it now, why can't I socially interact, where did everyone go? Backstory, please. Keep in mind that most people play single player.
More importantly, it doesn't fit. Think ghost *town*. Not mega-city.
This biome sounds great, and I've actually been trying to make such a place, but the amount of resources needed were on...An industrial scale. Perhaps, rather then wood, certain buildings can be made out of brick, with iron blocks reinforcing their edges to give them contrast. The iron would also cross over every fifth block (the same block that floors are located on in order to construct a frame, such as:
Of course, these buildings would mix in with all the concrete and cobble structures.
Tesla Coils (produced by stacking fences with signs surrounding all sides, with an iron block on the top) would occasionally appear in areas close to the factory, with redstone wires placed near them to seemingly give them meaning. Of course, they don't do anything, and are merely cosmetic structures.
Mob Type: Ferronx
A ferronx consists of a floating metallic block, almost entirely featureless save for two perpetually closed eyes, and four smaller blocks, red blocks attached to their top and right side, and blue blocks on their bottom and left side, making them resemble a"+" shaped magnet. They roam the halls of laboratories and factories, attracted to red stone torches and powered wire, congregating near them and sapping them of their power for short periods of time.
They Emmit a loud ringing noise to alert players of their presence, and if one inspects closely, faint sparks come out from their side units. As they hover a block high, they can follow the player across water, lava, and short cliffs without hindrance, and do not suffer fall damage, though this also means that they cannot jump, meaning cliffs larger then a single block in height are impassable. They attack using electrical charges that strike directly through iron armor and cause the screen to shake for a split second. Not only this, but their attacks are conducted by iron, gold, and water blocks, causing them to spread up to four blocks from their source (this damages all mobs that are caught in the shock.)
Though their durable metal body is difficult to destroy using conventional weapons, pouring water on them will cause them to instantly short-circuit, and fire will cause them to rapidly degrade and lose magnetism, making them fall onto the ground and discharge all their energy, melting themselves from the intense amount of heat given off along with destroying any ice, grass, wood, or logs within a one block radius (this also heavily damages the player and mobs within the small area).
A ghost town implies that there once was *large scale* social interaction. Where is it now, why can't I socially interact, where did everyone go? Backstory, please. Keep in mind that most people play single player.
See all those zombies around? Skeletons? Possibly creepers, if they aren't some sort of leaf golem thing? That's where everyone went. Man's hubris let him think he think that he could make himself safe as his machines poisoned the world, and he met a terrible fate. Hope you didn't breathe too much of that smog...
Or, maybe the monsters aren't as dumb as we've been thinking. We might slaughter them in mob traps by day, but when they coordinate they can pull off much more advanced feats of engineering than a human might think possible without opposable thumbs.
Or, with their inscrutably advanced technology, the original builders found a way off this world... or maybe sent themselves to Hell instead.
The point is, Minecraft's backstory has always been up to the player to interpret, starting with why you're on a deserted island and why you thought punching a tree would be a good idea. The Dark Metropolis is detailed enough to let imaginations run wild, and vague enough not to contradict them. Even if we end up with a general medieval theme with goblin towns and whatnot, that would just make the modern, well-engineered, abandoned city more eerie - nobody's escaped with its architectural secrets alive.
Also, love the ideas, Namkob! Brick buildings would look great in the city - the only reason I didn't have them in the original post is that if clay stays as rare as it is, people would strip the buildings down for bricks, which is why I had them all out of common or unrecoverable materials. And although, again, I don't want to add new mobs due to the coding required, yours is very neat.
EDIT: Forgot to mention, ideally the Dark Metropolis would appear much less frequently than other biomes, possibly only once per world. It kind of loses its mystique if there's a bunch of them around.
My imagination would be crippled in trying to imagine a scenario where people who a) had only axes and :cool.gif: had absolutely no reason to build giant cities... went and built huge cities.
My imagination would be crippled in trying to imagine a scenario where people who a) had only axes and :cool.gif: had absolutely no reason to build giant cities... went and built huge cities.
Who said they had only axes? Or that they didn't have a reason to build a giant city?
No. it is an amazing idea, but it doesn't fit into the minecraft i know in love. minecraft should be void of all signs of human life.
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Minecraft must NOT turn into the next WoW or Runescape.
Notch has an IQ over 130. He isn't stupid.
For some reason my hell looks like a train station....
How about this. You will probably agree that proper multi-room dungeons belong in the game before your super-city. Also, little hamlets - those first. And small towns (which are abandoned for some reason). And enormous creeper/spider nests. And so on.
After all those things that fit into the game better than this idea are added, maybe then it will be time for your dark metropolis. But probably, the "fun interactions" you imagine will be better-handled elsewhere.
(as for human life, there's multiplayer, and plans to add npcs)
Just use regular glass. Since you already can't recover it, it'll work fine.
The buildings should be denser the closer you get to the center of the city. There could also be pipes running between buildings, smokestacks/mini-factories, etc. as you get close to the center. The factory would be connected to nearby buildings by pipes, have pipes running along the roof, etc.
A 1x1 smokestack running up to the top of the map would be very thin. They should be made of multiple bricks, possibly up to 4x4.
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Quote from dusty328 »
This man really is a genius. Never have i seen such a clear and well written forum post.
How about this. You will probably agree that proper multi-room dungeons belong in the game before your super-city. Also, little hamlets - those first. And small towns (which are abandoned for some reason). And enormous creeper/spider nests. And so on.
After all those things that fit into the game better than this idea are added, maybe then it will be time for your dark metropolis. But probably, the "fun interactions" you imagine will be better-handled elsewhere.
(as for human life, there's multiplayer, and plans to add npcs)
Well, yes, multi-room dungeons would be more awesome. So would working HP in multiplayer, and redstone circuits, and biomes in general. The suggestions forum isn't for "DO THIS RIGHT NOW NOTCH," it's for "hey Notch, if you like this, consider putting it in sometime?" I have no delusion that this is a pressing issue that should be implemented immediately, but that doesn't mean it's not interesting to think about.
Quote from Pyro627 »
I love this. I have a few ideas of my own:
Just use regular glass. Since you already can't recover it, it'll work fine.
The buildings should be denser the closer you get to the center of the city. There could also be pipes running between buildings, smokestacks/mini-factories, etc. as you get close to the center. The factory would be connected to nearby buildings by pipes, have pipes running along the roof, etc.
A 1x1 smokestack running up to the top of the map would be very thin. They should be made of multiple bricks, possibly up to 4x4.
The reinforced glass was so you can't break through it with a pickaxe. Basically, the whole idea with the glass and concrete was that you can't pillar-jump up to a survivor nest, or at least not without using some dynamite. Then again, if the windows were just a block high they'd work fine with normal glass.
I was thinking of the buildings having a chaotic spiderweb of minecart tracks between them, but making a generator that would make them rideable seemed like a hassle - using pipes instead (and the increasing congestion towards the center) would look and work great!
The smokestack I was originally envisioning was a 3x3 hollow iron pillar, and I forgot to think about how that'd translate into pipes. But yeah, single-block pillars would be pretty ugly. Maybe 2x2 pillars, and not extending all the way to the world ceiling?
Heh, glad you like the ideas. Actually, pre-generated buildings existed in Minecraft for quite some time, indeed, in InfDev, giant (and by giant, I mean roughly the size of a mountain) brick pyramids would occasionally spawn across the world, being so large, that one could build settlements on them and there would still be plenty of space to spare! Of course, at the time, bricks couldn't be gathered in any way shape or form, but one could carve monolithic buildings from them (no free bricks for you).
One thing that is certain however, is that Notch isn't afraid to make pre-generated structures in the game, and he's even mentioned implementing abandoned towers. Ho, the thought of finding such land marks and mapping them out is quite lovely!
I hope to see a city-like landscape to be generated in the future, not to appear as a blemish next to the rest of the natural world, but to combine and contrast with it and add to it's feel. Besides, if one does not like them, then they can simply level the structures into the ground using TNT!
Another interesting prospect that Notch has been pondering over is making mobile structures possible in the future. The thought of a siege tower with a cannon mounted on it blasting its way through city ruins in order to get to the forge...
Now that we know what ghasts can do, maybe the Mega-Furnace should shoot exploding fireballs at you as long as it's smelting... Not sure on that though. Putting actual ghasts in the city (even if somehow prevented from leaving the city limits) would probably be a bad idea, as it'd basically turn wooden buildings into fiery deathtraps.
I kinda like the idea of people blasting through the city from a safe distance with TNT cannons. Sure, it eliminates the actual combat challenge, but replaces it with careful construction skill and timing required, as well as an inordinate number of slaughtered creepers if you want to clear a decent-sized path. Plus, you're likely to blow up a few chests and have difficulty locating them among all the other destroyed blocks... It's very much the "nuke it from orbit" option for dealing with the city, and it'd be neat if that was actually considered worth the effort in some cases.
Any thoughts for improvement on the mines? Right now, they're set up to discourage traveling underground to avoid the hordes on the surface - there's monsters down there anyway, and you're missing out on loot - with a few interesting bits for explorers, but they might be a bit boring. Maybe a flooded sewer system instead, or a dilapidated minecart subway with mission sections of track?
Should pipes "grow" while the city is polluted? I'm not sure how obviously eldritch / unnatural / "alive" the city should be, and while that would be a spooky effect it might be going too far. It'd also provide a way of getting new pipe blocks without having to find another Dark Metropolis - which, again, would ideally be very rare - but the relative scarcity of pipes might be a good thing.
And yeah, seeing Let's Players stumble on the city and freak out about it would be pretty awesome.
Love this idea, Especially the robot though.....
having massive resererves of steel would imbalance it, people are less likely to explore and more to mine the **** out of everything there
Also Notch has stated that he does not want advanced technology in the game, which i think robots and tesla coils kind of are.
Perhaps change the idea to a more medieval theme.
Abandoned Castle?
While i dont see this happening in alpha, and if changed probable in beta, i can see this idea happening... If its less based on technology.
Perhaps a Castle made of cobblestone (so nobody is enticed to strip it down) with some zombies/other ghoulies, traps, ect, and in the last place accessible a mob unique here (perhaps found in hell?) a spectre/shade which is quite large, and could be considered a boss, or mini-boss.
Inside the Throne Room is a chest with some valuables, and also what do you know! a hell gate! that's where that thing came from. The Castle would be of considerable size by the way, you wouldnt simply make a dirt tower and tunnel into the throne room.
Also to the person who appears trollbait *gestures toward electronic*
Have you read/watched/played a non-linear story? Im guessing not.
Try Suggesting after you criticize. If the idea seems absurd note which parts exactly, and how they could be made less absurd.
If this isnt implemented into SM, it can always be a Kick-ass Adventure Mode Map.
Im walking through the woods, and notice how foggy it has gotten recently. It is usually never this foggy, i can hardly see ten metre infront. I come across a long since forgotten mossy path, curious i decide to folow it, and come across a giant castle as the fog clears a little.
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Quote from house »
"You talk to God, you’re religious. God talks to you — you’re psychotic."
While walking in the woods, you come across a stone path. You follow it, wondering where it leads, and notice that the trees seem to be losing their leaves and the grass seems patchier as you go on, coughing from the smog. Finally, you emerge and find yourself looking over a massive factory complex, a series of apartment blocks, and a few small huts. But as the sun sets and you wait for the lights to come on... they don't.
A Dark Metropolis biome is basically intended to emulate a player-made city and elaborate mining complex, but abandoned after a large-scale disaster of some sort, and polluted due to a still-running Mega-Furnace.
New block list: Pipe, Asphalt, Reinforced Glass, Reinforced Concrete. Asphalt is a cosmetic block covering, like snow, and can be easily broken off with a pickaxe (or bare hands). Pipes are solid blocks that connect themselves like minecart rails, and are purely cosmetic. Reinforced concrete and glass are only destroyable with TNT, and cannot be recovered.
-Due to the pollution, grass grows in patches, or not at all. Flowers don't grow, and wheat takes longer to grow. The sky turns more of a brownish color the closer you get. These changes slowly start to reverse themselves once the Mega-Furnace is deactivated, and will restore themselves if it's reactivated (more on that later).
-The area is much more flat than normal, although not completely. Large, rectangular buildings (made of either cobblestone, wood, or concrete) dot the landscape, their maximum possible height slowly decreasing the further one gets from the Mega-Furnace. These buildings are procedurally generated, connected by asphalt roads, divided into rooms, and with each floor being decorated in a particular theme - as you climb a building, for example, you might pass a bookshelf-lined library, a bedroom, and an art gallery. The buildings may have balconies and opened windows to the outside, and you'll have to watch out for mobs jumping from the lower ones. One of the rarer room types is a "survivor's nest," walled off with a cobblestone-barricaded door and containing a single zombie and a chest of either supplies or valuables. Survivor's nests will have a window and some source of light in them, making them easy to locate at night, but will never be on the ground floor, and are usually found in concrete buildings; thus, you'll have to either dynamite the building from the roof down, or crawl through floors of monsters to get there.
-There will be a few small huts, entrances to a mining complex underground. Made of simple, rectangular strips carved out of the earth, these mines have been mostly stripped of anything worth mining, and the torches have been burnt out for ages. Occasionally you'll find a chest full of cobblestone, dirt, and gravel somewhere, but there's little iron, gold, diamond, or coal to be found in the walls or in chests. The stone in the entire biome contains less ore in general, as well. Somewhere in the mines, you'll find a cobblestone wall erected as a barricade by the last miners alive - break it down to find a small room, containing a chest of tools and some angry skeletons.
-At the center of the city is the Mega-Furnace complex, a large industrial factory made of reinforced concrete. Its roof has a number of enormous smokestacks (pipes) sticking out of it, extending nearly to the world ceiling, where they emit thick black smoke as long as the Mega-Furnace is online. Its interior has a few small rooms sealed off with iron doors, containing mob spawners hidden by concrete, but is mostly one large hall, containing a spiderweb of tangled pipes and a 2x2 indestructible Mega-Furnace. Right-clicking on this furnace while it's online will let you smelt entire stacks of material at a time for no cost, but will open the iron doors, most likely allowing the mobs to swarm the player. The player can also hit the lever on the side of the Mega-Furnace, completely shutting it off - this stops the pollution, turning the sky back to blue and allowing plants to grow normally again after a few in-game days. The furnace can be turned back on, re-polluting the land.
The actual city would be rather small compared to most biomes, but it would have a few asphalt roads extending far into other regions. The smog's effect would be about half the radius of the roads, so when you're halfway there you'll start seeing dead grass.
As for what I'm trying to accomplish for this, it's basically a way of optionally emphasizing the combat, horror, and exploration aspects of Minecraft without ruining or even displacing its more peaceful mining-and-megaprojects flow. With all those darkened rooms, balconies, narrow streets and alleys, and the inability to make more bacon or wheat, the Dark Metropolis presents a tough monster-infested challenge for the nighttime explorer - and you'll have to come at night to find the best valuables in the survivor nests, as the light they give off is the only way to find them from the outside. The Mega-Furnace is outright overpowered, but its surrounding area is deficient enough in minerals where you won't want to build a permanent base near it, and thus using it requires travelling through the infested city with all your valuables if you want to smelt them; on the other hand, if one wants to build a base here, it offers its own unique aesthetic, with a few of its visual effects toggleable. The pipes represent both a way to make your own convincing-looking machinery and "bragging rights proof" that you made it to the center of the city and back, sort of like industrial mossy cobblestone. The indestructible concrete and glass could be problematic if usable by players, so they aren't.
I tried to make it easy to code, too - although I haven't actually looked at Minecraft's code, so I might be completely off the mark. Rectangular buildings divided up into regular floors seem easy to make a generator for, and the individual room templates would add variety without requiring a slew of different buildings to be considered. The mining complex is simple and rectangular for these same reasons. The new blocks also do nothing another block can't already do, with the exception of being only destroyable with TNT, which I'm guessing wouldn't be too difficult.
tl;dr: Break into a randomly-generated, polluted, mob-infested city to loot, smelt, and explore
But, couldn't u block the iron doors with blocks?
Good suggestions:
Titans
Combat
Domestication
Yeah, I thought about it, but couldn't think of another way to get a bunch of monsters to come out at the same time without requiring some new kind of activatable spawner, and decided it was okay if it only scares the **** out of newbies and not experienced players.
Very neat ideas, and my original idea for the Mega-Furnace involved some sort of automated security system guarding it (think a redstone-powered GLaDOS redirecting steam vents and lava chutes to try to burn you), but I was trying to focus on ease of implementation and use as few new game mechanics as possible. That said, concrete slowly turning into ivy-covered concrete (or something) once the Mega-Furnace is off would be a beautiful little touch, and could probably reuse the grass-spreading code...
Right, and I love your idea on a thematic basis. I'm just avoiding adding any new monsters unless strictly necessary due to the amount of work that goes into one.
Like that... and IT COULD HAVE FACTORY'S GIANT SKYSCRAPERS AND ZOMBIES AND MORE! Also it should be true biome sized for the epicness
Of course, there isn't anything special about the biome that makes mobs spawn more often aside from the floors of darkened rooms, so one could gradually "tame" the city with enough lanterns or TNT, or just make a well-lit fully-shielded minecart track to and from the center. But seeing as Notch has said we'll be able to tame Hell with enough effort, this doesn't strike me as a balance concern.
I also can't see the pic you linked, but assuming it's of a more ruined city, I was thinking that at a few of the "room types" would have gaping holes in the walls or floors, implying either crumbling or explosions.
Regularly-shaped buildings become very boring to explore.
The monster AI is not built to handle complex structures.
More importantly, it doesn't fit. Think ghost *town*. Not mega-city.
Of course, these buildings would mix in with all the concrete and cobble structures.
Tesla Coils (produced by stacking fences with signs surrounding all sides, with an iron block on the top) would occasionally appear in areas close to the factory, with redstone wires placed near them to seemingly give them meaning. Of course, they don't do anything, and are merely cosmetic structures.
Mob Type: Ferronx
A ferronx consists of a floating metallic block, almost entirely featureless save for two perpetually closed eyes, and four smaller blocks, red blocks attached to their top and right side, and blue blocks on their bottom and left side, making them resemble a"+" shaped magnet. They roam the halls of laboratories and factories, attracted to red stone torches and powered wire, congregating near them and sapping them of their power for short periods of time.
They Emmit a loud ringing noise to alert players of their presence, and if one inspects closely, faint sparks come out from their side units. As they hover a block high, they can follow the player across water, lava, and short cliffs without hindrance, and do not suffer fall damage, though this also means that they cannot jump, meaning cliffs larger then a single block in height are impassable. They attack using electrical charges that strike directly through iron armor and cause the screen to shake for a split second. Not only this, but their attacks are conducted by iron, gold, and water blocks, causing them to spread up to four blocks from their source (this damages all mobs that are caught in the shock.)
Though their durable metal body is difficult to destroy using conventional weapons, pouring water on them will cause them to instantly short-circuit, and fire will cause them to rapidly degrade and lose magnetism, making them fall onto the ground and discharge all their energy, melting themselves from the intense amount of heat given off along with destroying any ice, grass, wood, or logs within a one block radius (this also heavily damages the player and mobs within the small area).
----
Anyways, excellent idea!
See all those zombies around? Skeletons? Possibly creepers, if they aren't some sort of leaf golem thing? That's where everyone went. Man's hubris let him think he think that he could make himself safe as his machines poisoned the world, and he met a terrible fate. Hope you didn't breathe too much of that smog...
Or, maybe the monsters aren't as dumb as we've been thinking. We might slaughter them in mob traps by day, but when they coordinate they can pull off much more advanced feats of engineering than a human might think possible without opposable thumbs.
Or, with their inscrutably advanced technology, the original builders found a way off this world... or maybe sent themselves to Hell instead.
The point is, Minecraft's backstory has always been up to the player to interpret, starting with why you're on a deserted island and why you thought punching a tree would be a good idea. The Dark Metropolis is detailed enough to let imaginations run wild, and vague enough not to contradict them. Even if we end up with a general medieval theme with goblin towns and whatnot, that would just make the modern, well-engineered, abandoned city more eerie - nobody's escaped with its architectural secrets alive.
Also, love the ideas, Namkob! Brick buildings would look great in the city - the only reason I didn't have them in the original post is that if clay stays as rare as it is, people would strip the buildings down for bricks, which is why I had them all out of common or unrecoverable materials. And although, again, I don't want to add new mobs due to the coding required, yours is very neat.
EDIT: Forgot to mention, ideally the Dark Metropolis would appear much less frequently than other biomes, possibly only once per world. It kind of loses its mystique if there's a bunch of them around.
Who said they had only axes? Or that they didn't have a reason to build a giant city?
Notch has an IQ over 130. He isn't stupid.
For some reason my hell looks like a train station....
After all those things that fit into the game better than this idea are added, maybe then it will be time for your dark metropolis. But probably, the "fun interactions" you imagine will be better-handled elsewhere.
(as for human life, there's multiplayer, and plans to add npcs)
Just use regular glass. Since you already can't recover it, it'll work fine.
The buildings should be denser the closer you get to the center of the city. There could also be pipes running between buildings, smokestacks/mini-factories, etc. as you get close to the center. The factory would be connected to nearby buildings by pipes, have pipes running along the roof, etc.
A 1x1 smokestack running up to the top of the map would be very thin. They should be made of multiple bricks, possibly up to 4x4.
Well, yes, multi-room dungeons would be more awesome. So would working HP in multiplayer, and redstone circuits, and biomes in general. The suggestions forum isn't for "DO THIS RIGHT NOW NOTCH," it's for "hey Notch, if you like this, consider putting it in sometime?" I have no delusion that this is a pressing issue that should be implemented immediately, but that doesn't mean it's not interesting to think about.
The reinforced glass was so you can't break through it with a pickaxe. Basically, the whole idea with the glass and concrete was that you can't pillar-jump up to a survivor nest, or at least not without using some dynamite. Then again, if the windows were just a block high they'd work fine with normal glass.
I was thinking of the buildings having a chaotic spiderweb of minecart tracks between them, but making a generator that would make them rideable seemed like a hassle - using pipes instead (and the increasing congestion towards the center) would look and work great!
The smokestack I was originally envisioning was a 3x3 hollow iron pillar, and I forgot to think about how that'd translate into pipes. But yeah, single-block pillars would be pretty ugly. Maybe 2x2 pillars, and not extending all the way to the world ceiling?
One thing that is certain however, is that Notch isn't afraid to make pre-generated structures in the game, and he's even mentioned implementing abandoned towers. Ho, the thought of finding such land marks and mapping them out is quite lovely!
I hope to see a city-like landscape to be generated in the future, not to appear as a blemish next to the rest of the natural world, but to combine and contrast with it and add to it's feel. Besides, if one does not like them, then they can simply level the structures into the ground using TNT!
Another interesting prospect that Notch has been pondering over is making mobile structures possible in the future. The thought of a siege tower with a cannon mounted on it blasting its way through city ruins in order to get to the forge...
I kinda like the idea of people blasting through the city from a safe distance with TNT cannons. Sure, it eliminates the actual combat challenge, but replaces it with careful construction skill and timing required, as well as an inordinate number of slaughtered creepers if you want to clear a decent-sized path. Plus, you're likely to blow up a few chests and have difficulty locating them among all the other destroyed blocks... It's very much the "nuke it from orbit" option for dealing with the city, and it'd be neat if that was actually considered worth the effort in some cases.
Any thoughts for improvement on the mines? Right now, they're set up to discourage traveling underground to avoid the hordes on the surface - there's monsters down there anyway, and you're missing out on loot - with a few interesting bits for explorers, but they might be a bit boring. Maybe a flooded sewer system instead, or a dilapidated minecart subway with mission sections of track?
Should pipes "grow" while the city is polluted? I'm not sure how obviously eldritch / unnatural / "alive" the city should be, and while that would be a spooky effect it might be going too far. It'd also provide a way of getting new pipe blocks without having to find another Dark Metropolis - which, again, would ideally be very rare - but the relative scarcity of pipes might be a good thing.
And yeah, seeing Let's Players stumble on the city and freak out about it would be pretty awesome.
having massive resererves of steel would imbalance it, people are less likely to explore and more to mine the **** out of everything there
Also Notch has stated that he does not want advanced technology in the game, which i think robots and tesla coils kind of are.
Perhaps change the idea to a more medieval theme.
Abandoned Castle?
While i dont see this happening in alpha, and if changed probable in beta, i can see this idea happening... If its less based on technology.
Perhaps a Castle made of cobblestone (so nobody is enticed to strip it down) with some zombies/other ghoulies, traps, ect, and in the last place accessible a mob unique here (perhaps found in hell?) a spectre/shade which is quite large, and could be considered a boss, or mini-boss.
Inside the Throne Room is a chest with some valuables, and also what do you know! a hell gate! that's where that thing came from. The Castle would be of considerable size by the way, you wouldnt simply make a dirt tower and tunnel into the throne room.
Also to the person who appears trollbait *gestures toward electronic*
Have you read/watched/played a non-linear story? Im guessing not.
Try Suggesting after you criticize. If the idea seems absurd note which parts exactly, and how they could be made less absurd.
If this isnt implemented into SM, it can always be a Kick-ass Adventure Mode Map.
Im walking through the woods, and notice how foggy it has gotten recently. It is usually never this foggy, i can hardly see ten metre infront. I come across a long since forgotten mossy path, curious i decide to folow it, and come across a giant castle as the fog clears a little.